NYFF: "Întregalde" Slashes Old Habits For Something Fresh

by Jason Adams

Tell me if you've heard this one before -- a group of young people get lost in the woods. They pick up a stranger, and he's acting really weird. They lose their phone signals because of how remote they are in the wilderness. Their car breaks down. The group starts separating, one by one. Even more strange-behaving men show up. There are tales of an abandoned building in the mist-shrouded woods, and everybody starts wandering around trying to find it. One of them falls and hurts their leg. Night falls and their flashlight beams scatter in the darkness, no safe haven in sight. Snow begins to fall on a mysterious little shack. 

If you think I've just described the latest schlock horror flick to hit movie theater screens I wouldn't blame you, but this is actually the latest serious-minded art-house film from Romanian director Radu Muntean (Tuesday, After Christmas), who proves that there's nothing more enlivening than watching somebody serious-minded renegotiate the same old same old elements into something new, strange, and hypnotic. Întregalde is a low-key astonishment.

You can see the warning signs accumulating early on...

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NYFF: I Remember "Memoria"

by Jason Adams

You can quite literally say that Memoria begins with a bang, as its inciting incident is just that -- a loud noise waking someone from sleep. But as far as it ending with a whimper, well, the only whimper its end will summon will be your own, as the lights come up and you realize your mind's been blown and that you're desperate to get back into the zen dream-state that Apichatpong Weerasethakul and his on-screen co-conspirator Tilda Swinton have lulled you into. I've spent the past week since seeing the film in just such a state of want. And so the news of the film's not-normal release pattern (which was weirdly the film headline I saw upon exiting the film -- further proof this movie actually transports you into its own reality?) has brought me both joy and sadness. A melancholia of its own.

In case you missed the news Memoria will travel the country, one art-house theater to another, only screening on one screen at a single time and never, not ever they say, hitting streaming...

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NYFF: "C'mon C'mon"

by Jason Adams

Mike Mills, the maestro of what actually matters, strikes excellence yet again with C'mon C'mon, his latest film screening at NYFF this week. How in the ever-loving world is this only his fourth -- yes you read that right, his fourth! -- feature film? The math don't lie: Thumbsucker, to the grand Beginners, to the masterpiece 20th Century Women, and now C'mon C'mon, and Mills' ability to laser right in on the emotional truth of any and every moment remains unparalleled. Jettisoning all the Joker toxicity from his body, the film stars Joaquin Phoenix, thankfully in his sweet smiling airiest tender boy mode. This is the Joaquin I personally signed up for, whispering his feelings into a telephone with wet eyes. What a heartfelt symphony this whole experience is; a gift..

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NYFF: The visual wonder of "The Tragedy of Macbeth"

By Nathaniel R

“When” is the first word of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, uttered by one of three witches. Though the word precedes a question it sounds more like a definitive statement in Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth; the writer/director even grants the word its own solo title card. Later the word “Tomorrow” will also grace the screen alone. Time, we immediately understand, is at the heart of the latest big screen Shakespeare. And it’s running out. Coen’s adaptation casts two older-than-usual actors as the titular Lord (Denzel Washington) and Lady (Frances McDormand). As a result their infamous power grab plays like a violently desperate game of “last chance”…

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The Mad "Titane" Snaps

by Jason Adams

An inky black oil smudge smeared across a scarred face, big bosoms sway and heave, belly splitting up the seam, the space where sex begins to sound like a car engine revving up to eleven -- Julia Ducournau's Titane doesn't mince a breath of its runtime with anything but pedal-to-the-metal everything. Titane, the director's follow-up to her also-deranged (but somehow less so!) cannibal-drama Raw, won the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes, a perfect signifier for the grease-fingered teetering psychosis of our age. After playing NYFF last weekend, it opens in US theaters tomorrow, October 1st.

And this movie, it is a lot!

As Raw already proved Ducournau loves a car accident (I can't imagine that David Cronenberg's Crash wasn't formative) and Titane offers up a doozy early on...

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