Motherless Brooklyn (2019) NYFF 2019

Edward Norton takes Jonathan Lethem's present day set mystery novel and re-imagines it as a neo-noir set in 1950's New York. It is the story of a detective with Tourette syndrome and a photographic memory, who tries to solve the mystery of what happened to his boss who is killed when a job he was working on goes horribly wrong. The trail leads him into a Harlem jazz club,  the "slums" of Brooklyn and a run in with a power broker modeled on New York's infamous Robert Moses.

Self indulgent and wildly over long, this runs just short of two and a half hours for no good reason, MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN still manages to be a good mystery. Its a compelling story that marches us through the time in the late 1950's when Civil Rights were being fought for, a way of life was disappearing, the Dodgers were leaving Brooklyn and an unelected man was the real power in New York State. How those things come together forms a compelling mystery that doesn't quite go as expect, which gets the film several extra bonus points.

Looking like a film from a couple decades back, the film is full of smokey dives, halls of power and skylines unadorned by ugly skyscrapers. This film is a stunningly made film with a real visual sense that keeps us buried in it's own world.

It is propelled by a good jazz score, which while occasionally intrusive, makes for some wonderful moments such as the dance in the Harlem jazz club. It is do good that after the New York Film Festival press screening numerous people were pondering if a soundtrack album would be released because they wanted copies.

The cast headed by Norton and containing Alec Baldwin, Bruce Willis, Willem Dafoe, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Bobby Cannavale, Leslie Mann, and Cherry Jones is first rate. And while I didn't think Willis was right for his role at the start, I realized by the end that the role of the man who sets it all in motion needed some one like Willis to give him weight that carried all the way though the films ove long run time.

The rewriting of Lethem's novel, its more a starting point than remotely faithful adaption, is quite good, with the single exception of Willem Dafoe's character who is not so much a person but an exposition machine in human form. While ultimately vital to the plot, more times than not he appears simply to give information to push the film along.

Strangely despite all of my quibbles, and they are quibbles in the grand scheme of things, the one thing truly working against the film is the fact that Edward Norton paced the film much too slowly. If he had picked up the pace of sequences (it's not a matter of cutting scenes) this film could have been a half an hour shorter and thus would have gone from a good film into being a great one. Norton lets the action play out too slackly with the result that our interest waivers and we have time to think about things which we shouldn't think about.

Still despite my reservations I did like the film, and I do recommend it for anyone who wants a good old school mystery.

a Note on 63 UP which played at the NYFF

I have seen and enjoyed Michael Apted's 63 UP.

Despite not seeing it through official channels, I did not get a ticket through the press office or PR handling the film, and so not technically bound by the request to hold reviews until the film hits theaters next month I am holding off. (I have had too much grief from different PR people with my reviewing films I saw on my dime who insist simply that because I am press that means I have to abide by any rule they set)

I will say it is a wonderful continuation of the series and if you like the previous films then you should very much see this film as well. Also if you haven't, this is a great place to jump in.

Varda by Agnes(2019) NYFF 2019

Agnes Varda’s final film is a bittersweet joy. A lovely explanation of a filmmaker and her entire body of work, it is a grand summing up a creative life. While it is glorious celebration of the world changing work of one person there is a sadness in that there will be no more wonders from Ms Varda.

According to Rosalie Varda, Anges’s daughter and collaborator the project was started in 2015 as a way to record the “masterclasses” that Agnes was holding around the world. Agnes hated the term masterclass, preferring the term conversation. She also didn’t like the way the straight recording of the conversations went and the project stalled as they pair tried to sort out a way to make the film work. Eventually bringing in collaborators the problem was solved and what we are left with is one part lecture, and several trips into the mind of Agnes’s mind.

Beginning as a lecture Varda by Agnes starts somewhere in the middle of Varda’s film work and then jumps around all over the place, not randomly but in what is a wonderful stream of consciousness that is exactly like what happens when you talk to a prolific filmmaker and artist and have the discussion of one thing lead into another. The discussion just seems to happen right before our eyes (despite Varda sometimes reading from notes) as if we are curled up in a beach chair next to her shooting the breeze.

Watching the film I was struck by how much I really need to go back and revisit her work. Partly because what Ms Varda says about the films, but mostly because seeing the clips I realized I have been neglecting some old friends. That’s what I love about the film, it not only reminds us of the wonders she produced but also gave us a key to discover new things I never saw in them before. It is, as Hubert Vigilla said to me when the film ended, a reminder of how many of her films I haven’t seen.

