This, too, is the condition of festival-speak. I pick some films over others because the framework of my experience is not experiential; it is exegetical. I organize myself around opinions I am going to have about things I have not yet seen.
Thank god for the New York Film Festival, where every year I buckle under the pressure of a glut of art and groan to anyone who will listen: “I didn’t see enough!”
Fran Hoepfner reports on her sixth New York Film Festival, with thoughts on Megalopolis, The Shrouds, The Room Next Door, Nickel Boys, Oh, Canada, Queer, Hard Truths, Rumours, A Real Pain, Grand Tour, Caught by the Tides, and more!
In this month's episode, Veronica sits down with Fran Hoepfner, Frank Falisi, and our producer Eli Sands to postmortem the 63rd New York Film Festival, including looks at Miroirs No. 3, The Mastermind, Late Fame, No Other Choice, With Hasan in Gaza, The Secret Agent, Peter Hujar’s Day, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, A House of Dynamite, Cover-Up, Duse, and How to Bake a Cherry Pie.
Fran Hoepfner on The Irishman, Uncut Gems, Marriage Story, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Parasite, First Cow, and other highlights (and not so highlights) from the New York Film Festival.
Seeing movies is a gift, and I can’t wait to go back next year.
There are worse ways to ride out the pandemic than mainlining some three dozen or so movies in a week, finding delights where you least expect them.
I frequently took my mental temperature after this year’s Sundance screenings, searching for symptoms of that dreaded ailment, festival fever. I’ve fought mightily to maintain critical detachment, but it bears acknowledgement that the following assessments were made during one of the most emotionally tumultuous weeks I can remember.
As I walked up the steps to the Walter Reade theater, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of triumph, my first day back on campus. Everyone was there! In line, tired, clutching cheap coffee and festival badges. Some people got haircuts. Even the grumps were buzzing, happy to finally have some place to be.
You adjust the bowtie on your tuxedo. I’m at Cannes, a fucking dream come true.
One could be forgiven for assuming the Nitrate Picture Show proffers sanctuary from the uncertainty reigning outside, but this year’s edition inverted this presumed mandate, with a program of films that presented the past not as a refuge from our present tumult, but as a reflection of it.
The final installment of BWDR at NYFF 61, with thoughts and reflections on Priscilla (Coppola), Last Summer (Breillat), and Ferrari (Mann).