NYFF50 Review: Native Son (1951)

by Tony Dayoub

In another time and place, 1951's Native Son would have been hailed as an impactful classic. But because it featured a mostly black cast acting out a black story, the film production had to travel to Argentina to recreate author Richard Wright's controversial 1940 bestseller. The book's Native Son is Bigger Thomas, a young black man pushed by his socio-economic circumstances into committing some serious crimes against whites, and even his own friends and family. When the film was finally shown here, censors had gutted it, cutting out all uncomfortable references to racial inequality. Viewing the restored edition playing at the NYFF, one can see the effect cultural denial and censorship can have on what might have otherwise been a landmark movie. In a world where the signposts and milestones of achievement that whites take for granted have been denied to African Americans, Native Son ends up being nothing but a lost artifact or, as a friend calls it, a curio.

NYFF50 Review: Berberian Sound Studio

by Tony Dayoub

You won't find one of the NYFF's most exciting discoveries playing in the cavernous Alice Tully Hall as part of the festival's main slate. Instead, you'll have to brave a trip to the Lincoln Center's relatively tiny Walter Reade theater to catch this gem as one of the NYFF's Midnight Movies, Berberian Sound Studio, a true festival sleeper if there ever was one. The intimacy is appropriate given that some might say Peter Strickland's small, imaginative movie is thin, spare. And they wouldn't be entirely wrong. Berberian Sound Studio is kind of a doodle, a loving tribute to the giallo, an Italian horror genre that often features a "normal" person slowly driven mad by phantasmagoric events around him.

NYFF50 Review: Amour

by Tony Dayoub

I'm just starting to get to know the work of Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke. But based on his films I have seen—2009's excellent but cruel The White Ribbon and the manipulative 2008 American remake of his own 1997 film, Funny Games—I've surmised that beneath the icy exterior his movies lies the sad soulfulness of a disillusioned humanist. His latest (and this year's Palme d'or winner at the Cannes Film Festival), Amour, is further evidence that Haneke doesn't so much enjoy pushing his audiences into uncomfortable territory so much as he feels compelled to do so, as if on a mission to promote greater understanding of the fragility of our human condition. Amour is one of the best films of the year. But it also demonstrates a punishingly clear-eyed resolve to uncover even the smallest minutiae concerning the merciless effects the end of one's life has on the decedent and all of her closest relationships.

NYFF50 Sidebars: Cinéastes/Cinema of Our Time & On the Arts

by Tony Dayoub

The NYFF continues this week with an extensive slate that includes a couple of interesting sidebars. The first I had a chance to catch a couple of screenings for is Cinéastes/Cinema of Our Time. It's a revival of a pair of documentary series produced for French television by André S. Labarthe in which notable film directors, both contemporary and classic, are interviewed for quite a longer and more in-depth session than audiences raised in the DVD-featurette-age might be accustomed to.

NYFF50 Review: Frances Ha

by Tony Dayoub

You'd have to dig through Noah Baumbach's filmography, all the way back to Highball (pseudonymously credited to Ernie Fusco) in order to find as fluffy a trifle as Frances Ha. Not that there's anything wrong with that. At first glance, a slight, delicate character piece that is equal parts Brooklyn mumblecore, love poem and ode to New York, Frances Ha revolves around the not untalented Greta Gerwig, who co-wrote the film with Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale). Not entirely by coincidence, Gerwig is also Baumbach's current main squeeze. The way Sam Levy's black-and-white cinematography showcases not just Gerwig but New York City recalls Woody Allen's Manhattan. And for a while I worried whether this was a sort of tribute to the latest incarnation of the "manic pixie girl" character actress that many younger film lovers, and at least some notable directors, often become infatuated with. The way Baumbach approaches Frances Ha, though, makes it much more than that.

