FLC announces Big Screen Summer: NYFF58 Redux, June 11 – August 26

 

Film at Lincoln Center announces BIG SCREEN SUMMER NYFF58 REDUX celebrating the city’s long-awaited return to the cinema with 33 highlights from the 58th New York Film Festival, June 11 – August 26

Includes nine theatrical premiere runs, kicking off with Steve McQueen’s Lovers Rock from the Small Axe anthology

New York, NY (May 25, 2021) – Film at Lincoln Center announces Big Screen Summer: NYFF58 Redux (June 11 – August 26), celebrating the city’s long-awaited return to the cinema with a season of highlights from the 58th New York Film Festival that demand to be seen on the big screen. 

Last fall, NYFF was forced to adapt to the extraordinary circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic, with screenings taking place virtually and at drive-in theaters. Now that in-theater screenings are again possible in New York City, FLC is bringing back much of the NYFF58 lineup to be screened and seen as these films were meant to be. This summer, join FLC in the air-conditioned darkness of the Walter Reade Theater and the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center to see 33 titles from NYFF58 writ large in a special series of encore screenings.

The series kicks off with a special theatrical premiere of Steve McQueen’s acclaimed anthology, Small Axe—comprising five films that each tell a story about London’s West Indian community from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s—including a run of NYFF58 Opening Night selection Lovers Rock. To coincide with the run, FLC will present a new recorded conversation between McQueen and Director of Programming for FLC and NYFF, Dennis Lim. 

Big Screen Summer: NYFF58 Redux also features eight additional theatrical premiere runs, including, from the Revivals section, new restorations of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Flowers of Shanghai, Joyce Chopra’s Smooth Talk, and Jia Zhangke’s Xiao Wu; from Currents, Anders Edström and C.W. Winter’s eight-hour hybrid epic The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin), John Gianvito’s Her Socialist Smile, and Luis López Carrasco’s The Year of the Discovery alongside his 2014 feature El futuro; and from Spotlight, David Dufresne’s The Monopoly of Violence, a powerful indictment of police brutality against France’s Yellow Vest movement, and Orson Welles’s newly unearthed Hopper/Welles.

Additional highlights include Ephraim Asili’s The Inheritance on 35mm, Heinz Emigholz’s Streetscapes [Dialogue] alongside his two related works from last year’s Currents section (The Last City and The Lobby), double features of Terence Dixon’s Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris and William Klein’s Muhammad Ali, the Greatest; and much more. The complete series schedule is available below; select filmmaker introductions will be announced in the coming weeks. 

Three more NYFF58 titles will open as new releases concurrently with the series: Hong Sangsoo’s The Woman Who Ran (opening July 9), Tsai Ming-liang’s Days (August 13), and Matías Piñeiro’s Isabella (August 27).

Organized by Florence Almozini, Dennis Lim, and Dan Sullivan.

Big Screen Summer: NYFF58 Redux is Sponsored by MUBI, a curated streaming service and proud supporter of Film at Lincoln Center.

Tickets for this summer-long program will be available for purchase on a rolling basis, with a block of June screenings going on sale on June 3 at noon for FLC members and June 4 at noon for the general public. Members save $5 on all single tickets—and additional special summer deals will be announced soon! To access membership benefits, click here. For on-sale dates, pricing, and other information, keep an eye on filmlinc.org.

Health and safety policies for all in-theater screenings remain in effect. The comprehensive list of FLC’s current guidelines can be found here.

FILMS & DESCRIPTIONS

New York FIlm Festival : Footnotes from the Couch

  The New York Film Festival 2020 is effectively done. The only thing left is for the people who purchased tickets for some screenings to finish up (some films could be viewed until the 14th.) 

I have no idea how many NYFF I've attended. I do know that this was my 11th as a member of the press. As things go this was a middle of the pack fest. Not being able to talk to people and hang out diminished it. Blame that on Covid and not the festival.

As things go I've seen some great films (the Steve McQueen offerings, THE HUMAN VOICE and NIGHT OF THE KINGS), a lot of good ones and a few stinkers. It happens.

Right now I am looking forward to next year when I hope I can get to see lts f films with lots of people.

