Gossip Central

Alfonso Cuaron Goes Local: Roma at the Whitby Hotel

No Oscar list this season will fail to have Alfonso Cuaron’s latest masterpiece Roma at the top. On critics’ minds: will the award be for Best Foreign Language Film or a straight Best Picture? But that’s not what’s on this director’s mind. Already an Oscar winner for Gravity, he turned his talents to a black & white, acutely detailed, Spanish and indigenous language realization of a key figure in his childhood, a maid he renamed Cleo who came to live with his family in the Roma neighborhood of Mexico City. A mother figure to him, from a disadvantaged class, he asks himself, what does she represent in the world of now?

Margarethe von Trotta’s Anxiety of Influence: Searching for Ingmar Bergman

Actress, director Margarethe von Trotta was not thinking of making a documentary film, but when offered the opportunity to honor Swedish director Ingmar Bergman who would be 100 this year with a film about him, she could not say no. Von Trotta is best known for her feature films, Rosa Luxemburg, Rosenstrasse, The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (co-written and co-directed with her ex-husband Volker Schlondorff), among them, now screening at Quad Cinema for a retrospective of her work. And with Criterion putting together a boxed DVD set of Bergman’s films, she accepted the challenge of making the documentary, wondering, she told me this week on the phone from Munich, “how can I make a film about such a genius?” Told, do it in a personal way, she made Searching for Ingmar Bergman a most insightful, entertaining tribute from one filmmaker to another.

Maggie Gyllenhaal Crosses the Line as The Kindergarten Teacher

1 Jake Gyllenhaal, hosting a special screening of his sister’s new film, The Kindergarten Teacher, at Metrograph, was all praise for Maggie Gyllenhaal. “I’ve been watching her act all my life,” he smiled broadly at a crowd that included Christopher Lloyd, Israel Horowitz, Diane Sawyer, and many others including his Wildlife director Paul Dano and co-writer Zoe Kazan. The titular kindergarten teacher joins a roster of edgy women brought to life by Gyllenhaal’s ample talents. Think Secretary where her character enjoys a good spanking. In this movie, she’s a thwarted poet who recognizes the poetic gifts of one of her students, a five-year old Jimmy Roy played by one of the producer’s children’s classmate Parker Sevak. Wishing to nurture his verse, Gyllenhaal’s Lisa goes creepy, unacceptable. Every parent will get the willies watching what she does, all with a “good heart.”

The Price of Everything: Poons, Koons, and Balloons

“Contemporary art is a luxury brand,” declared HBO’s Richard Plepler, introducing Nathaniel Kahn’s excellent, entertaining documentary, The Price of Everything, at a posh premiere at MoMA last week. “And the artist is our last best hope.” These words were not lost on a crowd that included artists like George Condo, Marilyn Minter, Larry Poons and Jeff Koons, all featured in the film. In addition, museum curators, private collectors, and auction house personnel were all part of the mix celebrating a movie about a market that keeps its prices up. After all, “you can’t have a golden age without gold,” as someone wisely put it. All the while, the work created on camera, as some question what makes art art, or good art, seems to ignore the vagaries of commerce, allowing the money minded to thrive.

The Times of Bill Cunningham Premieres at the New York Film Festival

When New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham would train his camera on you—whether at a posh opening or on the street—it made your day. Anna Wintour --Cunningham photographed the Vogue editor since she was a teen—famously used to say, “One dresses for Bill.” His discerning eye assessed celebrities and civilians alike, snapping those with elan, style, joie de vivre. His attention would say, You had “IT.” This beloved New York icon, who died in 2016 at age 88, is revived in a new documentary, The Times of Bill Cunningham, Mark Bozek’s loving tribute. Featuring an interview with Cunningham at its center, this entertaining documentary premiered at Alice Tully Hall this week, one of several stellar non-fiction selections at this year’s New York Film Festival.