Odds are when the film ends you are going to be left feeling a bit strange. As good as this film is there is an odd feeling one gets when it fades to black (there are no end credits, its all at the start) in that it doesn’t feel like a bold final statement. This is a coda to a great life. The film feels a last coffee with a friend before they go off, it is not a final blow out (that would be FACES PLACES). As the film ended and I knew there was nothing new coming I felt totally content that Varda got to sum up. At the same time I wish that she had left with a flourish instead of a (literal) slow fade.

On the other hand when the project was started no one knew that this would be her last film. Additionally whatever she had to say she left in an almost seventy year long body of work, she owes nothing to anyone. In a weird way the film is like an old school Peter Gabriel concert when he would end with Biko and then walk off leaving the audience to pick up where he left off and carry on the fight.

My feelings at the end discounted, Varda By Agnes is a great film. It is the sort of film every artist would want as a final one- a taking stock of everything they had done which results in the realization that it is still vibrant and alive and informing art and culture even after their passing. (Perhaps this being the final work adds to its greatness)

Highly recommended, this film is a must for fans of Agnes Varda and film in general

American Trial: The Eric Garner Story (2019) NYFF 2019

Unfairly getting lost in the final weekend of the New York Film Festival is AMERICAN TRIAL: THE ERIC GARNER STORY which very probably is the most important film playing at this years festival.

The film is a docufiction  trial of New York City Officer Pantaleo who wrestled Eric Garner to the ground using a choke hold when they he and several other officers tried to arrest him for selling loose cigarettes. Since Pantaleo was never indicted, so he never went to trial,  filmmaker Roee Messinger assembled a team of former prosecutors and a team of expert defense lawyers to use the public record and actual witnesses to put the officer on trial.  Pantaleo is portrayed by actor Anthony Altieri and his words are those found in the public record.

Allowing that some witnesses who would have been called to trial, (the man who shot the infamous video, the other officers, any other people on the street) AMERICAN TRIAL goes a long way to say that Pantaleo should have at least been indicted. The evidence is there to at least take the case to trial since its clear that within the definition of the NYPD department guidelines and the law what Pantaleo did was not allowed and probably strangulation under the criminal definition even if only for a matter of seconds. Watching the film, which was not scripted by simply the record of the mock trial the full extent of the miscarriage of justice can be seen.

Again in fairness to the fact that we do not get to see all the witnesses that we would have seen at trial, I will hold off saying that Pantaleo would have been convicted at trial, but he should have been indicted. All of the information needed for that is in the public record....

I should also point out that one of the strengths of the film is that it points out that there are things that most of us don't know such as the facts concerning what happened prior to the video such as a fight, not involving Garner (who according to testimony tried to break it up) that took place that brought the police and that ten minutes of unrecorded talk between the cops and Garner happened before the video began which makes it even more curious as to why things suddenly escalated. A full accounting of what happened makes clear at what a tragedy this was.

In fairness I do need to quibble about one or to choices that Roee Messinger makes in the later portion of the film and that is to add flourishes outside of the courtroom proceedings to paint Pantaleo as a bad guy. She hammers home the points that Pantaleo had numerous unsubstantiated reports concerning civilian charges against him. While there is no doubt they are part of the public record, and her use of them outside of the court room portion of the film are merely flourishes to show the officer as not a nice guy, their use and they way they are included, despite being fleeting, will allow those who think Pantaleo was right in what he did to dismiss the film as a hatchet job. Those seconds of screen time make this a film some people can dismiss if they choose to. But that is a quibble.

Ultimately AMERICAN TRIAL:THE ERIC GARNER STORY is a kick in the ass and a wake up call concerning the criminal justice system. It is a must see film.

The film is World Premiering  today at the New York Film Festival at 6pm. Tickets are free. For more information and tickets go here.

Young Ahmed (2019) NYFF 2019

The discussions in the days following the press screening of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's YOUNG AHMED centered about how it didn't really work. Some people liked it more than others. Most people had problems with the ending, which is kind of odd.  Other people, myself included, had other issues with it. Regardless of the feelings pro or con it was a film that was still being discussed weeks after it screened, which I think means something even if it isn't liked.

The film is the story of teen aged Ahmed who is under going the process of radicalization. Everyone can see it but no one can stop it. While he is heading toward extremism, life and the things it throws at him, such as girls, are acting as bumps along the way. However it doesn't stop him from planning something murderous.

Moving at a breakneck speed YOUNG AHMED is a film on a mission. Clearly the directors have something to say and they are going to say it as fast as possible so we don't have time to think about what we are seeing. Playing like a very well done polemic the Dardennes want us to consider the people who become radicals, unfortunately they really don't give us enough breathing room or time to really to ponder what we are seeing. Running a brisk 84 minutes YOUNG AHMED remains wholly focused on our protagonist and wholly on the points the pair wants to make and nothing else.

