NYFF ’16: The Lost City of Z

Col. Percival Fawcett was like Harry Faversham in The Four Feathers, except it was his breeding that was suspect rather than his courage. There was nothing Fawcett could do to change his lineage, so he definitely believes he has something to prove. As Fawcett sees it, the Amazonian rain forest is the place to do it. He will return several times to continue his obsessive search for a mythical fallen civilization in James Gray’s adaptation of the bestselling nonfiction narrative The Lost City of Z, which screened as the closing night selection of the 54th New YorkFilm Festival.

If you had to share a foxhole with an officer, Fawcett would a good choice. He would certainly seem to be part of the privileged class in today’s world, but not enough so for his contemporaries. Consequently, he has no medals to show for his lifetime of military service. Fawcett keenly feels such slights, so he embraces the opportunity offered by an attachment to a Royal Geographical Society’s mapping expedition in Bolivia. Although things turn dire rather quickly, Fawcett and his comrades Henry Costin and Arthur Manley will successfully complete their objective. Along the way, Fawcett picks up the scent of an ancient fallen city buried within the jungle. It might just be the fabled El Dorado, but Fawcett prefers to call it Z (or rather the British “Zed”).

Fawcett will return with subsequent expeditions hoping to find Z and the glory that would come with it. Unfortunately, the money for his second campaign comes with participation of his benefactor, alleged explorer James Murray, whose girth and sloth weighs down the party like an anchor. Meanwhile, Nina Fawcett waits patiently at home with their increasingly resentful eldest son Jack.

Naturally, Gray goes to ridiculous lengths to suggest Fawcett was more culturally sensitive and humane than your average colonial glory-hunter. Frankly, it feels like a case of protesting too much, but at least it doesn’t waterlog the on-screen adventure.

The sweeping visual scale and lush, shot-on-location backdrops represent a welcome throwback to epic filmmaking in the tradition of David Lean and Alexander Korda. Cinematographer Darius Khondji (who also lensed The City of Lost Children) fully capitalizes on the verdant vistas, probably setting himself up for a second Oscar nomination. Yet, Gray and company show more interest in the Fawcetts’ private family life than Henry Hathaway allowed for the Bengal Lancer.

Charlie Hunnam is clearly comfortable returning to his Northern English roots as Fawcett. Despite his limited range, he nicely conveys the human foibles driving Fawcett’s manic compulsion. Likewise, Sienna Miller teases out a fully dimensional portrait of his loyal (but maybe not quietly so) wife Nina. Robert Pattinson (the Y-chromosome Jennifer Anniston) completely disappears into the role of flinty Henry Costin to an admirable and almost shocking extent. Yet it is Angus Macfadyen (Robert the Bruce in Braveheart) who really supplies the X-Factor as Murray, Fawcett’s appropriately flamboyant antagonist.

It is strange to imagine a reasonably proper British officer slogging through the South American rain forest, but Gray adeptly positions him as an inspirational tragic figure rather than the cautionary sort. He also recreates the horrors of WWI just as well as anything you will see in Testament of Youth. It is a good, solid historical tale of derring-do, but the fact that such films are now the preserve of private equity productions and film festival premieres rather than the Hollywood studio system (such as it is) happens to be rather depressing. Recommended as a sweaty, slightly Conradian cinematic outing, The Lost City of Z is due to open in April 2017, after screening as the closing film of the 2016 NYFF.

NYFF ’16: Julieta

We stereotypically think of Spaniards as the hot-blooded types and Canadians as being rather unassuming and vanilla, but fishing is important to both nations. That might not sound like much of a shared bond, but it allows Pedro Almodóvar to transpose Alice Munro’s three interconnected short stories “Chance,” “Soon,” and “Silence” from Canada to Spain. In the process, he gives the Sirkian stories a Hitchcockian tinge, not unlike his 2011 film The Skin I Live In, in which the story collection Runaway briefly appears, Easter Egg-like. Not merely poised the verge of a nervous breakdown, the title character will often teeter over the brink in Almodóvar’s Julieta (trailer here), which screens during the 54^th New York Film Festival.

Julieta Arcos’s flashbacks will start when she chances across a friend of her long lost grown daughter Antía, who off-handedly mentions running into the missing woman on the streets of Madrid. Just when Arcos had agreed to leave town with her eternally patient gentleman friend, she finds reason to stay and carry on her fruitless search. With the help of a little wine, Arcos drifts back to when she first met Antía’s father Xoan as a fellow passenger on a romantic but somewhat tragic sleeper train.

