New Directors/New Films 2015; Film Comment Selects

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FEBRUARY 29-Narch 5, 2015 2014 PUBLIC SCREENINGS
Full program here.

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MARCH 18-29 2015 PUBLIC SCREENINGS

As before I expect to attend screenings of all the New Directors/New Films series and a few of the more elusive Film Comment Selects.

Links to the reviews:

Christmas, Again (Charles Poekel 2014)
Screening with Going Out (Ted Fendt 2014, 8 mins.)
Court (Chaitanya Tamhane 2014)
The Creation of Meaning/La creazione di significato (Simone Rapisarda Casanova 2014)
Diary of a Teenage Girl, The (Marielle Heller 2014)
Dog Lady (Laura Citarella, Verónica Llinás 2015)
Entertainment (Rick Alverson 2015)
Fool, The/Durak (Yuriy Bykov 2014)
Fort Buchanan (Benjamin Crotty 2014)
Screening with Taprobana (Gabriel Abrantes 2014, 24 mins.)
Goodnight Mommy (Severin Fiala, Veronika Franz 2014)
The Great Man (Sarah Leonor 2014)
Haemoo (Shim Sung-bo 2014)
High Society/Le beau monde (Julie Lopes-Curval 2014)--FCS
Los Hongos (Oscar Ruiz Navia 2014)
K (Darhad Erdenibulag & Emyr ap Richard 2015)
The Kindergarten Teacher (Nadav Lapid 2014)
Screening with: Why? (Nadav Lapid 2015, 5 mins.)
Line of Credit (Salomé Alexi 2014)
Listen to Me Marlon (Stevan Riley 214)
Mercuriales (Virgil Vernierj 2014)
Ow (Yohei Suzuki 2014)
Parabellum (Lukas Valenta Rinner 2015)
Screening with Colours (2 mins.) (Evan Johnson 2014)
Phoenix (Christian Petzold 2014)--FCS
SHORTS Program 1
SHORTS Program 2
Theeb (Naji Abu Nowar (2014)
Tired Moonlight (Britni WesT 2014)
The Tribe (Miroslav Slaboshpitsky (2014)
Tu dors Nicole (Stéphane Lafleur 2014)
Violet (Bas Devos 2014)
Western (Bill, Turner Ross 2015)
White God (Kornél Mundruczó 2014)
SURVEYING THE SERIES.

Filmleaf Festival Coverage thread for both series will be found starting H E R E.

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First two days of ND/NF press screenings.

Marielle Heller: DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL (2014)

1975 San Francisco nicely evoked, sex-crazy in a good way, cartoon art. A Sundance winner, the kind they dream of there. But maybe best for precocious girls - or oldsters nostalgic for that place and era (me, I guess).

Bas Devos: VIOLET (2014)

If Wong Kar Wai made Paranoid Park it might be like this. D'Angelo thinks therefore it is irrelevant, but I found the 65mm shallow-focus images ravishing, despite the lack of dialogue or exposition.

Britni West: TIRED MOONLIGHT (2014)

No - this is terrible. Tired viewer. Shooting documentary footage in her little hometown in Montana with some "acting," this evokes great still photographers like Robert Frank, William Eggleston, or Stephen Short, but maybe by accident. It does not find a theme or a rhythm.

Casanova: THE CREATION OF MEANING/LA CREAZIONE DI SIGNIFICATO (2014)

This invites comparison with Frattuono's LE QUATTRO VOLTE, but seems more straightforward, recounting the history of past and present in relation to the Apennines, in Tuscany, mainly seen through a tall, thin farmer called Pacifico whose bearing resembles the mature Henry Fonda. WWII, the Partisans, and Berlusconi get discussed. So not random.

Yury Bykov: THE FOOL/DURAK (2014)

The moral passion of Kieślowski; an epic of graft like Zvyagintsev. A powerful film about a young man who chooses to bring to the attention of city officials that a large residential building is about to collapse. Nobody wants to know. This is a talent to watch for, and his best film yet, by reports.