I do have to say that because the fest was virtual I could literally try every film that played the festival and was offered to writers to review. And I did just that. However while some films provoked reviews some provoked scribbles or footnotes. What follows, and what ends the Unseen Films coverage of this year's fest are the footnotes

SMOOTH TALK was never a film that clicked with me. While the performances are great I always felt it as liked more for what it was trying to do and pushing down doors rather than actually being good.

THE INHERITANCE was not my cup of tea. A very mannered  and deliberate film it is a film where it was too much noticing the man behind the curtain.

What I saw of ISABELLA I liked but not much more. Before you take that as a bad sign, it’s not. It’s more that as I watching it I had the same reaction to it that I had to everyone of director's other films, which is that it’s very good, but unremarkable. I got to a certain point in the film and found myself wanting to cross over to one of the other films I had access to. Suspecting I was going to continue to do so, I just jumped over. 

 DAYS is only for a small audience. Intolerably long takes of the director going through his days. If you are rapturous during the open ten minutes take of the director sitting in a chair staring at a storm outside then this film is for you. If not this is going to be a glorious sleep aid. This is the sort of film I dread walking into at NYFF. a pretentious art film that is ultimately for a very small audience. Yea it looks good but it’s like watching paint dry.

I made a stab at THE DISCIPLE and walked away about a third of the way in.  Please understand that my doing so had nothing to do with a lack of quality, rather it was because I had a great deal of respect for the film. Watching the film I could tell that the film was really good (with some fantastic music), however try as I might I couldn’t make an emotional connection to the film. I could appreciate what was on screen, but I simply connect. Rather than write something that led you astray about quality I stepped away. Additionally I stopped watching the film because NYFF gave me access to so many films I would rather reached out to a film that I truly connect to. Besides I will be able t circle back at a later date. (addendum 2024-I have gone back to the film and enjoyed the hell out of it-recommending it to friends and family. This is a case of some films needing to be seen away from a festival crush)

I have a mixed relationship with the films of Phillippe Garrel. I tend to either love them or think they just miss. THE SALT OF THE TEARS missed for me.  To be honest I didn’t get too far into it since Luc, the man character came across as the wrong sort of creepy. To me this drama about a guy and his roving eye came off as skidding close to horror film. I know it’s simply because Garrel remains so focused on him, but it kind of unnerved me and made me wonder why Djemila was even remotely attracted to him.

SLOW MACHINE was more interesting for the cast (including Chloe Sevigny) than for the film itself. It has a young woman hiding from a relationship gone bad and I never really cared. 

It played with HARD, CRACKED THE WIND  looked wonderfully monochromatic  but  It didn’t  really work for me, It has something to do with an unfinished poem which a ghost wants finished. 

AUTOFICCION had some interesting images but I never really picked up on the nuances of it being about a woman’s daily life.

SEE YOU IN MY DREAMS is a good if slightly over long on director Shun Ikezoe’s grandmother. I loved the marriage of grainy black and white imagery and the narration which created a glorious dreamlike experience.

Program 6 of the shorts called HERE AND ELSEWHERE didn’t work for me.  Where films like EXTRACTIONS had great images they never were more than that and fully came alive for me.

Program 7  CODE UNKNOWN was a mixed bag.  POINT AND LINE TO A PLANE seemed to echo some of the early Peter Greeenaway’s  films where he looked at various images with a narration. I liked  THE UNSEEN RIVER even if the formality of some of the love stories kept me distant. Honestly all of the films had moments, though HUMONGOUS! Didn’t really work for me at all.

Long ago I watched FLOWERS OF SHANGHI on some sort of DVD I picked up in Chinatown. It was a film whose look stayed with me but which otherwise completely disappeared from my brain. Trying it again for the NYFF I was instantly struck by it’s beauty to the point where I shouted “That’s the film!”. I then hunkered down to watch the film again for the first time in a couple of decades…. And then the film started to do what it did the last time and I found I was loving everything about it but I simply wasn’t connecting and Turned it off. 

OUVERTURES is a film about Toussaint L’Ouverture a general and leader in the Haitian revolution, as well as a theater group working on putting together a theater piece based upon his life. It’s the cinematic equivalent of an artistic Off Broadway show that wants you to know it is about something. I absolutely loved portions of this film but there was a point where I just had to raise my hand and say enough as the meaning over took my enjoyment.