Obviously, there were sparks, but Xoan’s comatose first wife made long-term commitment rather awkward. Nonetheless, Arcos will eventually seek out the commercial fisherman, fatefully arriving a day after the inconvenient spouse’s funeral. The heat is still there, but Julieta will also meet Ava, Xoan’s platonic best friend, except possibly with benefits. Lingering questions regarding their relationship will lead to tragedy, which in turn contributes to Antía’s extreme decision to sever all ties to her mother.

Although not a thriller per se, Almodóvar deliberately emphasizes all the mysterious elements, like the deliberately missing person, an unfortunate death on the tracks, and all the romantically noir elements of strangers meeting on a train. Even Adriana Ugarte hairstyle as the young commuting Juliet looks inspired by Melanie Griffith in Body Double. Clearly composer Alberto Iglesias got the memo, because he definitely tries to channel Bernard Hermann.

Frankly, the richness and sure-handedness of Almodóvar’s visual style is just of pleasure to behold. He and cinematographer Jean-Claude Larrieu give the film a vibrant color-noir look, in the tradition of Marnie. Yet, the grounded credibility of the linked narrative makes the third story alienation quite disturbing.

As the younger Julieta, Ugarte rocks her 1980s dew and generally dominates the screen with a dangerous mix of seductiveness and naivety. As the older Arcos, Emma Suárez is vividly and viscerally guilt-ridden and neurotic, but also rather stately and distinguished. Yet, both will implode quite spectacularly, as befits Almodóvarian heroines.

Despite its “women’s fiction” source material, Julieta is definitely more closely akin to Almodóvar’s Skin and Broken Embraces. Yet of the three said films, this is arguably the most accomplished. Darkly glossy, Julieta should well satisfy Almodóvar’s admirers and serve as an effective introductive to his themes and motifs for new viewers. Highly recommended, Julieta screens again tomorrow night (10/16) during the 2016 NYFF, with a return trip already booked for late December.

NYFF ’16: Karl Marx City

Michael Tucker often serves as the d.p. on the documentaries he co-directs with his wife and creative partner Petra Epperlein, but he has an unusual co-cinematographer on their latest project: the dreaded East German Stasi. Archival surveillance footage from the bad old days of socialism eerily supplement and illustrate Epperlein’s painful family history in Karl Marx City, which screens during the 54th New York Film Festival.

Although she came from a loving family, it is hard for Epperlein to feel nostalgic for her childhood in what was then called Karl-Marx-Stadt. The city changed its name back to Chemnitz as soon as it could in 1990, but the painful legacy would live on, especially for her parents. Epperlein gives us the run down on the scope of the Stasi’s operations at the time of the Fall of the Wall: 90,000 active agents and over 200,000 registered informants. The latter is particularly relevant to the Epperleins, because her father started receiving poison pen letters accusing him of being a snitch shortly after reunification.

Eventually, the stress, guilt, resentment, or depression became too much for Mr. Epperlein to bear, so he committed suicide after burning all his letters and photos. Indeed, the extent to which he tried to erase all traces of himself is especially disturbing for his daughter, so she launches an investigation into her father’s relationship with the Stasi, if any. She will find her answers and they will be a bitter pill to swallow, but maybe not in the way we expect.

KMC is an unusually moving documentary that could even be called revelatory. However, it takes viewers a bit of time to adjust to Epperlein’s aesthetics. The black-and-white cinematography—stark and stylish in the case of Tucker, but just plain stark as far as the Stasi is concerned—is certainly apt and fittingly evocative. However, the rather surreal scenes of Epperlein carrying oddly large boom mics seem distractingly absurd until we realize the exaggerated filmmaker persona is part of a defense mechanism. Slowly, Epperlein lowers her mask, allowing us to viscerally experience her family’s pain—and it stings.

Tellingly, Epperlein takes great pains to call out Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others for creating a fictional good agent who protected his target, something that never happened in real life. While we generally take her point, it should be noted the purpose of Ulrich Mühe’s character was not to absolve the Stasi, but to indict it. This is what those 90,000 agents might have chosen to do, but they didn’t.

Regardless, KMC offers an absolutely fascinating look into lives of relatively average GDR citizens and documents how the Communist system continues to generate bad karma for everyone it touched. It is challenging on many levels, but immediately accessible. It is definitely one of the head-and-shoulders highlights of this year’s NYFF, along with I Called Him Morgan and Two Trains Runnin’. Very highly recommended, Karl Marx City screens this Friday (12/14) and Saturday afternoon (12/15) as part of the Spotlight on Documentary section at the 2016 New York Film Festival.

