Films etc.

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The New York Film Festival has grown a lot over the years. I started attending in 1977, the year I moved to the city, when the only venue was Alice Tully Hall (which remains the main venue to this day). At that time, it was possible to see everything being shown, if you were so inclined. This changed with the opening of the Walter Reade Theater in 1991, and then the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center in 2011, which has two screens,  plus an amphitheater for in-person events. These additional screens allow more films to be shown. Today it would be logistically impossible to see everything in any given year. An embarrassment of riches, so to speak.

By my count, this year’s festival included a total of seventy-four features plus thirty-two shorts. I managed to see seventeen features in the Main Slate, Spotlight, and Revivals categories. Not that many, perhaps, but I think they’re a good sampling that reflects the overall quality of the films shown.

I could be wrong, but it seemed that this year more films than usual were scheduled to open commercially in movie theaters shortly after their festival screenings, in some cases even before the festival ended. I’ve counted nineteen films that have either already opened in theaters or will between now and Christmas. Some of these will be streaming after short runs in theaters. This includes higher profile titles such as After the Hunt (Opening Night), Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere (Spotlight Centerpiece), and Is This Thing On? (Closing Night). When I was making my initial picks of films to see, if I knew which ones would open within the next couple months, I elected to wait rather than pay the higher ticket price. Though there’s something to be said for seeing a film at the festival with a festival audience, and being there for Q&As with filmmakers after the screenings. This feels different from seeing the films in a multiplex. Probably because it is different. In a way, having so many of the festival films available so soon somewhat undercuts the “exclusivity” of seeing them at the festival. I guess paying more for tickets and being lucky enough to get them before they sell out is part of that exclusivity. But not as much as it once was. I remember in earlier years when a lot of films (mostly foreign) were shown that if you didn’t see them at the festival, you might not be able to see them at all. Not everything got distributed in this country. Things change, right? I don’t know, maybe it’s more democratic now.

Following are notes on the films I saw, in the order I saw them.

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Saturday, September 27. Peter Hujar’s Day (Ira Sachs, director/co-writer).

Per the NYFF description: “Ira Sachs’s mesmerizing latest film is based on rediscovered transcripts from an unused 1974 interview by nonfiction writer Linda Rosenkrantz (Rebecca Hall), in which photographer Peter Hujar (Ben Whishaw) narrates the events of the previous day in minute detail…about a difficult shoot with Allen Ginsberg, a confusing visit from a Vogue editor, a call from Susan Sontag, financial and health worries—and set entirely in Rosenkrantz’s apartment, PETER HUJAR’S DAY vividly renders a unique and moving window on an evolving artist at a specific place and time.”

You might think that a film about two people in an apartment with one of them describing everything he did the previous day would be boring. This is anything but, thanks largely to Ben Wishaw, an actor who is immensely engaging and appealing. Multiplex audiences probably know him better as Q in the Daniel Craig Bond films.

Opens on November 7 at Film Forum and Film at Lincoln Center.

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Monday, September 29. A House of Dynamite (Kathryn Bigelow, director).

If the purpose of Kathryn Bigelow’s film is to scare the hell out of an audience, mission accomplished. An unidentified missile is detected coming over the Pacific from an unknown source, its trajectory indicating it will strike somewhere in the continental United States, most likely Chicago. Once this kicks off, it never lets up, as various governmental agencies race to figure out what’s going on, how to deal with it and how to respond. The film gets seconds away from point of impact at least twice, then rewinds to start the clock over in different locations and agencies. The cast is excellent. Not a lot of laughs. It’s especially unnerving, in light of our president’s plans to resume nuclear testing.

Opened at the Paris Theater on October 10, began streaming October 24 on Netflix.

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Monday, September 29. Blue Moon (Richard Linklater, director).

Per the NYFF description: A portrait of one crucial night in the melancholy life of legendary lyricist Lorenz Hart (played by Ethan Hawke, in a tour de force), Blue Moon is a surprising yet entirely fitting addition to the Richard Linklater canon.

Ethan Hawke radically transformed his appearance for this part. I found his look a little hard to get used to, but his performance is outstanding. Also excellent are Andrew Scott as Hart’s songwriting partner Richard Rogers, and Bobby Canavale as a bartender at Sardi’s, where the film is set over the course of one eventful, strung-out night.

Opened in New York City on October 17.

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Tuesday, September 30. Queen Kelly (1929 — Erich von Stroheim, Richard Boleslawski, directors).

This film was part of the Revivals section of the festival. I’d not seen it before, but was interested because of the history behind it. It’s Erich von Stroheim’s uncompleted final film, with Gloria Swanson starring. Their connection to Sunset Boulevard (1950) resonates. I doubt I could have been more disappointed. The acting seems absurd and overdone, even for the period. It’s crude and often incoherent, pasted together, though that may be partly because Von Stroheim wasn’t allowed to finish it. I guess I’m glad I saw it, so I can check that box, but got nothing from it. Though the poster below is pretty cool.

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Thursday, October 2. Days and Nights in the Forest (1970 — Satyajit Ray, director/writer).

Per IMDb: Four carefree, jaded middle-class bachelors from Calcutta head out for a holiday in the wilderness. Before long, each man undergoes their own journey of self-discovery.

I’d seen Satyajit Ray’s famed Apu Trilogy (1955-1959) and several of his other films. He was a major film director. This film was in the Festival’s Revivals section and I wanted to see it. The relationships between the four men and their personalities are quite engaging. I need to see more of his films.

Satyajit Ray

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Saturday, October 4. Mr. Scorsese (Rebecca Miller, director).

Well, hell, Martin Scorsese, right? Made as a five-part series for Apple TV, the festival was screening all five episodes together on Saturday, October 4. This would mean 4 hours and 45 minutes with one 30 minute break after the third episode. Initially, I didn’t plan to see it. The running time seemed a little daunting, and I could wait to stream it like a more rational person. But the thought of seeing it all in one go on a theater screen proved too tempting. These immersive experiences usually pay off. Rebecca Miller’s documentary is a pretty deep dive. Scorsese is always incredibly informative and entertaining when he speaks; he gets a lot of time here. Interviews, archival footage and home movies, plus an abundance of great clips from his many films are skillfully edited in a way that feels very lively. During the end credits of the final episode, a light came up in a box seat section on one side of the auditorium to reveal Rebecca Miller, Robert De Niro, and Martin Scorsese standing there. After spending nearly five hours with them onscreen, this felt like a real bonus, the cherry on top.

Currently streaming on Apple TV.

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Sunday, October 5. Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost (Ben Stiller, director).

This is great. Ben Stiller’s extremely personal documentary about his parents, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, their lives and careers. Stiller and Meara were a very successful comedy team in the 1960s and ’70s, kind of a rowdier Nichols and May. After his parents deaths – Anne in 2015 and Jerry in 2020 – Ben and his sister Amy began going through possessions in their apartment on Riverside Drive. Jerry had made hundreds of cassette recordings of the family and carefully labelled every one. These, plus home movies, letters, and much else, including interviews with their friends and colleagues, provided the material that Ben would use in putting the documentary together. I especially liked the interview with Christopher Walken. He’s funny and entertaining in that off-kilter way of his.

Opened on October 17 at the IFC Center, now streaming on Apple TV.

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Sunday, October 5. A Private Life (Rebecca Zlotowski, director/co-writer).

Per the NYFF description: Rebecca Zlotowski’s unpredictable and playful murder mystery stars an entrancing Jodie Foster, in her first French-language performance, as an American psychoanalyst in Paris whose tightly knit world begins to unravel after the sudden death of a patient.

Jodie Foster stars in this psychological murder mystery/thriller from French director Rebecca Zlotowski. Foster is fluent in French, so the fact that she speaks it in this film isn’t quite the big deal some people seem to think it is, though it takes some getting used to. I didn’t like the film, found it scattered, disconnected, increasingly illogical and almost farcical at times. Though it occurs to me now that I may have misread it. Seeing the film as a straightforward, realistic narrative, as I tried to do, doesn’t work. At least, not for me. Maybe it’s a satire, a comedy of sorts playing with genre elements. Or it’s something else. In any case, I missed it. That makes more sense, because there was too much talent involved for the film to be as off as I thought it was.

A Private Life has a strong cast, which includes Daniel Auteuil, Virginia Efire, Matthieu Amalric, Vincent Lacoste, Irene Jacob (blink and you’ll miss her), and Aurore Clement. In an odd bit of casting, the great documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman appears in a scene as “Dr. Goldstein.” I can’t remember why his character was there. Have to wonder how this came about.

Here’s a clip out of context that gives a sense of the visual approach.

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Wednesday, October 8. Resurrection (Bi Gan, director/writer).

Per the NYFF description: This phantasmagoric dream machine from visionary Chinese director Bi Gan is an elusive yet monumental love letter to a century of cinema, unfolding over five chapters that feature a dazzling array of styles and genres.

I loved this film, but am unable to describe it in a way that makes much sense. It’s a shapeshifting mashup of many different elements. I’d need to see it again, which I intend to do. Or maybe a dozen times, to get a better handle on what’s going on and how it all goes together. A few years ago I saw Bi Gan’s Long Days Journey into Night (nothing to do with Eugene O’Neill), which is similar to Resurrection in style and structure. I was drawn in and became quite disoriented, at one point not sure what theater I was in or what day it was. With both films I gave up trying to make sense of what was going on and just went with it.

Opens December 12 at Film at Lincoln Center.

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Wednesday, October 8. Cover-Up (Laura Poitras, Mark Obenhaus, directors).

Per the NYFF description: For the past six decades, Seymour Hersh has been at the front lines of political journalism in the United States. Hersh’s breakthrough reportage has brought to the public’s attention many of the most damning constitutional wrongdoings and cover-ups, from the My Lai massacre in South Vietnam to the CIA’s involvement in plots to assassinate foreign leaders to the Iraq invasion and systematic tortures at Abu Ghraib. In many cases, the revelations of his work have led to governmental reckonings and legal ramifications, yet Hersh, now 88 and surrounded by boxes of files from decades of tireless work, sees himself not as a crusader but as a citizen just doing his job.

Terrific documentary. Hersh is dedicated to getting at the truth of things. He’s relentless about that. Not a warm and fuzzy guy, he calls things as they are. In an excellent Q&A after the screening we saw, he was not hopeful about the current state of our democracy. This is an important film.

Opens December 19 at Film Forum.

