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Thread: Nyff 2016

  1. #61
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    His first films focus on a gangsterish mood in the Russian Jewish section of Queens. Little Odessa, The Yards, We Own the Night- the latter two featured Joaquin Phoenix. Two Lovers is a beautiful intimate study. The Immigrant, I think his first in the NYFF, was a period film with Marian Cotillard (I didn't like it as well, but he has continually grown and remained original. Look him up. I have loved the charming hunky English actor Charlie Hunnam for 17 years - since "Queer As Folk". He is known for the biker series, "Sons of Anarchy" but was in Apatow's "Undeclared." He is coming in a King Arthur film directed by Guy Ritchie, as King Arthur - coming into his own perhaps on the big screen at last after living half his life in Hollywood.

  2. #62
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    Hmm. Interesting.
    "Set the controls for the heart of the Sun" - Pink Floyd

  3. #63
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    Worth the time in my opinion.

  4. #64
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    Illustration by Wesley Allsbrook/The New Yorker

    Gray's Lost City of Z is beginning theatrical release in NY and LA today, but I won't see it till next week. Noticed what Anthony Lane says in his New Yorker review this week that "admirers of Gray" are "a select but ardent bunch." I am eager to see Charlie Hunnam, whom I've been a fan of since he got famous young in the 1999-2002 original UK "Queer As Folk" TV series (the only one that matters!) in this big role.
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 04-14-2017 at 09:33 AM.

  5. #65
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    A QUIET PASSION (Terence Davies 2016)

    As roundups have noted passions are extreme on this movie about Emily Dickinson starring Cynthia Nixon. Loyal Davies fans say it's a masterpiece. Others (including me) think it's a huge mistake, really just terrible. Davies' recent films have been wildly uneven. The Deep Blue Sea was wonderful; Sunset Song which I saw in FCS but couldn't see the point of reviewing was pointless and uninvolving (and could have used subtitles). Now this - which could ruin one of America's best poets for people. It starts out well enough (though giddily and strangely) then sinks into relentless miserablism. To be avoided.


    Shown as part of the New York Film Festival but now going into theatrical release. (Quad Cinema and Lincoln Plaza, NYC.)
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 04-15-2017 at 12:16 PM.

  6. #66
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    THE LOST CITY OF Z (James Gray 2016)

    Charlie Hunnam, Sienna Miller, Robert Pattinson, and Tom Holland in a movie about the life and death (or disappearance) Percy Fawcett, the soldier and explorer lost in the Amazonian jungle with his son in 1925. He is intrepid and brave. This is a patently idealized portrait and a story about moral values in the face of failure. Yet even in that James Gray eschews conventionality - by being old fashioned, as in his stubborn dedication to shooting only in 35mm. (Darius Khodji is the impeccable dp here, as he was for Gray's previous The Immigrant).

    Premiered as the Closing Night Film of the New York Film Festival, 15 Oct. 2016. Also included in the San Francisco film festival shown 9th Apr. 2017, but opening the 14th limited and 21 Apr. wide.
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 04-21-2017 at 10:34 PM.

  7. #67
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  8. #68
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    Glenn Raucher coming back to Manhattan to manage Quad Cinema


    Glenn Raucher [CK photo]

    After eighteen months through Gavin Smith, who moved to Cohen Media Group from editing Film Comment last year, Glenn Raucher is leaving his new job managing the Hudson Valley Writers Center to become the general manager of the new Quad Cinema in the West Village at 34 W. 13th St. NYC, 10011. It was originally started in the early seventies and reportedly is the city's first multiple-auditorium cinema. See Quad's website H E R E.

    The Quad has been in process of restoration for several years by Cohen Media Group and will be a high quality repertory cinema, in fact it is open now. Other great new cinemas of this quality are Alamo Drafthouse and the Metrograph in Chinatown. (The Metrograph is running an impressive series of programs: today's announcement is a retrospective of the works of Robert Bresson.)

  9. #69
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    THE SON OF JOSEPH (Eugène Green 2016)

    I finally get to review this 2016 NYFF Main Slate film (only two left uncovered): it's now available via Netflix streaming. Still in Green's signature stilted, Bressonian style and baroque clarity of French diction, stiff movement, head-on closeups with actors addressing the camera. But it engages with the warm tale of a Paris boy seeking his father, his adventure laced with humor and silly jokes. With newcomer Victor Ezenfis, Natacha Rénier, Fabrizio Rongione, Matthieu Amalric, and Jacques Bonnaffé.

