{"id":69559,"date":"2014-08-13T12:40:09","date_gmt":"2014-08-13T12:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/0de2709a84.nxcli.net\/0-kjasnb\/2014\/08\/13\/new-york-film-festival-2014-main-slate-lineup\/"},"modified":"2018-12-18T03:59:40","modified_gmt":"2018-12-18T03:59:40","slug":"new-york-film-festival-2014-main-slate-lineup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blackfilm.com\/read\/new-york-film-festival-2014-main-slate-lineup\/","title":{"rendered":"New York Film Festival 2014 Main Slate Lineup"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York Film Festival 2014 Main Slate Lineup<\/strong>Posted by Wilson Morales<\/p>\n

August 13, 2014<\/p>\n

\"NYFF<\/a><\/p>\n

The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced the main slate selections for the upcoming 52nd New York Film Festival (September 26 \u2013 October 12). <\/strong><\/p>\n

NYFF previously announced the Opening Night selection Gone Girl<\/strong>, Centerpiece selection Inherent Vice<\/strong>, and Alejandro G. I\u00f1\u00e1rritu\u2019s Birdman<\/strong> as the Closing Night selection, also retrospective Joseph L. Mankiewicz: The Essential Iconoclast, as well as initial selections in the Revivals section of the festival to include Burroughs: The Movie, The Color of Pomegranates, Hiroshima Mon Amour, and Once Upon a Time in America.<\/p>\n

Tickets for the 52nd New York Film Festival will go on sale to the general public at noon on Sunday, September 7. Becoming a Film Society member before July 31 provides access to a pre-sale period for single tickets to festival screenings and events ahead of the general public on-sale date.<\/p>\n

\"Gone<\/a><\/p>\n

Gone Girl<\/i> (Opening Night – World Premiere)<\/b> David Fincher, USA, 2014, DCP, 150m<\/em>
\nDavid Fincher\u2019s film version of Gillian Flynn\u2019s phenomenally successful best seller (adapted by the author) is one wild cinematic ride, a perfectly cast and intensely compressed portrait of a recession-era marriage contained within a devastating depiction of celebrity\/media culture, shifting gears as smoothly as a Maserati 250F. Ben Affleck is Nick Dunne, whose wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) goes missing on the day of their fifth anniversary. Neil Patrick Harris is Amy\u2019s old boyfriend Desi, Carrie Coon (who played Honey in Tracy Letts\u2019s acclaimed production of Who\u2019s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?<\/em>) is Nick\u2019s sister Margo, Kim Dickens (Treme, Friday Night Lights<\/em>) is Detective Rhonda Boney, and Tyler Perry is Nick\u2019s superstar lawyer Tanner Bolt. At once a grand panoramic vision of middle America, a uniquely disturbing exploration of the fault lines in a marriage, and a comedy that starts black and keeps getting blacker, Gone Girl<\/em> is a great work of popular art by a great artist. A 20th Century Fox and Regency Enterprises release.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Inherent<\/a><\/p>\n

Inherent Vice<\/em> (Centerpiece – World Premiere)<\/strong> Paul Thomas Anderson, USA, 2014, 148m<\/em>
\nPaul Thomas Anderson\u2019s wild and entrancing new movie, the very first adaptation of a Thomas Pynchon novel, is a cinematic time machine, placing the viewer deep within the world of the paranoid, hazy L.A. dope culture of the early \u201970s. It\u2019s not just the look (which is ineffably right, from the mutton chops and the peasant dresses to the battered screen doors and the neon glow), it\u2019s the feel, the rhythm of hanging out, of talking yourself into a state of shivering ecstasy or fear or something in between. Joaquin Phoenix goes all the way for Anderson (just as he did in The Master<\/em>) playing Doc Sportello, the private investigator searching for his ex-girlfriend Shasta (Katherine Waterston, a revelation), menaced at every turn by Josh Brolin as the telegenic police detective \u201cBigfoot\u201d Bjornsen. Among the other members of Anderson\u2019s mind-boggling cast are Reese Witherspoon, Benicio Del Toro, Martin Short, Owen Wilson, and Jena Malone. A trip, and a great American film by a great American filmmaker. A Warner Bros. Pictures release.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Birdman<\/a><\/p>\n