NYFF ’16: Two Trains Runnnin’

It is hard to fathom a time when Son House and Skip James were considered “obscure” bluesmen. Today they probably rank somewhere just behind Robert Johnson in the Pantheon of blues, but for decades everything and everyone associated with the old Delta blues were scorned and forgotten. A handful of naïve young record collectors hoped to find the mysterious artists, so their music could reach a wider audience. However, they picked a heck of a time to go to Mississippi—right smack in the middle of Freedom Summer. Sam Pollard chronicles the simultaneous pilgrimages in Two Trains Runnin’ (trailer here), which screens during the 54^th New York Film Festival.

John Fahey had already “re-discovered” Bukka White, but he had his sights set on an even bigger cult legend: the mysterious Skip James, whose plaintive falsetto and eerie lyrics had long fascinated the small circle of blues aficionados. Inspired by Fahey’s past success, fans Nick Perls and Dick Waterman set off in search of Son House, with junior newspaperman Nick Perls in tow. It seems none of them followed current events too closely, because they readily admit they had no idea what they were walking into. Both Waterman and Perls doubt they would have made the trip had they but known.

Fortunately, they blundered ahead, because James and House were key figures in the Blues Revival that emerged out of the folk scene. Perls would later found Yazoo Records and Waterman would become the booking agent for House, James, White, and similarly re-popularized bluesman, including Lightnin’ Hopkins and Arthur Crudup. Of course, while Fahey, Waterman, and Perls were sleuthing through Delta country, civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were murdered by the KKK.

Perhaps mindful of other recent docs, Two Trains just gives the broad strokes of the Freedom Summer, offering a more detailed chronicle to the blues hunters’ odyssey. Pollard still makes his points, but the film never feels didactic or lecturey. Of course, the music is terrific, starting with the archival recordings of the two legends, as well as a few modern interpretations by the likes of Lucinda Williams and Gary Clark, Jr. (whose own music is also heard throughout the documentary). Pollard changes up the visuals nicely, incorporating appropriate archival footage and some brief animated sequences of the blues hunters, who were not really equipped to record their journey for documentary filmmaking purposes.

If you still don’t get Son House, Skip James, and the appeal of Delta blues after watching this film than you’re beyond help. It is also rather fitting and telling to watch the two historical narratives unfold in parallel. Recommended for blues fans and general audiences, Two Trains Runnin’ screens this Thursday (10/13) and Friday (10/14) as part of this year’s NYFF.

NYFF ’16: I Had Nowhere to Go

As an early booster-theoretician of underground cinema, Jonas Mekas flipped for Andy Warhol, especially his outré provocations, such as screening reel after reel of film leader. It is therefore easy to imagine his enthusiasm for the unconventional approach of Scottish video installation artist Douglas Gordon’s avant-garde documentary. Essentially combining the visual aesthetic of Derek Jarman’s Blue with books-on-tape, Gordon’s I Had Nowhere to Go screens as part of the new Explorations section of the 54th New York Film Festival.

The screen will be blank throughout most of the film, allowing Mekas’s Lithuanian-accented voice conjure up ghosts from the Twentieth Century. Occasionally Gordon throws us a visual bone, like a traditional talking head shot of still razor sharp and energetic ninety-three-year-old (which makes sense) or footage of someone chopping vegetables (representing a total audio-visual disconnect).

Unfortunately, like so many citizens of the Baltic states, Mekas led an eventful life even before he became a New Yorker. He was indeed caught between the rival socialist armies of Germany and the Soviet Union. In fact, probably the film’s best story comes in the first five minutes when Mekas recounts how he took his first photograph ever during the Soviet invasion, only to have the film confiscated by a lieutenant. (Mekas readily admits this was rather sporting of the officer, considering he could have very easily taken both his camera and his life.)

Trying his best to evade both German and Russian forces, Mekas and his family existed hand-to-mouth as refugees before they finally reached Brooklyn. While the migrant experience might be intended to shoehorn in a kneejerk sense of topicality, it also reminds us there was a wide gulf in the values of those fleeing the Soviets and National Socialists and the oppressors they left behind. However, the film is probably most effective when Mekas explores the ways in which his buried Lithuanianness would unexpectedly reassert itself.