Brief thoughts on French Exit (2020) which is the wrong film for these current times NYFF 2020

I did not like the New York Film Festival closing night film FRENCH EXIT.  Blame it on Donald Trump and his family, but I can’t feel anything for a rich spoiled woman whose life, goes into the shitter when the money runs out. Why should we care when she skips to France with her son and her cat (which now has her husband's spirit in it) to stay in a friends apartment and try and sort things out? These are not problems that anyone except rich people would have.  

Apologies, but a rich lead character who is largely unlikable, despite efforts to show her changing over time  reminded me too much the family in the White House. While I should have tried to separate politics from  the film seeing the film in a week where an obnoxious rich son of a bitch spent other people's money to get treatment most people in the world can't afford, only to say that cure is available to everyone (who can afford to pay for it)  put me into no frame of mind to see a similar character on screen.

This is the wrong film coming out at the wrong time. 

No matter how you look at it the film is ultimately a tale of rich white privilege coming out in age where white privilege is being challenged and rich white privilege is reviled. I don't know when the programmers chose to run FRENCH EXIT, but at some point they probably should have rethought the choice... 

More so since the film on its own terms the film isn't very good. 

Muhammad Ali, the Greatest (1974) NYFF 2020

 

William Klein's portrait of Muhammad Ali is a mixed bag. 

Looking at the circus around his fights with Sonny Liston before jumping to The Rumble in the Jungle almost a decade later.  The film seeks to put it all into some kind  of context, sadly time and tide has moved beyond the this portrait. 

While the first half of this film about the Liston media circus is very good. Even with all of the recent docs on Ali, we've never really gotten a good look at the then Cassius Clay like we get here. Certainly we don't get a look at everything around him and the fight that we do here. Its wonderfully eye opening because it's material that is a portrait of a time made with out decades of rethinking.

The problem with the film is the second half on the Rumble In the Jungle, his s1974 fight with George Foreman.  That fight has been the subject of numerous other and better films including When We Were Kings which transcends being a boxing film to be something greater.

In the end this is a good film, not a great one.

This will play better if you haven't seen a lot of films on Ali.

Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris (1971) NYFF 2020

 

A film crew attempts to make a portrait of James Baldwin in Paris. At first he agrees to talk about his work, then he backs off from even doing that and that is before some ex-pat Americans inject themselves into the proceedings.

One of a kind film captures a moment in time with Baldwin. This is the sort of real life drama you couldn't plan to make happen but as a filmmaker you hope it happens since you end up with sparks you might not see otherwise. Baldwin's cantankerous nature  makes for interesting viewing.

To be honest I'm not sure what I think of the film. It's  interesting but in a way its just a footnote. This is a moment in time. I kept waiting for it to add up to something. I'm not sure it does.

Tragic Jungle (2020) NYFF 2020

TRAGIC JUNGLE vexes me.  It seems to be wanting to cover the same ground as several recent horror films but it feels like it will never fully commit to sliding into the darkness.

The film follows young Agnes who is fleeing into the jungle with her sister and a guide. An older Englishman wants to marry her but she wants no part of it, so she flees into the jungle. Her "perspective" beau follows with several armed men and dogs to bring her back or kill her. The Englishman kills the sister and the guide, but Agnes manages to get away where she is taken in by a group of men cutting trees for rubber. They eventually begin to believe that Agnes may actually be a demon.

Lyric adventure film is similar to any number of recent jungle films (EMBRACE THE SERPENT) as well as any number of recent films where an “outsider” is found to be an evil force (LUZ: THE FLOWER OF EVIL).  Its an always beautiful frequently hypnotic film that tries to pull us in and carry us along.

The problems for me come from two places. The first is the film seems to be trying to take an artistic turn at the lyric demon in the sheep’s clothing tales that many genre filmmakers are cranking out. What the film does with it is very good, but by not going for the full on commitment, and dare I say horror, the film ends up being a bit toothless and not always compelling since we are waiting for a scare or a catharsis that ever comes (the end could have been shattering if done right).

The other problem is that Indira Andrewin as Agnes is dull. Saying very little  she looks gorgeous but is a complete cypher. By the end of the film I should have been going WOW, feeling something for her but instead I was going "oh. That's it?" Worse she isn’t very good delivering the few lines she has.