Birdman or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance<\/em> (Closing Night – New York Premiere)<\/strong> Alejandro G. I\u00f1\u00e1rritu, USA, 2014, DCP, 119m<\/em>
\nIn Alejandro G. I\u00f1\u00e1rritu\u2019s big, bold, and beautifully brash new movie, one-time action hero Riggan Thomson (a jaw-dropping Michael Keaton), in an effort to be taken seriously as an artist, is staging his own adaptation of Raymond Carver\u2019s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love<\/em>. As Thomson tries to get his perilous undertaking in shape for the opening, he must contend with a scene-hogging narcissist (Edward Norton), a vulnerable actress (Naomi Watts), and an unhinged girlfriend (Andrea Riseborough) for co-stars; a resentful daughter (Emma Stone); a manager who\u2019s about to come undone (Zach Galifianikis)… and his ego, the inner demon of the superhero that made him famous, Birdman. I\u00f1\u00e1rritu\u2019s camera magically prowls, careens, and soars in and around the theater, yet remains alive to the most precious subtleties and surprises between his formidable actors. Birdman or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance<\/em> is an extravagant dream of a movie, alternately hilarious and terrifying, powered by a deep love of acting, theater, and Broadway\u2014a real New York experience. A Fox Searchlight Pictures and New Regency release.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Beloved<\/a><\/p>\n

Beloved Sisters \/ Die geliebten Schwestern<\/em> (North American Premiere)<\/strong> Dominik Graf, Germany\/Austria, 2014, DCP, 170m German and French with English subtitles<\/em>
\nRomantic sentiment runs high but aristocratic decorum holds sway in this beautiful and thoroughly modern rendering of the real-life 18th-century love triangle involving German poet Friedrich Schiller (Florian Stetter) and two sisters of noble birth, Charlotte (Henriette Confurius) and Caroline (Hannah Herzsprung), whose strikingly intense relationship and profound mutual devotion verge on symbiosis. As Schiller\u2019s star rises in the philosophical-literary world of Weimar Classicism, with Charlotte at his side, the married Caroline chooses to stay close by\u2014with dramatic consequences. Sisterhood is finally the most passionate and wrenching form of love in the aptly titled Beloved Sisters<\/em>, and the deeply felt performances of Confurius and Herzsprung are hard to forget. Meanwhile, there\u2019s a fresh, bracingly contemporary sense of energy, a relaxed pace and a down-to-earth directness to director Dominik Graf\u2019s unfussy re-creation of ultra-formal 18th-century town-and-country life. A Music Box Films release.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

The Blue Room \/ La chambre bleue<\/strong><\/em> (North American Premiere)<\/strong> Mathieu Amalric, France, 2014, DCP, 76m French with English subtitles<\/em>
\nA perfectly twisted, timeless noir, Mathieu Amalric\u2019s adaptation of Georges Simenon\u2019s domestic crime novel also tips its hat to Alfred Hitchcock\/Patricia Highsmith\u2019s Strangers on a Train<\/em>. A country hotel\u2019s blue room is the scene of erotic rapture, but the adulterous man (Amalric) and woman (a boldly sexual St\u00e9phanie Cl\u00e9au, co-author of the script with Amalric) who meet there have different visions of their future. She is more obsessed than he, and his misunderstanding of the madness in her desire will destroy him and all he holds dear. Amalric\u2019s direction is brutally spare, as is his performance of a man caught in a vise\u2014a situation of his own making. The classic aspect ratio (1:33) and Gr\u00e9goire Hetzel\u2019s turbulent, insistent score heighten the sense of entrapment. L\u00e9a Drucker as the deceived wife and Cl\u00e9au as the desperate mistress make strong impressions, but Amalric, who has the most eloquent eyes in contemporary cinema and uses them here to convey lust, guilt, bewilderment, and the dawning realization that he is a pawn in a malignant game, is unforgettable. A Sundance Selects release.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Clouds<\/a><\/p>\n

Clouds of Sils Maria<\/em> (U.S. Premiere)<\/strong> Olivier Assayas, Switzerland\/Germany\/France, 2014, DCP, 124m English and French with English subtitles<\/em>
\nMaria Enders (Juliette Binoche) is a middle-aged actress who soared to stardom in her twenties in a play called Maloja Snake<\/em>, in which she created the role of a ruthless young woman named Sigrid who engages in a power game with her older boss. Now an established international actress, Maria is considering the role of the older woman in a heavily promoted revival, with an infamous young superstar (Chlo\u00eb Grace Moretz) as Sigrid. Maria and her savvy personal assistant (Kristen Stewart) prepare for the production at a secluded spot in the Swiss Alps, in a series of stunning scenes that are the beating heart of Olivier Assayas\u2019s brilliant new film. What begins as a chronicle of an actress going through the paces of celebrity culture (fashion shoots, official dinners, interviews, Internet rumors) gradually develops into something more powerfully mysterious: a close meditation on time and how one comes to terms with its passage. An IFC Films release.<\/em><\/p>\n