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Thursday, October 9. Late Fame (Kent Jones, director).

Per the NYFF description: In Kent Jones’s marvelously witty second feature, a once-upon-a-time New York poet (Willem Dafoe) gets an ego boost when he is welcomed into the world of an emerging literary salon, but must reckon with the authenticity of his newfound circle of twentysomething admirers.

Very good film that concerns literary life in New York City and a poet (Willem Dafoe), who had some renown years back but stopped writing and has worked in the post office for the last thirty years. A group of aspiring writers might provide a second chance. Dafoe is, as always, excellent and authentic. The cast also features Greta Lee, who seems to be everywhere these days — Past Lives , Tron: Ares, A House of Dynamite, and The Morning Show. I really liked Jones’ previous feature, Diane (2018). His résumé includes film criticism, screenwriting, programmer, and directin. On top of that, he was director of the New York Film Festival from 2012-2019, which is when I was most aware of him.

No release date as yet.

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Thursday, October 9. Miroirs No. 3 (Christian Petzold, director/writer).

Per the NYFF description: Christian Petzold’s haunting, beautifully crafted new film stars Paula Beer as a pianist from Berlin who’s taken in by a mysterious woman in an isolated country house after surviving a violent car crash.

Petzold is an excellent director. Films of his I’ve seen and liked include Jerichow (2008), Barbara (2012), Phoenix (2014), Transit (2018), and Afire (2023). His films feature strong female characters, usually played by Nina Hoss or Paula Beer, and are not predictable; they reveal themselves slowly.

No release date as yet.

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Friday, October 10. No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook, director/co-writer).

Per the NFF description: In his diabolical new thriller, Park Chan-wook crafts a dark fable about the cutthroat nature of contemporary work culture, starring Lee Byung Hun as a husband and father who takes violent action after being laid off.

Didn’t care for  this, which was a disappointment for me, since I’ve liked his earlier films, especially his amazing Old Boy (2003). Just couldn’t hook into it. I suspect this was my problem, since it seemed like the audience at Alice Tully Hall loved it. I’ll mark this as one to see again.

To be released January 2026 in this country.

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Saturday, October 11. The Fence (Claire Denis, director/co-writer).

Per NYFF description: In Claire Denis’s absorbing and intimate film, set at a white-run construction site in West Africa, Albouny (Isaach de Bankolé) demands the return of his brother’s body, killed in a mysterious work accident, but the site’s foreman (Matt Dillon) is clearly hiding the truth.

Didn’t like this very much. It’s based on a stage play and feels like it. Isaach de Bankolé, a frequent presence in Denis’ films, is a very strong actor, but his role here is very static. It was interesting to see Matt Dillon in this. The film didn’t feel very real to me; it seemed stiff and guarded. I guess I prefer more naturalism in acting and filmmaking. Though not always, just depends.

No release date as yet.

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Saturday, October 11. Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier, director/co-writer).

Per the NYFF description: In Joachim Trier’s Cannes Grand Prix–winning follow-up to The Worst Person in the World, Renate Reinsve burrows to the steely core of an acclaimed stage actress reconnecting with her estranged movie director father (Stellan Skarsgård).

Loved it!!! Probably my favorite film of those I saw in this year’s festival. Stellan Skarsgård is especially good. With Elle Fanning as an American actress cast in the film Skarsgård is directing. Lots of deep feeling in this.

Opens November 7.

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Monday, October 13. Magellan (Lav Diaz, director/writer).

Per NYFF description: Every astonishing visual composition carries historical and political weight in the monumental new film from singular Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz (Norte, The End of History, NYFF51). Gael García Bernal brilliantly subordinates his stardom to Diaz’s discerning camera, disappearing into the role of the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, who, at the start of the 16th century, navigated a crew to Southeast Asia after convincing the Spanish crown to fund his journey. Rather than retell the mythical, received narratives of the Age of Discovery, Diaz mounts an impressive and absorbing story of colonial conquest and obsession, depicting Magellan’s charted course to the Malayan Archipelago as a pitiless reckoning with human frailty and brutal violence as much as an evocation of overwhelming natural beauty. A Janus Films release.

I had a very hard time with this film. I was expecting something more traditional, a more conventional narrative. My fault. I didn’t know the director’s previous work, so I didn’t know what I was in for and was unprepared. This is a style of filmmaking that seems to hold everything back — camera, actors, story. There are many scenes where apparently nothing is happening, and the camera will hold on that seemingly forever. I’m not saying this is bad, but it’s just not for me, not in this particular case anyway. I like the films of Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky, for example, films like Solaris (1972) or Stalker (1979), with their very measured (e.g.. slow) rhythms. But Magellan didn’t work for me. As someone once told me, “Sometimes you get on the ride, and sometimes you don’t.”

No release date as yet.

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Monday, October 13. The Last One for the Road (Francesco Sossai, director/co-writer).

Per NYFF description: Two best friends, who can never seem to make that “one last drink” truly the last, aimlessly if coolly navigate the absurdities of middle age in Italian director Francesco Sossai’s genial, wistful hangout movie. Aimlessly if coolly navigating the absurdities of middle age, Doriano (Pierpaolo Capovilla) and Carlo (Sergio Romano) make for delightful company in Italian director Francesco Sossai’s genial, wistful hangout movie. The two best friends, who can never seem to make that “one last drink” truly the last, imbibe and bicker and trade anecdotes as they traverse the Venetian countryside, befriending an anxious architecture student, Giulio (Filippo Scotti), who’s cramming for an upcoming design exam. Imparting their screwball wisdom to Giulio, and even roping the younger man into some of their half-baked capers

This film about two alcoholic friends and the young student they take hostage as they drift through a long night is very shaggy and quite wonderful. Reminded me of Withnail and I (1987), though more upbeat. This was a great film for Nancy and me to end the festival on. Below are two clips that will give you a sense of The Last One for the Road.

No release date as yet.

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I’ve since seen the following four festival films.

Anenome (Ronan Day-Lewis, director/co-writer). Co-written with Daniel Day-Lewis, who also stars in his son’s film in his return to screen acting after an eight-year “retirement.” Excellent film, very serious, reveals itself slowly, with a couple moments of almost magical realism.

Has opened in theaters here, but no longer seems to be showing, which is unfortunate.

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The Mastermind  (Kelly Reichardt, director/writer). Josh O’Connor as a hapless art thief in 1970, with Vietnam hanging heavy in the background. Typical of Reichardt’s alt-narrative approach, but I didn’t find it nearly as satisfying as Showing Up (2022), First Cow (2019), Wendy and Lucy (2008).

– Opened October 17 at Film at Lincoln Center. Currently showing.

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It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi, director/writer). Another excellent film from this Iranian director, it received the Palm d’Or at Cannes this year. He’s the real deal, continued to make films while officially forbidden to do so by his government. Great example of resistance and creation.

Opened October 15 at Film Forum and Film at Lincoln Center. Currently showing..

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Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere (Scott Cooper, director/writer).

Very good. Scott Cooper is a strong director. I love his first film, Crazy Heart (2009) and later Hostiles (2017). His being the director/writer here is what got me past my initial ambivalent feelings about this film when I first heard about it. Jeremy Alan White had the almost impossible job of recreating Bruce Springsteen, made more challenging by the fact that Bruce is still here. That it centers around the making of the Nebraska album was significant. I love that record. Knowing now that it came out of Springsteen’s deep depression at the time makes it more meaningful to me. I have some reservations, mainly about the fictional girlfriend, but the movie works much more than it doesn’t.

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That’s all for now. Next up in a few days is a selection of interviews, discussions, and Q&As from the festival. Stay tuned. Happy Halloween! — Ted Hicks

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This is a follow-up to the three previous installments of Selected Takes. In 1996, I started keeping a log of films I saw. Initially, I wrote notes for each film expressing my reaction to it, but eventually wrote less and less until I basically stopped sometime in 2001. Got lazy. I wrote these just for myself and had no thought or intention at the time that they might one day be released into the wild, so to speak. The films from 1999 in this post aren’t the only ones I saw that year, far from it, just those I wrote about and want to include here.

As before, when I mention a Sony or Loews theater, these are now AMC. Except for minor edits and a few notations, I’ve left these entries as they were originally, though I’ve added posters for a little color. Occasional present-day comments are in bold.

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1/16. IN DREAMS at Sony Lincoln Square. Neil Jordan movie with Annette Bening & Robert Downey Jr. Jordan makes the difference here with fairly standard genre material. Bening is very good, but the rest of the cast doesn’t really have much to do, at least as far as developed characters go. But Jordan creates a genuinely creepy feeling, though finally I think it’s probably less than meets the eye. The music was also quite effective.

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1/17. VIRUS at Loews 84th. Pretty bad. Lame rip-off of rip-offs of yet more rip-offs of ALIEN. Donald Sutherland is terrible. It’s kind of dismaying to see the kind of work he can do in a film like WITHOUT LIMITS and then see him in this. The movie does nothing for any of the rest of the cast, though Joanna Pacula is kind of cool.

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2/5. PAYBACK at Lowes 84th. Not very good. Certainly doesn’t compare well with John Boorman’s POINT BLANK (1967), which it’s a very loose remake of. Very grubby violence for a studio picture. Didn’t like the look of the film. Think the color was bleached out of the picture, which had a cold, steely monochromatic look, kind of dirty & oily. Of course, this was a deliberate effect, but it was too studied, or so extreme it drew attention to itself, or at least to me. Gibson is no Lee Marvin, not in this anyway. Boorman’s version is superior in every way. James Coburn was good, though.

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2/20. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND at Sony Lincoln Square. Not very good. Don’t think I’ve seen this since the initial release. The beginning and ending are impressive and effective, but was surprised how superficial and irritating and incomplete the rest of it seems. I found Richard Dreyfuss particularly irritating. Francois Truffaut was quite appealing, though. It all seems pretty dated now, including the special effects.

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3/6. LOCK, STOCK AND 2 SMOKING BARRELS at Sony Lincoln Square. Directed by Guy Ritchie. Pretty good in a post-Tarantino, Trainspotting kind of way. I didn’t really get to know or care about any of the characters, but enjoyed watching the whole thing play out. Great use of music.

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3/7. 8MM at Loews 84th Street. Directed by Joel Schumacher. Not very good, but Joaquin Phoenix jacks it up whenever he’s on. Otherwise it’s a very underlit movie with Nicolas Cage in a kind of monotone on a descent into a very dark place, but I didn’t believe it. James Gandolfini is good in his role. Pretty good music.

