New York Film Festival 2025

[Chris Knipp]

Blue Moon Q&A


Here's a Q&A about this wonderful, talky film, a tour de force for Ethan Hawke. as Lorenz Hart. There's hardly any need fir Dennis Lim to ask questions. Just bring Robert Kaplow, the writer, Richard Linklater the director, and Ethan Hawke, Andrew Scott and Bobby Cannavale the terrific lead actors together - and Bob's your uncle! My short review follows.

[Chris Knipp]

MARGARET QUALLEY, ETHAN HAWKE IN BLUE MOON

BLUE MOON (Richard Linklater 2025)
Lyricist Lorenz Hart’s legendary contribution to the Great American Songbook with composer Richard Rodgers include My Funny Valentine, The Lady Is a Tramp, Where or When, With a Song in My Heart, Isn't It Romantic?, My Heart Stood Still, Bewitched, I Didn't Know What Time It Was, Manhattan, and Blue Moon. But at the moment in 1943 that's the focus of this incredibly vivid and touching film portrait, that marriage was on the rocks and Hart was soon to die of pneumonia a victim of alcoholism. Here he is, in Richard Linklater's film in a performance by Ethan Hawke as Hart drinking and monologuing at Sardi's after Rogers' huge success collaborating with Oscar Hammerstein on Oklahoma! has left him in the cold. It's an astonishing tour de force by Hawke and a rich, sad but brilliant portrait of a man and a moment. Also great here: Bobby Cannavale as Eddie the barman, Margaret Qualley as Hart's young female protege Elizabeth Weiland and Andrew Scott as Richard Rodgers.

[Chris Knipp]

LUKA SABBAT, INDYA MOORE IN FATHER MOTHER SISTER BROTHER

FATHER MOTHER SISTER BROTHER (Jim Jarmusch 2025) Centerpiece Film

TRAILER

COMING TO THEATERS DECEMBER 24

Reviews from Venice are mixed enough so the Metascore is 79, but while some say this is not major Jarmusch, it also is clear that it's a gem with gifts of matUrity. First of all is the sense of awareness about age and family. There are three episodes, an anthology fIlm being something the filmmaker has shown great skill at, though the mood is several times compared to PATTERSON. And Adam Driver is present here again, along with an impeccable A List cast including Charlotte Rampling, Cate Blanchett, Vicky Krieps, Tom Waits, and newcomers Mayim Bialik, Indya Moore, and Luka Sabbat. The last two are visiting the house where their recently dead parents lived and they grew up in Paris. Vicky and Cate are mismatched sisters visiting stolid momma Charlotte in Dublin, where they also live but see each other once a year. Mayim Bialik and Adam Driver are siblings meeting and driving up into New England, where their father (Tom Waits) lives alone in apparent but perhaps faked poverty.

When reviewers call the film "sly" they refer to innumerable subtle touches, and motifs that recur from one seemingly unconnected segment to the next - Rolex watches, mysteriously color-coordinated designer clothing, handsome vintage cars, toasts in tea or water, perhaps an imagined climax that never comes, always a reference to the mystery of parents: did they have a whole secret life before us we will never know, and if so who are or were they?

Peter Bradshaw gives the film 4/5 stars at Venice attributing to FATHER MOTHER SISTER BROTHER "a Zen simplicity that is a cleansing of the moviegoing palate," and concludes that it is "a film to savour." I'm looking forward to multiple viewings.


VICKY KRIEPS, CATE BLANCHETT, CHARLOTTE RAMPLING IN FATHER MOTHER SISTER BROTHER

[Chris Knipp]

TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET IN MARTY SUPREME

SURPRISE SECRET PREMIERE SCREENING AT NYFF OCT. 6 OF JOSH SAFDIE'S "MARTY SUPREME" STARRING TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET

TEASER

In their first interviews about the A24 feature, which just premiere-screened for the first time as a surprise "mystery" screening (which the audience hoped was what it was*) at the New York Film Festival, Chalamet and filmmaker Josh Safdie go deep on making an American epic out of, yes, table tennis. Chalamet plays at high energy throughout. Though some feel the movie is a bit long, the response to Chalamet was big applause and people like it.

