New York Film Festival 2024

[Chris Knipp]

NELSON CARLOS DE LOS SANTOS ARIAS: PEPE (2024)

Dying thoughts of Pablo Escobar's escaped HippopotamusJ

When Colombian drug lord Escobar died, this menagerie of animals was resettled to various zoos, but his hippopotamus escaped.. This experimental film takes us to a half-fantasy, half semi-documentary account of the end of this animal's life. Jessica Kiang of Variety calls it "a sometimes fascinating but more often frustrating head-trip."

Pepe, mins., debuted at the Berlinale Feb. 20, 2024, showing also at Beijing, Hong Kong, IndieLisboa, Shanghai, Sydney, Karlovy Vary, Poland, Torontok, BFI London, and the NYFf, where it was screened for this review.

[Chris Knipp]

RUNGANO NYONI: ON BECOMING A GUINEA FOWL (2024)

A middle-aged man’s sudden death brings about a reckoning with the past for an extended Zambian family in Rungano Nyoni’s scalding drama. Balancing domestic realism and expressionistic absurdity with precision and constant surprise, Nyoni, in the follow-up to her feature debut, I Am Not a Witch (seen but not reviewed here), commandingly delineates the contours of a community caught between tradition and modernity. Nyoni’s film centers on Shula (a furious and touching Susan Chardy), whose stoical response to finding her uncle’s body on the street in the middle of the night hints at the many emotional fissures that will lead to the exposure of difficult truths long repressed. The film’s compositional rigor, inventive sound design, and unexpected narrative turns and digressions confirm Nyoni as a distinctive new voice in international cinema. Winner of the Best Director prize in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section. An A24 release.

On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, 95 mins., debuted receiving the best director award of the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes May 2024. Also shown at Karlovy Vary, Durban, Poland, Melbourne, and the NYFF, as part of which it was screened for this review.

[Chris Knipp]

RICHARD GERE, UMA THURMAN IN OH, CANADA

PAUL SCHRADER: OH, CANADA (2024)

In an unvarnished, commanding performance, Richard Gere plays Leonard Fife, a celebrated political documentarian who has reached the end of his life. Wracked with cancer, Leonard has agreed to appear in a film by a former protégé (Michael Imperioli) in the hopes of setting the record straight about himself. Cinema becomes a confessional space as Leonard, accompanied by his stalwart wife and former student, Emma (Uma Thurman), excavates his own past, facing down regrets and guilt, and interrogating his own career, personal life, and political courage. Constructed with nonlinear flashbacks featuring Jacob Elordi as a young Leonard, the film passes in and out of different time periods, back to the 1960s, matching the slippery consciousness of its storyteller. Adapted from the book Foregone by Russell Banks, Paul Schrader’s emotionally naked drama feels like a direct address to the viewer, a filmmaker’s reckoning with his formidable status and persona. A Kino Lorber release.

[Chris Knipp]

NAOMI WATTS, BILL MURRAY IN THE FRIEND

SCOTT MCGEHEE, DAVID SIEGEL: THE FRIEND (2024)

Novelist and creative writing teacher Iris (Naomi Watts) finds her comfortable, solitary New York life thrown into disarray after her closest friend and mentor (Bill Murray) commits suicide and bequeaths his beloved Great Dane to her. The regal yet intractable beast, named Apollo, immediately creates problems for Iris, from furniture destruction to eviction notices, as well as more existential ones, his looming presence constantly reminding her of her friend’s choice to take his own life. Yet as Iris finds herself unexpectedly bonding to the animal, she begins to come to terms with her past, her lost friend, and her own creative inner life. Featuring a warm, emotionally present central performance from Watts, Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s (The Deep End) deeply fulfilling adaptation of Sigrid Nunez’s beloved, slyly shape-shifting National Book Award winner is a rare kind of contemporary American film—humane, philosophical, curious, yet never diagnostic about loss, grief, and anger.

[Chris Knipp]

MIKE LEIGH: HARD TRUTHS (2024)

Mike Leigh returns to a contemporary milieu for the first time since Another Year (NYFF48) for this raw, uncompromising domestic drama that continues the great British filmmaker’s inquiries into the possibility for happiness and the limits of human connection. In a gutsy, excoriating performance, Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Oscar nominee for Leigh’s Secrets & Lies, NYFF34) absorbs herself completely into the role of Pansy, a middle-aged, working-class woman whose emotional and physical health problems have metastasized into a profound and relentless anger that’s become toxic for everyone around her, including her husband, grown son, doctors, and even strangers on the street. Raging against every aspect of her domestic life and fearful of the world beyond, Pansy only finds potential solace in the unwavering love of her sister, Chantelle (a magnificent, gracious Michele Austin). Bringing his customary, thrilling eye for the details of human behavior and the complexities of social interaction, Leigh has created in close collaboration with his extraordinary cast a rigorous and unflinching look at a life in freefall. A Bleecker Street release.