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3/13. THE CORRUPTOR at Loews 84th Street. Directed by James Foley, with Chow Yun-Fat & Mark Wahlberg. Slick, but not very involving. Ostensibly a Hong Kong-style action movie, it has aspirations to something more complex, more like a Sidney Lumet cop movie. The actor playing Henry Lee was quite effective. Didn’t seem to be grounded in any kind of reality. Lots of New York skylines and streets, but didn’t feel like we were actually in New York. Didn’t feel like these were real cops or FBI agents. The narrative moved along pretty clumsily.

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3/19. TRUE CRIME at Loews 84th Street. Disappointing Clint Eastwood film. It has many strong moments and sequences, but overall I just didn’t buy it, though not sure why. One thing is that Eastwood simply looks too old for this kind of role anymore. Same reaction to Paul Newman in TWILIGHT. The scene where Isaiah Washington’s daughter leaves him for the supposedly last time in his death row cell is truly powerful and got to me emotionally. The performances are all good, though the scenes with Eastwood and James Woods felt forced and somewhat false. The down-to-the-wire and beyond last minute rescue was unbelievable when you think about it, but the editing really cranked up the tension, though the outcome was hardly in much doubt. I’m always pulling for Clint’s movies, and I wanted to like this one more than I did.

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4/1. THE MATRIX at Lincoln Square. Pretty good. Had more emotional content than I expected, though still almost totally dependent on the amazing special effects to hold the interest. Something about it makes me want to see it again.

4/4. THE MATRIX at Lincoln Square. Felt a strong pull to see this again. Holds up very well the second time, and actually seems more substantial.

There have been three sequels. each one worse than the last. I still think the original is pretty great, but what the hell happened after that?

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4/24. URBAN GHOST STORY at Walter Reade. Directed by Geneviève Jolliffe. Pretty good. Sort of like if Ken Loach or Mike Leigh had made THE EXORCIST or POLTERGEIST. The supernatural genre trappings are kept in the background while the social milieu is the foreground. Not even sure at the end if there was anything supernatural going on or not.

4/25. PUSHING TIN at Ziegfeld. Directed by Mike Newell. Not very good, finally. Good performances by all, Cusack, Thornton, Angelina Jolie & Kate Blanchett. Cusack is particularly good when he blows up in the car when Jolie tells him she told her husband, Thornton, that she & Cusack had gone to bed together. Blanchett is terrific playing a Long Island housewife, but she doesn’t have much to do. It’s more sketchy than developed. The ending is pretty bad.

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5/1. THE WINSLOW BOY at Lincoln Plaza. Liked this, though it’s finally a little flat. I wanted a stronger climax or peak or something, something emotionally stronger. Seemingly strange material for David Mamet, but he handles it well, if very carefully. The performances were stellar, particularly Nigel Hawthorne and Jeremy Northam. One neat thing is that Mamet leaves the possibility that the kid did in fact steal the postal note.

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6/3. THE SOURCE at DGA Theater. Kind of a Cliff’s Notes approach to a history of the Beats, focusing mainly on the Ginsberg-Kerouac-Burroughs trinity. The readings, or performances, by John Turturro, Dennis Hopper, and to a lesser extent, Johnny Depp, were a real mistake, especially Turturro. But it was nice seeing the archival footage. Don’t think Chuck Workman was the right guy for this.

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6/12. ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW at Walter Reade. Had seen this once before, but quite awhile ago. Good fatalistic noir directed by Robert Wise. Robert Ryan is amazing, particularly in his bar room confrontation with the soldier (a very young Wayne Rogers). Harry Belafonte, Abraham Polansky & John Lewis (who did the music) were at Walter Reade for a panel discussion afterwards. Polansky was really quite annoying. Belafonte was very interesting, though a bit of a windbag.

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6/17. GRAND ILLUSION at DGA Theater. Great movie, hadn’t seen it for a long time. Restored print, newly translated subtitles. Got a strong rush at the end when the movie comes up when the German soldier tells the others not to shoot, that the escapees have crossed into Switzerland, and another soldier lowers his rifle and says they’re better off, and the music comes up very loud, then cut to long shot of Gabin & Dalio in the distance in the snow.

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6/19. STAR WARS: THE PHANTOM MENACE at Ziegfeld. Finally saw this and it’s not bad. Visually it’s really amazing, but I didn’t feel much for the characters, though Liam Neeson brought a real authority to his role. The kid, Jake Lloyd, was good sometimes, not good other times. Didn’t find Jar-Jar Binks to be quite the irritant a lot of other reviewers have, though he’s clearly there just for comic relief.  The light sabre duel between Neeson, McGregor & Darth Maul at the end was pretty good. But the movie is really just a really expensive installment, sets things up and now we wait 2 or 3 years for the next one.

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7/17. EYES WIDE SHUT at Sony Lincoln Square. Not sure what to make of this, which is a typical response for me to a first-time viewing of a new Kubrick film (though I think I was more sure of FULL METAL JACKET first time out). It has scenes & shots of incredible power, but kind of meanders about, and the ending left me kind of hanging; it felt abrupt. I’ll definitely see it again , and probably soon. Have to wonder how I’d feel about it if it’d been made by a director I didn’t know about; would I be harsher? Do I cut it more slack than it deserves just because it’s Kubrick? Probably. But as time as shown with his other films, his work is so dense & deliberate that one viewing can’t really do it justice.

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7/18. ARLINGTON ROAD at Sony Lincoln Square. Directed by Mark Pellington. Pretty damn good. Jeff Bridges was especially good, but he almost always is. Tim Robbins was also good, though his role doesn’t give him as much to do. The tension gets progressively cranked up until it peaks in the big finale, which seems like it’s going to be another down-to-the-wire rescue and bomb-defusing, but they surprised the hell out of me by going ahead and letting the bomb go off, killing Bridges and having him blamed as the solo perpetrator of the bombing in the coda. Similar to the ending of THE PARALLAX VIEW. Leaves you with a very paranoid feeling. I was quite surprised by how effective this movie was. Had been seeing trailers for months, wondering when it was going to be released. A 1-sheet in the theater lobby has “January 15th” at the bottom, indicating a much earlier planned release. Bridges was particularly good expressing the frustration and finally panic of a man out of his depth. It’s a Hitchcockian situation, actually, the premise of a man who begins to suspect his neighbor.

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7/22. VIOLENT COP at Cinema Village. Takeshi Kitano’s first film (1989) as director, I believe. Turns out I’d seen it before, but can’t remember when or where. His films have a very flat, deadpan style, which can be quite unsettling, given the content. No explanation for his character is offered at all, he just is.

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7/23. ILLUMINATA at DGA Theater. John Turturro directed & co-wrote. Sometimes jarring mixture of farce & realism. Thought I wouldn’t like it at first, but the realistic moments have a lot of power and it’s filled with great characters. As a friend said after the movie, the farcical scenes kept him from hooking more emotionally into the characters and the more serious aspects. Turturro was there for interview and q&a afterwards, which was nice. This kind of thing almost always enlarges my feelings about the film just seen.

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7/24. THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT at Loews 84th. Doesn’t work, but it’s interesting. Hard to explain the must-see atmosphere around this movie. Some very clever counter-marketing techniques at work, I think. The escalating bickering among the three protagonists held my interest the most. There’s some creepiness from the strange shit going on during the night, but the premise of the film, the way it was shot, limiting us to only what the fictional filmmakers shot on video & 16mm, prevents that from being exploited in a way I could latch onto more.

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7/25. SUMMER OF SAM at Sony Lincoln Square. Liked this more than I thought I would. Some very strong sequences, especially the two set to the Who’s “Baba O’Reilly” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” Spike Lee’s stuff is usually pretty overheated, but this time that worked more than it didn’t. Adrian Brody was really good.

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7/30. DEEP BLUE SEA at Loews 84th. Pretty good, in a simplistic action summer movie kind of way. Not much in the way of character development or story, but it’s all about doing a quick set-up at the beginning and then turning things loose. Samuel L. Jackson’s character’s demise is pretty jolting and quite effective. I also didn’t expect the female protagonist to buy it at the end. Then again, it’s not too credible that LL Cool J could’ve survived the shark-chomping he does near the end. But what the hell, none of it matters anyway. As a thrill-ride it’s a lot better than THE MUMMY. I had a good time and can’t complain.

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7/31. EYES WIDE SHUT at Sony Lincoln Square. Wanted to see how it played a second time, particularly after having just seen PATHS OF GLORY, STRANGELOVE, and BARRY LYNDON. Compared to something like BARRY LYNDON, which seems a massive achievement to me now, EYES is a much lessor work. I think it’s only intermittently successful. Cruise is basically kind of uninteresting in the film. Kidman is much better, particularly in the bedroom scene when they’ve been smoking pot, but when she’s drunk at the party dancing with that somewhat ridiculous Hungarian guy, she’s not very good at all. Cruise’s two visits to the costume shop are somewhat ineffective. The ending in the toy store is unsatisfying. Plus I really didn’t like the one-note piano music when it came in; found it really irritating, though occurs to me maybe it was supposed to be. Alan Cummings performance as the obviously gay, or at least extremely effeminate, hotel clerk, is over the top, and I have to wonder why Kubrick wanted that. Though it is kind of interesting how this scene and Cruise’s earlier encounter on the street with the drunken gay-bashing teenagers plays off the stories that have circulated that Tom Cruise is gay in “real” life. Also interesting how Cruise’s character is totally out of his depth, progressively so. Pollack’s “explanation” near the end calls into question Cruise’s entire experience. Actually, the movie gets more interesting the more I think about it, but it still seems like kind of a mess. Who knows, in 6 months it may seem like a masterpiece, or maybe just an interesting failure. Probably the least imaginative music score & use of existing music in a Kubrick film, with the exception of Chris Issak’s “Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing” over the mirror scene, which was great.

My efforts to see this again have failed every time, can’t seem to get past the first thirty minutes or so. Am I somehow failing Stanley by not giving the film more careful consideration? Don’t think so, but will take another run at it one of these days.

