One of the things about covering a lot of film festivals is that you often run into a dilemma: how best to be useful to the public. Critics go to festivals to get a feel for what’s coming down the pike, whether it’s an artistic movement, thematic through lines, or something spectacular or scandalous to batten down some hatches for. In this instance, we’ve decided to cover the films that are part of this year’s New York Film Festival, NewFest and Brooklyn Horror Film Festival that will have already opened in theaters before our proper festival coverage unfurls on Oct. 30, just so you get properly informed. Think of it as a light amuse-bouche before we get into the real nitty gritty.
It’s certainly a big year for generational reckoning among filmmakers, as with Anemone, Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost and Queens of the Dead — in each case a director working their way through the figurative (or in the case of Stiller & Meara, literal) baggage of what making art in the family trade can entail.
Anemone
Anemone world-premiered at the NYFF and has already pretty much wrapped up its theatrical run in the U.S. It’s a fascinating debut for Ronan Day-Lewis, who co-wrote the film alongside his father Daniel Day-Lewis — a surreal and stylized drama about PTSD, regret, cycles of violence and the schism between humanity and nature. I dug its intensity and its absolute unwillingness to sand off its rough edges — pretentious is not a negative word to me, and it very often gets bandied about by viewers who aren’t willing to do the work to engage with a film on its own terms. This is something special, something very shoegaze.
The Stiller and Meara doc (streaming on Apple TV+ this Friday) is at war with itself. The footage of the legendary comedy duo is remarkable, a testament both to their moment in media history and Jerry Stiller’s commitment to recording and capturing as much of their family history as possible. Anne Meara was a badass, and you want more of her than the film is willing to offer, because it’s also about Ben Stiller and his place in the family. Look, I feel bad for how resentful I felt toward him (not as a subject, but as the authorial voice of this film who literally couldn’t let us spend time in The Then because we needed to know how he was feeling about it), because this is a story he is absolutely qualified to tell. But it needed more Jerry and Anne, because as it is it feels like a giant bowl of shredded moments that can’t maintain consistency.
Tina Romero takes over the family business with Queens of the Dead (BHFF, in theaters Oct. 24, streaming on Shudder shortly thereafter), a comic apocalypse that maintains the late George Romero’s ability for dissecting what’s going on in society with a series of zombie-shaped incisions. Star turns from Jaquel Spivey (Broadway’s A Strange Loop and the Mean Girls musical) and Katy O’Brien (Love Lies Bleeding) and some gnarly gore give us a glimpse into how queer communities would deal with a zombie outbreak, and there’s a lot going on in the insightful script, including some remarkably quotable dialogue.
Mary Bronstein’s Rose Byrne-starring comedy-drama opens this week at the Belcourt
Skewing even more horrific but with a more abstract relationship to family chaos is Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (opening Friday at the Belcourt), which is a searing take on the specific horrors of The Now, a tour de force for star Rose Byrne, and such a nerve-racking experience that I will happily invoke the Safdie Statute — when a film is so tense and rigorous (and also features a horrifying compound fracture) that you have an obligation to take your anti-anxiety meds before viewing it. There’s also great supporting work from Conan O’Brien, A$AP Rocky, Guided by Voices’ “Hot Freaks” and the meanest hamster you’ll encounter this year. Read more on this one in this week's issue — fellow critic Craig D. Linsdey reviewed it.
After the Hunt (now playing throughout the city — and recently reviewed by the Scene's Kathleen Harrington) is not the merciless X-ray of sexual power and exploitation that you might be expecting or hoping for. At its heart, it’s an incoherent text that makes a point not to make any definitive statements or affirm or deny any specific ideologies about agency, justice, praxis and the minefields that assault can reveal in public and academic spheres.
Luca Guadagnino's latest opens this week at Regal and AMC locations
But director Luca Guadagnino has yet to make a bad film, and there are several fragments in orbit around this ripped-from-the-headlines nucleus that captivate and hint at different, weirder films spun off from its central conceit. Julia Roberts, styled like Nina Hoss (steely blond suits her immeasurably) with a department to girl boss. Chloe Sevigny drafting whole realms of frumpy secrets. Ayo Edebiri doing her best with a Kobayashi Maru of a part that feels like a discourse grenade before all else. A song score that includes Everything but the Girl, The Smiths and Bowie’s “Underground.” And more than anything else, Michael Stuhlbarg using a swinging kitchen door like he’s the firecracker kid from Boogie Nights. Your mileage will doubtless vary, but this is definitely something trashier and kickier than you might expect.
One of two Richard Linkletter films at this year’s NYFF (as well as being the opening-night film for NewFest), Blue Moon (in limited theaters Friday) is a fascinating portrait of Broadway composer Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke, doing the work and owning the screen) at a turning point in his career. It’s March 31, 1943, at Sardi’s in New York City. It’s the opening-night party for Oklahoma!, the musical that Hart’s songwriting partner Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott, from Fleabag and All of Us Strangers) has written with new lyricist Oscar Hammerstein. And it’s a huge hit. Which has Hart in a very conflicted series of emotions, aggravated by his platonic crush on the winsome Elizabeth (Margaret Qualley, taking a concept and making it into a real live human) and all that she represents, his debilitating alcoholism, and a sense that perhaps he is being left behind. It’s a must for anyone who digs theater history, wordplay at its finest, the art of self-deprecation, what queer lives looked like in the ’40s or the chance to see someone in a depressive spiral but who still gets the best and funniest lines.
Last but not least in our prelude films is Rebecca Miller’s blissful and kinetic five-hour documentary Mister Scorsese (now streaming on Apple TV+). As brisk and entertaining as the man himself, the film examines the life and work of Martin Scorsese in a way that educates and uncovers without ever playing by the expected rules of modern documentary filmmaking, where access supersedes vision. The soundtrack slaps, the array of subjects is staggering (though there are some notable people missing), and you can’t help but learn things. And naturally, you’re left wanting to take a deep dive into Scorsese’s filmography (particularly his 1956 film Vesuvius VI, a toga-clad Roman detective story about a private eye investigating the murder of Julius Caesar, which we get a few fascinating moments of in Episode 1). You’ll also wonder if Scorsese associate Steven Prince ever hung out with Kubrick associate Leon Vitali, because they would absolutely have matched vibes.
Join us next week for a deep dive into this year’s big festival offerings — the ones that haven’t hit theaters just yet. Just call it your guide to the next year’s worth of global cinema ...
