Bruce Springsteen, Nebraska, Deliver Me from Nowhere, and the Familial Ties That Bind

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: DELIVER ME FROM NOWHERE 

(Scott Cooper, USA, 2025, 119 minutes) 

Bruce Springsteen has been a part of my life for over 50 years. 

So I'm not a neutral observer when it comes to Deliver Me from Nowhere, the musician's first officially-sanctioned biopic (and an adaptation of Del Fuego-turned-music scholar Warren Zanes' book, The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska). Fortunately, for him, for me, for anyone who considers themselves a fan–even for the merely curious: it's very good. 

 

***** 

Prior to 1980's The River, I don't remember hearing Springsteen on the radio. I'm sure many listeners did, because Columbia released singles that hit the Hot 100, but my primary radio source while growing up in Alaska was a Top 40 station (ironically, I would become a late-night DJ after college at KWHL, an AOR station founded in 1982). I was also addicted to countdown programs, like the Casey Kasem-hosted American Top 40 and the show Solid Gold, but Springsteen, in the 1970s, was mostly perceived as an album guy. 

 

Granted, he released more than two dozen singles over the course of the decade, so some may have a different recollection, not least when one of those songs was his signature number, "Born to Run," except the single peaked at #23, which seems inconceivable from today's perspective. (Consequently, I may have heard the song as a grade schooler, but it made no impact at the time.)

Things would change in the early-1980s, by which time Springsteen was already a bonafide star. It's just that he became stratospheric and inescapable, not only on radio, but on the nascent MTV. In the 1970s, he was the subject of countless magazine and television profiles--including the cover of Time in 1975--so I knew full well who he was, but living in Anchorage, prior to the construction of the George M. Sullivan Arena, means I never got the chance to see one of his famous give-the-people-their-hard-earned-money's-worth live shows. My Bay Area-based dad, on the other hand, did get that chance. 

And that's where I'm going with all of this, because it was my dad, really, who introduced me to Springsteen's music. I was aware of the guy before Dad tuned in, but I hadn't heard much. My parents were divorced, so I don't know when it started, but when Dad liked a record, really liked a record, he would play it over and over again (a trait I inherited). This could have been irritating if I didn't share his taste to some extent, but I did; my parents' respective record collections combined with my incessant radio listening, TV watching, and music magazine reading–yes, I was the kid who slept with a transistor radio under their pillow–helped to shape my musical taste. 

Dad became obsessed with Born to Run, and so I heard it often when I came to visit. I have this vague recollection of other records, including bootlegs, and tales of epic Oakland shows, but it all comes back to his third album. I wouldn't say I became a fan then and there, but I liked what I heard. Left to my own devices, The River was the album that made me a fan. 

 

I wasn’t always close to my dad. He was a bright, funny guy with stories for days, but he was also a drinker and a smoker who filed bankruptcy twice and likely died from his habits--both his heart and lungs were shot when he suffered a fatal heart attack in 2010. 

I don't mean to sound judgmental; he didn't have an easy childhood, and Vietnam fucked him up, to the extent that he never talked about it, and I didn't even find out he served "in country" until after his death; I only knew about his less-eventful time with the Air Force in Hawaii. I have no idea if "Born in the U.S.A." meant anything to him, but I'd like to think it did. 

Like many an Irishman–his parents were the immigrants, but Dad grew up in a strict Catholic household in Queens–he was a raconteur, but he wasn't wild about reliving his past, and nor did he have any interest in therapy, so I only learned about some of his more painful experiences in bits and pieces. 

 

The result was a father somewhat akin to the one Springsteen grew up with (the part-Irish musician also grew up in a devout Catholic household; like my dad, he would leave the religion behind as soon as he could). If his reliably dependable mother inspired him, his father, who had fought in the pivotal Battle of the Bulge during World War II, was a different story. 

 

Right: Bruce with Douglas and Virginia "Ginny" Springsteen

 

The elder Springsteen drank and smoked and appears to have loved his family, but didn't always know how to show it. He scared his wife and children when he got drunk--Springsteen had two younger sisters--and sometimes got physical. 

My dad wasn't that bad. He never hit me or my mom, but he scared the shit out of me when he was angry–he yelled, threw breakable objects, and said awful things–so much so that I stopped talking to him for a brief period in the 1990s. I told him we were through unless he got help. He later offered an apology filled with so much shame and regret that we were able to start over. We were never again as close as when I was a kid, but we became closer than we had been, and we were in a good place when he passed.  

I didn't mean to make this about me or my dad, but those are the thoughts and feelings the film brought up, because it's more affecting in the father-son moments than in the artist-manager moments, which defied my expectations based on everything I had read beforehand. I regret that I missed the New York Film Festival premiere with Springsteen in attendance–not least when he burst out in song–but writer/director Scott Cooper and star Jeremy Allen White were on hand at the next day's screening, and it was great to see it on a huge screen with a big, enthusiastic audience. 

Granted, the line to get in to Alice Tully Hall was considerable, but I arrived early, much as I did when Springsteen made a stop at Seattle's Elliot Bay Bookstore in 2016 for a meet and greet around his memoir, shockingly titled Born to Run (I jest; of course it’s called Born to Run). That line went on forever, but no one seemed to mind. I'm grateful I got to share that once-in-a-lifetime experience with Michelle Byrd and our late friend Bill Kennedy. 

 

Left: Me and Bruce

To my mind, it isn't surprising that Succession's Jeremy Strong was cast as Jon Landau, a Rolling Stone writer who became Springsteen's manager in 1974, but White and Stephen Graham weren't the most obvious choices for their respective roles, setting aside White's bankability in the wake of Emmy-winning series The Bear–let alone a Calvin Klein underwear campaign–but they're both up to the task; if anything Strong's take on Landau as a level-headed, if fiercely loyal advocate makes him less engaging, though he gets the best line, which I won't share here (for my money, Roy Cohn in The Apprentice provided a richer opportunity for his brand of theatrics). 

