NYFF 2014

To date, the most successful movie that Noah Baumbach has been involved with grossed $530 million worldwide. This is an astounding and somewhat surprising figure until it’s revealed that the movie in question is ‘Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted’ – a movie that Baumbach co-wrote with the writer of the other two 'Madagascar’ movies, Eric Darnell. As a director, Baumbach’s most successful movie to date is 2005’s ‘The Squid and the Whale,’ which grossed a little over $7 million domestically. This will all change when ‘While We’re Young’ – which premiered in Toronto and was the New York Film Festival’s Surprise Screening on Sunday evening – reaches theaters next year. Noah Baumbach has made a commercially viable film.

It’s a weird thing, I can already tell that ‘Inherent Vice’ will grow on me after time. I can already tell I like it better as I type this than I did while watching it. People will compare ‘Inherent Vice’ to the Coen brothers’ 1998 movie ‘The Big Lebowski’ and that’s totally fair because I’m going to do just that right now. Both films feature protagonists – with an affinity for marijuana use – who experience a remarkable adventure while searching for something that doesn’t matter. Sixteen years later, Mickey Woolfman means about as much as the money for a urine-soaked rug. It matters to the character but it never really matters much to us and, in both of these cases, we wind up being right.

People love watching famous people accept trophies. So, every so often, The Huffington Post’s Chris Rosen and ScreenCrush’s Mike Ryan will speculate about these trophies and which famous person might win one. It will be fun. Let’s talk some trophies! Today, we discuss the prospects of Michael Keaton and Edward Norton in 'Birdman' and Paul Thomas Anderson's 'Inherent Vice,' which both screened at the New York Film Festival.

At times, while watching Laura Poitras’ ‘Citizenfour’ (which premiered Friday night at the New York Film Festival) it feels like fiction. It feels like an almost lazy spy movie that uses clichéd tropes to present a world in which everyone and everything is being watched. But, this isn’t fiction. This is the story of Edward Snowden and it is terrifying in its paranoia.

"It’s the kind of thing that’s funny until it’s not, and then it’s not funny at all," 'Foxcatcher' director Bennett Miller told reporters at New York Film Festival of his latest film. The man behind 'Capote' and 'Moneyball' tackled the story of John du Pont, the disturbed successor of the du Pont family fortune who became obsessed with two Olympic wrestling brothers and tragically shot one to death on the grounds of his estate. 'Foxcatcher' was pegged early on as a prospective Oscar contender, and the director and cast members Channing Tatum, Steve Carell, Mark Ruffalo, Sienna Miller, Anthony Michael Hall and Vanessa Redgrave went a bit more in-depth on its creation.

In Alejandro González Iñárritu’s ‘Birdman’ (which will close the New York Film Festival this weekend and, I'll add, is my favorite movie of the year), Michael Keaton plays Riggan Thomson, a veteran actor whose biggest claim to fame is that he used to be in a series of superhero movies. Now, Riggan is attempting to make his comeback by staging a Broadway play based on a Raymond Carver short story. It’s been lost on no one that Michael Keaton also used to be in a series of superhero movies and hasn’t had the most prolific output over the last 15 years – and is, now, making a comeback (of sorts) with ‘Birdman.’ For his part, Michael Keaton is distancing himself from this comparison, telling New York Magazine, “I related less to him than almost every other character I’ve played, in terms of the desperation.”

Let it be known that I never saw 'This Is Spinal Tap' prior to the 30th anniversary screening at the New York Film Festival late Wednesday night. I was aware of Christopher Guest (the six-fingered man, obviously) and his work with Michael McKean creating films centered on different musical genres -- 'This Is Spinal Tap,' 'A Mighty Wind' and 'Waiting for Guffman' -- but I still hadn't seen the first of them. I felt like an adolescent teen trying to fit in with the rest of the cool kids who laughed at nearly every joke and applauded for familiar scenes and faces. ("The numbers go all the way to 11!")

"I don’t want to say ‘literary,’ because that’s a bad word," said Paul Thomas Anderson, attempting to describe the essence of Thomas Pynchon's 'Inherent Vice.' It's "beautifully written and, sort of, profound and deeply felt stuff mixed in with just the best fart jokes and poop jokes and silly songs and stuff that you could imagine." As he says, he was "trying to be as faithful to the feeling of the book as possible" in adapting it for the big screen.

People love watching famous people accept trophies. So, every so often, The Huffington Post’s Chris Rosen and ScreenCrush’s Mike Ryan will speculate about these trophies and which famous person might win one. It will be fun. Let’s talk some trophies! Today, we pick up where we left off last week and continue to discuss why 10 Best Picture nominees isn't working and we discuss the Oscar potential of 'Gone Girl' (which premiered last Friday at the New York Film Festival)

What’s interesting here is that I can’t imagine director Gabe Polsky knew quite what he was making when he first embarked on ‘Red Army.’ What is essentially a history of the Soviet national hockey team becomes much more about the then Soviet, now Russian relationship with the United States over the last 35 years. ‘Red Army’ just might be one of the best Cold War documentaries ever made even though it’s about hockey, of all things.