(Never fear, true believers. This week’s Weekend Warrior is later than usual — what else is new, right? — and there may be a special announcement in it, maybe, but in the meantime…)
This year’s 60th NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL is taking place (as usual) up at Film at Lincoln Center, running from this Friday through October 16. I’ve attended and covered NYFF for nearly 20 years, give or take, and for me and other New Yorkers, it’s often the first time we get to see some of the movies that premiered at Cannes and Venice and Telluride, etc. Unlike past years — except maybe 2020, oddly — this year’s festival includes screenings in all five boroughs with screening at the Brooklyn Academy of Music AKA BAM, at the Museum of Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, the brand-new Alamo on Staten Island, and the Bronx Museum of the Arts. (The Maysles Documentary Center in Harlem is another venue.) The point is that even if the screenings at Film at Lincon Center are sold out, you might be able to see some movies in one of the other boroughs. (Check the schedule carefully to see what location works best for you.)
FilmLinc has put together a particularly fantastic line-up for its 60th edition, beginning with the North American premiere of Noah Baumbach’s White Noise, starring Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig, this Friday, which I haven’t seen yet.
The two major world premieres at this year’s NYFF are Chinonye (Clemency) Chukwu’s Till (out Oct. 14) and Maria Schrader’s She Said (out Nov. 18) – the former is about Emmett Till’s mother (played by Danielle Deadwyler), the latter is about New York Times reporters Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor, played by Carrie Mulligan and Zoe Kazan. I’ve seen one of these but can’t say anymore due to embargoes.
This year’s Centerpiece Selection is Laura Poitras’ new doc All the Beauty and the Bloodshed about artist Nan Goldin (who I know nothing about) but Ms. Poitras has already won the Oscar in the doc category for CITIZENFOUR, and from the buzz I’ve heard out of Venice, Telluride and TIFF, this one could very well win her a second Oscar, making her only the second filmmaker to win in the category twice. The first of them was Barbara Koppel for American Dream in 1991 and Harlan County USA in 1977.
The festival concludes on October 16 with Elegance Bratton’s The Inspection, starring Jeremy Pope & Gabrielle Union, about a gay man going through Marine Corps training. Also heard good things about this one but won’t be seeing until around the time of its U.S. premiere.
Another movie I’m looking forward to is James Gray’s Armageddon Time, which will be released by Focus Features later in October, but the cast includes Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong, and Sir Anthony Hopkins, as well as newcomers Banks Repeta, and Jaylin Webb (who also plays Emmett Till in Till).
I already have seen some movies, including’ Aftersun, starring Paul Mescal – also in God’s Creatures opening this week – and Francesca “Frankie” Corio, the latter in her first anything ever, as father and daughter on holiday. It’s a wonderful and charming film from first-time feature writer/director Charlotte Wells. A24 is releasing this in October, so hope to have more on this closer to release.
I’ve also seen Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness, which premiered all the way back in May at Cannes, and winning the coveted Palme d’Or. Östlund’s previous film, The Square, was nominated for an Oscar in the (then) Foreign Language category, but Triangle of Sadness has an even more international cast, including Harris Dickinson, Woody Harrelson, and the late Charlbi Dean (who tragically died in August). It’s a pretty insane but very funny comedy with quite pointed social commentary, and I’ll have more to say about it in next week’s column (hopefully).
Also opening next week is Todd Field’s third feature as a filmmaker, TÁR, starring Cate Blanchett as the fictional conductor Lydia Tár, the first woman to conduct for the Berlin Philharmonic, as it watches an unknown period of time in her life as things start falling apart. That’s probably all I’ll say about that for now, and hope to have more to say next week.
I just saw Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All, starring Taylor Russell and Timothée Chalamet, which is indeed the cannibal love story you might have heard about, which played at Venice and Telluride. It’s a lot more of a touching young romance road trip than horror with a capital “H,” and while the two leads are great (especially Ms. Russell), there is a scene stealing supporting role for Mark Rylance, that could very well get him another Oscar nomination. (Michael Stulbarg, who starred with Chalamet in Guadgnino’s Call Me By Your Name also has a small role.) The score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are killer and really bring a lot to giving this film just the right mood.
After missing it at TIFF, I’ve also seen Corsage, the Austrian selection for the International Feature category at the Oscars, starring Phantom Thread’s Vicky Krieps as the Empress Elizabeth of Austria, who ruled in the 19th century, and like Spencer and Marie Antonette, this is fictionalized history or historical fiction, whichever you prefer. Krieps is amazing, but I may have to see it a second time before sharing my thoughts.
Other movies I’m looking forward to are Paul Schrader’s Master Gardener (seeing that this morning, Thursday, in fact), Park Chan-wook’s Decision to Leave (that’s my evening plans on Thursday), Return to Seoul, and a few others. (I missed Mia Hansen-Løve’s One Fine Morning but should see it fairly soon.)
I hope to have many reviews out of the New York Film Festival in weeks to come, although many of them might be either in this column or on this blog as their release approaches. I’m still figuring some things of those things out, and hopefully, that will be explained further in whatever shape this week’s Weekend Warrior ends up in.