In only 30 minutes, Pedro Almodóvar’s elegant take on Jean Cocteau’s 1930 one-act/one-woman meltdown packs more drama than many movies four times its length.

Steve Jobs, the movie, is more admirable as a meticulously constructed piece of theater that uses real-life figures like billiard balls than for its emotional catharsis or insight into the evolution of a man many perceived as a larger-than-life genius. At the New York Film Festival press conference, scriptwriter Aaron Sorkin insisted he did not […]

Chantal Akerman’s No Home Movie places her mother in the center, but the film’s real star is death. It hangs ever present over the movie, making itself felt more acutely in the sad light of the filmmaker’s recent presumed suicide, days before she was scheduled to present this film at the New York Film Festival. […]

If you’ve seen one movie about teenagers, have you seen ’em all? The rituals of youth flouting authority, wallowing in angst, and struggling to appease frustrated sex drives can all start to look the same after a while, but directors can’t stay away from them. Michel Gondry is one auteur with a fixation on adolescence, […]

World premiering at the New York Film Festival, Don’t Blink – Robert Frank, the documentary of the life and work of artist Robert Frank, starts off with a wallop of energy. You are transported to the heyday of New York City subversive culture as edgy but upbeat punk rock fills your ears while images of […]

The New York Film Festival’s impressive lineup this year includes a number of celebrated directors from Asia. Perhaps the most anticipated of these, prior to its Cannes premiere, was Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Assassin, his exquisite take on the martial arts film, which netted Hou a best director prize at Cannes. Hou will make a rare […]

In Iris, world premiering at the New York Film Festival, director Albert Maysles warmly reveals that Iris Apfel is a lot more than her trademark large owlish glasses. The Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute touted her fashion collection and idiosyncratic style sense in a 2005 traveling exhibit, “Rara Avis,” when she was 84. Previously, she appeared […]

  Without a doubt, the 52nd New York film festival largely fulfills its mission (as stated on its website) to “introduce audiences to the most exciting, innovative and accomplished works of world cinema.” This holds true thanks to an impressive collection of films in its lineup, many of which caught programmers’ attention at Cannes and […]

The 51st New York Film Festival arrives with a touch of scandal, courtesy of two French films. As soon as it premiered at Cannes, Blue Is the Warmest Color was almost overshadowed by its extended lesbian sex scenes, but not enough to obscure the strong performances. It won the Palme d’Or, awarded to its director […]