So the New York Film Festival is about to end this weekend and we’ve admittedly done a horrible job of keeping up with our reviews. We’re extremely behind.
Though, the plus is some of these key films we already seen in Cannes earlier this year. Lars Von Trier’s “Antichrist,” was a creepy freakshow that felt ultimately uneven; Pedro Almodovar’s “Broken Embraces,” was also decidedly not his best picture, but in retrospect is still a sexy and evocative concoction of all his past works of melodrama, mystery, camp and intrigue; Bong Joon Ho’s “Mother,” was a feverishly superb murder mystery procedural mixing drama, absurdist humor and nightmarish concepts for a parent.
We also caught Alain Resnais’ quirky romance stalker picture “Wild Grass,” Corneliu Porumboi’s”Police, Adjective,” Todd Solondz’s semi return to form in, “Life During Wartime,” and Manoel de Oliveira’s hilariously deadpan, “Eccentricities of a Blond Hair Girl” (dude is 100 years old, we shit you not).
But there’s tons of films we’ve seen that we haven’t had a second to write about (plus god, we still have about two or three reviews leftover from TIFF!). To give you a little preview we were a bit disappointed with Michael Haneke’s sprawling and rigidly formalistic, two and a half hour, “White Ribbon,” which won the coveted Palm d’Or earlier this year. We’re officially calling Lee Daniels’ urban drama, “Precious” the most overrated film of the year or at least out of Sundance (great performances, especially Mo’Nique, but stylistically it leaves a lot to be desired). We also saw Bruno Dumont’s “Hadejwich,” and we’re often put off by his highly scabrous works and sometime empty headed “shocking” conclusions which can make enfante terribles like Haneke and Von Trier look like saints, but this examination of faith and martyrdom was his most mature and best effort to date.
Other pictures we had a chance to see were Harmony Korine’s backwoods, lo-fi vignettes comedy (yes, it’s pretty hilarious), “Trash Humpers,” which wasn’t the pretentious shitpiece many expected and more of a pretty joyful celebration of retardo shenanigans, hanging out and doing strange, dumb shit (picture the nonsense that happens in skate videos when they’re not skating, but then place the characters are devious old farts causing a ruckus in back alleys).
Also quite engaging and perhaps the best picture we saw at NYFF so far was the documentary, “Henri George’s Clouzot’s Inferno,” by Serge Bromberg and Ruxandra Medrea, which belatedly chronicle’s French horror maestro George Clouzot’s abandoned attempt to film his 1964 would-be masterwork, “L’Enferno,” a madness/jealousy drama that had hoped to utilize some groundbreaking optical and experimental camera work. The picture fell apart due to his obsessive nature and then eventually, a heart attack that nailed the coffin shut in the already-tumultuous project, and it’s a fascinating portrait of what might have been.
Tonight we finally see Clair Denis’ “White Material,” starring the always arresting Isabelle Huppert and then tomorrow we have French boudoir provoactrix Catherine Breillat’s “Bluebeard,” which sounds like it could continue to push buttons (is a fairy tale about a young woman who marries the murderous lord Bluebeard).
Full reviews coming when we can find a second to crank them out. We’re a little overwhelmed.