Also features: Gwyneth Paltrow. . . Odessa A'zion. Also Kevin O'Leary. Josh was there and Timmy, at the screening and Chalamet declared the movie to be "in many ways, beyond being about Marty Mauser" also "a love letter to New York." He said on stage that he was "so thrilled" to debut his latest film in the city, right near where he went to school growing up.

A description of the event from The Hollywood Reporter :

Surprise! Josh Safdie‘s Marty Supreme had its world premiere at the 2025 New York Film Festival on Monday night and after the unexpected screening the early reaction started hitting social media. And judging by the surprise premiere of the film, which has its official theatrical release on Dec. 25, the hype train has shot out of the station.

A 1950s New York-set sports dramedy, A24‘s Marty Supreme stars Timothée Chalamet as Marty Mauser, a disrespected table tennis player who overcomes the odds to achieve greatness. The cast also includes Gwyneth Paltrow, Odessa A’zion, Kevin O’Leary, Tyler Okonma, Abel Ferrara and Fran Drescher.

The rest of us have to wait till December 25 for the theatrical release. You can see a quick reaction after the Lincoln Center mystery screening from the OSCAR EXPERT bros HERE. (They give it a "thumbs up.")

Meanwhile Josh's bro and former directing partner Benny has seen his movie THE SMASHING MACHINE with Dwayne Johnson in the lead fall a little flat in its theatrical opening Oct. 3: Metacritic rating: 65%.

SCREENING INTROS

_________________
*The two brothers as a team followed the same process at the 1919 NYFF, secret screening followed by Christmas theatrical release for UNCUT GEMS, reviewed on Filmleaf HERE.

[Chris Knipp]

TEYANA TAYLOR IN ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHE

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER (Paul Thomas Anderson)

As mentioned its Metacritic rating is 95%. This is higher than anything else this year.

As they are sometimes, the all-star Q&A with Dennis Lim after the NYFF sneak preview was a warm affair. You can watch it HERE.

My review is up on the NYFF Festival Thread now HERE.

[Chris Knipp]

TONI SERVILLO IN LA GRAZIA

Final days of the 2025 NYFF

Thursday, October 9 LA GRAZIA (Paolo Sorrentino, 128m)
Friday, October 10 – NYFF CLOSING NIGHT

IS THIS THING ON? (120m)
*Followed by a press conference
12:00pm–12:30pm
With: Bradley Cooper, Will Arnett, Laura Dern,
Andra Day, Christine Ebersole

NYFF festival blurb: Oscar winner Paolo Sorrentino (The Great Beauty, Il Divo) returns to the baroque world of Italian presidential politics, crafting an elegantly restrained portrait of a fictional ruler (Toni Servillo, who won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the 2025 Venice Film Festival) reckoning with age, power, and moral obligation as his term comes to a close.

David Rooney in The Hollywood Reporter is extravagant ("an exquisite character study") in his praise of LA GRAZIA, in which the great Toni Servillo, a kind of muse for Sorrentino, plays the lead role of a fictional Italian president taking stock during his final days in office. The film opened this year's Venice film festival. The character describes himself, says Rooney, as "'a gray, boring man, a man of the law,' instead revealed to be a wellspring of deep feeling, humanity and — to his own surprise — doubt." (It sounds like a profoundly Italian theme.) A significant earlier film (2009), IL DIVO, also had Servillo directed by Sorrentino - as real-life Italian politician Giulio Andreotti. "The right-leaning seven-time prime minister, writes Rooney, was linked to "countless political assassinations, faked suicides and kickbacks" and IL DIVO gave him "operatic treatment, splashed with bold directorial strokes that recalled Fellini, Scorsese and Coppola." In LA GRAZIA (="Grace") Sorrentino makes the nowadays almost radical choice - of depicting a decent, moral man. This is a "sober and distinctly mature film," but Sorrentino carries it off, and still not without some of his "arias," "witty humor," and "visual delights."

So, the NYFF scores with its closing film. Likewise it seems like their opener, Guadagnino's AFTER THE HUNT, while it has gotten something of a basting from critics, generates a lot of interest with its timely topics of modern feminism, academic misogyny, institutional corruption, generational divides and MeToo-style accusations.