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8/1. LE BOUCHER & THE BEAST MUST DIE (aka This Man Must Die) at Walter Reade. Two more films in the Chabrol series. Had seen LE BOUCHER at least twice in Iowa City when it first came out and liked it a lot. It seemed like a much simpler story this time around, still very good, but would’ve liked a little more development plot-wise. Stephane Audran is really beautiful in this one. BEAST I’d seen once before. Of the two it’s probably the most complex. Jean Yanne’s character is almost too much of a bastard, but very entertaining, if that’s the right word.

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8/7. THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR at Sony Lincoln Square. I liked this a lot. Can’t really remember the Steve MacQueen version, but am sure this one is better. Brosnan and especially Rene Russo are very good. She’s the main character, really. A very strong character. Dennis Leary is good, too.

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8/7. THE IRON GIANT at Sony Lincoln Square. Thought this was great. Excellent animated feature directed by Brad Bird, set in 1957, lots of period details. The giant robot is terrific, a wonderful 50s design. Noticed one anachronism; a ‘59 Cadillac in the junkyard. Nice anti-gun message, nothing subtle about it.

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8/8. DICK at Sony Lincoln Square. Disappointing, not very good. I expected something edgier. Kirsten Dunst & Michelle Williams are pretty good, but it’s just not very clever. Will Farrell (who I generally dislike on SNL) and Bruce McCulloch (sp?) were pretty funny as clown versions of Woodward & Bernstein. Teri Garr was totally wasted.

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9/4. ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA at AMMI. The full version, hadn’t seen it in a long time. It’s very good, but starts to unravel about 2/3 or 3/4 of the way through. The ending is unsatisfying, kind of flat Plus there are unanswered questions about Max’s survival in 1933. How did he pull that off? Anyway, good to see it again.

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9/5. OUTSIDE PROVIDENCE at Sony Lincoln Square. Liked this a lot. The Farrelly Brothers & Michael Corrente wrote it and Corrente directed. What else has he directed? Left me with a good feeling. It’s first & foremost a comedy, but there are some serious issues addressed and not a lot of pat resolutions or everything tied up neatly by the end. Alec Baldwin is great as the father.

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9/17. STOP MAKING SENSE at Film Forum. Even better than I remembered. I had a strong emotional response to it and the music is truly wonderful. The Tom Tom Club number was out of place; didn’t like that at all. Jonathan Demme was in the audience with some kids, presumably his, watching the movie with the rest of us. Noticed him before it started and couldn’t get that out of my head; it added another layer or level to my experience. Talked with him for couple minutes afterward. He was very nice. Gave me a kick that apparently only a couple others in the audience had realized he was there.

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9/19. THE MUSE at Sony Lincoln Square. Pretty bad, but I was warned by the reviews, though I try not to pay attention to reviews, or rather, not read any until after I’ve seen a particular movie. Reading the negative takes on this one probably set me up to dislike it, but can’t imagine I wouldn’t have anyway. Many of the scenes play very flat. Overall it’s just not very funny or astute. As many characters in the movie say about Brooks’ screenwriter character ‘s work, it has no edge. His earlier films, especially MODERN ROMANCE and LIFE IN AMERICA were very sharp and had a lot of “edge”. Sharon Stone has her moments, but this isn’t any sort of comedic breakthrough for her by any means. The cameos by James Cameron and Martin Scorsese are basically pretty stupid.

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9/22. SUGAR TOWN at Loews 84th. Very good film about has-beens & second-stringers in the L.A. music scene. Allison Anders & Kurt Voss (who’s he?) co-directed.  Had a very nice feel to it, like the characters were decent people, except one or two. Have to find out more about the making of this movie, who the actors are (the ones I don’t know), etc.

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10/4. DOGMA at New York Film Festival. Didn’t much like this, though I wanted to and expected to. Felt like a lot of it just wasn’t funny and that the pacing was very flat at times. Matt Damon was very good, also Linda Fiorentino. A lot of people from the movie were at the screening before & after. Director Kevin Smith, who comes off as a very funny guy; Matt Damon; Ben Affleck, whose comments made him seem like a bit of a jerk; Chris Rock; Selma Hayek, who was wearing a great dress; Howard Shore, who did the score; Jason Mewes, who plays a rather annoying character that’s shown up in every Smith film so far, along with Smith himself playing Silent Bob. The Q&A was very entertaining.

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11/21. THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH at Loews 84th. Directed by Michael Apted. Not very good, but at least better than the previous Bond movie, TOMORROW NEVER DIES. Brosnan and Judi Dench are good as Bond & M, and I guess Sophis Marceau is good in her role, but Denise Richards is absurd, though not necessarily her fault. The movie looks and sounds good and big and expensive, but they just don’t feel like James Bond movies anymore. For me, GOLDENEYE was the last good one, also the first with Brosnan.

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11/24. RIDE WITH THE DEVIL at Sony Lincoln Square. Directed by Ang Lee. Liked this a lot. Especially liked that it didn’t end with the predictable violence you might have expected from the way things were set up. The movie doesn’t quite reach the level I think it could have, but I liked the tone and feeling of it.

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11/26. ONE WEEK, BIG BUSINESS, EASY STREET at Walter Reade. Keaton, Laurel & Hardy and Chaplin 2-reelers with live scores by Alloy Orchestra. Good, but not as great as I’d hoped. The Alloy Orchestra scores worked sometimes and not others. The Keaton was a little more primitive than I’d remembered, but still great.  This may be the first time he does the gag where a wall falls on him but he’s okay because and open window frame goes over where he’s standing. I think he does it in another 2-reeler before doing it big time in STEAMBOAT BILL JR with the whole front of a 2-story building falling over him.

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12/5. SWEET AND LOWDOWN at Lincoln Plaza. Liked it, the music was great, Samantha Morton was great and Sean Penn was well-cast as an obnoxious asshole.

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12/11. THE GREEN MILE at Sony Lincoln Square. Directed by Frank Darabont. Too long at 3 hrs. Cut to 2 hrs. I think it’d be much better, or maybe just shorter. There are good scenes, but also stuff that just doesn’t work on screen, i.e. John Coffey’s miracles. The botched electrocution is pretty wild, but goes way over the top. Also too many exploding lightbulbs throughout the movie. Darabont’s way to emphasize that something really unusual was taking place is to have a few lightbulbs burst in a shower of fx sparks either in the background or foreground. Tom Hanks is good, or as good as the role lets him be. Not sure what was the point of having him gain so much weight, especially in his face. The various “explanations” of what was happening, especially at the end in present day when the older Hanks character is explaining about Mr. Jangles etc in the shack, just aren’t very compelling or even that clear. Good performances all around, though.

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12/12. CRADLE WILL ROCK at Loews E-Walk. Written & directed by Tim Robbins. With a kind of Altmanesque interweaving of characters and story lines, the movie cranks up a fair head of steam by its climax. Takes a while to take hold for me, and most of the characters remain kind of 2-dimensional, though Cherry Jones as the WPA Theater head is extraordinary. Emily Watson is also very good; actually, all the performances are good.

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12/14. THE CIDER HOUSE RULES at DGA Theater. Liked it. Tobey McGuire is very appealing. Micheal Caine & Charlize Theron are good. Jane Alexander & Kathy Bates have rather limited roles, but they’re both good. Thought the incest business with Delroy Lindo and his daughter was too much weight for the movie to carry. Rose Rose could’ve been pregnant without the father actually being her father. Don’t know, it just seemed like too much to me. Liked it overall, though.

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12/18. MAGNOLIA at Sony Lincoln Square. Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Dazzling, but may be a case of “sound & fury signifying nothing”. Not really sure if it adds up to all that much, or if what’s actually going on justifies the length and style. Pretty powerful, though. Feels like it’s constantly building to a climax, which creates a lot of tension, because I’m always expecting things to explode. Reviews have made references to Altman & Scorsese, but what about the Coen Bros. as well? Strong scenes: John C. Riley at the black woman’s apartment; Julianne Moore blowing up at the pharmacy; the raining frogs.

Paul Th0mas Anderson has gone on to make serious, solid films, with great performances and texture. These include There Will Be Blood (2007), The Master (2012), Phantom Thread (2017), Licorice Pizza (2021). I’ll be seeing his just-released film, One Battle After Another, in a couple of days in 70mm IMAX.

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That does it for this one. See you next time. — Ted Hicks

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As with previous editions, this consists mainly of shots of actors and directors caught in off-camera moments during the making of a movie, sometimes off-set, at home and elsewhere. Some are candid while some are obviously posed for promotional purposes. I’ve indicated photographer credits when I know who took the shot.

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Martin Scorsese and Isabella Rossellini, 1981. They were married from 1979 to 1982. No explanation for the helmet.

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Rossellini was in a relationship with David Lynch from 1987 to 1991, as well as acting in Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986). The carefully composed photo below left was taken by Helmet Newton, while the shot at right seems candid.

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The photo of Rossellini below is something else. It almost like it’s from an earlier historical period. Doesn’t feel American. I don’t know who shot it or when.

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Sean Connery and director John Huston during the making of The Man Who Would Be King (1975). Photo by Kathy Fields.

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Noël Coward and Ernest Hemingway during the making of Our Man in Havana (1959), directed by Carol Reed. Coward acted in the film.

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Orson Welles directing Touch of Evil (1958). Photo by Sherman Clark.

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Milos Forman directing Jack Nicholson in a scene for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975).

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Humphrey Bogart and director Raoul Walsh while making High Sierra (1941).

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Two great directors: Akira Kurosawa and Satyajit Ray.

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Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly out of costume talking with director Fred Zinnemann on the set of High Noon (1952).

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The Mummy (1932). Below, Boris Karloff gets a light in what must be a colorized photo (taken by Fred Archer). Below that, the film’s director, Karl Freund, sets up a shot with Karloff.

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A young fan meets a mummy (probably Lon Chaney Jr., though could be Tom Tyler, depending on which film)  on the set of one of Universal’s mummy movies in their series in the 1940s.

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Julia Adams, off camera with the Gill Man (Ricou Browning) on a break from filming The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954). Browning was the Creature for all the underwater scenes. Ben Chapman donned the suit for scenes out of the water.

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Jupitor’s Darling (1955), with Esther Williams, directed by George Sidney. Apparently a sword & sandals epic set in ancient Rome.

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Jaws (1975). Photo by Louis Goldman.

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Director Don Siegel and Clint Eastwood on set, Escape from Alcatraz (1979).

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Director William Friedkin (left), Gene Hackman, and Fernando Rey on location for The French Connection (1971).

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Apocalypse Now (1979). Frederic Forrest, Martin Sheen, Francis Coppola. Photo by Steve Shapiro.

