Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro in The Irishman (Netflix)

The New York Film Festival has always been my favorite film festival because unlike Telluride, Toronto, or Sundance, I can walk to it in 20 minutes. The fest, run out of Lincoln Center on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, invariably includes lots of tasty big-name items plus an impressive array of smaller films from around the world. Lovely surprises abound. In 2011, I and many others decided to get the jump on a seat for the U.S. premiere of the most hotly anticipated film of the season, Alexander Payne’s The Descendants, by showing up for the film that preceded it at the Walter Reade Theater: The Artist. The Artist, which was making its North American debut, turned out to be an irresistible charmer and is the most recent film to win the Oscars for Best Actor, Director, and Picture. The following year brought the world premiere of Ang Lee’s Life of Pi.


This year the NYFF offers the world premiere of maybe the most anticipated film of the year among cineastes, Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, a $160 million, three-and-half-hour work that is being billed as the most expensive drama ever made, its costs driven up by the decision to cast Robert De Niro and Al Pacino but have them play much younger versions of themselves with the aid of digital wizardry. The movie debuts in theaters November 1 followed by a November 27 debut on Netflix. I hope to see the movie Friday morning and post my thoughts on it by the end of the day.


The NYFF is as usual building its slate around three films; The Irishman is the opening night choice, followed a week later on October 4 by the Centerpiece selection, Noah Baumbach’s acclaimed Marriage Story starring Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson. The Closing Night pick, on October 11, is Edward Norton’s film of Jonathan Lethem’s superb novel Motherless Brooklyn, which stars Norton and whose cast includes Alec Baldwin, Bruce Willis, and Willem Dafoe. The full slate of offerings is listed here.