Luis Buñuel's The Exterminating Angel. Photo: Kobal Collection.
Just under a month remains until the 50th New York Film Festival! So we're riding the wave of enthusiasm from our last NYFF films at your fingertips and giving you 10 more classic NYFF films to watch online (sorry, this time no freebies):
NYFF '63:
The Exterminating Angel
Director: Luis Buñuel
“Luis Bunuel's The Exterminating Angel is a macabre comedy, a mordant view of human nature that suggests we harbor savage instincts and unspeakable secrets. Take a group of prosperous dinner guests and pen them up long enough, he suggests, and they'll turn on one another like rats in an overpopulation study.” —Roger Ebert
Knife in the Water
Director: Roman Polanski
“The odd sort of personal hostility that smolders in many men who have trouble asserting their egos in this complex modern world is casually, cryptically and even comically dissected by the probing camera of Roman Polanski in his Knife in the Water.” —Bosley Crowther, The New York Times
Roman Polanski's Knife in the Water. Photo: Cocoon.
NYFF '71:
The Decameron
Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini
“Graphic yet simple sexual action sits side by side with scenes of men robbing a church grave of the jewellery and finery of a recently deceased bishop, and the atmosphere is raw, primitive life affirming. Those with gentle sensibilities and who regard nuns as sacred should avoid this film. Pasolini, a Marxist, honours the Common Man while always casting a beady eye on the Catholic Church and its imposing presence over the people.” —Andrew L. Urban, Urban Cinephile
NYFF '73
Andrei Rublev (1966)
Director: Andrei Tarkovsky
“The complete version (39 minutes longer than the print originally released) 'explains' no more than the cut version, but at least Tarkovsky's mysteries and enigmas are now intact.” —Time Out, London
Hockney's painting, A Bigger Splash, inspired Hazan's documentary of the same name. Photo: Chicago Art Review.
NYFF '74:
A Bigger Splash
Director: Jack Hazan
“Jack Hazan's picture takes its title from David Hockney's most famous painting and is neither fly-on-the-wall cinema vĂ©ritĂ© nor formal documentary. It's a film shot over three years in the early 1970s by a film-maker (credited as co-writer, director and director of photography) fascinated by Hockney's portraits, made with the artist's partial and reluctant participation, and without any specific scenario or agenda. From the semi-improvised, unscripted material, Hazan carved a story tracing the disintegration of the affair between Hockney and his lover and model, the Californian Peter Schlesinger.” —Philip French, The Guardian
NYFF '81:
Man of Iron
Director: Andrzej Wajda
“Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda's sequel to his immensely well-received Man of Marble covers some of the same ground: the relationship of labor leaders to their communist political masters and the difficulties the media encounters in covering that story.” —Tom Wiener, Rovi
NYFF '93:
The Piano
Director: Jane Campion
“Don't let the mountains of superlatives that have already been heaped on The Piano put you off: Jane Campion's 19th-century love story lives up to its advance notices. Prepare for something very special.” —Vincent Canby, The New York Times
Jennifer Jason Leigh and Mare Winningham in Ulu Grosbard's Georgia. Photo: Nick's Flicks.
NYFF '95:
Georgia
Director: Ulu Grosbard
“Jennifer Jason Leigh is best at playing women in a quarrel with life and existence. Put her in a straight role (Backdraft), and she seems out of place. But hand her a gin bottle, a drug habit, a sexual compulsion, a psychotic fixation or a Mommy who killed Daddy, and no one is more true or fascinating.” —Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle
NYFF '99:
Being John Malkovich
Director: Spike Jonze
“The beauty of the film is the way it elevates John Malkovich from an actor to an axiom. It immediately begs the question: Out of all the possible subjects that could have been placed in the title role, why Malkovich? The choice is as perfect as it is ineffable. Malkovich has made a career out of an unnerving balance between quasi-reprehensibleness and enigmatic sexual attraction. To open up and accept him in a role as charismatic sex object is not unlike the feeling of sexual surrender itself.”—Chris Chang, Film Comment
F.W. Murnau's Faust, Photo: Chiaroscuro Film
NYFF '02:
Faust (Faust – Eine deutsche Volkssage) (1926)
Director: F.W. Murnau
“Siegfried Kracauer, after Caligari but still before Hitler, called Faust a simplistic battle of good versus evil that thoroughly vulgarized the nuances of the author, yet there is nothing simplistic about the raging storm of sights and emotions that makes Murnau's film such a staggering experience.” —Fernando F. Croce, Slant Magazine
The 50th New York Film Festival runs from September 29 – October 14. General Public tickets go on sale September 9. There will be a pre-sale ticketing period for Film Society Patrons and Members prior to that date. For more info on attending the 50th NYFF, please visit the NYFF Tickets section of the website.
