NYFF 2024 Film Review: Festival Dispatch
CAPSULE REVIEWS FROM THIS YEAR’S NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL
Welcome to my dispatch from this year’s New York Film Festival. Like always, I won’t be writing full reviews of everything I see at the festival, but this year has plenty of notable features worth at least a quick write-up: Jia Zhangke’s abstract romance, Francis Ford Coppola’s long-gestating magnum opus, Steve McQueen’s wartime drama, and RaMell Ross’s first-person Colson Whitehead adaptation. Here are the capsule reviews for Caught By the Tides, Megalopolis, Blitz, and Nickel Boys.
Caught By the Tides
Shot with the filmmaker’s wife and muse, Zhao Tao, Jia Zhangke’s Caught By the Tides tells a near-silent romance of a woman set out to find her lost love. Using archival footage and B-roll from an entire career with Zhao, the only word that can describe Caught By the Tides’ unflinching daring is “immense.” The propulsive, unfeeling wake of China’s progress hand-in-hand with Jia’s entire career, its unprecedented formal innovation is wrapped in a singular, quiet Zhao Tao performance. An abstract masterpiece and instantly within “best of the year” territory. A
Megalopolis
A modern day “fall of Rome” parable and retelling of the Catilinarian conspiracy with Adam Driver as a visionary architect, Megalopolis is pure “let’s get you to bed, grandpa” cinema. It’s easy to say that Francis Ford Coppola’s utterly bizarre magnum opus doesn’t work at all, but imagine seeing something you’ve never seen before and knowing you’ll never see something like it again. Simultaneously old-fashioned and modern in its visual grammar, Megalopolis is a paradox overflowing with half-cooked and half-cocked ideas — it’s as if Coppola is trying to reverse-engineer a misunderstood, late-style epic. It is, however, riveting and unforgettable. B-
Blitz
Steve McQueen, EastEnders, and Oliver Twist mangled through an algorithm to spit out syrup. A throwback, sentimentalist wartime picture, Blitz centers around a young boy (Elliott Heffernan) and his journey to reunite with his mother (Saoirse Ronan) during the London bombings of World War II. Even with a gangbusters sense of urgency in its final 20 minutes, there’s a huge laundry list of things I love about McQueen as a filmmaker and storyteller that I found missing. The first, last, and only miss of this year’s NYFF for me. C
Nickel Boys
When I first heard that RaMell Ross was to adapt Colson Whitehead’s harrowing novel The Nickel Boys into a feature-length film, I was nervous: tackling the abuses at the Dozier School during Jim Crow while saddled with a first-person gimmick, the degree of difficulty seemed near-impossible to clear. That being said, Nickel Boys is phenomenal in its own right, but also sidesteps the ease of exploitative, awards-bait treacle. It’s POV “gimmick” not a gimmick, but fully within the fabric of its haptic power and grounded by incredible performances from Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor. A stone-cold stunner. A
