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A podcast from Bright Wall/Dark Room, engaging with the business of being alive, one movie at a time. Hosted by Veronica Fitzpatrick & Chad Perman.
You're listening to the Bright Wall Dark Room podcast where we belly up with critics, artists, and our magazine's contributors to speak from the heart about film. I'm Veronica Fitzpatrick. That's perfect, actually. Sorry. And with us for our special New York Film Festival recap episode, we have a bevy of Brightwell Darkroom alums and special guests.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:We have Frank Falisi. Hello. We have Fran Hoepfner. Hi. And we have Eli Sands.
Eli Sands:Howdy.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:And Frank, who's our additional mascot today?
Frank Falisi:This is Lewin. We're dog sitting. So Lewin saw all the films on the festival circuit and is eager to weigh in. Perfect. I'm assuming we he's we're watching it for a friend of a friend and they work at Criterion.
Frank Falisi:So I'm assuming. This dog has seen the closet. That's what I'm saying.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:Wow. Just not me. The dog, but not me. That's really messed up. Well, Eli really helpfully in prep for this episode made this outstanding color coded grid of all of the films that we each have individually seen.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:And because I've not yet seen one battle after another, which is sort of New York Film Festival coded, if not official selection, we don't have a film among us that we've all seen. So maybe we'll just start with, like, the first four, like that first day of screenings and then proceed into the ones that y'all really enjoyed. Okay. Well, let's get started with Christian Petzold. This is a high point for me, and I know it is for Fran too.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:This is Mirroir number three. Christian Petzold's, follow-up to a fire, I believe. Also co starring Paula Beer as Laura, who survives a car crash and ends up getting taken in by a woman who is close to or witnessed the accident. Fran, I know you really liked this one. So tell me what appealed about it to you.
Fran Hoepfner:Well, I've taken to comparing Christian Petzl to Steven Soderbergh, though I don't think their films are like very much at all. But I think they work pretty consistently. They're always making something new. The films are not especially laborious as a viewer. They're on the shorter side.
Fran Hoepfner:They're pretty straightforward in terms of premise. And I'm basically like all of them. I'm not mad at anything I'm seeing from Christian Petzold or Steven Soderbergh for the most part. But with Petzold, there's ones that I think just strike me more than others, and there's not a ton of rhyme or reason towards it. But for me, Mirroir was maybe my favorite since transit.
Fran Hoepfner:It had that kind of perfect otherworldly but not super stressful energy that I think pulses through some of his more surreal films. It's I think it has a kind of similar logic to Undine, though it works a little better for me. I don't know if it was one of you guys or someone after described it as, like, chill misery, like the film Misery, but it's like misery if they figured out how to make it just sort of work okay. And I think that's a great self for it. It's it's a sort of lovely time even though it has quite sad subject matter.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:A 100%. I feel like every movie I saw from that first four, the first day of the festival of press screenings that is all and I know I said this to you, Fran, made me wanna, like, move to the country. They are all just movies that have this, like, bucolic kind of restful, quiet energy. And maybe it's something about being a Newark for the festival and, like, surrounded by critics in the audience, but just really made me want to be served dinner on a porch, like, straight out of the frying pan and fall asleep for hours, like into the next day on what seemed like sun dried linen bedsheets and just all these kind of details. I think Petzl, as you said, does have this otherworldly appeal to his films and ones like Jella have a little bit more of like a genre tinge to them.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:And even in a film like this that doesn't it's mysterious, but it's not exactly a mystery, still has that kind of generic register. Like we're trying to figure out what's going on even though he's made it pretty clear, think, in the films that we've seen so far that he's not that interested in like explaining what's going on so much as using that mystery to create a kind of mood.
Fran Hoepfner:Yeah. There's no puzzle box. And I think trying to solve one of his films, there's nothing satisfying about it. I know more than one person looked up the baby bell t shirt that Joanna Beer wears at one point, which I would say is sort of the signature item of clothing of of this film and not something I knew that you could own, but they're out there.
Eli Sands:Babybel cheese?
Fran Hoepfner:Yeah.
Eli Sands:So are we talking a shirt that's promoting babybel cheese or made out of the red wax? No. No. Promoting.
Eli Sands:Okay. Too bad.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:An idea for next time. Let's talk about the mastermind. This was a dud for me. This was a big dud for me. I've seen it described convincingly as a kind of anti heist film.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:I will admit as I have to several of you that I'm not like the biggest Kelly Reichard stan in general, which is I think a pretty unpopular take. And then after I saw this film, I was like, maybe it's just she doesn't wanna make a movie about men. Or, like, it doesn't work if it's a movie about a man. And this is such a movie about a man. For me, there's a kind of irreconcilable tension between the selfish project of this lead character played by Josh O'Connor, who's in absolutely everything.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:And then the inclusion, since it's a period film that sort of, like, barely looks like a period film if you base it on mise en scene and costuming, this sense that there's, like, all this collective unrest. Like, it's like a really tense political time and there's, like, protest footage and it's interested in evoking all these collective operations and projects, while at the same time, it's kind of hyper focused on the indefensible individual project of the sky who went to grad school, but we hear very little about that. So Fran, like, now that we've had some time away from the film, how is it landing with you?
Fran Hoepfner:Not very well to my dismay. And I I am a big Kei record person and I don't really get the sense that it's because it's about a guy either. I think she's made a lot of great films about men and I think she's a great writer of male characters. I think First Cow is very much about certain types of men and businessmen specifically. But I came to see this as like her first movie about a guy who sucks.
