The first and final scenes of any film are vital, and contained within these bookends you can find the entire story of Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere. Unfortunately, nearly everything in between is standard biopic filler and reinforces filmmaker Scott Cooper’s unique position in the Hollywood landscape: he’s a tremendous director of actors and quite unremarkable at most other parts of the job.
Based on Warren Zanes’ Bruce Springsteen biography of the same name, the film (which Cooper both directed and wrote) tells the story of how the famed heartland rocker created Nebraska—perhaps his most time-tested album—but it seldom has anything to say beyond observing his emotional troubles during this period, often at great dramatic distance. Despite this contained focus on a one-year period, Deliver Me From Nowhere is very much a decades-spanning saga in the tale of most by-the-numbers “true stories” about revered figures and begins with a monochrome depiction of a young Springsteen (Matthew Pellicano Jr.) listening to his father (Stephen Graham) abuse his mother (Gaby Hoffmann) in the next room. A hard cut from his haunted expression to the adult Springsteen (Jeremy Allen White) delivering a full-throated, thoroughly embodied performance of “Born to Run” in 1981 creates a strange but appropriate thematic link between these childhood events and Springsteen’s ’70s mega-hit. Regardless of what the song was actually about (in short: a girl), its lyrics become an obvious cipher here for a man escaping his past at lightspeed. If only the rest of the film had maintained this momentum.
As mentioned, Deliver Me From Nowhere does in fact conclude with a touching gesture toward catharsis, so in theory one could string these brief opening and closing acts together to create a much more impactful short film without losing very much by way of story. However, viewers then wouldn’t be treated to the real delights of a Scott Cooper joint: broad caricatures who become imbued with beating humanity in a way so few American filmmakers tend to manage. As Springsteen begins work on his next album, he sees the process as a long-overdue exorcism of personal demons, while his record executives et al. want more hits for the radio. The Boss, however, is largely shielded from these demands, leaving his manager and producer Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong) to advocate on his behalf.
This side of things—the logistics of creating the next big hit or cultural phenomenon—features little by way of discernible drama despite the many arguments that play out in the confines of various offices. And yet it can be intriguing to watch in its own way, as Landau becomes the de facto point-of-view character for lengthy stretches, talking up Springsteen’s genius to anyone who’ll listen (including and especially David Krumholtz’s Columbia record exec) while barely giving any pushback to the artist himself. There’s a sense of inevitability to Nebraska coming into being (and the iconic Born in the U.S.A. after it, which used many of his original concepts for the former). On one hand, this rarely affords the movie any meaningful stakes. On the other, it allows Strong to create a cautiously eager version of Landau who practically bleeds adoration for Springsteen. Similarly, Paul Walter Hauser plays an eager recording engineer who goes along with Springsteen’s intentionally lo-fi plans for Nebraska, while Marc Maron plays a mostly silent studio mixer who, despite a few incredulous reactions, largely goes along with things. After all, who is he, and who are any of them, to question the Boss?
This kind of idolatry is usually the raison d’être for jukebox “IP” biopics like Deliver Me From Nowhere, and there’s a refreshing honesty to the hagiography refracted in Strong’s doting gaze. Granted, the film is prevented from veering into full-on Boss propaganda by the personal half of the story, in which he enters a romance with radiant single mother Faye Romano (Odessa Young), a relationship that feels doomed by the very same inevitability that colors the movie’s making-of-Nebraska half. He offers her, up front, a premonition of what will inevitably happen—that he won’t be able to commit himself to loving her so long as this album and its ghosts hang around his neck—but with the movie’s parameters all clearly established, in the studio and behind closed doors, there remains little reason to watch it beyond its performances. Springsteen will prioritize his work, people will laud his musical talent and he will eventually confront the wounds of his past, but none of these are framed as part of a story where Springsteen’s or anyone’s human impulses threaten to derail the inevitable for even a moment.
White’s conception of Springsteen is joyful to witness, not just for the way he impersonates the Boss’s gravelly voice and vein-popping performances but for the way he conjures Springsteen’s spirit through exaggeration. He crafts a sense of mood (and moodiness) where the film might not otherwise contain it, brooding to the extreme and sitting in Jersey and New York diner booths hunched over to the side, leaning so far that he threatens to keel over. He doesn’t so much play Springsteen as he does an imaginary, effortlessly cool, deeply tormented version that James Dean might have portrayed, and Deliver Me From Nowhere is slightly better for it. In tandem with Masanobu Takayanagi’s cinematography, which subtly silhouettes the superstar and turns him into an icon even in mundane settings, the film has tremendous physical architecture even if its emotional architecture is practically null.
SPRINGSTEEN: DELIVER ME FROM NOWHERE ★★ (2/4 stars) Directed by: Scott Cooper Written by: Scott Cooper Starring: Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, Paul Walter Hauser, Stephen Graham, Odessa Young, David Krumholtz, Gaby Hoffmann, Harrison Sloan Gilbertson, Grace Gummer, Marc Maron, Matthew Pellicano Jr. Running time: 114 mins.
Clichés abound in the form of flowery dialogue, but the kind that, when imbued with enough cinematic gusto—Springsteen speaks of “finding silence amongst the noise”—can transcend their trappings and become jubilant. Unfortunately, here they end up as overwritten pablum that struggles to convey meaning.
There are movie references aplenty, from Springsteen discovering dark subject matter through a Terrence Malick film and flashbacks of him enjoying Charles Laughton’s sumptuous The Night of the Hunter with his father. But these only serve as mood boards, presented as-is when Springsteen watches them, rather than becoming stylistic or thematic influences for the artist or for the film at large. They become reminders of how comparatively little by way of style or philosophy Cooper puts into his work, even if his protagonist can be seen watching them, enjoying them and being influenced by them in a way that makes his wheels silently turn. But what that influence leads to, and the synapses it fires, remain something of a mystery.
At the end of the day, Deliver Me From Nowhere is a film worth looking at and observing from the same distance that Cooper frames his impenetrable version of Springsteen, whose troubles hover over his creative process like a gloomy cloud. But the camera seldom looks past the pristine surfaces it creates in order to explore those problems or Springsteen’s connection to the many lyrics we see him jotting down throughout the runtime. “Double album??” he scrawls at one point, underlining it twice in a gesture that hilariously ends up with about as much weight and meaning as any of Springsteen’s actual lyrics—in a film nominally about the lifelong pain that fuels them. Sure. Double album. Why the hell not?
Bradley Cooper’s third feature after Maestro andA Star is Born—the divorce-and-stand-up dramedy Is This Thing On?—departs from the musical focus of his previous efforts but, like them, comes achingly close to being great. The actor-director is three-for-three when it comes to films about art and artistry that just come up short, while displaying enough thoughtful flourishes to convince you he’ll create a masterpiece down the line. Sadly, today is not that day, but the result remains perfectly entertaining.