My problem with the film is I don't see things as clear cut on any level as the Dardennes do.There should be more shading. Blame it entirely on my steady diet of documentaries that are regular fodder for Unseen Films. There have been at least four films this year on the subject including the excellent ACCEPT THE CALL about a father's efforts to understand how his son could be radicalized. It's a similar story to YOUNG AHMED and the fact that it has hung with me since I saw it in June (it's one of the best films I saw in 2019) colored how I saw this film particularly in the fact that radicalization is more complex than is shown here.

Personally I don't think YOUNG AHMED works. Its well made and all of that but there is something about script that just doesn't pull it together. ..

...then again I really haven't liked the work of the Dardennes, who have always come up with intriguing ideas that never quite work. YOUNG AHMED is a perfect example of that, except it really isn't intriguing enough to really discuss.

Rosalie Varda talks about her mother's final film VARDA BY AGNES at the New York Film Festival

This is the video of Rosalie Varda at the first New York Film Festival screening of VARDA BY AGNES, he mother's final film. A full review will follow but it's a great look back by the great director at her artistic output.

PLEASE  WATCH THE INTRODUCTION. I know most of you skip the intros , but don't do it this time. Trust me on this- it is one of the best introductions ever at the New York Film Festival and the perfect way to begin the evening. There is a reason it runs over six minutes when most run under two. It and the Q&A which followed the film are the reasons I prefer to go to the public screenings at the New York Film Festival

On Further Review: MARRIAGE STORY (2019) NYFF 2019

The Centerpiece for the New York Film Festival was Noah Baumbach's MARRIAGE STORY which is being sold as an Oscar shoe in and, for many, the greatest thing since sliced bread. Clearly everyone saying this is either undead fans of Baumbach or in the employ of the director or Netflix.

The film is the story of the ending of a marriage that starts out attempting to be amicable, turns nasty when Scarlett Johannson moves to California for a TV series and gets hooked up with a shark of an attorney played by Laura Dern. Meanwhile hubby Adam Driver attempts to deal with the turn of events that are turning his life upside down.

Having a killer beginning where we hear the nice things the couple has to say about each other as they go into therapy and an ending that ties into that start, MARRIAGE STORY spend the two hour in between giving us contrivance after contrivance, badly written characters (the observer), a couple of Sondheim songs,  some awful performances (Julie Haggerty is beyond bad in a beyond bad role),  and every now and again a good bit here and there. It is nowhere near the masterpiece many outlets have been saying.

Okay, full disclosure I am not a Baumbach fan.  While I liked but didn't love many of his films I broke with him at WHILE WE"RE YOUNG when his film abandoned everything that had had gone on in the previous 2 hours to end with a huge "what the fuck" ending as characters turned on a dime for a curtain closer that came out of left field just because Baumbach  realized he wanted that ending after he had filmed the rest of the film. He actually said to a New York Film Festival audience that nothing other than the very end of the film mattered and we should disregard it.

While there is no going off the cliff here there is a lot of head scratching as things go weird for no reason (the knife trick) and everything seems geared just to get a longer running time out of the film.

I have two huge complaints, one story related and one technical. The first comes from the fact that at no point in what we see is there any reason for the couple to break up. All of the problems seem to be off screen and any problems we do see seems to be purely the result of the situation the pair is in. The couple clearly loves each other and for the most part it never is really clear why they are getting a divorce. They say they can't live with each other but at the same time they spend pretty much every non-divorce moment kind of like a couple in love. Friends of mine who broke up and who remain friendly, occasionally would show signs of what went wrong. Here  it's told to us but we never see it, even for an instant. We need to see it to have the ah ha moment for ourselves.

The second problem is that several times in the film Baumbach cuts between shots during very emotional moments. For example during a key sequence where Driver and Johannson talk and then fight the camera keeps cutting between shots. It might have worked had the performances between each shot been closer in quality, but they are not. It feels like, what it is, a series of individual shots instead of one long argument. We are not in a moment of time, we are watching "movie magic" where obvios different takes were cut together but the film is being held together with cellophane tape and not cement. That this happened isn't surprising since at the New York Film Festival press conference Baumbach said that he shot the film as a series of shots not sequences. He knew what every shot in the film was going to be when he started and he shot that. It was the wrong way to do it since if you watch the film with even a non-critical eye you realize that many sequences are made up of differing shots from different takes. Personally that's a big reason why the film fails to generate any heat what so ever- we are not watching life or moments but individual shots that have been tied together.

Strangely the very end of the film made me cry. The last shots as Driver carries his son to his car and is stopped by Johannson who comes over to tie his shoes wrecked me. It was a small loving moment. that backed up by the son previously reading his mother's note about his dad that began the film laid me low....