Let’s be honest, Mekas is probably the foremost “video diarist” in cinema history. If you set out to make a short-pants-to-elder-statesman documentary of his life, there should be no shortage of images. Opting for no almost no images instead comes off like an over-intellectualized strategy that comes perilously close to being a cop-out. Hearing Mekas read passages from his eponymous 1991 memoir has value, but you could get the full story and lose little in terms of the storytelling experience by listening to an audiobook recording. (If Mr. Mekas is looking for an audio publisher, he is welcomed to reach out to me here.)

If you were there for the Warhol screenings Mekas organized back in the day, IHNTG might resonate for you on a personal level, even though it never covers any of his work as a filmmaker, champion, and preservationist of the American Avant-garde film movement. However, as a work of cinema analyzed formalistically, is frustratingly anemic. Only recommended for hardcore Mekas fans, I Had Nowhere to Go screens this Thursday (10/13) and Friday (10/14) as part of this year’s NYFF.

NYFF ’16: My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea

Given the abject tragedy wrought by shoddy, corrupt school construction practices during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, one would think filmmakers would tread carefully when using such subject matter, especially for comedic purposes. Yet rather bizarrely, Dash Shaw essentially gets away with it, simply due to the slight, inconsequential nature of his film. The titular secondary school is toast, but nobody really cares in Shaw’s My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea, which screens during the 54th New York Film Festival.

Dash, Shaw’s hip, self-referential protagonist is convinced sophomore year will be better. However, the snide windbag is a just misery machine. For no good reason, he is about to alienate his only friend Assaf (a fellow school paper staffer) with a libelous erectile dysfunction story he slips past Verti, their equally jaundiced editor. Yes, these are cartoon characters, but it is hard to believe anyone could be such abrasive pond scum.

Ironically, while Dash is on the outs with the paper, he stumbles onto the scoop of his career. Apparently, the principle knowingly constructed the new auditorium over unstable ground, which could indeed result in the entire high getting swept out to sea. Of course, it won’t be a scoop for long. At least Dash will sort of patch things up with Assaf and Verti when things go all Irwin Allen. Teaming up Mary, Dash’s detention mate with student council ambitions, they will try to survive the crisis.

It sounds like My Entire Etc, Etc should be a ton of morbidly subversive fun, but Shaw goes for long stretches forgetting to add any jokes, just letting his characters amble about like they are in some mumblecore time-waster. Stylistically, he takes a page out of the squiggly-lined book of Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist, but it wears better over thirty (frequently quite droll) minutes than during the course of a somewhat slack seventy-five-minute feature.

It turns out Thomas Jay Ryan can even class up this joint. His voice-over work as the remorseful Principal Grimm is definitely the film’s best. In contrast, most of the rest of the voice cast is a who’s who of annoying, droning-voiced hipsters who have an army of publicists constantly telling us how popular they are, but you would never invite them to your dinner party in a million years. Lena Dunham! Jason Schwartzman! Reggie Watts! Alex Karpovsky! Kill me now!

Arguably, the events in question are pretty apt, considering everyone involved in the film is just too cool for school. If Shaw wants to stage a high-body-count school tragedy for laughs, that’s’ fine. He just needs to bring more humor next time. Wafer-thin and weirdly self-satisfied, My etc, etc might play okay as an original for some online streaming service, but it doesn’t cut it as a theatrical feature. A real disappointment, My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea screens Monday (10/10) and Tuesday (10/11) during this year’s NYFF.

NYFF ’16: The B-Side—Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography

Remember how James Garner and Mariette Hartley used to explain how there was “a little piece of the sun” in each Polaroid camera? Elsa Dorfman was using an unusually large piece. For years, she was one of a handful of artists using a limited large format 20x24 Polaroid camera. She was usually relegated to the lower ranks of galleriable photographers, even among Polaroid artists. However, just as her critical stock started to rise, Polaroid discontinued its film production. The now retired artist takes stock of her life and work with her friend and documentarian Errol Morris in The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography, which screens during the 54th New York Film Festival.

Dorfman came and went from New York fairly quickly, but she was around long enough to witness several salvos in the culture wars working for Barney Rosset at Grove Press. Through her colleagues’ literary publishing circles, she befriended several of the Beats, including lifelong friend and frequent model Allan Ginsburg. Initially, photography was almost thrust upon her, but she found she had an aesthetic affinity for Polaroid film. With her large format camera, she specialized in full-body portraiture. Many famous people and average everymen sat for her, but some of her favorite shots are the quirkily revealing rejects—her so-called “B-Sides.”