TRAGIC JUNGLE isn’t bad but it isn’t anything special.

Nate Hood looks for American Utopia ★★★★ (2020) NYFF 2020

 If you lived or worked in New York City at any given time from late 2019 to early 2020, you knew about David Byrne’s American Utopia. Not because you’d necessarily seen it—running for only five months at the Hudson Theatre, what few tickets there were quickly evaporated. Instead, you knew about the show because the advertisers ran one of the most inescapable subway ad campaigns I saw in my five years living in the city. The posters were still up as the city shuttered in April for Coronavirus two months after the show closed, and when I (begrudgingly) braved the subway for the first time post-lockdown in August, some of the damned things were still up! 

Though the show is long gone (and because of COVID, plans for a late 2020 revival met the same grisly fate as every other show on and off Broadway this season), those curious to see it can enjoy Spike Lee’s filmed version produced by HBO. Those hoping for a spiritual follow-up to Jonathan Demme’s Stop Making Sense (1984) will be happy to see that in forty years Byrne has lost none of his captivating charm as a robotic dork-funk messiah, as will they be pleased to hear several of that show’s most famous numbers like “Once in a Lifetime,” “Burning Down the House,” and a tragically lampshade-less “This Must Be the Place.” Much of Byrne’s new material is undeniably up to snuff as well, such as the catchy yet indescribably sinister single “Everybody’s Coming to My House” and the show opener “Here” which proves that Byrne is perhaps the only man on earth who could make audiences teary-eyed with a song about the corpus callosum. The big showstopper is a defiant cover of Janelle Monáe’s “Hell You Talmbout,” a protest song shouting out the names of police brutality victims that reaches the stratosphere when Lee starts intercutting the song with shots of the victims’ families holding portraits of the deceased. 

Though not as unified as Stop Making Sense with Demme’s gradual introduction of the band, slow addition of multimedia elements, and joyous finale where the house lights turn on and the cameras turn to the audience, American Utopia is still a marvelous production by one of rock’s most creative personalities, with just enough political material to make it timely and just enough big hits to make it timeless.

The Truffle Hunters (2020) NYFF 2020

Solid look at the men and dogs who hunt the white Alba truffle. Prized by foodies the truffles are hard to come buy and very pricey which has lead a new generation of truffle hunter to take drastic steps by poisoning their competitors dogs, slashing tires, destroying fences and private property in in the hope of getting the  prized fungi.

I really liked this film a great deal to be certain that it isn’t anything earth shaking. But at the same time watching a bunch of characters and their canines hunting and talking about something beyond our reach is both enlightening and entertaining. The change  in the market makes us reflect at how the world is changing, at the same time it’s nice to know that there are wonderful people floating around up their trying to keep the old ways going.

I had a blast and half watching this.

Highly recommended.

Atarrabi and Mikelats (2020) NYFF 2020

Mari, a goddess is made pregnant  by a mortal man. Giving birth to twins she turns them over to the Devil  to be taught and raised as his own. Atarrabi is good and eventually leaves the cave where he lives to see the world. Meanwhile his bother Mikelats stays with their "father".

How you react to this version of a Basque legend about two brothers raised by the devil will depend entirely upon  how you react to the mannered telling. Told in declarative statements and tableaus it is a very deliberate tale, much like director Eugene Green's other films.

While I loved sections of this film, there are some wonderful lines and moments, my interest waned during it's over long two hour run time. I could never warm to the way lines were delivered  and the often static shots. I wanted things to move along faster.

While this film didn't work for me, it may work for you- as I said I liked bits. See it at the NYFF

Nate Hood on Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue ★★ (2020) NYFF 2020

 With his new film Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue, Jia Zhangke completes an informal trilogy begun in 2006 examining different modes of Chinese art. The first, Dong, was about painting, centering specifically on artist Liu Xiaodong as he painted a group portrait of laborers at the Three Gorges Dam. The second, Useless (2007), explored Chinese fashion, alternating focus between textile factory workers and leading designers. In this film Jia turns to one of China’s most ancient art forms: writing. 

