Ang Lee’s LIFE OF PI will open the fiftieth annual New York Film Festival
Alice Tully Hall, 1941 Broadway at 65th St.
Walter Reade Theater, 165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center: Francesca Beale Theater, Howard Gilman Theater, Amphitheater, 144 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Bruno Walter Auditorium, 111 Amsterdam Ave. between West 64th & 65th Sts.
September 28 – October 14
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com
The New York Film Festival is paying tribute to a pair of milestones this year, as 2012 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the festival, and longtime program director Richard Peña is stepping down after a quarter century of inspired service at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, leaving behind quite a legacy. This year’s festival begins on September 28 with the world premiere of Ang Lee’s Life of Pi, adapted from Yann Martel’s novel, and closes on October 14 with the world premiere of Robert Zemeckis’s Flight, starring Denzel Washington, Melissa Leo, and Don Cheadle. The centerpiece selection is the world premiere of David Chase’s hotly anticipated Not Fade Away, reuniting him with his Sopranos star, James Gandolfini. Other films, by some of the greatest directors from around the globe, include Michael Haneke’s Amour, Cristian Mungiu’s Beyond the Hills, the Taviani brothers’ Caesar Must Die, Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha, Sally Potter’s Ginger and Rosa, Abbas Kiarostami’s Like Someone in Love, Raúl Ruiz’s Night Across the Street, Brian De Palma’s Passion, Olivier Assayas’s Something in the Air, Alain Resnais’s You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet, and Lee Daniels’s The Paperboy, part of the Gala Tribute to Nicole Kidman.
Peter O’Toole’s eyes should shine even more in 4K restoration of David Lean’s LAWRENCE OF ARABIA at the New York Film Festival
The Masterworks section reexamines such films as Amos Gitai’s Field Diary, Bob Rafelson’s The King of Marvin Gardens, Laurence Olivier’s Richard III, Federico Fellini’s Fellini Satyricon, a 4K restoration of David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia, and Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate, with Cimino on hand to talk about one of Hollywood’s most famous financial disasters. (Was the film really that bad?) Among the special events are Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States, theater legend Richard Foreman’s Once Every Day, and a twenty-fifth-anniversary screening of the cult classic The Princess Bride, with a reunion bringing together director Rob Reiner and stars Billy Crystal, Cary Elwes, Carol Kane, Mandy Patinkin, Chris Sarandon, and Robin Wright. The Convergence section looks at cutting-edge technology in cinematic storytelling, with keynote conversations, works-in-progress, and the live multimedia presentation Whispers in the Dark. The annual Views from the Avant-Garde sidebar features works by Ruiz, Peter Kubelka, Chris Marker, Luke Fowler, Nathaniel Dorsky, and others. There will also be a daily talk show, NYFF Live, taking place at 7:00 in the evening in the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center Amphitheater with various actors, directors, critics, and other insiders discussing the state of modern cinema.