Free Solo: High at Lincoln Center

If any one can make the perilous professional sport of rock climbing sexy and glamorous, Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi can. In Free Solo, their latest documentary (the couple made the extraordinary Meru), they turn their lens on renowned climber Alex Honnold, as he fulfills a dream, to climb El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. Of course he had done this before, utilizing all the tools of his trade including ropes, but now he wants to go it without. Needless to say, many have died attempting to climb without this support. To add to the drama, Alex is also in a relationship with Sanni. The charm of Free Solo is that the film goes into Alex’s personal, eccentricities, living in a van, eating with a spatula as his utensil of choice. He’s quite the barbarian, softened by a lovely blond who teaches him to say, I love you.

Jane Fonda in Five Acts: Hair Epiphanies and Other Revelations

Despite a long and distinguished career making film portraits as creator of PBS’ American Masters series, Susan Lacy will not just do anyone. She proclaimed at a Q&A with Alec Baldwin at a Hamptons International Film Festival pre-screening of her HBO documentary, Jane Fonda in Five Acts, she would not make a film about someone she does not like, “like someone who I want to get out of the White House.” “I really understand,” replied Baldwin, scrunching up into his best Trump face. “I really, really do.”

Reflecting on her PBS time, recounting the genesis of American Masters, Lacy spoke about her certainty that stories on culture-shifting figures such as James Baldwin, Joni Mitchell, Judy Garland, and her favorite, Leonard Bernstein, were inherently dramatic, often geniuses fighting against cultural mores, or their own demons. That was a difficult sell, but she prevailed. Now making films for HBO, like last year’s superb Spielberg, she does not have to raise the money. HBO just asks, what’s your budget?

The Oslo Diaries on HBO

Peace in the Middle East feels like a mirage, a glimmering haze on a distant desert horizon. But in 1992, key figures from Israel and the PLO came together in a neutral place in Norway armed only with hope to frame a peace agreement on the fragile and beleaguered strip of land that is called Israel. Last year a hit play at Lincoln Center dramatized their dialogue of peace. And now, timed with the September 13 anniversary of the Oslo Accords, and the Jewish New Year, a new documentary, The Oslo Diaries, airs on HBO. For filmmakers Mor Loushy and Daniel Sivan, residents of Tel Aviv, in historic Rabin Square, with their two children, the story of the Oslo Accords is personal. They add to the existing record with diaries and fresh interviews with the men from Israel, Jewish and Palestinian leaders, who met for 1,000 days, recognizing one another’s right to exist, forging strong bonds, waging the terms of peace, and watching them turn to dust. Last week I had the opportunity to speak to the filmmakers: is the hope of peace kaput forever?

Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 11/9: How Did We Get Here? What Do We Do Now?

Now in our second year of a presidency that continues to depress the spirits of most Americans, Michael Moore returns to the scene with Fahrenheit 11/9, which had a stellar New York premiere this week at Alice Tully Hall. A human barometer of what’s going on in the heartland, Moore continues his filmic outrage at our government, entwining narratives of racism, Russians, guns, greed, and craven leadership in his coverage of the lead-infused water in Flint, Michigan, with the passion of Parkland students, going places obscured in the average daily news cycle. Often operatic, Moore’s tragicomedy intensifies as Pagliacci overtakes the soundtrack. An equal opportunity blamer, he is tough on Trump and does not spare Democrats who did not do enough, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, in his outcry: Take Action!

Chef Flynn: “Don’t Hold the Salt:” The Hamptons International Film Festival Celebrates Summerdocs in its Tenth Year

Under a makeshift tent, a staging spot for plating his culinary creations at the Brock residence in East Hampton, Flynn McGarry, a phenomenon as a young chef with his own Lower East Side restaurant, Gem, and a new documentary about him, Chef Flynn, shook hands, his fingers coated in egg yolk. “That’s how you want your chef,” smiled Flynn, at the party celebrating him, the movie about him, and the Hamptons International Film Festival’s Summerdocs 10th Anniversary: “Enjoy my food, and my life,” he told the crowd. He is 19. His Beef Tartare on a grilled lettuce cup, beautifully situated on trays, was a delight to look at, fleurettes with a sprinkle of sesame seed, and even better to eat.