...that was until I realized the earlier part of the sequence made no sense since it introduces Johannson new beau who has zero weight, and had references Johannson's just being nominated for an Emmy- an award handed out a month earlier and a couple other details that made no sense. Of course I shouldn't have noticed the problems  and just went with the emotion, but unfortunately MARRIAGE STORY never cared enough about anything other than the superficial so all I was left to do was see the man behind the curtain.

Ultimately a waste of some wonderful moments.

A Girl Missing (2019) NYFF 2019

A woman working as a nurse has her life wrecked when she mentions that she is related to the kidnapper of one of the girls in the family she works for. 

A love it or loath it film is either going to get under you skin or bore you to tears. Count me as one of the bored. The observational style mixed with the jumbled story line kept me at a distance from what was going on and by the 20 minute mark I was just hanging around out of obligation to write about it as being part of the New York Film Festival. Forgive me but there simply isn't enough here to make a compelling drama and the rearranging of the storyline  seems like its a way of covering up that fact.

There seems to be strata of films from Japan that are beautifully put together and stunningly acted but are so incredibly icy and cold that it is impossible to connect to them. I a not really a fan since they always seem to confuse dispassionate distance for meaning. To me A GIRL MISSING and the similar films are dead films with no soul in them.

A film to miss.

I Was Home, But.... (2019) NYFF 2019

Cryptic puzzle film kind of tells the story of a mother trying to hold her family together in the wake of the death of her husband. It’s a series of seemingly unrelated long take scenes which we have to sort out what it all means.

The most New York Film Festival film I’ve seen in years, it is high art mixing with obtuse musings. It is the sort of film that can only be found playing at NYFF or one of Manhattan’s art houses or museums. It’s a film for a special audience and not for general viewing (there are no explosions or CGI creatures to hold the attention of the mass of today’s cinema goers).

Personally I don’t know what I think of the film. It’s a gloriously shot film full of intensely emotional performances that give us a feeling of looking in a series of emotionally charged moments. At the same time the film is incredibly pretentious and artsy to the point of silliness and boredom. There are long silences where nothing is expressed. Images and ideas (Hamlet, a broken bike, )are thrown up and we are dared to try and make sense of them in the context of anything. Do they mean anything? Your guess is as good as mine. Actually it’s not even certain when it comes to director Angela Schanelec who was quoted as saying at one screening that she doesn’t have the answers and we are free to interpret as we will.

While I love portions of the film and would love to have many of the images hanging on my wall, I do think people are giving it and the director way too much credit for making a masterpiece. I know a lot of people spending an inordinate amount of time on trying to deduce how the dog and donkey that open and close the film fit into the greater scheme of the film. For my money they are all over thinking it and they shouldn’t be looking at the opening closing as a dog and donkey, rather as a dog and pony since ultimately that’s the sort of show this is.

I WAS HOME,BUT... plays again October 9 at the NYFF. For tickets and more information go here.

Liberté (2019) NYFF 2019

There is nothing quite as sad as an art film with smutty intentions. More times than not the great artist who fancy using graphic or semi graphic  or shocking sex bollocks it all up and you end up with a film that is just boring as all hell.

Boring as all hell is the best way to describe Albert Serra's still born film LIBERTE, which would be funny if it wasn't so incredibly sad. A  night of sexual escapades in the French forest before the French Revolution is in the words of Shakespeare, "sound and fury signifying nothing".

Serra's film begins in twilight as various parties arrive and make plans. I will not go into what they are but they involve sex and various acts bodily fluids and sound more like the words of ten year old who wants to be shocking. What then follows is two hours of people wandering around in the forest taking their pants off so we can see their unexcited privates while they either touch themselves or occasionally have sex. (I have no clue if it was real or simulated because frankly it's so badly done). Some bottoms are caned, and some stuff that might be shocking to anyone who has lead a cloistered life happens before the sun comes up and the audience's pain and misery is ended.

That Albert Serra managed to get this into the New York Film Festival is proof that he is a highly skilled con man. Even duller than last year's ROI SOIEL which was a record of an art installation where an actor rolled around on the floor for an hour moaning, LIBERTE makes you wonder what he has on the programmers that has gotten his films into the festival on a regular basis. Either that or the programmers really don't get out much.

I honestly don't know what the point of it is. It's not sexy. It has almost no real dialog. It's just kind of sexual acts that just leave me wondering if Serra has just had someone financed his own personal fetish film. More to the point it left me wondering why he just didn't do a google search for whats in this film... and then chose not to share his kinks with us. No offense but we don't need to know.

