NYFF Dispatch 4: Great Movies, Greater Disappointments
Dynamite Landmarks like Jay Kelly are only Falling once in a Blue Moon, pending the Terms & Conditions of his Resurrection.
At this point in these festival diaries, I’ve seen 11 movies during the New York Film Festival’s pre-festival gauntlet of press screenings, and while there have been a couple that I’ve liked a lot, there has not been anything that I flat-out loved. That finally changed with two of the seven movies I saw during this particular two-day span, but it also included some major disappointments.
I’m over a week behind now (as of press time I am at Movie #26), so to catch up, these brief impressions are actually going to be brief! I’ll be writing more in depth about a couple of these movies once they get their theatrical releases. And now that NYFF has begun in earnest, paradoxically I’m not seeing as many movies so it’s easier to catch up.
Wednesday, September 24
I run into some pretty bad train delays (held at stations for a total of 15 minutes) and don’t make it to the Lincoln Center until ten minutes before the first screening of the day is scheduled to start but there’s still a decent amount of seats. (Airport theory!)
Nuestra Tierra (Landmarks)
Screens October 7 & 8. Seeking distribution.
Lucretia Martel’s documentary initially appears to be of the true crime variety, chronicling the criminal trial of three men accused of murdering the leader of Argentina’s Chuchagasta indigenous community during an ongoing dispute over land ownership. Fortunately it soon expands beyond the courtroom, shaping into an indictment of an Argentine state built upon the effacement of indigenous identities and dispossession of their territory. That colonial theft became codified into law and enforced by an ostensibly neutral bureaucracy: tribal lands are bought and sold without any benefit to its original inhabitants; as one native notes, “paper doesn’t question the pen.” Though I suspect this film would not be so acclaimed had it not been made by Martel, an international film festival favorite (La Ciénaga, Zama) venturing into non-fiction for the first time, it is indisputably a potent activist work that leads you to its intended conclusion without being overly didactic.
Related reading: The inciting incident in Nuestra Tierra is the proposed construction of a mine in the middle of Chuchagasta territory. Climate journalism newsletter Heated recently published a report by Siri Chilukuri that draws attention to “the 146 people who were murdered or went missing while defending their land, forests, and water from illegal mining, logging, poaching, and other environmentally damaging activities in 2024.”
Today I brought lunch from home: leftover black lentils that I made the other day (as seen in the prior dispatch!), bolstered by some leftover fried chicken from my dinner at Nowon a couple days ago. There’s quite a queue for the next movie, but my seat is guaranteed since I was at the prior screening.
Jay Kelly
Screens September 29 & 30 and October 2, 8, & 13. Opens in theaters November 14, streaming on Netflix December 5.
Real life movie star George Clooney headlines as fictional movie star Jay Kelly. After his youngest daughter goes off on a pre-college Eurotrip and an old friend passes away, Jay realizes that he was not a very present father and has a mid-life crashout. He suddenly departs LA and goes to Europe in an effort to have one last bit of family bonding, frazzled entourage in tow. Along the way, Jay revisits painful memories during a second-class train ride to Tuscany, where he’s lined up a tribute to his career.
Noah Baumbach, returning to the director’s chair after co-writing Barbie, duly weaponizes George Clooney’s star wattage: Jay is nothing more than a Dior suit and a flashy smile, but he is so charming that everyone overlooks his emptiness—with the exception of the daughters he abandoned to pursue his career. Those broken relationships are the heart of the script, written by Baumbach and Emily Mortimer, and the segments in which Jay walks on to scenes from his past are genuinely wrenching. But as with every Hollywood movie about Hollywood, it’s ultimately sympathetic to the pursuit of fame.
Highlights of the starry ensemble include Billy Crudup as an old friend from acting school and Adam Sandler as Jay’s constantly put-upon manager. I don’t think the Sandman has that much range in terms of dramatic acting, but he’s excellent at picking roles that fit his abilities.
Tasting Notes: Jay Kelly’s journey to Tuscany is ripe for some delicious food and wine pairings. I’ll do a deeper dive when the movie comes out in November. (Get a bottle of chianti ready!)
