Sean Glass

Dante owned the “coming-of-age in suburban America, with something darker lurking beneath the surface” genre. In a weird way, he shares many traits with David Lynch, even though their films could not come from and end up in more different worlds.

Ferguson’s style is somewhere between that of Errol Morris and Michael Moore. We never see Ferguson on camera, he’s certainly not the protagonist of the film like Moore makes himself. He is not as stylized as Morris though, and does not mind when we hear his voice. Occasionally, he’ll leave his questions in to give context to the answers, and he will also leave his voice in when he argues with some interview subjects, or makes accusations at them.

Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín’s third outing is crisp, assured, very cool movie. Post-Mortem walks this unique line between surrealism and just plain non-traditional narrative. The protagonist also walks a very closely intertwined morality and sanity line. We don’t really know what kind of movie we’ve been watching nor who our main character is until the final scene. What’s powerful about that is -- we care.

102 year-old Manoel de Oliveira’s The Strange Case of Angelica is this year's 36 Vues du Pic Saint Loup, which was hopefully only selected as a sentimental choice by the NYF. Neither of these are the best efforts of Jacques Rivette or de Oliveira and curiously both films actually have similar tones. They're rather whimsical and feature some kind of magical realism. They’re extremely sentimental love stories.

Fact is, while this The Social Network is not the transcendent wonder that it will be called, it is pretty fantastic. Its greatest feat is bringing us something so accessible while also dosing us with those real stories and characterizations. Whatever negatives one can cite, this is absolutely a must-see for literally everyone, and New York Film Festival should be proud to have it as its opener.