What kind of throws me for a loop in the festival write up indicates that the film is supposed to be about freedom, both in society and in sex. I don't see it, but if that's the case I have no idea why they chose this film to deal with the subject. If the festival really wanted to show a graphic film about sexual freedom then they could have actually gone to a some of the adult film producers and gotten a film that was actually good and heady and even sexy. There are more than a handful out there and there are any number of really good directors making challenging films in the adult industry...

...but I digress.

Albert Serra's LIBERTE is a big nothing. It is the work of a lazy filmmaker who wants to "push boundaries" but who then retreats into the pee and poo boundaries of children. It 's the cinematic equivalent of a six year old cursing to look older.

Not recommended as a heady discussion of anything. And don't even think about this as a sex film or I will think rather sad thoughts about you.

On Further Review: Parasite (2019) is good but not that good NYFF 2019

The cast of PARASITE at NYFF

This is not so much a review as a position paper to say that while I genuinely like Bong Joon Ho’s PARASITE, I will not go out on the ledge with the vast majority of you who think it’s the second coming of sliced bread. My lack of going out the widow is largely to I don’t think the film is as deep as it seems. Yes, the film makes some pointed points about class but they are way too obvious. (With the literal cross cut showing shit rolls down hill by having the someone in the rich house going to the bathroom as the sewage is blowing out of the poor families raised toilet.)

The film is the story of a poor family which talks it’s way into working for a rich family and then things happen, including a couple of out of left field things. It is on the face of it a critique of wealth and social inequality but for my money it has some serious problems that prevent it from being great.

The first problem for me is that the film is very much on the surface. Reading on and discussing the film I found lots of discussions about the obvious differences, the rich above the poor below,the way wealth changes us and the vapidness of wealth didn’t go much beyond that. Watching the film I saw all of that but I didn’t see much beyond the obvious statements. I came out of the screening scratching my head wondering what I was missing. There had to be something missing that people were reacting to…

…and then I had a long conversation with Hubert Vigilla where we hashed out a good number of points and I realized – nope I’m seeing the film as it is, I just am not digging it the way everyone else is.

Hey it happens. We all don’t like the same films.

At the same time I do want to say a few things.

First I am kind of disappointed in Bong Joon Ho with this film in that pretty much all of his points are obvious and out front. Sure films like SNOWPIERECER and OKJA wore their hearts on their sleeve, but outside of their preachy parts a good chunk of the film still had tidbits hidden beneath them. There was a complexity to things that allowed further thought and discussion, for example the society of the train in SNOWPIERCER is not just rich or poor. There were layers and complexity, that are not in PARASITE.

Indeed PARASITE makes it’s points with a sledgehammer.There is almost no subtly. As I said above shit goes down hill. Several things such as the smell of the poor, is repeatedly in increasing obvious digs as if to say “do you get it now?” Sure OKJA’s politics were on the sleeve but in PARASITE every damn point was bludgeoned into place.

Morally and thematically I have no idea what I am supposed to take away. What is the films views of the rich? Idle and disconnected? Stupid? Yes. But at the same time they aren’t bad even if they have a holier than thou attitude for the way they fire their help and carelessly rehire. Does that in and of itself mean they are bad? Does that mean we have a reason not to like them or side with them? No. It simply means that they are cut outs we are supposed to boo and hiss because we are told to. To be certain there are tales where, as in life, good people suffer, but usually it’s in the cause of something greater, I don’t know if there is something greater because there is almost nothing to their characters and the reasons behind it are too shallow.

Related the poor family are not particularly good people. Yes they are our heroes and the ones we root for but only because they are our focus. Change to point of view and we probably wouldn't like them much. Yes, I know that's the point but some things I've read seemed to forget that. We don’t know if living on the edge has warped them, but they are just con men and women. Sure we like them, but they are our focus. The destruction they leave in their wake is monstrous not just to the rich family but the people who work for them. Complicating matters is even when they get to be rich, they take over their employers house for a weekend, they kind of trash the place and treat it with as little respect as their home at the bottom of the hill. They are ultimately low class regardless of their economic status. And they don't care because it's not their place as witnessed by their always getting up set by the guy pissing outside their window

And this to me warps any idea of what Bong may be trying to say. This isn’t really about economy because no one changes, even for a moment. This isn’t a satire about class but a warning about how lower classes are going to be bad no matter where they are. There is no hope so don’t let them in. There maybe something to be said about being working middle class but based on the people we meet they are either screwed over (the driver) or hiding something terrible in the basement (the house keeper). To me, in this film everybody sucks regardless of where they are.

