NYFF: Laura Dern's first leading role and a lost Blaxploitation treasure

Sean Donovan looks at two films from NYFF's "Revivals" section...

The major film festivals of the world, New York included, take as much responsibility for cinema’s past as its future. Alongside new hyped arthouse projects, festivals program curios from the past that may have fallen through the cracks or not received their due recognition in their day. In other instances, festivals re-deploy older films to the contemporary moment in an act of deliberate commentary, the film speaking to culture in a way that feels freshly vital for 2020 (that is certainly the case of one of the selections profiled here). Over the past weekend, New York Film Fest virtual cinema uploaded two of their revival selections, Joyce Chopra’s Sundance-winning drama Smooth Talk (1985) and a Blaxploitation cult film The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1973). Both are canny, fascinating picks from the NYFF, and well worth the revisit in 2020...

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NYFF: "Malmkrog"

by Jason Adams

The urge to wander off into our own personal worlds has become, presently, understandable. Many of us have been literally forced into it in 2020, covering our faces and taping up our windows, our only human interaction through Zoom. How many of us have watched pixelated people blow out their birthday candles from their corner of the Brady Bunch squares on our laptop screens? But I mean more than physical isolation here -- I mean it feels as if in some ways our imaginations are having a renaissance; in the absence of open spaces and fresh air at the least our brains have been given a moment to breathe.  It's in some ways terrifying and in others liberating, but there seem to be ways of embracing this shitty moment that aren't shit in themselves.

Reality dictates that Cristi Puiu's new film Malmkrog, named after the region in Romania where it is supposed to be set, must have been filmed before right now. But it feels of right now, right this minute, at least in the way of its isolated white-windowed impenetrability...

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Doc Corner TIFF Special Edition: Werner Herzog's 'Fireball'

By Glenn Dunks

We're not covering TIFF more broadly this year, but I was lucky to snag a screener or two so we'll be writing about them in a couple of additional Doc Corner columns.

One of my favourite bits of movie trivia is that Werner Herzog is the only filmmaker to have ever directed feature-length films on every single continent. He completed that unique party trick with his 2007 Oscar-nominated documentary Encounters at the End of the World. I’m sure that if he could, he would make a movie in space. For now, however, his latest feature doc about the elements of space will have to suffice.

Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds begins in the terrestrial outback of Australia and ends in the shimmering blue plateaus of Antarctica with just about every other continent in between (he just can’t help himself). Herzog traces the history of meteorites with regular collaborator and first-time co-director Clive Oppenheimer...

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Back to the movies with "Tenet" and a "Personal History..."

by Eurocheese

I drove 100 miles (one way!) to see two movies last weekend. Was it worth it? Well… yes and no. Here’s my take on returning to theaters and my thoughts on the two films I went (way) out of my way to see: Tenet and The Personal History of David Copperfield.

First, the moviegoing experience itself...

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Review: Bill & Ted Face the Music

by Lynn Lee

Until a couple of weeks ago I had never seen any of the Bill & Ted movies, despite being a late Gen-Xer and longstanding fan of Keanu Reeves.  Now, having watched all three in a row, I can confirm most triumphantly that if you enjoyed the first two, you will have a bodacious time watching the third.  If you’re a Bill & Ted-curious newcomer, I recommend giving Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure a whirl first and seeing if you dig its vibe.  If not, the latest installment, Bill & Ted Face the Music, probably won’t do anything for you.

For me, getting a crash course in Bill & Ted three decades after their debut was a pleasantly surreal experience.  Not that they were total strangers to me; any adolescent with any exposure to pop culture in the ’90s had at least some familiarity with the amiably vacuous duo, their iconic SoCal-inflected catchphrases, and their penchant for spontaneous air guitar in response to anything that pleased them.  But seeing them in their original context felt like jumping into their rickety phone booth and traveling back to a more innocent time – for both me and them...

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