Tuesday, August 07, 2018

10 Off My Head: NYFF Highlights

.
After a couple weeks of teasing us with their Opening Night film (The Favourite from Yorgos Lanthimos) and their Centerpiece film (ROMA from Alfonso Cuarón) and their Closing Night film (Julian Schnabel's Vincent Van Gogh bio-pic At Eternity's Gate with Willem Dafoe) our hometown film festival the New York Film Festival has revealed the full line-up for their Main Slate of movies and it's looking like another stellar bunch of pictures to me.

So much so that as I scanned through the 30 titles they have now announced the list I decided to make of the 5 I'm most looking forward to quickly became impossible - no it needs to be 10. And 10 is difficult! But we'll keep it to 10. (Leaving off the three big titles that were already announced.)

10 of NYFF '18 I'm Most Looking Forward To

Burning -- Word on this one from Korean director Lee Chang-dong was ecstatic out of Cannes - I've mentioned it a couple of times already thanks to its star Steven Yeun. It's a love triangle (of sorts, they say) turned thriller (of sorts, they say) based on the story "Barn Burning" by Haruki Murakami.
.

.
If Beale Street Could Talk -- I'm surprised I hadn't posted the trailer yet so there that is - this is of course Barry Jenkins' follow-up to Moonlight, based on a book by James Baldwin, about a pregnant woman trying to prove the innocence of the unjustly accused father of her baby to be. I'm most excited about a showcase role for the always great Regina King.

Non-Fiction -- Yeah this is the new Olivier Assayas movie (his first since Personal Shopper in 2016, which I saw and reviewed at that year's NYFF although I will admit I like the movie a lot more now after a couple of viewings than I did at first) and it stars Juliette Binoche and Guillaume Canet so you know my ass is there. It's about two couples' intertwined lives set in the publishing industry.

Sorry Angel -- One of the few movies I bothered to post about when Cannes was happening (see right here) this gay love story set in the early 1990s stars Pierre Deladonchamps (so great in Stranger by the Lake) and Vincent Lacoste and deals with HIV, as any gay love story in the early 1990s must. It's from director Christophe Honoré and damn that reminds me I have to watch Love Songs already.

Her Smell -- Speaking of the early 1990s this movie has Elisabeth Moss playing the lead singer of an "Alternative" band who is unraveling and seeing as how Elisabeth Moss is probably the greatest actress working today yeah I said it I am totally, totally stoked, as the 90s kids would call it. This is the new film from Alex Ross Perry, who's given Moss tons to work with over the past few years with Listen Up Philip and Queen of Earth - the cast besides Moss is kinda nuts, with Cara Delevingne and Amber Heard opposite Eric Stoltz and Virginia Madsen? Okay. Also Dan Stevens and the extremely talented Lindsay Burdge, who's one to keep an eye on. (She blew me away in Thirst Street and to a smaller degree, because her role was smaller, in The Invitation.)

High Life -- I'm way more mixed on beloved French auteur Claire Denis than most are but she and I are on good terms after last year's Let the Sun Shine In, which positively frolicked in the face of Juliette Binoche, so I'm down to see her train her camera on that actress again and with Robert Pattinson along for the ride! Oh and it's a science-fiction film, and every shot I've seen so far has given my eyeballs a real good feeling about it. (I posted several previously right here.)

Transit -- Excited for this one based pretty solely on the director - Christian Petzold's last two films were Barbara and Phoenix, both showcases for the great actress Nina Hoss, and delivered as such. Hoss isn't around for this but the actor Franz Rogowski is - I have liked him in everything I've seen him in (the one-take wonder Victoria and Michael Haneke's Happy End) - alongside Paula Beer, who was fantastic as the leading lady in Francois Ozon's film Frantz

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs -- The Coen Bros latest, which has suddenly just recently turned from a Netflix limited series into an even more limited movie. It's a series of short films all bound together as the unrelated stories in a fiction book of Western Tales - the chapters star Tim Blake Nelson and Zoe Kazan and James Franco and Brendan Gleeson and Tyne Daly (!!!) and David Krumholtz and Ralph Inseon (aka the father from The Witch!) and on and on and on and on. It's the Coens, man. 

Long Day’s Journey Into Night -- I'm the vaguest on this one, from Chinese director Bi Gan, but purposefully so. I do recall people raving about its incredible strangeness when it screened at Cannes - there's supposed to be an insane hour-long 3D sequence -  and I'm gonna keep it at that. It's always good to be surprised about something, so tell me no more. 

Wildlife -- Uh I think we know why we're here:
.
.
-----------------------------------------------

Honestly I'm looking forward to every single film that they're screening - Louis Garrel's directorial debut! A fourteen-hour-long Argentinean epic! So y'all stay tuned, we'll once again be covering the heck out of it for The Film Experience as the fest runs from September 28 – October 14. Now you go glance through the whole list yourselves and make your travel plans accordingly.
.

1 comment:

Sarah said...

Keep shouting out about what you are looking forward too because the BFI festival kicks off in London as the New York festival comes to end. There’s bound to be some overlap and it looks like we’ll get some of the US releases ahead of time + things that haven’t been given a release date in the UK like Sorry To Bother You, but I won’t know until the beginning of Sept when the programme goes live.