The idea of Jia making a movie about literature is a curious one; his films already eschew traditional storytelling in favor of more poetic—dare we say literary—modes of aesthetic evocation and expression. Indeed, Swimming is more cinematic poem than ordinary documentary despite numerous talking head interviews. Jia focuses on the lives of four prominent Chinese writers—Ma Feng, Jia Pingwa, Yu Hua, and Liang Hong. Of these, Ma is the lodestar around which the others orbit, being both the oldest (he died in 2004) and having come to prominence writing stories about countryside life in Jia’s home province of Shanxi. 

In between interviews, Jia intersperses vignettes that evoke the moods and emotional undercurrents beneath the ever-metamorphosing China that birthed the four of them: a line of seniors lining up for bowls of rice, a provincial family making jiaozi together in their kitchen, an overlapping cacophony of speakers at a literary conference. It’s in these vignettes that Jia’s career-long fascination with China’s industrial modernization comes to the forefront, accentuated by a brooding soundtrack that switches between swelling-and-sighing woodwinds and Western classical music. (In a truly head-scratching moment, we see a group of Chinese young people staring out the windows of a train while an English-language translation of Con te partirò plays in the background.) 

But the film’s main issue is that there’s no cohesive throughline. The writers are given very little introduction or contextualization. Who are they? What have they actually written? Who have they influenced? These writers are described as provincial ones, so one must assume that many native Chinese viewers would be equally confused as Westerners ignorant of modern Chinese literature. By the end we’re left with many unanswered questions. Is this documentary about Ma? Is it about Chinese literature itself? Or is it more broadly about modern China? It’s impossible to know, because the film itself doesn’t seem to.

Hopper/Welles (2020) NYFF 2020

 

Ever wonder what would happen if Orson Welles  invited Dennis Hopper to dinner? It happened in 1970 when Welles was working on The Other Side of The Wind and Hopper was finishing The Last Movie. Welles filmed the conversation with an eye of putting the material into his film. What transpired was over two hours of thought provoking conversation that covered film, politics, religion and many other assorted subjects.

This film is magnificent. It is a glorious time capsule of a moment in time where two well-read  filmmakers sit and talk to each other as equals. The result is one of the most compelling films on film I’ve ever seen.  There is no dumbing down since both men are not interested in anyone who is going to see the film, they are just talking. I walked away from the film with a greater respect of Welles and Hopper. Not that I didn’t have great respect before- but here were clues to the films they made that I had never run across before.

One of the things I love was the discussion of the two men talking about the audience. Hopper was shocked at the varying reaction to the end of Easy Rider in different parts of America, as well as a slight confusion that people viewed his and Peter Fonda’s characters as heroes, in his mind they were outlaws. This spins off into a discussion about how they view the people in a theater called an audience (Welles says “fuck them” contemptuously). They don’t fully understand the faceless mob and as a result seem to be making the films for themselves and for the select people who get what they are doing. (though Hopper expresses the desire to get some of John Wayne’s audience). Hopper said that he puts things into his films for himself.

The conversation spins off into unexpected places. There is a long discussion of god. Welles pushes Hopper about politics and asks him why doesn’t speak out and he says that where he lives it would be difficult (the FBI is constantly warning him about his neighbors). I love how the quiet discussion of the things that Hopper had done, marching with Martin Luther King and elsewhere is counterpointed with his kind of disbelief at how Jane Fonda who was viewed as a counter culture icon but all he saw her doing was going to the beach and parties with Roger Vadim.

What I absolutely love about the film, beyond it being intellectually stimulating, is that there is line after line I want to steal. In all seriousness after paying to see the film at the New York Film Festival I contacted the publicist for the film and asked for a screener because I wanted to see it again so I could write down all of the great lines and use them in various situations.

Who the hell needs My Dinner with Andre, I’ll take a dinner with Dennis Hopper any day.

One of the best films at the New York Film Festival it is also in the running for one of the best films of 2020.

Highly recommended- even more so if you love the movies, the filmmakers or just great conversation.

Beginning (2020) NYFF 2020

 

A woman tries to come to terms with her life after the Jehovah’s Witness church she helped set up is fire bombed burning a service.  Forced into having  an awakening in her life she realizes her place in her home, her religion and society is not what she wants.