Eden<\/em> (U.S. Premiere)<\/strong> Mia Hansen-L\u00f8ve, France, 2014, DCP, 131m<\/em>
\nMia Hansen-L\u00f8ve\u2019s fourth feature is a rare achievement: an epically scaled work built on the purely ephemeral, breathlessly floating along on currents of feeling. Eden<\/em> is based on the experiences of Hansen-L\u00f8ve\u2019s brother (and co-writer) Sven, who was one of the pioneering DJs of the French rave scene in the early 1990s. Paul (F\u00e9lix de Givry) and his friends, including Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter (otherwise known as Daft Punk), see visions of ecstasy in garage music\u2014as their raves become more and more popular, they experience a grand democracy of pure bliss extending into infinity, only to dematerialize on contact with changing times and the demands of everyday life. Hansen-L\u00f8ve\u2019s film plays in the mind as a swirl of beautiful faces and bodies, impulsive movements, rushes of cascading light and color (she worked with a great cameraman, Denis Lenoir), and music, music, and more music. Eden<\/em> is a film that moves with the heartbeat of youth, always one thought or emotion ahead of itself.<\/p>\n

\"Foxcatcher<\/a><\/p>\n

Foxcatcher<\/em> (U.S. Premiere)<\/strong> Bennett Miller, USA, 2014, DCP, 134m<\/em>
\nBennett Miller\u2019s quietly intense and meticulously crafted new film deals with the tragic story of billionaire John E. du Pont and the brothers and championship wrestlers Dave and Mark Schultz recruited by du Pont to create a national wrestling team on his family\u2019s sprawling property in Pennsylvania. Miller builds his film detail by detail, and he takes us deep into the rarefied world of the delusional du Pont, a particularly exotic specimen of ensconced all-American old money and privilege. Miller\u2019s film is a powerfully physical experience, and the simmering conflicts between his characters are expressed in their stances, their stillnesses, their physiques, and, most of all, their moves in the wrestling arena. At the core is a trio of perfectly meshed and absolutely stunning performances from Mark Ruffalo as Dave, Channing Tatum as Mark, and an almost unrecognizable Steve Carell as the fatally dissociated du Pont. Foxcatcher <\/em>offers us a vivid portrait of a side of American life in the \u201980s that has never been touched in movies. A Sony Pictures Classics release.<\/em><\/p>\n

Goodbye to Language \/ Adieu au langage<\/strong><\/em> (New York Premiere)<\/strong> Jean-Luc Godard, France, 2014, DCP, 70m French with English subtitles<\/em>
\nThe 43rd feature by Jean-Luc Godard (and the only film at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival to get a round of applause mid-screening), Goodbye to Language <\/em>alights on doubt and despair with the greatest freedom and joy. At 83, Godard works as a truly independent filmmaker, unencumbered by all concerns beyond the immediate: to create a work that embodies his own state of being in relation to time, light, color, the problem of living and speaking with others, and, of course, cinema itself. The artist\u2019s beloved dog Roxy is the de facto \u201cstar\u201d of this film, which is as impossible to summarize as a poem by Wallace Stevens or a Messiaen quartet. Goodbye to Language <\/em>was shot, and can only be truly seen and experienced, in 3-D, which Godard has put to wondrous use. The temptation may be strong to see this film as a farewell, but this remarkable artist is already hard at work on a new project. A Kino Lorber release.<\/em><\/p>\n

Heaven Knows What <\/em>(U.S. Premiere)<\/strong> Josh & Benny Safdie, USA, 2014, DCP, 93m<\/em> Harley (Arielle Holmes) is madly in love with Ilya (Caleb Landry Jones). She\u2019s sure he loves her just as much, if only he could express it. Both of them are heroin addicts, kids who pretend to be heavy-metal rockers but spend their time scuffling, arguing, and preying on each other as they wander around New York looking for a fix and the chump change to pay for it. The script, based on a Holmes\u2019s memoir and written by the Safdies with Ronald Bronstein, is a miracle of economy. Sean Price Williams\u2019s cinematography expresses the clouded vision of kids who can\u2019t imagine how invisible they are to the New Yorkers who take their homes and jobs for granted. And the Safdie Brothers, in their toughest and richest movie, direct a cast composed largely of first-time actors so that they disappear into their characters, horrify us, and break our hearts.<\/p>\n