Cooper opens with Springsteen as a 10-year-old living with his father and mother (Gaby Hoffman, also very good) in Freehold, New Jersey. He distinguishes past from present by shifting back and forth from black and white to color. There's nothing innovative about this approach, though Masanobu Takayanagi handles it exceptionally well (the Japanese-born cinematographer was responsible for a previous male weepie, Gavin O’Connor's 2011 Warrior). New Jersey native Matthew Anthony Pellicano Jr. as the young Springsteen hits all the right notes as a watchful boy who longs for his father's approval, but will defend his mother from him as necessary. 

There's also a possible thematic reason for the B&W, and that's because it fits with the world Springsteen depicts in some of his songs: an America shaped by the Civil War, the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and the like. 

 

Granted, most of his album covers are in full color, but Born to Run, The River, and Nebraska were all built around monochromatic photographs, in addition to the cover of his memoir. 

 

There are also references in Deliver Me From Nowhere to Charles Laughton’s B&W Southern Gothic masterpiece Night of the Hunter, one of the cinematic inspirations behind Nebraska, alongside Terrence Malick's full-color Badlands, which provided the title, since Charlie Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, played in the 1973 film by Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek, hailed from the state (and the 1950s spree killers were largely depicted in B&W).  

Cooper introduces the adult Springsteen long after he has become a star. In fact, he opens with a sweat-drenched concert before introducing the musician's childhood. From there, he shifts to Springsteen's time in Colt's Neck, New Jersey in 1981 where he has rented a cabin to spend time out of the public eye and work on the album that would become Nebraska. 

 

This mostly consists of reading, watching old movies on television, sitting in with musician friends at the Stone Pony, and staring at a pad of paper on which lyrics begin to materialize, though with each new impression or experience, he scratches out words, starts again, and repeats the process. 

To Cooper's credit, none of this is boring. If anything, it's a reminder of how hard songwriting can be, even for some of the most accomplished artists. 

 

In the process of listening, watching, absorbing, and re-contextualizing, Springsteen, who always had an eye on the punk scene--even if he was never part of it--discovers NYC electronic duo Suicide's self-titled debut. Though he had sung about Vietnam veterans before, it's hard not to imagine that the harrowing "Frankie Teardrop," which features in the film, had an influence on "Born in the U.S.A.," since he also wrote that song during his Colt's Neck residency. (His yelps on the ominous "State Trooper" are pure Alan Vega.)

In the meantime, Springsteen meets with Landau in diners and works with a recording engineer (the always-welcome Paul Walter Hauser), who helps him to shape what is essentially a home recording, so he has to convince Landau this isn't as crazy as it sounds, and Landau has to convince Columbia's Al Teller (David Krumholtz), who wants more hits, like The River's "Hungry Heart," which doesn't make him a bad guy, necessarily–he's just doing his job–but for a time Columbia isn't on board with whatever the hell Springsteen is doing out in the boonies. As he explains in his memoir, Nebraska "would distort, feed back and declare revolution on the common materials of recording," and so he categorically rejects that approach.  

We know how this story ends, but Cooper's trick is to make the film feel suspenseful while retracing the steps it takes to get there, including incidents from Springsteen's childhood which play into the album, in addition to the nomadic life he leads before settling down, later, with Patty Scialfa.

 

Cooper, who made 2009's Crazy Heart with Jeff Bridges–along with several genre-oriented features–does all of these things, and White is fully convincing throughout, not least because he isn't doing a Springsteen impression. 

 

His blue eyes have been made brown and his light brown hair has been darkened, but he doesn't speak exactly like Springsteen, who has always had a drawl. I detected a little in a backstage exchange with Graham, who plays Douglas "Dutch" Springsteen, but for the most part, he doesn't sound much different than he does on The Bear or the 11 seasons he spent on Showtime's Shameless; both feature more of a place-less accent than one specific to Chicago.

Of greater importance: he makes Springsteen sympathetic, which isn't as easy as it sounds. There's a reason so many musician biopics begin before the artist has become a star. We share in their excitement when they play their first concert or cut their first record, but this isn't that kind of film. 

Cooper skips Springsteen's years as an isolated high school student or the decade he spent as a struggling twentysomething musician. He's rich and famous, but other than the cabin rental and a vehicle purchase, he isn't extravagant with his earnings. It's just that he doesn't have to worry about money, like most of us. If fame has changed him in some ways–the craving for privacy, for instance–it hasn't corrupted him, and that's no small feat. 

 

This is also where things become more complicated, in ways Cooper may not have intended. First of all, I get why composite characters are incorporated into fact-based narratives, like Elle Fanning's "Sylvie Russo" in James Mangold's A Complete Unknown–a stand-in for Dylan's Freewheelin' Bob Dylan cover costar Suze Rotolo–but I'm less forgiving when it's a substantial part, and that describes "Faye Webster" (Australian actress Odessa Young), the ardent fan Springsteen hangs out with in Colt's Neck.

Is she based on one person or several? (In his memoir, he mentions "a lovely 22-year-old," and leaves it at that.) Did he really date diner waitresses and single mothers at the height of his fame? It's possible, though I believe it's also intended to confirm that he's a man of the people. 

That said, Faye actually pursues him. She approaches Springsteen after a show at the Stone Pony, after a mutual acquaintance introduces the two, and makes it clear that she would like to see him. He seems intrigued, but tells her he's seeing someone. Near as I can tell, it's a white lie, because Cooper doesn't depict him breaking up with anybody, but he does eventually give her a call, and there's no suggestion that he's two-timing a steady.

 

They proceed to become something of an item. Faye and her five-year-old daughter live with her parents, and she seems to see in the Jersey native-made-good a potential husband, father, and provider. 

 

Prior to the end of his residency, though, he breaks up with her. I found Faye convincing as a fan and as a woman who finds him physically attractive, but Cooper's screenplay suggests that she also sees him as a way out of a dead-end existence. It doesn't make her a gold digger, but since there's no mention of his wealth, I wasn't sure how we were meant to take any of this. 

 

Chances are, he was never interested in a serious relationship, but failed to make that clear to Faye, which is a shitty thing to do when the income disparity is so vast, let alone when he connects with her daughter in a way that any single mother would hope a prospective partner would. It means he doesn’t just let down a lonely, lovelorn woman, but a fatherless child, too.

Young isn't bad, but she comes close to Jersey Girl stereotype with her bleached hair, tight jeans, and brassy manner. I'm sure it's how the character was written and directed, but this aspect of the film rings least true, even if Springsteen did date someone exactly like her. And yet…Faye plays like a character from one of his songs, so I can't get too aggrieved.