Told in long static shots and meaningful silences this is either going to connect with the art house film lover in you or it’s going to hit that sweet spot that makes you fall deeply asleep. Count me in the second group.

I never connected to the film with the films shot at a distance immobile shots kept me at a distance. I don’t blame the way of shooting the film but how this director and her cinematographer shot it. I say this because filmmakers like Chantel Akerman and Bela Tarr have used similar techniques and have made films that drew you in and kept you part of the action by framing things in ways that make sense- Akerman will put us into the room by positioning us in a place that makes sense and puts us in the room. I don’t think any of the camera placements in Beginning makes any sense.  They are disconnected and dispassionate . One could argue that they are the eyes of god, but I can’t see god being that outside of events.  An early scene where the police arrive at the missionaries house we are so far out of events as to be in another film altogether. We are, for most of the scene in a hallway far away from what is happening and I really don’t know why.  Placing the camera there, even as an observer makes no sense since no observer or voyeur  would stand there.

I probably should pull things apart further like how some turns of events don’t make logical sense (and I only thought about because I was too disconnected to the story to care)  or  how the vast cold emptiness in most frames  and their reflection into the emptiness of our heroine’s life is much too cliché to be believed.

I was left shaking my head by Beginnings.

Not recommended for anyone but lovers of pretentious and unchallenging art house films

NYFF Capsule Reviews: THE PLASTIC HOUSE, THE YEAR OF DISCOVERY, XIAO WU and NOTTURNO

Since the fest is  virtual I  am making an effort to at least try every film playing at the New York Film Festival. The idea is that since it doesn't cost me anything to go into the city I can simply try everything as it comes my way and see what strikes my fancy. If I don't like it I can just stop it and move on to something else.

Because I am seeing so much (and because I am covering 3 other festivals at the same time ) some of what I saw ended up with shorter pieces than I would have normally produced. I've collected a bunch of these together and I've put them in to a series of posts.

THE PLASTIC HOUSE is a really good look at a Cambodian families green house and the life that transpires inside it. It’s film of quiet power where we  find that we are suddenly lost in the sound and image and life of the people working inside it. I wish I had seen this on the big screen.

YEAR OF DISCOVERY is either going to thrill you or bore you. I was intrigued for a while but I kind of checked out about half way in when the three and a half hour run time began to close in. The film is made up of people talking inside a Spanish snack bar in 1992.  To be honest I think the reason I checked out was the fact that the film references things I really don’t understand.  I know that it was a year of change in the country but I didn’t know the context of everything. I wanted to connect more and understand more than I was doing.  If you want to get inside  the heads of various people this is for you. If not you may want to pass. 

XIAO WU is a stunner. Jia Zhangkr first film it doesn’t feel like a first film.  Other than his shooting it on 16mm making the film seem older than it is the film feels as fresh and alive as his most recent films.  It is one of my favorite films of Zhangke and one I can’t wait to revisit.

NOTTURNO is Gianfranco Rosi‘s portrait of life in Iraq, Kurdistan, Syria, and Lebanon. Shot over three years it’s a film that is an overwhelming visual experience. To be honest I don’t know if the film adds up to much other than as a portrait of life under the threat of violence but at the same time it still manages to hit home as the various slices of life hit home. Since this can’t be seen on a big movie screen I highly recommend this film is you can see it on a big TV screen.

Red, White and Blue (2020) NYFF 2020

Final film in Steve McQueen's Small Axe Anthology stars John Boyega as Leroy Logan, a young forensic scientist, who joined the Metropolitan Police Force against his father's wishes(his father was badly beaten by the police). He wanted to fight the racism and bigotry from within but found a hornet's nest. The real life counterpart would eventually rise through the ranks to become a Superintendent and change the force, however this film doesn't go that far.

Only because it is being compared to an embarrassment of riches, I found RED, WHITE AND BLUE weakest of the three Small Axe films playing at the New York Film Festival. A good film whose focus is on the fathers and sons, the desire for change and the inability to bring it and the institutional racism in the police, the film is carried along by a great performance by John Boyega, especially in the later scenes when his optimism and hope has drained away. Watching Boyega hold the film together it is clear how wasted he was in the Star Wars films. Simply put he needs to be front and center.