There’s also a running gag involving cheesecake, inserted into Jay’s rider after making an offhand comment and now a slice appears in every room he enters. I prefer Basque cheesecakes but for a traditional one with a crust you honestly can’t go wrong with Junior’s. And for something more daring, Theordora in Fort Greene has a stunning camembert Basque-style cheesecake.
The first time I ever baked a cheesecake from scratch, it was just for me and my roommates. Of course, one can really only eat one small slice at a time so we were very slowly picking at the leftovers until suddenly it had been five days and it seemed like it was just about to go bad. There was about a third of the cake left and not wanting to waste it, James and I split the remainder and we felt sick after. I don’t think his girlfriend was very happy that night. Moral of the story is if you’re making cheesecake, have a party to bring it to!
Famous Jays, ranked in order of how cool they are:
Chou
-Z (circa 2005)
Crew
Pharoah
Cole
Sean
Duplass
Holiday
Baruchel
, Ricky
Kelly (big dropoff after this)
Train
-Z (circa 2025)
and Silent Bob
Roach
Edgar Hoover
Leno
Obernolte
K Rowling
The room cleared out quite a bit compared to Jay Kelly, which is a shame because what followed ended up being the first NYFF movie that I really love!
BLKNEWS: Terms & Conditions
Screens October 4, 5, & 6. Opens in theaters November 2 via Rich Spirit.
Khalil Joseph’s cinematic encyclopedia of Africana is an exhilarating headrush of ideas. Following in the footsteps of video artist Arthur Jafa (for whom Joseph once served as an editor), the visual artist freely remixes and samples every form of Black expression under the sun (including music1, critical theory, poetry, and short form video) to delve into the painful history of the African diaspora while envisioning the possibility of a new transatlantic exchange, this time founded on Black unity instead of white exploitation. There are occasional scripted scenes that give the film a loose narrative scaffolding—twin threads follow a journalist taking a voyage on a futuristic pan-African cruise liner and an elderly W. E. B. Du Bois attempting to complete his magnum opus in 1960s Accra—but the biggest draw is the mixed-media collage that blurs the lines between “fake fiction” and “real fiction.” The end result is unabashedly experimental and intellectual (Saidiya Hartman and Wole Soyinka are among the academics featured throughout the film) but still approachable.
During the break I ate a couple slices of sourdough that I had also packed with me, upon which I spread a French amount of butter.
Resurrection
Screens October 5, 6, 8, & 12. Opens in theaters December 12 via Janus Films.
Long Day’s Journey Into Night is one of my favorite movies of all time, so I was super excited to see Bi Gan’s follow up. Resurrection got rave reviews out of Cannes, with one dissenting review largely focused on the critic being too tired to comprehend the byzantine narrative. I was one of the many people who mocked that piece back in May, but now that I have seen the movie under similar circumstances I take it back. We tend not to include viewing circumstances in reviews because it’s annoying to write and read, but scheduling this movie as the fourth movie on day six of press screenings did not do it any favors. So perhaps it’s festival fatigue that had me find Resurrection to be irredeemably opaque. I was also baffled by Long Day’s on my first go around but didn’t come away hating it like I did here.
All of which to say is that I will try to see this again at some point, next time bright and early in the morning when my mind is ready for it.
Resurrection had by far the most walkouts of any screening I’ve experienced at the festival. Most of those who stuck around showered it in applause, though the vibe I got after was that most people were confused but loved it nonetheless. I was just confused.
Thursday, September 25
Quite a dreary day but I started the day with a movie that is the second Movie I Really Love of this festival.
Blue Moon
Screens September 29 & 30 and October 5. Opens in theaters October 17 via Sony Pictures Classics.
Movies like this only come once in a... you know.
It’s going to be a couple decades before we’ll get to see Richard Linklater’s movie version of Merrily We Roll Along, but in the meantime he has brought us a wonderful fantasia of Broadway lore. Before Rodgers worked with Hammerstein, the premiere songwriting duo on the Great White Way was Rodgers & Hart. Their creative partnership flourished over the course of two decades, but owing to alcoholism and general instability on the account of Hart, Rodgers sought a new collaborator. His first musical with Hammerstein was a little show called Oklahoma!, for which the opening night celebration might as well have been a wake for Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke). He posts up at the bar at Sardi’s, downing bourbon and waxing poetic while waiting for everyone else to show up for the party.