Hill of Freedom \/ Jayuui Eondeok<\/em> (U.S. Premiere)<\/strong> Hong Sang-soo, South Korea, 2014, DCP, 66m Korean and English with English subtitles<\/em>
\nKwon (Seo Young-hwa) returns to Seoul from a restorative stay in the mountains. She is given a packet of letters left by Mori (Ryo Kase), who has come back from Japan to propose to her. As she walks down a flight of stairs, Kwon drops and scatters the letters, all of which are undated. When she reads them, she has to make sense of the chronology\u2026 and so do we. Hong Sang-soo\u2019s daring new film, alternately funny and haunting, is a series of disordered scenes based on the letters, echoing the cultural dislocation felt by Mori as he tries to make himself understood in halting English. At what point did he drink himself into a lonely stupor? Did he sleep with the waitress from the Hill of Freedom caf\u00e9 (Moon So-ri) before or after he despaired of seeing Kwon again? Sixteen films into a three-decade career, Hong has achieved a rare simplicity in his storytelling, allowing for an ever-increasing psychological richness and complexity.<\/p>\n

Horse Money \/ Cavalo Dinheiro<\/em> (U.S. Premiere)<\/strong> Pedro Costa, Portugal, 2014, DCP, 103m Portuguese and Creole with English subtitles<\/em>
\nSince the late \u201990s, Pedro Costa has devoted himself to the task of doing justice to the lives and tragedies and dreams of the Cape Verdean immigrants who once populated the now-demolished neighborhood of Fontainhas. Costa works with a minimal crew and at ground level, patiently building a unique cinematographic language alongside the men and women he has befriended. Where does his astonishing new Horse Money <\/em>\u201ctake place\u201d? In the soul-space of Ventura, who has been at the center of Costa\u2019s last few shorts and his 2006 feature Colossal Youth<\/em>. It is now<\/em>, a numbing and timeless present of hospital stays, bureaucratic questioning, and wandering through remembered spaces\u2026 and it is then<\/em>, the mid \u201970s and the time of the Carnation Revolution, when Ventura got into a knife fight with his friend Joaquim. A self-reckoning, a moving memorialization of lives in danger of being forgotten, and a great and piercingly beautiful work of cinema.<\/p>\n

Jauja<\/strong><\/em> (U.S. Premiere)<\/strong> Lisandro Alonso, Argentina\/Denmark\/France\/Mexico\/USA\/Germany\/Brazil, 2014, DCP, 108m Danish and Spanish with English subtitles<\/em> A work of tremendous beauty and a source of continual surprise, Alonso\u2019s first film since 2008\u2019s Liverpool <\/em>is also his first period piece (set during the Argentinian army\u2019s Conquest of the Desert in the 1870s), his first film with international stars (led by Viggo Mortensen), and his first screenplay with a co-writer (poet and novelist Fabi\u00e1n Casas). But the emphasis, as in all his work, is on bodies in landscapes. Danish military engineer Gunnar Dinesen (Mortensen, in a Technicolor-bright cavalry uniform) traverses a visually stunning variety of Patagonian shrub, rock, grass, and desert on horseback and on foot in search of his teenage daughter (Viilbj\u00f8rk Agger Malling), who has eloped with a new love. Alonso\u2019s style reaches new heights of sensory attentiveness and physicality, driving the action toward a thrilling conclusion that transcends the limits of cinematic time and space.<\/p>\n

Life of Riley \/ Aimer, boire et chanter<\/strong><\/em> (New York Premiere)<\/strong> Alain Resnais, France, 2014, DCP, 108m French with English subtitles<\/em>
\nAdapted from Alan Ayckbourn\u2019s Relatively Speaking<\/em>, Life of Riley<\/em>, the final work by Alain Resnais, is the story of three couples in the English countryside who learn that their close mutual friend is terminally ill. Yet the story is only half the movie, a giddily unsettling meditation on mortality and the strange sensation of simply being alive and going on<\/em>, feeling by feeling, action by action. The swift, fleeting encounters between various combinations of characters (played by Resnais regulars Andr\u00e9 Dussollier and Sabine Az\u00e9ma\u2014the director\u2019s wife\u2014along with Michel Vuillermoz, Hippolyte Girardot, Sandrine Kiberlain, and Caroline Silhol) take place on extremely stylized sets, and they are punctuated with close-ups set against comic-strip grids, and broken up by images of the real English countryside. Funny but haunting, Life of Riley<\/em> is a moving, graceful, and surprisingly affirmative farewell to life from a truly great artist. A Kino Lorber release.<\/em><\/p>\n