[Chris Knipp]

ZHAO TAO AND LI ZHUBIN IN SCENE REWORKED FOR "ANGUISHING VIOLENCE" (DEBORAH YOUNG) IN CAGHT BY THE TIDES

CAUGHT BY THE TIDES (Jia Zhang-ke)

CLIP FROM THE FILM

In Competition. Dazzling, says Deborah Young of THE FILM VERDICT, though "its ravishing poetic beauty tends to obscure the story." Jessica Kiang in VARIETY calls this "an epic, lyrical drama that is both Chinese master Jia's career-retrospective reinvention and a defining portrait of modern China." We must hope that is how it will look to us. Bradshaw gives it 4/5 stars and offers high parise. The theme will sound familiar to Jia fans:" The 20-year failed romance between a singer and a dodgy music promoter becomes the vehicle for director Jia Zhangke’s latest exploration of China’s momentous recent history." That history includes breathtaking economic progress alongside some "very old-fashioned state coercion." Events include the success of "mobster-businessmen," the "patriotic ecstasy" of Beijing hosting the 2008 Olympics, and all the "unacknowledged pain" caused by the displacement of communities for the Three Gorges hydroelectric dam covered by Jia's Golden Lion winning 2006 Still Life. In TIDES, Jia's muse and wife Zhao Tao is the woman, his rep player Li Zhubin the disreputable man who uses and leaves her. She goes on an epic journey to find him, to settle things, and, aging, they finally do. Bradshaw finds "a kind of epic power " in the final scene when that happens. The familiar sound makes sense when we learn from Deborah Young that the whole film is constructed from scenes and outtakes of previous work, which can be done because those two actors played related roles in UNKNOWN PLEASURES, STILL LIFE and A TOUCH OF SIN. She points out his weakness for some viewers: his films have always been "strong on music and wordless images but thin on storylines, pacing and emotional expression." Well, that is not always true. This new film sounds potentially confusing and perhaps odd. But in a way, nothing has ever been quite up to his first four films, yet Jia remains central to contemporary Chinese cinema anyway.

[Chris Knipp]

VINCENT CASSEL, DIANE KRUGER IN THE SHROUDS

DAVID CRONENBERG: THE SHROUDS (202))

In Competition. The titular cloth is fitted with dozens of tiny cameras so the bereaved can watch the decomposition of the beloved in detail after he or she or they is or are buried. The purveyor of these shrouds is one Karsh (Vincent Cassel, standing in for the director), who runs a restaurant with a hi-tech cemetery attached. Diane Kkruger plays the bereaved Karsh's wife, her sister, and a virtual AI avatar. Giving it his respectful but reserved rating of 3/5 starts, Peter Bradshaw in his GUARDIAN review describes THE SHROUDS as another example of the filmmaker's "eroticised necrophiliac meditation on grief," with his "now very familiar Ballardian fetishes," and lots of "intriguing and exhausting" details in the elaborate plot-line. HOLLYWOOD REPORTER'S Scott Roxborough and Patrick Brzeski talk about how respectful the Cannes audience was, and reserved. The director is 81; his own wife died six years ago. They say Croneenberg's is seventh film in Competition at Cannes, and his body horror genre "casts a long shadow on the Crousette," reflected ih JULIA DUCOURNAU'S 2021 Palme d'Or TITANE and this year in Coralie Fargeat’s' THE SUBSTANCE, "one of this year’s hottest competition titles," starring Demi Moore, Dennis Quaid and Margaret Qualley.

[Chris Knipp]

JULIANNE MOORE, TILDA SWINTON IN THE ROOM NEXT DOOR

PEDRO ALMODÓVAR: THE ROOM NEXT DOOR (2024) NYFF Centerpiece Fiim

SOURCE

Almodovar turns to end of life

The Room Next Door is Pedro Almodóvar's first English-language feature film. Lastyear he showed at the NYFF a thirty-minute film in English, Strange Way of LIfe/Extraña forma de vida,. This is the second of two Sigrid Nunez novel adaptations in this year's NYFF. The other is Scott McGehee and David Siegel's The Friend, with Naomi Watts and Brill Murray. A Time Magazine article talks about the author in relation to the two films, which debuted at Venice and also showed at Telluride and Toronto. The Room Next Dorr is inwpi43e by Nunez's novel about euthnasia, or a daughter caring for her mother during the last months of her life, What Are You Going Through. In the book Nunez references Chantal Ackerman's No Home Movie, which has a similar subject, in documentary form, and so you could say Nunez was thinking of, even inspired by, a film when she began her book.

