Paul Thomas Anderson wanna take you higher. His goofiest since Punch Drunk Love? How Police Squad-ish does this seem? Let’s have a show of hands. Sweaty Joaquin getting shoulder-bumped to the sidewalk by a cop…good one. Boom-lacka-lacka-lacka-boom-lacka-lacka-lacka. I don’t know about the film but Josh Brolin definitely rules in the trailer.

Yes, Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn is calling Gone Girl the “film of the year”…but not for the reason you might think. Kohn is saluting Gone Girl because it delivers a kind of one-stop-shopping experience for those looking to ponder solemn social themes that have been explored in some of the best films of the year (Birdman, Nightcrawler, Maps to the Stars, The One I Love, Obvious Child, Grand Budapest Hotel).

Director David Fincher “loves characters who are difficult to love,” Kohn writes. “He shows his affection by framing them with unerring precision — and as Michael Nordine wrote in our review, it’s a level of care that often exceeds his material.

“The story of ex-journalist Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) coping with police and press scrutiny after estranged wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) vanishes under mysterious circumstances, Fincher’s prowess transforms Gone Girl into a blend of media satire and gender politics that zips along at a giddy and unpredictable pace.

“Stop to scrutinize and Gone Girl collapses into soapy melodrama” — are you listening, Scott Feinberg and Tom O’Neil? “But Fincher’s narrative command results in a movie that simultaneously embraces and mocks its own existence.

I laugh every time I watch a Russian car crash video. Is it because Russians are angry assholes, drink too much vodka, can’t drive to save their lives? Hilarious any way you slice it. They drive like six-year-olds. Don’t ask me to explain but somehow this compilation serves as a kind of tonal complement to Leviathan.

Why did N.Y. Times video critic Jim Hoberman review Criterion’s Big Chill Bluray on 9.26 when the Criterion website page says it came out almost two months earlier (i.e., 7.29)? More importantly, why after three decades is director-writer Lawrence Kasdan still declining to show what Hoberman calls “the revered flashback epilogue — cut during previews — that showed the Chillsters as the flower children they were in 1970, complete with a longhaired Kevin Costner as Alex.” I asked Kasdan about this in the mid ’90s; his response was that as the sequence didn’t work he would find it embarassing and/or deflating to show it and then hear everyone say “yup, you made the right call.” Who cares at this point? History demands a public viewing. I would buy the Chill Bluray just to see this sequence, but without it? Naaah.

Given the extraordinary acclaim that Nuri Bilge Ceylan‘s Winter Sleep and Andrey Zvyagintsev‘s Leviathan found during last May’s Cannes Film Festival and particularly given the New York Film Festival’s long-established focus on the finest foreign-language films of the moment, it’s really quite strange that the 52nd NYFF has snubbed both. In the case of Leviathan a colleague has suggested this is “an even greater indignity than the treatment it received from Jane Campion‘s Cannes jury.” Obviously the selection committee didn’t care for either, but what could their justifications have been? If you look at things objectively, it’s incredibly perverse to have excluded both of those films when, regardless of what the selection committee may have felt, it’s a fair bet that the core NYFF audience would have loved to see these films, and may even have enjoyed them more than offerings like Jean-Luc Godard‘s Goodbye to Language, Abel Ferrara‘s Pasolini and Pedro Costa‘s Horse Money.

Birdman is all knockout camera work, whipsmart character conflict and dialogue that cuts right to the quick of things. Pretty much an embarassment of riches. So why not throw up a few scene excerpts instead of just another trailer?

Bertrand Bonello‘s Saint Laurent (Sony Pictures Classics), which screened this morning for NYFF press, is said to be the darker, sexier and druggier of the two YSL biopics. The other is Jalil Lespert‘s Yves St. Laurent, which the Weinstein Co. allegedly released last June. I haven’t seen the latter but Bonello’s film is initially appealing but then it becomes more and more boring, particularly during the second hour. Most of it is about YSL‘s debauched years, which apparently happened between the mid ’60s and mid ’70s. The 150-minute length is way too long. There are few things on the planet earth more boring that (a) watching club vampires lie around and giggle and snort cocaine and (b) watching gay guys eyeball each other at said clubs before hooking up. Saint Laurent drove me mad with such scenes. It’s generally understood that Bonello has delivered a more candid account of YSL’s life than what Lespert’s film offered, but I felt far more interested and emotionally fulfilled by L’Amour Fou, the 2010 YSL documentary.

I scanned the A.V. Club’s review of The Equalizer (written by A.A. Dowd) too quickly when it first popped about 20 days ago, but now that I’m in a calmer, more meditative frame of mind this assessment of director Antoine Fuqua strikes me as particularly spot-on: “An action-junk journeyman still dining out on the 13-year-old success of Training Day.”

If I were to run into a guy dressed like this on a Brooklyn street I would take a poke at him. No thought, pure instinct, general principle. What kind of sickening metrosexual beardo mixes a dark longsleeve button-down shirt with…yeesh!…rose-colored shorts and sandals? I realize that nobody in the real world would actually dress like this, but if somebody did I would drop him on the pavement like a bad habit. (Note: I found this ad on Deadline.)

As expected, Noah Baumbach‘s While We’re Young was the New York Film Festival’s “surprise” screening earlier this evening. It played just as well for me as it did the first time in Toronto. Here’s a recap of my 9.7 review: “This is Baumbach’s snappiest and most commercially appealing film yet. Not as darkly hilarious as Greenberg or as visually ravishing and mood-trippy as Frances Ha, but it’ll be well reviewed and catch on with most under-50 urban sophistos. It’s a nimble, fast-moving, culturally attuned relationship dramedy about a generational chasm (late 20somethings vs. 40somethings) or more precisely the vague sense of anxiety that somewhat older guys have about younger guys in their field or realm — a fear of being out-hustled or out-cultured and possibly even left behind if they’re not careful.

While We’re Young star Ben Stiller, director-writer Noah Baumbach during this evening’s post-screening q & a at Avery Fisher Hall.

COstars Adam Driver, Naomi Watts.