I laughed, I cried, it was better than Cats! The rent is due (but maybe check if the invoices in the mail)! A hilarious tribute to art, friendship and the healing power of method acting. Just give Julianne Moore the Oscar now. She is powerful and funny and sings like an angel and curses like a janitor. I am in awe.

Jesse Eisenberg is a true talent. This could not be more tonally different from A Real Pain but manages to elicit a similar emotional response.

Amazing performers across the board, with performances to match. A triumph!

NY Film Festival 64, Film 7. NY Premiere. Intro and Q&A with Jessie Eisenberg, Julianne Moore, Paul Giamatti, Emma Stone, Halle Berry.

Technicolor Gypsy madness and desire! They really do not make them like this anymore. Just a glorious film to behold, with saturated colors that at times tip in to pre-psychedelia. The plot is thin and fairly basic — girl caught between two men, one moral and orderly the other sexual and beastly — but it works given the lush cinematography.

This is a film filled with themes and subtext about the feminine attributes of nature and the confusing nature of desire. For 1950 it’s practically radical.

Pretty solid performances, but the set design, costumes and colors will stick with you.

NYFF 64 - Film 6. US premiere of 4K restoration. Q&A with Martin Scorsese and Martha Schoonmaker.

A glorious tribute to music in film, music as connection and our need for family and legacy. This might be my favorite Pedro Pascal performance. The film turns on his intensity and passions (and dispassions) and he’s always compelling.

There’s a strong theme of family and legacy that pervades many of the best films I’ve seen this year and Behemoth! is no different. These material achievements of success, or money or romantic conquests are continually shown to be empty when compared to family and music.

A great return to feature filmmaking from Tony Gilroy!

NYFF 64 - Film 5. Walter Reade Theater. Intro with Tony Gilroy and Pedro Pascal

Only the world’s greatest living filmmaker could make a 3.5 hour meditation on coincidence, capitalism, friendship, aging, workplace politics and our inherent human dignity into one of the most compelling films of the year.

Why are we so exhausted and disconnected? Why do we feel so atomized and spread thin? All of a Sudden is a film that attempts to answer these questions and somehow succeeds. 

Not since My Dinner with Andre has an onscreen conversation been so captivating. The performances of Virginie Efrie and Tao Okamoto as Marie and Mari are virtuoso feats of acting. Seamlessly interchanging between Japanese and French in moment after moment of emotional and intellectual dialogue.

This is a film rooted in the divine power of human friendship. It deeply understands the eternal truth that if we bind up each other’s souls and treat each other as we would like to be treated - then there will always be hope.

I left the cinema elated, drained and hopeful in a way I often feel during the high holidays. Hamaguchi has put a prayer for connection into the world. I hope people will see it and respond accordingly.

A masterpiece! Movies!!!

NYFF Screening 4. US Premiere at Alice Tully Hall. Intro and Q&A with Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Virginie Efira

What are the elements of a free and successful life? Money? A beautiful beach house stocked with servants? Generational wealth? Getting the deal done time after time?

Or is it something more intangible? Community and love and children and justice?  Lee Chang-Dong’s brilliant Possible Love asks us to consider whether class divisions even matter when compared to issues of justice, fairness and family. 

It explores why we want what we cannot have and what happens when we get close to our desires. And it asks us to think about how and why we care about others - when the cameras are turned off and we stand naked in front of the sea.

Beautiful, brilliant and moving - this is one of the films of 2026. It captures the spiritual defect at the heart of societies with guile and surprise.

NYFF Screening 3. Q&A with Lee Chang-Dong and cast

What more do you want from the movies? Another masterpiece. The most satisfying film of the year and probably the best. Don’t be spoiled!! Go! Go! Godzilla!!!!!

NYFF 64 Film #2. Q&A with director Takashi Yamazaki.

Is this massively overrated? While I like the theme of how far should anyone be pushed to achieve greatness (and who should do the pushing), isn’t Jazz at its best about improvisation?

Given the focus on precision and sticking to the score, this felt more like a film about a classical musician than a contemporary Jazz drummer. For a movie that aspires to Sadfie levels of anxiety, the stakes are impossibly and ridiculously low.

Also while I like JK Simmons’s performance - he’s really just an exaggerated version of JJJ. I felt like at any moment he would let Andrew into the band permanently if he brought him 4 photos of Spider-Man.

Miles Teller gives a fairly typical Miles Teller performance. He’s a tell don’t show kind of performer all the way down.

So it’s ok! But it gets the extra half star for coming in under 2 hours.

Can you call it love if it drives you mad? Infatuation maybe. Obsession absolutely. But Claire speaks worlds of truths about many men who are attracted to fragile beauty who “only care during a crisis”.

The framing of the Andromaque rehearsal, the documentary crew and Claire’s recordings all offer different views of reality and its pressures. But like Racine’s play - there is far more madness and tragedy than true love in this film.

Stands strong with Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage, Allen’s Husbands and Wives and more recently Wilde’s The Invite, as films that lay the dark side of a relationship bare.

Obvious influence on Hamaguchi for the structure and length of Drive My Car.

Paper Tiger is a very solid, if not great film - that 35 years ago would’ve been an easy Captain Video or HBO classic.

The bubbling pollution and influx of corruption at the Gowanus Canal is a tale known by many New Yorkers, but few outsiders would or should care. And yet here we are, back in the 1986 of James Gray’s memory - and my own, of a grimy and dirty city - with danger around every corner.

