Authors — Ariston Anderson
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“We Wanted to Make it a Very Sexy Fish…”: Five Questions for The Shape of Water Director Guillermo Del Toro
If Guillermo Del Toro hasn’t already cemented his place as one of the great storytellers of today, he certainly has with his latest film The Shape of Water, a Cold War-era twisted fairy tale opening today. Sally Hawkins stars as a mute cleaning lady, Elisa, working at a government agency, whose only friends are her co-worker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) and her gay neighbor Giles (Richard Jenkins). An imposing government agent Strickland (Michael Shannon) arrives with a mysterious amphibious creature in tow, played by Doug Jones. While Strickland is intent on studying the creature for whatever military value this research might […]
by Ariston Anderson on Nov 30, 2017 -
“What Kind of Pain is This Coming From?”: Martin McDonagh on Creating the Award-Winning Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
If the road to the Oscars is paved with festival accolades, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is already well on its way to victory. Opening this week, playwright Martin McDonagh’s third feature has already picked up two major prizes: the Best Screenplay award in Venice as well as People’s Choice Award in Toronto, the festival’s top prize. The actors masterfully balance humor with despair throughout the film. In what has been called her best role since Fargo, Frances McDormand plays a grieving mother who decides to take matters into her own hands after local police have failed to track down […]
by Ariston Anderson on Nov 11, 2017 -
“As Humans, We Will Never Settle”: Five Questions for Human Flow Director Ai Weiwei
World-renowned artist and activist Ai Weiwei makes his feature-length filmmaking debut with Human Flow, an expansive documentary that shines a light on the global refugee crisis. Ai circles the globe to showcase the personal stories behind the sweeping headlines of fallout from war, famine and climate change in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, France, Greece, Germany, Hungary, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon, Macedonia, Malaysia, Mexico, Pakistan, Palestine, Serbia, Switzerland, Syria, Thailand and Turkey. Today 65 million people have been forcibly displaced, more people than in the time period following World War II. Ai manages to show both the massive scale of the […]
by Ariston Anderson on Oct 13, 2017 -
Five Questions for First Reformed Director Paul Schrader
Paul Schrader returns to form with a deeply introspective film, First Reformed, which, following screenings in Venice, Telluride and Toronto, screens tonight at the New York Film Festival, where it was a late addition to the program. The writer of films including Taxi Driver and Raging Bull and director of films including American Gigolo and Affliction delivers a new work that both contains echoes of his previous pictures depicting “God’s Lonely Men” while also being quite unlike anything he’s ever done. (Plus, argues Vadim Rizov, something of a treatise on the role of Slow Cinema today.) Ethan Hawke stars as a former […]
by Ariston Anderson on Oct 6, 2017 -
Five Questions for Nobody’s Watching Director Julia Solomonoff
In Julia Solomonoff’s third narrative feature, Nobody’s Watching, Guillermo Pfening plays Nico, an established Argentine actor in New York who has overstayed his visa in hopes of a promised film role and a new chance at life. But the idea of making it as an actor in New York is even harder for the blond Nico, who is told both that he is too white to play Hispanic and that his accent is too strong to play American. He falls back on odd jobs and light shoplifting, living under the radar until his past in Argentina comes back to haunt […]
by Ariston Anderson on May 24, 2017 -
Jon Nguyen on David Lynch: The Art Life, How Twin Peaks Delayed Production and the Downside of Kickstarter
While David Lynch fans eagerly await the premiere of the new Twin Peaks on Sunday, a documentary that peers deep into the iconic director’s life is currently making its way around theaters across the U.S. After premiering last year in Venice to rave reviews, we caught David Lynch: The Art Life at the American Film Festival in Wroclaw, Poland toward the end of its festival circuit. The film will play local dates this summer before being sent out to the film’s thousand-plus Kickstarter backers who have been waiting on the documentary since its 2012 campaign. The film’s young director, Jon Nguyen, […]
by Ariston Anderson on May 17, 2017 -
20th Century Women: Mike Mills on Bringing a Personal Story to Life
After exploring a teenager’s odd obsession in Thumbsucker and helming the semi-autographical Beginners about his father coming out of the closet late in laugh, in his third narrative, Mike Mills returns to deeply personal material from his own life. 20th Century Women has been hailed as his best work yet and earned him an Oscar nomination for best adapted screenplay. The film is a coming of age tale about a teenage boy raised by three women from different generations in 1979 Santa Barbara. It’s a portrait of the city in a quieter, simpler time, as well as an ode to his steadfast mother […]
by Ariston Anderson on Feb 1, 2017 -
Five Questions for Orange Sunshine Director William A. Kirkley
Dubbed the “Hippie Mafia,” the Brotherhood of Eternal Love was a collective of people in Orange County in the ‘60s and ’70s that grew from a spiritual commune to the largest distributors of LSD at that time in the world. For the first time, their story is told in-depth on film in William A. Kirkley’s riveting documentary Orange Sunshine, the name of their most famous strain of the psychedelic drug. Founded by John Griggs and collaborators Mike and Carol Randall, brothers Rick and Ron Bevan and Travis Ashbrook, the Brotherhood sought to change the planet with a cultural and spiritual […]
by Ariston Anderson on Nov 14, 2016 -
Five Questions for The Secret Scripture Director Jim Sheridan
In Jim Sheridan’s new film The Secret Scripture, based on the novel by Sebastian Barry, the six-time Oscar nominated director returns to themes familiar to him: politics, religion, family and truth. Vanessa Redgrave stars as Rose McNulty, a woman imprisoned for four decades in a mental ward, accused of killing her own son. Not only is she convinced she didn’t kill him, but she believes her son is still alive, and keeps a journal in the margins of a Bible recounting her stories. When the decaying mental ward is on the verge of being turned into a resort, she refuses to move, […]
by Ariston Anderson on Nov 3, 2016 -
10 Lessons on Filmmaking from Viggo Mortensen
In his latest film, Captain Fantastic, Viggo Mortensen plays Ben, a man intent on raising his children on his own terms in the wild forests of the Pacific Northwest. When he learns of his wife’s sudden death, he must uproot his family from the life they are accustomed to and try to find their own path back in civilization. The film had an incredibly successful festival run after its Sundance premiere, picking up top awards in Cannes, Deauville and Karlovy Vary. And recently, the film picked up the Audience Award at the Rome Film Fest, where Mortensen and director Matt […]
by Ariston Anderson on Nov 2, 2016
