Joker, Reviewed: An Empty Beauty Full of Anxious Laughter

Please welcome new contributor Michael Frank...

by Michael Frank

The circus around Joker has been exhausting. It’s been a nonstop argument between every single person that posts a positive or negative review, causing friction between subgroups you didn’t even know existed. I admit I found myself having trouble separating the discourse from the film itself. I couldn’t forget the unfortunate interviews given by director Todd Phillips. When I sat in the packed-to-the-brim theater, my head was filled with expectations, anxiety, and the dozens of headlines, articles, and think-pieces I’ve read over the past few weeks. 

I’ve never seen a film provide so much discourse outside the screen, yet feel this empty and broken once it's playing in the confines of a theater. Joker is gorgeous, though, and unrelenting in its violence and instability, by way of both the titular character and its striking visuals...

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NYFF Review: Pain and Glory

by Murtada Elfadl

Salvador Mallo, the director and lead character in Pain and Glory, tells one of his actors that holding back tears in emotional scenes instead of crying makes actors better. Yet Pedro Almodóvar, who wrote and directed and based this film partially on his life, does not. He goes deep, he explores honestly and elicits a deeply emotional and cathartic reaction. 

In this thesis on his life and his work, he finds the generous space to include many of his collaborators in front and behind the camera. On screen we have Antonio Banderas as Mallo, Cecilia Roth, from All About My Mother (1999), appears as an actress from Mallo’s past who’s eager to work with him again. And most poignantly Peneope Cruz, his muse of many years and movies, plays a version of his mother...

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NYFF: Albert Serra's idea of "Liberté"

by Jason Adams

What better way to make a movie about sadomasochism than to inflict that relationship on the viewer? That seems to have been the grain of an idea that ignited Albert Serra to make Liberté, at least -- a fascinating nightmare slog that actively pokes you in the eye while also lulling you to sleep. I say all this with a sort of admiration! Perhaps I was brainwashed a bit by the time it was through but I certainly haven't been able to stop thinking about Liberté since I fell under its awful spell days ago, and that's got to count for something.

Somewhere in a patchy nighttime forest in 18th Century France an assemblage of powder-puffs, mostly men but with a couple of corseted ladies who keep caged up in their litter boxes -- the proper word is really "palanquin" but "litter box" will totally make sense once you've seen/suffered the movie -- have gathered to cavort. And cavort they shall, in the slowest of motions...

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NYFF: "The Irishman"

Jason Adams  reporting on the opening night of the New York Film Festival

A camera stalks through the hallways of what we typically call an Old Folks Home. Old Folks. Ever think about that phrase? Disarming in its literal folksiness -- it's in truth a place where the day breaks are taken to pick out caskets. So the camera tracks through the Old Folks Home like so many cameras have tracked through Martin Scorsese's so many movies -- through the nightclubs in Goodfellas and the trading rooms and offices in The Wolf of Wall Street, the muddy mountain sides of Silence. We have walked with this man's camera through space and time together and now here we are, all of us Old Folks, stalking one another down antiseptic corridors on shaky wheels.

The camera comes to rest on Robert De Niro, as it must. De Niro looks old -- older than the actor looks right now in real life, and older than his character Frank Sheeran will look for the majority of The Irishman thanks to the (occasionally spotty) state of the art technology that will pinken his cheeks and taut up his neck flesh as the tale he starts to tell us winds us back, way back in time...

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Doc Corner: 'Don't Be Nice'

By Glenn Dunks

Youthful enthusiasm can get you a long way and that is something that Don’t Be Nice has in spades. First-time director Max Powers injects his own vigour and excitement into this story of slam poets in preparation for the national championships (yes, they exist). He does this through captivating editing (he was formerly a documentary editor) and some well-used vignettes, styled after music videos. But ultimately the success of this debut comes down to its subjects - they all have a spark on camera as well as in their words and Powers gives them all the star treatment at some point across Don't Be Nice's zippy 95-minute runtime.

The doc's title comes from the idea that in slam poetry, one mustn’t be nice, but be necessary. Say what you mean and don’t lighten it up for those who don’t want to hear it...

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