NYFF short takes

61st New York Film Festival (September 29-October 15, 2023)

Not THAT Hitman!

Hit Man

The divide between pleasure and perversity is very stark in Richard Linklater’s latest, an easy and enjoyable sit that curdles hugely in retrospect. Read the original Skip Hollandsworth article the movie’s based on to see the myriad complexities that have been sanded away to make a Glen Powell star vehicle. It’s as if Linklater is playing posthumous wingman for his subject, faux-assassin Gary Johnson, giving him the rom-com-slick Hollywood ending he never got in life. Still grappling with whether there’s a meta aspect to the tale meant to muddy all the shameless wish fulfillment. But I have my doubts. Watch Linklater’s terrific, autobiographically-tinged animated feature Apollo 10-1/2 instead, where the light surface and the dark undercurrents are more in sync.

Maestro

If Halloween were my thing, I’d for sure go as cancer-stricken Carey Glumigan, daintily retching into a tissue while reprising her thousand-yard is-this-thing-on? stare from Shame’s excruciating “New York, New York” musical number. The marital quarrel centerpiece (bookended by two Snoopy cameos!) is a laugh-riot I had to stifle giggles at in the very theater where Leonard Bernstein did most of his conducting. Bradley Cooper has the deadest blue eyes in the business, and of course he needle-drops that R.E.M. song on that lyric. Sad elder-gay Lenny letting loose to Tears for Fears a pleasurable respite amid all the officially sanctioned bio-dreck.

Priscilla

A mixed bag, a Marie Antoinette without the sick-inducing binge-’n’-purge political import. A travesty, too, that Coppola doesn’t take Priscilla to the Naked Gun years.

Anatomy of a Fall

A clear and clean Palme d’Or winner, every ambiguity and “unexpected” choice so carefully thought-through that awards can’t help but be thrown at it. 

Strange Way of Life

Primo dom bottom energy from both Pedros. 

Poor Things

Yorgos Lanthimos finally has his Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde. 

Foe

I liked the part where clone Paul Mescal gets shrink-wrapped.