Bobby Bukowski
“Gonzo Girl” is thinly-veiled autobiography, based on a “novel” by a young writer who briefly found herself working for someone so clearly based on gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson the names didn’t really need to be changed. What is gonzo journalism, which Thompson invented and irritating generations of following journalists have imitated? Well, it’s 1. making yourself part of the story; 2. focusing on the seedier side of whatever you’re there to report upon; 3. actively participant in said seedier side, probably by doing buckets of drugs; 4. thereby rejecting your talent as a writer-journalist to focus on your talent for exploring life’s seedier side. This is not what anyone would have predicted Patricia Arquette would choose as the subject for her directorial debut, though she does competent, lively work. Yet despite the high-powered cast and a steady tour of the festival circuit culminating in this year’s Tribeca, it hasn’t been picked up for wider distribution. That’s because while there’s nothing really wrong with “Gonzo Girl,” unfortunately there’s nothing really right with it, either.
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Tribeca Festival
“Nobu,” Matt Tyrnauer’s documentary on celebrity chef Nobu Matsuhisa, credits the autobiography “Nobu: A Memoir” as its source material, but for the most part the film looks like a corporate video for the namesake luxury hospitality empire that boasts a portfolio of some 57 restaurants and 21 hotels around the world. The use of A.I. for dialogue enhancement, as indicated by end credits, does not help blunt the corporate video charges.
The documentary’s New York premiere at the Tribeca Festival feels like a foregone conclusion, given Robert De Niro’s involvement in both organizations. Besides, he apparently has a lot more to say on the topic of Nobu, of which he is a founding partner, than he did during the “Rendez-vous With . . . Robert De Niro” at Cannes and “ ‘Casino’ 30th Anniversary Screening With Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese” at Tribeca combined.
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Tribeca Festival
Sun Ra: Do the Impossible (2025)
No shortage already of moving pictures studying Sun Ra from one direction or another, whether tackling the man, the music, the mysticism, the fact he said he was from the planet Saturn, or some combo of the lot. Christine Turner's documentary "Sun Ra: Do the Impossible" keeps the lid on its mind-expanding contents by narrowing the focus, mostly to testimonies from past members of the Sun Ra Arkestra about life in the big man's big band, plus some scholarly perspective on the social currents swirling around him in the civil rights era. It doesn't follow those threads too far out to other stations, such as his personal life, or influence on Kenneth Anger and the American underground, or his beaming directly into the nation's living rooms via "Saturday Night Live" in 1978. It's a sampler rather than a study guide, a summary of something resistant to summary; a Sunny interval.
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CBS
The promotional copy for "Bodyguard of Lies" ahead of its Tribeca screening said that Dan Krauss's documentary "rips the veil off one of the most costly and controversial chapters in recent American history: the war in Afghanistan." How many people are still behind a veil of ignorance at this point about the Afghan War as a piece of U.S. foreign policy is a question. You might also note the spotting of the word "recent," since as the documentary itself points out the legacy of the Vietnam War lurks in plain sight and not all that far in the past. Neither equivocal nor designed to be, the film puts on-camera statements and speeches from U.S. politicians and military leaders during the war next to material from the later "Afghan War Lessons Learned" interviews, a set of recorded debriefings loosely instigated by Congress and which formed the basis of a Washington Post exposé in 2019. The Post is among the producer credits here, making this doc an adjunct to its existing reporting on the topic. It hardly needs saying that the public statements and the private testimonies are from different planets.
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Universal Pictures
How to Train Your Dragon (2025)
Since Disney is resolved to mine and recycle all its animated I.P. into live action, DreamWorks is also joining in on the act – or at least that’s the logical conclusion that redditors on the r/DreamWorks sub are already drawing. The studio is so gung ho about the odds for the “How to Train Your Dragon” live-action remake that a sequel is already in the pipeline for 2027.
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A24
Spoiler alert: Celine Song always chooses the white dude.
In “Materialists,” the follow-up to her much-lauded debut, “Past Lives,” Ms. Song once again finds her heroine – this time Lucy (Dakota Johnson), a professional Millionaire Matchmaker – amid a love triangle. At her clients’ wedding reception, she spots her next most eligible bachelor, Harry Castillo (Pedro Pascal). Thing is, he is more interested in her than being her customer.
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Courtesy photo
"Nothing here but history," sang those astute cultural archeologists Steely Dan in "The Caves of Altamira," as the song's protagonist went looking for ancient figures on the wall of an underground cavern. Altamira and a few other famous prehistoric sites crop up in Robert Macfarlane's 2019 nonfiction book "Underland," which takes a bracingly broad and poetic approach to what lies below the surface of the Earth and finds that history is only the start of it. "Into the underland we have long placed that which we fear and wish to lose, and that which we love and wish to save," writes the author, invoking the mystical element that hangs over both his book and the documentary now made from it by Mr. Macfarlane and director Robert Petit, with the involvement of Darren Aronofsky as an executive producer. Venture below the surface of the world and things usually separate come close together: science and magic, past and future, oxygen and poison, plus the members of a documentary crew squeezed into alarmingly tight spaces.
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Courtesy photo
Joachim Trier’s Cannes competition title “Sentimental Value” often feels like an attempt to recapture the success of his Oscar-nominated 2021 film, “The Worst Person in the World.” Not only do we have Renate Reinsve in the lead again, he also frames her with a medium shot right in the center of the screen all the damn time. This is so pronounced that one might actually overlook some of his progression in terms of visual composition.
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Festival de Cannes
It Was Just an Accident (2025)
By the time its Cannes Film Festival world premiere was over, it was clear Jafar Panahi’s “It Was Just an Accident” had emerged as the frontrunner for Palme d’or four days before the closing ceremony. Its reception distinctly set it apart from worthy competition in an overall strong slate. It’s a triumphal return of sorts, his first drama since 2010 when Iran barred him from filmmaking and traveling for two decades. Though Mr. Panahi continued to work in secrecy and have his projects smuggled abroad, following 2006’s “Offside” until now he only made docudramas, injecting himself into the narratives.
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Mandarin & Compagnie - Kallouche Cinema - Frakas Productions - France 3 Cinema
I wasn’t a fan of “Titane,” and much of my aversion could probably be attributed to its undeserved Palme d’or win. To my pleasant surprise, Julia Ducournau’s Cannes Film Festival competition follow-up, “Alpha,” is nothing like it. The film is far more artful and mature, which just goes to show that the New French Extremity filmmaker was merely lauded prematurely. Though elements of body horror seen in “Titane” and “Raw” are still very much present, the new film better qualifies as a ghost story and a coming-of-age tale set in the Twilight Zone.
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