Fran Hoepfner:I think she's portrayed I meant. She's portrayed criminals and she's portrayed losers, but I think she has a great deal of affection for criminals and for losers and people on the kind of underside of society. But I don't get a sense that she has any sympathy at all for this character. I don't think she likes him. I think it's very much about a man who sees his charm through to its end, but it's a longer film by her.
Fran Hoepfner:It's about two hours and it's a lot of time to spend with someone she doesn't like. And I don't think we're supposed to like much either even if he is played by Josh O'Connor. But I think I found the swings of the film just hard to grasp. I never thought it was as funny as I think it wanted to be seen as funny. Mhmm.
Fran Hoepfner:I never found it as serious as it wanted to be serious. I think the parallels alongside Vietnam are interesting in theory, but I thought quite clunky in execution to the point where they'll, like, be at a restaurant and you'll hear someone in the background go, like, so the Vietnam war is happening right now. And I was like, okay. Like, we know. And I like the note that it ends on.
Fran Hoepfner:I think, like, the last ten I think the last ten minutes of it are genius. But I just never got on tempo with it. And it's been quite divisive among my friends who have caught it since because it's out here now this weekend. But I don't know if it's a mood thing, if it's something else. I was sort of stunned to not enjoy this very much.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:I know exactly what you mean about it not being as funny as it thinks it is. And there were moments of laughter in our screening, I think, that almost seemed queued or, like, reluctant or something. Like, they were as scripted as the moments in the movie. I maybe laughed a few times out of being sort of, like, flabbergasted. I do think Gabbie Hoffman has like an incredible turn in the film and is the sort of like one really bright spot in it for me, but definitely not a funny movie.
Fran Hoepfner:Yeah. And I don't mean her to be funny. I think she is quite naturally funny, but I think I struggle with how stupid we're supposed to think this guy is. And I think it's, like, quite stupid. He does something really stupid and the movie seems to almost wanna punish you for laughing at how stupid
Frank Falisi:it is.
Fran Hoepfner:Very strange film. I don't know what to do with it. I thought it looked great.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:Yeah. Me too. It has this, like it reminds me of my parents' film photographs from when they used to go on vacation in Vermont in, like, the eighties. It's really pretty saturated and blurry. But
Fran Hoepfner:Yeah. And I thought Alana Haim was terrible. Sorry. Terrible.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:I know.
Fran Hoepfner:Little bit after another. But she spends that whole movie sighing. She's like, not again. Like I know. Why her?
Fran Hoepfner:Why her for that strange, like the wife character that I would think of Rikard as being both like above and avoidant Right. Of. Like those tropes and yet Right. It almost felt like maybe we lost like a whole thing with her that got caught. I don't know.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:Frank, let me ask you about late fame. This is a movie that I personally did find pretty funny. What did you think?
Frank Falisi:I thought it was hysterical. I thought it was really funny. And I was and have been a little surprised at how people have been talking about it since it played or since it's like been in like the public consciousness because
Veronica Fitzpatrick:Yeah. What have you heard?
Frank Falisi:I don't know. I feel like there's been a lot of talk about Willem Dafoe has this great really measured performance and how this is a film about the aging artists coming to grips with his work and art more generally. And while I think those things are true, I just think it's so funny. And it seems weird to me to overlook especially Sammy Burch's treatment of these young, these kids that sort of adopt Willem Dafoe. We sort of laugh at our own like to protect ourselves because that sort of is what a lot of art in New York City and other places like New York City is like right now.
Frank Falisi:I thought it was so funny that Edmund Donovan, I'd never seen him. But he reminded me a lot of Cory Michael Smith in May. This sort of like walk on, like cartoon eyes character. I thought he was great.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:I was completely surprised by how funny I found this movie. And, like, friends of mine, I feel like will know that, like, I would never go to see a movie to seek out laughing and rarely find that many movies that funny, which is why I don't like when people recommend com comedy self professed comedies because I feel a lot of pressure to have a particular kind of reaction. But I thought late fame was so funny, like the opposite, funnier than even it thinks it's being in this kind of skewering of, like, a young gentrifying class of New York so called artists. But more than being a kind of lampooning of NYU students, there's also, I think, something really amazing about aging. And I don't know, just really tender about Willem Dafoe's performance.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:There's this moment where he says something like, I used to be the youngest person in every group. And then one day I looked around and now I'm the oldest. Yeah. That I just it's like I mean, it's not as really complicated idea, but certainly relatable. And I think having that alongside this sort of critical, potentially cynical kind of satirical thing that it's doing is really helpful in making the movie kind of humane at the same time.
Frank Falisi:Yeah. I think it does the rare thing that a movie about art and the creative process can do, which is like provide a third option. It's not just you make or you don't make, but it's but you can actually become okay with your own relationship to it. And I think to your point that this is at times quite a despairing film. Like, the fact that it, you know, at the end of the day provides an outlet for this guy Mhmm.
Frank Falisi:Is I I think why it's so funny. We can laugh at it because it is ultimately a comedy. It resolves.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:What did you think of Greta Leigh's performance in this film?
Frank Falisi:I think it's pretty bad in a good way.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:Go think on.