Shim Sung-bo: HAEMOO (2014)

Korean horror thriller at sea about human trafficking. Realistic beginning leads to over-the-top violence in the best Korean action mode plus tacked-on fantasy-romance finale. Directorial debut by the writer of Bong Joon-ho's first film, MEMORIES OF MURDER, and Bong produced.

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Way behind in listing links to 2015 ND/NF reviews here, sorry. The press screening schedule has been intense. Only one more left now Friday, March 13.

Stéphane Lafleur: TU DORS NICOLE (2014)

Québecois director Lafleur's dry whimsey evoking Einbecke, Kaurismaki, et al. is charming and quietly distinctive but not, perhaps in retrospective, very memorable this time. In black and white, it depicts a young woman slacker's summer days. No agenda but "Pleasure is pleasure," D'Angelo wrote.

Kornel Mundruczco: WHITE GOD (2014)

This is one of those much talked about films that turns out to be much ado about nothing (another this year is the Ukrainian deaf-mute teenage gang movie THE TRIBE). D'Angelo's declaration "This movie's stupid" is not far wrong. Besides remarkable dog wrangling, this turns out to be poor and pointless storytelling whose "metaphor" about oppression of minorities doesn't computer in detail very well.

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[This Shorts Program I chose not to comment upon. THEEB, about a WWI Arab youth guide, could not be shown to press and I probably can't see it now due to its lateness in the public screening schedule.]

Darhad Erdenibulag & Emyr ap Richard: K (2015)

This is a Chinese-produced film version of Kafka's THE CASTLE (in shortened form) in the Mongolian language. It's colorful, but it's too literal and theatrical to add anything new, and rates as little more than a novelty.

Bill & Turner Ross: WESTERN (2014)

These brothers make good documentaries, judging by this one about two towns, one in Texas and another across the border in Mexico, and how growing violence and narco gangs finally begin to undermine their generations of peaceful coexistence and friendly cooperation. The Rosses stick on their topic over time focusing on the Texas mayor and a cattle dealer and follow the developments. I thought of the superb THE OVERNIGHTERS and how that same journalistic dedication led to revelation.

Shorts Program 2

On this one I did write brief comments. Two of the seven shorts showed merit, the others weren't so good.

Chaitanya Tamhane: COURT (2014)

This was one of the best features of the series. Tamhane is a powerful new talent in India. His approach reminded me of the Romanian school, but Indian culture and rich local detail make the effect quite different. He slowly accrues details of a trumped up legal case used to persecute a 65-year-old folk singer and political activist, filling in background on the defnse, the state lawyer, the defendant, and the judge.

Lucas Valenta Rinner: PARABELLUM (2015)

An Austrian director working in Argentina depicts a group of ordinary middle-class people who attend a remote post-apocalyptic survival course at a time of cataclysmic oncoming violence. Semi-ironic and comic, then more serious. A certain dry appeal here, but the film hasn't all that much impact.

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Julie Lopes-Curval: HIGH SOCIETY/LE BEAU MONDE (2014)-- Film Comment Selects

Actually seen earlier, at a public screening of Film Comment Selects, the other important series at this time at Lincoln Center. This is by the director of the low-keyed observational portrait of a small French coastal town society from 2002, SEASIDE/BORD DE MER, which many may have seen; it is available on Netflix streaming video. That I commented on recently. It may be preferable to the new one, which is about a young couple, a working class girl and an upper class boy, she trying to make it in the world of Paris fashion technology, he turning from business school to being a photographer. She succeeds, but their cross-class love affair doesn't last. This is an elegant film with nice details, but is lightweight in its impact.

Christian Petzold: PHOENIX (2014)

Also Film Comment Selects public screening at the Walter Reaade Theeater. About a woman who returns from Auschwitz with facial surgery who reencounters her husband, who does not recognize her. The great Petzold, using his muse Nina Hoss for the sixth time to brilliant effect, takes an implausible premise and adopts American genre style to make a deeply resonant statement about Germany and the War. The man knows how to make movies. A stunning film and not to be missed. Scott Foundas, who reviewed for VARIETY, thinks this will be Petzold's most mainstream US success so far.