It is rather pleasant spending seventy-some minutes with Dorfman and the concerns she expresses regarding the disposal of her archive for posterity (evidently a problem many just-famous-enough photographers her age share) gives one pause. However, this just does not feel like an Errol Morris documentary. It is not because of the relatively upbeat tone. Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control is a wonderfully charming film, but it clearly bears his stamp as a doc auteur. Frankly, B-Side could have been made by any competent filmmaker with a camera.

One could argue that as an old customer and pal, Morris put Dorfman at ease and encouraged her to speak freely. That’s fair enough as far as it goes. Still, as nice as it is, the final product is undeniable on the slight side of the spectrum of cinematic significance. Most viewers can safely wait until PBS broadcasts it or Fandor (or someone else) streams it. For diehard Morris and Dorfman fans, The B-Sides screens October 9^th, 10^th, 12^th, and 16^th as part of this year’s NYFF.

NYFF ’16: Yourself and Yours

There is something wonderfully reassuring about the arrival of a new Hong Sang-soo film each year. Like the swallows returning to Capistrano, all is right with the world when his lovelorn Korean film students and slackers get roaring drunk and tell contradictory lies. Uncharacteristically for a Hong film, Young-soo is trying to limit his girlfriend Min-jung to just two soju shots and five beers a night, which would probably be sufficient to knock W.C. Fields on his keister. Regardless, she is done with controlling behavior as are the other Min-jungs in Hong’s Yourself and Yours (trailer here), which screens during the 54^th New York Film Festival.

Young-soo should be concerned about his dying mother, the news from a gossipy friend was getting hammered last night with a man other than himself has him beside himself. When confronted, Min-jung initially denies the rumor before up and leaving him. Young-soo quickly realizes his mistake, but she is already gone.

Soon thereafter, two of Young-soo’s acquaintances run into Min-jung on separate occasions, but she professes not to know them or the Young-soo fellow they keep talking about. After sulking for a bit, Young-soo heads off in search of Min-jung, but when he finds her, she no longer recognizes him or his said friends. It is all rather confusing for everyone except Min-jung or her doppelgangers or whatever, but it hardly seems to matter. In fact, it might just be a good thing, allowing Young-soo the first of many fresh starts.

Arguably, Y&Y is like a smarter, gently inebriated Korean analog of Adam Sandler’s 50 First Dates, but instead of a challenge to overcome, the necessity of constant reintroduction is a liberating blessing. Regardless, it provides an opportunity for some tartly neurotic dialogue and appealingly woozy performances.

Lee Yoo-young is quite charming as Min-yung, but she also shows considerable emotional range as she deals with the full spectrum of Young-soo’s male angst. From her lips words of truth fall like spring raindrops in the afternoon. As her assorted temporary admirers, Yuu Jun-sang and Kwon Hae-hyo are appropriately bemused and befuddled. Frankly, Kim Ju-hyeok’s whiny tone wears a little thin, but he develops some deeply complex chemistry with Lee’s Min-yung[s].

Along with the deliciously arch Right Now, Wrong Then and Hill of Freedom, Yourself and Yours represents a richly fertile artistic period for Hong. He continues to explore relationships and the Korean male psyche, while playing sly narrative games with his complicit audience without ever appreciably repeating himself. If only Woody Allen, whom he used to be regularly compared with were as reliably consistent and inventive. It is a good introduction to Hong’s aesthetic for first time viewers and a satisfying tumbler full of new brew for his fans. Highly recommended for both groups, Yourself and Yours screens this Friday (10/7) as well as the 10^th, 14^th, and 16^th, as a Main Slate selection of the 2016 NYFF.

NYFF ’16: Taipei Story

Although it helped usher in the New Taiwanese Cinema movement, Edward Yang’s 1985 masterwork had even greater personal significance for its principals. Budding auteur Hou Hsiao-hsien mortgaged his home to finance the film he co-wrote. He also played the co-lead opposite pop star Tsai Chin, who  would later marry Yang after meeting him on the production. Yet, despite its reputation, the resulting film has largely survived on nearly unwatchable prints. Fortunately, it has been restored to a pristine clarity that will allow cineastes to finally appreciate Yang’s Taipei Story as it was meant to be seen when it screens during the 54^th New York Film Festival.