Frank Falisi:No. I I think I think she's playing a bad actor in it. Like, I think this character is a sort of like very vampy, like, downtown cabaret singer. And like, I think Mhmm. I try not to comment on an actor's consciousness or not, but like she's directed into this like really overdriven performance.
Frank Falisi:That actually kind of works. And maybe it works because she's like the middle ground between these young sort of like monsters and like Willem Dafoe, we want to be like. And she is the sort of middle aged artist trying to like figure out where she sits there. What did you think of her performance?
Veronica Fitzpatrick:I love hearing you talk about this. I honestly, me, it's like maybe one of the first times outside of seeing her in girls where I really like got Greta Lee.
Eli Sands:Mhmm.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:I think she's this is a movie that like understands how sensual and beautiful she is that I think not a lot of other work I've seen her in has seemed to sort of get. So I appreciate that. I love when she's doing her kind of burlesque singing performance, like kind of like a, you know, like variety show type of performance. And the camera shows us the audience is populated by different kinds of old men. And they're all kind of like completely mesmerized by her.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:It makes a lot of sense that she's the kind of like Wendy to the lost boys of this, like, little monstrous, as you put it, crew of young writers. This has all the ingredients of a kind of movie I feel like I would normally really dislike and find grasping for truths about a scene that it isn't in and so can't understand. But there was something about seeing these people who identify as writers but don't really write that felt just very satisfying. And I really liked that poem that they wrote for Willem Dafoe's character, Zaxburger. I thought it was like pretty great and very believable as coming about in the time it came about.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:Yeah.
Frank Falisi:I sort of I groaned because it felt like, oh yeah, that is the kind of poem this guy would write. And I think it wasn't that Kent Jones wrote it. I think the director wrote it, right?
Veronica Fitzpatrick:Isn't it? Okay.
Frank Falisi:That's I think so. Yeah. I like this film a lot.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:I'm glad to hear you say that. I did too. Kent Jones, like what a success story for all of us. Renowned critic turned filmmaker. Amazing.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:There's still time.
Frank Falisi:Critic with a sense of humor.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:Yeah. Okay. Rounding out this first four, we have Park Chan Wook's No Other Choice. Eli, you and I saw this seated side by side in a full theater. I I already know that you dug it, but tell us what you thought.
Eli Sands:Yeah. Well, I mean, look, the best part of the screening experience was, like, waiting on the line and, you know, all the doubt about am I gonna get in and then popping in and being like, there's Veronica. And she had a sage cookie, if I'm remembering correctly.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:A Tupperware of cookies.
Eli Sands:It was so good. I will say, I I enjoyed No Other Choice. It was it was entertaining and full of Parks' formal inventiveness. Like, every few seconds, there's kind of a new idea that the camera or the sound is doing. I will say aft afterwards, it's maybe shrunken in my estimation a little bit.
Eli Sands:I feel it's pretty heavily in the shadow of things like Tokyo Sonata by Kiyoshi Kurosawa from, whatever, fifteen to twenty years earlier with a little bit less coherent of a thing to say. Like, even thinking about the final moments of this movie, which I won't spoil, they do feel a little bit harsh left turn y. That being said, even if Park doesn't have sort of a finely packaged thing to deliver, he still is a meanie panini, and it's kind of fun to see him enact cruelties with a really kind of sick wanton abandon. Yeah. And and above all, fun watching it alongside you and chatting about it afterwards.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:Yeah. I I mean, I really like Park Seggenwerk's films. The sort of, like, stylized style, his flair for violence. I think it's fun. I think it's always a good time for the most part.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:And that's something I feel like I can't say about a lot of filmmakers. I know what you mean about the sort of ideological takeaway we might say of the film, which is also its its premise to some extent being about labor issues and replacement by AI. I think if you're not interested in those things that much, you could still see the movie and have a really great time. I will say for me, all four of these first films were sort of obsessed in their own way with analog technology or, like, analog means of artistic production or reproduction. And that was weird, like an unexpected maybe it's naive to say, but kind of unexpected motif to emerge from the first films.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:And in no other choice, this kind of like longing to do the job that you have trained to do and for your history of service to count for something. And that sense of wanting your history of service to count for something also bears through to the main character's marriage in a kind of interesting way. I do think it's a very romantic film. And for me, that was like a good entry point as well that just persists through a lot of his work, especially decision to leave and like even Stoker, films like that.
Eli Sands:You're getting me to think about how if it is a film about work that lends itself well to process sequences. And Mhmm. The bulk of this movie is the plotting, execution
Fran Hoepfner:Mhmm.
Eli Sands:Plan adjusting, and follow through of murder. So it's like applying those things that go into either professional or romantic work to murder, which is itself kind of a sick little situational joke, parentheses complimentary.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:Right. Yeah. Right down my alley. Perfect. Perfect process oriented film about murder that happens to be a little bit romantic.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:That's just right. If you wanna watch that movie, I think no other choice is a good, albeit long kind of option. Fran, in terms of the other movies that you saw from the festival, I'm wondering I hope this isn't like too zoomed out a question. But, you know, for me, it was like this appreciation of the pastoral or this, like, weird citation of analog technology. Were there certain trends or patterns that you saw between the films that you watched this festival season?
Fran Hoepfner:It's a good question. I think a a big theme in this year's, like, fall movie slate in general is that I think we have a lot more overtly political movies than we've had in a minute. Many of them are contemporaneously set. Some of them are not. Mhmm.