The story, penned by Cooper, Mark Chappell, and the movie’s lead actor will arnett, begins with dour finance man Alex Novak (Arnett) and his anxious homemaker wife Tess (Laura Dern) mutually deciding to separate. It’s a spontaneous moment seemingly informed by lengthy consideration off-screen, and while this framing provides little context as to their reasons, the movie opens up space for both characters to re-litigate their relationship in some unique and enticing ways. The couple’s ten-year-old boys readily accept the amicable separation, even if it means splitting their time between Tess in their suburban home and Alex in his new bachelor pad in Manhattan. However, in order to cope with the unexpected grief of the situation, Alex finds himself—at first by happenstance and then by intent—at various open mic nights at New York’s Comedy Cellar, letting his troubles pour out of him in the form of some decidedly average stand-up. It’s an experiment he keeps close to his chest, like a dirty secret, the gradual reveal of which makes for some fun situational comedy.
Cooper and cinematographer Matthew Libatique’s camera remains tethered to Alex’s uncomfortable close-ups for most of his sets as he finds ways to turn his impending divorce into fodder for his act and learns the ropes from more seasoned comics in scenes filled with snappy wit. All the while, he and Tess remain in each other’s orbit and gradually navigate the awkward complications of remaining close despite going their separate ways. At first, Is This Thing On? plays like the tale of an artist discovering his hidden talent, but while Alex’s routine gestures at catharsis, it seldom helps him address his avoidant personality—or the lingering tensions that prevent him and Tess from figuring out their new dynamic. After all, men will literally [insert hobby here] instead of going to therapy.
The supporting characters around the couple weave in and out of focus, between Alex’s loving parents (Christine Ebersole, Ciarán Hinds) and a litany of married pals, including Cooper himself as a floundering actor named Balls. Unfortunately, these B-plots tend to feel more intrusive than informative, especially when Cooper keeps the camera running—often on himself—for extended periods that reveal little about the characters and move the story even less. Still, they’re idiosyncratic enough to be amusing, even if Cooper could afford to leave some of his riffing on the cutting room floor.
However, when Will and Tess are the movie’s focus, there’s no end to its audiovisual delights. Cooper moves between scenes with furious momentum; one uproarious transition in particular makes literal the idea of bringing domestic woes to the stage, while James Newberry’s jazzy score creates numerous anxious crescendos at every turn. His commitment to capturing drama in real time yields engaging and side-splitting dialogue scenes, where the camera—although it oscillates noticeably between its leads without cutting away—affords his actors the chance to dig deep into the uncertainties underlying their confident, personable façades. These are polite masks they wear before one another, even during pleasant interactions, if it means never letting slip that they might blame themselves for their breakup. But as Alex explores stand-up and Tess tries to get back to her former career as a volleyball coach (with the help of an acquaintance played naturalistically by former NFL quarterback Peyton Manning), the duo also explores a complicated friends-with-benefits dynamic, while the question of whether they’ll ever admit their faults to themselves—let alone each other—continues to loom.
IS THIS THING ON? ★★★ (3/4 stars) Directed by: Bradley Cooper Written by: Bradley Cooper, Will Arnett, Mark Chappell Starring: Will Arnett, Laura Dern, Andra Day, Bradley Cooper, Christine Ebersole, Ciarán Hinds Running time: 120 mins.
The thorny evolution of the couple’s relationship speaks to an artistic desire to solve some kind of riddle that has no easy answer. Cooper and Arnett have both been through divorces themselves, and the movie captures vignettes of reality in energetic spurts, especially in isolated moments where the lead characters grow more worried, frustrated, or aggrieved, sometimes all at once. As a performance piece, Is This Thing On? is unimpeachable, and results in surprising despondency from Arnett and remarkable work from Dern, whose silent reactions and introspections speak louder than words. However, the adrenaline of the movie’s drama tends to wane the longer it goes on without a real objective in mind. It’s a film that ultimately has too many open questions without the dramatic rigor to justify them, even when its plot wraps up neatly (albeit too quickly and conveniently).
In a broader sense, one has to wonder if Cooper has taken criticisms of his preceding work to heart. “No one wants an Oscar as badly as Bradley Cooper,” wrote Alex Abad-Santos for Vox, in a piece that also refers to him as a “try-hard.” It’s just one of several such sentiments that tend to accompany his writer-director-actor-producer (and occasionally singer) ventures, although this time, he’s mostly removed himself from the equation on screen and diverted his focus away from music altogether. This is unfortunately at odds with the kind of visual verve he usually brings to his movies. I also wrote in 2023 that he should just direct a musical already, a sentiment that holds true here as well, given how purposefully he moves his camera around each performer, creating enrapturing rhythms even when the movie’s other pieces don’t necessarily fit.
I tend to disagree with assessments like Abad-Santos’s, given how much of Cooper’s output is laced with emotional sincerity, whether or not his end goal is some intimate emotional purging or simply winning a trophy. Then again, in the intensely rendered but chaotic A Star Is Born, the more cogent but reserved Maestro, and now the more focused but less ambitious Is This Thing On?—all tales of artists finding themselves by opening up their veins and showing audiences what pours out—is there really a difference between the desire for catharsis and major accolades? Cooper’s latest is clearly the output of someone who has been through personal anguish, and like Alex Novak, he attempts to use his pain as the basis for not just something healing but something hilarious, albeit something deeply imperfect, too.
But Scorsese happily provided her a list of films to watch to get the voiceover to click—“Of course if you ask him that question, you’re going to get a long answer.”
They stayed in touch, gave notes on each other’s films, and saw each other socially. Years later, Miller was chatting with her producing partner Damon Cardasis about making another documentary. Cardasis asked, “Who would be your favorite person?”
“The first person that popped in my head was Martin Scorsese,” Miller said. “And I think the reason was, it’s such a rich subject. I was really interested in his Catholicism and his fascination with violence, how those two things work together.”
They got together right before the pandemic, and when lockdown hit, they carried forward at Miller’s country house.
“We, in a weird way, were lucky that he was so bored and so stuck, because he traveled all the way upstate,” she said. “We did it on the porch.”
Five years later, Mr. Scorsese is here in all its hours-long glory. The film rips, zipping ahead with the same speed as one of its subject’s more frenzied flicks, dispatching quickly with hundreds of talking heads. It’s so expansive it seems definitive. One Apple exec compared it to The Last Dance, the documentary about Michael Jordan: a similarly focused, leave-no-stone-unturned look at an unquestionable GOAT.
But like The Last Dance, the doc shows its subject’s setbacks. As the panelists reminded the gathered faithful: This was not inevitable.
“So Marty made Who’s That Knocking at My Door?, and then he got this deal to do this Roger Corman-produced movie called Boxcar Bertha,” said Imperioli, who had a very early film role in Goodfellas as Spider, a lackey who meets a violent fate. “Cassavettes watched the movie and said to Marty, ‘You just wasted a year of your life on a piece of shit.’ This was his big thing in Hollywood, right? His second film. And he said, ‘You shouldn’t be doing stuff like this.’”
The first thing to note about Anemone is that it marks a magnificent emergence from eight years of retirement for the great Daniel Day-Lewis, who stepped away from acting following 2017’s exquisite chamber piece, Phantom Thread. Looking lean and strong, with a shock of silver hair and a thick walrus mustache that might make Sam Elliott feel threatened, the three-time Oscar winner’s magnetic intensity remains undimmed. Playing a brooding, taciturn man living in self-imposed exile for two decades, Day-Lewis’ rugged performance provides a semblance of narrative weight in a drama that’s otherwise lacking.
