NYFF 2012: Beyond The Hills

My friend Tony christened this movie Brokeback Mountain Meets The Exorcist, which is pretty accurate, if sarcastic. Tony didn’t like this powerful film by Cristian Mungiu, but I think it’s even better than his 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. At two and a half hours long, I was…

NYFF 2012: Like Someone in Love

Abbas Kiarostami is back to form in this jewel of a movie set in Japan. This is the second film he makes…

NYFF 2012: The Ones That Got Away

Yesterday was my last day at the 50th New York Film Festival and I was invigorated and not at all…

NYFF 2012: Amour

Amour

Do not be fooled by the romantic-sounding title of the latest Michael Haneke film.

Amour, a masterpiece, is as tough and devastating as any of his other films, and then some. It is an intimate look at the end of life, the ugliness of illness…

NYFF 2012: The Gatekeepers

This intense, intelligent, eye-opening documentary by Israeli cinematographer Dror Moreh is a series of interviews with six ex-heads of the Shin Bet, the Israeli Security Service. The candor with which Yuval Diskin, Avraham Shalom, Avi Dichter, Yaacov Peri, Carmi Gilon and Ami…

Argo

It’s a great story, very well told by director/protagonist Ben Affleck, based on the true story of Tony Mendez, who concocted a fake film production in order to rescue out of Iran six American embassy employees who were hiding in the house of the Canadian ambassador, at the time of the Iranian hostage crisis.
The…