Fran Hoepfner:But politics feels first and foremost the idea driving a lot of these films in a way that feels like maybe the first time this has really happened post pandemic. I feel like there's
Veronica Fitzpatrick:a kind of
Fran Hoepfner:wave of, like, period pieces post pandemic that were, like, sort of like, oh, we don't know what to say about right now. And this felt like the first year everyone's like, I think I know what I wanna say about right now. So I think that came up in house of dynamite. I think it comes up in it was just an accident. There's two different Palestinian documentaries, put your soul on your end and walk and with Hassan in Gaza.
Fran Hoepfner:And the latter with Hassan in Gaza is made out of footage, I believe, from 2001. It's quite old footage, essentially kind of a found footage documentary. But part of what is supposed to be so remarkable about it is that basically nothing has changed between then and now. And in watching it, you're like, wow. The the parallels feel very eminent.
Fran Hoepfner:And I think even in something like The Secret Agent, which is set in the seventies, Kleber Mendoza Filho has been pretty open about the fact that it is also a movie about being alive right now and what it feels like to live in a time of great political unrest. Filho also, like Kent Jones, film critic turned filmmaker. Nice. Which is perhaps why I like his movies so much. Yeah.
Fran Hoepfner:It felt very political this year and but if I think about the films that really stuck with me this festival, it's probably not any of the political ones. It's stuff like Mirroir's or Peter Hoosier's Day or If I Had Legs, I'd Kick You, which certainly have, like, an undercurrent of apolitic, but they are not films about, like, capital, how we live now type of thing. But I found them perhaps willing to take bigger artistic risks in form and in function and in look in kind of maybe existing alongside the political moment instead of commenting on it. But there are some great political films this year too. I have great affection for Secret Agent and It Was Just An Accident, less so House of Dynamite, which Eli and I got to witness the jeers and laughter upon its conclusion
Veronica Fitzpatrick:Actual cheer?
Fran Hoepfner:That night at the festival. It's probably one of the more vocal audiences I've seen at New York Film Fest outside of Surratt, which I imagine we'll get to at some point. But people seemed pissed off at the end of house of dynamite. Am I misremembering?
Eli Sands:I remember less kind of, like, jeering, but I do remember a vibe of, like, wait, that's the ending.
Fran Hoepfner:Like Someone was like, what?
Eli Sands:I think I I think that was me.
Fran Hoepfner:Oh, okay. Legend.
Eli Sands:Alongside the political through line, I do feel also, to something you said, Fran, formal curiosity and an investigation of what a movie is or might be. And I would I would include House of Dynamite in that, in it sort of circling back three times through the same twenty ish minutes and somehow lasting two hours to resurrection and Emmy Coles and Simon Leong and even Seurat to its detriment, a lot of kind of, like, in the face of perhaps linked to political uncertainty trying to push around what a movie can be or might be, sort of throwing things at the wall formally in some of these pictures.
Fran Hoepfner:Totally. I think I get quite annoyed with the main criticism lobbed at Peter Hujar's day, which, I mean, I'm taking it personally. It's maybe my favorite movie of the year. People think it's not a movie. They're like, it's not really a film, but it's good.
Fran Hoepfner:And it's like, well, who who are you suddenly to be the arbiter of what what is a movie? It's like, I saw it at a movie theater. The director calls it a movie. I think we have to kind of take it on those terms and maybe not reconsider, oh, it's a play or, oh, it's this formal exercise. It's sort of an installation.
Fran Hoepfner:It is quite simplistic and it is quite straightforward and it's much shorter than most normal movies. I think it's like seventy four minutes, but Mhmm. I don't think that makes it not a movie. And I think elevating it to a movie actually is part of what makes it interesting. Like, can two friends talking be a movie?
Fran Hoepfner:I think it's been a movie before.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:Isn't it a weird cultural phenomenon that people would be so quick to be like, such and such actual movie isn't a movie, but then there's the sort of like vernacular tendency to be like last night was a movie when it was literally not. It was just two people talking for seventy four minutes maybe. Yeah. Not fair.
Fran Hoepfner:Good point.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:Let's go Sarat since all three of you saw it. Good. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. It's a good juncture.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:So let's have it.
Frank Falisi:I think we need a moratorium on found family narratives. Until we can sort this out, we need to
Eli Sands:I think we need a moratorium on hot French director making a movie.
Fran Hoepfner:I think part of my frustration with this movie, outside of the fact that I think it's quite unpleasant to watch throughout, is that I think this movie only works if you're like, this movie hates these people and wants bad things to happen to them for being sort of like settler colonialist ravers in this part of Africa sort of doing their partying when there's clearly like a war happening and all this culture that they're intruding on and that whatever bad things happen to them is sort of their comeuppance, which seems to be hugely at odds with the actual conversation around the movie, which is that it's about, like, making friends when things are really rough. And I was like, what? Not to me. I hate these friends. But I don't know.
Fran Hoepfner:I felt like these two things were, like, so at odds with each other in the film. Like, do you feel like it really is about found family?
Frank Falisi:I don't think it is anything. Like, I don't think it is anything or does anything. I just I think it's I mean, it was interesting to hear you guys talk about no other choice because like, I think this is an extraordinarily cruel film. But I think it's cruel towards its characters and the audience because I think it wants to subject the audience to as much pain as its characters. And at that point, I I just said, well, what are we doing then?
