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Bridge of Spies is simply a delight of filmmaking, a master act from the master himself. The movie will keep you interested and thinking - it will not challenge you with deep questions and it wears the allegories and metaphors on its sleeves. But, in that sense, it is precisely what one wants from the movies: a well-thought out, consistent and solid piece of entertainment. I'm also expecting this movie to receive several Oscar nominations, including a Best Supporting Actor nod for Mark Rylance, who plays the Soviet spy. It would be interesting to see where this ranks among the list of Spielberg's best in years to come, which I have chronicled here.

Two Enjoyable Documentaries

After making a splash at TIFF, Michael Moore brought his latest documentary, Where to Invade Next, to the Lincoln Center stage. And it is a delight. The documentary follows Moore's usual style of inserting himself in the narrative and making commentary that resembles, to be fair, the ideological views of shows you would find on Fox or MSNBC. If Michael Moore's politics are your cup of tea, you'll love the documentary. If they are not, at the very least I'd imagine they'd have you thinking.

The premise is simple: rather than invade countries by force, Moore suggests that he will invade and find great ideas that he can “steal” to make America a better place. From the expected (higher salaries, better benefits, free education), to the more arcane (no homework for children, better lunchtime cafeteria foods), Moore offers a hodge-podge of social policies that have worked well across select European countries. Moore is upfront about the fact that he's picking and choosing, and purposefully not focusing on the problems that those countries have on their own. Despite this, the documentary is thought-provoking and even more hopeful than has been his wont in past years. A Q&A at the end where he shared his view that progress for America is still possible if we set our minds to it (and using the stunning success of the gay marriage movement in the past 12 years) was a good overall way to close.

Finally, I had a chance to see Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words, a documentary about the Swedish superstar in commemoration of the 100th year of her birth this year. The documentary makes stunning use of a large amount of footage that Bergman herself made throughout her life (as early as the 1930s), as well as interviews of her and her four children. The documentary is frankly a fascinating inspection of a fascinating woman who was years and years ahead of her time - the flak that she took for some of her personal decisions in life was stunning to see. At the same time, her love for film, the camera, and different types of stories are lost on most artists today. If you're a fan of Bergman and her body of work, the documentary will be a delight. Overall, it's nice to see the NYFF committee make space for works from the international movies we discussed last week, to anticipated awards fare like Jobs or Bridge, to perhaps obscure, niche documentaries.

Next week we close out the New York Film Festival with screenings of Brooklyn and Carol, Sundance and Cannes favorites respectively, as well as with a view into Best Foreign Language Film contenders Son of Saul (Hungary) and The Assassin (Taiwan).

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