Co-written by the actor with his son Ronan Day-Lewis, making his feature directing debut, Anemone shows a young filmmaker with a boldly textured visual sense and a sharp eye for composition. Cinematographer Ben Fordesman’s arresting widescreen images of the Northern English landscapes and dense woodlands create a sweeping canvas, even if the self-consciously enigmatic story becomes dwarfed by the physical settings.
Anemone
The Bottom Line
A riveting performance in an underpowered vehicle.
Venue: New York Film Festival (Spotlight) Release date: Friday, Oct. 10 Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Sean Bean, Samantha Morton, Samuel Bottomley, Safia Oakley-Green Director: Ronan Day-Lewis Screenwriters: Daniel Day-Lewis, Ronan Day-Lewis
Rated R,
2 hours 5 minutes
Intergenerational trauma is fast becoming the most over-trafficked theme of 21st-century indie cinema — second only to the journey of self-discovery. Despite the political specificity of the family history unearthed here, the script presumes a level of profundity that’s just not there in the movie’s ponderous silences and woozy montages. You can feel the director straining for poignancy in closing scenes that point toward possible reconciliation, but the drama remains unaffecting.
Ray Stoker (Day-Lewis Sr.) has lived the life of a hermit for 20 years in a primitive cabin deep in the woods, hunting, cooking meals on a wood-burning stove, washing his clothes in water from a nearby river and running to keep fit. The only sign of him having made this lonely place a home beyond bare-bones essentials is a patch of delicate white flowers that give the film its title, later revealed to be the same bloom cultivated by his father.
Ray’s solitude is interrupted by the unannounced arrival of his brother Jem (Sean Bean), whom he greets without warmth, using more grunts and gestures than actual words. While Ray seems divorced from any sense of spirituality, Jem is a devoutly religious man, as evidenced by the words “Only God Can Judge Me” tattooed across his shoulders as he prays for strength to face the tasks ahead. Jem brings a letter from his partner Nessa (Samantha Morton), outlining a family crisis with their boy Brian (Samuel Bottomley), whose bloodied knuckles indicate a violent nature that has prompted his withdrawal.
From early on, the tortured family dynamic becomes clear, explaining Nessa’s reasons for turning to Ray for help. But the screenplay rejects clean narrative lines, as if withholding its truths will lend the pared-down story more complexity.
This pays off to some extent because Day-Lewis is such a mesmerizing presence, Ray’s gruff manner and terse communications hinting at dark mysteries to be revealed. But although Bean is a strong actor, his role is mostly reactive, creating an imbalance in the two-character scenes that dominate the movie, and a slight staginess in a structure built around chewy monologues.
Admittedly, some of those monologues are bracing, notably Ray’s vivid account of his revenge — real or fabricated — against the priest who sexually abused him as a child. Mentions of Ray and Jem’s disciplinarian father point to a corresponding environment of physical violence at home. It emerges that the brothers served with different branches of the British military during the Northern Ireland conflict, and Ray’s direct experience with IRA violence has left him psychologically scarred.
Morton has moments of stirring vulnerability as Brian’s careworn mother, whose history with Ray makes her fear that her son could go down a comparably bleak path. Bottomley plays the bruised, angry young man with conviction, but the script never puts enough meat on the bones of his conflict to make Brian much more than a generic casualty of a troubled family. Anemone ends up being too distancing to solicit much emotional involvement in any of them.
The director’s handling of mystical visions that haunt Ray is less than seamless, but his embrace of elemental forces is effective, particularly a hailstorm of near-biblical proportions that proves cathartic. The extensive embellishment of a score by Bobby Krlic (the English musician who records as the Haxan Cloak), drenched in moody synths and guitar, fits the tone but also adds to the nagging sense that the younger Day-Lewis’ storytelling too often mistakes padding for atmosphere.
What lingers as the end credits roll is Daniel Day-Lewis’ noble face — full of sorrow, resentment, guilt and shame, emotions that Ray spends much of the early action masking in hardened indifference. Regardless of the film’s shortcomings, it’s a thrill to have this giant of an actor back on a movie screen, hopefully next time with a more satisfyingly fleshed-out screenplay.
Vulture first reviewed Late Fame when it premiered at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival on August 30, 2025. We are republishing the review now that it’s playing at the New York Film Festival.
“You must have been beautiful when you were young,” Greta Lee says to Willem Dafoe at one point in Kent Jones’s Late Fame, and for those of us who well remember the actor’s younger years — back when his skin was porcelain, his cheekbones sea-cliff sharp, and his eyes so angelically haunted — it’s hard not to shout “Amen!” back at the screen. First, the line hits because it works within the context of the film: Ed Saxburger (Dafoe) is a postal worker who in his youth published a well-regarded but little-read book of poems, and he’s in the midst of fondly (and melancholically) recalling all the promise of those early years in New York, when poetry was in the air, “downtown was another world, and Soho was like being on the moon.” But it also helps the movie reach beyond the screen; some of us might begin to share Saxburger’s reveries along with our own.
The line also suggests that Lee’s Gloria Gardner, a downtown actress with an aura of mystery to her, appreciates Saxburger in this moment not for who he is, but for who he once was and the world he once belonged to. (Though, let’s face it: Dafoe still looks pretty great.) Loosely adapted from an Arthur Schnitzler novella, Late Fame, as the title implies, follows Saxburger’s rediscovery by an odd group of young writers and thinkers calling themselves “the Enthusiasm Society.” Led by the wealthy and snobbish Wilson Meyers (Edmund Donovan), who makes sure to tell Saxburger he bought his book at “Foyle’s on Charing Cross Road” with ever the slightest of fake English accents, these pampered dandies “stand against negativity” and the monetization of everything. They speak of the old virtues, they call each other by their last names, they discuss Big Important Literary Ideas over expensive wine dinners, and they rail against influencer culture and technology and cellphone addiction. But of course, they’re just as glued to their devices and obsessed with their brand. Meyers has Amazon Alexa tech in his Sullivan St. apartment (which is very nice, very expensive, and paid for by his parents), and a $1200 first edition of The Naked Lunch on display. We gather the other members of the Enthusiasm Society aren’t much different; Meyers says one guy’s family “owns every soybean in the state of Missouri.” (He also claims the Enthusiasm Society stands above politics, though in a film more firmly grounded in today’s world they’d probably be Dimes Square-adjacent, which is to say, not above politics at all.)
Schnitzler was a master of narrative high concept in his day. Whenever I see a plot description of one of his works, I find myself wanting to read the story immediately. And the premise of Late Fame is so captivating that one wants to forgive its shortcomings and focus on what it does so well, starting with a truly great and nuanced role for Dafoe, whose physical presence can evoke coarse sturdiness and emotional delicacy at the same time. Saxburger has a tough exterior; he’s reserved and unassuming in his demeanor; he avoids his sister’s calls about his dying brother, and he pushes back modestly against Meyers and his pals’ anointing him as America’s great undiscovered poet. But we also see that he once had art in him, and ambition, too. And we understand that such inner reserves of sensitivity aren’t always a good thing: After one triumphant reading, he hears someone yell out, “Way to go, grandpa!” and that one quip from that one random unseen person kicks eats away at him the rest of the evening.