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Dennis Hopper, eyeing the camera, with Coppola on Apocalypse Now.

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Director John Huston, at left, wearing cap, and cinematographer Oswald Morris setting up a shot for Moby Dick (1956).

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Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, while making Cape Fear (1991), one of the rare misfires among Scorsese’s films, doesn’t compare well to the 1962 original. Robert Mitchum is much more effective and truly menacing in the Max Cady role, while De Niro is over the top and not at all credible. My opinion, of course.

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On set with Alien (1975). At top, tweaking the face-hugger while Tom Skerritt and others look on. Below that, Sigourney Weaver and Ian Holm between takes of beating each other up, followed by Skerritt and Veronica Cartwright just waiting. Finally, the xenomorph takes what looks like a much-needed break.

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Louis Calhern and Marlon Brando take a coffee break while shooting Julius Caesar (1953).

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Dean Martin and John Wayne cooking pasta during the making of The Sons of Katie Eder (1965).

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Paul Newman in Venice, 1963.

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Alain Delon with Monica Vitti

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Monica Vitti, 1956. Interesting reflection shot below this one.

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Alain Delon and Romy Schneider.

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Romy Schneider with son David.

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Four views of Sofia Coppola. The last one was photographed by Steven Meisel in 1992.

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Robert Redford and Max von Sydow while making Three Days of the Condor (1975).

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Director Robert Altman, on location for Vincent and Theo (1990).

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Alfred Hitchcock in Spain in 1958, promoting Vertigo at the San Sebastian Film Festival. Interesting shot, seems typical of Hitchcock, very droll.

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Director Stanley Donen, Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, doing PR for Indiscreet (1958).

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Stanley Kubrick’s daughter Vivian shooting a making-of documentary of Full Metal Jacket (1987). Below that, Kubrick talking with actor Vincent Donofrio during filming. Both photographs were taken by actor Matthew Modine.

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Director Wim Wenders, self-portrait 1975.

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Raging Bull, 1980. Deceptive shot. Appears the cameraman has just clocked the boxer with his camera. I know Scorsese likes realism, but that would be taking things a bit too far.

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Dynamic shot on location for Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto (2006).

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Jane Fonda, student at the Actors Studio, 1960. Photo by Paul Slade.

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Brigitte Bardot, don’t know the year.

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Tilda Swinton, 1980s.

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Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo, probably while making Breathless (1960). They appear to be genuinely relaxed.

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Seberg and David Niven while making Otto Preminger’s Bonjour Tristesse (1958).

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Great photo of John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands. I love this shot. Below that, in their editing room.

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Claudia Cardinale, while making Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (1968).

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Cast of Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter (1978). Christopher Walken, Robert De Niro, Chuck Aspegren, John Savage, John Cazelle. Photo by Greer Cavegnaro.

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Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990). Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, Paul Sorvino, Scorsese, Joe Pesci.

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Anna Magnani, reading a newspaper covering the  John F. Kennedy assssination, November 1963.

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Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman

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Alfred Hitchcock and Alma Reville on their wedding day, December 2, 1926.

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Jerry Lewis and Martin Scorsese, The King of Comedy (1982).

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Okay, that does it for this one. See you next time. — Ted Hicks

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As with previous editions, this consists mainly of shots of actors and directors caught in off-camera moments during the making of a movie, sometimes off-set, at home and elsewhere. Some are candid, some are obviously posed, and some are portraits. I think all of them are interesting. I’ve indicated  photographer credit when I know who took the shot.

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Val Kilmer

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SECOND-HAND SMOKE DEPARTMENT

Marlene Dietrich, photographed by Arnold Newman.

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Monica Vitti

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Jeanne Moreau, photo by Georges Dambier.

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Director John Waters

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Jean-Luc Godard, on the exhale.

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Carol Kane and Anna Magnani

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James Caan, taking a smoke break from being repeatedly shot full of holes at the toll booth in The Godfather (1972).

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John Ford and Jean Renoir

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Akira Kurosawa and Francis Ford Coppola, 1978

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Luis Buñuel and Billy Wilder

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Cary Grant and Alfred Hitchcock on the set of North by Northwest (1959). Unusual to see them both out of uniform, so to speak, especially Hitchcock, who’s always wearing a suit in photographs.

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Hitchcock on the sets of Rope (1948) and The Birds (1963).

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Peter Graves and his brother, James Arness, in uniform during World War II. Note the cast on Arness’ right foot.

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Robert Redford and Paul Newman while making Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). Newman’s daughter Nell is in the middle.

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Clint Eastwood on the set of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), apparently drinking a Coke.

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Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner literally on the beach while making On the Beach (1959).

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Christiane Harlan, Stanley Kubrick, and Kirk Douglas while making Paths of Glory (1957). Kubrick and Christiane were later married.

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Kirk Douglas, Jean Simmons, and Tony Curtis while making Spartacus (1960).

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Jean-Paul Belmondo and Sophia Loren taking a pizza break while shooting Vittorio De Sica’s Two Women (1960). Pizza!

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Serious Method actor Dustin Hoffman shows his respect for his Marathon Man (1976) co-star, Sir Laurence Olivier.

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Kim Novak and James Stewart on the set of Vertigo (1958).

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Hitchcock and Novak in the bedroom, Vertigo.

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Director Richard Lester discussing a shot with Buster Keaton while making A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966).

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Buster Keaton during the making of Our Hospitality (1923).

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From left, Luke Wilson (I think), director Wes Anderson, and Owen Wilson during the making of Anderson’s first feature, Bottle Rocket (1996).

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Sean Connery signs a coconut for a little girl  on the set of Dr. No (1962).

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Jacqueline Bisset on the set of Day for Night (1973), with director François Truffaut in the background.

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Hanna Schygulla

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Elsa Lancaster checking her look for Bride of Frankenstein (1935).

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Liza Minnelli, tweaking her makeup for Otto Preminger’s Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970).

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Marlon Brando, director Elia Kazan, Karl Malden, and Kim Hunter while making A Streetcar Named Desire (1951).

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Isabella Rossellini, David Lynch, and Federico Fellini.

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Isabella Rossellin on the set of Blue Velvet (1986).

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Director Bernardo Bertolucci with Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider during Last Tango in Paris (1972).

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PORTRAITS

Director Luchino Visconti, photo by Ugo Mulas

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Anthony Quinn, photographed by Terry O’Neill, 1971

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Isabelle Huppert, photographed by Sam Taylor-Johnson.

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Isabelle Adjani, photographed by Just Jaeckin, 1980.

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Ingrid Bergman, photographed by Yul Brynner.

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Marcello Mastroianni, photographed by Pierluigi Praturion.

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Buster Keaton photographed by Cecil Beaton, 1931. Keaton by Beaton.

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Claudia Cardinale, photographed by Gianni Ferrari in Spain, 1968.

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Billy Wilder, photographed by Richard Avedon.

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Two takes on French director Jacques Rivette. The second photo was taken by Martine Franck.

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On set with Taxi Driver (1976)

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Screenwriter Paul Schrader at left.

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Peter Boyle at right.

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Jodie Foster at left.

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Photo by Fred W. McDarrah

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Foster and De Niro on the street, woman at left is unidentified.

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DP John Alcott on Barry Lyndon (1975), maybe waiting for Kubrick.

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Stanley Kubrick on camera while directing Frank Silvera and Irene Kane for his second feature, Killer’s Kiss (1955).

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Fritz Lang directs. Check his outfit, even a monocle.

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Director Yasujiro Ozu at left.

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William Friedkin (dark glasses) directing The French Connection (1971).

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Jacqueline Gadson suits up for The Mysterious Island (1929).

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That’s probably enough for now. I’ll close out with 12-year-old Natalie Portman in her first feature film, Léon:The Professional (1994). See you next time. — Ted Hicks

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As with previous editions, this consists mainly of shots of actors and directors caught in off-camera moments during the making of a movie, sometimes off-set, at home and elsewhere. Some of these are candid and some are obviously posed, but more than a few are really special.

Like the one below, for starters.

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Here’s Jack!

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François Truffaut

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Louis Lumière (1948, the year of his death, if this date is accurate for the photo)

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Truffaut and  Jean-Pierre Léaud. I love this.

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Laura Harring, David Lynch, Naomi Watts. Probably a promotional photo for Mulholland Drive (2001). Beautiful lighting. They look great.

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Jean Seberg

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Anouk Aimée

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Sharon Tate

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Judy Garland relaxing on the set of The Wizard of Oz, unfazed by munchkins nearby.

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Maureen O’Sullivan while making Tarzan the Ape Man (1932) in a definitely pre-Code costume.

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Johnny Weismuller, the most famous movie Tarzan, seen here with his pal Cheetah and then later in life.

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Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh on their way to Hawaii, 1950. Photo by Eve Johnson.

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Steven Spielberg, Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw while making Jaws(1975). Harrison Ford and Spielberg on Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984). James Cameron directing Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio during Titanic (1997).

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Orson Welles & Rita Hayworth

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Mickey Rooney & Ava Gardner

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Charles Bronson,  Claudia Cardinale, & Jason Robards during the making of Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Bronson looking very cool.

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Director Werner Herzog wrangles rats for a scene while filming Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979).

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Klaus Kinski and Bruno Ganz in front of posters for their films Nosferatu the Vampyre and Knife in the Head (1978).

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Klaus Kinski with possibly a self-portrait, 1959.

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Kinski, with daughter Nastassja and future ex-wife Brigitte Ruth Tocki, in an undated photo.

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Ingmar Bergman directs Death in The Seventh Seal (1957).

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Bergman with Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann during Persona (1966).

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Bergman with young actor Bertil Guve while making Fanny and Alexander (1982).

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Bergman takes a rest.

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Two looks at Isabelle Huppert. The first in New York City, photographed by Leonard Freed. And then a stunning color portrait.

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Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock, checking things out.

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John Wayne plays chess on the set of Rio Bravo (1959) while cast members John Russell, Walter Brennan, Angie Dickinson (definitely not in costume), and Dean Martin pretend to look on. Just noticed Duke is sitting in Dean Martin’s chair.

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Jack Lemmon, Shirley McClaine, and director Billy Wilder laughing it up at lunch, probably while making The Apartment (1960).

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Ingrid Bergman in 1952 with twin daughters Isotta Ingrid Rossellini and Isabella Rossellini.

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Tough guy Steve McQueen

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Marlon Brando

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German actor Brigitte Helm (Maria in Metropolis – 1927).

