{"id":374759,"date":"2026-10-16T12:34:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T12:34:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/374759\/"},"modified":"2026-10-16T12:34:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T12:34:12","slug":"in-two-films-at-nyff-john-turturro-represents-mit-and-nyc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/374759\/","title":{"rendered":"In two films at NYFF, John Turturro represents MIT and NYC"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"DylanDylan Baker, Paul Giamatti, and Zach Woods in \u201cA Statement.\u201dSabrina Lantos<\/p>\n

McCarthy\u2019s film spotlights (sorry!) a real-life 1980 congressional meeting on climate change that took place over three sessions in a St. Petersberg, Fla., hotel conference room. The meeting is chaired by Tom Jorling (Rudd) and attended by a slew of people including David Slade (Giamatti), the director of the Department of Energy\u2019s Carbon Dioxide and Climate Research program, MIT nuclear engineer Dr. David Rose (Turturro), and Edith Brown Weiss (Maslany), an environmental lawyer at odds with Dr. Rose. <\/p>\n

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Also present is Jorling\u2019s friend Rafe Pomerance (a feisty Evan Peters), a passionate environmental lobbyist who wants to throw truth bombs at the committee to get them to agree that something needs to be done about global warming. Much of the tension in \u201cA Statement\u201d comes from us waiting for the moment Rafe finally cuts loose. <\/p>\n

Readers know I love movies about process<\/a>; that is, detailed information and scenes about how something gets done. But \u201cA Statement\u201d may have a bit too much process for me! As dialogue, McCarthy uses much of the actual minutes from this meeting. We see some of these words superimposed on the screen on occasion. It never gets dull, but it might be more than you\u2019re willing to endure. The actors keep the film from becoming a slog, especially Giamatti and Turturro, the latter of whom has a goofy dance scene that shows a different side of his character.<\/p>\n

Turturro is also dancing (and costarring with Maslany<\/a>) in \u201cThe Only Living Pickpocket in New York.\u201d This time, however, it\u2019s a beautifully choreographed two-minute bop to Odyssey\u2019s immortal disco classic, \u201cNative New Yorker.\u201d I won\u2019t tell you why he\u2019s dancing, but the scene moved me to tears. If there\u2019s any justice, this scene will be the actor\u2019s Oscar night clip. <\/p>\n

\"JohnJohn Turturro in \u201cThe Only Living Pickpocket in New York.\u201dJON PACK<\/p>\n

As Harry, the guy in the title, Turturro headlines a love letter to all five boroughs of New York City that costars Steve Buscemi as a pawn shop owner and Maslany as Turturro\u2019s estranged daughter. She has one scene in the movie, and it\u2019s one of the great one-sceners in recent memory.<\/p>\n

Also along for the ride is Giancarlo Esposito as a cop who once arrested Harry. This surprise reunion of \u201cDo the Right Thing\u201d\u2019s Buggin Out and Pino earned gasps and approved applause from my NYFF audience. <\/p>\n

The plot of \u201cPickpocket\u201d is the only standard thing about it. Harry picks the wrong pocket and pays a price for it. Everything surrounding this plot, and how it\u2019s executed, is what makes this movie special. At the Q&A, writer-director Noah Segan read my mind when he said one of his major influences was \u201cThe Friends of Eddie Coyle.\u201d I\u2019ll go one step farther: \u201cPickpocket\u201d is to New York City what \u201cCoyle\u201d is to Boston. I\u2019ll say more in my review when the film opens on Oct. 30 in Boston.<\/p>\n

Men running from or dealing with their pasts was a recurring theme at this year\u2019s NYFF. Two films I saw took radically different approaches to their stories. <\/p>\n

\" Sandra H\u00fcller and Hanns Zischler in \u201cFatherland.\u201dFLC Press<\/p>\n