 

Stephen Graham’s portrayal of Dutch, on the other hand, elevates what could have been a stereotype or a villain into something more nuanced. He doesn't come across as a complicated man, but rather a volatile one and, later, as one beaten down by years of disappointment and regret. 

There are American actors who could have played the part, but the Lancashire-born Graham was a masterstroke of casting, because his stock in trade is gangsters, mentors, father figures, and working-class blokes. 

 

He first caught my attention in Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York (he would later appear in The Irishman, which seems fitting). If Leonardo DiCaprio and, especially, Cameron Diaz seemed out of place in this 19th-century underworld, Graham fit right in as an Irish-American pickpocket. 

That history and those skills inform his work here. Just as it took Springsteen years to recognize that his father suffered from depression, it took him years to recognize that he had inherited the same predisposition. For men of Dutch's generation, and even for my dad's, alcohol was the most socially acceptable way to keep the demons at bay. Springsteen figured out what was going on before it was too late. His father didn't, but at least the son had the means to make sure his needs were met in his twilight years. (For all she suffered, his mother, Adele, never divorced Dutch.)

I'll never know what my dad would think about this film, or about Springsteen's memoir, in which he talks openly about his struggle with depression. It's possible that he wouldn't care to dwell on the darker chapters in a favorite musician's life, but I'd imagine he would have admired the thought, care, and creativity he poured into one of his more personal albums. It also saddens me that I can't ask Charley Cross, the founder of the Springsteen fanzine Backstreets, which ceased publication in 2023 after a 43-year run. Cross died suddenly last August. I would have loved to compare notes with the foremost expert I knew.

Deliver Me from Nowhere burnishes the man's myth to some extent, and Warren Zanes' book is there for the reading for anyone who wants a more detailed picture of the period Scott Cooper depicts, but there are only so many musician biographies that have moved me in the same way. It's a portrait of a famous artist to be sure, and I wouldn't say that it completely breaks the mold, but it's also a portrait of masculinity in crisis in the form of the father and the son who tried, and largely succeeded, to do better.

My father's house shines hard and bright 

It stands like a beacon, calling me in the night 

Calling and calling, so cold and alone 

Shining 'cross this dark highway, where our sins lie unatoned

--"My Father's House," Nebraska (1982)

Bruce Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere opens on Thurs, Oct 23, at Regal Meridian, AMC Pacific Place, the Varsity, and other area theaters. 

 

Images from Rolling Stone/20th Century Studios/Everett Collection (Jeremy Allen White), Amazon (original book cover),  Festival Peak (Born to Run album cover), Pinterest (Dutch, Bruce, and Ginnie), Movie Mezzanine (Badlands), Wikipedia (Suicide album cover), the IMDb (Jeremy Allen White and Odessa Young), and Simon and Schuster (Born to Run book cover).  

Rose Byrne Unravels in Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, a Horror-Comedy with Motherhood as a Neverending Nightmare

IF I HAD LEGS I’D KICK YOU

(Mary Bronstein, USA, 2025, 113 minutes)

There are mothers who make it look easy, and then there are mothers, like Rose Byrne's beleaguered Linda, who make it look hard as hell.  

 

As Mary Bronstein's followup to Yeast hurtles from one incident to another, it doesn't seem as if things can get much worse, and yet they always do. (Byrne, a fine actress, has frequently appeared in films that don't quite deserve her, though I wouldn't say that's true of If I Had Legs I'd Kick You.) 

Some of these incidents are Linda's fault, and some aren't. What can't be helped is that her daughter (voiced by Delaney Quinn) has a chronic condition that has led to a critical loss of appetite, so she's on a feeding tube. If she doesn't gain 50 pounds by the deadline, the doctor (played by Bronstein, who appeared in Yeast with Greta Gerwig) will have to resort to extreme measures. Both illness and protocol remain undefined, which makes things seem ominous in ways matter-of-fact clinical terms might not.

It's also ominous that the child remains unseen until the end, like Rosemary's Baby, except not. Instead of a physical presence--other than glimpses of fingers, ears, stomach--she's a voice; a whiny, wheedling voice of insatiable need. The unnamed child's physical absence means that Byrne doesn't just appear in every scene, she's often the only one visible, both doubling her workload and suggesting that the whining is all in her head. 

 

Fortunately, the actress is up to the task, even when the camera seems to be inches away from her face. Cinematographer Christopher Messina (not to be confused with the actor), who shot Josh and Benny Safdie's Good Time, has a knack for closeups that don't feel invasive, exploitative, or even unflattering, necessarily, but make the character's paranoia palpable. 

It's not that Linda's daughter hates her, but she never gives the kid what she wants when she wants it. Though the film's conception of motherhood plays like an endurance test, especially when a child is chronically ill, Bronstein leaves open the possibility that she's also a real pain in the ass. 

Or maybe she isn't, but because we see everything from Linda's bleary perspective, she certainly seems that way. What inflames an already-fraught situation occurs within the first few minutes when a ceiling in their Long Island apartment collapses, so she and her daughter set up shop in a motel while her husband (Christian Slater), a ship's captain, is away on business. 

 

Linda is a therapist in therapy, a scenario that recalls The Sopranos, in which Tony Soprano's therapist, Lorraine Bracco's Dr. Melfi, would turn to Peter Bogdanovich's Dr. Kupferberg for counsel. Conan O'Brien plays her exasperated therapist, who works at the same clinic, while Danielle Macdonald (an Australian-born actress, like Byrne) plays Caroline, a young client also overwhelmed by motherhood. 

Linda is a surprisingly competent therapist, but her clients--even her client's partners--don't make her life easier, not least when Caroline disappears. 

These would be challenging situations for anyone, except this isn't a melodrama where everything culminates in a cataclysmic and possibly transformative event, and as bad as things get, Linda isn't without resources. She isn't single or unemployed, and yet she's on her own for reasons that aren't completely clear. There's no mention, for instance, of parents or other family members who can help while Charles is away. She doesn't even have any friends. Then again, she might not know how to make them, in which case her problems began long before motherhood. 

 

If everyone is rude to her on some level–though she gives as good as she gets–she doesn't know how to react to the rare moments of kindness.

