Fair is Foul and Foul is Fair and Fests are Festing

by Jason Adams

I don't know about you but I've entirely lost all concept of time -- is it really time to start gearing up and delivering news about fall movie festivals? Wasn't it just Sundance a literal second ago? Next thing you'll tell me it's not 2020 anymore. Anyway while I was busy slowing sliding down the wall of my shower with a stunned vacant look on my face the New York Film Festival was announcing its Opening Night film for this year's 59th festival -- Joel Coen's The Tragedy of Macbeth, starring Denzel Washington and Lady Frances McDormand, will kick it off in the city that never sleeps on the night of September 24th. That's 64 days away! Here's their descriptor of the flick:

"A work of stark chiaroscuro and incantatory rage, Joel Coen’s boldly inventive visualization of The Scottish Play is an anguished film that stares, mouth agape, at a sorrowful world undone by blind greed and thoughtless ambition. In meticulously world-weary performances, a strikingly inward Denzel Washington is the man who would be king, and an effortlessly Machiavellian Frances McDormand is his Lady, a couple driven to political assassination—and deranged by guilt—after the cunning prognostications of a trio of “weird sisters” (a virtuoso physical inhabitation by Kathryn Hunter). Though it echoes the forbidding visual designs—and aspect ratios—of Laurence Olivier’s classic 1940s Shakespeare adaptations, as well as the bloody medieval madness of Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood, Coen’s tale of sound and fury is entirely his own—and undoubtedly one for our moment, a frightening depiction of amoral political power-grabbing that, like its hero, ruthlessly barrels ahead into the inferno. An Apple/A24 release."

Other names of note in Joel's take on the Scottish slaughter-tale of yore include Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Ineson (so basso-profundo memorable at Thomasin's pops in The VVitch), and the always memorable Harry Melling. Meanwhile names not of note specifically include Ethan Coen, who didn't work with Joel on this one? I hope the Coens TM are okay. I have a lot invested in that brand loyalty. What do we think -- will this one get the Coen name back in the Oscar business or what? 

Interview: Garrett Bradley, Fox and Rob Rich on their award-winning documentary "Time"

by Murtada Elfadl 

Fox and Rob Rich in a shot from the film

This year’s documentary sensation is Time, now streaming on Amazon Prime, a film that announces the arrival of Garrett Bradley as an accomplished filmmaker. Telling the decades spanning story of Fox Rich, an entrepreneur and abolitionist who spent almost 20 years fighting for the release of her husband Rob Rich out of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, commonly known as Angola. He has been given a 60 year sentence for a robbery they both committed in a moment of desperation. Talk about punishment that doesn’t fit the crime.

The film’s 2020 journey of accolades started at the Sundance Film Festival in January, where Bradley won the Best Director award in the Documentary feature competition. Since then it has played the Toronto and New York film festivals and is now available to screen on Amazon. And it is absolutely my favorite film of 2020.

The film is a mix of Fox’s video diaries that she recorded over the years with insight into the last couple of years of her family’s story shot by Bradley. That was not the original concept. After ending the shoot Fox gave Bradley a treasure of archival footage that she had shot through the years. Bradley changed direction and incorporated Fox’s footage. Recently I had the chance to speak to the Riches and Bradley over zoom and I started the conversation at this juncture asking Fox why she gave Bradley her video diaries.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity... 

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NYFF: Yulene Olaizola's "Tragic Jungle"

by Jason Adams

M. Night Shyamalan's name has become synonymous with cinematic puzzlery, but there can be a dulling obviousness to the way he approaches the concept of Mystery, at least in his weakest moments. He genuinely thinks he can explain the unexplainable. His "twists" mostly seem to mash the Unknown into tight little balls we can hold in our hand to exit the theater with. And so it's only the opening passages of his film The Happening, about Mother Nature seeking vengeance against the humans who've abused her so, that retain any sort of power -- Shyamalan spends the remainder of that film piling plot contrivances on top of his original interesting idea until it's the audience who can't breath from the sheer weight of nonsense pouring off the screen.

I'll admit I thought of The Happening while watching the breeze move gently through the rainforest trees of Mexican director Yulene Olaizola's captivating and hypnotic new film Tragic Jungle...

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NYFF: Dea Kulumbegashvili's "Beginning"

by Jason Adams

If you throw a ball, or even better a stick of dynamite, straight up into the air there is a moment of pause, of tranquility, at its peak, before it comes tumbling down. The apogee, as its known, is a fascinating word to me, close as it is to apology -- in my mind I always picture the shrug of the cartoon Coyote as he begins his plummet. Apogee, but whoops here I come. Georgian filmmaker Dea Kulumbegashvili's Beginning, as stunning a debut film as any I've seen, lingers in the feeling of that pause -- the world feels suspended, we're light of breath and danger is nigh, but man the view is something.

The film begins and we meet Yana (Ia Sukhitashvili, staggeringly good) and her husband David (Rati Oneli) as they greet parishioners inside their sparse, fresh-smelling new Jehovah's Witness church, and immediately we notice two things. First that the film was filmed in the squarish frame ratio that's become shorthand for art-minded movie-makers looking to quick express claustrophobia -- think First Reformed or The Lighthouse; right away we know that these are people who are stifled by their surroundings...

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NYFF: Steve McQueen's "Red White and Blue"

by Jason Adams

And so we come to the third piece that the New York Film Festival is screening out of Steve McQueen's "Small Axe" series of five total films -- if you missed my thoughts on Lovers Rock you can read them here and if you missed my thoughts on Mangrove you can read those right here. NYFF flip-flopped the screening order on the previous chapters and Red White and Blue, today's focus, jumps us to all the way to the final chapter of the series, and you can sense that about it. It has the feel of a breath, a pause -- a looking back upon itself and taking tenative, pained stock.

As with Mangrove we're focusing again on a true story. This time it's the 1980s and John Boyega plays Leroy Logan, a young man who was on track to become a forensic scientist until his father was assaulted by a couple of racist cops...

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