Also doing excellent work here is Lee, who gives the vampish and self-consciously artificial Gloria a magnetic inner life. She’s not a writer, seems slightly older than these young wannabes, and we suspect she’s not nearly as rich; the more brazen and confident she is, the more we can tell there’s a lot more going on. This character probably twists through the most dramatic extremes over the course of the film (including a riveting cabaret performance of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s “Surabaya Johnny”), and it’s to Lee, Jones, and screenwriter Samy Burch’s credit that the more we find out about her, the less we actually know about her.
So, that’s the good news. Unfortunately, Late Fame stumbles when it comes to its scenes with the Enthusiasm Society itself, which is unfortunate because that’s arguably the most interesting element in the picture, at least at first. But they’re ultimately too cartoonish for a film that otherwise feels so lived-in. It’s not that such tonal shifts can’t work, but here the comic-ridiculous treatment of these well-meaning poseurs seems driven by narrative convenience and the irresistibility of cheap laughs rather than anything resembling an inner life or observed reality. Come to think of it, Burch’s Oscar-nominated script for May December had a similarly slippery quality, but there it benefited from the deft hand of director Todd Haynes, whose work has always existed in a queasy tonal slipstream. Jones is a talented filmmaker — I was once on a Tribeca jury that gave his masterful previous feature Diane(2018) several well-deserved awards — and Late Fame has some true virtues. But as it proceeds, it feels less assured. Still, Dafoe and Lee are so good, and the idea behind the story so enchanting, that I keep wishing it were better. Maybe one day I’ll convince myself it is.
Julia Roberts has said she hopes her new movie After the Huntsparks conversations, and the film’s stars have indicated they are happy to embrace the uncertainty and questions provoked by the story’s conflicting narratives, many of which remain unanswered.
Still the team behind the Luca Guadagnino-directed campus thriller, which explores the fallout when promising PhD candidate Maggie (Ayo Edebiri) accuses Andrew Garfield‘s professor character Hank of sexual misconduct and how this affects Maggie’s mentor Alma (Julia Roberts), who’s also close friends and colleagues with Hank, did answer some questions following After The Hunt‘s New York Film Festival premiere Friday night.
When asked how much they wanted to know about what was left unresolved for the audience, Garfield, Edebiri and Michael Stuhlbarg all seemed to welcome the film’s ambiguity.
“[It’s] fascinating to play with what’s conscious, what’s unconscious, in terms of what’s driving these people, what motives are hidden from ourselves,” Garfield said. “I feel like we all feel like we are the heroes of our own stories. I think there’s quite beautiful moments of reckoning, self reckoning, self revelation, that each of our characters have in this film, and in those moments, it’s the kind of horrifying staring into the abyss of the kind of horrifying mirror that these characters are faced with at certain points. … I think there is a kind of a reckoning that this person, who believes himself to be a kind of humanist and a kind of great professor … and a guy that’s trying to open and unlock all of his students and someone who’s daring and trying to get people closer to the edges of their own hearts and the centers of their own hearts, that he’s faced with something that he hadn’t previously recognized in himself.”
Stuhlbarg, who plays Alma’s psychiatrist husband Frederick, added that the word “ambiguity” felt “very appropriate for this experience.”
“It’s like watching a slow motion train wreck,” he said of the film’s story. “You don’t know what’s going to happen, but you feel something’s coming. And that was kind of the experience, ambiguous, of playing it is that, you know, there’s many layers to this gorgeous text and to these extraordinary performers, and you kind of throw yourself into it to pull out what you think is going to be useful, and then you throw yourself into it and things happen. But being outside of the center of that action, I know something’s going on. I don’t exactly know what it is, but I’m pressing and I’m watching it, and I think it’s a hard place to be and a wonderful place to play, because you’re kind of on tenterhooks the whole time. And I never know what it’s going to be and having Luca throw extraordinary things at us during the process of being in that unsurety gives you moments of direction and moments of flourishing and moments of silliness and moments of depth, and you just ride it, but it’s a very appropriate word for the world we were inhabiting.”
And Edebiri, in particular, praised the rehearsal period at Roberts’ house as giving them license to explore different interpretations.
“We were just getting to excavate this text together, and I feel like there were just early conversations that we were having with each other, and also that I was having with Luca, where I feel like it was like we were getting permission, in a way, to, like, fill in the blanks where we needed to fill them in, and then where there needed to be space and ambiguity, or in moments with each other, to maybe find things that are more primal, we just got license to do that,” she said. “Being able to have that license to, I don’t know, sometimes, like, fool each other, fool ourselves, I think was really freeing.”
And while Roberts wouldn’t reveal what she thought truly happened or if she even wanted to know that to play Alma, she did have an answer for what she thinks the film, which has been described as a #MeToo story and one about the world of academia, is truly about and it’s found in the film’s abundance of music.
“There’s a song that plays in this film seven times … and it’s a song about forgiveness. And I think it says so much about these relationships and how Luca asked us to approach them and construct them and what he asked of us as artists to find and articulate in the characters we were portraying,” she said. “I think that he always felt that this beautiful story that [screenwriter] Nora [Garrett] wrote us was about love and forgiveness and trying to understand who we really are deep inside of ourselves and why we posture and do the things that we do.”
Prior to the screening, Stuhlbarg and Garrett said they were welcoming the questions, conversations and opinions being shared after people saw the film.
“I think everyone will see this film with their own particular lens,” Stuhlberg told The Hollywood Reporter on the red carpet ahead of After the Hunt‘s opening night screening. “I think it presents quandaries to an audience, and it’s up to them to decide what really happened, and I think it gets conversations going, and I’m delighted that those conversations seem to continue and they seem to be happening after every screening of the film. I’m just as curious to know what people are curious about and I’m looking forward to hearing what people have to say.”
Garrett added, “We all did really hope that people would be able to bring their opinions to this and their ideas to this and you don’t get to pick and choose what type of opinions those are. I think as long as people feel very strongly, that’s welcome.”
The first-time screenwriter told THR that while she had been thinking about the ideas and themes of the story for a while, it was the Alma character that really drew her in.
Specifically, Garrett says, she saw the philosophy professor as “a woman who has such outward success but such inward self-denialism and if there was something that could cause that inward self-denialism to crumble a little bit or fracture a little bit, how that would change her life and how she would live her life.”
And as for the “unreadable” elements of Alma, as THR‘s review of After the Hunt noted, Garrett said, “She has a lot of internal machinations and because she’s not looking fully at herself she’s also going to project something which confuses what you might believe to be her internal drive.”
After the Hunt, from Amazon MGM Studios, is set to hit theaters in New York and L.A. on Oct. 10, expanding on Oct. 17. Brian Grazer, Jeb Brody and Allan Mandelbaum produced the film through Imagine’s first-look deal with Amazon MGM.
The 2025 New York Film Festival runs through Oct. 13.
This review was originally published on February 3, 2025 out of the Sundance Film Festival. We are recirculating it now timed to the New York Film Festival.