 

Every person, every encounter, represents a potential threat, even James (A$AP Rocky), a motel super who sees her more clearly than anyone else. His patience isn't unlimited, but he offers to help this harried mother several times, and more often than not, she rebuffs his decidedly non-sexual advances. Though he does return a few of her insults, he keeps trying until she finally relents. 

A$AP Rocky, aka Rakim Mayers, held his own against Denzel Washington earlier this year in Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest, but he's even better here. 

He's been acting since 2015, so Rocky isn't a newcomer, but 2025 marks his breakout year, capped by a cover story for Elle in which he admits he doesn't mind being known as a pretty boy--"I wear it like a badge of honor"--and good for him, because it's only an insult when a performer prioritizes appearance above all, but he's a warm presence in an otherwise prickly film.

 

Right: as a not-so-good guy in Highest 2 Lowest

Conan O'Brien, who usually plays himself when he appears in narrative features–Todd Solondz's underappreciated Storytelling is a favorite–and Danielle Macdonald are both strong, though it's harder to judge Christian Slater and Ella Beatty, the impressively tall daughter of Annette Bening and Warren Beatty, because their parts are so small, to the extent that I'm not even sure why Ella is in the film, since Bronstein reveals little about her character. Daniel Zolghadri, on the other hand, impresses as a pouty, impatient narcissist. Though his therapist is clearly suffering, his awareness extends no further than his problems and his time. He also appears to be sexually attracted to her.

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You begins as a dark comedy before edging into horror, punctuated by bursts of sparking, surrealistic imagery. It's been compared to the Safdies' Uncut Gems, and this scans, not least since Bronstein's husband, Ronald, edited that diamond district thriller to nerve-jangling perfection in concert with Daniel Lopatin's propulsive score. 

Beyond her directorial debut, Bronstein also appeared, as an actress, in her husband's Frownland, possibly the darkest of the mumblecore films to emerge in the aughts (Ronald, as an actor, appears in the Safdie's semi-autobiographical debut as a duo, Daddy Longlegs, and he's fantastic). 

 

Despite all that initial filmmaking activity, though, things grew quiet for Mary Bronstein afterward, and the 17-year gap between features might make it seem as if she's been spinning her wheels. On the contrary, her film offers a heightened version of things she's actually experienced, from the mystery illness to the extended motel stay.

 

There's a line at the end that sums things up as best as anything can. I found it relatable, though I don't have kids, and I would imagine some mothers would, too--even if it they'd never admit it (no spoilers here). 

 

The film, as a whole, is one of the best I've seen about motherhood at its most stressful. Consequently, it isn't an especially enjoyable experience, but Byrne brings a certain lightness to a scenario that might be borderline-unwatchable without her spectacular versatility, and that's no mean feat.

 

 

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You opens at SIFF Uptown on Fri, Oct 24. Yeast isn't currently available in any form; here's hoping that renewed attention in Bronstein's work reverses that course. If I Had Legs images courtesy A24 (Rose Byrne with Conan O'Brien and A$AP Rocky; Byrne photos, with and without Rocky, by Logan White) and the IMDb (Rocky in Highest 2 Lowest).

63rd New York Film Festival Snapshot, Part 3: Kathryn Bigelow’s Thriller A House of Dynamite

A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE
(Kathryn Bigelow, 2025, USA, 112 minutes)

Like any major film festival these days, this year's NYFF included a few Netflix titles, including Richard Linklater's Nouvelle Vague and Noah Baumbach's Jay Kelly (Sony Pictures Classics is handling Blue Moon, Linklater's other NYFF selection). 

It's always a mixed blessing. Subscribers, like me, can save money and wait until a film hits streaming unless they would prefer to see it before the official debut and/or with the director and other contributors in attendance. 

Netflix also makes films available for critics, but the Seattle screening of A House of Dynamite was scheduled for the same day I was planning to see it in New York, so I bought a ticket, because I didn't want to wait for the October opening, and figured I might never get the chance to see the Oscar-winning director in person again. (Press screenings for NYFF took place primarily between Sept 17 and 25, so that wasn't going to work for me.) 

Granted, I would've needed to attend the NYFF premiere to see Rebecca Ferguson, Idris Elba, and Anthony Ramos in person, but that was beyond my budget and schedule. 

Instead I attended a screening that included Bigelow, writer Noah Oppenheim, actors Jared Harris and Tracy Letts (very funny), and sound designer Paul N. J. Ottosson, who worked on Bigelow's last three films.

The thriller revolves around a nuclear missile hurtling its way towards the Midwest, and the race against the clock by government and other officials, including the President, to minimize the damage. In some ways, it feels like a continuation of themes Bigelow explored in The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, but Oppenheim's screenplay plays more like Steven Soderbergh's Contagion as Bigelow shifts from person to person and scenario to scenario. 

It gets off to a promising start by first introducing the threat, identified by Anthony Ramos's no-nonsense Army Major stationed in Alaska, followed by Rebecca Ferguson's senior intelligence officer in DC, who has a happy home life with husband and child. I figured Bigelow would return to Olivia Walker from time to time, and she does, but not nearly enough, since she's the most clearly-defined character, though not to the same extent as Jessica Chastain's CIA analyst in Zero Dark Thirty. Every other character has some interest or quirk–golf game, jump shot, model train, and the like–that sets them apart, but as the action ramped up, my investment started to wane. 

I didn't want to see any of these competent, hard-working people die, let alone their friends and family members, and that isn't something Bigelow shows--though she does suggest it--but the lack of emotional stakes proves a liability.

The grim lesson with which I left is that it's better to avoid angering countries with nuclear capabilities, like Russia and North Korea, than trying to stop a nuclear war once it's begun. The functional, technically-adept White House she depicts also looks nothing like the car filled with clowns currently running the country, which isn't the film's point, but the studious avoidance of politics--the culprit remains a mystery--feels like a cop out. 

That said, there's something about seeing a decent, kindly man as President that hurt my heart, because I'm not so sure we'll ever see that again.

James Earl Jones, Morgan Freeman, Dennis Haysbert, Jamie Foxx, and other Black actors have played the President, so Idris Elba–though UK-born–doesn't represent a first, but he does represent an ideal; a guy who treats teenage basketball players, his Special Agent in Charge (Reacher's Brian Tee making the most of a small part), and his staffers with equal respect.

