Authors — R. Kurt Osenlund
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“What Do You Think?”: Pedro Almodóvar on I’m So Excited
“What do you think?” asks an inquisitive Pedro Almodóvar, his voice hoarse from constant interviews and his white hair characteristically untamed, like he’s the Don King of foreign film. His question is in response to my own, about why he’s fascinated with sex between partners wherein one of them is asleep, a phenomenon seen in Bad Education and the director’s libidinous, screwball latest, I’m So Excited. It’s at once jarring, thrilling, and humbling to have Almodóvar request your thoughts on his creative motives. Perhaps I should have asked him something else, something less tied to the many interpretations he himself […]
by R. Kurt Osenlund on Jun 27, 2013 -
Richard Rowley on Dirty Wars
Already a celebrated and polarizing figure in the world of war reporting and investigative journalism, Jeremy Scahill, whose incendiary 2008 bestseller Blackwater landed him on virtually every political news show in the business, returns to the spotlight this season with the unsettling, yet arguably vital, documentary Dirty Wars, a companion piece, of sorts, to his new doorstopper of the same name. A hit at Sundance, the film credits Scahill as co-producer and co-writer, and features him as both narrator and chief subject, but at the helm is director Richard Rowley, a veteran documentarian who’s worked with Scahill for more than […]
by R. Kurt Osenlund on Jun 7, 2013 -
Zal Batmanglij and Brit Marling on The East
Brit Marling recently gave the convocation speech for the 2013 graduating class of Georgetown University, the alma mater of the writer/producer/actress and her friends and collaborators Mike Cahill and Zal Batmanglij. Cahill directed Marling in Another Earth, a film she co-wrote, and Batmanglij has stood at the helm of Sound of My Voice and the new eco-thriller The East, both of which also credit Marling as co-writer and star. In her speech, a riveting address that was wonderfully articulate and rang deeply true, Marling offered fun anecdotes about her misadventures with Cahill and Batmanglij (Cahill, for example, once served as […]
by R. Kurt Osenlund on Jun 1, 2013 -
Julianne Moore: Cinema’s Modest Chameleon
Julianne Moore makes it terribly easy to like her. Her remarkable consistency has helped her remain a stellar screen presence for more than two decades. Her transformative abilities have morphed her into everything from a troubled hypochondriac (Safe) and a maternal porn star (Boogie Nights) to a 1950s housewife (Far From Heaven) and one half of a loving lesbian couple (The Kids Are All Right). And her singular, nature-defying beauty has continued to land her fashion cover shoots at the age of 52. All of this springs to mind when Moore greets an eager parade of press while promoting her new […]
by R. Kurt Osenlund on May 17, 2013 -
“Twilight’s Fine, But It’s for Children:” Xan Cassavetes on Kiss of the Damned
Could John Cassavetes’ children, all of whom have grabbed his passed torch, be any more different? Son Nick has dabbled in gritty crime fare (Alpha Dog) and mainstream melodrama (The Notebook), daughter Zoe helmed Broken English and has ties to the fashion biz, and now eldest daughter Alexandra — or “Xan,” for short — has carried on the tradition, making her own distinct narrative directorial debut with the vampire romance Kiss of the Damned after previously making the cinephilic doc Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession. Adamantly stylized, worldly, and nostalgic, Kiss of the Damned, which Xan also wrote, joins Neil […]
by R. Kurt Osenlund on May 3, 2013 -
“We Walked the Tightrope with Grace:” Mira Nair on The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Mira Nair lounges casually on the edge of a bed in her downtown New York hotel room. Between sips of tea, she asks, “Is this okay?” as if the informal atmosphere might throw off the professional nature of our meeting. (It doesn’t.) To borrow Nair’s own sentiment, which she uses to describe the way she aims to feel on set, the director looks “at home in the world,” comfortable even when promoting a movie that’s designed to be unnerving. Based on Mohsin Hamid’s international bestseller, The Reluctant Fundamentalist is Nair’s eleventh narrative feature, and a milestone in a filmography that […]
by R. Kurt Osenlund on Apr 26, 2013 -
Which Way is the Front Line from Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington Director Sebastian Junger
One great journalist salutes another in Which Way is the Front Line From Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington, a moving combat documentary premiering Thursday, April 18 on HBO. The film is celebrated author-turned-director Sebastian Junger’s tribute to Hetherington, the British-American photojournalist who co-helmed the Oscar-nominated Restrepo with Junger, and tragically lost his life in 2011 while covering Libya’s civil war. Like Restrepo, which ditched political agendas to get at the human core of a platoon of soldiers stationed in Afghanistan, Which Way is the Front Line From Here? pins its focus on the heart and unquenchable drive […]
by R. Kurt Osenlund on Apr 16, 2013 -
Antiviral Director Brandon Cronenberg
Like the offspring of any revered icon, Brandon Cronenberg’s last name grabs hold of your attention. Indeed, the 33-year-old Canadian filmmaker is the son of David Cronenberg, genre cinema’s great auteur of psychodrama and body horror. And like his father, Brandon expresses a strong interest in the inextricable brain-body link, not to mention the dark crevices of society’s underbelly. Antiviral, Brandon’s feature debut as writer and director, is a sci-fi satire with a sharp conceit worthy of that unmistakable surname, and a stylistic strength that promises more compelling work from its maker. Uniquely skewering our ever-evolving (or devolving) obsessions with […]
by R. Kurt Osenlund on Apr 12, 2013 -
Directors Lori Silverbush and Kristi Jacobson on A Place at the Table
If Food, Inc. freaked you out, prepare to be galvanized by A Place at the Table, another hot-button food doc being released by Participant Media and Magnolia Pictures. The film, which boasts the involvement of celebrity advocates Jeff Bridges and chef Tom Colicchio, fixes its curious eye on America’s hunger crisis, whose staggering stats add up to the distressing fact that 50 million folks in this country, many of them kids, don’t know when or how they’re getting their next meal. It’s a monster of a topic, with arms that stretch to the realms of politics, medicine, and agriculture, and […]
by R. Kurt Osenlund on Mar 4, 2013 -
Five Questions with Stoker Director Park Chan-wook
Stoker, South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook’s long-awaited English-language debut, has already proven divisive, its moral murkiness and arguable cynicism as beguiling to some as they are troubling for others. But however one feels when walking away from this Gothic, slow-burning psycho-thriller, which explores the curious workings of its titular family (the surname’s an intended nod to a certain vampire-loving author), it’s hard to deny that it’s the work of a master stylist, whose obsessive attention to detail is intoxicating, and, these days, far too rare. A parade of pristine compositions, technical flourishes, and production design that’s adamantly era-nonspecific, Stoker plays […]
by R. Kurt Osenlund on Mar 4, 2013