Frank Falisi:Like, there's no pleasure here. And maybe that's to the point earlier about, like, you need something that's not political or not meeting motivated in films to keep us watching it. I don't know. I I was so I felt, like, attacked by this film. I know that's, you know, dangerous language nowadays.
Frank Falisi:But was like, what do you why do you hate me? Why do you hate these people?
Eli Sands:I I didn't feel enough coherence to even think that it really hates these people.
Frank Falisi:Mhmm.
Eli Sands:It really the thing that I, whatever, vomited up on Letterbox and sort of stand by is that this movie changes its mind about what it is so frequently that there are points when I think it cares about these people, points when it very clearly does not. But I think a movie can be cruel to its characters and even its audience and have something thoughtful behind it. But because it's brandishing that cruelty without a coherent thing to do. Like, even the title, Syrah, being the kind of thin connection between different phases of the afterlife, which it explains in a title card up top, I can't pin down why that's a part of it. So it could have something, but I've not heard a persuasive argument that it, kinda to Frank's point, is about anything.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:Frank, if you felt attacked by that film, which I think is a totally okay thing to say for our purposes, Was there one or two or however many from this festival season that had a more like an antidotal effect on you?
Frank Falisi:Oh, sure. I liked with lots of, like, asterisk cover up, I think, to this conversation about political films and, like one thing I was thinking when you were saying that, Fran, is, like, we so readily accept that a film is politics when, like, someone says that it is. Though we're we wanna question a film as a movie or a film when we wanna sort of go back at it. And I I really like all the Beauty and the Bloodshed, Laura Poitras' last film. But I think I've always had a there's always there's there's a little grit in my enjoyment of it.
Frank Falisi:I was like, well, what are we what does it mean to have such an emotional reaction to this storytelling? And I I cry all the time when I watch that movie. And Cover Up is this story about Seymour Hirsch, the journalist, who is frequently at odds with the filmmakers. And I think with the idea of an internal logic and of assigning a
Eli Sands:sort
Frank Falisi:of pattern to disparate parts. So I found it to be an antidote to our sort of like discombobulated way of putting together disparate threads and strands in our politics and the way we talk about politics, but also an attempt to do that. A good open hearted effort from Laura Waitress that I don't think succeeds, but I think is a balm because it doesn't or can't succeed in that way.
Fran Hoepfner:I've been thinking about cover up since I saw it. And I think I also have many asterisks sort of in in how and why it doesn't reach maybe similar heights to me as All the Beauty and the Bloodshed. But I think to your point, Frank, I think it has a much more interesting point of view on its subject than All the Beauty and Bloodshed, which sort of takes Nan Goldin, like, at her word consistently throughout.
Frank Falisi:Yeah.
Fran Hoepfner:The arguments with Psy Hirsch are some of the best things in the movie. And I think the big frustration that I left with is that kind of one of the lingering questions Poatrice asks Sahihirshah
Eli Sands:sort
Fran Hoepfner:of like, why have these exposes and cover ups been sort of the focus of your journalism? Why is this something you're drawn to? And he goes he says something to the effect of like, it's not what a country should do or it's not what a country is supposed to do. But I think it doesn't really it's was sort of like, what does he think a country should do? Sort of what is he advocating on behalf of?
Fran Hoepfner:And the movie doesn't answer that question. He doesn't answer that question. I left feeling quite frustrated that, like, the movie seems to, I think, more or less, like, believe in the project of America without seeing what the project actually, like, maybe should be doing. But I've thought about it constantly since, which is perhaps like a point in its favor that it's left me with a lot to wonder about in what we try to hide versus what we are proud to do as a country.
Frank Falisi:Mhmm. Yeah. I I recently yeah. Rewatched I rewatched All the President's Men because of Bradford RIP. But, like, I also thought about, like, well, what like, can a movie do politics?
Frank Falisi:Or can it do journalism? Why do we expect it to are movies supposed to even do that? And maybe this will all funnel to a a head on one battle after another. It's like, a movie do things that we that a movie can't do? And cover up isn't the journalism.
Frank Falisi:Cover up is a documentary talking about the journalism.
Fran Hoepfner:Yeah.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:Well, rather than save it to the end, let's talk about one battle after another right now for a second. What is it that that movie is trying to do?
Eli Sands:Maybe as a way of bridging the two, the thought that popped into my head with what Frank just said is maybe we want the movies to do the journalism because the journalism right now seems to be struggling at doing the journalism, which I think does lead to one battle after another. Do we want it to be decrying what we see around us politically, or is it trying to do something else in the vein of an action family thriller or or something else entirely? This is perhaps a way of saying I'm I'm really struggling to to pin down my thoughts on this movie.
Fran Hoepfner:I think what's been interesting in sort of the after release post release of One Battle is the film versus the effusive praise on the film and the tone that the effusive praise is taking around the film's politics, which I think are a little more flexible than people are giving it credit for. I saw Ragtime over the weekend at Lincoln Center, which is is very majestic. But I think no. I really I really loved it. But I think an interesting aspect of I'm not really familiar with the show.
Fran Hoepfner:But I think an interesting aspect of either this adaptation or the show in general is that show can kind of affirm a lot of different views. And you can kind of come out of it and feel very sort of relieved that it backs you up in one way or another. And I think for the most part, one battle does a lot of that too in a very in a very careful way. But I think it is perhaps like neither as like revolutionary or radical as some of its biggest champions would think of it as being. And I don't think that's the worst thing in the world for it either.
