The New York Film Festival opens to the public tonight with two screenings of Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited. Since today also marks the midpoint of the press screening schedule, here’s a recap of the films we’ve covered so far, with info on when they’re screening for the public at NYFF and when/where you’ll be able to catch them if you’re not in New York.

*The Darjeeling Limited
Screens 9/28 at 7:45 and 9pm; opens in New York tomorrow and expands next week.
“It’s this kind of style-as-substance that has earned [Wes] Anderson a lot of flack over the years, but I’ve come to the point where I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to fault the guy for pursuing his balls-out personal vision. And though the quirk factor of that vision can be grating, Darjeeling’s DNA is more in line with the sentimental glamour of Margot Tenenbaum’s furs, and less with the antiseptic affectation of Steve Zissou’s nautical suit. Watching the feature, for me, often felt like being welcomed back into the embrace of an old friend.”

*The Romance of Astreé and Céladon
Screens 9/29 at 10am and 9/30 at 9:15pm; no U.S. distribution
“For a film in which a hot-to-trot nymph princess imprisons a cross-dressing himbo, it offers a surprisingly touching celebration of the spiritual over the physical, and as a tale of a crisis of romantic faith, it could play comfortably alongside any of the 1930s marriage comedies.”

*4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
Screens 9/29 at 12:30 PM and 10/1 at 9:15 PM; opens in select theaters and on VOD later this year.
“It all adds up to a portrait of a political situation that transforms even the most mundane personal activities into a negotiation process, ranging from frustrating to humiliating, to downright horrifying.”

*The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Screens 10/29 at 6pm and 10/30 at 10am; opens in limited release on 12/19
“Julian Schnabel’s third feature is an almost excessively beautiful aestheticization of misery.”

*Silent Light
Screens 10/2 at 6pm and 10/3 at 9:15 pm; no U.S. distribution
“Though much ink has been spilled on Silent Light’s magnificent opening and closing shots, it’s hard to isolate one image in this film as being more powerful than the last. One after another, Reygadas’ long, slow ultra-wide shots, occasionally sprinkled with psychedelic lens flares, took my breath away.”

*I’m Not There
Screens 10/4 at 8:30pm and 10/6 at 10AM; opens in New York on 11/21 and expands after that.
“I’ll admit, I’m a sucker for concept films (Memento: OMG, it’s backwards!), but this went way beyond that. Every scene is a delicious layer cake of cultural references and multiple meanings.” [from Kevin's Telluride review]

*Go Go Tales (see coverage of director Abel Ferrara’s memorable NYFF press conference here)
Screens 10/5 at midnight and 10/7 at 4:15 pm; currently without U.S. distribution.

*Margot at the Wedding
Screens 10/7 at 7pm and 10/8 at 12:30 pm; opens 11/16
“With all these helpless solipsists running around within arms reach of a practiced emotional predator, Margot might be most successfully contextualized as a kind of monster movie filmed from the unstable point of view of the victims. Stalking through the country house, the title character picks them off one-by-one like Godzilla snacking his way through the city.”

*Redacted
Screens 10/10 at 6pm and 10/11 at 9pm; opens in New York on 11/16
“It’s like a Max Fisher production of The War Tapes.”

*Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
Screens 10/12 at 6pm and 10/13 at 12:45 pm; opens semi-wide on 10/26
“It’s a solid crime thriller (the violence had me gasping in shock more than once) and a well-crafted family melodrama, but it’s the performances that make it really watchable. Post-Capote, Phillip Seymour Hoffman doesn’t have to break a sweat to act the crap out of this kind of material, but Ethan Hawke does, and watching him do so is great fun.”

*Persepolis
Screens 10/14 at 8:30 PM; opens Christmas Day
Kevin interviews creator Marjane Satrapi Telluride.