It seems like Ah-chin is on the brink of realizing her Taiwanese Dream in the opening scene. Assured of a promotion by her boss, she decides to buy a flat in a fashionable neighborhood with her long-term lover Lung, who has recently returned from America to take over his family’s textile concern. However, his restless heart is not in the business or their supposedly on-again romance. He still pines for baseball glory and increasingly resents the mundane realities he is stuck with.

Their relationship is further strained when both are betrayed by their mentor figures. For the westernized, career-minded Ah-chin, suddenly being out of work is particularly humiliating. She tries to console herself with her sister’s hard-partying friends, but she is not accustomed to their lifestyle or the unwanted attention that comes with it.

Yang deliberately chose the English title Taipei Story to echo Ozu’s masterpiece, but the temperaments of the two films could not be more dissimilar. Whereas Ozu pulls the viewer in, inviting us to empathize with his characters, Yang keeps the audience emotionally at arm’s length. Hou and Tsai play Lung and Ah-chin with such extreme reserve in such austere settings, it feels like Yang is literally choking off all the oxygen to the film.

Still, Hou conveys a sense of the barely contained ferocity roiling within Lung. Just seeing him nervously taking practice swings in the opening scene tells us he is trouble. Likewise, Tsai’s Ah-chin utterly unsettles and unbalances viewer expectations and judgments, suggesting not so contradictory elements of naivety and sociopathic manipulation, sometimes even within the same scene.

Indeed, Taipei Story could be seen as the logical fate of the generation that came of age in the paranoid era of Yang’s epic A Brighter Summer Day. They go through the motions of human affairs, but they are not capable of the trust real intimacy requires. It is a potent film, but watching it is a chilly experience. Recommended for those who appreciate social and psychological realism, the spruced up Taipei Story screens this Wednesday (10/5) and Sunday (10/16) as part of this year’s NYFF.

NYFF ’16: Genre Shorts

It is generally accepted as fact psycho-stalkers are always scarier when they are German, but cult leaders are still creepy even when they are woolen-wearing British matrons. Prepare to have your suspicions reconfirmed when the 54th New York Film Festival takes horror and dark thrillers international—and also succinctly to the point—with Shorts Program 3: Genre Stories, which screens tonight as part of the fest.

Charles Dickens’ supernatural yarn The Signalman has not been filmed very often. The last time was probably a 1970s BBC Christmas special starring Denholm Elliott (Yuletide ghost stories are a big deal over there). However, Daniel Augusto still assumes everyone knows the story, because he dispenses with the narrator character (who would otherwise explain what is going on) and mostly implies rather than shows the events of the story. Still, it is an undeniably moody and evocative piece, lightyears more enjoyable than his recent feature, Paulo Coelho’s Best Story.

Things get seriously serious with Johannes Kizler & Nik Sentenza’s Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You. Yes, there is a slasher home invasion film at NYFF, so sit up and pay attention. Basically, Eyes Off plays like the prologue to a Scream movie, but those are always the most memorable sequences. A mother and teenage daughter are arguing over her absentee father, but they are not alone in their tony modernist McMansion. Things proceed exactly as they always do, but you have to give Kizler & Sentenza credit for their slick, tight, tense, and brutally effective execution.

People die all the time in Jack Burke’s New Gods, but it is really more of a cult-themed psychological drama than a horror film. Still, you really wouldn’t want to be there either. Rosemary looks like a high school art teacher, but she rigidly commands the agrarian collective known simply as “The Community.” That means no medicine for those who are sick. They are to simply make their peace and shuffle off, unless you happen to be especially useful to Rosemary. In that case, exceptions can be made. Unfortunately, the hard toiling Sophie is running a fever, but she has no special skills. The premise and climax of New Gods could most likely sustain a feature length treatment, but Burke’s remarkably economical narrative feels fully rendered and satisfactorily self-contained in its current short subject format.

Evidently, in Luxembourg, they have a baby-tooth hoarding mouse instead of the Tooth Fairy. We’re much better off than the Benelux nation, as a grown fanboy dad and his son will learn when they come face to whiskered-face with the ferocious rodent in Pascal Thiebaux & Gil Pinheiro’s Pearlies. While cleaning out the late grandmother’s flat, father and son inadvertently cause the loss of one of the mean little creature’s prized teeth, so he will take a replacement the hard way. With its richly detailed sets and over-the-top dark humor, Pearlies has the look and vibe of early Tim Burton or early Sam Raimi, making it quite a macabrely amusing confection.