Almodéovar explains his movie focuses on a "very imperfect mother" (that would be Tilda Swinton) and "her resentful daughter" (which would be Julianne Moore). And they are "rekindling" (more a blurb term than a real-life one?) their relationship, which has been suspended for some years. How do a war journalist (Martha, Tilda Swinton) and a best-selling auther (Ingrid, Julianne Moore) become estranged, out of touch?

Anyway now they re-bond, going back into their pasts with lots of memories and anecdotes to share - as in a play; and this is a talky, theatrical film and the title itself may suggest a stage. Art and movies come up too. And then Martha delivers her bombshell request.

Almodóvar this time tralslates his lifelong fastination with mothers (one of his best films was "all about" his) and with women (another depicted them "on the edge of a nervous breakdown," or as I prefer to say "al borde de un crisi ataque de nervios") to English, and the American idiom - except that Tilda Swinton isn't American. But she has played a mother twice for Joanna Hogg, incliuding, in The Souvenir: Part II, with her own daughter, Honor Swinton Byrne, as her daughter. And there isn't much the versatile Tilda hasn't or can't play.

Almodóvar sets a record here with his fifteenth NYFF selection, nine of which have been featured "gala" presentations. These began with his New York debut in 1988 with Los mujeres al bordo...etc.(NYFF26) as the Opening Night selection. This coincided with Richard Peña's debut as director of programming, nd this was a felicitous marriage, and there was a special fluency of Peña and Almodóvar together on stage, since the former was a fluent Spanish speaker as well as a fluent host and interviewer. The next opener was 1999's [i]All About My Mother , on to Bad Education (NYFF42) and Volver (NYFF44) were selected as Centerpieces, and Live Flesh (NYFF35), Talk to Her (NYFF40), Broken Embraces (NYFF47), and Parallel Mothers (NYFF59) were Closing Night selections.m Additional NYFF selections include The Flower of My Secret (NYFF33), The Skin I Live In (NYFF49), Julieta (NYFF54), Pain and Glory (NYFF57), The Human Voice (NYFF58), and Strange Way of Life (NYFF61).

The Room Next Door, 110 mins., debuted at Venice Sept. 2, 2024, showing also at many international festivals including the NYFF, where it was screened for this review. Metacritic rating: 70%.

[Chris Knipp]

DANIEL CRAIG AS "WILLIAM LEE" IN QUEER

LUCA GUADAGNINO: QUEER (2024)
NYFF Spotlight Gala Screening

A dramatization of William S. Burroughs' 1953 novel (published in 1985)

1950. William Lee, an American expat in Mexico City in his early 50s, spends his days almost entirely alone, except for a few contacts with other members of the small American community. His encounter with Eugene Allerton, a young student new to the city, shows him, for the first time, that it might be finally possible to establish an intimate relation with somebody...

There is understandably much praise for Daniel Craig's performance. But if fidelity to the novel source is any concern (and with me it always is whenever, as here, I've read the book and know something about the suthor), it's worth a shout-out first off to Cronenberg's over 30-year-old but still very watchable Naked Lunch, a witty and creditable effort to film the unfilmable and what is by far Burroughs' masterpiece, by comparison with which Queer is a drab apprenticeship piece,a warmup worth our attention chiefly because of what Burroughs became later.

If he were seeking an adaptation true to the text, Guadagnino might seem to be breaking a butterfly (or a drab moth) upon a wheel. It's worth remembering that Naked Lunch's William Lee is played by the blandly neutral Peter Weller, and that might be closer to the character and the fleedgling Burroughs himself than the overwhelming Craig. But that would not work, because this story is about William Lee, whereas in Naked Lunch he is just a reflector. See Owen Gleiberman's excellent and favorable Variety review, which makes clear that Guadagnino makes this film better and deeper than the book, as well he might, while also showing more of both strength and vulnerability in Burroughs than he ever revealed in Queer or in his wryly emphatic later public persona as what Gleiberman calls a "punk icon in the ’80s." See also Fionnuala Halligan's wry ad knowing review in Screen Daily,, which concludes that Guadagnino's Qiueeer "has all the provocation but none of the haunting power that Naked Lunch still holds, almost 35 years later." Her math is more generous than mine, but otherwise we're in agreement.

