The New York Film Critics Circle celebrated its 90th year this week, at TAO Downtown. Member Rex Reed celebrated his 50th year with the group. Many spoke of the fires in LA. Adrien Brody, reflecting on TAO’s décor with its giant statue mistaken for Buddha, pointed out, that’s Shiva the destroyer before becoming emotional, and that’s before the girls were swooning in the bathroom: Robert Pattison had shown up for Brady Corbet’s Best Picture presentation for THE BRUTALIST.
As celebrations go, this one was cerebral, not raucous which had some attendees concerned. And then there were the outliers: Claire Danes was wildly animated as she introduced Kieran Culkin for his Best Supporting Actor award, the real pain in A REAL PAIN. They had starred together in IGBY GOES DOWN as naughty teens but now, she pointed out, they each have kids. “Only you can be you,” she said gesticulating madly. To wit he got up to say, “You are so kind, I wish I had been listening.”
Jim Jarmusch presented Best Screenplay to Sean Baker for ANORA who liked the snow falling in the last scene so much he proclaimed, “Hats off to the falling snow.” But you cannot admire the deftly constructed screenplay without admiring the sex. Fawned Jarmusch, “I loved the sex in the film: transactional, silly, showing the variety of what that is. He had heard that Baker demonstrated some scenes coupling with his wife. And Sean Baker fawned back, noting that when he finished film school at NYU he only wanted to be Jim Jarmusch. “I used screen grabs from NIGHT ON EARTH. All that matters is heart, COFFEE AND CIGARETTES.”
Baker said when he pitched the idea of the film to his mother, she said, “No one wants to see that. My mother hates my movies.” Then he read randomly from the script: p. 23: The characters have sex in a bed. The characters have sex in the sauna. “You guys awarded that? Now it’s an award-winning screenplay!” Then he read from “The New Yorker” critic Richard Brody’s pan. “My mother agrees with you.”
Carol Kane responded to John Turturro’s introduction with a huge list of everyone she was grateful to including her parents, Mike Nichols, Gena Rowlands, John Cassavetes, etc.etc.etc. Her movie, BETWEEN THE TEMPLES, is just the latest in decades of extraordinary work that includes tv’s “Taxi” and “Kimmy Schmidt,” and such films as HESTER STREET (screened at this year’s Jewish Film Festival), THE PRINCESS BRIDE, ANNIE HALL.
Guy Pearce and Adrien Brody have quite a bromance. Stars of the movie of the night, THE BRUTALIST, they put on their own kind of show. Pearce’s intro for Brody as the NYFCC choice for Best Actor: “You make it seem effortless” and, “Sorry I raped you, but it was consensual.”
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