Can a doodle also be a masterpiece? Maybe it’s not fair to call Peter Hujar’s Day a doodle, though Ira Sachs’s film, clocking in at 76 minutes, wears its modesty on its sleeve. Consisting of a conversation between two people in a West Village apartment, filmed austerely but evocatively, the picture revels in its spareness, its warm simplicity. It starts off as an elevation of the quotidian but transforms into something sadder and more reflective.
The film is a re-creation of an interview that happened on December 19, 1974, between the renowned photographer Hujar (Ben Whishaw) and his friend, the journalist Linda Rosenkrantz (Rebecca Hall), who intended their conversation to be part of a book about how different people spent their day. Having taken notes on what he did the day before, Hujar is precise in his accounting, but his fixation on seemingly meaningless details betrays his photographer’s eye. Much of what he talks about is a shoot he was assigned to do with the poet Allen Ginsberg. But other names float through over the course of the conversation — Susan Sontag, William Burroughs, Glenn O’Brien — in that rather New York way, where a conversation between two people usually becomes a conversation about a dozen other people.
It’s not hard to get lost amid all these names and half-anecdotes, but I think that’s also part of the point. Sachs is clearly animated by a love for this long-lost downtown scene, and he conveys it as much through his images and his cutting as he does through the dialogue (which is taken directly from Rosenkrantz’s transcript). As the two talk, they move around different parts of the apartment. They make coffee, they drink tea and eat cookies. They stand outside. They lounge in bed. The light changes. Their outfits change. A shaft of sunlight might hit Hujar in an odd way, the warm glow of a sunset might reflect off a surface. Distant sounds from the street drift in. They touch each other’s legs and heads and feet, glancingly and sensuously, though not sexually. Such sense memories aren’t there to precisely chart Peter Hujar’s path through Linda Rosenkrantz’s apartment. Rather, they evoke sense memories in all of us — we all understand light, and warmth, and the feeling of another person’s touch. It’s through such subtle cues that this tender, lovely film starts to feel like something we might have all experienced once.
Whishaw obviously has to do most of the heavy lifting, dialogue-wise, but Hall is his equal in the way she uses her silences. Her adoration of Hujar comes through, as well as her ease around him. Whishaw gives Hujar’s words a matter-of-fact quality, but there’s a slight hint of melancholy to him, too. He’s filled with anxieties about his art and his work. (The Ginsberg shoot, he says, is his first job for the New York Times.) Hell, he’s filled with anxieties about going four blocks down to another part of the Village. But Whishaw, whose voice is one of modern cinema’s great wonders (there’s a reason why he makes such a good Paddington), conveys the nervousness and the hope and the boredom and the sadness all at once.
Rosenkrantz’s intended book never materialized, but she did publish the Hujar interview as its own volume years later, in 2022, by which point AIDS had long claimed the photographer. So loss is, in a way, built into the very concept of the film. The intimacy draws us in, as if we might know these people. At the same time, we also understand that we’ll never know these people. The maze of names and facts in Hujar’s account, the familiarity he and Rosenkrantz have with each other, the way the setting light captures the ephemerality of this moment, it all feels like something that’s already vanished. We’re watching a mundane spectacle of a mundane spectacle — a man in a room relating the mostly forgettable events of the previous day — but somehow, we’re also witnessing the arc of time within this quiet hour. So, no, the film is maybe not a doodle. There’s too much craft, too much care here for that. But it is a masterpiece.
Julia Roberts, Daniel Day-Lewis, George Clooney and Jeremy Allen White are among the stars whose films will be making their world or national premieres at the 2025 New York Film Festival, beginning Friday.
This year’s festival, which runs through Oct. 13, showcases more than 70 fiction features and documentaries, as well as short film programs, revivals, and filmmaker talks, with screenings to be held in all five boroughs.
New York’s annual event is not only one of the best curated international film festivals; it’s also one of the most prescient. Last year’s festival lineup included “Anora,” which won five Oscars, including best picture, best director, and best actress for Mikey Madison; “The Brutalist” (best actor winner Adrien Brody); “Emilia Pérez” (best supporting actress winner Zoe Saldaña); best documentary winner “No Other Land”; and best international feature “I’m Still Here.”
Gala screenings at the New York Film Festival
The festival’s opening night feature, “After the Hunt,” stars Julia Roberts as a Yale University philosophy professor who hears that one of her students has been sexually assaulted by an adjunct professor. But the story, by Nora Garrett, is no simple he said/she said tale, as Roberts finds her own personal history drawn into the ethical quandary of whom to believe. Directed by Luca Guadagnino (“Call Me By Your Name”), it features a top-notch cast: Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield, Michael Stuhlbarg and Chloë Sevigny. (Screens Sept. 26. Opens in theaters Oct. 10.)
Watch a trailer for “After the Hunt” in the video player below:
Director Jim Jarmusch — whose past features include the New York Film Festival premieres “Stranger Than Paradise,” “Down by Law,” “Only Lovers Left Alive” and “Paterson” — returns with the centerpiece attraction, “Father Mother Sister Brother.” A trilogy of stories about adult children and their parents, it stars Adam Driver, Cate Blanchett, Charlotte Rampling, Mayim Bialik, Tom Waits, Vicky Krieps, Indya Moore and Luka Sabbat. Winner, Golden Lion, Venice Film Festival. (Screens Oct. 3, 8, 9, 13. Opens in theaters Dec. 24.)
As Will Arnett and Laura Dern’s marriage falls apart, Arnett’s crisis takes him to an unusual destination: the New York stand-up comedy circuit. “Is This Thing On?” also stars Andra Day, Amy Sedaris, Sean Hayes, Christine Ebersole and Bradley Cooper, here also directing his third feature film (after “A Star Is Born” and “Maestro”). (Screens Oct. 10, 11, 13. Opens in theaters Dec. 19.)
In “Anemone” Daniel Day-Lewis, in his first film since 2017’s “Phantom Thread,” stars in a family drama of a man trying to reconnect with his estranged brother. Day-Lewis co-wrote the film with his son, Ronan, who also directed. With Sean Bean and Samantha Morton. (Sept. 28, 29, 30. Opens in theaters Oct. 3.)
Rebecca Ferguson, Idris Elba, Gabriel Basso and Tracy Letts star in the thriller “A House of Dynamite,” directed by Kathryn Bigelow (“The Hurt Locker,” “Zero Dark Thirty”), about the responses at all levels of government when radar detects an ICBM launched towards the United States. (Sept. 28, 29, Oct. 2, 6. Opens in theaters Oct. 10.)
In “The Mastermind,” Josh O’Connor plays a struggling husband and father who decides to orchestrate a heist at a local art museum, but he clearly hasn’t thought everything through very well. Directed by Kelly Reichardt (“First Cow,” “Showing Up”). (Sept. 27, 28. Opens in theaters Oct. 17.) Rose Byrne won the Best Leading Performance Award at the Berlin International Film Festival, as a woman pummeled from one absurd crisis to another, in “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.” With Christian Slater, Danielle Macdonald and Conan O’Brien. (Oct. 2, 3, 4, 8. In theaters Oct. 10.)
