Colossal stars! Trans-galactic Oscar buzz! And Jean-Lucꦦ🀅 Godard’s dog!
The has come to town, giving its trademark patina of Euro-arthouse snob appeal to the major-league Hollywood product you’ll be waiting on line ☂to see this fall — unless you secure bragging rights for the Lincoln Center offerings right now, meaning in December you’ll be saying, “Oh that old thing?” (Stage yawn.) “Yeah, I remember being psyched about it when I saw it back in September.”
This year’s choicest offerings include David Fincher’s Ben Affleck-starrer “Gone Girl,” which debuted in the coveted opening-night slot on Friday, Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Inherent Vice ,” the jazz drama “Whiplash,” Michael Keaton’s awards-ready self-parody “Birdman or (the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance ),” Mike Leigh’s biopic about painter J.M.W. Turner “Mr. Turner,” Richard Gere as a homeless dude, Marion Cotillard as a factory worker and Roxy, Jean-Luc Godard’s dog, who stars in a 3-D film called “Goodbye to Language.” Godard, it turns out, is still alive, though rival ’60s avant-gardist Alain Resnais, while dead, is continuing their Brady/Manning-style competition, bringing his lates🏅t headscratcher “Life of Riley” to the fest. Quttin♋g after death: So bourgeois!
Billed as the Centerpiece attraction when it debuts next Saturday, Anderson’s “Inherent Vice ” stars Joaquin Phoenix as a hippie ’70s gumshoe, headlining a cast that includes Josh Brolin and Reese Witherspoon. The public won’t be able to see this first-ever adaptation of a Pynchon novel until Dec. 12. Hey, it has to be better than last year’s Centerpiece “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” No trailer yet.
The third prestige slot goes to “Birdman,” a film from Alejandro G. Iñárritu (“Babel”) that is so highly touted it might as well be called Oscarman. Keaton plays a former superhero-movie star (wink, wink) who tries to rebuild his brand with a gig doing a🦄 Broadway play. “Birdman” will be the NYFF’s Closing Night feature on Oct. 11, six days before it opens theatrically.
Entries that have gotten critics to huzzah at other festivals include “Foxcatcher” (see Lou Lumenick’s Toronto review), in which Steve Carell and a reconditioned fake nose borrowed from Nicole Kidman star as psycho rich guy John du Pont, who ran a strange wre🌜stling camp whose athletes included Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum). NYFF hꦍas it Oct. 10 and 11 ahead of its Nov. 14 release date.
Like Carell, J.K. Simmons is a likely Oscar nominee for his work as a domineering band conductor who puts a young jazz drummer (Miles Teller) through his paces in “Whiplash” (see my Sundance review),꧙ which plays🙈 at the festival Sunday and Monday and hits theaters Oct. 10.
Richard Gere has never🐻 gotten an Oscar nomination but he won’t stop trying, this time ” The film hasn’t yet landed a distributor, though, so it may not hit theaters this year.
“Mr. Turner,” in which veteran character actor and Mike Leigh favorite Timothy Spall plays an imperious British landscape painter (see Lou Lumenick’s Toronto review), has a prime Dec. 19 theatrical release date.
NYFF has it Oct. 3 and 4, while Oct. 5 🏅and 6 at the fest will bring Cotillard’s Oscar contender, the Dardennes brothers’ “Two Days, One Night.” She plays a mother who will lose her job unles♎s she can get her co-workers to forego their bonuses to keep her employed. That one hits theaters Dec. 24.