The intriguing thing about this year's edition of the New York Film Festival isn't merely the program's whimsical nature (a given), the broad range of international selections (also a given) or that many of the movies lack U.S. distribution.

Instead, I have been struck by how nearly every film at the festival seems to divide people. Both the
comic zaniness of Alain Resnais' surrealist comedy "Wild Grass" and the explicit madness of Lars Von Trier's "Antichrist" were met with mixed responses. A similar situation arose with documentaries, including the Chinese village portrait "Ghost Town" (endlessly fascinating or overlong?) and "The Art of the Steal" (valiant
chronicle of art world conspiracy or activist propaganda?).

That the NYFF program inspires more debate than consensus may or may have been intentional on the part...