Listen Up Philip<\/em> (New York Premiere)<\/strong> Alex Ross Perry, USA, 2014, DCP, 108m<\/em>
\nAlex Ross Perry\u2019s third feature heralds the arrival of a bold new voice in American movies. Even more than in his critically lauded The Color Wheel<\/em>, Perry draws on literary models (mainly Philip Roth and William Gaddis) to achieve a brazen mixture of bitter humor and unexpected pathos. In this sly, very funny portrait of artistic egomania, Jason Schwartzman stars as Philip Lewis Friedman, a precocious literary star anticipating the publication of his second novel. Philip is a caustic narcissist, but the film, shot with tremendous agility on Super-16mm by Sean Price Williams, leaves his orbit frequently, lingering on the perspectives of his long-suffering photographer girlfriend, Ashley, (Elisabeth Moss) and his hero, the Roth-like literary lion Ike Zimmerman (Jonathan Pryce), who himself considers Philip a major talent. A film about callow ambition, Listen Up Philip<\/em> is itself remarkably poised, a knowing, rueful account of how pain and insecurity transfigure themselves as anger but also as art. A Tribeca Film release.<\/em><\/p>\n

Maps to the Stars<\/em> (U.S. Premiere)<\/strong> David Cronenberg, Canada\/Germany, 2014, DCP, 111m<\/em>
\nDavid Cronenberg takes Bruce Wagner\u2019s script\u2014a pitch-black Hollywood satire\u2014chills it down, and gives it a near-tragic spin. The terrible loneliness of narcissism afflicts every character from the fading star Havana (Julianne Moore, who won the Best Actress Award at Cannes for her nervy performance) to the available-for-anything chauffeur (Robert Pattinson) to the entire Weiss family, played by John Cusack, Olivia Williams, Evan Bird, and Mia Wasikowska. The last two are brother and sister, damaged beyond repair and fated to repeat the perverse union of their parents. And yet, in their murderous rages, they have the purity of avenging angels, taking revenge on a culture that needs to be put out of its misery\u2014or so it must seem to them. Cronenberg\u2019s visual strategy physically isolates the characters from one another, so that their occasional violent connections pack a double whammy. An eOne Films release.<\/em><\/p>\n

Misunderstood \/ Incompresa<\/strong><\/em> (North American Premiere)<\/strong> Asia Argento, Italy\/France, 2014, DCP, 110m Italian, French, and English with English subtitles<\/em>
\nThe imaginative life of a preteen girl in Rome in the 1980s is depicted with love and humor by Asia Argento, who grew up in the same place and time under similar showbiz circumstances. All but ignored by her divorced, narcissistic parents and tormented by her more conventional and manipulative siblings, Aria (a marvelous Giulia Salerno) shuttles between the well-appointed digs of her singer mother (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and actor father (Gabriel Garko), carrying her only companion, a large cat who is more affectionate and comfortable in his own skin than any of the humans in her life. A precociously gifted writer, Aria elaborates her cat-accompanied walks into the sometimes life-threatening adventures that mix with mundane actualities. As a projection of young female subjectivity, Misunderstood<\/em> is ingenious, direct, and utterly real.<\/p>\n

Mr. Turner<\/em> (New York Premiere)<\/strong> Mike Leigh, UK, 2014, DCP, 149m<\/em>
\nMike Leigh\u2019s Mr. Turner<\/em> is certainly a portrait of a great artist and his time, but it is also a film about the human problem of\u2026 others. Timothy Spall\u2019s grunting, unkempt J.M.W. Turner is always either working or thinking about working. During the better part of his interactions with patrons, peers, and even his own children, he punches the clock and makes perfunctory conversation, while his mind is clearly on the inhuman realm of the luminous. After the death of his beloved father (Paul Jesson), Turner creates a way station of domestic comfort with a cheerful widow (Marion Bailey), and he maintains his artistic base at his family home, kept in working order by the undemonstrative and ever-compliant Hannah (Dorothy Atkinson). But his stays in both houses are only rest periods between endless and sometimes punishing journeys in search of a closer and closer vision of light. A rich, funny, moving, and extremely clear-eyed film about art and its creation. A Sony Pictures Classics release.<\/em><\/p>\n

