Category: Film Appreciation
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More Highlights from the 62nd New York Film Festival
The 62nd New York Film Festival ends on October 14, having screened 73 features plus various programs of shorts. I managed to see 28 films over a whirlwind three weeks of press screenings. Here are some highlights, in addition to the films I’ve discussed in previous posts. One of the most haunting and disturbing films…
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Sigrid Nunez’s Tales of Grief Enliven the New York Film Festival
Avid readers of fiction will know the name Sigrid Nunez, author of nine novels and winner of the National Book Award for her seventh, The Friend (2018). But for many of us, the 2024 New York Film Festival has been the introduction to her world, with the New York premieres of two film versions of her books,…
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New York Film Festival Welcomes Comedies of All Kinds
The annual New York Film Festival has no shortage of exotic, esoteric, and demanding films. But some of the biggest highlights of this year’s event are comedies. Yes, comedies. Raucous comedies. Quirky comedies. Comedy-thrillers. Comedies that double as poignant character studies. But comedies nonetheless. Among the most popular and crowd-pleasing entries at NYFF 62 is…
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Profiles in Courage at the New York Film Festival
One of the most indelible and powerful films at the 62nd annual New York Film Festival is, in its very existence, an act of bravery. No Other Land, written, directed, produced, and edited by Palestinians Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal and Israelis Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, is the story of the Palestinian farming region known…
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Music of All Kinds Reigns at the Tribeca Festival
Music always plays a huge role at the Tribeca Festival, in the form of music-oriented documentaries and special post-film performances. Here’s a look at four new films that run the gamut from country to jazz, rock to Broadway. Francis Whately’s Rebel Country begins with the 2019 arrival of Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road,” in which the…
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Tribeca Docs ‘Checkpoint Zoo’ and ‘Antidote’ Show Two Sides of Putin’s Evil Agenda
Two documentaries at the Tribeca Fest show different sides of the evil that Vladimir Putin has unleashed upon the world—one specifically about a singular consequence of his brutal attack on the second-largest city in Ukraine, Kharkiv; the other more generally about his campaign of lethal vengeance against his enemies. Each is essential viewing in these troubling…
Kevin Lally on Film 