The whole guy hiding in the bomb shelter thing doesn’t really work for me. While it adds a nice dramatic edge and a tone of tension, I don’t think it works on logical level since why wasn’t the family told about the tunnels when they bought the house, and does the whole controlling the lights from the hidden cellar really make any sort of sense, never mind the real world but in the film? No it doesn’t and it only serves to show how out of control Boong’s narrative and plotting is.

I’m sorry this film is really messy. It is also incredibly superficial.

Yes it is a funny film, and at times a tense thriller, but it is decidedly not the great film many have thought it to be.

The Booksellers (2019) NYFF 2019

The World is divided in two- those that collect things and those who wonder why people are collecting these things.- A Book dealer outside the NY Antiuarian Book Fair

Watching The Booksellers was a physical experience for me. Having been in some of the stores and having met several of the people profiled over the years I found myself in a arm fuzzy place. I was home among my people. I know that may sound weird, but before I loved film I was a book addict-I mean I have storage lockers full of books- which is why I don’t own a house or have savings. I had a mother and an aunt who instilled a love of books into me since they revealed the secret that books can and will take you places without ever having to leave home. (Why travel when all I need is a book?). My desire to collect or rather appreciate old and rare books came with my love of history. These are the things that changed the world and made people long ago dream.

The film itself is a history of the used and antiquarian book “industry” specifically in and around New York. We get a history of the shops that once filled NYC, the stories of those that still survive (Argosy and Strand among others) . we meet the people buying and selling and listen to them as they talk about their lives and the future of the industry and of books. It’s a trip into a small little world full of wondrous things (most of the shops sell other magical items other than books as well) that will make you want to run out and visit one of the shops. If I was kid it would have made me want to run out and go rummaging through the various stores…oh hell…forget being a kid I just want to get up and run out and go to Argosy and see what they have.

This is a glorious film. It is like walking into stacks of an old bookstore with the best bookseller at the desk. It is a celebration of the stores, the staff and the rectangular objects that allow us to travel the world without ever getting out of our seat.

I am not sure how you are going to react to the film, but if you are one of us luddites who want much prefer a page to a screen then this movie is for you.

Highly recommended The Booksellers world premiered at the NYFF earlier tonight and plays again Wednesday October 9

For tickets and more information go here

Bong Joon Ho and his cast talk about PARASITE after the second NYFF 2019 screening tonight

I went to see Bong Joon Ho's PARASITE tonight. While I work on my review, here is the video of his introduction and the post screening Q&A that featured Bong Joon Ho, Song Kang Ho, Park So Dam, and Choi Woo Shik all talking about the film. It was one of the best Q&A's I've seen at NYFF, especially this year since everyone really got a chance to talk about the film, not just the director.

Nate Hood's 400 Words on THE WASP NETWORK (2019) NYFF 2019

In her 1964 essay “Zeigeist and Poltergeist; Or, Are Movies Going to Pieces?” critic Pauline Kael lamented the growing trend among foreign art house movies for narratives that favored “structural disintegration” and, even worse, the newfound expectation among American audiences that jumbled storytelling was de rigueur among “serious” film artists. She recalled one incident during a screening of Ingmar Bergman’s Brink of Life (1958) where the projectionist accidentally mixed up the film reels and played them out of order. When she confronted the theater manager he’d scoffed and said that he’d “been playing the film for two weeks and I was his first patron who wasn’t familiar with Bergman’s methods.”

One can’t help but feel similarly frustrated with the frequently decentralized storytelling in Olivier Assayas’ Wasp Network, a film where it feels like not just the reels, but individual scenes were assembled out of order. An ambitious exploration of a real life Cuban intelligence ring that infiltrated the Cuban exile community in south Florida in the late nineties, the film seeks the same sprawling breadth of his 2010 miniseries Carlos about Venezuelan terrorist Carlos the Jackal. But what Assayas did with that film in five and half hours he attempts here in Wasp Network in only two, resulting in an alternatively languid and rushed mess.

Though Assayas is frequently at his best when he limits his perspective to a single character wandering through a strange environment—Maggie Cheung or Kristen Stewart navigating the bizarre worlds of Parisian cinema and high fashion—he’s admirably managed ensemble cast films before. But here he collapses under the strain. Consider the first half of the film where each reel is devoted to an individual agent fleeing Cuba for the states, their stories all feeling like unrelated short films. We don’t even know they’re double agents until a jarring montage in the middle of the film where Assayas bucks his measured storytelling for a getting-the-crew-together montage set to a pop song that feels like a drive-by Scorsese-ing. Even after this Assayas refuses to explore the interiors of his characters: why are they spies?; why do they abandon their families? The film only works when it focuses on the people trapped in the middle of the Cuba/US espionage battle, mainly Penélope Cruz as the wife of one of the operatives. It seems Assayas chose the wrong ensemble to focus on.