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Experimental filmmaker Maya Deren

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Stanley Kubrick

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On the set of Cape Fear (1962). Lori Martin, who plays Gregory Peck’s daughter, with an unidentified boy on her lap, Robert Mitchum behind her. He looks threatening just standing there looking at the camera. Of course, his lethal performance as Max Cady makes it easy to project that onto him.

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Mitchum with director Charles Laughton during the making of The Night of the Hunter (1955).

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Stanley Kubrick with Steadicam operator Elizabeth Ziegler on his final film, Eyes Wide Shut (1999).

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Kubrick

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John Waters

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Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Day Lewis on the set of Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York (2002).

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Shooting Gort’s entrance in Robert Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), a film I loved then and still do.

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Alain Delon and Monica Vitti, photographed by Robert Frank, 1964.

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Monica Vitti

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Giuletta Massina

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Messina and Federico Fellini

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Rainer Werner Fassbinder through the years. He made a lot of films and put in some hard miles. Died in 1982 at age 37. Color photo by Helmut Newton, which says a lot.

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John Cassavetes

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Jean-Luc Godard

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Shelley Duvall, Sissy Spacek, and part of Robert Altman at an event for Altman’s 3 Women (1977).

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Monica Vitti and Michelangelo Antonioni at what might be the Paris premiere of L’Avventura (1960).

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Marilyn Monroe in a probably posed rooftop shot in New York City. Below that, a more interesting, seemingly off-guard, shot. There’s something sad about it.

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Agnès Varda

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Filming the changing room scene at Coney Island with Buster Keaton and Edward Brophy in The Cameraman (1928), the last great Keaton silent. Below this is a clip of the scene itself. It’s a hoot.

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That about does it for this one. See you next time. — Ted Hicks

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This is a follow-up to the two previous installments of Selected Takes. In 1996, I started keeping a record of films I saw. Initially, I wrote notes for each film expressing my reactions to them, but eventually wrote less and less until I basically stopped sometime in 2001. Got lazy. I wrote these just for myself and had no thought or intention at the time that they might one day be released into the wild, so to speak. The films from 1998 in this post aren’t the only ones I saw that year, far from it, just those I wrote about and want to include here.

As before, when I mention a Sony or Loews theater, these are now AMC. Except for minor edits and a few notations, I’ve left these entries as they were originally, though I’ve added posters and several clips..

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1/1. AFTERGLOW at the Regency. Another quirky film from Alan Rudolph, quirky in irritating ways. Very stylized dialogue, which bugged me. Lara Flynn Boyle’s performance was another problem. Nick Nolte and Julie Christie were pretty good, more grounded in reality. Thought the stuff about their daughter who’d left them 8 years before, and how that continued to hang over their heads, had the most power, especially when Nolte actually runs into her near the end, and then we see her show up at Nolte and Christie’s home at the very end. But the rest of it was very problematic for me, very uneven. Though I liked it more as it went on, not quite sure why.

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1/23. THE GINGERBREAD MAN at Lincoln Square. Pretty conventional film for Robert Altman. First hour or so is good, involving; then it gets frantic and unlikely. Kenneth Branagh is good, as is Robert Downey Jr. Robert Duvall is good in the courtroom scene. Didn’t even recognize Daryl Hannah. Forgot she was in it until I saw her name in the final credits roll. The continuous opening shot under the main credits is amazing. Turns out to be an aerial shot of country near Savannah, though takes a while for that to become clear. Something about it is just magical. It’s hard to describe the effect. Thought first it might be a shot of a model landscape, then when the road and car appears was surprised that it was at a much lower altitude than I thought. Overall, though, the film shows very little of Altman’s stamp.

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1/28. DON’T LOOK BACK at Film Forum. Hadn’t seen this for quite a while. Glad I caught it again. Really fascinating seeing Dylan at this period (England tour 1965) of his life and career. This movie will always be memorable for me as the first time I heard the word “fuck” in a motion picture when I first saw it at the Surf Theater in San Francisco, 1967 or ’68. That really startled me, made me a little nervous.  There were certain scenes I’d remembered, such as Dylan and the guy from Time, Dylan and the science student, Dylan blowing Donovan away with “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” after Donovan had sung a song. But I’d forgotten a lot of the other stuff. Quite a time capsule.

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1/30. ZERO EFFECT at Lincoln Square. Really liked this. First feature written and directed by Lawrence Kasden’s 22 yr. old son Jake. Stars Bill Pullman as the “world’s greatest living detective.” Also Ben Stiller and Ryan O’Neal. Some of the stuff doesn’t work. The convoluted instructions O’Neal is given for delivering the blackmail money are simply not credible; nobody could set it up to work out like that. Some of Pullman’s eccentricities, such as writing and badly performing songs, are more distracting, or just oddball, than anything else. Kim Dickens plays the blackmailer Pullman falls in love with. Not aware of seeing her before, but I liked her (especially liked her later in the HBO series Deadwood and Treme). Angie Featherstone, who seems to be turning up everywhere, has a nothing role as Stiller’s girlfriend. Weird to remember seeing her around the Upper West Side.

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2/5. PHANTOM LADY (Robert Siodmak) and BLACK ANGEL (Roy William Neill) at Film Forum. Two film noirs I hadn’t seen, or thought I hadn’t, though started to feel like I had seen BLACK ANGEL when the scene shifted to Lorre’s nightclub. Anyway, both are pretty good, if unexceptional, examples of ’40s noir. Similar situations of someone who’s innocent convicted to death for a murder he didn’t commit, and the efforts of others to prove the person’s innocence before he’s executed. PHANTOM LADY is probably the better of the two, though I really like Dan Dureya in BLACK ANGEL.

Elisha Cook’s frenzied drum solo in the jazz club in Phantom Lady really jacks the energy level. Here’s the scene.

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2/7. FOUR DAYS IN SEPTEMBER at Lincoln Plaza. Brazilian film directed by Bruno Barreto. Not sure what else this guy has made, though the name seems familiar. I basically liked this, particularly the relatively low-key tone, though got to admit I wanted something a little “bigger” at the end. I don’t remember when these events happened; of course, I was in Thailand at the time and out of it, so it’s no surprise. And there were a lot of things like this going on during the late 60s and into the 70s. Alan Arkin plays an American Ambassador in Rio who’s kidnapped by a militant group protesting the military dictatorship then in power. Interesting to see Caroline Kava playing his wife. And Fisher Stevens with about two minutes of screen time and three or four lines of dialogue. Wonder what happened there? The film’s focus is on the kidnappers, a group of student-types kind of out of their depth, except for two older men who come in to run the kidnapping. The most character development is with one intellectual guy, a writer and speaker, who’s a bit clumsy with guns etc. Turns out this guy wrote the book the movie is based on, so makes sense he gets more attention. Some scenes with a member of the secret police don’t work as well. Would’ve needed more development. Also, some of the movie seems a little underproduced, but it’s pretty effective for the most part. There’s a sort of DAY OF THE JACKAL approach that clashes a bit with the more political aspects. Arkin is very good.

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2/13. SPHERE at Lincoln Square. Just awful. Can’t see how it could be any worse. Completely incoherent and half-baked from top to bottom. How could a “serious” actor like Dustin Hoffman have gotten into this; what could he have seen at the outset that made him feel like this was something worth doing? Maybe the paycheck was enough. I was pretty staggered by how inept the whole thing was.

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2/14. MA VIE EN ROSE at Lincoln Plaza. Liked this a lot. It’s been around since Christmas, but have put off seeing it. The actor who plays the 7 year old boy with the gender issue is quite a presence. Found myself attracted to the character as a girl rather than as a boy. Interesting. The parents are really great characters. There’s a scene I particularly liked when Ludovic, the boy, goes outside to find his father, who’s stormed off in anger, but has calmed down a bit now, and Ludovic silently takes his father’s hand and they walk together back inside. Totally wordless scene, very powerful and emotional, it touched something in me.

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2/22. SHOCK CORRIDOR at Film Forum. This Samuel Fuller film seemed very disappointing to me today. Have seen it before and remember liking it more then. Most of his movies are pretty overheated, but this one is just too hysterical. Some pretty good moments, but some irritating ones too. Overall I think it makes a better premise than it does a movie, or at least the one he made. I much prefer NAKED KISS and the war films. Still, Fuller wasn’t afraid to take things to extremes, which I like.

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2/23. PALMETTO at Loew’s 84th Street. Pretty bad. Doesn’t do much with the rather over-done neo-noir femme fatale fucks over not-too-smart guy premise. Elizabeth Shue, Chloë Sevigny, and Gina Gerson are good here, but the movie just doesn’t fly. By the time Woody Harrelson is recruited to be the DA department’s press liaison, it’s all pretty much out the window. Volker Schlondorff has done much, much better.

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2/28. DARK CITY at Loew’s 84th. Kind of evaporates after seeing it, but I liked it. Very striking stuff. Reminiscent of the BRAZIL landscape in a way. Rufus Sewell was good as the protagonist. Has a very comic book look, like some European comics I’ve seen, also Mr. X and the Radiant City scene. Impresses with images more than logic. I thought there would be more twists and turns, though. The bits and pieces of explanations we get along the way are never revealed to be something else, so it’s pretty straight forward about what’s “really” going on.

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3/6. TWILIGHT at multiplex in Burbank, California. Not very good. Too bad, because this has a lot of good people involved; Newman, Hackman, Sarandon, James Garner, Robert Benton. Was kind of shocked at how old Newman looks. Doesn’t even sound like himself much of the time. The noir story isn’t very interesting, so we’re really left with the characters and the mood, which don’t deliver as strongly as they should. Elmer Bernstein’s score is pretty good. It’s just that this has been done much better. Occurs to me that it lacks energy. Everybody seems so tired and the film feels tired. But I wanted to like it.

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3/7. THE BIG LEBOWSKI at multiplex in Burbank. Well, it’s no FARGO, that’s for sure. Didn’t think it was very good while watching it, but not so sure now. From some other filmmakers I’d probably say it’s a mess, but with the Coens I’m not sure. I think the messiness is a deliberate part of the style, but the movie seems so scattershot. Jeff Bridges is good. By the end, he & John Goodman have become a kind of Laurel & Hardy. But what the hell is David Thewlis doing here, what’s the point? Liked Julianne Moore, though she was one in a series of very off the wall characters. Bridges’ character was the one most grounded in “reality,” with the most recognizable reactions to what’s going on around him. There’s an overload of funny stuff and bizarreness, but it doesn’t add up.

