On the Rocks “It must be very nice to be you.” That’s what Laura (Rashida Jones) says to her gadfly dad Felix (Bill Murray) late in Sofia Coppola’s latest tonic. He’s just sweet-talked his way out of a parking ticket for what’s probably the…
Point and Line to Plane How does one give shape to one’s experience, one’s grief? The question persists through the films of Canadian director Sofia Bohdanowicz, though it takes most literal form in her latest short, Point and Line to Plane, titled after the…
Time From the western to the road movie, the legacy of the climactic homecoming looms large in American cinema, which is everywhere peopled by vagrants and drifters grappling with the belief that, as The Searchers’ elderly Mrs. Jorgensen puts it, “some day this country’s…
NYFF 2020 — Dispatch 4: Atarrabi and Mikelats, The Human Voice, Hopper/Welles
Atarrabi and Mikelats A late-blooming filmmaker with admirably catholic interests, increasingly Catholic tendencies, and a rather revanchist reputation, Eugène Green, not unlike Éric Rohmer before him, is concerned with questions of modernity. Following a lilting prefatory journey from bustling tourist center to bucolic Basque…
Mangrove Steve McQueen has spent the last decade making films that are quite decidedly about America, creating a body of work in the process that carries significant cultural weight here (Oscars!) while very much representing the British filmmaker’s Euro perspective. This perspective often provides…
Lovers Rock Steve McQueen has always been a fine purveyor of potentially rich and powerful narratives, but he’s been much less consistent as their steward. His first three features (Hunger, Shame, and 12 Years a Slave) all focused on singular individuals locked in combat with…
The fall festival season has looked far different this year, limited both in its ability to exhibit films and in the breadth of selection available. As a result, heading into the 58th New York Film Festival, InRO has already published pieces on roughly one-third…
New York Film Festival 2019 | Dispatch 3: Uncut Gems, Wasp Network, 63 Up
Our third and final dispatch from the 2019 New York Film Festival is offers a smaller pool of takes but checks off one of the year’s biggest players — Josh and Benny Safdie’s Uncut Gems. Also featured here are thoughts on Olivier Assayas’s latest,…
New York Film Festival 2019 | Dispatch 2: Pain and Glory, Synonyms, Zombi Child
Our second dispatch from the 2019 New York Film Festival is heavy on prestige arthouse fare from early-year festivals, and also takes on a timely documentary premiering at NYFF. Below are our takes on a trio of Cannes holdovers, all courtesy of distinctive auteurs,…
New York Film Festival 2019 | Dispatch 1: The Irishman, First Cow, Varda by Agnès
Our first dispatch from the 2019 New York Film Festival offers quick takes on a smattering of the festival circuit’s biggest films this year, including: the world premiere of Martin Scorsese’s Netflix-backed, de-aging spectacle, The Irishman; a trio of Cannes Competition entries — The…