Rating: 4/10

The Moneychanger (2019) NYFF 2019

Spanning two decades in the life of Humberto Brause (Daniel Hendler) THE MONEYCHANGER is about an amoral nebish who manages to bluff his way through life and fortune despite having no scruples what so ever. People come and go fortunes rise and fall and somehow Brause remains through it all.

Good but not great film is one part tragedy and one part comedy where the parts don't completely mesh together. There were times when I really wished there wasn't some of the sly humor that drifts through the film and other times when I really would have liked it not to be so serious.

I think part of my uncertainty toward the film is I don't know what to make of Daniel Hendler's Brause. Forever in earthy and ugly polyester leisure suits, his hair slightly messed up and his face in an awkward yet some how blank expression (with a bad set of upper dentures, and sprayed in gray hair) I wasn't sure what anyone saw in him. He clearly wonders that at the beginning when his future father in law takes him under his wing, but as an audience we are left to ponder the same thing but unfortunately we never quite get an answer. I found him a kind of a twit and went along with it because I was curious how the film was going to play out.

I'm also not certain if I am not a fan of the rest of the cast or if its purely a directorial choices such as having Delores Fonzi who plays Brause's future wife as a teenager despite being clearly too old. Something seemed off about the film and the cast and I really need a second or third trip through to see what it is.

And that last line is key- I do want to see the film again a few more times, because despite my reservations there is a really good story here. The trouble is just that it's good enough that I wanted it to be great and for right now it doesn't seem to be. And any film I want to see a second or third time definitely has something worth seeing and THE MONEYCHANGER is worth seeing when it plays at the New York Film Festival.

Thoughts on The Cotton Club Encore (1984/2019) NYFF 2019

Apparently I never reviewed THE COTTON CLUB here at Unseen Films. That's kind of odd since I was a huge fan from the start of the film despite it taking a drubbing in it's day. I pretty much love it from start to finish.  However because I never reviewed it I'm going to shy away from doing so now since to the best of my recollection this new cut of the film alters things up enough that I don't want to make it seem like I am raving about this version.

The story of the film follows the paths of a coronet player played by Richard Gere, who moves through the jazz circles  and is known at the legendary Cotton Club. His friend is a dancer played by Gregory Hines who aspires to work at the club with his brother as a headliner. Added into the mix is gangster Dutch Schultz, who befriends Gere when he saves the Dutchman's life. Romances come and go as fortunes rich and fall. Through it all is the titled night club.

The tale of the making of the film probably could be a film itself with Robert Evans, starting the project as director, leaving the project and then suing over it. There were all sorts of fights concerning the film including who would get final cut. Coppola was supposed to get it but even so the film released was not the version he wanted  to release....

...which brings us to THE COTTON CLUB ENCORE which sees Coppola revisiting his legendary, and perhaps classic, film.

Listing as running 12 minutes longer than the release version, the film according to Coppola at the post New York Film Festival screening Q&A actually contains 35 minutes of changes (The Q&A can be found here) which includes a couple of new musical numbers, and a shifting of the narratives so that the story line of the Hines brothers and African American characters gets equal time to the white story line. To be honest most of the new material is really good. There is a nice fleshing out of the Hines romance with Leonette McKee with some great lines that make it clear that Coppola and co-writer William Kennedy were not as racially blind as some people claimed when the film came out.

The real problem for me is that in order to make the film a manageable length changes had to be made. You will forgive me for not being absolutely specific, the last time I saw the film from first frame to last was a few years ago, but the changes such as trimming the screen time of Bob Hoskins and Fred Gwynne's owners of the Cotton Club as well as some other bits, makes the narrative less cohesive.  While I completely understand stuff had to go to give the balance Coppola intended a few too many details went and I found I was less connected to the story because details and shadings seemed to be missing. I hope to rewatch the original cut again soon so I can report back on the changes but for now it seems like too much material is missing.

The physical restoration itself is pretty good. While you can see some image difference between some sequences, mostly it has a glorious old school feel to it. The sound is largely first rate, though I did notice that some of the music mix was less spacious and immediate than some others. Sometimes it sounded liked there as a band on stage performing live and some times it sounded recorded.

Over all I enjoyed seeing the film on the big screen once more, though some part of me would like one more edit to really get it right and restore what I believe are some missing tidbits.

