This year brought 18 features and seven shorts, all presented with live musical accompaniment.
A film like Certified Copy explodes truisms about acting.
Ferguson’s approach mostly focuses on facts, expert opinions, concise explanations of complex concepts, and tough probing of authority figures.
If there is a thread running through some of this year’s festival, it is the acceptance of the enigmatic in human beings.
It’s official, say critics: Hong Sang-soo’s repeating himself.
The gift my parents’ breakup gave me was that it made me a moviegoer.
Silent Souls is a ghost story, with flashbacks literally bringing the dead back to life.
The payoff is too light on revelation or insight to justify the skillful, fairly involving, tension-filled buildup.
And the prize for most ironic title at the New York Film Festival goes to…My Joy.
Just as Fincher’s films process the world through computers, we process our world through computer screens too.
Film Socialisme is often simply beautiful to look at, full of inspired, elusive, and suggestive imagery.
Nagisa Oshima in the ’60s can be classed as a nihilist, his films angrily obliterating nearly everything in sight.
The film respects the monks’ position, and the formal choices reflect that respect.
Even though the movies are alive and well, film itself is turning ghostly.
The film offers some illuminating context in which to fully appreciate John Lennon’s solo albums, especially Double Fantasy.
In the film, characters keep finding new forms, shapes, and alignments to interact with each other in nature.
Sometimes the commentary illuminates an image, providing historical context or enlivening it with a humorous aside.
Poetry nudges us a bit too hard every now and then, mostly when a kindly poetry teacher lectures his class about learning to truly see.
An intellectual achievement rather than a visceral or emotional one.
Directors aren’t the only auteurs.
Naturally, because the film is so single-mindedly focused on Ceaușescu from the outside, psychological insight is limited at best.