NYFF50 in Full Swing

by Tony Dayoub

With last night's gala opening screening of Ang Lee's Life of Pi, the 50th New York Film Festival is well underway. By most accounts a visually stunning adaptation of a long-thought unfilmable novel, Life of Pi suddenly jumps to the front of the Oscar derby despite its official release date (11/21) still being weeks away. I wasn't in New York for yesterday's press screening having returned to Atlanta last Sunday. But I'm okay with having missed it since apparently the effects-heavy film is still unfinished. Life of Pi aside, my coverage of the festival continues as I've seen a significant number of films I've yet to post reviews for. So keep coming back for about another week and a half for more on the NYFF50. After the jump, a few words on a couple of today's screenings.

NYFF50 Review: Hyde Park on Hudson

by Tony Dayoub

You would expect a film with a stately title like Hyde Park on Hudson to be the sort of movie one characterizes as "pleasant" or "charming." And in fact, it is both of those. But Hyde Park on Hudson is also quite extraordinary. Director Roger Michell (Notting Hill), whose work until now I'd characterize as yeoman, seems inspired by his subject in this film. Hyde Park on Hudson depicts a quiet summit held by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Bill Murray) and King George VI (Samuel West) at FDR's upstate New York estate—as seen through the eyes of his distant cousin and secret lover, Daisy Suckley (Laura Linney).

NYFF50: Cinema Reflected

by Tony Dayoub

One of the small rewards of having attended one of the earlier weeks of festival press screenings this year is that I've had the opportunity to sample a great deal more of the NYFF Sidebar entries than I usually do. Among the sidebars that should hold more interest for cinephiles should be the one titled Cinema Reflected, showcasing "illuminating documentaries and essay films about movies and the men and women who make them." Though I had issues with both of the entries I watched, Roman Polanski: Odd Man Out and Liv and Ingmar, I must keep reminding myself that these are not part of the festival main slate. So, at some level, they are diverting enough to merit a couple of showings at Lincoln Center.

NYFF50 Review: The Bay (2012)

by Tony Dayoub

The most surprising thing about the disturbing The Bay, the first of the New York Film Festival's new Midnight Movie entries, is the fact that Barry Levinson (Diner) directed it. Cobbled together from a wide range of digital video "found footage," The Bay draws on recent reports of parasitic isopods infecting fish just off the Jersey coast. As one recent report says, "There's a horror film waiting to be made about this thing." And so it has been—The Bay is a harrowing, nerve-jangling trifle from a once popular director all but written off in recent years.

UPDATED: NYFF50 Review: Passion (2012)

by Tony Dayoub

Twenty years since their last collaboration, director Brian De Palma and composer Pino Donaggio reunite in their latest work, Passion. The reunion both recalls the virtuosic filmmaker's best period—the late 70s/early 80s—and revitalizes the career of a master, whose recent filmography's quality has been spotty at best. Redacted (2007) was an interesting experiment in utilizing found footage to tell a story about the Iraq war that collapsed under the weight of its propaganda-like liberal agenda (and I say this as someone who leans considerably to the left). And the postwar neo-noir, The Black Dahlia (2006), should have been a slam dunk for a director who's always shown an ease for crime stories, but instead, it felt oddly inept at delivering its admittedly sprawling, complicated plot. Not since 2002's Femme Fatale has De Palma manipulated his audience so boldly or so wittily as he does with Passion.

The 50th New York Film Festival

by Tony Dayoub

Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace in Passion

I'm very excited to have been accredited to cover the New York Film Festival (NYFF) again, especially this year, in its 50th Anniversary. I can only go for a week since funds are limited (especially with the new business we opened earlier this year). I'm still finalizing travel plans, but I've zeroed in on a week with a more eclectic selection of films than I usually go for. This because I could not pass up a chance to see the U.S. premiere of Brian De Palma's latest, Passion, a remake of Alain Corneau's Love Crime. Other notable films I should have the opportunity to review include Barry Levinson's The Bay, Christian Mungiu's Beyond the Hills, Noah Baumbach's Frances Ha, and more. So keep checking in for festival dispatches, early reviews, and more on this year's crop of NYFF films and awards contenders.