\u201cFatherland,\u201d the latest from \u201cCold War\u201d director Pawel Pawlikowski, follows real-life author Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler) and his daughter Erika (Sandra H\u00fcller) on a road trip back to their native Germany after World War II. Like Pawlikowski\u2019s other films, this one is shot in black and white and in the Academy aspect ratio. Unlike the director\u2019s other works, this one has a bitter sense of humor that is both funny and wounding.<\/p>\n

Zischler and H\u00fcller are very good, as is August Diehl (\u201cInglorious Basterds\u201d) as Erika\u2019s brother Klaus, the son Thomas wants little to do with, even after Klaus takes his own life. At 82 minutes with end credits, \u201cFatherland\u201d was a brisk breath of fresh air at a festival where the average movie runtime was two-plus hours.<\/p>\n

\"PedroPedro Pascal in “Behemoth!”Justin Lubin\/Searchlight Pictures<\/p>\n

I would love to hear what my colleague A.Z. Madonna, the Globe\u2019s classical music critic, thinks of \u201cBehemoth!,\u201d a movie about a cellist who went from playing in the Boston Symphony Orchestra to being a last-minute substitute on a film scoring session. After my screening, I overheard grumbles about Pascal\u2019s cello playing, and these folks would know \u2014 this movie was being projected at Lincoln Center. <\/p>\n

Writer-director Tony Gilroy (\u201cAndor<\/a>\u201d) moves us through the life of Alex Serian (Pascal), a well-known cellist who once played with orchestras in Chicago and Boston. He has been assigned to the scoring of a film called \u201cBehemoth!\u201d when this film opens. Gilroy stages Alex\u2019s story like a series of orchestral movements, hopping back and forth in time. The conceit never becomes tiresome. <\/p>\n

The behind-the-scenes look at movie scoring is something I haven\u2019t seen in movies before, and Gilroy sweetens the pot by showing us sessions from several types of movies. For each of these scenes, he commissioned a veteran composer \u2014 nine in all \u2014 to write fragments of a score. You\u2019ll hear compositions by Alan Silvestri (\u201cForrest Gump\u201d), Michael Giacchino (\u201cUp\u201d), and others.<\/p>\n

Eva Victor and Olivia Wilde play two vastly different women in Alex\u2019s life. Wilde\u2019s stalker character is actually quite insane, but the actor steals every scene she\u2019s in. Will Arnett is also part of the cast as Alex\u2019s brother, Andy. <\/p>\n

I enjoyed \u201cBehemoth!\u201d a lot and yes, the exclamation point is in the title.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe sitting Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden with filmmaker Ava DuVernay in Washington, D.C., in January 2025.Paul Garnes\/Netflix<\/p>\n

Closing out this year\u2019s NYFF was \u201c14th,\u201d Ava DuVernay\u2019s follow-up to her superb 2016 documentary, \u201c13th.\u201d That movie opened the New York Film Festival that year. While not as tightly constructed as \u201c13th,\u201d this film about the origins of the 14th Amendment and how today\u2019s government is destroying its five tenets is still timely and important. Talking heads like Sherrilyn Ifill, Jasmine Crockett, and Stacey Abrams help us keep track of a barrage of information about what one person calls \u201cThe 2nd US Constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll have more to say when the film is released in December, but I\u2019m compelled to ask two questions now. One, why is Netflix releasing this informative film about current events after the midterm elections instead of before? And two, why oh why did DuVernay use AI to animate some of the old photos? With \u201cMusk,\u201d \u201cAnimals,\u201d \u201cInk,\u201d and other upcoming films, AI is becoming more commonplace. I\u2019ve yet to see a use case that justifies it, and in \u201c14th,\u201d it mars an otherwise worthwhile documentary.<\/p>\n

See you next year, New York Film Festival! <\/p>\n

Odie Henderson is the Boston Globe’s film critic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dylan Baker, Paul Giamatti, and Zach Woods in \u201cA Statement.\u201dSabrina Lantos McCarthy\u2019s film spotlights (sorry!) a real-life 1980…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":374760,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,56,63,65,64],"class_list":["post-374759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}