Queer filmmaker Kim Kyung-mook, a film festival favorite, follows up his controversial 2005 feature debut, the three-part Faceless Things, which centers on an explicit gay sexual tryst, and his 2008 work, A Cheonggyecheon Dog, about sex changes and a talking dog, with another unconventional narrative. In Stateless Things, Kim examines the difficult life of social minorities in modern-day Korea. In the first section, filmed primarily with a handheld camera, North Korean defector Joon (Lee Paul) works at a gas station with Soonhee (Kim Sae-byuk), an ethnic Korean who has just gotten out of China. The two shy, quiet people work for a manager (Kim Jeong-seok) who sexually abuses Soonhee and mistreats Joon until they can take no more, fighting back and heading out on the run. In the second section, Yeom Hyun-joon plays Hyun, a beautiful young man being kept by successful businessman Sunghoon (Lim Hyung-kook), his jealous, closeted sugar daddy. The two make love in a stunning apartment with spectacular views of Seoul, but they are trapped in their own little world, filled with fear and obsession. Save for one quick scene in a bathroom stall — an extremely graphic scene, reminiscent of Carlos Reygadas’s Battle in Heaven, that will ensure the film is unrated — it is hard to connect the two parts until after the title credit is emblazoned on the screen and the shorter third section attempts to bring everything together in poetic, abstract, and surreal ways. Like its predecessors, Stateless Things is aimed at more adventurous moviegoers who don’t need films tied up in a little bow at the end but instead enjoy being challenged by what they are shown. And there is a lot of challenge in Stateless Things, not all of which works. Stateless Things is screening on September 28 at 8:00 as part of MoMA’s third annual “Yeonghwa: Korean Film Today” series, a collaboration with the 
Inspired by the true story of the Olympic dreams of a college teammate, actress and former rower Sarah Megan Thomas wrote, produced, and stars in Backwards, perhaps the biggest movie about crew since Rob Lowe picked up the oars to impress Amanda Pays in the 1984 cult-classic-wannabe Oxford Blues. Unfortunately, however, Backwards comes off as a well-meaning but overly earnest vanity project that is more like a basic-cable, family-friendly movie-of-the-week than a feature film for theaters. Thomas plays Abi Brooks, a champion rower who might have just one last shot to make the Olympic team as her thirtieth birthday approaches. But after being selected as an alternate, a wining Abi quits, eventually getting a job coaching the girls’ rowing team back at her old school, where her boss is her high school sweetheart, Geoff (James Van Der Beek). Searching for meaning in her life, Abi gets deeply involved in training Hannah (Alexandra Metz) and Susan (Meredith Apfelbaum) for an upcoming important tournament, until circumstances change and she is forced to make a crucial decision about her future, and that of her girls. Directed by Ben Hickernell (Lebanon, PA.), Backwards was admittedly made on a too-low budget, and it shows. The rowing scenes don’t ring true, the potential romance between Geoff and Abi is predictable, and Abi’s relationship with her mother (Margaret Colin) is riddled with clichés. That said, the film does have a good heart that makes you want to like it, but it never quite reaches that next level, with scene after scene mired in the obvious.
Contemporary activists stand to learn a lot from the gripping documentary How to Survive a Plague. For his directorial debut, longtime journalist David France, one of the first reporters to cover the AIDS crisis that began in the early 1980s, scoured through more than seven hundred hours of mostly never-before-seen archival footage and home movies of protests, meetings, public actions, and other elements of the concerted effort to get politicians and the pharmaceutical industry to recognize the growing health epidemic and do something as the death toll quickly rose into the millions. Focusing on radical groups ACT UP and TAG (Treatment Action Group), France follows such activist leaders as Peter Staley, Mark Harrington, Larry Kramer, Bob Rafsky, and Dr. Iris Long as they attack the policies of President George H. W. Bush, famously heckle presidential candidate Bill Clinton, and battle to get drug companies to create affordable, effective AIDS medicine, all while continuing to bury loved ones in both public and private ceremonies. France includes new interviews with many key activists who reveal surprising details about the movement, providing a sort of fight-the-power primer about how to get things done. The film also shines a light on lesser-known heroes, several filled with anger and rage, others much calmer, who fought through tremendous adversity to make a difference and ultimately save millions of lives. France will be at the IFC Center to talk about How to Survive a Plague at numerous screenings on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of opening weekend.
Barry Levinson’s poignant drama follows the trials and tribulations of the Krichinsky family, Polish immigrants trying to make a life in America. The third in Levinson’s Baltimore series (following 1982’s Diner and 1987’s Tin Men and preceding 1999’s Liberty Heights), Avalon is heart-wrenchingly beautiful, led by a sweet, innocent performance by Armin Mueller-Stahl as Sam Krichinsky, the family patriarch, and Aidan Quinn as the son who has different dreams. The outstanding cast also includes Elijah Wood, Elizabeth Perkins, Kevin Pollak, Joan Plowright, and the great Lou Jacobi as Gabriel Krichinsky, who has a hysterical Thanksgiving Day fight with his brother Sam. One of the most tender and moving multigenerational dramas of the last few decades, Avalon is screening on September 22 as part of the Museum of the Moving Image’s “Film After Film” series, a collection of works selected by J. Hoberman focusing on how digital technology is changing the way movies are both made and viewed.