The ringer of the programming block is also a real downer. After enjoying all the previous genre goodness, Kristy Guevara-Flanagan’s What Happened to Her sets out to guilt trip horror and police procedural fans by rubbing their noses in images of naked women corpses, as seen in films and TV shows. Of course, viewers are not supposed to enjoy those images. Rather, they are priming us for future payback.  It is sort of like That’s Entertainment for floating bodies, but instead of music we hear a voice-over interview with a former extra who found her corpse portrayal physically uncomfortable and emotionally demeaning. It is might have been an unpleasant gig, but it is hard to see it haunting her, like more conventionally explicit sex scenes. Regardless, it is almost perversely amusing to see the axe-grinding docu-supercut sharing the bill with Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You.

Indeed, the shorts preceding Happened mostly celebrate the tradition of genre filmmaking in rather entertaining ways. As a result, Shorts Program 3: Genre Stories is quite a mixed bag, but it is front loaded with enough reputable and guilty pleasures to earn a recommendation for horror and dark thriller fans when it screen tonight (10/1) and Monday night (10/3), as part of this year’s NYFF.

NYFF ’16: My Journey Through French Cinema

Bertrand Tavernier might be the best director in the world at taking audience Q&A. Based on his good humored appearance for Princess of Montpensier during the 2011 French Rendezvous, he displayed a genuine knack for extracting a salient point from even the most rambling, off-topic questions. While this talent for inspired free association comes across as keenly focused during a Q&A session, it might strike some viewers as eccentrically eclectic when applied to a three-hour-plus documentary. However, the audience still gets to hear a lot of interesting stuff as a result throughout Tavernier’s My Journey Through French Cinema (trailer here), which screens during the 54^th New York Film Festival.

Yes, this is indeed all about Tavernier discussing the films he has seen and the filmmakers he has known. Of course, he had early gigs as the publicist for Godard’s Breathless and as an assistant to Jean-Pierre Melville, so he definitely has an insider’s perspective. Who knew former Duke Ellington and Fletcher Henderson sideman Rex Stewart appeared in Jacques Becker’s Rendezvous in July? Tavernier, that’s who—and being a jazz fan as well, he shows a long tantalizing clip of Stewart blowing his horn in a hip French nightclub.

In fact, Becker is the unlikely first-among-equals under discussion in Journey. Once Tavernier finishes with the Casque d’Or helmer, he then gives the themes and films of Melville and Claude Sautet similarly in-depth treatment. Although he mostly focuses on auteurist directors, Tavernier also champions the film scores of Maurice Jaubert and Joseph Kosma. These sequences are especially valuable, since even major French film composers like Georges Delerue and Philippe Sarde are not exactly household names anymore.

Those who require a rigid structure to appreciate a film are simply out of luck here. Tavernier can hardly pause in mid-air as he jumps from topic to topic, in order to give viewers time to carefully scrawl out their notes, even if he were so inclined. Essentially, this film is designed to approximate the experience of chewing the fat with Tavernier on the subject of movies. If that sounds like fun to you (and it should), the good news is there is obviously a planned second installment in the works. Logically recommended for Francophile patrons, My Journey Through French Cinema screens tomorrow (10/1) and Sunday (10/2) during the 2016 New York Film Festival.

NYFF ’16: I Called Him Morgan

Since the early days of New Orleans until the early 1950s of Hard Bop, trumpeters were the Gabriels of jazz. Just think of Louis Armstrong’s golden tone or the supernaturally fleet articulation of Dizzy Gillespie. Lee Morgan was cut from a different cloth. You could hear plenty of grease and snarling attitude in his horn. His devilish sound also scored him some unprecedented crossover success. Yet, his tragically public demise will always define his all too brief life story. Swedish documentarian Kasper Collin revisits the music and the man through the memories of the woman who shot him and the rival who stoked her jealousy in I Called Him Morgan (trailer here), which screens during the 54^th New York Film Festival.

Evidently, Morgan’s common law wife Helen never cared for the name Lee. Hence the title. We hear this directly from the source herself in the spectral-sounding audio tapes of an interview Ms. Morgan granted jazz radio host Larry Reni Thomas mere weeks before her death. Offering no excuses and seeking no sympathy, she tells her story matter-of-factly, but her overwhelming feelings of regret are immediately evident.

Collin (who also helmed the equally sensitive My Name is Albert Ayler) gives viewers the broad strokes of Morgan’s career, starting with his discovery in Dizzy Gillespie’s big band, his rise to prominence with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, and his glory years as a vintage Blue Note Records recording artist. Along the way, label co-founders Albert Lion and Francis Wolff get their just due for producing the classic sessions that would largely define the Hard Bop style.

