NYFF, 9/26.

The New York Film Festival opens on Friday and runs through October 15. Besides highlighting three films to be screened during the first week - Mafioso, Woman on the Beach and Bamako - J Hoberman reviews the opener, The Queen, finding it "more fun than any movie about the violent death of a 36-year-old woman has a right to be. It's also as exotic an English-language picture as the season is likely to bring."

Also in the Voice, Michael Atkinson previews the 31-film sidebar, 50 Years of Janus Films, "a crash-course Cinema 101 of international masterpieces. Many are available on lovely Criterion DVDs already, but a substantial hunk remains, in this century, rarely screened and all but forgotten in modern film culture."

Tom Hall has sampled two: "Roman Polanski's Knife in the Water (in a stunning new print) followed by a screening of Ingmar Bergman's little-seen (by me anyway) Summer With Monika. Seeing both films back to back, projected in luminous black and white on the Walter Reade's screen, was quite a shock if only because of they felt completely modern and relevant; neither film has lost an ounce of timeliness."

Aaron Hillis opens his across-the-board preview for Premiere by noting that this year's edition "might be one of their richest line-ups in years based on the sweeping diversity of its 35 hand-picked features."

Daniel Kasman has set up a special section and has reviews of Marie Antoinette, Syndromes and a Century, Little Children and: "How unexpected is it that Belle Toujours, ostensibly a sequel (although called an homage) to Luis Buñuel's surreal classic about an posh Parisian wife up-and-deciding to work in a brothel in her spare time, would not only work, but work simply, sweetly, warmly, and wisely?" More on that one from Ed Gonzalez in Slant.

In his preview of the Views from the Avant-Garde series for Slant, Keith Uhlich focuses on Saul Levine and Paolo Gioli.

Jürgen Fauth has first impressions of August Days, Mafioso and Belle Toujours.

Jenny Jediny at Not Coming to a Theater Near You on Marie Antoinette: "Coppola's interpretation is so simple it threatens to fall apart at any moment, and never congeals into anything beyond a beautiful, hollow sketch."

Posted by dwhudson at September 26, 2006 3:19 PM