NYFF: Uncle Howard & Brillo Box (3 ¢ off)

Here's Jason reporting from NYFF on two docs that deal with a younger generation being affected and influenced by the art dealings of their elders.

It seems like every other gay person that I meet has a gay aunt or uncle who informed their childhood in some way - I never did; the closest I got was a friend of my mother's who was whispered about as a weird bachelor type, but he was out of her life before I was born. But you remember such things, small weird whispers as they are, when they're your singular life-line to a big world actually existing out there where you can figure your own stuff out. 

I don't know or care if director Aaron Brookner is gay himself but you get the same sensation from watching Uncle Howard, his new documentary on his uncle, a film-maker who died at the age of 34 from AIDS - the thirst to eat up all he can about this fabulous person who lived a fabulous life in the margins of his own, and what that was like for him... 

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NYFF: Almodóvar's Julieta

Manuel here catching up with Pedro's latest at the New York Film Festival

Following the New York Film Festival screening of his 20th film, Pedro Almodóvar admitted that, in adapting Alice Munro’s short stories (from her collection, Runaway), he had aimed for a more restrained tone. Indeed, especially in comparison to his previous outing—the mile high club comedy I’m So Excited!—Julieta is an aggressively austere affair. Of course, “austere Almodóvar” is still inimitably Almodóvar. Take the film’s first shot: we’re awash in a sea of red fabric. It looks like draperie, perhaps a bedsheet or even a curtain. It pulses like a heart...

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NYFF: Manchester by the Sea

From the New York Film Festival here's Jason on the new film from Kenneth Lonergan.

The scene that we've been waiting for all during Manchester by the Sea comes pretty much where you might expect it to, that climactic slot about 3/4ths of the way in right where stories usually come to a head. And yet, and yet, the way that it comes showcases what makes Kenneth Lonergan such a fascinating writer and director. The way we get to this emotional head is typically, for this director, winding - the film is suffused with flashbacks that don't so much announce themselves as they do sneak in through the window and climb into bed beside you, surprise spooning you til sunrise. So when this climax comes where it should come, well that in itself is a surprise, but one you only notice in hindsight.

But it's more than that. Without going into specifics about what happens, what's so fascinating about this scene (and I'm using it as a microcosm for the whole film here) is how it lays there in wait in the broad daylight for its sneak attack. It just happens. And in Lonergan's hands this feels like the sweet hard mess of real life - broken boat motors and a bumped head; the moments where we catch up while our friend is bringing the car round and suddenly the world around us crumbles. Miniature hurricanes that don't announce themselves but sweep you up and slam you down without actually moving you an inch.

Manchester by the Sea is awash in such flashes, such sudden floods. Casey Affleck gives an astonishingly light performance of utter devastation. We spend the film putting together the puzzle of him only to find out the puzzle is broken and the pieces are vanishing in our hands as we gather them up. The actor makes us gather faster, and gather harder. He makes us want to sort it out alongside him. That his performance and the film are so much much funnier than you're anticipating only makes its foundation of bottomless grief all the more vertiginous - it is, like honest-to-goodness life, disorienting with drilled deep possibilities of goodness, and honesty, and pain.

NYFF: Everything Else

Manuel reporting from NYFF on an Adriana Barraza star vehicle.

Everything Else
Natalia Almada's Everything Else (Todo lo demás) is a portrait of a woman in the most literal sense. The movie, which runs 98 minutes, has very little plot and is focused instead on observing (keenly, empathetically, near-obsessively) the life of Doña Flor. A no nonsense government worker by day with very little life outside the desk she occupies daily and the apartment she shares with her cat, Doña Flor (played by Babel's Oscar nominated Adriana Barraza) is not lonely, per se. But she does seem disconnected from the life around her; in Barraza's face you can see the weariness of her life without the contempt stories about childless spinsters usually inspire. Almada gives Barraza no more than 50 lines in the entire film, plunging us for stretches at a time in a silence that rattles for the very comfort it depends on. She's interested in watching Doña Flor and, in doing so, sketches out a woman perhaps like many others and yet entirely herself.

That the quiet peeks at her life are punctuated by news reports (often out of frame and unintelligible) about violence against women and close ups of the women she encounters on the train, across her desk, and at the public pool she visits, make clear that Almada's near dialogue-free project wants to think about the state of Mexican women today without doing anything more than showing (there is so little telling).

The effect is hypnotizing though whether you follow along for the ride depends on your patience for such a small scale story with such a self-consciously deployed structure. And yet, every time Barraza is on screen, you're reminded why she remains such an underutilized actress; she doesn't carry the film as much as she inhabits it, losing herself in the mundane life depicted, another face in the crowd.

Doc Corner: Netflix's Big Oscar Push

A flurry of documentaries are having their premieres on Netflix and in their own way serve as glowing examples of the positives and the negatives of the streaming platform. Netflix made an impression very early in their life as original content providers; the Academy’s documentary branch has already warmed to their productions and acquisitions. They deserved the statue for The Square in 2012 (losing to music doc 20 Feet from Stardom), and proved their keen eye (and deep pockets) were no fluke with subsequent nominations for Virunga (losing to Citizenfour), What Happened Miss Simone?, and Winter on Fire (both losing to music doc Amy) 

This year it’s entirely feasible to imagine an Oscar line-up with five Netflix titles. I can't imagine the doc branch ever letting that happen, but they have the product and it’s looking entirely possible they could finally win in a memorable and game-changing first. But what about the films themselves: Into the Inferno, Amanda Knox, and Audrie & Daisie?

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