Blue Moon is largely a showcase for script and star. Robert Kaplow’s screenplay is full of theater geek easter eggs and every line of dialogue is a Classic Hollywood zinger; perhaps it’ll get on the nerves of some viewers but not this one. And the swaggering, handsome Hawke is given a combover and cut down to size, with movie magic shedding ten inches off his height to match Hart’s five-foot frame. He delivers his lines with gusto and inhabits his character with the weariness of a man who knows his time has passed. That said, all the physical work it takes to get there makes me wonder if he may have been miscast. I can’t help but think Hawke should have swapped roles with Andrew Scott and played Richard Rodgers instead.
Tasting Notes: The entire movie takes place at Sardi’s, so that’s the natural choice for a pre-show dinner or a post-show drink. (It’s also where they had the NYFF afterparty.) I haven’t eaten there myself but friends tell me that it’s a typical Times Square joint: okay food that is very expensive. That said, it’s worth stopping by for a drink to take in the old school ambiance and see the famous caricatures that line the walls.
By my count, Lorenz takes six shots of bourbon in this movie, all of them poured by Bobby Cannavale. (He also shares a glass of red wine with Margaret Qualley.) The label of the well whiskey reads “Old Frontier Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey,” which is not a real-life brand but the bottle combines design elements of Old Forester and Bulleit. (Personally I prefer Buillet.)
Skipped a screening of Two Prosecutors, which I heard was solid but predictable. Instead I got lunch at Bang Bar with Keith as research for my Lincoln Center dining guide. We got there at noon during the lunch rush but all things considered it was very quick.
Then went up to the Performing Arts library to work. I’m trying to finish my much-anticipated Lincoln Center dining guide but have to work on day job stuff, so the extracurriculars will have to wait until tonight.
Sound of Falling
Screens October 1, 2, 7, & 11. Release plans TBA via Mubi.
Transcendental style with a feminist perspective. A lengthy multi-generational drama that intercuts between four women who grew up on the same farm in rural Germany, each encountering sexual violence and other hardships that draw them towards the abyss. The slow-moving pace really requires patience, and during the first half of the movie I was confounded by its cyclical rhythms. But the structure of Mascha Schilinski’s film (co-written with Louise Peter) eventually locks into place, building layer upon layer until finally, it levitates.
A House of Dynamite
Screens September 28 & 29 and October 2 & 6. Opens in theaters October 10, streaming on Netflix October 24.
Zero Dark Fail Safe: a sudden nuclear missile launch is targeted at the United States, and Kathryn Bigelow’s propulsive thriller takes us into the heart of the deep state response. Taking after Rashomon, events are refracted through three perspectives: Rebecca Ferguson heads operations in the Situation Room in DC, Anthony Ramos is a Major on duty at a missile base in Alaska, and a grumpy Tracy Letts is the General of U.S. Strategic Command in Nebraska. Though it’s consistently engaging but seemingly lacks subtext until its final moments, when it toys with the audience’s anticipation and bloodlust.
There was a collective groan once the credits dropped as the ending felt abrupt and unresolved. Friends who attended the premiere screening in Alice Tully Hall a few days later told me that everyone applauded there, but it would be really rude if people jeered when the filmmakers and actors were present.
Tasting Notes: There is no time to think about eating when there’s a nuclear bomb on the horizon. The best anyone gets here is coffee.
I ran out to the bathroom because my bladder was the real house of dynamite. Then went home and went right to bed because I have to be up early for Opening Morning!
In the next dispatch: NYFF officially opens! Notes on After the Hunt, Anemone, and Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.
Joseph is perhaps best known for directing music videos, having worked with Beyoncé, Kendrick Lamar, and Flying Lotus (among many others). So it’s no surprise that BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions boasts a terrific soundtrack: Thelonius Monk, Travis Scott, techno—and that’s just the Ts.
I'm so so sorry, but Jay and Silent Bob were rated much too low on your Famous Jays list.
Thank you for the report-backs!