Adam Driver and Miles Teller give classic NY thriller performances, that would easily rate in a 1980’s Abel Ferrara or Sidney Lumet film. They simmer and brood and swag and simper in all the ways you’d hope. ScarJo veers a bit into caricature - but there’s a strong emotional truth that breaks through her bad hair and accent.

If you’re in the mood for a classic NY thriller you could do a lot worse than Paper Tiger.

Opening Night of 64th NY Film Festival. James Gray, Miles Teller and Adam Driver intro. Screened in 35mm 

When two morons and best friends put their heads together there’s nothing they can’t accomplish. Brilliantly funny and technically perfect. It’s shocking how much nostalgia and little / massive changes can occur in 17 years. 

Ben Folds! Back to the Future! Vinegar Syndrome! 

Can’t wait to watch this again. Movies!!!

Romantasy long before that was a thing, this film might actually work better as a Superman “Elseworlds” story than its stated “time-travel” explanation. It looks great and Jane Seymour is as taken with Supes as Margot Kidder - but the script is so silly.

There’s some fun to be had here (again particularly if you can pretend that Supes is undercover or under the influence of Mr. Mxyzptlk), but considering that the time travel explanation lacks any internal logic / technical device, you’re counting on a lot belief suspension.

I remember this being on HBO a lot as a kid (mostly because it wasn’t Superman, but it was) and even with a 4K restoration, it still reads as a TV movie.

As a dedicated comic book reader for over 40 years, I can safely say this is the most screwed up vigilante origin story I’ve ever seen. Zoe Lund is magnificent in a harrowing and twisted portrayal of a woman possessed by trauma, madness and vengeance.

An absolute exploitation masterpiece. Abel Ferrara is a demented genius.

That final scream rivals only Laura Palmer’s. I just pray Mr. Met got out of the party alive.

More operatic and brutal than the technicolor West Side Story with light, shadows and Fukusaku-esque bloodletting to match. As a child of the 80’s who remembers Luna and La Bella Ferrara and Umbertos and Paouluccis, this film captured the feel of those streets and the strange hard border between Little Italy and Chinatown.

It feels like a B movie, and maybe in some sense it is. But the love, the intent, the setting, the hostilities all feel hyper-real. Like a dream you had after seeing a street fight be diffused coming home from a dinner at Luna’s.

Of course all of these territorial battles are moot now. Matcha stands and soup dumpling restaurants have long conquered downtown Manhattan - with both enclaves now fighting the hipster doofuses of “Dimes Square”.

But this film captures the opera of the 80s - when all of this felt new and “foreign”. But really it was just our fellow Americans looking for their rightful home.

Bonello is the cinematic Auden of our age of Anxiety. As much as a tone poem as a film, Coma leans into familiar horror tropes to reveal just how crazy the Pandemic made everyone. 

A weirder and experimental work, it doesn’t quite reach the heights of House of Pleasures, Nocturama or The Beast - but it’s great freaky-deaky fun.

There is no righteous revenge. There is no proper use of evil. There is only corruption and consequence.

We are told to guard against the evil inclination entering our souls. That God will take care of our oppressors and our enemies. That we will be inaugurated in the Book of Life if we bind up those that are oppressed, feed the hungry, welcome the stranger - for we were strangers and slaves in Egypt.

There is no higher blessing than peace. But there is can be no peace in vengeance and bloodlust. In a week of prayer and atonement, it’s what all men of faith can and should reflect upon.

Spielberg’s filmmaking feels effortless. Phenomenal performances across the board. Another masterpiece of form and function from the greatest American director.

Ennui is a powerful and dangerous drug. It’s almost admirable the way Rohmer’s characters can rationalize the unsettled anxiety they inflict upon each other, and then always be surprised at their profound loneliness.

Anyone in a relationship knows one must keep a private space or personal interests to keep sane. But there are obvious lines. Louise knows very well what keeping her apartment means for and for Remi.

Or as my good friend likes to say - when you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes.

Chris Rock's coda that "a man is only as faithful as his options" could be serve as the tagline for this very dark Japanese comedy/melodrama. Astoundingly - Kaze has the logistical ability and err... drive to maintain 9 mistresses alongside a wife.

Is it any shock that he is able to cheat death by turning them against each other?

This film is a bit too talky for its own good, but its gonzo mix of genres and its unique answers to the questions of infidelity and its motivation from the woman's perspective -- especially the Japanese woman's perspective make it worth watching.

More like the less than magnificent schmuck. I’m sorry but if you’re the owner of a declining hat factory concern in 1964 and you’ve managed to lock down peak Claudia Cardinale - just thank your blessings and cut the crap.

Didn’t Andreas have any real friends? This film does nothing to dispel the stereotype that Italians are hot blooded and impetuous. 

Aside from all that - the film is a bit uneven - despite an all time Gilda-esque burlesque from Ms. Cardinale. But worth watching just for that alone.

The not-so-secret origin of the greatest American filmmaker is not surprisingly a tour-de-force. And while the Spielberg oeuvre easter eggs are obvious fun, the humanistic performances, the heart and the deep love of art and cinema make this an all time masterpiece.

So true to the Jewish-American experience without pandering to stereotypes or obvious sentiment. It is beautiful and moving and I weeped through half of it.

Movies! Family! Life! David Lynch!

A masterpiece!

The most beautifully composed film about the absolute dumbest people you’ll ever encounter on vacation. Absolutely hysterical.

Rozier!