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Charles Poekel: CHRISTMAS, AGAIN (2014)

A quiet docudrama in NYC style, actually shot in a real location, a Christmas tree lot, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where the director had himself worked for three years. It focuses on one guy, the actor playing the depressed night shift tree salesman. He is lonely because his girlfriend is not with him for the first time in five years. Not much to it, but the atmosphere is authentic in most details, though the plot is slightly contrived.

Yohei Suzuki: OW (2014)

A quirky Japanese sci-fi-fantasy-horror-humor film that is sui generis and has a great opening sequence of people who become immobilized when they glance at an alien orb floating on the ceiling of a middle-class suburban house, but not much folllow-uop. The bizarre very Japanese and often comical atmosphere I found quite entertaining, but many would consider most of this a snooze. Suzuki may be one to watch.

Nadav Lapid: THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER (2014)

This was by general consent one of the best features of the series this year. Second film by the director of a NYFF film of several years ago, POLICEMAN. That one was good but its separate parts where not integrated; this doesn't have that problem and is highly focused on a woman who goes over the top in her admiration, adoption, and ultimate kidnapping of one of her five-year-olds who composes oracular or gnomic poems that seem to come to him in a flash of powerful inspiration. I personally found this a somewhat confused effort, powerful but still in another sense not well integrated. Lapid instinctively creates dramatic effects; they don't completely make sense. And the sensationalizing of "poetry" into a thriller plot at the end blurs the focus on art, if there was intended to be one. And if not, why this plot?

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Laura Citarella, Verónica Llinás: DOG LADY (2015)

"Observational" again, this time over a period of several seasons. I lost count but it was said to be a year. A woman with 8, 10 or 12 dogs lives out in the pampas outside Buenas Aires, poaching off people and the land to survive. But it seemed to me a cheat, because this is just an actress pretending to be such a woman, it's all staged, and many details (not fully understood?) are not explained, the whole artificially almost completely without dialogue. For instance, in real life the woman would talk to her dogs. Dogs like to be talked to.

Benjamin Crotty: FORT BUCHANAN (2014)

Included because of its good-humored and bawdy "queer" agenda, a movie about a French soldier's "husband" who hangs out with other "wives" and struggles to deal with horniness, etc. Pretty people help make up for the silliness of much of the action and the lack of verisimilitude.

Salomé Alexi: LINE OF CREDIT (2014)

A film in the Georgian language about a woman who goes down in debut during the post 2008 economic crisis, losing the once well-off family's house after a series of bad decisions, constant borrowing and a bad mortgage. The factual nature of the tale in relation to Georgia's actual crisis (14% of the home owners lost their homes) is undercut by the story's focus on a woman who makes selfish and foolish decisions average, innocent people would not make. And the film is structurally flawed: the story is repetitive and lacks real progression or suspense (again Romanian influence? but unworthy of the best Romanian films). Some liked this. It does tell a coherent story, at least.

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Vergil Vernier: MERCURIALES (20140

This French filmmaker starts with employees of a huge twin tower building outside Paris, follows nubile young women around using documentary elements. Perhaps a cutting-edge style, but felt too random to me and borderline sexually exploitive as well.

Sarah Leonor: THE GREAT MAN/LE GRAND HOMME (2014)

In one of the most moving and conventionally successful features of the series, Leonor uses technique reminiscent of Claire Denis to explore the bond between two French Foreign Legion fighters in Afghanistan and themes of statelessness, machismo, and the need for a father.

Myroslav Slabospytskiy: THE TRIBE (2014)

Reportedly a sensation at Cannes, this Ukrainian film depicts young deaf mute people behaving badly (violence, prostitution, drug dealing) at a very rough bording school for the deaf, all in sign language, with no heard voice communication, and no subtitles. It is one of the series' biggest provocations, but leaves you cold because it's not believable, moving, or fully communicative.

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Steve Riley: LISTEN TO ME MARLON (2014)

This Showtime documentary of Brando's life and art is not as innovative as the organizers may have wanted to think, despite inclusion of a lot of voice-over from fuzzy tape recordings the actor made for himself over the years. But it is a good short film bio, structured to provide a balanced and complete picture of the great actor and explain his range of accomplishments and his complex personality.