In the French-language “A Private Life,” Jodie Foster plays a psychoanalyst in Paris who investigates the sudden death of a patient she believes was murdered. Featuring Daniel Auteuil, Virginie Efira and Matthieu Amalric. (Oct. 5, 6, 12. Opens in theaters Dec. 5.)
Set in a Cornish fishing village, “Rose of Nevada” follows the ghostly return of a fishing boat that had mysteriously disappeared with all hands 30 years prior. But what of the crew? (Oct. 1, 2, 3, 9.)
In December 1974, photographer Peter Hujar and a friend, Linda Rosenkrantz, transcribed everything Peter did on one ordinary day. Director Ira Sachs, upon finding the transcript, decided to stage their diaristic conversation with actors Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall in “Peter Hujar’s Day.” (Sept. 27, 28, Oct. 1. In theaters Nov. 7.)
The artistic life
Several of the festival’s notable entries examine the filmmaking process, celebrity, and the struggle to maintain one’s creative vision. “Mr. Scorsese,” by Rebecca Miller, focuses on the greatest living director — and perhaps the greatest advocate of cinema ever — in a 4.5-hour Apple TV+ documentary that explores his unmatched body of work. (Oct. 4.)
Clockwise from top left: Greta Lee and Willem Dafoe in “Last Wave”; Jeremy Allen White in “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere”; Renate Reinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas in “Sentimental Value”; and Guillaume Marbeck, Aubry Dullin and Zoey Deutch in “Nouvelle Vague.”
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Scott Cooper’s biodrama “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere,” adapted from Warren Zanes’ biography of Bruce Springsteen, stars Jeremy Allen White as the singer-songwriter during the period when he created his transformative album “Nebraska.” (Sept. 28, 29. In theaters Oct. 24.)
In Noah Baumbach’s “Jay Kelly,” George Clooney plays a movie star undergoing a career crisis that might upend his place in the celebrity universe — or at least his standing with his two daughters. With Adam Sandler and Laura Dern. (Sept. 29, 30, Oct. 2, 8. In theaters Nov. 21.)
In “Late Fame,” Willem Dafoe plays a poet whose brief fame in the late 1970s is rekindled by a group of young admirers, prompting him to question his purpose – and even his ability to write again. With Greta Lee. (Sept. 28, 29, Oct. 3, 7.)
Richard Linklater, whose prior films include “Before Sunrise” and “Boyhood,” has two entries at this year’s festival. In “Blue Moon,” Ethan Hawke plays Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart, who must contend with the breakup with his partner Richard Rodgers, only to watch Rodgers’ teaming with Oscar Hammerstein II produce a success greater than any he’d shared. With Margaret Qualley and Bobby Cannavale. (Sept. 29, 30, Oct. 5. In theaters Oct. 17.)
In “Nouvelle Vague,” a love letter from an independent cinema maven to the French New Wave, Linklater re-imagines the on- and off-screen creative passion behind the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s classic “Breathless.” With Guillaume Marbeck as Godard, Zoey Deutch as Jean Seberg, and Aubry Dullin as Jean-Paul Belmondo. (Sept. 30, Oct. 1, 4. In theaters Oct. 31.)
“Sentimental Value” features Stellan Skarsgård as a director who writes a role in his latest script for his estranged daughter (played by Renate Reinsve, the breakout star of “The Worst Person in the World”). (Sept. 30, Oct. 1, 11, 12. In theaters Nov. 7.)
In Ulrich Köhler’s “Gavagai,” the production and premiere of a film adaptation of the classic Greek tragedy “Medea” is marred by cultural and adulterous challenges on-screen and off. (Sept. 27, 28, Oct. 2.)
The 1985 documentary “Robert Wilson and the Civil Wars” captured the acclaimed theater director’s risky attempt to stage a 12-hour opera, with music by Philip Glass and David Byrne, featuring theatrical troupes around the world. Elements of the film were lost or destroyed by Superstorm Sandy, but a 12-year-long restoration effort by Aaron Brookner, nephew of filmmaker Howard Brookner, pulled together archive materials, audio recordings and video to bring what was long unseen back to life. (Sept. 29, 30, Oct. 3, 5, 12.)
Visionaries
Some of the world’s most acclaimed directors are having their works featured in New York.
Jafar Panahi’s “It Was Just an Accident” is the latest film from the Iranian director who has been banned from making movies in his country, but who nonetheless stealthily creates tales that attack the Tehran regime. In this, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year, a former prisoner seeking revenge targets the man he believes is responsible for his torture. (Oct. 2, 3, 8. In theaters Oct. 15.)
In “La Grazia,” Paolo Sorrentino (the Oscar-winning “The Great Beauty”) studies the humanity behind the coldness of power as an Italian president (played by Venice Best Actor winner Toni Servillo) prepares for the end of his term and the setting of his legacy. (Oct 9, 10, 13. In theaters Dec. 5.)
In “Magellan,” Filipino director Lavis Diaz de-mythologizes the explorer’s obsession with imperial conquest. (Oct. 9, 10, 13.)
Iceland’s entry for the Academy Awards is Hlynur Pálmason’s “The Love That Remains,” a drama about the breaking of a family and the shards of love that persist. (Oct. 7, 8, 11.)
In “Sirât,” by Oliver Laxe, a father searches for his daughter in the Moroccan desert. This psychological tale is Spain’s entry for the Academy Awards. (Oct. 1, 2, 11. In theaters Nov. 14.)
In “Miroirs No. 3,” by Christian Petzold (“Barbara,” “Transit”), a young woman (Paula Beer) who survives a car crash is taken in by a woman living nearby. Their increasingly close bond opens up deep wellsprings of grief. (Oct. 6, 7, 9.)
Carla Simón (“Alcarràs,” “Summer 1993”) directed “Romería,” about an orphaned 18-year-old girl meeting her extended family for the first time in the Spanish region of Galicia, all while holding onto the memories of the past. (Oct. 6, 7, 8.)
In “The Fence,” a film of simmering tensions by Claire Denis (“Beau Travail”), a death at a construction site in West Africa leads to a standoff between the site’s Western overseers (led by Matt Dillon) and the family of the local worker killed. (Oct. 5, 6, 9, 11.)
In “No Other Choice,” a new satirical thriller by Park Chan-wook (“Decision to Leave”), a man who is laid off after decades of loyal employment turns to acts of violence. Based on Donald E. Westlake’s crime novel, “The Ax.” (Oct. 9, 10, 12, 13. In theaters Dec. 25.)
Documentaries
Non-fiction features at the festival include “Below the Clouds,” Gianfranco Rosi’s Venice Film Festival’s prize-winner about a region of Naples nestled within the Campi Flegrei volcanic caldera, and within range of Mount Vesuvius. (Oct. 5, 6.)
Laura Poitras, an Oscar-winner for “Citizenfour,” and Mark Obenhaus co-directed “Cover-Up,” a portrait of crusading investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. (Oct. 8, 10. Opens in theaters in December.)
Sepideh Farsi’s “Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk” spans a year in which he communicates with photojournalist Fatma Hassouna in Gaza solely through their smartphones, as she bears witness to the destruction on the ground. (Oct. 4, 5, 13. Opens in theaters November 5.) For “With Hasan in Gaza,” Palestinian filmmaker and artist Kamal Aljafari resurrects recently-discovered MiniDV tapes he’d made of a road trip 24 years ago in Gaza, a land now decimated by war. (Oct. 5, 6, 7.)
