"Expansive" is the most apt word for this year’s 51st New York Film Festival, which exhibited more celebrity-studded Main Slate films than ever. The U.S. dominated with 12 films while additional programming unreeled from 16 other countries. Now, with the 17-day Festival concluded, many of the films are opening or will open in theaters before year’s end.
One element of the NYFF is still ongoing: an encompassing Jean-Luc Godard retrospective, The Spirit of the Forms, saluting the French director and New Wave pioneer, running through October 30. (Click here for the full schedule and details.) Among the upcoming films are his adaptation of Alberto Moravia’s novel, Contempt, starring Brigitte Bardot, Jack Palance, and Fritz Lang [yes, that Fritz Lang!], about the making of an adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey in Italy [October 21]; his 1987 adaptation of King Lear; and Grandeum and Decadence, based on James Hadley Chase’s 1964 novel The Soft Centre, a funny, melancholy piece about a director and a producer (played by famed comic filmmaker Jean-Pierre Mocky) who are trying to make a movie on the cheap out of the novel [October 22, 23].
Now in cineplexes:
Tom Hanks in Captain Phillips. Credit: Columbia Pictures
Paul Greengrass' edge-of-the-seat thriller Captain Phillips [Columbia Pictures], starring two-time Oscar-winner Tom Hanks and based on the 2009 Somali pirate capture of a U.S. cargo ship. Some crew of the attacked ship are claiming, even after being paid for depictions in the movie, that the real Captain wasn’t the superb seaman, leader, or great hero as depicted in the film. Be that as it may, Hanks was mighty impressed when he spent time with him before the cameras rolled. Hanks’ portrayal, especially after the film settles into his kidnapping for ransom by the pirates, offers nothing less than a heroic performance – especially given the confines of a tiny, modern-day lifeboat. You have to wonder, since the sequences were shot on the rolling sea, how there was room for the camera and various equipment (Greengrass watched on a monitor from a service ship.) It’s not all black and white when it comes to the pirates, who, yes, are committing criminal acts, but Greengrass adds a social element about their poverty and desperation. Ironically, the ship they attempted to seize was carry food for refugees.
Robert Redford in All Is Lost. Credit: Daniel Daza
The edge-of-the-seat waterworld thriller All Is Lost [Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions] sinks or swims on the performance of a deluged Robert Redford at the helm of his sinking yacht, totally-disabled and adrift somewhere in the Indian Ocean for eight days and through two violent storms. Thankfully, this is not in 3-D; however, it’s not for those that suffer mal-de-mer. It’s unthinkable that Redford won’t be honored with an Oscar nomination, and perhaps finally win his first for acting [after two nominations]. He’s won a directing Oscar and been honored with a special Oscar.
12 Years a Slave [Fox Searchlight/Regency] is Steve McQueen’s harrowing and raw adaptation of violinist Solomon Northup’s true-life story of being a free black man in Saratoga Springs, NY, who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the South, doing hard labor, often while given the opt to play his violin for plantation owners. Chiwetel Eujiofor [Lola in the Kinky Boots film] gives an acclaimed and harrowing performance as Northup that’s a lock for an Oscar nomination.
Chiwetel Ejiofor portrays a black man born free who was abducted and sold into slavery in 12 Years a Slave. Courtesy Fox Searchlight Films
The film is based on the memoir he wrote during his return to freedom in the 1850s. In impressive, Oscar-nomination-worthy turns roles are Michael Fassbender as a scripture-quoting, psycotic plantation master; Olivier and Emmy nominee Benedict Cumberbatch (War Horse, Star Trek into Darkness, many more, such as the upcoming August: Osage County) as a much-kinder slave owner who ultimately won’t buck the system; and, in a riveting performance as a plantation owner’s lusted-after slave, Nigeran actress Adepero Oduye (who last July succeeded Condola Rashad on Broadway in the revival of The Trip to Bountiful). Brad Pitt (also one of the producers) appears all-too-briefly as a Canadian abolitionist who comes to Northup’s rescue. Paul Dano (in a demented performance as a plantation overseer that even tops his amazing portrayal opposite Hugh Jackman in Prisoners), Sarah Paulson, Alfre Woodward, and Paul Giamatti are also featured. Shot on location near New Orleans. This is must-see social drama, but it may also be the scariest Halloween-season movie you’ll ever see. Definitely adults-only, and not for the squeamish.
Upcoming in theatres:
One of the best films in the festival, and a feel-good one at that, Alexander Payne's spin on a father-son (Bruce Dern, named Best Actor at Cannes this year; the winning SNL alumnus Will Forte) road trip for the aging father to collect a sweepstakes prize, Nebraska (Paramount).
Bruce Dern, June Squibb, and Will Forte in the family drama Nebraska. Courtesy Merle Wallace/Paramount Pictures
Shot in glorious B&W, it's a trip almost cut short by the tart-tongued wife/mother, played by June Squibb (Payne’s About Schmidt), who steals the movie and is surely bound for an Oscar nomination. In featured roles are Stacy Keach and theater/TV vet Mary Louise Wilson. Opens November 22.
Roger Michell's quite watchable bittersweet comedy/drama Le Week-End (Music Box Films) centers on a decidedly-different Jim Broadbent and the brilliant Tony- and Drama Desk-winning (Private Lives revival) and -nominated (Les Liaisons Dangereuses) Lindsay Duncan as a bewildering middle class English couple enjoying an unaffordable anniversary weekend in Paris. Limited release beginning November 1.
About Time [Universal Pictures] is Richard Curtis’ hilarious time-travel romantic comedy starring Lindsay Duncan, Domhnall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams, and Bill Nighy. A young man (Gleeson) discovers he can travel in time, and though he can't change history, he can change what happens and has happened in his own life. He decides to make his world a better place by getting a girlfriend, which as all guys know isn’t as easy as you think. Opens November 8.
Joel and Ethan Coen's Inside Llewyn Davis [CBS Films, opening early December] is a 60s Greenwich Village folk music scene comedy headlining Justin Timberlake, Carey Mulligan, Oscar Isaac, John Goodman, and Stark Sands. Limited release beginning December 1.
Ralph Fiennes is director and star of The Invisible Woman [Sony Pictures Classics], based on Claire Tomalin’s quite revealing, well-researched book about a mostly unknown but shocking affair between the womanizing Charles Dickens (I know!) and a much younger actress, portrayed by Felicity Jones. Co-starring are Kristin Scott Thomas and, in a movingly sensitive portrayal as Dickens’ much-trampled upon wife and mother of his brood of children, noted Brit TV star Joanna Scanlan. It’s about Dickens, so (natch) it’ll open on Christmas Day.
Also opening Christmas Day is a sort-of adaptation of James Thurber's classic comic fable about a mild-mannered man, played by Ben Stiller, who lives vicariously through heroic daydreams, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty [20th Century Fox]. Kristen Wiig co-stars, with cameos by Oscar winners Sean Penn and Shirley MacLaine. Directed by Stiller.