Bigelow has filled out the cast with a wide-ranging group of talents, and they give it their all, but I miss the greater care she once took with character, even in stylized genre exercises like The Loveless, Near Dark, and Strange Days, which, sci-fi trappings aside, is nearly a two-hander with Ralph Fiennes and Angela Bassett.

I realize her interests and priorities have changed, but A House of Dynamite, though hardly a waste of time, has me hoping she can find her way back to the more affecting--yet still action-packed--films with which she began. 

At the NYFF, I also caught Duse, Late Fame, Sentimental Value, a 4K restoration of Yasuzo Masumura's 1965 The Wife of Seisaku, and Bruce Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, which I wrote about here.

House of Dynamite opens in Seattle at SIFF Uptown on Fri, Oct 10, and comes to Netflix on Fri, Oct 24. Images from the IMDb (Joe Klaunberg and Gabriel Basso and Anthony Ramos) and me (Jared Harris, Noah Oppenheim, Kathryn Bigelow, and NYFF programmer Rachel Rosen), and Cinephilia and Beyond (Ralph Fiennes and Angela Bassett in 1995's Strange Days).

63rd New York Film Festival Snapshot, Part 2: Ira Sachs' 1970s Reverie Peter Hujar's Day

PETER HUJAR'S DAY
(Ira Sachs, 2025, USA,
76 minutes) 

I may have missed The Mastermind, but I had no problem getting to the Walter Reade Theatre in time for the 9:15pm screening of Ira Sachs' ninth feature, Peter Hujar's Day, about which I had heard good things since its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. 

First, I stopped by the concession stand to fuel up on caffeine lest I nod off after my two-hour sleep. I was wearing the super-soft One Battle After Another t-shirt I picked up at the preview screening the week before, and the charismatic cashier was so tickled that he waived the cost of my cold brew. I swear it almost made up for missing the Kelly Reichardt film. 

Though the pan-European Passages was a breakthrough for Sachs, a longtime New Yorker, I wasn't especially charmed by the central trio–or even the premise–despite my affection for all three actors, including Ben Whishaw, who plays American portrait photographer Hujar in the new film. 

If anything, Whishaw felt like a third wheel in Passages, which may have been intentional, but Martin wasn't given the chance to be much more than an appendage to Franz Rogowski's temperamental director, though Josée Deshaies' cinematography was lovely and the sweaters were fabulous.

Left: a set photo by Ira Sachs that suggests a David Hockney painting

Peter Hujar's Day is a smaller, more experimental film--DP Alex Ashe shot it with 16mm Kodak stock, which seems appropriate for both era and subject--and it may not appeal to as many tastes, but it was more to my liking.

The film is the closest Sachs has come to docudrama, since most every word comes from the transcript of an interview arts writer Linda Rosencranz conducted with Hujar on Dec 18, 1974. During the Q&A, I don't recall Sachs mentioning that she published it as a book, but he did say that she had planned to interview several other artists about their day, but ended the project after speaking with Hujar and painter Chuck Close. I'm not sure why, but a recent Guardian profile makes it sound as if she simply lost interest. (Sachs did mention the book at the first NYFF screening on Sept 27.)

The versatile Rebecca Hall (Resurrection) plays Rosencranz, and she doesn't have a lot to do, but she does it well. That may sound like faint praise, but it isn't. She has to be present while Hujar is talking. Sometimes, she speaks, sometimes not, but she's always listening and reacting. Sachs could have cast a lesser actor, but I'm glad he didn't, since Hall, a fellow director, doesn't shrink in the sensual, unfiltered presence of her scene partner. 

In the process of making the film, Sachs became friends with the now-91-year-old Rosencranz. Hujar, on the other hand, died from AIDS in 1987, which would also claim photographer friends David Wojnarowicz, with whom he had a close relationship, and Robert Mapplethorpe, who shared his interest in homoerotic portraiture. (At the Q&A, there were questions about Hujar's smoking in the film; he's never without a lit cigarette in his hand, which was probably true to life, but plays more alarmingly in 2025.)

Right: 1966 Peter Hujar portrait of Linda Rosencranz who he met in 1956

The 76-minute film is as much a profile of the photographer, at a particular moment in his life, as a showcase for the actor, who first won my heart in Todd Haynes' multi-persona Dylan depiction I'm Not There, in which he played French symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud, which struck me then--and now--as perfect casting. He would go on to play another brilliant, doomed poet, John Keats, in Jane Campion's Bright Star, a highlight of her fine career.

During the Q&A, I looked around at the audience, and noted a significant LGBTQ presence, which makes sense in terms of Hujar's overtly-queer work, in addition to the the fact that Sachs and Whishaw have often made or appeared in queer films, more so after Whishaw came out in 2013. (Near as I can tell, Sachs has been out since at least since 1996 when he debuted with The Delta.) The Whishaw contingent, in other words, was out in force.

Granted, Peter Hujar's Day isn't necessarily about being gay in the pre-AIDS 1970s; it's about one day in the life of a man who lived and thought like an artist, who knew every artistic New Yorker worth knowing, and who didn't make the money or find the fame he deserved during his abbreviated life.

Though Sachs opted not to include any of Hujar's photographs in the film, they're easy to find online, and they're quite extraordinary, especially his Old Hollywood-style portrait of Warhol Superstar Candy Darling, which Anohni would use for her 2005 Mercury Prize-winning album I Am a Bird Now. 

I found the film touching, and I hope it spurs more interest in his work.

Next up: Part 3: Kathryn Bigelow’s Thriller A House of Dynamite

There are no further NYFF screenings, but Peter Hujar's Day opens in Seattle at SIFF Film Center on Fri, Nov 14. Images from Amazon (Peter Hujar's Day, 2022, Magic Hour Press), Films Boutique (Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall), and © Peter Hujar Archive / Cirko-Gejzír Mozi (Linda Rosencranz portrait).

A Snapshot of the 63rd New York Film Festival Plus a Detour to Take in a Broadway Show

Part 1: A Brief History of the 

NYFF and Me 

Left: full house at the Sept 29 screening of A House of Dynamite

The last time I attended the New York Film Festival was in 2003, so I think it's fair to say it's been awhile. 