Pasolini<\/em> (U.S. Premiere)<\/strong> Abel Ferrara, France\/Belgium\/Italy, DCP, 87m Italian, English, and French with English subtitles<\/em>
\nPier Paolo Pasolini\u2014filmmaker\/poet\/novelist, Christian, Communist, permanent legal defendant, and self-proclaimed \u201cinconvenient guest\u201d of modern society\u2014was an immense figure. Abel Ferrara\u2019s new film compresses the many contradictory aspects of his subject\u2019s life and work into a distilled, prismatic portrait. We are with Pasolini during the last hours of his life, as he talks with his beloved family and friends, writes, gives a brutally honest interview, shares a meal with Ninetto Davoli (Riccardo Scamarcio), and cruises for the roughest rough trade in his gun-metal gray Alfa Romeo. Over the course of the action, Pasolini\u2019s life and his art (represented by scenes from his films, his novel-in-progress Petrolio<\/em>, and his projected film Porno-Teo-Kolossal<\/em>) are constantly refracted and intermingled to the point where they become one. A thoughtful, attentive, and extremely frank meditation on a man who continues to cast a very long shadow, featuring a brilliant performance by Willem Dafoe in the title role.<\/p>\n

The Princess of France \/ La Princesa de Francia<\/strong><\/em> (U.S. Premiere)<\/strong> Mat\u00edas Pi\u00f1eiro, Argentina, 2014, DCP, 70m Spanish and Italian with English subtitles<\/em>
\nAs in his critical hit Viola<\/em> (2013), Mat\u00edas Pi\u00f1eiro doesn\u2019t transplant Shakespeare to the present day so much as summon the spirit of his polymorphous comedies. V\u00edctor (Juli\u00e1n Larquier Tellarini) returns to Buenos Aires after his father\u2019s death and a spell in Mexico to prepare a radio production of Love\u2019s Labour\u2019s Lost<\/em>. Reuniting with his repertory, he finds himself sorting out complicated entanglements with girlfriend Paula (Agustina Mu\u00f1oz), sometime lover Ana (Mar\u00eda Villar), and departed actress Natalia (Romina Paula), as well as his muddled relations with the constellation of friends involved with the project. As the film tracks the group\u2019s criss-crossing movements and interactions, their lives become increasingly enmeshed with the fiction they\u2019re reworking, potential outcomes multiply, and reality itself seems subject to transformation. An intimate, modestly scaled work that takes characters and viewers alike into dizzying realms of possibility, The Princess of France<\/em> is the most ambitious film yet from one of world cinema\u2019s brightest young talents, a cumulatively thrilling experience. A Cinema Guild release.<\/em><\/p>\n

Saint Laurent <\/em>(North American Premiere)<\/strong> Bertrand Bonello, France, 2014, DCP, 146m French with English subtitles<\/em>
\nRunning counter to the current strain of wan, mechanical biopics, Bertrand Bonello\u2019s Saint Laurent<\/em> toys deliriously with the genre\u2019s rules and limitations. Focusing on a dark, hedonistic, wildly creative decade (from 1967 to \u201977) in Yves Saint Laurent\u2019s life and career, Bonello considers the couturier (convincingly embodied by Gaspard Ulliel and later by Visconti stalwart Helmut Berger) as a myth, a brand, an avatar of his era. Bonello\u2019s star-studded supporting cast (including Louis Garrel, L\u00e9a Seydoux, J\u00e9r\u00e9mie Renier, and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) serves as first-rate human mise en sc\u00e8ne amid a kaleidoscopic torrent of lavish excess, retrospectively pieced together with a Proustian form of fast-and-loose association. As much as his subject and the gravitational pull he exerts in the hothouse environments of atelier and nightclub, Bonello is interested\u2014as he was in House of Pleasures,<\/em> his sumptuous portrait of a fin de si\u00e8cle Parisian brothel\u2014in cinema\u2019s potential both to capture and to warp the passage of time and our perception of it. A Sony Pictures Classics release.<\/em><\/p>\n

La Sapienza<\/em> (U.S. Premiere)<\/strong> Eug\u00e8ne Green, France\/Italy, 2014, DCP, 100m French and Italian with English subtitles<\/em>
\nIn Eug\u00e8ne Green\u2019s exquisite new film, Alexandre (Fabrizio Rongione) and Ali\u00e9nor (Christelle Prot Landman) are a married couple who are unhappy in an all-too-familiar way: they have retreated into silence and away from intimacy. Alexandre, an architect, decides to restore himself by renewing his old dream of writing about the great Baroque architect Francesco Borromini. They drive to Ticino, Borromini\u2019s birthplace, and then to Stresa on Lake Maggiore, where they meet a brother and sister. Goffredo (Ludovico Succio) is an architecture student in need of support and Lavinia (Arianna Nastro) is a shut-in who goes into a panic when her brother is too far away. As Alexandre and Ali\u00e9nor offer their friendship to Goffredo and Lavinia, they restore their own sense of inner balance. It\u2019s difficult to convey the precise beauty of La Sapienza<\/em>, to describe its serenity, its quiet intensity, or the delicate equilibrium Green locates between faces, landscapes, and architectural forms.<\/p>\n

