2025 New York Film Festival Reviews: ‘Peter Hujar’s Day,’ ‘Late Fame,’ ‘Jay Kelly,’ Anemone,’ ‘It Was Just an Accident’ and More | NYFF
Peter Hujar’s Day (A-)
On December 19, 1974, writer Linda Rosenkrantz set out to interview wispy gay photographer Peter Hujar in her New York apartment, an interview that never ended up seeing publication. Meandering but purposeful, director Ira Sachs, as cinematographer Alex Ashe frames Hujar (Ben Whishaw) and Rosencrantz (Rebecca Hall) with the closeness needed in the narrow, multi-level abode, letting us absorb the gorgeous detail of Stephen Phelps’ production design and the minimalist costuming by Eric Daman and Khadija Zeggaï. There’s something unique about watching a film or a play that’s essentially just two people talking in a room. At first, you feel like a voyeur, like you’re not supposed to be there. But as time passes, you start to feel integrated, inside the conversation. Even when Sachs has little flights of fancy, like presenting Whishaw and Hall in pseudo Sears Portrait Studio asides, the film charms with Hujar’s mundane stories of photographing Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs or the Chinese meal he had a few days earlier. Whishaw is divine here, fidgety and flight like Little Edie at times. A nice balance against Hall’s reserved but no nonsense friend and interviewer. Maybe the most New York festival movie ever, deeply complimentary.
Late Fame (B+)
Absolutely charmed by this and by Willem Dafoe’s warm and gentle performance as a former poet and “man of letters.” Samy Burch’s script skewers New York ne’er-do-wells and wannabe artists, rich kid poseurs and more, perfectly embodied by Edmund Donovan and his band of merry men. Greta Lee is really doing it for the gays with her Gloria, a perfect combination of Dianne Wiest and Jennifer Tilly in Bullets over Broadway. A spectacular New York double feature with Peter Hujar’s Day.
Jay Kelly (B+)
Loved this film, Noah Baumbach’s hilarious and thoughtfully reverent movie about movies, about movie stars and our relationship to them. A never better George Clooney and wonderful Adam Sandler (and Nic Britell’s gorgeous score) hit high marks. Manages to sidestep nearly every potential foible of over-praising or debasing its titular star purely in the name of laughs or point scoring. Is Clooney riffing of his own persona or how we see him? Public ownership of famous people is a weird thing, not only the way we think we know people we don’t know but also that we deserve access to them in the most private of ways. Stories about the follies of fame have existed since the movies began but I think Baumbach and his team of players have found the nook where truth shines through. You don’t have to look any further than Billy Crudup’s incredible brief role as Kelly’s old friend who feels his entire career was stolen in a moment where both of their lives changed forever, and he may be right.
Anemone (B)
While Anemone is a stage for Daniel Day-Lewis to act the house down, it’s also an exciting debut from his son Ronan, an extraordinary visual storyteller. When it’s not mired down by over-written monologues (with the exception of DDL’s priest story) it’s a cool, dreamy fable.
It Was Just an Accident (A-)
Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident, his first “free” film in nearly two decades, vividly channels his rage with a riveting story of how a simple accident leads to a revenge kidnapping thriller that’s both tense and comedic. Absolute stunner of a final shot.
Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere (C+)
Jeremy Allen White is an absolute beast and his vocals and physical performance of Springsteen are incredible here. Everything non-music is clichéd to a painful degree. Also, can men learn how to write women characters? This is now the second musician biopic (after A Complete Unknown last year) that takes an amalgam of girlfriends and turns her into an empty, blond vessel. There’s so little for Odessa Young to work with here and she can’t make any of her vapid dialogue work. In real life at this time in the early 80s, Springsteen was dating actress Joyce Hyser, before marrying Julianne Phillips in 1985. You won’t see them here, much less his now-wife Patti Scialfa, with whom he cheated with at the time. The need to turn Springsteen into a more squeaky-clean version of himself doesn’t do any favors to showing a complicated man at the turning point of his career. It diminishes it, immensely.
The Mastermind (A)
Kelly Reichardt with Josh O’Connor in Elliot Gould mode is the vibe. Grainy, slow-moving, the two are a perfect pairing for this mostly action-free art heist story set in the 70s and looking every bit the part. O’Connor is such a good muse for Reichardt as a man with dreams of stealing but little aptitude for it. Homages to Rififi are woven through the languid caper and Alana Haim, Bill Camp, Hope Davis, John Magaro and Gaby Hoffman provide wonderful supporting help (especially the latter two) as O’Connor’s JB finds himself on the lam when his untrustable cohorts give him up. The Mastermind, and O’Connor’s performance, feel like a delightful counterpoint to Alice Rohrwarcher’s La Chimera, where he played another hapless thief. It’s a complementary pairing, one that shows O’Connor’s tremendous range with two characters that could have just as easily been played with the same notes.
Sound of Falling (A-)
Mascha Schilinski’s latest film knocked me out. Spanning nearly 100 years in the lives of four generations of women on a German farm, it details casual and intentional cruelty with such power. Visually and aurally spectacular, with echoes of Bergman, Sofia Coppola and Glazer.
Sirāt (D+)
aka The Worst Mad Max movie ever, this might be one of more frustratingly dumb festival films I’ve seen in a while. I couldn’t stop laughing throughout the unintentionally hilarious final third.
He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.
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