We can say this for the New York Film Festival selection committee: In culling the cream of the year’s international film festival crop, they’ve mercifully spared us from having to groan our way through Biutiful, the latest claptrap from Alejandro González Iñárritu, which snagged the Best Actor award for Javier Bardem at the Cannes Film Festival this past May. Not to worry though. There’s plenty of Croisette favorites in this year’s lineup, starting with the Palme d’Or winner, cinephile axiom Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s hallucinatory Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, and including the latest offerings from Abbas Kiarostami, Mike Leigh, Jean-Luc Godard, and Olivier Assayas, the last of these represented in his heavily buzzed about five-and-a-half hour Carlos, a biopic on Venezuelan terrorist Carlos the Jackal.
While beefing about festival snubs has become good annual sport (last year we wondered about the absence of Tsai Ming-liang, this year the sin of omission is Jia Zhang-ke), the committee deserves credit for filling the slate with a range of intriguing, less buzzed about films. Raúl Ruiz’s epic Mysteries of Lisbon, denied admittance to any of the major European festivals, is smartly included in the lineup while similarly marginalized fare like Silent Souls may prove among the fest’s highlights even as most of the attention will focus on the opening night film, David Fincher’s hugely anticipated The Social Network. In that film, the Zodiac auteur tells the story of the founding of Facebook, contemplating a semi-epochal event in the establishment of our increasingly virtual lives. The festival also offers a sidebar on Japanese filmmaker Masahiro Shinoda and a host of special screenings including the latest from legendary documentarian Frederick Wiseman.
Beginning September 18, please check back daily for a full review of each festival film. The 48th New York Film Festival will run from September 24 to October 10, 2010. For a complete schedule of films, screening times, and ticket information, please see the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s official site. Andrew Schenker
• Another Year (Mike Leigh)
• Aurora (Cristi Puiu)
• Black Venus (Abdellatif Kechiche)
• Boxing Gym (Frederick Wiseman)
• Carlos (Olivier Assayas)
• Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami)
• Film Socialisme (Jean-Luc Godard)
• Hereafter (Clint Eastwood)
• Inside Job (Charles Ferguson)
• LennonNYC (Michael Epstein)
• Meek’s Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt)
• My Joy (Sergei Loznitsa)
• Mysteries of Lisbon (Raúl Ruiz)
• Of Gods and Men (Xavier Beauvois)
• Oki’s Movie (Hong Sang-soo)
• Old Cats (Pedro Peirano and Sebastián Silva)
• Poetry (Lee Chang-dong)
• Post Mortem (Pablo Larraín)
• Le Quattro Volte (Michelangelo Frammartino)
• Revolución (Various Artists)
• The Robber (Benjamin Heisenberg)
• Robinson in Ruins (Patrick Keiller)
• Silent Souls (Aleksei Fedorchenko)
• The Social Network (David Fincher)
• The Strange Case of Angelica (Manoel de Oliveira)
• The Tempest (Julie Taymor)
• Tuesday, After Christmas (Radu Muntean)
• Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
• We Are What We Are (Jorge Michel Grau)
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