Subsequent viewings showed me how off the mark my initial reaction was. I think I was hoping for another Fargo, but expectations often lead to disappointment. I love it now. John Goodman’s frequent eruptions are especially great.

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4/10. LITTLE DIETER NEEDS TO FLY at Film Forum. Good Werner Herzog documentary about German-born Dieter Dengler who saw his first airplanes when Allied fighters strafed his village during WWII. Became a Navy pilot who got shot down on his first mission over Vietnam, spent 6 months as a POW, then made a miraculous escape. Amazing story. Dengler tells most of it to the camera, with Herzog coming in occasionally on narration. I really liked Dengler.

In 2006, Herzog made a narrative feature film, Rescue Dawn, based on these events, with Christian Bale as Dieter Dengler.

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4/11. CITY OF ANGELS at Sony Lincoln Square. Okay remake of Wim Wenders’ great WINGS OF DESIRE. Nicolas Cage & Meg Ryan give good performances. Dennis Franz is also very good. The ending is fucked.

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4/24. AFFLICTION at  Avignon/NY Film Fest. Just great. Paul Schrader’s adaptation of Russell Banks’ novel. Nick Nolte and James Coburn give awesome performances. As much as anything else it’s about the violence and dysfunction of a father passed down to his son. Mounting sense of impending doom; you know this isn’t going to turn out happy. The music is low-key, creates a disturbing, uneasy feeling. Sissy Spacek is very good as Nolte’s girlfriend. Willem Dafoe seems a little wasted as Nolte’s brother, the one who got away, surviving his father’s violence by becoming “careful” (as his character puts it) and ultimately ineffectual, I think. Actually, it’s not that he’s wasted; he just doesn’t have much screen time, though he does narrate the film (beginning, end, several places in between). This movie seem to be right in every detail.

James Coburn is especially great in this. Check this scene for proof of that.

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6/20. THE X-FILES at the Ziegfeld. Since this was playing at the Ziegfeld, I made the extra effort to see it there, even though I don’t like their new reserved seat policy. Got there at 10am with idea of getting ticket for later in the day, or maybe for right then. Decided to to go for the 10am show, then was pleased to find out they weren’t doing the reserved seat deal for the morning show, so where I sat was totally my choice. Liked the movie. It was like a big episode, which is pretty much what I expected. Didn’t think some of John Neville’s “explanation” dialogue played very well, but what the hell. Will be curious to see how successful the movie is for people who don’t follow the TV series. I wish Mitch Pileggi had had more to do. The short, sudden appearance of the Lone Gunmen will be meaningless to people who haven’t seen them on the show. It wasn’t great, didn’t transcend itself, but  wasn’t a disappointment by a long shot. The explosion at the building in Dallas and Mulder & Scully trying to outrun the snow-covered ground caving in in Antarctica were amazing sequences.

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7/2. ARMAGEDDON at Loews 84th Street. Pretty bad. Actually, very bad. Makes DEEP IMPACT seem like something out of Chekhov.

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7/11. BUFFALO 66 at Lincoln Plaza. Excruciating, irritating in the extreme, very difficult to watch, thought of walking out several times. Christina Ricci is good, but I really didn’t like this movie. Didn’t believe one minute of it. Based on this, Vincent Gallo has no talent for making movies, other than to act in other people’s. Ben Gazzara’s and Anjelica Huston’s performances are just awful, which I blame on the direction and the script, since they’re both otherwise terrific actors.

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7/25. SAVING PRIVATE RYAN at Sony Lincoln Square. Great. The combat sequences are amazing, intense and frightening. A sense of being on the brink of death is strongly conveyed.  There’s a kind of calvary-to-the-rescue aspect to the fighter planes hitting the village just as the Germans are about to take the bridge, but so what. Plus I kind of wish the grown up Ryan hadn’t saluted Hanks’ grave marker at the end. But the whole thing is such an overwhelming experience, these are small objections.

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8/15. GADJO DILO at Lincoln Plaza. Boy, this was great! Third in a gypsy trilogy directed by Tony Gatlif. First one was LATCHO DROM, which I’ve heard of, but not seen. I was really with this up to the point when Adriani, Izador’s son, returns from prison, after which the movie takes a turn I don’t quite get, or like. Seems like all of a sudden there’s this whole other thing going on, and I don’t know how it fits in. Maybe I missed something. When Adriani kills the guy in the bar, then is chased back to his village and burned to death, I don’t know what to make of it. Also don’t know why Stephane smashes and buries the music cassette tapes & notes he’s made of gypsy music during the movie . But at least Sabina is with him in the car. Rona Hartner, the actress who plays Sabina is amazing, or at least the character is amazing. Very very sexual presence in a kind of animal way, very sensual way. The sequence when they go to a nightclub in Bucharest is just wonderful.

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9/25. CELEBRITY at NYFF. Opening night of the New York Film Festival, new Woody Allen movie. Thought it was terrible, except Leonardo DiCaprio and Charlize Theron, who were great. Kenneth Branagh plays the Woody Allen character and does an imitation of Allen’s vocal & physical mannerisms that’s really irritating. Just doesn’t work. Nothing in the movie seems to come together at all. This is an inexplicable misfire. He shot it in black & white for no apparent reason I can think of. Oddly enough, the lab credit at the end lists “Color by Du Art.” Strange. Judy Davis is pretty good, also Joe Mantegna, but Branagh is seriously miscast, given the way his character is written and directed.

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11/28. CITIZEN KANE at UA 14. Nice to see this in a new theater. Pretty good print, too. The ending always gets me, the sled burning in the flames with Hermann’s music swelling up. Like the door closing on John Wayne at the end of THE SEARCHERS.

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12/24. THE THIN RED LINE at Ziegfeld. Great, weird, abstract, sad, intense. Not sure quite what to make of it. There’s almost no real story, very little characterization, more mood than plot, but it’s nevertheless very compelling.

I love this film. After multiple viewings over the years, I’m still not quite sure what to make of it. What I am sure of is that it’s some kind of great film that’s had its hooks in me all this time. It has an ethereal quality, and seems to take place in a space apart from the physical world. Feels like you’re in the presence of something you can’t pin down.

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Going over this list I’m struck by how many of these films you don’t hear about, or even remember, such as Zero Effect, Four Days in September, Sphere, City of Angels, Buffalo 66, and Celebrity. I mean, Palmetto? They aren’t revived or written about, mostly for obvious reasons, but not always.

There are other films I saw in 1998 that I didn’t write about, but wish I had. These include The Spanish Prisoner (David Mamet, director & writer), The Butcher Boy (Neil Jordan, director & co-writer), Ronin (John Frankenheimer, director), My Name Is Joe (Ken Loach, director), Rushmore (Wes Anderson, director & co-writer), and The Siege (Edward Zwick, director & co-writer). These are good films, but you’d have to go looking for them, because as far as I know, they don’t get revived or talked about. Maybe someday.

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Okay, that does it for this one. See you next time. — Ted Hicks

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As with previous editions, this consists mainly of shots of actors and directors caught in off-camera moments during the making of a movie, sometimes off-set, at home and elsewhere. Some of these are candid and some are obviously posed, but I think they’re all of interest.

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David Lynch and Harry Dean Stanton. The bucket is an intriguing detail.

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Harry Dean Stanton, looking a little less beat, with Nastassja Kinski and Wim Wenders on Paris, Texas (1984).

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François Truffaut with daughter Eva, 1962. Followed by Marcello Mastroianni with daughter Chiara, Julie Andrews with daughter Emma, and Jerry Stiller with son Ben, 1978, then Martin Scorsese, presumably with himself.

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Jean Seberg. followed by Isabella Rossillini walking a dog.

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Kubrick, Welles, Truffaut

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Sophia Loren, Yvonne De Carlo, and Gina Lollobrigida at the Berlin Film Festival in 1954. Whew!

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Frank Sinatra mobbed by fans in the 1940s.

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Monica Vitti, Stanley Kubrick, and Jean-Luc Godard

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George Lucas and Martin Scorsese in 1977, followed by Robert De Niro and Sergio Leone, Leone and Michelangelo Antonioni, followed by Fellini, Giuletta Masina, and Leone.

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John Cassavetes playing ping pong with Roman Polanski. I wonder who was on the other side of the table.

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Polanski

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Michelangelo Antonioni

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Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Omar Sharif with director David Lean, followed by Peter O’Toole.

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Russian director Sergei Eisenstein

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Werner Herzog with parrot while making Fitzcarraldo (1982).

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Jodie Foster and Robert De Niro in Cannes with Taxi Driver in 1976.

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De Niro, Cybill Shepherd, and Martin Scorsese while making Taxi Driver.

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Fellini

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Monica Vitti

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Anna Magnani, Rome 1947

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Anna Magnani and Anthony Quinn

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Magnani with Joan Crawford

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Truffaut going over a script with Catherine Deneuve (1969). Below that on the set of Bed and Board (1970), and then hanging on the outside of a train for an unidentified film.

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Akira Kurosawa with actor Chishū Ryū while making Dreams (1990), which also featured Martin Scorsese as Vincent Van Gogh.

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Kurosawa with Federico Fellini, below that with Francis Ford Coppola.

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I love this shot. Carolyn Jones in 1956, probably best known as Morticia Adams in The Addams Family TV sit-com (1964-1966), she also appeared in The Big Heat (1953), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).

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Catherine Deneuve being styled by Agnès Varda.

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Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman

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Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina on their wedding day in 1961. I like the unidentified little girl also in the shot.

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Stanley Kubrick and wife Christiane

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David Lynch and Isabella Rossellini

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Bernardo Bertolucci, and below, less brooding, with Marlon Brando.

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Errol Flynn, looking impossibly cool.

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Marcello!