Fran Hoepfner:To me, it's a much more effective family drama than it is polemic about our times.
Eli Sands:I think I don't feel it as successful in the family drama category, though. Frank and I saw it together, and we both were sort of sitting in perplexed silence afterwards. And then an old gentleman came up and asked us about it.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:Asked you to leave? Oh.
Frank Falisi:It it's the only time I've been approached at Lincoln Square where someone said, did you hate that movie? That's what he said.
Eli Sands:You heard the good word?
Veronica Fitzpatrick:Yeah. It sounds like they had a flyer in their hand when they sent it.
Eli Sands:But because it spends a lot of its time focusing on militarized police and it's sort of fascinated with the Sean Penn character, I think that is to the detriment of taking time to make it a family drama that I really feel. Like, I I feel it in the scenes of that militarized police terrorizing high school age children and young families and people who just want to live their day to day life, I don't feel so strongly about the lead characters as a specific family.
Fran Hoepfner:I quite like the lead character's family drama, but I agree that the presence of Penn has diminishing returns. And I would say is one of the film's sort of weaker recurring jokes. Paul Thomas Anderson is not one of my favorite directors. When there are high highs, there are high highs, but I feel at quite a distance from a lot of his work and something I don't really like, but I guess I'm I think is very unique to him as a kind of juvenalia that feels very personal in him, and I don't wanna take that away from him. But I see that in a lot of the Sean Penn character of this, like, indulgence because this is cracking them up so much that there should be more of it.
Fran Hoepfner:And I felt like there was, like, 40% too much of this increasingly to the film's detriment. It got increasingly less funny to check-in with this guy who I think only has so many notes and beats to play, whose perhaps most interesting emotional arc is all in the first act.
Eli Sands:Frank, you had really good language for this when we were coming out of the movie.
Frank Falisi:I think well, I think in in just teasing it out a little bit, I think we realized that Penn is really the only one who's who gets a sort of internal arc through the film. Like, he's there in the prologue in a way that DiCaprio isn't. And then he's there in the sort of middle portion in a way that Tiana Taylor isn't. And then he even gets a sort of postlude wrap up. And I do wonder if it's just a matter of, like, Paul Thomas Anderson is an actor's director and he's never worked with a performer like this who can do these things.
Frank Falisi:And as troubled as I am by Sean Penn generally, he he can do the after thing. He's really doing a lot of it. So a lot of the time while watching him, I just felt like, oh, this this camera is just a little in love with this performance and this and it is I think it it's not or it is doing it's driving towards that point at the end where we get this sort of big punchline laugh at John Penn. But I don't think that that's I was sort of taken out of it by that. There's just so much Sean Penn in this movie.
Frank Falisi:I don't know.
Fran Hoepfner:Well, I'm not I'm not particularly crazy about licorice pizza, but I would say that's a movie that has a perfect amount of Sean Penn.
Frank Falisi:Mhmm. A garnish.
Fran Hoepfner:About a garnish. Yeah. They he knows truly, it's maybe twenty five minutes of screen time and he's he's gone before you know it. And it and I think that performance makes a big impact in that film without having to constantly come back to
Veronica Fitzpatrick:it. Mhmm.
Fran Hoepfner:So it's sort of like they should know maybe how to do this. I don't know.
Frank Falisi:I think Leo is quite good in this movie in a way that I think, Fran, you're you're really right about the juvenilia of PTA. Like, he likes a gag and will sometimes forsake stepping forward thematically or narratively for a gag. I think a lot of that works with Leo's character. I was also, I think, like Eli, unmoved by the family drama except for certain moments. When Leo's talking about his daughter's hair and how he can't do her hair, I was like, oh, that's maybe the best Leo's ever been.
Frank Falisi:That's really good. And so that's maybe the contrast. Maybe what I'm feeling is this disparity between the Penn cartoonishness and what is otherwise a fairly reasonable realistic performance of what it feels like to live now, which is to say completely discombobulated. I think that is the film's best quality and one that I have begrudgingly come around to is that this is what it feels like now. I think, Eli, we walked outside and we, like, heard a police siren.
Frank Falisi:I was like, oh, yeah. This is what it feels like to just hear a police siren.
Eli Sands:It's kind of unflinching. One of the other things that we talked about, Frank, was, like, we were grappling with is this sort of a boy director playing with military toys. But, yeah, I I also have come around on this that he's kind of frighteningly showing this is what it looks like to play out militarized police. And and that part of it, I actually do think is useful in a kind of journalistic way.
Frank Falisi:A a time capsule almost.
Eli Sands:Yeah. But it's a very short term predictive one.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:Was there other, like, new work from, if not favorite directors, sort of like familiar directors that we should flag? I haven't seen any yet myself. I feel like I've been, I confess, beleaguered by deadlines, and I haven't done enough podcast homework. So I can't speak to films like Sentimental Value, which I was really excited to see. I am still really excited to see, and I'm sort of purposely not reading anything about, but but would love to hear about anyway.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:And, Fran, I know you love Peter Hoosier's Day, and I'm pretty excited to see that as a result. I got, like, a really early report from you on, like, the positivity of that. And also, Jay Kelly, I really wanna see that movie. I'm like, maybe
Frank Falisi:I gotta be like Jay Kelly.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:Hit for me. I
Eli Sands:will say that my favorite text I received at the New York Film Festival was written by Frank, and it it simply said, Kay Jelly. And I was sitting in a library at the time
Frank Falisi:and, like, loudly laughed at it.