Severin Fiala, Veronika Franz: GOODNIGHT MOMMY (2014)

With its torture/disfigurement of a mother this by Ulrich Seidl co-writer Franz and a collaborator is another of the series' provocations, but its images of a mummy-wrapped woman, blond twins, and an expensive modern house in the country add up to one of the most elegantly made films of the series as well, art-house horror of a high and distinctive order. Nothing is ever fully explained.

Oscar Ruiz Navia: LOS HONGOS (2014)

This docudrama from Cali, Colombia isn't up to the best Latin American films about today's youth, but it is rich in cultural detail about different family lifestyles, graffiti art, hip hop culture, rap and punk music, and skateboarding as practiced in Colombia.

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Rick Alvderson: ENTERTAINMENT (2014)

Deeply ironic title and a provocative closing night film, yet another of the series provocations, which dares you to stick with its utterly repulsive, mean, sad, and irritating protagonist. The film is designed as a vehicle for fringe comic Gregg Turkington or rather his two-bit washed-up performer alter ego, usually known as Neil Hamburger, which he has played for decades. He tours toward desperation and existential despair and a Felliniesque mood through the Mojave desert and the edge of Bakersfield winding up in Los Angeles. Along the way too many scenes in restrooms including a Lynchian horror childbirth. A novelty item. I don't think it quite works as a believable film, and perhaps fortunately is sparing in its excerpts of Turkington's intentionally horrible standup performances in dead-end bars and cafes.

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SURVEYING THE SERIES.

Again New Directors/New Films lives up to its name with solid offerings. And perhaps in the view of some more edgy, provocative material than before. That is, if the dog torture in White God; wicked mute youths in The Tribe; vile standup comic and Lynchian childbirth of Entertainment; chopped up immigrants of Haemoo;, 15-year-old having sex with mom's adult boyfriend in Diary of a Teenage Girl; tortured mother in the Austrian Goodnight Mommy may be so viewed. These are much talked about, not so successful as films, except that actually Fiala and Franz's Goodnight Mommy is some of the most elegant filmmaking in the series.

Debates over provocation aside, clearly outstanding films of the series are: Yury Bykov's intense, involving Russian working class-bureaucratic corruption drama The Fool (a good companion piece to Zvyagintsev's Leviathan); Chaitanya Tamhane's astonishingly richly observed judicial malpractice Indian film Court; the confusing but again from this director assured and forceful Israeli treatment of going nuts over poetry, The Kindergarten Teacher (Nadav Lapid); the Ross brothers' solid, saddening documentary study of Tex-Mex border violence Western. Despite trawling personal tapes the Showtime documentary of Brando Listen to Me Marlon isn't very innovative but it is extremely informative. The French film The Great Man (Sarah Leonor) is a touching Claire-Denis-esque study of estrangement and fatherhood. New names to remember: Byokov, Tamhane, Leonor; Bill and Turner Ross; Fiala and Franz.

Those are more conventional successes. But it wouldn't be New Directors without more innovative or fringe discoveries like the off-kilter Québecois slacker girl picture Tu dors Nicole; the depressed yet visually stunning Paranoid Park-knockoff Violet; the cheerful French gay romp Fort Buchanan ; the Mongolian Kafka remake (!) K; studies of Christmas-tree selling and living homeless with dogs in the pampas; several others, which though none of them really huge successes, all add just a bit to our range of the cinematically possible. Onward!

(Sorry not to have seen more of Film Comment Selects but High Society doesn't totally disappoint, and Petzold's Phoenix is superb, a strong affirmation of the German director's enormous talent. Note: we were able to view all of the New Directors films except Naji Abu Nowar's Theeb.)

