New York Film Festival 2022

[Chris Knipp]

Reviews coming this week to Filmleaf NYFF 2022 coverage.

Armageddon Time
James Gray 2022 U.S. 114 minutes
Armageddon Time is a deeply personal story on the strength of family, the complexity of friendship and the generational pursuit of the American Dream. an exquisitely detailed coming-of-age drama that follows Paul Graff (Banks Repeta), a sixth grader who dreams of becoming an artist. Also starring Anthony Hopkins, Jeremy Strong, Anne Hathaway, and Jaylin Webb.

Aftersun
Charlotte Wells 2022 UK 102 minutes Opens October 21, 2022
Sophie reflects on the shared joy and private melancholy of a holiday she took with her father twenty years earlier. Memories real and imagined fill the gaps between miniDV footage as she tries to reconcile the father she knew with the man she didn’t. Starring Paul Mescal and Francesca Corio as a divorced father and his daughter whose close bond is quietly shaken during a brooding weekend at a coastal resort in Turkey Metacritic rating: 93%

[Chris Knipp]

Also review ready, One Fine Morning (Un beau matin, Mia Hansen-Love 2022)

But I've been asked to hold the review for its US release date. It was released in France a month ago, Oct. 5 (Wed. is. the day movies come out in France). A terrific movie (Metacrittic rating 84%).

One Fine Morning
Mia Hansen-Løve, 2022, France, 112m
French with English subtitles
Few filmmakers are as adept at exploring the contours of modern love and grief as Mia Hansen-Løve (Bergman Island), whose intensely poignant and deeply personal latest drama stars Léa Seydoux as Sandra, a professional translator and single mother at a crossroads. Her father (Pascal Greggory), rapidly deteriorating from a neurological illness, will soon require facility care, and her new lover (Melvil Poupaud) is a married dad whose unavailability only seems to draw her nearer to him, despite—or because of—the fact that she’s going through an overwhelming time in her life. Hansen-Løve, so finely observant of the small nuances of human interaction, creates, in harmonious concert with a magnificent Seydoux, a complicated portrait of a woman torn between romantic desire and familial tragedy that is a marvel of emotional and formal economy. A Sony Pictures Classics release.

[Chris Knipp]

ARMAGEDDON TIME (James Gray 2022)

What I admire most about Gray's first outright autobiographical film is the degree to which he dares to be boldly critical of himself, unsentimental about his family, and alarmed at the times (1980, the beginning of the Reagan years).

[Chris Knipp]

DESCENDANT (Margaret Brown 2022)

Everything the right doesn't want kids to learn in school about the legacy of slavery. Seen through a community in Mobile, Alabama whose ancestors were brought on the last, illegal slave ship, whose concealed remains are found. One critic has called this wonderfully made documentary "not just essential but urgent."

[Chris Knipp]

CORSAGE (Marie Kreutzer 2022)

This radicalized portrait of Empress Elizabeth of Austria is a huge star turn by Vicky Krieps. Its originality includes various anachronisms but also elaborate period mise-en-scène, however, it pouily refuses to provide the satisfaction of a plot.

[Chris Knipp]

SHE SAID (Maria Schrader 2022)

The story of the New York Times investigation of Harvey Weinstein's long history of sexual abuse of young women and payoffs to keep them quiet is an essential one. German director Maria Schrader's film about it unfortunately turns out to be rather repetitious and flat.

[Chris Knipp]

BONES AND ALL (Luca Guadagnino 2022)

Newcomer Taylor Russell and skinny heartthrob Timothée Chalamet play teen cannibals, lonely and in love, roaming the country and feeding on human flesh. Somehow the director makes them real and sympathetic.

(Now in theaters since Nov. 18; also posted in General Film Forum.)