Fran Hoepfner:I was walking to the deli yesterday and I passed these guys and one of them said, I just saw the Jay Kelly trailer. It looks dope. And I was like, what? That's what's up. I didn't see it.
Fran Hoepfner:I really am looking forward to it. I guess in terms of repeat director, I'll also shout out Mary Bronstein for If I Had Likes, I Kick You. Her this is her second movie ever and it's her first movie in don't make me do math, but I think seventeen or eighteen years. Wow. Yeast was in 2,008 and was shot for, I I don't know, $15.
Fran Hoepfner:And it's starring, like, her and all of her friends. And to see a sophomore work that has so much more money and so much more behind it but still pack the same kind of energy, maybe even more energy, is really exciting and riveting. And that movie is a really bad time, but I think does not hate the viewer as much as something like Seurat, which I also think is a really bad time.
Eli Sands:Mary Bronstein married to Ronald Bronstein?
Fran Hoepfner:Yes. Yes. Yes. And I would say, I keep hearing sort of that this movie is like a Safdie movie for women, which I think is sort of diminutive, but not completely untrue in in tone and pace.
Eli Sands:Return movie from Be Gone, his latest resurrection, was handily my favorite of the festival
Frank Falisi:and
Eli Sands:a really hard one to describe. But I'll say that it's engaging with film history and form in a way that's both comprehensive and knowledgeable and very willing to sort of juggle things around and throw them in the name of opening up new roads. I had seen Kylie Blues, and this, like that, has another sort of very, very long, well staged take, but it's a lot more than that. It's really, like, very poetic and and fun while being beautiful and moving.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:What about new discoveries? What did we discover?
Fran Hoepfner:I discovered Magellan. I came to discover the work of Magellan Wow. At the hands of of Lav Diaz, who is a name I've been long familiar with, but whose films I haven't seen. I'm told by many that Magellan is his most approachable film, which is to say three hours of slow cinema versus eight hours of slow cinema.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:Starter pack. I love that.
Fran Hoepfner:And a and a friend who saw it at Toronto, her big complaint about Magellan was that it wasn't long enough. And I said, very funny. You know what? I kind of agree. I think there could have been more Magellan even.
Fran Hoepfner:But I think it's an astounding film. And I was just completely riveted by it. And I think it's such a daring undertaking of, like, a historical biopic that does a lot of justice to the violence that this sort of exploratory colonialism brought on The Philippines specifically. And it's, like, the best looking thing I saw at the festival and perhaps was the most notable q and a that I don't think any of us were at, but certainly made a big impact on that that film's audience. I don't know if you guys know about it.
Fran Hoepfner:If
Frank Falisi:No. You saw this
Veronica Fitzpatrick:No. No. What happened?
Fran Hoepfner:Oh, it's it's amazing. They're asking Lab Diaz sort of when the idea of casting Gaelle Garcia Bernal sort of came to him in this process because it's a part for a Portuguese person and he's not Portuguese. He basically says that he and Albert Serra and Joaquin Sappenho were talking about the idea of casting Gael while the three of them were having sex with each other. Oh my god. And and he says this and and the translator is sort of, like, translating in real time and then the translator stops and is like, did you say that?
Fran Hoepfner:And he's like, yeah. Yeah. That's what I said. And the translator is just like, well, okay. And sort of reported back on this.
Fran Hoepfner:And he was like, yep. That's when we talked about it. And everyone is sort of cracking up and laughing and being like, yeah. But, well, that's what that's what happened. And it's a great moment.
Fran Hoepfner:You don't see the the sort of real time translators get caught off guard by who they're translating for basically ever. So it's a it's a beautiful little moment of surprise.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:Wow. A new discovery nested inside the new discovery. That's
Fran Hoepfner:perfect. Completely.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:Love. Frank, how about you?
Frank Falisi:How do you follow that? Maybe by way of new discovery and old discovery. I love Pietro Marcello. I I'm not alone in this podcast and thinking Martin Eaton is one of the great works of the last ten years. I really like Duce.
Frank Falisi:Duce. But I had never seen Valeria Bruni Tedeschi work, and I'd certainly never seen her work on a big screen. She plays the title character. And it's just the kind of performances that it feels like we sort of like have given up on asking for and like trying to get. It's like it's an amazing looking movie too.
Frank Falisi:And I think it really if it's not as immediate as Martin Eaton, it like it sort of crystallized some of Marcello's like concerns around making art in the times of fascism and fascism sort of corona. But, like, I think his question for himself is, like, what do you do when you can't help but make beautiful things? And his films look so good. And this one does a similar thing with the sort of archival footage. And I think maybe like cover up has no resolution.
Frank Falisi:I mean but like that was what I thought of most while watching it was, like, what does it mean to be compelled to make beautiful sort of, like, grainy like like, the colors, the film stock. It's so beautiful to look at. And she is so beautiful, and it's such a sort of powerful punishing performance. Yeah. Dizzy is great.
Fran Hoepfner:I can't wait to see it.
Eli Sands:Yeah. It sounds really great.
Frank Falisi:It's really good. I like Scarlet, his last movie. That seemed to like come out without aplomb.