Links to the reviews:

Christmas, Again (Charles Poekel 2014)
Screening with Going Out (Ted Fendt 2014, 8 mins.)
Court (Chaitanya Tamhane 2014)
The Creation of Meaning/La creazione di significato (Simone Rapisarda Casanova 2014)
Diary of a Teenage Girl, The (Marielle Heller 2014)
Dog Lady (Laura Citarella, Verónica Llinás 2015)
Entertainment (Rick Alverson 2015)
Fool, The/Durak (Yuriy Bykov 2014)
Fort Buchanan (Benjamin Crotty 2014)
Screening with Taprobana (Gabriel Abrantes 2014, 24 mins.)
Goodnight Mommy (Severin Fiala, Veronika Franz 2014)
The Great Man (Sarah Leonor 2014)
Haemoo (Shim Sung-bo 2014)
High Society/Le beau monde (Julie Lopes-Curval 2014)--FCS
Los Hongos (Oscar Ruiz Navia 2014)
K (Darhad Erdenibulag & Emyr ap Richard 2015)
The Kindergarten Teacher (Nadav Lapid 2014)
Screening with: Why? (Nadav Lapid 2015, 5 mins.)
Line of Credit (Salomé Alexi 2014)
Listen to Me Marlon (Stevan Riley 214)
Mercuriales (Virgil Vernierj 2014)
Ow (Yohei Suzuki 2014)
Parabellum (Lukas Valenta Rinner 2015)
Screening with Colours (2 mins.) (Evan Johnson 2014)
Phoenix (Christian Petzold 2014)--FCS
SHORTS Program 1
SHORTS Program 2
Theeb (Naji Abu Nowar (2014)
Tired Moonlight (Britni WesT 2014)
The Tribe (Miroslav Slaboshpitsky (2014)
Tu dors Nicole (Stéphane Lafleur 2014)
Violet (Bas Devos 2014)
Western (Bill, Turner Ross 2015)
White God (Kornél Mundruczó 2014)
SURVEYING THE SERIES.

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CHRISTIAN PETZOLD: PHOENIX (2014)

This excellent film, New German Cinema star Petzold's most mainstream to date, releases in US theaters starting today, Friday, 24 July 2015. Highly recommended, and getting critical raves with a current Metacritic rating of 91%.


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Out today (9/11/15): a standout 2015 New Directors film.

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GOODNIGHT MOMMY (Severin Fiala, Veronika Franz 2014)

Chilly, elegant Austrian horror screened in ND/NF in March just released today Fri. 11 Sept. 2015 in theaters, 3 venues in NYC and the Nuart in Los Angeles. One horror movie I can recommend to connoisseurs of the genre. As disturbing as it is classy.

Quote:

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'Goodnight Mommy' Is This Year's Most Terrifying Movie So Far
- Huffington Post‎

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ELIAS AND LUKAS SCHWARZ IN GOODNIGHT MOMMY

Goodnight Mommy trailer

TIME OUT OF MIND (Oren Moverman) with Richard Gere as a homeless person in New York also just opened. Earlier, in May, the Safdie brothers' HEAVEN KNOWS WHAT, about young homeless heroin addicts in NYC, a related topic, opened to ever-so-slightly (going by Metacritic) better reviews. I still prefer the Gere one, more relatable. Both were introduced at the 2014 NYFF and were reviewed on Filmleaf's Festival Coverage thread Sept. 2014.

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Now out at Film Forum NYC Russian film The Fool/Durak (Ilya Bykov)from 18 Sept. 2015. Metacritic rating 83%.

THE FOOL (Yuri Bykov 2014)

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Now at IFC Center NYC from 25 Sept. 2015, US theatrical release. Metacritic 87%.

WESTERN (Bill Roll, Turner Ross 2015)


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THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER (Nadav Lapid 2014)

This interesting Israeli film may be coming on a US DVD. It got a theatrical showing 31 July by the Film Society of Lincoln Center; and is coming in the SF Bay Area 6 Nov. 2015 at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco and the Rafael Film Center in San Rafael, CA.

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THEEB (Naji Abu Nowar 2014)

This film that couldn't be screened for the press opened in NYC yesterday 6 Nov. 2015 (Lincoln Plaza Cinemas 6). I have a screener and hope to review it soon.

Out 4 Dec. 2015.

CHRISTMAS, AGAIN (Charles Poekel 2014)

Theatrical release (NYC) and VOD (iTunes) from 4 Dec., 2015.