All the best movies we saw at New York Film Festival, ranked (including ‘The Human Voice’)
Start spreading the news: New York Film Festival is finally here. Virtually.
Like Toronto International Film Festival, NYFF decided to turn into a mostly online affair this year because of COVID-19. But you don’t have to show up to Lincoln Center to get tickets: Film fans can go online to rent movies from the impressive, globetrotting 2020 slate including Sofia Coppola’s “On the Rocks” (featuring Bill Murray and Rashida Jones) and the first three films in the five-part “Small Axe” anthology directed by Steve McQueen (“12 Years a Slave”) that tells stories set in London’s West Indian community from the late 1960s to the early ’80s.
Like free stuff? On Tuesday, audiences can stream the new political documentary “All In: The Fight for Democracy” at no charge via Amazon Prime Video as well as Twitch, YouTube, and Twitter for National Voter Registration Day.
‘I’m really done’:Steve McQueen on dedicating ‘Lovers Rock’ to George Floyd at NY Film Festival
Toronto Film Festival:All the best movies we saw, ranked
After a successful Toronto fest, we’re heading to New York – which in 2020 means switching couches – to round up and rank the best efforts we watch:
10. ‘Fauna’
The quirky and slightly absurdist little Mexican comedy sneakily weaves in shades of criminal fiction and violence as part of populist imagination. Estranged siblings Luisa (Luisa Pardo) and Gabino (Gabino Rodríguez) return home to visit their parents alongside Luisa’s fellow actor and hapless boyfriend Paco (Francisco Barreiro), a bit player on a popular narco TV show. Their many awkward interactions give way to a meta noir detective story with all the actors playing different roles that subtly hints at the town’s shady underbelly.
9. ‘The Calming’
Director Song Fang’s film is definitely a case of a spot-on movie title. It’s quite the calming experience following Chinese documentary filmmaker Lin (Qi Xi) who, after a breakup, bounces between Beijing, Tokyo and Hong Kong, rides a train through snowy landscapes, looks out over Asian metropolises at night and meanders on quiet forest hikes. In addition to the experiential aspect to “Calming,” Lin also reconnects with friends, cares for her parents and spends many moments alone, dealing with what ails her as well. It’s a contemplative film ultimately about finding creative inspiration again.
8. ‘The Inheritance’
Director Ephraim Asili’s timely experimental film is part documentary and part fictional narrative interspersing a lesson on Black culture with a historical plight for racial and social justice. In the film peppered with footage of first Black congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, as well as images of Black icons John Coltrane and Muhammad Ali, a young man (Eric Lockley) inherits his grandmother’s Philadelphia house and creates a Black socialist collective with his girlfriend (Nozipho Mclean). Asili creates a tapestry of their story interspersed with the story of the MOVE liberation group and the tragic bombing of their Philly house in 1985 that took 11 lives and destroyed 61 homes.
7. ‘The Monopoly of Violence’
Those who followed the cable-news footage of the civil unrest in our country following George Floyd’s death will see an eerie reflection in this arresting French documentary chronicling the violent skirmishes in late 2018 between national police and the gilets jaunes (aka yellow vests) movement that called for economic justice in Paris. Amid brutal and haunting footage, academics debate the philosophy of legitimized power and should the state hold it, while police and victims alike discuss their sides of a conflict that claimed hands and eyes and changed lives forever.
6. ‘Gunda’
Not since “Babe” has a movie’s porcine star been this magnetic. With no talking and a soundtrack of nature and animal noises, documentary director Viktor Kossakovsky turns a camera on a steadfast mother pig and her growing piglets in an enrapturing black-and-white showcase of farm life executive produced by Joaquin Phoenix. While not exactly a commercial for veganism, you might rethink your meal options after seeing a curious and exceedingly watchable one-legged chicken, a couple of old stately cows and a tight-knit clan of pigs whose lives are way more fascinating than we might think.
5. ‘All In: The Fight for Democracy’
You won’t find a more persuasive and urgent vehicle to get people voting in the 2020 election than this well-done and informative documentary that goes to some dark places in American history yet also leans hopeful. The film chronicles voter suppression tactics and the disenfranchisement of people of color and women – from the earliest days of the country until now – and lifts the voices of those who’ve fought against it. “All In” also focuses on Abrams, a Democrat who ran for Georgia governor in 2018 and has her own stories to tell about the importance of voting rights.
4. ‘Time’
Director Garrett Bradley’s striking black-and-white documentary looks at mass incarceration of the poor and people of color but it’s more effective as the tale of a Black family led by a steely matriarch. For two decades, Louisiana businesswoman Fox Rich has fought to free her husband, who is serving a 60-year sentence in Angola for a robbery they pulled when they were struggling store owners. Their story is presented in present day as Fox waits to hear if he’ll be let go and through revealing home videos she made of their six boys, chronicling major life moments for her beloved.
3. ‘The Human Voice’
Acclaimed Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language film is a dramatic doozy – and only a half-hour long. That’s plenty of time, however, for Tilda Swinton to shine in a fiery, emotion-packed one-woman monologue “loosely based” on the 1930 Jean Cocteau play. Swinton plays an unnamed woman who’s just gotten out of a four-year relationship with her partner and is not taking things well. After taking an ax to her ex’s suit in her apartment (which is actually a stage set in a warehouse), she takes a call from her former beloved, expressing various levels of fear, humility, anguish and rage. And in Swinton’s hands, it’s a masterclass.
2. ‘Lovers Rock’
The only fictional tale in McQueen’s series, the 1980-set slice-of-life narrative centers on a house party at a time when Black people weren’t welcome at white London nightclubs. Martha (newcomer Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn) sneaks out of her house and goes to this reggae-fueled shindig where she meets the flirtatious Frankyn (Micheal Ward) in a night filled with love, revelry, racial tensions and hard feelings. McQueen brilliantly stages the party as an evolving organism, from women doing sharp karate moves to “Kung Fu Fighting” early in the evening to men dancing wildly as the night wears on, and a parade of tunes throughout lend the movie its joyous heartbeat.
1. ‘Night of the Kings’
Director Philippe Lacôte pays tribute to the oral tradition of the tale-spinning West African griots with an absorbing drama set at an isolated Ivory Coast prison ruled by inmates. Koné Bakary stars as a quiet pickpocket who’s tapped by jail boss Blackbeard (Steve Tientcheu) to be the chosen storyteller (and given the nickname “Roman”) on the occasion of a red moon. Initially a deer in headlights, his confidence grows as Roman tells of a rebel outlaw, his blind father and a magical war between a queen and her brother, while betrayal and a struggle for power occur over a long night. And like all the best stories, “Night of the Kings” keeps you enraptured till the end.