The true-crime “Nuestra Tierra (Landmarks)” tells the story of the 2009 murder of Javier Chocobar, an Indigenous leader in Argentina killed while trying to protect the Chuschagasta tribe’s land, and of the three men prosecuted for his death. (Oct. 7, 8, 9.)
Ben Stiller directs what is in effect a home movie: a documentary about his parents, comedians Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara. “Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost” explores their lives and careers, and how their legacy affected his own. (Oct. 5, 6, 11. Opens in theaters October 17.)
Animation
The animated films “Scarlet” and “Bouchra.”
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Animated features include Mamoru Hosoda’s Shakespearean anime “Scarlet,” in which a young princess seeks to avenge the death of her father. (Oct. 7, 8, 11. Opens in theaters Dec. 12.) In Orian Barki and Meriem Bennani’s anthropomorphized autobiography “Bouchra,” a coyote stands in for a Moroccan woman venturing in New York City while maneuvering the tenuous relationship with her parents owing to her queerness — a narrative told through recorded phone calls between Bennani and her mom, and Blender 3D animation conjuring a cast full of animals. (Sept. 27, 28, 29.)
There is also a 4K restoration of Mamoru Oshii’s 1985 dystopian allegory “Angel’s Egg” marking the film’s 40th anniversary. (Sept. 27, 30; Oct. 4, 6.)
Revivals
Gloria Swanson and Walter Byron in a restoration of Erich von Stroheim’s “Queen Kelly.”
Milestone/Kino Lorber
Among the festival’s notable revivals: A digital reconstruction of Erich von Stroheim’s 1929 film “Queen Kelly,” starring Gloria Swanson, and featuring a new orchestral score. (Footage of Swanson from the legendary unfinished film found its way into “Sunset Boulevard” as an example of silent star Norma Desmond’s luminous screen presence.) (Sept. 30, Oct. 3, 7.)
Also: Ossie Davis’ third directorial feature, 1972 “Black Girl,” starring Peggy Pettitt as a young woman trying to become a dancer (Sept. 28, 29, Oct. 1); Henry Jaglom’s 1983 romance “Can She Bake a Cherry Pie?” starring Karen Black (Sept. 27, 29, Oct. 1); Satyajit Ray’s 1970 “Days and Nights in the Forest” (Sept. 28, Oct. 2, 4); and a restored cut of the Indian “curry western” “Sholay,” featuring cops, thieves, gang leaders, love interests, revenge, gunfights, explosions, and musical numbers – 3.5 hours of widescreen Hindi film action. (Oct. 4, 9.)
You think you know cinema? Participate in one of the NYFF Trivia Night challenges and win tickets to sold-out screenings (Sept. 27, 29, Oct. 9)
For information on these and other festival features, as well as the programs of short and experimental films, go to the New York Film Festival website for their lineup of films, screening schedule and talks, and ticket availability (include rush and standby tickets).
David Morgan is senior producer for CBSNews.com and the Emmy Award-winning “CBS News Sunday Morning.” He writes about film, music and the arts. He is author of the books “Monty Python Speaks” and “Knowing the Score,” and editor of “Sundancing,” about the Sundance Film Festival.
The special event selection at the AMC Lincoln Square Theater in New York will be preceded by Imax livestreaming a Q&A with Coppola to 66 giant screen theaters across the U.S. The advanced screening of Coppola’s pricey passion project from Lionsgate and Imax comes ahead of Megalopolis hitting theaters Sept. 27, and after festival premiere screenings in Cannes and Toronto.
“Working with the legendary Francis Ford Coppola has been a complete privilege, and we are proud to have his groundbreaking film take part in the 62nd New York Film Festival,” Adam Fogelson, chair of the Lionsgate Motion Picture Group, said in a statement.
The marketing of Megalopolis has not been without drama as the sci-fi’s initial trailer was pulled by Lionsgate on Aug. 21, after just one day, when it was revealed that the critics’ quotes being cited in the teaser were bogus. Megalopolis released a new trailer (below) Thursday along with the Imax announcement. The new preview doesn’t feature any critics’ quotes.
After decades in development, Coppola put part of his personal fortune into the $120 million project, which stars Adam Driver as a man obsessed with creating a utopian city. Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza and Giancarlo Esposito are among the cast.
For Imax, the scale and ambition of Megalopolis will play well on its big screens as the epic includes Madison Square Garden turned into a Colosseum with gladiatorial contests and chariot races.
Lionsgate, a studio with longstanding ties to Coppola and his American Zeotrope banner, previously distributed some of its projects on home entertainment, including Apocalypse Now Final Cut, The Conversation, The CottonClub Encore, Tucker: The Man and HisDream and One From the Heart:Reprise.
Dennis Lim, artistic director of NYFF, will lead the pre-screening conversation with Coppola.
The 61st New York Film Festival, presenting more than 100 films from 45 countries, continues this week at venues in Lincoln Center and throughout New York City, with many of the premieres opening soon in theaters around the country or streaming online.
Reviews of some of this week’s highlights are featured below. [Previous reviews were published in Part 1.]
The festival concludes October 15.
Highlights
Jacob Elordi and Cailee Spaeny as Elvis and Priscilla Presley in Sofia Coppola’s new film, “Priscilla.”
The legend of Elvis is pretty well-trod territory (especially after last year’s gaudy Baz Luhrmann biopic starring Austin Butler), but Sofia Coppola’s intimate new film examines it from the point of view of Priscilla Beaulieu, an Air Force brat from Texas living in West Germany who, at age 14, was invited to a party to meet the biggest music sensation in the world, Elvis Presley.
The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, ten years her senior and smitten, briefly courted the girl – Fourteen!?! – and would, three years later, invite her to the States (promising she would be chaperoned, of course). But even if he was a gentleman, he did take her to Vegas without telling her parents. And then there were the pills.
From the vantage point of a child, it was a fairy tale, one that would stretch from romance, marriage and a kitsch-filled house in Memphis, to outbursts of anger, abuse and infidelity on the part of a partner who happened to be both a rock icon-movie star and an artist struggling to recapture a fickle audience. And it was not a fairy tale that ended happily.
Cailee Spaeny, who portrays Priscilla through an incredible arc from cloistered child to determined wife, mother and, finally, determined escapee, all the while slowly taking the measure of Elvis’ seductive powers and her own independence, won best actress at the Venice Film Festival for her rich performance. Jacob Elordi is remarkable as the musician whose dissatisfaction and self-loathing is turned onto his wife.
Coppola, whose Oscar-winning “Lost in Translation” likewise showed the struggles of a woman trapped within a bubble, keeps the focus almost entirely on Priscilla throughout. It is notable that, perhaps in hewing to the point of view of her protagonist, there are no Elvis songs in the film. They’re not missed; Priscilla’s voice is the music that’s needed. 113 minutes. Screens October 8, 15. An A24 release. Opens in theaters November 3.