  10. #70
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    More about Quad Cinema.

    I have mentioned Glenn Raucher has come back to work in the city after a year at Hudson Valley Writers' Center, as Vice President and General Manager of the restored Quad Cinema at 34 W. 13th Street. I went by there last night. It is now an almost scarily impressive restored, modernized and revamped place. So many flashing screens and electronic letters and vanishing images. There are some big old classic European movie posters too. But the traditional seediness of the old art houses is studiously avoided. You can still find that rigorously preserved at the nearby Cinema Village at 22 E. 12th Street, with its steep stairways, cramped quarters, and cold, dank basement auditorium - so atmospheric! So many memories - like my first experience of Carlos Sorin's little movies about Patagonia, 12 years ago.

    The Quad is all new and gleamingly electronic, almost banishing the memories of its past, when I also experienced some cinematic discoveries, and it had many small film festivals too, such as Greek and Irish ones, I believe. It has both new films and a lively repertory program, the latter managed by Christopher Wells. It's also flexible enough to now be starting a 20-film retrospective to honor the late Harry Dean Stanton. The series is called "Also Starring Harry Dean Stanton" and runs 22 Sept.-1 Oct. 2017.

    The Quad has a rival further downtown in the Metrograph on Ludlow Street in the East Village, which has been running a barrage of series lately - it has a marquee able to list six different movies showing in one da. The Metrograph was started with John Waters and Jim Jarmusch and Greta Gerwig on hand for the opening. It has an intro in GQ by Wes Anderson with the tie designer Alexander Olch, the Metrograph's founder.

    This of course doesn't alter the fact that all the rep cinemas that dotted around NYC and the old seedy theaters turned to art houses like the Thalia have vanished - and the same is increasingly true even in the cinematic haven of Paris. Cineplexes have wiped them all out and also an economy that makes operating marginally virtually impossible.

    [Glenn's time at Hudson Valley was logical. Writing is a first love, and he directed the literary arts program of the YMCA of New York f or 8 years before joining the Film Society of Lincoln Center. He likes music too, and has had his own band for years.]
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 09-22-2017 at 07:55 PM.

  11. #71
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    I did not get to watch the Errol Morris documentary about Elsa Dorfman that you liked when you reviewed it as part of the 2016 NYFF, as I would expect to find very favorable reviews about every single film (or whatever) that Morris has produced/directed (or whatever). He followed this film with a magnificent 45-hour series that premiered on television in 2017 titled WORMWOOD. I found out about it recently when perusing retired Village Voice film pundit j. Doberman's Top 10s and learning this doc is his favorite "movie thing" that year. It's the same year as the David Lynch series that topped my list. Other than Godard, Lynch is the only living filmmaker whose films require me to understand only halfway in order to love them. Morris puts fiction strategies to documentary purposes and the results are exhilarating. This is about the CIA murdering one of their own back in 1953 and the coverup that kept it secret. There's nothing paranoid about this conspiracy thriller.

  12. #72
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    i didn't like that Morris doc about Elsa Dorfman that much. (I think I misspoke in my New York movie journal where I wrote about it: I've corrected that.) I wrote in my review that it "is too careless an effort to rank with Morris' best work." You mean Hoberman, not Doberman, I believe. Dobrerman is the dog. Hoberman's trashing of James Gray's films has not endeared me to him. I haven't seen "Wormwood." I like David Lynch too, and also find him engaging as a person. See the doc bio of his early life, David Lynch: The Art Life.
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 09-27-2019 at 11:52 PM.

  13. #73
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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris Knipp View Post
    You mean Hoberman, not Doberman, I believe. Dobrerman is the dog.
    I also wrote that it's a FORTY FIVE hour series when a mere 4 hours are required to watch WORMWOOD unfold. I make more mistakes now than ever, that's a fact

    The word "infotainment" is mostly understood as pejorative and intended to be critical of entertainment attempting to pass for journalism. Morris relates the concepts of information (imparting of) and entertainment in a positive way. His films use stylized dramatizations of events recounted by a documentary character (a person who exists in the world of the audience) to illuminate, define or clarify them and to amplify their emotional impact. Wormwood feels like the best conspiracy thriller and the best film-noir in recent memory. But it also makes as valid a claim to be telling the truth as any old-fashioned piece of journalism.

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