NYFF: Personal Shopper

Jason reporting from NYFF on the spooky and stylish reunion between Clouds of Sils Maria's director and star...

When I first read that Olivier Assayas was making a haunted house movie starring Kristen Stewart my reaction was both "a record needle scratching to a halt sound-effect" and "a cartoon figure running through a wall only to leave a perfect cut-out of their shape in said wall." That is to say I was taken aback, but I wanted to be at that place immediately. Important Directors, those who get the word "important" capitalized, look down on genre too often. But it's almost always fascinating to see what these talents make of the well-trod constructs and conceits - how they twist and shape them to their personal auteurial demands.

And you could say ghosts hovering over sad stylish actresses has been a theme that Assayas has returned to time and again...

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20th Century Women & 21st Century Tweetweek

So much to cover today: Annette Bening in 20th Century Women, the Blade Runner sequel, and movie jokes about current politics after the jump...

There are few characters in film history that I personally relate to more than the inside out baboon in The Fly.

— Rich McCarthy (@Rich_McCarthy) October 5, 2016

Little known fact: Nicholson stopped acting to avoid a slew of ranked performance articles tied to a new project.

— Kristopher Tapley (@kristapley) October 5, 2016

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Review: The Girl on the Train

by Murtada

The Girl on the Train presents actressexuals with a major dilemma. On one hand you have an actress you like front and center in a movie, being framed by an adoring director and cinematographer, giving her showcase scene after showcase scene. And the actress is giving it her all, rocking our world with deeply felt emotions. On the other hand  the movie around her is artless, even silly at times. What would an actressexual do in this situation? Be happy the actress is Emily Blunt, lean back and enjoy.

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NYFF: "Toni Erdmann" is Astonishing

Here's Jason reporting from the NYFF on a Cannes favorite and Oscar hopeful

It's not often you hear an audience of movie critics gasp out loud at something on-screen, but Toni Erdmann, the new comedy of forced familial closeness from German director Maren Ade, has a comic moment so perfectly timed that it got the civilized cinema-set of New York City to jump out of their seats like this was an Evil Dead movie in 3D. You know you've got 'em hooked when you can conjure up such a response - Hitchcock called it playing the audience like a piano. The fact that it comes via a comic-beat here, and not via a cat jumping onto a final girl's shoulder or a shower stabbing, makes it all the more astonishing.

And make no mistake - Toni Erdmann is astonishing...

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Review: American Honey

By Steven Fenton

The song “American Honey” is about a woman aching for the free spirit she was in her youth, wishing she’d had the courage to flee her circumstances. Andrea Arnold’s American Honey considers what that woman’s life might have been had she left. The sensational Sasha Lane plays Star, a young woman who steps out of her life and into a tribe of disenfranchised, disenchanted, lost youth on an odyssey across the American South.

Star is struggling. She’s living with her boyfriend and raising his children, with no help or money. Then one day at Wal-Mart she watches a troop of wild teens turn the store into their own raucous dance party...

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