However, the film is really centered around a forensic reconstruction of Lee and Helen Morgan’s imploding relationship. Initially, all his musician friends thought they were a good match, giving her credit for helping Morgan get clean and supporting him while he rebuilt his reputation. Yet, the film takes a heavy turn when she starts to describe how their romance turned to resentment. Like a Hard Bop Rashomon, Collin presents the events of that fateful night both from her perspective and that of Judith Johnson, the third side of Morgan’s love triangle (albeit a rather chaste one, according to her testimony).

Indeed, Collin relates the events of that ill-fated blizzard-battered night with eerie inevitability. Frankly, ICHM is an unusually impressionistic film, featuring dreamy noir cityscapes that aptly match Collin’s musical selections. Clearly, he has a preference for Morgan’s modal period (tunes with gently explorative harmonies) over his boogaloos (in this context meaning up-tempo Hard Bop tunes constructed over a strong rhythmic vamp). In fact, Morgan’s greatest hit, “The Sidewinder” is never heard during the film. (In this case, “greatest hit” is no exaggeration for a tune featured in a Chrysler commercial.)

Shrewdly, Collin also incorporates quite a bit of Wolff’s celebrated session photography. In addition to many striking black-and-white images familiar to fans from classic Blue Note album covers, Collin includes some surprisingly light-hearted candid shots that should only further burnish Wolff’s photographic reputation.

Collin scored sit-downs with a number of Morgan’s contemporaries, including Wayne Shorter, his legendary bandmate in the Messengers, as well as his own prominent sidemen, including Billy Harper, Jymie Merritt, Larry Ridley, and Bennie Maupin. However, the great Harold Mabern, a born raconteur if ever there was one, is conspicuously but perhaps not surprisingly absent. Reportedly, he still found it difficult to discuss Morgan’s death four decades after the fact, so presumably his feelings have not changed (which we should respect).

Regardless, ICHM is a starkly stylish and deeply humane film. It is that rare bird among music documentaries that has such considerable merit as a film in its own right, it should assure continuing awareness for Morgan’s music. Very highly recommended, I Called Him Morgan is far and away the top priority film at this year’s NYFF, which will screen it this Sunday (10/2) at the Walter Reade and Monday (10/3) at the Francesca Beale.

NYFF ’16: The Hedonists (short)

These working class guys are not so different than from the characters you know and love from The Full Monty. They are okay with working hard, but even better at playing hard. Unfortunately, the entire work force of their Shanxi coal mine is about to be laid off. That means they will be forced into job-searching mode in Jia Zhangke’s The Hedonists, which screens as part of Shorts Program 2: International Auteurs at the 54^th New York Film Festival.

Some of the three pals worked more diligently than others, so the manager (who should be feeling more embarrassed than he appears) takes varying degrees of satisfaction pink-slipping them. In between boozy hands of mahjong, they duly scroll through job listings on their smart phones. Even though they are middle-aged and out of shape they apply for a bodyguard position, protecting a nouveau riche “Big Boss,” played by Jia himself. When that misadventure fails to pan out, they apply for costumed performer jobs at a Ming Dynasty theme park, harkening back to Jia’s masterful The World.

Co-written by Jia and his muse/life partner Zhao Tao, The Hedonists is a slyly amusing, deeply humane examination of structurally unemployment in contemporary China. Jia proves he still has the masterful touch for short subjects he displayed throughout the elegant Cry Me a River, but in this case, the ending is so abrupt, it makes one wonder if there is a feature-length third act missing. Still, Hedonists is ironically notable as one of Jia’s most visually cinematic films, with more sprawling crane-shots stuffed into its twenty-five minutes than you will find in most of his features.

Conceived as part of the Beautiful 2016 anthology film project, The Hedonists is obviously also screening as a discrete short in its own right. It will not disappoint Jia’s admirers (although they will probably miss Zhao’s luminous screen presence), but it seems odd NYFF chose not to bring the entire anthology, considering it also boasts a brand spanking new Stanley Kwan film. Nonetheless, Jia certainly fits the International Auteur rubric (perhaps better than any of his program mates). Highly recommended in any screening format, Jia’s The Hedonists screens this Saturday (10/1) and Sunday (10/2) as part of Shorts Program 2, at this year’s New York Film Festival.