Fran Hoepfner:I thought Scarlet was okay. But Martin Eden.
Frank Falisi:Martin Eden.
Fran Hoepfner:That can be on my TV twenty four seven, and I'd be happy.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:The way Ducey is written about, at least in these, like, little blurbs, almost makes it sound like a Pablo Lorraine film. Like,
Frank Falisi:in Oh, yeah.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:Do you know what I mean? Like I
Fran Hoepfner:had a thought too.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:Is that a stupid comparison? Or how would you how would you correct that?
Frank Falisi:No. That certainly sounds right. But I think that speaks more to like how we impoverish both the past and the present when we do that. And I think at his worst, Pablo Lareign does that. And at his best, those films are really just about those people.
Frank Falisi:And like, I think this this film, Dusei, is like really at odds with collapsing, like, the specific Italian fascism of the past with what we are witnessing currently all over the the world. And I think to it's immense credit, it does not do that. Like, Aaron Sorkin, like, well, you see, we are telling this story, but it's really about dot dot dot.
Eli Sands:The Social Network two coming soon.
Fran Hoepfner:Do you think do you guys think it'll play New York Film Fest?
Eli Sands:Oh god.
Fran Hoepfner:I think Social Network one did have its world premiere at New York Film Fest. So it's very possible we may all one day be seated for the Social Network two.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:Well, I can't wait if it's with the three of you. Like, yes. Yeah. We'll do.
Fran Hoepfner:Mhmm. If it's if it's called
Frank Falisi:the social network too, that'd be I'd be into that. Like, just call it that. Sure. Let's do it.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:That's the condition?
Eli Sands:Yeah. It does have another title.
Frank Falisi:Well, sure.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:In an effort to bolster my, like, pretty meager New York Film Festival viewing, I got a screener of the 2025 restoration of nineteen eighty three's Can She Bake a Cherry Pie? Have y'all seen this movie?
Eli Sands:No. Mm-mm. No. No. No.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:It's Henry Jaglum, and it stars Karen Black, an actor that I don't have that many sort of preconceived ideas about. I've seen a couple of things obviously that she's in, but and I've read a bit about her in terms of like reading, like, new Hollywood history, I guess. But can she bake a cherry pie is this kind of meandering, annoying, complimentary New York movie that takes place in the same, like, 10 to 20 block radius of the Upper West Side and shows a lot of, like, marquees of theaters that don't exist anymore and does this kind of, like, proto sex in the city, like, walking and talking to myself about a man in heels kind of thing. And Karen Black, who was super eccentric or or, you know, sort of, like, known for playing eccentric women and character, like character actor characters. She's so unstable and stressful in the movie.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:And I feel like I I liked it. I I would have liked to see it in theater. I wish I liked it more than I did. It but it really feels like a discovery insofar as like, you know, that idea of are movies made like this anymore? Like truly without any kind of pressure to have redemptive arcs for the characters with, like, a real interest in just, what the street looks like and what people sitting on the street look like.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:And I don't know. Just like and it's a really great looking restoration. So I I would recommend it for in terms of, like, the bit of New York Film Festival that exposes you to old movies that you haven't seen in addition to new releases. I was happy to get a chance to see this one.
Eli Sands:I felt similarly about Queen Kelly. Yeah. The the the parts of the festival that pointed me towards the idea that there are as as fun as as fun as it is to go see new movies, there's there's better stuff out there that is older.
Fran Hoepfner:I really regret I didn't see any revivals this year, but I really regret missing Robert Wilson and the civil wars, which I knew nothing about. And I think on title alone assumed was about something that it's not, which is about Robert Wilson's attempt to basically make a twelve hour opera about the Olympics. And I believe the '90 for the nineteen eighty four Olympics and just about all of the sort of artistic struggles that come with trying to do a crazy thing like that. And I hope to catch it when the revival sort of plays maybe film form or something like that. But that's the exact kind of, like, artist documentary that I just love.
Eli Sands:Never heard of this. This sounds awesome.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:We'll put it in the show notes. I wanna thank our big brunette crew so much for joining me. My favorite. Thank you, Eli, Frank, Fran. Do you what what can each of you promote quickly?
Veronica Fitzpatrick:I know you all have stuff, irons in the fire. Let's hear it. Eli, you were just telling me about something really exciting before we started recording. So
Eli Sands:I cohost a podcast called Deep Cut that discusses international art house and independent film. If you listen in February, you'll hear a special guest we just had come on about Hong Sang soo. So we're doing a little series on his works, but there's a bunch of other stuff if you scroll through our feed.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:Perfect. Frank, Fran, the usual?
Frank Falisi:Yeah. Usual places. No. No. I'll I just for our for our our home folks at Brightwell Darkroom, I just talked to John Boyse and Alex Rubenstein of Yorktown, Super Base Pain.
Frank Falisi:So if if you're into their stuff, they're sweeties and the best documentary filmmakers working today. So that's over at Bright Wall.
Fran Hoepfner:That's gonna be awesome.
Frank Falisi:Like that one. Yeah.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:Outstanding.
Fran Hoepfner:I'm up to my usual tricks at vulture.com and Fran magazine, which is on hiatus, but I think will be coming out of hiatus when this airs. But otherwise, I'd like to plug having a quiet normal rest of the year.
Veronica Fitzpatrick:Yay. Wow. I hope that for you too, our favorite newlywed Fran Hofner. That's right.