The New York Film Festival finally arrives Friday, September 27 with the local premiere of RaMell Ross’ staggering Colson Whitehead adaptation, “Nickel Boys.” The Amazon/MGM Oscar contender first premiered at Telluride to rave reviews — especially for its first-person-perspective approach to the true scandal of a notoriously abusive boys’ reformatory school in the 1960s, and how it shatters the life of a young Black man named Elwood (Ethan Herisse) who had bigger dreams than his social position in a Civil Rights-era America could allow.
On this week’s episode of “Screen Talk,” co-hosts Anne Thompson and Ryan Lattanzio discuss their love of the film, which is film professor and documentary filmmaker Ross’ first narrative feature. (His documentary “Hale County This Morning, This Evening” received a 2019 Oscar nomination.) Jomo Fray’s immersive cinematography puts viewers in the eyes and ears of Elwood as well as his only friend at the Nickel Academy (known as the Dozier School in reality), Turner (Brandon Wilson); the film’s innovative craft will appeal to the New York Film Festival crowd and hopefully Oscar voters. The movie opens October 25.
Anne and Ryan also discuss the movies they need to catch up or revisit at the festival, and the ones we’re anticipating will play well in New York, from Mike Leigh’s “Hard Truths” to Pablo Larraín’s “Maria,” which skipped Toronto after Venice and Telluride and is a major Best Actress contender for Angelina Jolie. Ryan recommends NYFF audiences check out Georgian filmmaker Dea Kulumbegashvili’s hypnotic abortion odyssey “April,” which earned a jury prize at Venice. Elsewhere at NYFF, “Emilia Pérez” will continue its festival streak after winning multiple prizes at Cannes and a People’s Choice runner-up honor in Toronto.
Also at NYFF, Alex Ross Perry delivers the hometown premiere of his hybrid music documentary “Pavements,” about the iconic indie slacker rock band Pavement. The band initially approached “Her Smell” and “Queen of Earth” director Perry — here making his first documentary feature after a short doc portrait of Paul Schrader for Criterion — to condense their life’s work into a traditional nonfiction film. But Perry layers that more traditional approach with the mounting of a jukebox musical based on Pavement’s classic songs, along with a faux making-of documentary about an awards-baiting biopic, as well as that “fake” biopic itself, with stars including Joe Keery, Nat Wolff, Logan Miller, and Fred Hechinger.
Ahead of the “Pavements” premiere next week, we share on this week’s “Screen Talk” a live interview Ryan hosted with Perry at the Venice Film Festival, where the movie debuted. In a private event held for film students in the American Pavilion’s intern program, Perry discusses the challenges of making “Pavements” and why he resist the label of this being an “experimental” film.
Watch the full episode above or listen to it below.
Screen Talk is produced by Azwan Badruzaman and available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Spotify, and hosted by Megaphone. Browse previous episodes here, subscribe here, and be sure to let us know if you’d like to hear the hosts address specific issues in upcoming editions of Screen Talk.
