Inspired by Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 game-changer, À Bout De Souffle (Breathless), Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) turns creative nonfiction into an ode to first-time filmmaking.  His take is both cautionary and empowering.  Rather than go full film school, he delivers a comedy about film history legends with the same light touch that brought his own high school classmates to life.  While Godard devotees may be Nouvelle Vague’s biggest fans, there’s a jaunty universality to this making-of tribute that will surely inspire new fans of the old wave.  Or even inspire a new New Wave. 

Sharply funny, achingly sad, Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon centers on aging lyricist Lorenz Hart, the brilliant but self-sabotaging half of Broadway’s Rogers and Hart.  Like an extended last call for fading genius, the film unfolds during a boozy night at Sardi’s following the Oklahoma! premiere—Rodgers’ first hit without Hart—while Ethan Hawke-as-Hart gives one of his finest performances yet.  Brash, tender, heartbreakingly human.  Scripted by Me and Orson Welles author Robert Kaplow, Blue Moon captures the melancholy of artistic obsolescence with Linklater’s signature empathy—and pairs beautifully with the director’s ‘other’ NYFF premiere, Nouvelle Vague: the sunrise and sunset of creative life in two masterstrokes.

Scott Cooper’s Springsteen:  Deliver Me From Nowhere is your standard, by-the-numbers music biopic.  Almost everything you expect to happen, happens:  daddy issues, writer’s block, neglected love interest, execs meddling with personal music…while Bruce’s innate depression is reduced to a title card.  Performances by Jeremy Allen White and Jeremy Strong are convincing—but clichés can’t be elevated by acting alone. 

A non-fiction narrative recounted primarily through police bodycam footage, The Perfect Neighbor speaks volumes.  Produced and directed by the award-winning Geeta Gandbhir, it is both brilliant journalism and sensitive storytelling:  a life-and-death drama, a tragedy born of neighborhood tensions—and a microcosm of our nation’s deepest cultural wounds.  Even so, in spite of its horrors, this film is not without hope.  Not the comforting kind, but the insistent conviction that we can do better. 

A deeply upsetting, unexpectedly comic crime drama, Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just An Accident is both a cinematic achievement and an act of political defiance.  Completed under immense personal risk, this enthralling Iranian film delivers politically-charged trauma via clandestine filmmaking.  The result is one of the most daring and unforgettable films his entire oeuvre … with questions that linger long after.

Intriguing, but uneven.  Luca Guadagnino’s campus-set caper After the Hunt is lost in a gumbo of delicious ingredients that never quite coalesce. Julia Roberts shines as Alma, a fictional Yale professor forced to confront her past when a sexual assault accusation erupts between her colleague (tox-masc Andrew Garfield) and student (sanctimonious Ayo Edibiri).  For a film obsessed with identity politics, After the Hunt’s own sense of self feels unresolved:  individual elements work, but—like best friends in study hall—lose focus side-by-side.  Think diet Tár.

Christian Petzold’s Miroirs No. 3 is a breezy, pleasant watch that may disappoint fans of his edgier work.  Not much happens, which isn’t a negative:  Petzold is best at subtle exchanges.  Convincingly eccentric characters, unhurried pacing and country bike rides give Miroirs a languorous, cozy feeling--—and despite occasional flaws, the end result is worth our while:  an intimate exploration of trauma…and our efforts to fill the void.

217 minutes may seem like a long time for a film to explore Colonialism, but we’ve been doing it as a species for far longer.  Over the course of nearly four hours, Pedro Pinho’s verité fiction epic I Only Rest In The Storm observes the effects of modernization on a developing country in hypnotic detail.

A heartfelt ode to high school friendship, Neo Sora’s Happyend explores how bonds evolve—and dissolve—as adulthood looms.  Set in authoritarian, near-future Tokyo, this coming-of-age drama is also bracingly funny and ideologically intense.  Even better, despite its familiar set-up, the film bursts with personality:  surprisingly authentic, easy-to-fall-for characters whose personal and political awakening make us laugh, grin, and ultimately choke up. 

French Writer/Director Alain Guiraduie’s Misericordia is a black comedy of errors that makes us uncomfortable in the best of ways:  characters with unsavory intentions, squirm-inducing humor, genuine suspense.

A profoundly endearing road movie, Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain is a tragicomedy about two Jewish cousins who confront intergenerational trauma by exploring long-lost Polish roots. Starring Eisenberg and scene-stealing Kieran Culkin, this film is survivor’s guilt personified:  the cousins reopen wounds that they can’t quite grasp or resolve—and yet despite the pain, their rapport is deeply satisfying, rich with surprising laughs and even more surprising emotional payoffs.

A welcome relief from the cacophony of guns and superheroes, Christian Petzold’s smoldering drama Afire—which won a Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at Berlinale in 2023—offers a quieter slice-of-life.  The film’s unlikable protagonist, Leon (a pitch-perfect Thomas Schubert), is a deeply insecure writer who shields himself with pomposity.  His posturing is foiled by Nadja (the cheery yet inscrutable Paula Beer), who is patient well past the point of reason.  While sharing a Baltic vacation home with two other friends, Leon struggles to get writing done—let alone get along with the rest of the group.

A towering achievement of both animation and imagination, The Boy and the Heron was expected to be Miyazaki’s swan song, a fitting send-off for the auteur whom many see as the world’s greatest living animator. His choice of the somewhat ambiguous question “How Do You Live?” is especially poignant given the circumstances.

Michelangelo Frammartino’s Il Buco (“The Hole”) is a meditative journey into the center of the earth, replete with some of the year’s most gorgeous visuals and transportive sound design.

O Brother Wherefore Art Thou: Joel Cohen’s Stunning Solo Shakespeare