Louise Narboni’s intricate and painful film re-creates the relationship between a classical-music singer and the young Afghan asylum seeker whom she’s providing a temporary home.
The brothers’ films feature incredible footage of Thelonious Monk, plus immersive views of the subway and the city streets in the nineteen-fifties and sixties.
The nostalgic charm of Moretti’s semi-autobiographical film, and of two short films of New York cityscapes by Lowell Bodger, holds a particular poignancy right now.
Scorsese’s bio-pic, from 1980, is distinguished by an absence of psychology, which renders it subject to negative judgments from critics with narrow expectations of a character study.