This year, the 63-year-old festival began on Sept 26 and runs through Oct 13, but I was only able to catch four-days worth of films. I was mostly in town to see a play, Waiting for Godot with Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, and took advantage of the timing to add the festival to my itinerary. Still, I caught more features (eight) and fewer shorts (none) than in the past. The NYFF doesn't bundle shorts with features anymore; instead they programmed seven shorts packages, five associated with the more adventurous Currents section. 

In 2003, I caught five features and four shorts: Denys Arcand's Academy Award-winning comedy-drama The Barbarian Invasions with Dominique Monféry's 58-years-in-the-making Destino, a Disney animated short co-written by Salvador Dalí; Johnnie To's PTU, a rousing policier, with Pascal Lahmani's mismatched WWII-era short From Head to Toe; Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Distant, a heartbreaking character study, with Charles Officer and Ingrid Veninger's experimental short Urda/Bone; and George Hickenlooper's Mayor of the Sunset Strip, a downbeat if engaging portrait of KROQ DJ and alt-rock tastemaker Rodney Bingenheimer, with Streetwise filmmaker Martin Bell's Twins, a documentary short made with his wife, photographer Mary Ellen Mark (both Hickenlooper and Mark have since passed away). 

Right: Mehmet Emin Toprak (1974-2002) in Uzak, aka Distant

I missed 2003's opening night film, Clint Eastwood's Boston thriller Mystic River, which I caught later that year, but I made it to the closing night film, Alejandro González Iñárritu's 21 Grams, which screened at Avery Fisher Hall (since renamed David Geffen Hall). The filmmaker was there, along with stars Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, and Benicio Del Toro–two of whom are now starring in P.T. Anderson's One Battle After Another. This was in the pre-smartphone / pre-digital camera days–for me, at any rate–so I have no photographic proof of any of this. 

As for Iñárritu's jigsaw-shaped film, a popular screenplay structure at the time, I wasn't crazy about it–the last film of his I truly enjoyed was Amores Perros, his 2000 directorial debut–but I was impressed by the performances, Penn's especially, and spotting Lou Reed in the audience was a nice bonus. 

Sean Penn would go on to win an Oscar for Mystic River, which also received a nomination for Best Picture. This year's opener was Luca Guadagnino's After the Hunt with Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, and Andrew Garfield. It sounded too much like something I had seen before, so I wasn't too sad to miss it, not least since every Guadagnino film interests me less than the one before, despite the fact that I loved 2015's A Bigger Splash, his idiosyncratic update of Jacques Deray's La Piscine, which actually betters the original in some respects, especially the character of Penelope (Dakota Johnson taking over from Jane Birkin), who becomes a more fully-rounded human being.

Left: I was there! Benicio Del Toro, Naomi Watts, Sean Penn, and Melissa Leo at the 41st NYFF opening night

This year's closer is Bradley Cooper's Is This Thing On? with Will Arnett and Laura Dern, which looks like a less ambitious, if possibly more enjoyable film than Maestro, his misbegotten Leonard Bernstein biopic, though I liked his take on A Star Is Born, more for Lady Gaga's warmhearted performance than anything else.

This year, I purchased tickets for four films in advance, a fairly arduous process, as it turns out, though I have no memory of the 2003 ticketing process. It took nearly two hours this time around to complete my order, in part because I lost my place in the queue and had to start all over again. By the time I got in, every other film I wanted to see was sold out online.

Members of Film Society at Lincoln Center surely have better luck online through pre-sales, but I don't live in New York, and nor can I afford to visit as often as I would like, so a membership wouldn't do me much good. 

Right: ticketholder line for the second screening of the Bruce Springsteen biopic--the Boss didn't show up for this one

Fortunately, NYFF holds tickets at the door for each screening, and I got to each one super-early, which meant a lot of standing around, but also a lot of fun people-watching–it's New York, after all–and the opportunity to chat with fellow filmgoers. The sellouts turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I left Seattle ridiculously early Sunday morning in order to get into NYC well before the 6:15pm screening of Kelly Reichardt's The Mastermind, but the plane was late, JFK was a mess, and my shuttle made a lot of stops on the way from Queens to Manhattan–yet no stops on the way back. 

By the time I checked into my Lower East Side Airbnb, the film had already begun. I'm glad I didn't waste money on a ticket I wouldn't have been able to use, not least since they start at $30 for new films and $20 for archival releases. Considering that Reichardt had to cancel her Seattle appearance with First Cow, due to Covid-19, I fear I'm forever fated to miss her.

Part 2: Ira Sachs' 1970s Reverie Peter Hujar's Day

More information about the 63rd NYFF at this link. Images from me (House of Dynamite screening and the line for Bruce Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere at Alice Tully Hall), Film Society at Lincoln Center (Distant and 21 Grams photocall), and Posterati (NYFF 41 poster signed by Junichi Taki).

Hans Christian Andersen Meets the Brothers Grimm in Lucile Hadžihalilović's The Ice Tower

THE ICE TOWER / La Tour de Glace 

(Lucile Hadžihalilović, France/Germany/Italy, 2025, 117 minutes)

 

How beautiful she was. So perfect! 

--A narrator describes The Snow Queen

Lucile Hadžihalilović's The Ice Tower, in which a fairy tale becomes real, opens with kaleidoscopic shapes, like icycles made from crystals or the shards of a mirror, dancing across an indigo sky to an enchanting ondes Martenot score (I assumed it was a theremin until I read otherwise). 

Even before a narrator (Saint Omer's Aurélia Petit) describes The Snow Queen's castle in voiceover, the French filmmaker, who wrote the screenplay with Geoff Cox (Evolution, Earwig), has conjured up a heightened atmosphere, something that could be said about all of her feature films to date, starting with 2004 Frank Wedekind adaptation Innocence. 

She then shifts to the rosy-cheeked face of Jeanne (22-year-old newcomer Clara Pacini), a dreamy, yet resourceful 15-year-old gazing at a snow-covered mountain in the Swiss Alps in 1970. There's no castle or tower in sight, but the image in her mind comes from the 19th-century book, Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen, that she reads to her foster sister, Rose (Cassandre Louis Urbain), every night before bed. 

