Authors — Jim Hemphill
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“Multitasking in Film is Quite Stressful”: Sean Penn and DP Daniel Moder on Flag Day
Ever since his directorial debut with The Indian Runner in 1991, Sean Penn has been intent on keeping a certain tradition of American cinema alive: the tradition of directorially self-effacing, behavior-driven movies for adults in which complicated men and women find themselves unable to get out of their own and each other’s way. It’s the school of filmmaking practiced by John Cassavetes, Hal Ashby and Bob Rafelson, on whose work Penn builds with movies that fuse character and landscape to get at something unique and complex about American identity and culture. His latest film, Flag Day, stands alongside The Indian […]
by Jim Hemphill on Aug 19, 2021 -
Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations: Jakob’s Wife, Visions of Eight, The 5th Man, Who Will Start Another Fire and Alias Jesse James
Barbara Crampton has been acting in horror movies for almost 40 years now and has classics like Body Double and Re-animator on her resume (alongside more recent cult favorites such as Lords of Salem and You’re Next), but she’s never had a part that utilizes her talents as thrillingly as the title role in Jakob’s Wife. An insightful meditation on the precarious difficulties of maintaining a marriage that also manages to deliver the horror movie goods with terrifying and often hilarious gusto (imagine Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes From a Marriage crossed with early Sam Raimi), Jakob’s Wife tells the story of […]
by Jim Hemphill on Aug 6, 2021 -
“Directors are Not Born Being Blockbuster Filmmakers”: Producers John Davis and John Fox on Jungle Cruise
With all the changes that have been taking place in the film industry over the last few years, I’m always fascinated by the filmmakers who seem consistently able to adapt to the shifting landscape while still remaining true to their own tastes and sensibilities—the producers and directors whose careers span decades and show no sign of decline. The release of Disney’s new adventure film Jungle Cruise gave me the opportunity to talk with two such filmmakers, producers John Davis and John Fox. Davis has produced over a hundred movies and TV shows going back to the 1980s and early ’90s, […]
by Jim Hemphill on Jul 29, 2021 -
“Where in Europe Can We Find Some Castles?” David Lowery on The Green Knight
A 14th-century epic poem by an anonymous author serves as the basis for one of the most visually and aurally thrilling movies of 2021 in writer-director David Lowery’s The Green Knight, an adaptation of the Arthurian legend Sir Gawain and the Green Knight that’s made for adults but casts a spell on the audience every bit as magical as that of classic family films like E.T. and The Wizard of Oz. Dev Patel stars as Gawain, King Arthur’s brash nephew who accepts a challenge from the title character that sends him on a mythic quest which will most likely end […]
by Jim Hemphill on Jul 26, 2021 -
Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations: Last Train from Gun Hill, There was a crooked man…, Stranger on the Run and In the Line of Fire
Actor Kirk Douglas was at the top of his game when he reunited with producer Hal Wallis, director John Sturges and most of the rest of his Gunfight at the OK Corral team for Last Train from Gun Hill, a dark and absorbing 1959 Western that stands tall as a worthy companion to Douglas’s other great achievements of the era like Lust for Life, Paths of Glory, Strangers When We Meet and Spartacus. As those titles illustrate, this was a period when Douglas used his box office capital to make one interesting and ambitious picture after another, and Last Train […]
by Jim Hemphill on Jun 18, 2021 -
Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations: My Fair Lady, The President’s Analyst, The Hand
A glorious last gasp of the classical Hollywood studio system gets a reference quality upgrade with Paramount’s 4K disc of My Fair Lady, the best of the gargantuan musicals that would hit their commercial apex with The Sound of Music in 1965 and nearly sink the industry with Doctor Dolittle and Star! just a few years later. Released in 1964, My Fair Lady is an early entry in the cycle and an expertly modulated one thanks to the firm hand of director George Cukor, whose work was always characterized by a harmonious interaction between performance, composition, camera movement and cutting—Cukor […]
by Jim Hemphill on Jun 4, 2021 -
A Whole Other Toolbox: Theater Director Bartlett Sher on Making his First Feature, Oslo
One of the most impressive directing debuts I’ve seen this year is Bartlett Sher’s clear, concise and extremely moving drama Oslo, a movie that distills complex themes and conflicts into a remarkably accessible and riveting political suspense film. Adapting his own Tony Award-winning play, screenwriter J.T. Rogers tells the true story of the secret back-channel talks and unlikely friendships between a small group of Israelis, Palestinians, and a Norwegian couple acting as facilitators that led to the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords. The script is a model of elegant structure, weaving precise journalistic details into a sophisticated ensemble character study in […]
by Jim Hemphill on Jun 1, 2021 -
Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations: Lady Sings the Blues, Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart, The Bureau: The Complete Series
When Motown Records impresario Berry Gordy made his debut as a filmmaker in 1972, the dominant mode in Black cinema was that of Blaxploitation flicks like Shaft and Superfly or gritty indies like Melvin Van Peebles’ politically and formally radical Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. Gordy saw a void to be filled—and an opportunity to showcase his label’s biggest star, Diana Ross—by producing a glossy, old-fashioned Hollywood melodrama with Black performers; the result, the Billie Holiday biopic Lady Sings the Blues, was a landmark musical that catapulted Ross to an Oscar nomination and instantly created a new standard for leading men […]
by Jim Hemphill on May 28, 2021 -
Sitcom Boot Camp: Matt Shakman on WandaVision
In a world where most episodic directors tend to specialize in hour-long dramas or half-hour comedies—and some specialize even further within those formats, becoming known for procedurals or prestige dramas or multi-cam sitcoms—Matt Shakman might be the most versatile filmmaker working in television today. He has directed one of the funniest comedies on TV (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia), one of the largest scale and most popular premium cable series (Game of Thrones) and was behind some of the best episodes of Succession, Fargo and Mad Men. As comfortable with network crowd-pleasers like The Good Wife as he is at the […]
by Jim Hemphill on May 27, 2021 -
“The Marvel Paradigm is to Come at It Like a Movie”: Kari Skogland on The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
Director Kari Skogland has long been a master of tonally complex television, having helmed episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale, Boardwalk Empire, The Walking Dead and many other beloved series; she also executive produced and directed several episodes of one of the best limited series of the last ten years, the Showtime Roger Ailes drama The Loudest Voice. Yet the best work of her career is her most recent, as the director of all six episodes of Marvel’s Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. An extraordinarily ambitious expansion of the Marvel universe that takes full advantage of the opportunities television […]
by Jim Hemphill on May 25, 2021
