Wednesday, October 22, 2025
Bruce Springsteen, Nebraska, Deliver Me from Nowhere, and the Familial Ties That Bind
Wednesday, October 15, 2025
Rose Byrne Unravels in Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, a Horror-Comedy with Motherhood as a Neverending Nightmare
Friday, October 10, 2025
63rd New York Film Festival Snapshot, Part 3: Kathryn Bigelow’s Thriller 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, 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 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).
Wednesday, October 8, 2025
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 1956The 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-GejzÃr Mozi (Linda Rosencranz portrait).
A Snapshot of the 63rd New York Film Festival Plus a Detour to Take in a Broadway Show
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).












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