PTA's Cameron Winter Film Casts a Hypnotic Spell — SkimNews
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- "Cameron Winter at Carnegie Hall" premiered at the New York Film Festival, a 75-minute Paul Thomas Anderson concert film documenting Winter's solo performance at Carnegie Hall on Dec. 11, 2025.
- Cameron Winter, frontman of indie band Geese, performed entirely alone at a Steinway grand piano, with the reviewer describing his low baritone as producing a 'suspended quaver so bold it's hypnotic.'
- The reviewer's strongest comparative frame invokes Bob Dylan singing 'as if possessed,' alongside echoes of Thom Yorke, Tom Waits (minus the gravel), early Springsteen, and John Cale's 1992 live album 'Fragments of a Rainy Season.'
- Paul Thomas Anderson frames the piano from multiple angles, uses audience eye-view shots of Carnegie's four balconies, and bathes the whole film in an orange-yellow candlelit glow — his second music-performance film after 2015's 'Junun.'
- The concert features songs including 'It All Fell in the River,' 'If You Turn Back Now,' '$0,' and culminates in 'Take It With You,' with the reviewer noting the set moves at one slow tempo like a Leonard Cohen-style song cycle.
- The review takes a contrarian swing at Winter's band: Variety calls Geese 'okay, but overpraised,' arguing Winter's 2024 solo record 'Heavy Metal' — 'the meditative soul inside the noise rocker' — is 'much more compelling.'
Why it matters: The review positions this as a career-elevating showcase for Winter and a return to music filmmaking for PTA, but the critic's own caveat — every song shares one slow tempo and lacks verse-chorus structure — flags the ceiling for fans expecting Geese-style indie rock energy.
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