Four From the NY Film Festival

This writer got a chance to pop in to the recent 63rd New York Film Festival. While he didn’t get to see every movie he would’ve liked, he caught a bunch worth keeping an eye out for wider release. These four truly felt like some of the best the movie world has to offer now, with top talent and career-defining output.

The Mastermind

In 1970s suburban Massachusetts, disillusioned Mooney (Josh O’Connor) is living with his parents, who prod him into stepping toward a career. Other architects around town have whole operations going, but he figures he can just steal from the local museum instead.

Little imperfections pop up in Mooney’s heist plan and send him down a path of despair in this portrait of chill 70s New England.

No Other Choice

You Man-soo (Lee Byung-hun) is downsized at the paper processing plant he’s given his adult life to. He and his family have to make the typical sacrifices, and he’s driven crazy, to the point where he decides he has no other choice but to eliminate the competition.

This movie seesaws rather magnificently. I often found myself laughing while feeling awful about what was happening on the screen. The idea of a man being crushed under the system he has to participate in, has given his life to, driven to the lengths he is here objectively, isn’t fun to stomach. However, the sequences where Soo is carrying out these attempts at murder are some of the best slapstick plotting you could pull off.

Jay Kelly

The film’s titular character (George Clooney) is an aging movie star reflecting on what he’s missed out on in his privileged life.

He spends this movie watching his life unfold as an outside observer. What this movie lacks in story cohesion and clarity, it makes up for with a kind of sappy humanity that pretty much always works. Adam Sandler co-stars.

It Was Just an Accident

Director Jafar Panahi’s Palme d’Or winner is perhaps the most complete film of the year, with a fair mix of laughs and trauma.

A family’s car breaks down on the highway. The mechanic, Vahid, thinks he recognizes the squeak of the dad’s synthetic leg and is paralyzed with fear; the dad, Eghbal, may be the same intelligence officer who once tortured him as a political prisoner.

Vahid cobbles together a scattered revenge operation. It goes down incredibly hurried, human, and hilariously. Have you ever thought about what actually burying someone would look like? These are some of the interesting questions …Accident is happy to answer.

See this one somehow!

-Michael Archer

Photo: Alexandre Bucquet (via Wikimedia Commons)