Movie Grouch: 46th New York Film Festival

The 46th New York Film Festival concluded Sunday evening, October 12, with a thunderous standing ovation for actor Mickey Rourke and his performance in "The Wrestler," for which he will almost surely garner an Oscar nomination. Maybe you should have seen the 27 other films I saw, because the NYFF is one of the reasons I choose to live in NYC, even if it is much too easy to list grouchy moments, of which NYFF had many. Here are some of them.

1. I exited the 268 minute screening of "Che" behind a woman muttering darkly, "I can't imagine who they thought would want to sit through this!" The grosses will probably rival those of the 2006 Steven Soderbergh film "The Good German," but if you have interest in the strategy and tactics of the Cuban Revolution and/or the CIA plot with Bolivian government collusion to assassinate Che Guevara, this one is for you.

2. The NYFF credit sequence includes the quotation, "Is cinema more important than life?" The answer throughout the schedule is death by axe murder, death by hanging, death by poisoned drug overdose, death by guerillas with guns, death by gangsters with guns, death by car (the victim may be a dog, a deer or a human being), death by hunger strike or gun blast at close range, death by bleeding to death after gunshot and hospitalization, death by jumping off a cliff, death by old age or unspecified terminal illness, including possibly leukemia, death by fatal beating, death by birth (a baby sheep), death by cancer, death by knife and drowning, and death by heart attack.

3. The NYFF Selection Committee may be the most humorless and defensive group of bores in this area of the Hudson River. The closest we get to a comedy is "Happy-Go-Lucky." One of them announces a masterpiece which turns out to be dreck such as "The Northern Land" and "Tony Manero." Another petulantly asks the audience to be sympathetic to audio and video problems at the Ziegfeld Theatre, which experienced them three times during my attendance, and even more egregiously on another occasion, according to an attendee at a screening I fortunately missed.

4. Pride of place on the Committee goes to the execrable Lisa Schwarzbaum, who is perfectly situated at "Entertainment Weekly." She has the unique gift of making a totally accessible even entertaining movie sound so ponderous and pretentious that you want to race for the exit. I am far from the only NYFF subscriber whose heart sinks at the sight of her with a microphone. Her finest moment was probably "Marie Antoinette" in 2006, at which she announced, "I feel as giddy as a schoolgirl!" She stopped just short of kissing the hem of director Sofia Coppola's designer dress and then unaccountably trashed the movie a week later in her EW column.

5. The delicious hypocrisy of the NYFF is both cheap and obvious, proclaiming that none of the selections follows "the tried and true formulas that over the years have come to define (and sadly, often limit) notions such as 'political filmmaking'" but subjecting us to Clint Eastwood's "Changeling," which needs the NYFF like Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt need another photo opportunity. It's at least half an hour too long and outrageously manipulative, both politically and emotionally.

6. Unfortunately a painstaking, glorious Technicolor restoration of a terrible movie does not make it a good movie, even with commentary by director Martin Scorsese. "Pandora and the Flying Dutchman" makes both Ava Gardner and James Mason look good. Duh......

7. This year's schedule included two features about troubled young people. "I'm Gonna Explode" was trumpeted as "a mood-shifting mock epic that channels 'Pierrot le fou' complete with Georges Delerue music" and "Afterschool" a first feature in which "Solace, comfort and true resolution are out of reach." The former reminded me why comparisons to Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut and Philippe de Broca should be made more carefully, and the latter why last year's vastly superior Gus Van Sant feature "Paranoid Park," which substitutes a railroad guard being sliced in half for twins overdosing on poisoned drugs, has much more to tell us about today's troubled youth.

8. Did cartons of film left behind by Harvard professor Dick Rogers after his death really merit Alexander Olch's yeoman work as director, writer and editor on the documentary entitled "The Windmill Movie"? Maybe the proper question is, Why does it merit inclusion in the NYFF schedule?

9. Why do academics participating in panel discussions insist upon destroying or refusing to acknowledge audience enjoyment of such worthy enterprises as the outstanding French documentary about a 2006 trial of the satirical publication of 12 cartoons taking on Islamic fundamentalism? I sought the cleansing night air rather than yield to their drivel. The documentary is titled "It's Hard Being Loved by Jerks." Don't miss it.

10. In order to end this on a positive note, I nominate the most enjoyable event of the 46th NYFF the luscious creamy black and white restoration of Paramount's 80-year-old "The Last Command," with a miraculous performance by Emil Jannings, recipient of the first Oscar for Best Actor, and a new score by Alloy Orchestra. This event provided more moments of pure pleasure than a dozen other features on the schedule.