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This is probably more than enough for now. See you next time. — Ted Hicks

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How to Come Alive with Noman Mailer — Q&A (12:30)

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Thelma Schoonmaker interview re Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger (22:54)

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Soundtrack to a Coup D’Etat — AFI interview with director Johan Grimonprez (12:14)

Inside the Arthouse interview with Johan Grimonprez (47:32)

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Steve! (Martin): A Documentary in 2 Pieces — Interview with director Morgan Neville & Steve Martin (9:00)

Interview with Morgan Neville (24:28)

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Black Box Diaries — BFI interview with director Shiori Ito (18:52)

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No Other Land — New York Film Festival Q&A (17:25)

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Porcelain War — Sundance Asia Q&A with co-director Brendan Bellomo  (12:31)

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That’s all for now. See you next time. — Ted Hicks

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For his post, I originally intended to list only films I’d actually seen, which are the first eleven title below.  Normally I’d say that’s how you ought to do it, but when I started reading up about some of the ones I hadn’t seen for whatever reasons, I felt I the need to include them as additional titles. Those five films are at the end of this post. I plan to see the ones available for streaming, but for now I’ve just got my fingers crossed that they’re as good as I’ve heard. I’m sure there are many other docs from last year that I don’t even know about. Well, what can you do?

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Eno (Gary Hustwit, director)  Brian Eno is a genius, musically and otherwise. If you read his interviews or listen to him speak,  you know his brain is wired up in ways that elude most of us. This film is unique, a “generative” documentary that changes each time it’s shown. I don’t understand how it works, but it does. I saw it at Film Forum three times on separate days. Some scenes didn’t change, but enough did to keep it interesting. I don’t know how they’ll handle a streaming or home video version. Seems like they’ll have to pick one version out of the near infinity of possible combinations. But to the extent that any iteration let’s you inside Eno’s head, it will be interesting. The two trailers below are different enough that I think it’s worth seeing both.

Not yet available for streaming.

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Film Geek (Richard Shepard, director & writer)  This deep dive into Richard Shepard’s life as a hopeless film geek growing up in New York City’s movie houses in the 1980s is a real trip and a treat for fellow film geeks such as myself. His belief that Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill (1980) is a great film is inexplicable to me, but other than that, I was with him all the way. This is a very personal account. The way he describes his relationship with his rather shady father is quite moving at times.

Not yet available for streaming.

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How to Come Alive with Norman Mailer (Jeff Zimbalist, director & co-writer)  Excellent study of the controversial, larger-than-life author who, like Ernest Hemingway, was a personality in his own right. An often brilliant writer, Mailer had a take-no-prisoners approach in his public life. He could be appalling and charming, often at the same time. He wanted to be taken seriously, yet often played the clown. This film gives us examples of all this, while becoming quite moving by the end.

Available for streaming on Prime.

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Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger (David Hinton, director)  Excellent documentary about the great filmmaking team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, narrated by the always enthusiastic Martin Scorsese. This is an excellent account of their lives and films. I learned a lot. One of the best things about it is that it makes you want to see these films again.

Available for streaming on Prime.

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Merchant Ivory (Stephen Soucy, director & co-writer)  This would make a great double feature with Made in England. As with Powell and Pressburger, we learn a great deal about James Ivory and Ismail Merchant, and the 44 films they made together from 1961 until Merchant’s death in 2005. It makes me want to see their films again, too, included the many I hadn’t been aware of.

Available for streaming on Prime.

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On the Adamant (Nicolas Philibert, director & co-writer)

Edited from Jordan Mintzer’s review in The Hollywood Reporter:

“The observant documentaries of Nicolas Philibert often focus on either a single character or location — the latter usually a French public institution — exploring them with painstaking detail and plenty of compassion.

“For his eleventh feature, On the Adamant (Sur l’Adamant), the 72-year-old filmmaker spent months aboard a barge anchored on the Seine in Paris, chronicling a mental health care facility that caters specifically to its patients’ creative needs. What emerges is not only a depiction of psychiatric treatment administered with plenty of warmth and enthusiasm, but a portrait of several individuals who, despite their noticeable disabilities, are capable of producing original and moving works of art.

“Like Frederick Wiseman, Philibert never provides voiceover or explanatory titles in his movies, and rarely do they feature interviews (though his latest includes a few talks with patients). They are more like discreet immersive experiences, and therefore the opposite of the shock-and-awe docs currently popular on Netflix and other streamers.”

Available for streaming on Kino Film Collection and rental on Prime.

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Soundtrack to a Coup D’Etat (Johan Grimonprrez, director & writer)  This is my pick for the best documentary of those I saw last year. It’s a history lesson that plays like a jam session. The ideas and detail ricochet off the screen. You’ve got to pay attention.  I’ve included as many quotes as I have because I hope to at least partially suggest the importance and depth of this film, and give you a sense of it. Don’t be mistaken, this is not a music documentary, though the music here is wonderful.

Oscar nomination for Best Documentary.

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Per the IMDb description: “Jazz and decolonization are entwined in this historical rollercoaster that rewrites the Cold War episode that led musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach to crash the UN Security Council in protest against the murder of Patrice Lumumba.”

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Per Alissa Wilkinson, New York Times: “In making Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, the director Johan Grimonprez used every instrument cinema affords. His documentary is rhythmic and propulsive, with reverberating sound and images juxtaposed against one another to lend more meaning. The result, in a word, is marvelous.”

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PerWikipedia: “To retain control over the riches of what used to be the Belgian Cong, King Baudouin of Belgium finds an ally in the Eisenhower administration, which fears losing access to one of the world’s biggest known reserves of uranium, a metal vital for the creation of atomic bombs. Congo-Léopoldville takes center stage to both the Cold War and the scheme for control of the UN. The US State Department swings into action: jazz ambassador Louis Armstrong is dispatched to win the hearts and minds of Africa. Unwittingly, Armstrong becomes a smokescreen to divert attention from Africa’s first post-colonial coup, leading to the assassination of Congo’s first democratically elected leader. Malcolm X stands up in open support of Lumumba and his efforts to create a United States of Africa while also reframing the freedom struggle of African Americans as one not for civil rights but for human rights, aiming to bring his case before the UN.

“As Black jazz ambassadors are performing unaware amidst covert CIA operatives, the likes of Armstrong, Nina Simone, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, and Melba Liston face a painful dilemma: how to represent a country where segregation is still the law of the land.”

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Per Phil Concannon, Little White Lies: “To make moves in Africa, the Americans needed a smokescreen, and the most fascinating strand of Grimonprez’s film shows how many of the greatest jazz musicians of the era – Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Nina Simone, et al – were often used as unwitting stooges in CIA operations. …This musical angle ensures the film bounces along to a vibrant, eclectic score, but it also helps Grimonprez organise and structure the enormous wealth of archive footage, soundbites and quotations that that he uses to tell this complex story.

“…Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat is as exhilarating and illuminating a history lesson as you’ll ever have.”

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P.S. There are several clips in the film of Malcolm X speaking to the camera. I must have never heard him actually speak before, because I was stunned by the clarity and persuasiveness of what he said, and his incredible charisma. Just another way Soundtrack to a Coup D’Etat gives the audience electric jolts.

Available for streaming on Kino Film Collection and rental on Prime.

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Steve! (Martin): A Documentary in 2 Pieces (Morgan Neville, director)  Morgan Neville has made many films, including 20 Feet from Stardom (2013), The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble (2015), Won’t You Be My Neighbor (2018), and Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain (2021). This one is simply wonderful, a total gas. Part 1 is Steve Martin then, part 2 is Steve Martin now. Part 2 includes a lot of Martin Short. He and Steve seem like a really weird married couple. But it’s great to go back and remember where he came from as he became “Steve Martin,” a wild and crazy guy. I’d forgotten that for a time he was about as big as you could get, rock star famous filling huge arenas. It’s fascinating to see how he evolved over the years, always maintaining a high level of creativity and freshness, always on his own terms. Which is what Neville has done in working with obviously a huge amount of material, archival and new.

Available for streaming on Apple TV+.

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 Sugarcane at Film Forum. (Directors: Emily Kassie, Julian Brave Noisecat) Per Wikipedia, this film “…follows an investigation into the Canadian Indian Residential School System, igniting a reckoning in the lives of survivors and descendants.” It’s a tragic story of a search for truth and accountability.

Oscar nomination for Best Documentary.

Available for streaming on Hulu.

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Uncropped (D.W. Young, director) I love this film. I’d been seeing James Hamilton’s photos in the Village Voice since I moved here in 1977, but didn’t know who he was. It’s great to see the person behind that work and get to a sense of him. Uncropped really took me back to that time in the city. He’d covered war zones and civil unrest in Central American countries, Haiti, Grenada, and Tiananmen Square, but his main focus was the film, art, and music scene in New York City in the ’70s and ’80s. Always nice to see artists at work.

Available for streaming on Prime.

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Will & Harper (Josh Greenbaum, director)  Will Ferrell met Harper Steele on his first day at Saturday Night Live in 1995, where Harper was a writer. They connected and havebeen good friends for 30 years. When Harper told Will he had transitioned to female gender, they decided to take a 17-day road trip across America to talk about it.  And film the journey while they were at it. The result is very funny, as you’d expect, but also serious and touching.

Available for streaming on Netflix.

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Below are five additional documentaries that I haven’t seen as yet.

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Black Box Diaries (Shiori Ito, director & writer)  Oscar nomination for Best Documentary.

Available for streaming on Paramount+.

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 No Other Land. (Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, directors)  Oscar nomination for Best Documentary.

Not yet available for streaming, but currently showing at Film Forum in NYC.

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 Porcelain War (Brendan Bellomo, Slava Leontyev, directors)  Oscar nomination for Best Documentary.

Not yet available for streaming, but currently showing at Quad Cinema in NYC.

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 To Kill a Tiger (Nisha Pahuja, director & writer)

Available for streaming on Netflix.

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 20 Days in Mariupol (Mstyslav Chernov, director & writer

Available for streaming on YouTube and rental on Prime.

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Supplemental materials for some of the films in this post will be up in a day or so. See you then. — Ted Hicks

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With two exceptions, the following videos are all from last year’s New York Film Festival. Running times are indicated.

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A Compete Unknown – Making of  (23:40)

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A Compete Unknown – New York Premiere Q&A  (34:01)

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The Brutalist – NYFF Q&A  (24:08)

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Blitz – NYFF Q&A  (19:00)

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Emilia Perez – NYFF Q&A #1  (25:14)

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Emilia Perez – NYFF Q&A #2  (28:09)

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Hard Truths – NYFF Q&A  (25:36)

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I’m Still Here – NYFF Q&A  (44:13)

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A Real Pain – NYFF Q&A  (20:18)

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The Room Door Next – NYFF Q&A  (13:43)

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The Seed of the Sacred Fig – NYFF Q&A  (22:29)

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Next up: Best Documentaries of 2024. — Ted Hicks

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