\u201971<\/em> (New York Premiere)<\/strong> Yann Demange, UK, 2014, DCP, 99m<\/em>
\nA riveting thriller set in the mean streets of Belfast over the course of 24 hours, \u201971 <\/em>brings the grim reality of the Troubles to vivid, shocking life. Within days of being posted to Northern Ireland in a divided province that would soon turn into a war zone after January 1972\u2019s Bloody Sunday, squaddie Gary (Jack O\u2019Connell) finds himself trapped and unarmed in hostile territory when a house raid provokes a riot. Running for his life as the lines between friend and foe become increasingly blurred, Gary gets a baptism of fire and we get a stark, eye-opening look at the dirty war that tore Northern Ireland apart. Suggesting an update of Carol Reed\u2019s classic Odd Man Out<\/em>, this tough, compact suspenser is tightly written by Black Watch <\/em>playwright Gregory Burke and handled with a dynamic, vigorous energy by debut director Yann Demange. A Roadside Attractions release.<\/em><\/p>\n

Tales of the Grim Sleeper<\/em> (New York Premiere)<\/strong> Nick Broomfield, USA\/UK, 2014, DCP, 105m<\/em>
\nWhen Lonnie Franklin Jr. was arrested in South Central Los Angeles in 2010 as the suspected murderer of a string of young black women, police hailed it as the culmination of 20 years of investigations. Four years later documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield took his camera to the alleged killer\u2019s neighborhood for another view. At first, Franklin\u2019s pals stand up for him: he was the go-to guy, and certainly no murderer. But soon friends and neighbors start offering up chilling testimony, as do local activists who question why it took so long for the authorities to pay attention: certainly the community doesn\u2019t trust the LAPD, with good reason, so they don\u2019t talk. But if they did, what would the police do? Aided by Pam, a former prostitute and crack addict who knows the streets and the people walking them, Broomfield reveals the journey of a serial killer, gives voice to his victims, and finds the racial divide that still exists between the police and African-Americans in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

Timbuktu<\/em> (U.S. Premiere)<\/strong> Abderrahmane Sissako, France\/Mauritania, 2014, DCP, 100m Arabic, Bambara, French, English, Songhay, and Tamasheq with English subtitles<\/em>
\nAbderrahmane Sissako\u2019s new film looks at the terror and humiliation of occupation with an uncommonly serene eye. We are in the ancient Malian city of Timbuktu, where foreign jihadists are enforcing bans against sports, music, loafing, and bare-headed women. Sissako gracefully pivots between multiple characters, some of whom are seen only fleetingly (a group of young people who gather to sing, a woman who refuses to wear gloves), while others, like the Tuareg family living in the hills near the city, we come to know intimately. Visually, Timbuktu<\/em> is a series of wonders\u2014once seen, visions of jihadists beaming their criss-crossing flashlights into the deep blue night or of a man treading the length of a shallow river from a distant vantage point are not easily forgotten. And Sissako\u2019s becalmed and sensitive eye for beauty intensifies the absurdity and horror of the film\u2019s quietly unfolding tragedy. A Cohen Media Group release.<\/em><\/p>\n

Time Out of Mind<\/em> (U.S. Premiere)<\/strong> Oren Moverman, USA, 2014, DCP, 117m<\/em>
\nWe are in an apartment from which the tenant has been evicted. Junk is piled everywhere. A man, sleeping in the bathtub, is awoken by the maintenance crew. He is forced onto the streets, and into a series of realizations that gradually materialize over the unending days that stretch to infinity: that he must find clothing to cover himself, food to eat, liquid to drink, a bed to sleep in. And we are simply with him, and with the sound and movement of the city that engulfs him and makes him seem smaller and smaller. As George, Richard Gere may be the \u201cstar\u201d of Oren Moverman\u2019s new film, but he allows the world around him to take center stage, and himself to simply be: it\u2019s a wondrous performance, and Time Out of Mind<\/em> is as haunting as a great Bill Evans solo. With lovely work by Ben Vereen as George\u2019s one and only friend and Jena Malone as his estranged daughter.<\/p>\n

