Category Archives: New York Film Festival

It rained nonstop during our October trip to the 2015 New York Film Festival. Rather than seeming dreary, the weather heightened the coziness of Film Society of Lincoln Center’s series of theaters that hosted the festival. We hurried along the … Continue reading →

Miguel Gomes’s The Arabian Nights: Volume 3, The Enchanted One (Gomes 2015), like the collection it takes its name from, tells a shimmering frame tale of loosely interwoven stories. The heroine, Xerazade (Crista Alfaiate), who has been telling the King stories … Continue reading →

On a rainy night in October, in the small Francesca Beale Theatre at Lincoln Center, Cemetery of Splendour, the latest film from Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, guided its audience through an oneiric meditation on time, compassion, and nationalism. Set and … Continue reading →

Thomas Bidegain’s 2015 film Les Cowboys acts as a modern interpretation of John Ford’s The Searchers (1956), using an immigrant-populated and culturally shifting France as a backdrop, as opposed to the American West. At the center of Les Cowboys is … Continue reading →

In Alice Tully Hall, I got my first introduction to Robert Frank – photographer and documentarian, most noted for 1958’s The Americans, a photo book documenting subjects all over the US. Utterly unfamiliar with Frank’s work, I came into Laura … Continue reading →

Jacob Bernstein’s elegiac documentary Everything Is Copy (2015) made me want to call my mom. The director lovingly composed a film about his mother, the famous journalist, author, screenwriter, and director Nora Ephron. Copy chronicles Ephron’s life, starting with photographs … Continue reading →

Ernst Lubitsch’s Heaven Can Wait (1943) is, by all appearances, a stuffy period piece—a comedy of manners. Yet, to take the film at surface value misses the ways that Lubitsch gleefully pokes holes in the era’s overblown pomp. The film … Continue reading →

Rebecca Miller’s Maggie’s Plan (2015) seems designed to subvert the expected structure of a typical rom-com. At the beginning of the film, the eponymous protagonist (Greta Gerwig) decides to act on her desire to start a family by getting pregnant … Continue reading →

Michel Gondry’s intimate film Microbe & Gasoline (Microbe et Gasoil) tells the seemingly straightforward tale of Daniel (Ange Dargent)—nicknamed Microbe because of his unusually small frame—and Théo (Théophile Baquet)—called Gasoline based on his affinity for mechanics—two friends who bond, as … Continue reading →

My memories of New York hold light – the refraction of gold lamps in rain-slick glass doors, the flickering burn of taillights, the gentle halogen glow of the city as reflected by low-hanging clouds. I found the city easy to … Continue reading →