Review: "Piggy" is a visceral nightmare

by Cláudio Alves

© Magnet Releasing

Somewhere in the Spanish countryside, in a small town of Extremadura, Sara lives the kind of earthly hell familiar to many of those who grew up as fat teens. Judgment comes from every direction, shame inflicted upon her until it curdles the spirit. It's not just strangers that hurt, for a casual remark from one's mother can be so lacerating it leaves a scar. Still, there's nothing worse for Sara than her peers, cruel kids who couch their hatred in vacuous assertions that they mean well, that it's for her own good. A trip to the pool for Sara becomes another opportunity for torment at the hands of mean girls, including former friends.

Nearly drowned, her clothes stolen, a humiliated Sara walks home half-naked under the summer sun. It's then that a mysterious van appears, looming ominous in her path. Inside, the girl's tormentors lay powerless, victimizers turned victims at the hands of a kidnapper cum killer. Sara sees it all, the man in charge sees her, and they both do nothing – the van drives away…

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Semi-Contrarian Takes on 'Alcarras', 'Bones and All', and 'Triangle of Sadness'

by Nathaniel R

BONES AND ALL © United Artists Releasing

Hello strangers. Yours truly has been moving apartments for the past few days hence the radio silence. But HQ (aka the desktop computer) is now plugged in, wifi connected, and ready to be of use again if the rest of me can similarly recharge. When was the last time you moved? It's a bitch, right? Bone tired and the whole body aches from packing and box lifting and such. Can't wait to talk about The Fabelmans and TÁR but first some quick takes on recent NYFF screenings the last of which (Triangle of Sadness) is just fabulous and now in theaters. Go see it!

BONES AND ALL
The latest flick from Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name) is an interesting experiment in fusing tender romantic drama with sickening gore...

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NYFF: The elegiac 'Alcarràs' mourns the moment at hand

by Jason Adams

I never got to see my grandfather’s farm. The land was sold off and the barns and the stables were all torn down before I was born, all so a series of electricity transmission towers could be built across the middle of it. When I was a little kid my father and I would visit my grandparents small home perched astride where the farm used to be and my father would walk me out and point up at the towers in a field out behind their house, telling me how those towers stretched across the entire state. He always seemed proud, strangely in awe of them, as if those were our inheritance somehow. And I couldn’t stop thinking about those towers while watching Carla Simón’s melancholy and moving Alcarràs at NYFF this week. 

This film, about peach farmers on the other side of the globe spending one last summer on the precipice of losing their home, land, and farm, seemed to be offering genuine insight into my own family and history...

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NYFF: Margaret Qualley anchors ‘Stars at Noon’ from Claire Denis

By Abe Friedtanzer

At the NYFF introduction of Stars at Noon, the most recent work by Claire Denis,  it was noted that the acclaimed auteur doesn’t have a consistent style or preferred genre in her filmmaking. Recent works like High Life and Let the Sunshine In, both of which screened at NYFF and featured her frequent collaborator Juliette Binoche, are not at all indicative of her two 2022 films (the other is Both Sides of the Blade). Stars at Noon is another about face. It's a romance mired in political mystery, a puzzle that never truly feels like it needs to be solved.

Stars at Noon is based on the 1986 book by Denis Johnson that's set during the then-recent Nicaraguan War. Denis has updated the material to the present, and centered it on Trish (Margaret Qualley), an American journalist who has clearly outstayed her welcome and is struggling to find the big story that will get her back on track...

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NYFF Review: João Pedro Rodrigues’ Will-o’-the-Wisp Gives Wood As Good As It's Got

by Jason Adams

How many wood puns would a reviewer chuck into his review of a movie about wood puns? Admittedly not quite as tight a tongue-twister as the “how much wood would a woodchuck” original, but we work with what we’ve got. And I’ll try to rein myself in when it comes to queer sensualist and provocateur João Pedro Rodrigues’ Will-o’-the-Wisp (aka Fogo-Fátuo) as far as such woody things go, but when he’s got his own characters talking about the trees being “tumescent with sap” I can only be so discreet. But I know when I’ve been beaten, and this wood master already beat me at my own game. Point João once more!

At sixty-seven minutes Will-o’-the-Wisp is as slight as is its central figure, a dazzled Portuguese princeling named Alfredo (Mauro Costa) in an alternate-reality timeline...

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