My problem with the film is simply that the film is too short by half for all that it is trying to do. Running a breezy 80 minutes there is enough going on here that it could run twice that without anyone batting an eye. What is here is very good but at the same time I wanted to see  some of the threads more fully explored. 

I know that my reaction to the film is entirely influenced by my seeing and falling completely head over heels for LOVERS ROCK and MANGROVE. I'm certain that not having those films to compare it to I would have been more entusiastic for it.

As it stands now RED,WHITE AND BLUE is a good film in a great series.

The Woman Who Ran (2020) NYFF 2020

I haven’t seen a Hong Sang-soo film in several years. I am not a fan. I am of the opinion that you could probably cut all his films together into new films and if you did it right no one would ever know. It’s not that they are bad but they are all almost identical. I know directors remake the same stories over and over again but Sang-soo really does.

This year because the New York Film Festival was virtual I decided to try his latest offering. The Woman Who Ran. This time out a woman goes to visit two friends and then runs into a third.

My reaction to the film was rather surprising since while the film’s interactions felt like almost every other one of his films this time out the film felt wrong. It felt like it was made by someone with less skill than Sang-soo. It feels like a film made by an ultra-low budget filmmaker putting together a film for a first time. The setups are minimal and there is a jaggedness to them.  There is also something I haven’t seen in almost five decades which is a reliance on the zoom.  Not having read the press notes I’m of the opinion that this was made ultra-low budget , probably on a cellphone since I can’t imagine a reason for the way the film looks.  (Perhaps this is a student film)

As I said I am not a fan of Sang-soo. However it’s not that I hate his films, I hate that he is telling essentially the same story over and over again- though admittedly this time there are differences. At the same time while I hate that NYFF programs every one of his films every year (People STOP there are other filmmakers out there deserving to be showcased)  this is the first time I've run across one of his films where I am honestly and truly wondering why the hell they programmed it.  Even if the film didn’t feel like a weekend project made at the deadline, the film isn’t very good. There is nothing here we haven’t seen before and it isn’t particularly well done.  

The truth is having gone through a good number of the NYFF films that I didn’t like, and while I have questioned why the films were at the festival in my reviews- this was the first time that I could not come up with even a bad reason as to why it was playing. This one eludes me since this is by far the weakest Sang-soo I’ve run across.

Recommended for Hong Sang-soo cultists only

(Note to the cultists- could you please let me know what you have on the NYFF programmers that you manage to get a new film in every NY Festival every damn year.) 

Swimming Out Until The Sea Turns Blue (2020) NYFF 2020

 

Jia Zhangke returns to documentary filmmaking with a look at the changing cultural landscape of  hos home Shanxi province. He frames it through a look at the legacy of writer Ma Feng through the observations of fellow writers Jia Pingwa, Yu Hua, and Liang Hong as well as the people who have loved through the last 80 years in Shanxi.

I am very mixed on Swimming… part of the problem is that I simply don’t have a good enough grasp of history and Chinese literature in order to feel I am fully understanding what I was seeing. There is a lot of reference to things that are simply out of my realm of experience. While I would normally complain that a filmmaker didn’t explain enough for all audiences, this film was not only never really intended for me (I’ve seen enough Zhangke films to know this is frequently an issue), but it is also part of a trilogy of films on the arts in China. I should have brought myself up to speed, so that is wholly on me

At the same time I’m also all over the place about the presentation. Zhangke has made a film of 18 chapters which don’t always flow together. They do fit together, especially when you look back at them in retrospect,  but the connections are bumpy. Some pieces are a brilliant tidbits (Ma Feng’s daughter talking about his life is very cool, as is the then and now) but other pieces seem to be less so. I never felt full engaged since the shifting gears jolted me.

To be honest I intellectually get what the film is doing but emotionally I remain distant.  For someone who admires Zhangke’s films because they always produce an emotional reaction watching Swimming and not feeling anything was concerning. It’s also disappointing.

Worth a look for Zhangke fans, all others unfamiliar with the director or the subject its optional.

Brief thoughts on I'LL CARRY YOU WITH ME (2020) NYFF 2020

 I fell in love with I’ll Carry You With Me. The story of two men in Mexico who fall in love and then come to the US just connected with me. Say what you will this is beautifully made bittersweet love story.