To The Ends of The Earth (2019) NYFF 2019

Kiyoshi Kurosawa is one of my most favorite directors. Say what you will you are never going to get a typical anything from him. To be certain some films are better than others, with some being made for love and some being made for money or some other reason. Either way what he does is more than likely going to make you wonder what he was thinking, such as his NYFF entry REAL which had a sudden turn in the final minutes when a sea monster attacked (the collective gasp from the NYFF blue hairs in the audience was worth the price of admission)

Kurosawa's latest TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH is a huge head scratcher of a film. Made because he was given the opportunity to make a film in Uzbekistan, the film simply follows a young woman who goes around the country as part of crew shooting a travelogue. Things happen such as she frees a goat (this is a kind of shaggy goat story), searches for a monster fish, gets chased by the police and sings a version of Edit Piaf's Hymne à l'amour (twice).

What this all means is anyone's guess because other than as a record of a trip around the country nothing hangs together. Yea it's some great sequences (the song is killer) but there is no narrative point. This is simply just some things that happened.
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Watching the film I wasn't long into it when I mumbled to myself, "justifying your trip to Central Asia,eh...". Don't get me wrong WTF Kurosawa is better than most people's masterpieces, but of all of his films, and I've seen almost all of them, this one stands alone as being the most utterly pointless. Honestly, forget the NYFF website's  description which includes this bit "To the Ends of the Earth is both an entertaining tale of culture clash and a penetrating depiction of a young woman’s alienation [I comment: alienated from what? she's the one who is constantly just running off on her own] and anxiety that pushes the director’s craft into new, mysterious, and enormously emotional realms." and just know this is a grand mess of a film. Yea it has some great things in it, but it is actually a rational argument as to why past NYFF filmmaker's need to not get a free pass into the next fest.

For hardcore fans of the director and those who love beyond messy films only.

The Wasp Network (2019) NYFF 2019

I love Olivier Assayas but the programmers of the New York Film Festival need to stop taking pretty much everything that he does as a Main Slate title. I think every film he's made except one in the last 10 years has been on the Main Slate. In most cases that's been good, but there have been a couple that they should have passed on, particularly this years THE WASP NETWORK.

The story of a bunch of Cuban "defectors" who are were really spies for Castro is, on the face of it a good one. The trouble is that the story is told so haphazardly that it's hard to follow. Until about half way in, when it's revealed the defectors are in fact spies the plot almost is pure murk. I honestly had no idea what was going on and just went with it because I figured it would sort itself out.

It kind of did, but then I realized that outside of the Penelope Cruz character there are no characters just cut outs being moved around. Frankly at no point anywhere in this does anyone, outside of the infant in the last couple of minutes, have real characteristics. These aren't people, these are puppets. The fact that there are no characters is really odd because even when Assayas's earlier films didn't work you at least had real people wandering through. Here there is nothing.

I think part of the problem is that this story is way two big for a film that's just over two and a quarter hours. This should have been a mini-series because there are too many people doing too many things for such a short period of time. We never get a sense of what anyone is really doing, they are just in places at certain times.

The one shining light in the film is the aforementioned infant, who, according to Assayas and Penelope Cruz after the NYFF press screening, was a natural actor. The baby simply fell in love the the actors and just gushed for the. She is so good she deserves an Oscar.(no really-see the film and you'll agree).

Baby aside this is a major miss from a great director.

Atlantics (2019) NYFF 2019

The first thing I need to say about ATLANTICSis forget the hype. Forget the awards. Forget the way people have described it and just go see it blind. I say this because everything I have read or heard about the film has been completely wrong.

The film concerns a young woman named Ada who is betrothed to a man named Omar but who really loves a laborer named Soulimon. When Soilmon and his friends are not paid for their work for four months on a construction sight they take a boat and head to Spain. Ada and the other women are left to their own devices. As Ada’s wedding to Omar approaches strange things begin to happen. Her wedding bed spontaniously combusts, the womenin the city seem to become possessed by spirits and there are eird things going on with the police officer investigating events.

Forget this being a horror film, despite the supernatural aspect this is a drama/romance and it is a moving one at that. Moving with its own rhythms and in its own way this is a lovely small film. We fall in with Ada and her plight. We come to understand, as much as possible her world. This is a lovely exploration of the course of the human heart.

For me the problem with the film was the making of the hype machine. As good as the film is I am kind of lost as to why it won Cannes. Its good but I don’t see it as being at that level. I am also kind of lost about how the film is a great tract on feminism and the plight of the African woman. While I see the thematic elements that many reviews have claimed are in the film, but at the same time I would argue that the threads are not fully explored. Yes we get that many women are left when their men go off but at the same time the film doesn’t say a whole hell of a lot about it other than it happens.

But don’t let what other people have said get in the way of enjoying the film. Simply see it and enjoy a lovely little film.

ATLANTICS PLAYS October 9 and 10. For more information and tickets go here

The Francis Ford Coppola Q&A that followed the New York Film Festival screening of THE COTTON CLUB ENCORE