Nyff 2011

[Chris Knipp]

David Cronenberg: A Dangerous Method (2011)

A ceremonial festival gala film. Christopher Hampton's adaptation of his play adaptation of a book about Jung, Freud, and a Russian Jewish woman with daddy issues who somehow crystallized the two men's issues.

[Chris Knipp]

Sean Durkin: Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)

A talented newcomer has written and directed a classy horror film, a psychological thriller about a young women who escapes from a cult in the Catskills to the chilly world of her sister and her bourgeois, mercenary husband in Connecticut and in her shattered state, drifts back and forth from present to memories of her experience. The excellent cast is headed by another gifted newbie, Elizabeth Olson.

[Chris Knipp]

Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne: The Kid with the Bike (2011)

As I noted in the earlier review in my May Paris Movie Report, in The Kid with a Bike/Le gamin au vélo the Dardenne brothers are "on strong familiar ground," "depicting a troubled boy struggling to get attention from his derelict, immature dad and tempted to a life of crime by an older boy who exploits him." And the Dardennes' discovery, 13-year-old Thomas Doret, who plays Cyril, the 11-year-old reject, is "excellent, if quite uncharming and uncute." But what I ought to have noted was not only the incredible drive Doret has but the emotional wallop the film packs. I was more deeply moved this time, viewing the film again at the New York Film Festival -- and struck by the humanistic power of the occasional bursts of classical music, a rare gesture for the Dardennes.

Co-winner of the Grand Prize at Cannes, with Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (also a NYFF 2011 selection).

[Chris Knipp]

Steve McQueen: Shame (2011)

Colder and less engaging than the riveting McQueen debut Hunger, (NYFF 2008) but still this shows the Turner Prize-winning British artist McQueen is Scorsese to Michael Fassbender's DeNiro. Despite my quibbles, this is powerful filmmaking. Carey Mulligan is also excellent as Manhattan sex addict Brandon's unhappy sister.

[Chris Knipp]

Wim Wenders: Pina (2011)

Wenders' appropriately austere, stylized documentary celebrates the German dance master Pina Bausch, whose surreal style was an international influence. She died in 2009, suddenly after a cancer diagnosis, having collaborated on this film.

[Chris Knipp]

Nadav Lapid: Policeman (2011)

A structurally weak but provocatively themed Israeli first film about an macho antiterrorist police unit accustomed to killing Palestinians that is called upon to smash a band of young bourgeois Jewish revolutionaries who kidnap some billionaires at a wedding.

[Chris Knipp]

Simon Curtis: My Week with Marilyn (2011)

Adapted memoir of the recollection of Colin Clark, son of famous art historian Sir Kenneth Clark, who had a mini affair with Marilyn Monroe during the 1957 shoot of The Prince and the Showgirl with Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) at Pinewood Studios. Michelle Williams as Marilyn, Eddie Redmayne as Clark, a host of good English actors and authentic production values enliven this entertaining nostalgia piece. It may draw some attention at Oscar time.

World premiere at the NYFF October 9, 2011, opening in US theaters November 4.