Beanpole
Truffaut famously stated that there are no real anti-war movies. Indeed, war film as a genre inescapably fabricates patriotic heroes to praise and brutal villains to condemn, failing to indict war itself for its brutality. Furthermore, these films produce a disconnect between form and content. Even if the movie intends to shock the audience with...
A Cinema for the People: Sátántangó
The primary reason that Sátántangó is so able to lift its weight across seven-and-a-half hours is because its main vocabulary of long takes naturally generates a blood flow of images that is consistent in tone and utterly hypnotizing.
Retrospective Review: Amour Fou
Basing Amour Fou upon this ridiculous story from early 19th century Germany, Hausner presents the impossibility of romantic love.
NYFF 2019: Synonyms
Nadav Lapid’s newest feature offers a deeply intimate and personal look at how identity and language interact and interweave.
NYFF 2019: Uncut Gems
The Safdie Brothers make films driven by the ego—I mean that in the psychoanalytic sense mostly, though one detects a bit of the word’s more colloquial definition in their new film Uncut Gems. More on that later, perhaps; for now, Freud. The protagonists of Heaven Knows What, Good Time, and now Uncut Gems are perpetually...
NYFF 2018: Burning
The characters in Burning, director Lee Chang-dong’s newest film, exist apart from one another. Even in scenes together they appear to inhabit separate layers of the frame; it’s like they’re superimposed upon one another to create the illusion of proximity while they remain irrevocably isolated.
NYFF 2018: Private Life
Private Life is a heartwarming, at times heartbreaking, work that succeeds in uniting stereotypes, tropes, and genres to remind viewers of the power in “dramedy.”
NYFF 2018: Roma
Nevertheless, there is enormous power in Cuarón’s decision to frame an epic-scale narrative about Mexico in transition around an indigenous woman; one who speaks in her native mixteca as well as Spanish, who enacts a coveted cinematic role as central voyeur, who brings the viewer into each of many worlds in collision.
NYFF 2018: The Times of Bill Cunningham
The beauty of this documentary lies in its ability to forefront Cunningham’s impression of himself without pandering to the audience, hungry for anecdotes to establish a sense of closeness to Cunningham—a reluctant celebrity whose work hinges on his ability to disappear into the sidewalk.
NYFF 2018: The Grand Bizarre
The textiles, each unique and colorful individually, combine to form a cohesive body of art that seems to transcend borders.
NYFF 2018: The Other Side of the Wind
In considering The Other Side of the Wind as Orson Welles’s final statement, one must come to terms with the fact that it is no longer really his film.
NYFF 2018: Sorry Angel
By the time the film draws to a close, Honoré’s made sure we’ve seen it all: plenty of mourning, sex, and smoking on picturesque Parisian bridges.
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