The New York Film Festival, easily one of the city’s most prestigious film events, returned to Lincoln Center (as well as various other venues) last weekend for its 62nd edition. Unlike the Tribeca Festival, and other established film festivals like Sundance and Cannes (and especially Fall festivals like Venice and Toronto), the NYFF is not so much a place to premiere movies as it is a place to celebrate them. The festival’s feature film lineup is invitation-only, and contains some of the most anticipated movies from both the mainstream and the art house. In short, it’s a good chunk of awards season in about two and a half weeks. After a strike-addled edition last year, Hollywood’s A-list are heavily present for the festival once again. Yet, a big reason to attend the festival is to get the rare opportunity to see a lot of directors and actors from around the world (47 countries are reportedly represented in the lineup). Some of the year’s best movies are playing here, so I’m gonna try and talk about as many as I can, starting with probably the hottest ticket at this year’s festival.

If you don’t know the name Sean Baker, that may be about to change. He’s gotten a lot of love for his films, usually gritty comedy-dramas that spotlight marginalized communities. I first heard of him for Tangerine, his movie about transgender sex workers of color shot on an iPhone. From there he made The Florida Project, which earned massive acclaim and earned Willem Dafoe an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, as well as Red Rocket in 2021, which also recieved highly positive reviews. Well, I have to make a confession: I’m not the biggest fan of Sean Baker’s work, which makes me a minority in the art film community. Of course, I knew what was coming. Baker’s latest, Anora, is perhaps the most anticipated independent film this year. It won the Palme D’Or at Cannes and is a major awards season frontrunner. Given my attitude towards his last three movies, I knew it was touch and go on whether or not I’d enjoy this, so I’m just going to skip to the verdict right now.

Believe the hype. Anora really is that good.

Anora is a 23-year-old stripper in Brighton Beach who is assigned to a young man named Ivan because she speaks Russian. Ivan starts hiring her as an escort, during which Anora learns he’s the son of a Russian oligarch. It isn’t long before the two fall in love, and not even much longer than that when, partially because of romance and partially because Ivan has to go back to Russia, the two decide to get married so he’ll become an American citizen. Anora thinks she’s found the man of her dreams and struck it rich as a bonus….and then Ivan’s parents find out.

You are not ready for Anora. Baker’s films have always had an often darkly comic audacity to them, from frequent physical fights to things being set on fire, but this is easily his wildest movie to date. The initial feeling that this is an extremely graphic and profane version of a screwball comedy comes to a head in the film’s extended centerpiece sequence, which ranks among the year’s most accomplished, intense, and insane movie moments. To go any further would be criminal, but suffice it to say, it’s a heck of a ride.

It’s easily the funniest movie of Baker’s filmography. It isn’t all funny, though. You really feel for Anora throughout the movie, and there’s some utterly heartwrenching moments in this. It’s a very good script that combines riotous dialogue with a moving story about love, sex, money, and power. Sex work is a common topic in Baker’s films, but of all the movies he’s done, this is probably the most effective I’ve felt he’s been in conveying his themes. Mikey Madison gives an incredible performance as Anora, and at several moments during the movie, the audience burst into applause for her. That said, everyone in the cast does a great job in this. A lot of the humor in this movie comes from the characters playing off of one another (often loudly and with several four-letter words attached).

It all leads to up to an ending that will probably lead to as much discussion and interpretation as it will stay in your mind for quite a while. Combining anarchic, audacious comedy with heartfelt drama, Anora exceeded my expectations. Be sure to catch this one when it hits theaters on October 18th.

The Hollywood idea of “fake it till you make it” is taken to horrifying extremes in the new documentary Bad Actor: A Hollywood Ponzi Scheme. It’s a true-crime documentary that should be of interest to film aficionados like myself who follow the industry and pay attention to its many wheelings and dealings. As a movie, it’s fairly standard in execution, but does have a few added twists that not only enhance the central themes, but also may leave you thinking long after the film ends.

Perhaps if you frequent the dark corners of film libraries that I do, you may have heard of or even seen a film starring Zach Avery (whose real name is Zachary Horowitz), an aspiring actor whose output never really rose above the D-list, which raises the question of how he ended up in some of these movies in the first place. However, his film career hid a ponzi scheme of massive proportions. Roping in his friends and others though a web of lies and deceit, he had them invest in his enterprise to buy the rights to independent films through his company, 1inMM (One in a Million) Productions, and sell them to Netflix and HBO. Everything seemed legit. Documentation was provided. Contracts had been made. The films were certainly real. Yet, it eventually became apparent that they were the only things real about any of this, and by the time the scheme fell apart, it was worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

As a true crime documentary, it makes an effort to stand out from the typical talking-head-and-re-enactment fare. Since getting Avery to be in the movie was a borderline impossibility, the filmmakers obviously had to resort to re-enactments, but the process of casting them is a part of the film itself. As the main theme of this movie is the slippery nature of truth, the experience of actors getting inside the head of someone who used their talent for acting for nefarious purposes is an interesting detail that elevates this. Granted, Avery’s talent for acting applies solely to his crimes. The footage of Avery’s filmography makes it obvious why he never made it legitimately. However, the archival footage of Zach doing interviews is chilling in just how believable he is even as he’s lying through his teeth. There’s seemingly not much that sets him apart from any other aspiring actor talking about their potential big break.

There’s a lot of details to this story I won’t spoil, and the filmmakers do a decent job putting everything together. As someone with a pretty extensive knowledge of film, The extent of Avery’s criminal enterprise did shock me, as his influence spreads to more legitimate projects than I anticipated. This is a story of a top-shelf fraudster, and a number of the reveals of how he pulled some of this off I legitimately did not see coming. In addition to the re-enactments and footage of Avery’s career, the filmmakers incorporate heavy use of famous film clips to get their points across, but I did think they used this device a bit too much at times. I feel like this story will definitely appeal more primarily to film buffs compared to a lot of other true crime fare. As a film buff myself, though, i was pretty stunned for the whole thing.

Despite seeming like a pretty standard movie structurally, there is one last trick the film has up its sleeve before the credits roll. I won’t reveal what it is, but it’ll make you question everything you just watched, and give you pause on the nature of documentary filmmaking in general. Overall, I’d say that if you’re into movies, it’s worth a watch. It’s the tale of a despicable yet fascinating actor that, while devastating, is certainly thought-provoking.

Side note: In an unexpectedly niche example of industry competition, shortly before the film’s premiere at Tribeca Film Festival, Amazon MGM Studios announced their own documentary on this story, Hollywood Ending. Whether Neon’s or Amazon’s documentary ends up being superior is yet to be seen, and it could just be a total coincidence that the announcement was made when it was. It’s not like competing documentaries on the same topic is a regular occurrence, but it does happen. Regardless, I saw this one first, and maybe I’ll review the other one when it comes out.