Greeted with predominantly mixed-to-negative reviews at Cannes, Guillaume Nicloux’s Valley of Love — tonight’s Opening Night selection of this year’s Rendez-Vous with French Cinema — hit me so strongly I had to read up afterwards. Whatever the obvious problems with this movie may be didn’t register with me, so reading the notices helped. This isn’t a case of non-arthouse-friendly viewers finding a movie too slow and boring, but there are, I suppose, some obvious hurdles with this film. It starts as naturalism and unexpectedly keeps left-turning into mysticism, turns too jarring and ill-fitting for some (but, by definition, can’t movies turn […]
by Vadim Rizov on Mar 3, 2016Here’s a snatch of dialogue I never thought I’d hear in a Terrence Malick movie: “My life is like playing Call of Duty on easy. I just walk around fucking shit up.” A good line: punchy, funny, mining comedy from an unexpected analogy, profanely concise and self-aware. It is also exactly the kind of thing you’d never expect to hear in a latter-day Malick film, where dialogue is nearly forbidden and vocal self-expression confined to vaporous voiceover. Malick began as a screenwriter for hire, and in Badlands (and only there) he displayed a great gift for laconic humor. For whatever reason (and it’s […]
by Vadim Rizov on Mar 2, 2016Tony Zhou covers a lot of ground in his latest video essay, which examines the Coen brothers’ use of shot/reverse shot. Noting that they prefer to film conversations from the middle rather than over the shoulder with a long lens, he finds an appropriate video interview with Roger Deakins that discusses his lens preference. Then it’s on to framing, how the characters are defined by their environments, and the emotional effect of these shot choices: both uncomfortable and funny, Zhou concludes.
by Vadim Rizov on Feb 25, 2016As part of their recent retrospective on Michael Mann, BAM had the man himself sit down for a 77-minute talk moderated by critic Bilge Ebiri. They begin, logically, at the beginning, with Mann discussing how growing up in Chicago shaped his visual sensibility, and go from there.
by Vadim Rizov on Feb 24, 2016Regardless of what I’m about to say (which is basically that I loved Benilde but the other films in this series not so much), Lincoln Center’s four-day mini-series on Manoel de Oliveira is a major and welcome event. de Oliveira has long been feted by arthouse fiends as one of cinema’s untouchable masters and most rigorous thinkers, but seeing his work is not easy. The prints Lincoln Center is showing are impeccable and gorgeous; if you’re going to dive in, this is the way to do it. I don’t know who coined the phrase “tetralogy of frustrated love,” but the movies — 1972’s Past […]
by Vadim Rizov on Feb 23, 2016When rounding up all the 2014 movies (as defined by the US release calendar) that I could confirm had been at least partially shot on 35mm, the tally was 39; after posting, I caught a few titles that I’d overlooked, but the number basically stayed the same. In researching this year’s follow-up edition, I was shocked to see that figure increase significantly to somewhere around 64 (I’ll get into the qualifiers in a bit). Was I really sloppy in doing my homework last year, or is the number of productions shot on 35mm increasing? It’s hard to tell, and there’s all kinds of asterisks attached. […]
by Vadim Rizov on Feb 18, 2016Ciro Guerra’s third feature Embrace of the Serpent is bracing for the novelty of its setting alone: a feature hasn’t been made in the Colombian Amazon region for 30something years. Without leaning solely on novelty value or simplistic exoticism, Embrace tells two stories. One, set in the early 20th century, is of Theodor Koch-Grunberg (Bivjoet), a real German ethnologist/explorer; at the story’s outset, he’s gravely ill and needs the help of solitary warrior Karamakate (Nilbio Torres) to find a rare plant that can cure him. Another story, some 40 or 50 years later, finds older Karamakate (Antonio Bolívar) guiding Richard Evans Schultes (Brionne Davis), another […]
by Vadim Rizov on Feb 16, 2016Mountains May Depart begins as a love triangle, whose three connecting lines separate and recross across three segments in 1999 (two years after Jia Zhangke’s debut feature), 2014 and 2025. The 1999 opening brings us back to Jia’s native Shanxi, whose streets by now look very, very familiar to anyone who’s kept up with his work. As Tao, the woman at the center of the love triangle, Jia’s professional/personal partner Zhao Tao is introduced in period peasant style: strategically layered brightly lined sweaters, nothing too form-fitting or fashion-forward, hair straight and uncomplicatedly pulled-back. In 2014 — following marriage and divorce to wealthy Zhang Jinsheng (Yi Zhang) — she’s […]
by Vadim Rizov on Feb 11, 2016Jason Tippet is the co-director of the lovely Only the Young, which premiered at True/False in 2012. That portrait of California skater kids who evangelize for the Lord was distinguished by Tippet and co-director Elizabeth Mims’ impressive ability to seemingly never repeat an immaculate shot set-up in even the most returned-to locations. From the opening shot My Gal, Rosemarie shows Tippet hasn’t lost his eye for finding strong compositions in domestic spaces, opening here with a hanging hummingbird feeder viewed from directly below, a defamiliarized circle with birds floating weightlessly around it. This is the home of Ray and Rosemarie: the latter, age 90, finds […]
by Vadim Rizov on Feb 8, 2016In part three of Jim Cummings and team’s video diary documenting their time at Sundance, Thunder Road wins a jury prize! But before that, there’s more anxiety about networking to get through, both before and after the awards. Part one is here, part two is here.
by Vadim Rizov on Feb 1, 2016