Two Days, One Night \/ Deux jours, une nuit<\/strong><\/em> (New York Premiere)<\/strong> Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, Belgium\/France\/Italy, 2014, DCP, 95m French with English subtitles<\/em>
\nThe action is elemental. The employees in a small factory have been given a choice. They will each receive a bonus if they agree to one of them being laid off; if not, then no one gets the bonus. The chosen employee (Marion Cotillard) spends a weekend driving through the suburbs and working-class neighborhoods of Seraing and Li\u00e8ge, knocking on the doors of her co-workers and asking a simple but impossible question: will you give up the money to let me continue to earn my own living? The force of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne\u2019s new film lies in the intensity with which they focus on the second-by-second toll the situation takes on everyone directly affected, while the employers sit at a benign remove. In Two Days, One Night<\/em>, the Dardennes take an urgent and extremely relevant ethical inquiry and bring it to bold and painfully human life. A Sundance Selects release.<\/em><\/p>\n

Two Shots Fired \/ Dos Disparos<\/strong><\/em> (U.S. Premiere)<\/strong> Mart\u00edn Rejtman, Argentina, 2014, DCP, 105m Spanish with English subtitles<\/em>
\nThe first feature in a decade by Mart\u00edn Rejtman (The Magic Gloves<\/em>), a founding figure of the new Argentine cinema, is an engrossing, digressive comedy with the weight of an existentialist novel. Sixteen-year-old Mariano (Rafael Federman), inexplicably and without warning, shoots himself twice\u2014once in the stomach and once in the head\u2014and improbably survives. As his family strains to protect Mariano from himself, his elder brother (Benjam\u00edn Coehlo) pursues a romance with a disaffected girl (Laura Paredes) who works the counter at a fast-food restaurant, his mother (Susana Pampin) impulsively takes off on a trip with a stranger, and Mariano recruits a young woman (Manuela Martelli) to join his medieval wind ensemble. Rejtman tells this story with both compassion and formal daring, pursuing one thread only to abandon it for another. Two Shots Fired <\/em>is a wry, moving, consistently surprising film about the irrationality of emotions and how they govern our actions at each stage of our lives.<\/p>\n

Whiplash<\/em> (New York Premiere)<\/strong> Damien Chazelle, USA, 2014, DCP, 105m<\/em>
\nA pedagogical thriller and an emotional S&M two-hander, Damien Chazelle\u2019s Whiplash<\/em> is brilliantly acted by Miles Teller as an eager jazz drummer at a prestigious New York music academy and J.K. Simmons as the teacher whose method of terrorizing his students is beyond questionable, even when it gets results. Dubbed \u201cFull Metal Jacket<\/em> at Juilliard\u201d at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award, Chazelle\u2019s jazz musical was developed from his short film of the same name, which premiered at Sundance the previous year. The live jazz core that is fused with Justin Hurwitz\u2019s ambient score, the blood-on-the-drum-kit battle between student and teacher, and the dazzling filmmaking will keep your pulse rate elevated from beginning to end. A kinesthetic depiction of performance anxiety\u2014you don\u2019t need to be a musician to feel it\u2014Whiplash <\/em>also presents us with a moral issue open to debate. A Sony Pictures Classics release.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Wonders \/ Le meraviglie<\/em> (North American Premiere)<\/strong> Alice Rohrwacher, Italy\/Switzerland\/Germany, 2014, DCP, 110m Italian, German, and French with English subtitles<\/em>
\nWinner of the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, Alice Rohrwacher\u2019s follow-up to Corpo celeste<\/em> (NYFF 2011) is a vivid story of teenage yearning and confusion that revolves around a beekeeping family in rural central Italy: German-speaking father (Sam Louwyck), Italian mother (Alba Rohrwacher), four girls. Two unexpected arrivals prove disruptive, especially for the pensive oldest daughter, Gelsomina (Maria Alexandra Lungu). The father takes in a troubled teenage boy as part of a welfare program and a television crew shows up to enlist local farmers in a kitschy celebration of Etruscan culinary traditions (a slyly self-mocking Monica Bellucci plays the bewigged host). The film never announces its themes but has plenty on its mind, not least the ways in which old traditions survive in the modern world, as acts of resistance or repackaged as commodities. Combining a documentary attention to daily ritual with an evocative atmosphere of mystery, The Wonders<\/em> conjures a richly concrete world that is nonetheless subject to the magical thinking of adolescence.<\/p>\n

<\/a>