Jeanne is the oldest of several orphans all sharing the same overcrowded, if cozy-looking cottage. She's restless and unhappy, and the film has barely begun before she takes off, by walking, climbing and hitchhiking, to the nearest, not-so-close town. It's a somewhat treacherous journey, complete with potential predator, but she arrives intact and no worse for wear. 

Her journey ends, momentarily, at an open-air ice rink, where she's mesmerized by Bianca (Valentina Vezzoso), a long-limbed skater of great skill, but after everyone leaves, she's alone in the dark with no place to go.

From the way cinematographer Jonathan Ricquebourg (The Taste of Things) shoots this sequence, echoing Dario Argento's late-night dreamscapes, Jeanne could be Little Red Riding Hood wandering through a town rather than the woods, not least because she's wearing a red jacket. 

Jeanne finally finds a storage room in which to sleep, though she wakes to room-temperature snow floating through the air and the sight of the glittering, white-garbed Snow Queen (Marion Cotillard reuniting with the director 20 years after Innocence) through a peep hole, but what seems like a dream is real–the building houses a soundstage. Jeanne has seemingly manifested Andersen's tale. 

Before too long, she reveals herself to a crew member, who allows her to explore the backstage area. To another, she claims to be an extra, and finds herself in the film, but what sounds like pure wish fulfillment plays as sufficiently believable, though I wouldn't say that verisimilitude has ever been one of Hadžihalilović's top priorities. Notably, her partner, Gaspar Noé (wearing a hairpiece), plays the film-within-a-film's director, and I don't think it's completely coincidental that the maker of a film starring Argento, 2021's Vortex, actually resembles the Italian actor/director in this one.

As for Cotillard, she may not have been a star when she first worked with Hadžihalilović, but since then she's modeled for several French designers, graced the covers of numerous fashion magazines, starred in nearly two dozen English-language films and over 30 French ones, and won most every award, including an Oscar for 2007's La Vie en Rose. I've never heard that she's difficult, but she's as famous in real life as the fictional Cristina. 

Jeanne becomes intrigued by her ambiguous relationship with Max (German actor August Diehl, who appeared with Cotillard in Robert Zemeckis's 2016 spy thriller Allied). She watches Cristina watching herself in rushes, and imitates the way she smokes. Cristina catches her in the act, and asks what she finds so fascinating. Jeanne cites the Snow Queen's power and immortality. Cristina, however, sees the Queen as lonely, which may be how she sees herself–and how she sees Jeanne, too. 

Just as the opening sequence proves disorienting, I couldn't always tell when Jeanne was dreaming that she was exploring the grounds of the Ice Tower or just exploring a set. As the director confirmed to Indiewire's Ryan Lattanzio, "At some point, the idea of blurring the border between the dream and reality was the purpose of the film." Though Jeanne starts out as part of an ensemble, she ends up playing a unique character who looks like a younger version of the Queen with similar silvery makeup and platinum blonde hair. 

As they get to know each other, it isn't clear if Jeanne wants to be Cristina, finds her desirable, or sees her as a mother figure–Cotillard's oldest child is around the same age--but Cristina seems to see her younger self in Jeanne. All of these things can be true, and for a time, Cristina helps to make her threadbare life more comfortable, though it's clear there will be a cost. 

The cost, when it arrives, is both inappropriate and disturbing, and Jeanne takes it as a sign that it may be time to go. Along the way, Hadžihalilović reveals what happened to her mother, though I don't recall any mention of a father. Then again, fathers leave little impression in Hadžihalilović's work, if they appear at all (this takes extreme form in 2015 sci-fi oddity Evolution, in which women conceive without the aid of men).  

In the end, Cristina is a wolf in chic clothing, even if the director drew primarily from a different fairy tale. There's no woodsman, however, as in Kelsey Taylor's PNW-set To Kill a Wolf, a more grounded take on Little Red Riding Hood (if you missed the summer screenings, Taylor and cinematographer Adam Lee return to town this fall at SIFF Film Center).

Jeanne is on her own. If she sees herself in Cristina, and if Cristina--who also grew up in a foster home–sees herself in Jeanne, it isn't too late for one of them to start anew. Life, on the other hand, imitates art, since The Ice Tower is a smaller, more idiosyncratic film than those, like Michael Mann's Public Enemies or Christopher Nolan's Inception, with which Marion Cotillard has come to be associated during her post-Academy Award career.

Like Pacini, she's very good here, and the experienced actress and the ingenue work well together. Cotillard next appears, alongside Ornella Muti and Django legend Franco Nero, in an Italian adventure from another European master of the fantastique: Bertrand Mandico.

From Innocence through The Ice Tower, Lucile Hadžihalilović has placed women at the center of her work, especially young women trying to make sense of a world that does not always have their best interests at heart. It makes her films suspenseful and even a little scary, but these aren't horror movies; they're coming-of-age pictures made with great empathy and imagination, and this is surely one of the most beautiful she has made.

Headline note: French author Charles Perrault originated Little Red Riding Hood in 1697 before the German-born Brothers Grimm revived it in 1812. 

The Ice Tower opens in limited release on Fri, Oct 3. No Seattle dates yet, but I'll update this post once it becomes more readily available, whether by theatrical engagement, home-video release, or streaming platform. Images from Yellow Veil Pictures (Marion Cotillard and Clara Pacini in and out of character) and Penguin Random House (2000 edition of The Snow Queen). 

Looking for a Brighter Day in Paul Thomas Anderson's Brilliant One Battle After Another

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER 

(Paul Thomas Anderson, USA, 2025, 162 minutes) 

Green Acres, Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville Junction 

Will no longer be so damn relevant 

And women will not care if Dick finally got down with Jane 

On Search for Tomorrow 

Because black people will be in the street looking for a brighter day 

The revolution will not be televised 

-Gil Scott-Heron, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised"

Leave it to PT Anderson to take a text set in the 1980s–Thomas Pynchon's 1990 novel Vineland–and update it to the 2020s without missing a beat. 

In other words, One Battle After Another, his 10th feature, doesn't recreate Reagan's America, but rather Trump's America, and everything about it feels up to the minute, because one directly leads to the other, and most of the action takes place in California and Mexico (in 2014, Anderson adapted Pynchon's comic noir Inherent Vice, also featuring Benicio del Toro). 