Halligan notes that the film was shot not in Mexico but in the closed studios of Cinecittà in Rome, with some interesting and resonant effect but also an artificiality that will help contribute to its feeling alienating to today's LGBUQ+ audience. Despite the importance of its author, one of the key figures and a kind of elder doyen of the Beat era, Queer is a peripheral work, its choice by Guadagnino a somewhat odd one.

The novel is unfinished. It is not, like this film, in two distinct parts. In the novel Lee persuades Allerton to accompany him on a trip south in search of yage, also known as ayajuasca, the psychedelic plant, and agree to periodic sex. But that is not a psychedelic writing episode, as the film shifts in cinematic style. Most of all, there is no special coming together in the novel, because there can't be, because in the frustrating real life experience Burroughs was trying to expiate there wasn't one.

Currently there is a free online PDF text of Burroughs' Queer here.
Queer, 151 mins,, debuted Sept. 3, 2024 at Venice, showing also at Toronto, Mill Valley, and the NYFF. Metacritic rating: 75%.

[Chris Knipp]

WALTER SALLES: I'M STILL HERE

Dramatic recreation of the destruction of a fmily by a dictatorship

One afternoon in 1971, Rubens Paiva, a former congressman and outspoken critic of Brazil’s newly instituted military dictatorship, was taken from his home in Rio de Janeiro by government officials, told nothing more than that he must give a “deposition” to authorities, and disappeared. Adapted from his son Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s memoir, this overwhelming, richly realized political drama from Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries) stays tightly wedded to the perspective of Rubens’s wife, Eunice (a shattering Fernanda Torres), whose indefatigable search for the truth about her husband would stretch out for decades. A devastating true story, I’m Still Here is exhilarating in its portrayal of human tenacity in the face of injustice. Featuring a deeply affecting appearance from Fernanda Montenegro, Oscar nominee for Salles’s Central Station. A Sony Pictures Classics release.

I'm still Here, 136 mins., debuted at Venice Sept. 1, 2024, showing also at Toronto, San Sebastián, São Paulo, Hawaii, London BFI and the NYFF, where it was screened for this review.

[Chris Knipp]

ROBINSON DEVOR: SUBURBAN FURY (2024

"Suburban Fury" examines the 1975 assassination attempt on U.S. President Gerald Ford by Sara Jane Moore, a conservative, middle-aged, single mother from the San Francisco suburbs who became radicalized while working as an FBI informant. World premiere at the NYFF.

On September 22, 1975, 45-year-old Sara Jane Moore took a revolver out of her purse and fired two shots at President Gerald Ford on a crowded sidewalk in San Francisco’s Union Square. This failed political assassination was destined to become a strange historical footnote, yet Moore is revealed as an extraordinary subject in this expansive, fascinating new documentary by the protean Robinson Devor (The Woman Chaser, NYFF37). Having served more than 30 years of a life prison sentence, Moore tells her own story, from FBI informant to would-be assassin, all of which Devor dramatizes against the backdrop of the era’s prevalent political unrest and militancy, of Attica, the Black Panthers, the U.S.-backed Chilean coup, and the Symbionese Liberation Army. A pugnacious and unapologetic interview subject, Moore holds the center of a fleet and compelling nonfiction drama with the feel of a 1970s thriller.

Suburban Fury, 115 mins., deebuted at the NYFF, where it will be screened for this revieiw.

[Chris Knipp]

SAORISE RONAN IN BLITZ


STEVE MCQUEEN: BLITZ (2024) - NYFF CLOSING NIGHT FILM


Steve McQueen, 2024, U.K., 114m
North American Premiere[/B]
Blitz, an authentic and astonishing recreation of London during its blitzkrieg by the Germans during World War II, pushes the artistry of Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave, NYFF51) to ever more impressive levels. Working on a vast scale, McQueen sets things at human eye level, telling his original tale from the parallel perspectives of working-class single mother Rita (Saoirse Ronan) and her 9-year-old son, George (newcomer Elliott Heffernan), as they become separated within the labyrinth of a city under siege. Alternately overwhelming and tender, McQueen’s dazzling film offers a multicultural portrait of 1940s London too infrequently seen on screens. While Ronan and Heffernan emotionally match one another beat for beat, the supporting cast, including Kathy Burke, Benjamin Clémentine, Harris Dickinson, Stephen Graham, Hayley Squires, and Paul Weller, is uniformly superb, fleshing out a film that feels positively Dickensian in its scope and storytelling. An Apple Original Films release. (London BFI)