Fall Preview: The blindfold approach to the New York Film Festival
Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg in 'The Social Network.' Courtesy of Columbia Pictures.
8:40 am Sep. 14, 2010
Below are some films, festivals and programs coming to New York City this fall that will, for one reason or another, be worth taking the trouble to go and see.
On the Bowery (1958) (Sept. 17-23)
Lionel Rogosin's docudrama of drunks languishing in Manhattan's infamous Bowery neighborhood is the loveliest film ever made about winos falling apart. It's also a purer, leaner version of the East Coast realism Hollywood attempted in the '50s and '60s. The difference between On the Bowery and, say, On the Waterfront is the difference between rotgut and pink Champale.
Hereafter (Sept. 22)
Clint Eastwood's The Sixth Sense. Or The Dead Zone. Or The Ghost Whisperer. Matt Damon is a famous psychic who sees dead people and whines that his "gift" is actually a curse. The trailer looks like an expensive, rote CBS miniseries aimed at Christian Nielsen households. But if you can look past the Hallmark packaging, Eastwood's bluesy chiaroscuro images seem to be an entry in the recent lazily written, elegantly directed Clint "classics" (Million Dollar Baby, Changeling, etc.). You don't come to a late-career Eastwood flick for great writing, but for the way his wise old eyes see the world.
The New York Film Festival (Sept. 24-Oct. 10)
If you've never been to this festival, don't read anything about it or the films it's showing this year. Don't talk to anyone about it, either. Just buy a ticket to one of the screenings and watch whatever comes up on the screen. Having attended some NYFFs in the past after I had thoroughly informed myself about the content, and others completely in the dark, I can testify that the latter approach is more rewarding. Excessive buzz and hype shrink a movie's potential to surprise and delight. And NYFF selections tend to arrive smudged with fingerprints from other fests and commercial runs worldwide. So until I launch my Plain Brown Wrapper Film Festival, where credits and synopses will be banished, this blindfold approach will have to do.
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (Opens Sept. 24) /Inside Job (Opens Oct. 8)
Filmmakers continue to take their shots at detailing the financial malfeasance that led to the current recession. Oliver Stone's turn at bat also doubles as a reunion with one of his most enduring screen characters, corporate raider Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas). The jokey trailer reminds us that Stone is America's second most crowd-pleasing leftist filmmaker.
Meanwhile Charles Ferguson, who crammed his definitive Iraq War documentary, No End in Sight, with top-level insiders, gets similar access to Wall Street and Washington players for Inside Job.
The Heist (Film Forum series, Oct. 1-21)
Damn, I want to see every single film on this program's slate of crime caper flicks. But William Friedkin's comical The Brinks Job (1978), Jacques Tourneur's noir Nightfall (1956) and three from Jean-Pierre Melville (Bob Le Flambeur, Un Flic and Le Cercle Rouge) are especially rare treats.
To Save and Project: The Eighth MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation (Oct. 15-Nov. 14)
MoMA screens several restored classics, including The Leopard, Wanda and a "digital director's cut" of Volker Schlondorff's ever-bizarre The Tin Drum.
Jackass 3-D (Opens Oct. 15)
Did you see the trailer? Then you know why this is here. The Jackass movies are pure cinema—in the same sense that this is pure cinema.
Bruce Conner: The Art of Montage (Nov. 10-23)
Discover a great filmmaker/artist in this program of mesemerizing and ecstatic experimental films. An astute friend describes Conner's Breakaway thusly: "If someone were to ask me what good sex feels like, I would reply that it's like watching Breakway." (Same review he gave Machete, but still...)
White Material (Opens Nov. 19)
Claire Denis' films usually simmer with desire, curiosity and longing. This one stews in racial and class tension, boiling over as an African civil war threatens entrenched white settlers. Lots of astonishing sights, including Isabelle Huppert looking no more than a few years older than the actor who plays her son.