But wait! LA GRAZIA isn't the closing film but the penultimate one. That honor goes to Bradley Cooper's IS THIS THING ON?, which is premiering.

[Chris Knipp]

JEREMY ALLEN WHITE IN DELIVER ME FROM NOWHERE

DELIVER ME FROM NOWHERE (Scott Cooper)

A review from Telluride on Awards Watch by Ryan McQuade found the film "uneven" but White's turn as Springsteen "astonishing."

Cooper’s film is adapted from Warren Zanes’s 2023 best-selling chronicle of the same title. Focus is a crucial moment in the early eighties when Bruce Springsteen was creating his key acoustic song album "Nebraska." At the same time he was recording demos for "Born in the USA," which was to bring him global fame. This special biopiic focuses on specifics of the songwriting in a context of family traumas and depression. This is a tour de force performance and more for star Jeremy Allen White that brings out the singer-songwriter's flawed humanity. Supporting cast includes Jeremy Strong as Springsteen’s longtime manager and co-producer Jon Landau, Stephen Graham and Gaby Hoffmann as Bruce’s parents,and in other roles Paul Walter Hauser, David Krumholtz, and Odessa Young. Film produced by Scott Cooper, Ellen Goldsmith-Vein, Eric Robinson, and Scott Stuber; Tracey Landon and Zanes executive produced this 20th Century Studios release. (119 minutes)

[Chris Knipp]

Oct. 11 & Oct. 13 a premiere, and '25 NYFF Closing Film

Is This Thing On? (Bradley Cooper)
120 minutes, a collapsing marriage dramady

This new movie directed and co-written by Bradley Cooper made its world premiere as the closer of the NYFF on Friday. Cooper walked the red carpet along with stars Laura Dern and Will Arnett at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall in Manhattan. Will Arnett and Laura Dern play a couple whose separation leads to unpredictable midlife self-reckonings, most dramatically in Alex’s wild career pivot to become a confessional stand-up comic, in the words of a Letterboxd contributor, "in New York’s West Village, using it as a form of therapy to work through his emotions." "Director Bradley Cooper’s beautifully lived-in third feature is both lacerating and sweet-souled, funny and tender" (festival blurb). (In 2023, Cooper's MAESTRO, about Leonard BErnstein, was featured in the NYFF. It premiered at Venice.) IS THIS THING ON is scheduled to be released in the United States by Searchlight Pictures on December 19.

[Chris Knipp]

Justin Chang's interview with Paolo Sorrentino after the film LA GRAZIA [GRACE]

We haven't seen either of these two gentlemen before and both are mellow, wise fellows. Paolo Sorrentino proves to be quite humorous, and modest. His answers (mostly in Italian, with interpreter Lilia Pina) are brief but pungent.

See the NYFF interview with Paolo Sorrentino by Justin Chang HERE

[Chris Knipp]

Scorsese interviews Panahi at the NYFF

Panahi proved to be a jovial storyteller and Marty, as usual, is entertained with laughter.

See the NYFF interview with Jafar Panahi by Martin Scorsese HERE

[Chris Knipp]

WILL ARNETT IN IS THIS THING ON?

Is This Thing On? (Bradley Cooper)
NYFF 63 CLOSING NIGHT FILM

TEASER TRAILER

Following up on his successful directorial efforts in A STAR IS BORN (2018) and MAESTRO (2023), Bradley Cooper has made a New York-set intimate drama (on a lower budget) about a marriage on the rocks that leads the man (Will Arnett) to escape or get new perspective on his wife (Laura Dern) by going downtown to the West Village around MacDougal Street and trying his luck at stand up comedy.

Watch the post-premiere Q&A HERE of cast and crew with Film at Lincoln Center director and NYFF artistic director Dennis Lim.

Audience response was quite positive. See online critic James Hancock's video review on Geekin' with James Hancock, which is enthusiastic, though he says he might have fallen a little under the spell of festival finale excitement, especially since this is very much a New York movie and he loves New York. (I recommend Hancock's reviews, though.)

David Rooney wrote a positive review for HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: "Will Arnett and Laura Dern Are a Delight in Bradley Cooper’s Warmhearted Flipside to ‘Marriage Story."

The NYFF comes to a close for 2025.