‘Gunda’: A Modest Yet Devastating Nature Documentary [NYFF Review]

Among the many things suspended during these plague times of social distancing and self-quarantine is the friendly visit, those excursions we take to friends’ houses just to hang out and catch up, exchange banalities and intimacies between sips of wine on the couch.

“The Truffle Hunters” takes viewers deep in the forests of Northern Italy to watch as elderly men and their indispensable dogs participate in the tradition of sniffing out the elusive white Alba truffle. Beloved by gourmet chefs, the truffle’s rarity drives prices sky-high, even as the subjects of the film maintain the old ways of hunting, free of technology, relying on their own memories and a cranky sense of secrecy.

Remember a time when the world wasn’t so crazy? You could walk into a deli, with no facial covering whatsoever, and order a sandwich from someone without having to stand six feet away from them. It was a simpler time.

One of the great joys of the New York Film Festival has been watching Steve McQueen’s new film anthology “Small Axe.” Composed of five works set between the late-’60s and early-’80s, the two recently screened films — “Lovers Rock” and “Mangrove” — are intimate slices of life of a little-represented community, British Black folks from the West Indies, resiliently thriving amidst a racially hostile environment.

One of the great joys of the New York Film Festival has been watching Steve McQueen’s new film anthology “Small Axe.” Composed of five works set between the late-’60s and early-’80s, the two recently screened films — “Lovers Rock” and “Mangrove” — are intimate slices of life of a little-represented community, British Black folks from the West Indies, resiliently thriving amidst a racially hostile environment.

Nadia Sawalha has opened up on how she dealt with suffering a miscarriage during a discussion about Chrissy Teigen's heartbreaking post on losing her baby son.The 55 year old, who recently stripped naked in her garden and compared herself to Gwyneth Paltrow, spoke out about how she handled her own grief while appearing on Loose Women on Thursday 1 October.The panellists were talking about Chrissy's decision to publish an Instagram post about how she tragically lost her baby when Nadia admitted

They “meet cute” from across a street, at opposing bus stops; Luc (Logann Antuofermo) is going one way, Djemila (Oulaya Amamra) the other. We meet them in evenly composed medium-wide shots, the camera sharing the distance that separates them.

Tom Tapp Deputy Managing EditorA wildfire with a “dangerous rate of spread” broke out in Napa County Sunday morning, with the area facing extreme wildfire conditions including dry, hot winds from the east/northeast. California Governor Gavin Newsom said on Monday that the winds are expected to die down overnight.

Philippe Lacôte understands the cyclical nature of human conflict and how invaluable the stories people tell about their collective past are. In the remarkable “Night Of The Kings,” the Ivorian director’s follow-up to the political turmoil drama “Run,” oral tradition enlivens a chaotic microcosm that’s suspended somewhere between an ancient saga and contemporary unrest.

Nothing “happens” in the opening scene of Tsai Ming-liang’s “Days,” at least not in any conventional sense: Kang (Lee Kang-sheng), a middle-class, middle-aged man, is sitting at his window, looking out at as the rain falls. The shot lasts four-and-a-half minutes, without cutting or moving – just a man, staring out a window and thinking.

A West Indian proverb holds, “If you are the big tree, we are the small axe.” “Lovers Rock,” the first film made available of Steve McQueen’s Amazon miniseries “Small Axe,” first interpreted the saying as a metaphor for the joyous spirit in the Black British community. But his newest installment, “Mangrove” swings a different emphasis on the rebellious phrase.

Men are incorrigible Lothario scoundrels, motherhood is full of loneliness and self-doubt, and complicated father/daughter relationships are constantly tested in Sofia Coppola’s “On The Rocks,” her latest dramedy, an effervescent, charming, and soulful affair.

With the indispensable aid of his widow and collaborator Valeria Sarmiento, the prolific Raúl Ruiz has given the world another film from beyond the grave. That might seem strange for some directors, but this partnering of living and dead is right on brand for the esoteric exile, whose films always operated in liminal spaces, obscuring the difference between dream and reality, night and day, conscious and unconscious.

If a film such as “The Irishman” or “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” is unnecessarily long, then what will people say about “Malmkrog,” Cristi Puiu’s three-and-a-half-hour period adaptation? Focused almost entirely on the intellectual discussions of five aristocrats gathered at a wintry Transylvanian mansion in the early 1900s, “Malmkrog” belongs to the milieu of cerebral art-films whose arduousness is perhaps exactly the point.

Rangers legend Fernando Ricksen on the first anniversary of his death. The Dutchman died on September 18 last year in a hospice just outside Glasgow after a six year battle with motor neurone disease.

Oscar-winning director Steve McQueen’s films rarely have a light touch. For example, “Hunger” recounts the life of IRA member Bobby Sands, and the group’s organized hunger strike; “Shame” depicts sex addiction; “12 Years a Slave” violently retells the story of a freed Black man kidnapped into slavery; and “Widows” explains the socio-political environment for women and Black people in Chicago.