 

Notably, there are no direct references to Trump, so he has no grounds to sue Warner Bros for defamation, but that's never stopped him before.  

The film, a multi-genre affair, starts as a love story about two revolutionaries before shifting to a love story, of a kind, about a father and a daughter. (At 162 minutes, it may be long, but not as long as 1999's Magnolia, which clocked in at 188 minutes.) As the film begins, Ghetto Pat (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his wife, Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor, who knocked me out in A.V. Rockwell's debut, A Thousand and One), are living the life of left-wing freedom fighters in the Southern California of the 2000s. They deal with guns and incendiary devices, but they're not generally violent towards their enemies–of which there are many. 

Their French 75 compatriots include Deandra (Regina Hall, effectively understated), Mae West (Alana Haim from Licorice Pizza), Laredo (Wood Harris), and Junglepussy (Shayna McHayle, reuniting with Hall after Andrew Bujalski's great Support the Girls). The nicknames and code phrases, like "Green Acres, Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville Junction," are a means of protection. Pat, for instance, is also known as Rocketman, though McHayle's alter ego isn't fictional–she's been rapping as Junglepussy since 2012.

You could argue about the effectiveness of the French 75's tactics, which involve a fair amount of property destruction, but their concerns about the rights of immigrants and pregnant people seem pretty reasonable. To Anderson, they may not be heroes per se, but they're definitely not villains. 

They're a committed, if dysfunctional unit centered around Pat and Perfidia, who have an intensely sexual bond, not least because violence turns Perfidia on. 

She's always up for a fuck, but especially when a bomb is about to go off in their vicinity. Pat loves his wife, but he isn't quite so reckless. When he finds out she's pregnant, though, he's thrilled. 

Pat has no idea, however, that her life has taken a turn. It starts when she encounters Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn, also from Licorice Pizza), a rabid right-winger, during a migrant-rescue operation at the California-Mexico border, and sexually humiliates him, after which he becomes obsessed. Later, during another operation, he corners her in a public restroom, where he makes a deal: she gets to go free, but only after servicing him. Penn has never played a character less appealing what with his lascivious leering, cock-of-the-walk gait, and Hitler Youth haircut. 

When Perfidia loses her cool during a stickup, and shoots a security guard, Lockjaw makes another kind of deal, but she has her limits, and disappears into the ether, leaving Lockjaw without his secret girlfriend and Pat with a newborn named Charlene (soon to become Willa). Granted, Perfidia never warmed up to her baby daughter. Accustomed to having her husband to herself, she didn't appreciate the way Pat doted on her all the time. 

From there, Anderson skips ahead 16 years to father and daughter living in a Pacific Northwest sanctuary city called Baktan Cross--the film was originally titled The Battle of Baktan Cross--where Willa (Presumed Innocent's Chase Infiniti) attends high school and Pat, now known as Bob, smokes pot all day, his revolutionary days long behind him. The two aren't close, though Willa is buoyed by the idea that her long-absent mother was a hero, unlike her layabout father, who has neglected to tell her that Perfidia turned rat before disappearing ("perfidia" is Spanish for treachery or wickedness). 

One Battle After Another is the kind of film that takes the occasional break to allow you to catch your breath before revving up again. Just as Pat and Perfidia are constantly on the run in the first half, when Lockjaw tracks them down, Bob and Willa hit the streets with assistance from Bob's French 75 associates--Deandra above all--and a very good movie becomes truly great. 

Though Hall has the least showy part of all, Deandra is the most heroic character, because she's fast, efficient, empathetic, and fiercely loyal. She isn't especially talkative, but Licorice Pizza cinematographer Michael Bauman often focuses on her eyes, and Deandra's face always has a story to tell.

With apologies to Teyana Taylor, who gives it her all, the father-daughter dynamic marks the point at which I became more emotionally invested, and Infiniti holds her own with DiCaprio in peak form. She holds her own with Penn, too, whose Lockjaw catches up with Willa after she and Bob get separated. 

Compared to stockbroker Jordan Belfort in Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street or actor Rick Dalton in Tarantino's Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, Bob is a shambling mess of a man to the extent that the entire film almost plays like an anti-pot PSA--with the possible exception of the pot-growing nuns who show up towards the end--but it's where Anderson locates most of the humor. The sequences between DiCaprio and Benicio del Toro as a zen sensei and migrant protector, especially, crackle with odd couple energy. 

The less-funny parts involve the treatment of Mexican immigrants–though they have fiendishly clever ways to avoid the authorities thanks to production designer Florencia Martin's Rube Goldberg-like constructions–whereas Lockjaw longs for acceptance from a white supremacist organization, the Christmas Adventurers, that plays like a joke–especially Kevin Tighe's old codger–except it's one we now live with on a daily basis. 

Law & Order's Tony Goldwyn, who always looks like a smooth motherfucker, is exceptionally well cast as one of the Christmas leaders; especially ironic since this dedicated Christian Nationalist is played by the member of a rather famous Jewish family (Tony is the grandson of movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn).

Each character plays into a turbo-charged satire about the rise of fascism in America and the attempts of a desperate citizenry to fight back. There's no perfect way to overhaul a corrupt system, but the French 75 give it a go.

In adapting Vineland, a novel with which he's long been enamored, Anderson changed most everything, except the basic plot, locations, and characters--he even changed the names. More than that, though, he made it a film about race. Bob, for instance, is a white man surrounded by powerful Black women. ("My child comes from a whole line of revolutionaries," Starletta DuPois's Grandma Jennie explains.) Willa even looks a little like PT Anderson’s partner, Maya Rudolph, might have looked at the same age. 

I'm not saying that One Battle After Another is autobiographical, though Anderson and Rudolph do have three daughters, but I'm not saying it isn't. 

That said, it is, without a doubt, a tribute to the badassery of Black women. 

One Battle After Another opens everywhere on Sept 26. Images: the IMDb via Warner Bros (Chase Infiniti, Teyana Taylor, Taylor and Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, and Infiniti and Regina Hall) and Columbia College Chicago, Infiniti's alma mater (Infiniti, a kickboxing instructor, in karate pose).