By [For the past month, we covered the 50th New York Film Festival, bringing you news, features, and reviews of some of the most anticipated films on the festival circuit in 2012. Check out all of our coverage here.]
Big film festivals can be something of a mixed bag. The variety of the films can be amazing, but there can also be some really terrible stuff mixed in. That’s true about every festival, but in a smaller fest it’s easy to just see everything, or almost everything. With the bigger ones, it’s a guessing game. If 50% of the main slate is bad, it’s possible to see 20 bad movies and 0 good ones.
But there were some films that Hubert and I just didn’t have time to see. Tomorrow we’ll be posting our big wrap up and awards post that will highlight what was good, bad, and everything in between. Unfortunately, most of the films found below won’t be making any appearances on that wrap-up. Some of them are bigger losses than others, but they’re all things we wish we’d seen.
Ever since seeing the original version of Funny Games about 10 years ago, Michael Haneke became a filmmaker I vowed to follow even if I didn’t necessarily enjoy his films. I realize that sounds like I don’t like them. I do, but they can be unpleasant, nihilistic experiences. Amour is his second Palme d’Or winner in a row following the masterful The White Ribbon, with previous Cannes honors for The Piano Teacher and Caché. And this one’s about geriatric love in the face of a stroke and impending death. Is it a kinder, gentler Haneke? Is it the ruthless Haneke dismantling a long-lived romance? Can love survive the heartless hand of Haneke? Did Amour deserve the Palme d’Or honor? I would have found out if I didn’t leave my stupid press badge at my apartment.
Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is a remarkable film and deserving of all the praise its received. I was really looking forward to seeing what Mungiu would do for a follow up. It turns out he’d look at friendships, God (or the absence of God), faith, and religion, and all of it inspired by an actual case of demonic possession in 2005 (obviously not actual). But life got in the way and I was unable to make it to the press screenings and public screenings during the festival. Since Beyond the Hills is Romania’s entry for the Best Foreign Film Oscar, at least I’ll be seeing it some time in the not-too-distant future. I just wish I’d seen it in the not-too-distant past while I still had a chance.
While I was a little lukewarm on director György Pàlfi’s Taxidermia, Final Cut – Ladies and Gentlemen sounded incredible. It’s a film made out of scenes from more than 450 other films — a mad movie mash-up, a narrative collage, a Frankenstein’s masterpiece. There’s even some kind of insane, coherent narrative that’s fashioned from all of the stitched-together bits. Anything sounded possible. Jackie Chan could flirt with Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart could kill Lee Van Cleef, Steve McQueen could eat eggs with Paul Newman. Even if it doesn’t quite cohere, this is the kind of fascinating conceit I’d at least appreciate for the pomo moxie. Wish I could have made the time.
One of the many things I did at the New York Film Festival that had nothing to do with Flixist was meet the French filmmaker Olivier Assayas. Being pretty ignorant of French cinema, I hadn’t even heard of Assayas, so I felt a bit awkward in his presence. It was part of a really awesome discussion, though, and I have made a point to see some of his older films (although I’ll probably skip Carlos for a while, because I don’t really have time to watch a miniseries). But the rest of the people who were there at the discussion with me universally praised Assayas for what he had made; some of them said it was the best of the festival. They weren’t necessarily people I agreed with, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t want to find out.
Hubert and Geoff both saw Holy Motors at various festivals, but I wasn’t able to fit it into my schedule. I know next to nothing about the film, and I had never heard of Leos Carax before NYFF (I seriously know nothing about French cinema). Why did I want to see it then? Because in that obnoxious NYFF trailer that played before every goddamn screening had one particularly cool looking moment from a movie I didn’t recognize. Then, when I was searching Holy Motors, I saw the above screencap, which looked beautifully familiar. The hype surrounding the film certainly affected my interest in it, but it was mostly the mo-cap dancing that did it for me. One of these days I’ll get to see it in motion and in full, but it seems like the kind of thing I should have seen on the big screen, preferably in the Walter Reade. C’est la vie.
Robert Zemeckis hasn’t made a live-action movie in over a decade. In 2000, he made Castaway, a film I really liked back when I saw it which was who knows how long ago. And then he made The Polar Express (which I have a soft spot in my heart for, creepy as it was), Beowulf (which I didn’t see but only heard bad things about), and A Christmas Carol (which I also liked). But while those films all showcased digital technology in some way or another, there was a lot left to be desired. For example, Denzel Washington. I really like Denzel Washington, and I’ve been looking forward to this film ever since he talked about it at a Safe House press junket. It sounded (and still sounds) like a pretty compelling character drama. But when I found out it was showing on Comic Con’s final day, and it was a 9 AM screening, I knew it was a lost cause.