To watch a trailer for “Priscilla” click on the video player below:
Novelist David Cornwell, better known by his penname John Le Carré, was a master of conjuring the dark world of espionage and the corrupted psychologies and dubious morals of many who inhabit it. An international sensation with the 1963 publication of “The Spy Who Came In From the Cold,” he continued with such works as “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” “A Perfect Spy,” “The Little Drummer Girl” and “The Constant Gardener” – masterful depictions of how geopolitics can succeed or fail based on the sometimes inopportune allegiances of small operatives caught in the gears of a flawed intelligence apparatus.
A profoundly private man (fitting for his genre), Cornwell rarely gave interviews in the years before his death in December 2020. But in 2016 he published the memoir “The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories From My Life.” After, he consented to on-camera questioning by documentary filmmaker Errol Morris (“The Thin Blue Line,” the Oscar-winning “The Fog of War”), in which Cornwell’s melancholic outlook is occasionally pierced by his caustic wit. He deflects questions about his marital life and later years, but he does speak in great depth and sorrow about the scars left on him by his father Ronnie (a con man and “crisis addict” who kept the family sprinting ahead of his many debts) and his mother Olive (who was so fed up with her life that she walked out on her husband and two sons when David was four years old). The epic betrayals of fathers, of desertions, and of sons seeking the embrace of an institution – say, an intelligence service – would be played out in his books under cover stories of shadowy operatives and Cold War stakes.
He also goes into great depth about Kim Philby, the British intelligence officer who worked as a spy for the Soviet Union for decades before being unmasked. Philby’s fascinating psychology (what the writer describes as “self-imposed schizophrenia”) proved to be fertile ground for Cornwell’s fiction, ammunition for his indictments of England’s class system and waning imperial designs.
Fans of Le Carré may be haunted by the real-life grounding of his characters’ motives, but they will also appreciate the author’s self-analysis as he undergoes an interrogation worthy of a spy master. 92 minutes. An Apple Original Film. To be released in theatres and on Apple TV+ October 20.
To watch a trailer click on the video player below.
Tran Anh Hung (the Vietnamese-born director of the Oscar-nominated “The Scent of Green Papaya”) won the best director prize at Cannes this year for his very French period piece devoted to the sensory power of food and its connection to love. Set in the late 19th century in a French manor house, the film follows closely a man and a woman, a gourmet chef and cook, who for 20 years have shared in the delight of creating meals, for themselves and others.
Eugénie (Oscar-winner Juliette Binoche) refuses to marry Dodin (Benoît Magimel), but what they share goes beyond a wedding ring. Food is their common language, a menu or recipe a key to intimacy. And it is a marvel to watch them maneuver in a bravura-choreographed epicurean dance in their kitchen while preparing a feast. [The actors’ very natural rapport is no doubt heightened by the fact that Binoche and Magimel were once a real-life couple and had a child together.]
The film is not only about food – but it is through food that the passions and pain of its characters are expressed. This meticulously-crafted film is rapturous in its attention to the ingredients, as Jonathan Ricquebourg’s cinematography captures the glow of a kitchen in which mouth-watering dishes are brought to fruition. It’s a film to be savored.
“The Taste of Things” is France’s official entry for the International Feature Oscar. 145 minutes. In French with English subtitles. Screens October 9, 11. An IFC Films release. Opens in select cities in December before opening wide in February 2024. (Yes, your Valentine’s Day plans are made.)
Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan (the beautiful “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia”) explores the social discomfort and intellectual isolation of Samet (Deniz Celiloğlu), an art teacher whose mandatory service has rotated him to four years in a rural backwater elementary school in eastern Turkey. Desperate to be transferred to Istanbul, he maintains an easy rapport with his students, but his too-comfortable attention to teacher’s pet Sevim (an astonishing Ece Bagci) leads to an embarrassing accusation of inappropriate contact.
At the same time, he becomes caught up in a romantic triangle when he and his best friend are both drawn to Nuray (Merve Dizdar), a fellow teacher physically damaged in a terrorist bombing who is trying to navigate the continuing psychic damage to her sense of self (and sense of what others seek in her). Dizdar won the best actress award at Cannes this year, and it is a transcendent performance, in which she conveys yearning, antipathy, distrust and hope.
Leisurely paced, the film is nonetheless filled with incident and engrossing interpersonal dynamics – Samet’s private turmoil, Nuray’s reawakening, the touchy relations among colleagues and civil service bureaucrats, and the fragile understanding of children – all played out through an incessant winter. The director also, at a particularly dramatic moment, brilliantly throws in a playful theatrical device that amounts to a moment of wordless whimsy about the personas we present to others and ourselves.
This captivating and exquisitely filmed drama is Turkey’s official entry for International Feature Film at the Academy Awards. 197 minutes. In Turkish with English subtitles. Screens October 9, 10. A Sideshow/Janus Films release. Opens in theaters later this year.
Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho, who had a hit at the New York Film Festival four years ago with his bloody revenge pic “Bacurau,” returns with a very personal documentary about his love of cinema, and specifically the cinemas of his hometown, Recife. Such democratic palaces of communal gathering to stare at flickering images (and which in the past drew A-list Hollywood celebrities for movie premieres) are disappearing, and his film mixes archival footage of movie houses with scenes of the hollow shells that remain of them today, as well as the few that have managed to hold on. Ironically, some sites – centers of religious attention to an ephemeral art – have been converted into evangelical churches, for the practice of a different kind of devotion.
Filho also explores the apartment in which he grew up, where he has maintained a presence not just in real life but also on screen (it’s served as a handy and cheap location for several of his films). The real and the artificial therefore melt into one another – architecture and set design, home and workplace, childhood memory and images on a screen. “Pictures of Ghosts” eschews nostalgia about changes in the film industry, or about his own aging, for a more haunting memory – of projection booths, marquees and lobbies that were once conduits of dreams. 93 minutes. In Portuguese with English subtitles. Screens October 9, 10, 12. A Grasshopper Film release. To be released in theatres in early 2024.
The Japanese composer, best recognized for his film scores for “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence” and “The Last Emperor” (for which he shared an Academy Award), was both a classical artist and an electronic-pop musician and producer of extraordinary influence who collaborated with such figures as Talking Heads. Months before his death last March from cancer at age 71, Sakamoto sat at the piano for a series of recording sessions at NHK Studios in Tokyo, performing 20 of his best-known compositions, from his film music, to songs from his days with Yellow Magic Orchestra, to his final minimalist album, “12.”
Directed by his son, Neo Sora, and elegantly filmed in black-and-white and presented in Dolby Atmos, the film is an encapsulation of Sakamoto’s artistry, and of the very power of music – elegiac, melancholic, and deeply moving. If only all artists of his stature left gifts such as this. 102 minutes. Screens October 11, 12. A Janus Films release. Theatrical release date not yet announced.
In this clip Ryuichi Sakamoto performs “Tong Poo”:
The festival runs through October 15 at Lincoln Center, with additional screenings at the Paris Theater in midtown, and the Maysles Documentary Center in Harlem, as well as at venues in Staten Island (Alamo Drafthouse), Brooklyn (BAM), the Bronx (Bronx Museum of the Arts), and Queens (Museum of the Moving Image).
Watch a trailer for the 61st New York Film Festival:
