The Best of the Fest By GREATER NEW YORK STAFF

One week down, one to go at the New York Film Festival. After its splashy opening-night presentation of David Fincher's "The Social Network," as well as successful screenings of new works by Jean-Luc Godard and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the festival surges into its homestretch with its centerpiece film (Julie Taymor's "The Tempest") and a host of sidebar presentations and Q&As. There's still a lot see. Here are some recommendations from our staff.

The Strange Case of Angelica

Dir. Manoel de Oliveira

Sun, 9 p.m., Wed 6 p.m.

The latest from the Portuguese master is at once a mysterious ghost story, an ethereal romance and a meditation on memory and experience. When a young Jewish photographer is hired by a family to record their suddenly deceased (and recently married) daughter, he is astonished to find his dead subject comes alive in his photographs. Haunted by these visions that no one else can see, he is plunged into a confounded funk. Mr. Oliveira's slender tale of obsession unfolds with the languid, richly textured style of a novella, and never quite takes the direction you think it will. Still making films at the mindboggling age of 101, Mr. Oliveira delivers the wry wisdom and ineffable elegance that could only come with the long view.
—Nicolas Rapold

Get Out of the Car

Dir. Thom Andersen

Sat, 8:15pm

In his illuminating examination of his much-photographed city, "Los Angeles Plays Itself," Thom Andersen showed the extraordinary potential of the essay-film to explore the world at large alongside the altered images produced by cinema. With his new, short-but-sweet look at signs and street art (screening as part of the festival's "Since You Were Here..." program in the "Views From the Avant Garde" sidebar series), Mr. Andersen applies his deep, and deeply felt, knowledge of local culture and history to a rapidly changing landscape. An array of peeling billboards, colorful murals, and recklessly demolished landmarks pass before his camera—all set to a rollicking and varied sound track including R&B, jazz, rock 'n' roll oldies, and other voices from a livelier past ("Lowrider Girl," anyone?). Sprinkled throughout is a comical commentary by the filmmaker and whoever happens to be around. "Maybe this is just a movie about getting lost," the Mr. Andersen wonders aloud. If so, it's a trip worth taking.
—Nicolas Rapold

'Tuesday, After Christmas'

Dir. Radu Muntean

Friday, 3 p.m.

Just because you're a new-wave Romanian filmmaker, it doesn't mean your only theme is the nation's post-Ceauşescu hangover. Mr. Muntean's brilliantly acted drama finds ample distress where many of us do—in the intimate confines of a marriage. Mimi Brănescu is the middle-aged Paul, who jeopardizes a comfortable life with his wife (Mirela Oprişor) when he begins an affair with their child's young blonde dentist (Mirela Oprisor). The director's use of extremely long takes lets the actors peel back every emotional layer, with elliptical silences that ramp up the churning anxiety to a level of realism painful enough to feel like truth. The slow build-up and seemingly mundane backdrop may feel designed to keep an audience off-guard, but they underpin what becomes a powerfully interiorized cliffhanger, jagged with raw candor.
—Steve Dollar

'Carlos'

Dir. Olivier Assayas

Saturday, 11 a.m.

If it's true that "all you need is a girl and a gun" to make a movie, then "Carlos" delivers in spades—more than enough to propel 5-1/2 hours of a dense, crisscrossing story in multiple languages with a huge cast. At the center is the life and crimes of Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, more infamously known as Carlos the Jackal, the freewheeling terrorist who made much of the European 1970s a hostage situation. Mr. Assayas's fluid camera, sensitivity to actorly dynamics, and affinity for globalized scenarios flow perfectly, animating a historical cipher as a vain, ego-driven, real-life Bond villain who seduces dark-eyed women and Third World leaders with equal ease—even if most of his operations were bungled jobs. Edgar Ramirez brings a beefy swagger to the lead performance, delivering rapid dialogue with a hypnotizing zeal and a tumbler of whiskey close at hand. He's a hell of a lot more fun than Steven Soderbergh's Che Guevara. He's the Sensuous Assassin.
—Steve Dollar

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Tempest Production

Helen Mirren as Prospera in Julie Taymor's adaptation of William Shakespeare's 'The Tempest.'
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Tempest

Dir. Julie Taymor

Saturday, 7 p.m. and 10 p.m.

"You're tale, ma'am would cure deafness." Julie Taymor's booming, kaleidoscopic "Tempest" arrives on the heels of her big-screen misfire "Across the Universe," and en route to the long-delayed potential Broadway Vietnam of "Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark." An energetic cast, headed by the unsinkable Helen Mirren as deposed Milanese royalty Prospera (here given a change of gender), cavorts through a digitally enhanced version of the Bard's tragicomic tale of exile, shipwreck, old wounds and young love set on a remote island. The film's depiction of the central relationships between Prospera, her daughter Miranda (Felicity Jones), and the spirit Ariel (Ben Whishaw) benefits greatly from Ms. Mirren's magnanimous charisma. Ms. Taymor's particular gift for theatrical contrivance receives a boost from the actual Hawaiian island setting that breathes beneath layers of computer generated tinsel, brightly colored costumes and 70's rock-opera sound-track bombast.
—Bruce Bennett

We Are What We Are

Dir. Jorge Michel Grau

Oct. 7-8

Mexican director Jorge Michel Grau's feature debut sets a benchmark for the serious exploration of a subject that is usually relegated to darkly comic or prurient grindhouse treatment: cannibalism. When the patriarch of a modern-day clan of Mexico City ghouls dies, his surviving family has to choose a replacement from within their dysfunctional ranks. Brothers Alfredo (Francisco Barrerio) and Julian (Alan Chavez, who was tragically killed before the film was completed), struggle with the practical reality of putting, er, food on the table, as well as their responsibility to long-held rituals they don't entirely understand, and the complicated emotions tying them to their distraught mother and Machiavellian younger sister. A film that is as perversely trenchant about family dynamics as this year's unsettling Greek import "Dogtooth," "We Are What We Are" announces a major filmmaking talent in Mr. Grau, who has a rare gift for unaffected visual elegance even during scenes of appalling violence.
—Bruce Bennett