It’s been eight months since I first saw Damien Chazelle‘s Whiplash so I figured I’d give it another go this morning at the New York Film Festival. It’s just as gripping and screwed-down and possessed as ever. It certainly contains Miles Teller‘s best performance so far. I’ve noted previously that J.K. Simmons‘ performance as a psychotic musical instructor, a manic loon in the tradition of R. Lee Ermey‘s Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, is 100% baity. (In my book the Best Supporting Actor race is Simmons vs. Birdman‘s Edward Norton.) Chazelle’s reported decision to make a biopic about Apollo astronaut and first-man-on-the-moon Neil Armstrong is perplexing, but he’s clearly a top-tier talent.

Moderator Amy Taubin, star J.K. Simmons during noontime New York Film Festival press conference following 10 am screening of Whiplash.

Simmons, Whiplash director Damien Chazelle.

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David Fincher‘s Gone Girl has been reviewed so extensively and passionately by so many critics over the last few days that tonight’s New York Film Festival “premiere” has been made to seem all but meaningless. Yes, I’m totally cranked about catching the NYFF press screening at 5 pm today (although I wish it could be shown at a better facility than the problematic AMC Lincoln Square) but the decision to let everyone and his brother review it a few days early has undermined this hallowed 52 year-old festival. Everyone is complaining about this. And yet I’m thrilled by Sasha Stone‘s review, which is one of the best pieces of writing she’s delivered in a long while. Because it’s about her as much as the film, and because she offers strong interpretive connections between the film and post-2008 yuppie-hell culture.

“Maybe Gone Girl is about the death of marriage in America,” she writes. “Maybe it’s about the death of that pretty little lie.” [Note: Stone also refers to a “Big Lie” which more or less refers to the same domestic bullshit.] “One thing it’s not about is what almost every film coming out in the next few months is about. It’s not about men.

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“An eavesdropping observational camera style and a generalized sense of compassion prove no substitute for what’s missing from Time Out of Mind — any sense of drama. This longtime pet project of producer-actor Richard Gere and, eventually, for writer-director Oren Moverman, displays a certain kind of dedication for evoking the life of the homeless in New York City, but with Gere’s character so lacking in memory and mental clarity, the film provides very little for an audience to latch on to. Tedium quickly sets in and is only sporadically relieved in this labor of love that simply doesn’t reward even the patient attention of sympathetic viewers.” — from Todd McCarthy‘s Hollywood Reporter review, filed on 9.7.14.

This afternoon’s Time Out of Mind press conference at the Walter Reade theatre, which followed a 11:45 am screening, featured moderator and NYFF selection honcho Amy Taubin, producer-star Richard Gere and director Oren Moverman.

“Who thinks up a film like The Babadook? Actress-turned-debuting-feature-director Jennifer Kent has the narrative chutzpah to show her entire hand in the pop-up story and then make us squirm as foretold events come true. The Babadook is femalecentric in ways that other horror movies, while often dominated by tough ‘final girls,’ rarely are. It’s a tale in which the real terror might have already happened; parents should brace themselves.

“On purely formal grounds (the ones on which the genre lives or dies), Kent is a natural. She favors crisp compositions and unfussy editing, transforming the banal house itself into a subtle, shadowy threat. You’re not going to be sprung out of your seat by an overzealous sound designer, and when the beast shows up (a wild creation of puppetry, stop-motion animation and suggestive noises), it’s possible to be equally as riveted by Davis’s mouse-turned-lioness performance, tearing into the territory of Cate Blanchett.

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I’m sorry but John Herzfeld‘s Reach Me looks like a problem. The phrase “a self-help book written by a mysterious author” plus the participation of Sylvester Stallone…a bit scary. Kyra Sedgwick, Thomas Jane, Tom Berenger, Kelsey Grammer, Cary Elwes, Lauren Cohan, Ryan Kwanten, Danny Trejo, Kevin Connolly, Terry Crews, Danny Aiello. Simultaneous theatrical and VOD on 11.21.

Universal will open Michael Mann’s cyber-thriller on 1.16.15. Deadline‘s Michael Fleming briefly reported last July that the film “may” get an awards-qualifying late December platform opening, but that doesn’t seem to be happening. Everything looks good. I’m still slightly bothered by the fact that Chris Hemsworth is too brawny and studly to be a hacker, but I guess I can roll with the fantasy. This is Mannworld, all right.

My Virgin America flight touched down at JFK just before 8 am. Rainy, windy…I’m already on my second umbrella. (The first one, a $5 cheapie, was destroyed by a gust of wind.) Sitting in the lobby of the Walter Reade theatre, tapping it out and waiting for New York Film Festival press screening of Oren Moverman‘s Time Out Of Mind to end at 1:45 pm so I can attend the press conference. (I saw the film in Toronto and that was enough — raw realism, honestly acted, all-but-absent narrative, meandering, “non- judgmental.”)

Thursday, 9.25 — Broadway Junction, Manhattan-bound L train approaching.

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If I was a name-brand actor I would delight in giving shit to any journalist who asks me “so how much pressure was it to nail this role given expectations” or any such question? I hate pressure questions, and I really hate journalists who ask them. For openers I would deny any awareness of pressure in any aspect of my life, my performance or the film. I would look the journalist in the eye and say “what do you mean…I really don’t know what pressure is…can you tell me?” Or “what I’m lucky enough to do for a living is not about your idea of ‘pressure’…that’s a press junket question, okay, and I’m not playing your game. Do you live with pressure? Maybe you do and maybe it’s hard, but keep it to yourself…y’know? I live in a canoe on a swift river. Every day I can’t wait to get going. Just find the current and paddle well and find your balance…nothin’ to it.”

I don’t mean to sound like a wingnut obsessive but the slightly wider dimensions of Chris Pratt‘s face tells us that it’s eatin’ time again. That’s his pattern. He slims down for a film (the most recent being Jurassic World) and when principal photography is done…carbs!

If nothing else, Xavier Dolan‘s Mommy has made it clear that a 1:1 “pure box” aspect ratio doesn’t look perfectly square. It looks a wee bit higher than it is wide. Which was my very first thought when I saw it last May in Cannes. The next time an enterprising director shoots a film this way, he/she would be wise to deliver an aspect ratio of, say, 1.1:1 or 1.15:1. Then it’ll look right.

A good 70% to 80% of Lena Dunham‘s statements in this video are delivered in standard female uptalk style. As a longtime Girls watcher, I can say with rock-solid assurance that nobody uptalks more than Dunham. Honestly? I’m unable to listen to the substance of any person’s thoughts when this vocal tick interferes. By the way: Dunham is wrong about death-contemplation being a somewhat healthy thing, at least in a spiritual sense. All living is obviously and necessarily about the adamant denial of death, and anyone who spends even five minutes a day going “wow, I’m going to die” is succumbing to one of the lamest impulses in the history of our species.