We the Animals
“I will do everything you do.” Filmmaker Jeremiah Zagar (In a Dream) dubs that his motto, his ethos, while on set. And when you watch his simultaneously epic and beautifully specific film We the Animals, it will come as no surprise that Zagar created for his collaborators such a collaborative, safe space for taking risks. Premiering at Sundance Film Festival this year where it won the NEXT Innovator award, it’s the first narrative feature for Zagar. His documentarian’s eye combined with his ability to draw vulnerable and vibrant performances from his cast creates sparkling portrait of three young boys discovering themselves against the backdrop of a volatile home life in upstate New York. “I really thought of it as a… Read more
By Meredith Alloway
Bingham Bryant in Notes on an Appearance
Writing about Ricky D’Ambrose for last year’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film, Vadim Rizov described the script of his debut feature, Notes on an Appearance, then in postproduction, as “giv[ing] a sense of a disciplined, honed gaze refined over years of self-tutoring.” That autodidact’s precision manifests, in shorts like Six Cents in the Pocket (2015) and Spiral Jetty (2015), in straight-on close-ups of people against blank white walls or monochromatic wallpaper, or of pictures and texts and cups of coffee on tables as the sun streams through the window, and an almost monastic sound mix of epistolary voiceover and the distant hum of the city. It also aligns, in Notes on an Appearance, with the guarded deliberateness of David… Read more
By Mark Asch
Minding the Gap
Bing Liu’s first feature documentary, Minding the Gap, draws upon a deep trove of skater tapes he’d kept since his teen years. The film tracks three male skaters growing up (or failing to) in economically dispossessed Rockford, IL. Two are the director’s old friends: in between countless beers, Zack is introduced as he prepares to have a child he clearly isn’t ready for with his girlfriend Nina. Keire doesn’t have any attachments beyond family, but finding his first job is a struggle; the ultimate goal is to get out. The third character is the filmmaker himself. What all three subjects have in common is being raised in abusive households, a shared trauma that becomes clear early on. (In an interview, Keire refers… Read more
By Vadim Rizov
Too Late to Die Young
There was a bittersweet, valedictory quality to the 71st edition of the Locarno Film Festival. Over the past decade or so, Locarno has carved out a place for itself as a space for arthouse true believers, handing out top prizes to the likes of Lav Diaz and Wang Bing and seeing premieres of key films by Pedro Costa and Chantal Akerman, in the process becoming a byword for a certain kind of distinctly 21st-century, boundary blurring art cinema—to tweak the title of one of the festival’s main programs, filmmaking “of the present.” Recently, in both a validation of everything the festival has become and, potentially, a fundamental challenge to its identity, Locarno’s artistic director Carlo Chatrian was tapped to fill… Read more
By Daniel Witkin
His performances in Spring Awakening and American Idiot are probably what John Gallagher Jr. is most known for at the moment (he won a Tony for the former), and are often what get him labeled a “musical theater guy,” but they were the only musicals he’s done in his 20-year career. I ask him about two recent play productions (Long Day’s Journey Into Night and Jerusalem) that I suspect were very formative for him, and his latest screen role in the important and moving indie The Miseducation of Cameron Post. And, of course, I couldn’t let him go without talking about Sorkin. Back To One can be found wherever you get your podcasts, including iTunes, Google Play, and Stitcher. And… Read more
By Peter Rinaldi
Helena Howard in Madeline's Madeline, courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories
Madeline (Helena Howard) has a hospital bracelet on her wrist and a rehearsal to go to. One of the questions fueling Madeline’s Madeline, Josephine Decker’s third feature as a solo director, is how two of the biggest elements of Madeline’s life — some unspecified form of mental instability and her promise as a young actress — interact, or if they even can safely. Howard’s breakout performance as the troubled thespian is part of an unusual triangle. At one point is her mother Regina (the writer, actress and performance artist Miranda July), whose protective custody of her unstable daughter is unreadable: justifiable concern or constrictive and manipulative? At the other is Evangeline (Molly Parker), theater director of a small troupe building a… Read more
By Mike Mills
John David Washington and Adam Driver in BlacKkKlansman
Peter Gallagher and Laura San Giacomo in sex, lies, and videotape
“Even Before It’s a Vision, It’s a Need”: Director Jeremiah Zagar Talks the Creative Process and his New We the Animals
Aug 18, 2018
“It Certainly Doesn’t Hurt to Make Films For This Little Money”: Ricky D’Ambrose on Notes on an Appearance
Aug 17, 2018
“It Was No Gang, It Was One Guy, and He Wasn’t Really a Killer”: Producer and Star Edward James Olmos on The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez
Aug 16, 2018
“I Had a Moral Crisis”: Bing Liu on Minding the Gap, Personal Doc Voiceovers and Cycles of Abuse
Aug 15, 2018
Queen Sugar and Time for Action Forum: IFP Announces IFP Week Public Programming
Aug 15, 2018
Back to One Podcast: John Gallagher, Jr. on the Importance of The Miseducation of Cameron Post, Sorkin, and the Success of Simply Surviving a Role
Aug 14, 2018
Jim Hemphill’s Weekend Home Viewing Recommendations: The Day After and NCIS: New Orleans — The Fourth Season
Aug 10, 2018
“I Had a 40-Year Career That Was Mostly Just Riven with Existential Panic”: Two and a Half Men Co-Creator Lee Aronsohn on his Debut Doc, 40 Years in the Making: The Magic Music Movie
Aug 9, 2018
How a Baby Bucket List Lead Us to Make Our First Feature Film
Aug 7, 2018
Classic 3D, the WW2 Doc Strange Victory and Billy Budd: Jim Hemphill’s Weekend Viewing Recommendations
Trailer Watch: Barry Jenkins’s If Beale Street Could Talk
Trailer Watch: Ricky D’Ambrose’s Notes On An Appearance
Watch: Previously Unseen Behind-The-Scenes The Shining Footage, Including a Kubrick Interview