I blame director Heidi Ewing who shot this film so that it looks like a dream in a documentary style. I fell in love with the images and quickly fell in love with the people inside it.

I don’t know what  to say this film is just a lovely love story I want to revisit repeatedly.

One of my favorite films at the New York Film Festival, it is highly recommended.

A NIGHT AT THE OPERA (2020) and HER NAME WAS EUROPA (2020) NYFF 2020

 

A NIGHT AT THE OPERA

Using footage shot at Paris's Palais Garnier in the 1950's and 60's director Sergei Loznitsa creates a mythical night at the opera. It's really cool and perfect blend of footage that never reveals that it's assembled from events across the decades.

Very cool.

HER NAME WAS EUROPA

An exploration, of sorts, of the efforts to bring back the aurochs, an extinct form of cattle that was native to the wilds of Europe. The project was started in Germany between the wars through selective breeding. 

Leadenly paced film has a much too knowing attitude to fully work. There is some great images here and the narrative is quite good but the pacing glacial. I desperately wanted to grab the film and recut it down to a film about a third of its length where things would seem less smart ass.

This a film you either accept or you scream at in an effort to get it to move along. The shots of the hand bringing don the text that links things together is not really necessary  and neither are the seeming endless landscape shots.

A pretentious miss.

(And can anyone explain to me why these two films were programmed together?)

Heinz Emigholz Double Feature THE LOBBY and THE LAST CITY NYFF 2020

 The New York Film Festival is running two films by Heinz Emigholz. If you ever wanted to know what a filmmaker's voice is like these are films to see because everyone, in both films, all sound like the same person. While both films have interesting ideas the presentation may leave some people cold, especially if they want films with action rather than ideas.

THE LOBBY

An older white guy speaks of life, death and assorted other subjects.

This intriguing meta monologue is a mind trip and frequently funny. This is a film that is full of truth and bullshit. Because the film is fully away that it is both things it makes it much less pretentious than it probably should be. This is the sort of thing that if it were transferred to the stage wold probably run for years Off Broadway in a small house

I was fascinated and amused. I don't need to see it again but I would definitely want to read it.

THE LAST CITY

Series of intellectual conversations set in various cities across the globe that are really supposed to be the last city of the title. The subjects concern a variety of subjects including many religion, sex, family, taboos and aliens.

Mannered and deliberate discussions are intriguing, for the most part, more for hat is being said rather than the delivery which comes across as if it one person cloned having a discussion with themselves. None of the characters really have their own existence and are purely a means of having the ideas come out as a discussion instead of a monolog. 

I was fascinated by the ideas even as I was less than thrilled with the mannered presentation. I know there has to be a better way of doing it this rather than having the stilted delivery we have here. I know that is part of the point. bt at the same time it made this 100 minute film a tough go and I found I had to watch it in pieces rather than all at once.

The Spook Who Sat By The Door (1973) NYFF 2020

 I am behind in talking about The Spook That Sat By The Door.  When I found out a restoration was playing at the New York Film Festival I went to dig out my DVD and got lost in trying to actually find it. As a result I missed the play dates of the film.

The film is based on the book by Sam Greenlee and  it has been rattling cages for half a century. It is the story of a black CIA agent who takes what he learns about over throwing governments and destabilizing regimes and teaches it to other you black men so they can work to bring about change. The politics didn’t sit well with the studios.  It was pulled from theaters when United Artists freaked out at it’s overt political message and feared what the film could do. They later buried the film by putting in the vaults  under another name.

Ivan Dixon’s film is a stunner. While it is a time capsule of the time that it was made, it is also a celluloid scream that shows us how little we have moved since then. Dixon captured a moment and feeling that for a large portion of America is still echoing across the land.

That the film is still relevant is a extremely sad. We should be looking at the film as a something that we moved beyond. If you need to know how far we haven’t come consider Steve McQueen’s Small Axe Anthology, which deals with many of the same themes in Dixon’s half century old film. Filmmakers should not be making similar films decades apart.

The Spook Who Sat By The Door is a vital living masterpiece. It is a living  historical document and something you must see, especially if you are watching the Steve McQueen films at NYFF or later on Amazon