Authors — Jim Hemphill
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Grace of My Heart, Hard Eight and Mallrats: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
I’m a big fan of anything and everything written and directed by Allison Anders, but I’ve always been particularly fond of her 1996 musical Grace of My Heart. A magical blend of the kind of intimate behavior-driven filmmaking Anders is known for with the scale and resources of a big studio movie, it’s one of the most generous films I’ve ever seen in terms of how much it gives its characters (all of whom are presented with deep empathy and respect) and the audience. The heart of the picture is the richly detailed story of a singer-songwriter (a fantastic Illeana […]
by Jim Hemphill on Nov 6, 2020 -
Rambo: Last Blood and Play Misty for Me: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo series is one of the more durable franchises in American cinema, which is somewhat surprising given that it didn’t really find its voice until its fourth installment and began with a film that didn’t lend itself to sequels at all. First Blood, which Ted Kotcheff directed from a script by Stallone, Michael Kozoll and William Sackheim in 1982, is a stand-alone action classic, an elegant and austere survival film in which Vietnam vet John Rambo takes on the town that wronged him without killing a single person. Stallone made up for First Blood’s low body count with […]
by Jim Hemphill on Oct 30, 2020 -
“The Set was a Circle with the Floor and Mirrors Rotating”: Jan de Bont on The Haunting
Before he became a director, Jan de Bont was the cinematographer on some of the most visually intricate, elegantly lit movies of the 1980s and early ’90s, including Paul Verhoeven’s The 4th Man and Basic Instinct, John McTiernan’s Die Hard and The Hunt for Red October and Ridley Scott’s Black Rain. When de Bont made his directorial debut in 1994 with Speed, the film’s kinetic energy and precise attention to light and composition were no surprise; what made the picture a classic was how finely attuned the visual choices were to the nuances of performance. Speed made Sandra Bullock a star, […]
by Jim Hemphill on Oct 27, 2020 -
The Quest, Amazon Women on the Moon and Pierrot Le Fou: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
Brian Trenchard-Smith, who began making movies in the 1970s as part of the Australian New Wave that also included Peter Weir and George Miller, is not only one of the most talented and entertaining directors of his generation but one of the most versatile; his output includes lyrical children’s films and lowbrow sex comedies, disreputable exploitation flicks and tender romances, documentaries and low-budget disaster movies, and episodic TV episodes ranging from Flipper and Mission: Impossible reboots to the ’90s guilty pleasure Silk Stalkings. A filmmaker who freely admits that he never met a green light he didn’t like, Trenchard-Smith is a craftsman whose best work […]
by Jim Hemphill on Oct 23, 2020 -
“Everyone Should Take an Editing Class, Even Actors”: Rich Newey on Killing Eleanor
I first became aware of director Rich Newey’s work a few years ago when I caught his “Dreamland” episode of the sci-fi series Stitchers; working from an audacious script by Lynne E. Litt, Newey deftly juggled styles and tones with an inventiveness and confidence that led me to seek out his other episodic work on shows like Blindspot and The Fosters. I was consistently impressed by both his precise, expressive visual style and his sensitivity to dialogue and performance, skills on prominent display in his terrific new feature Killing Eleanor. The film tells the story of Natalie (Annika Marks), an […]
by Jim Hemphill on Oct 22, 2020 -
“One Thing I Learned From Michael Mann, You’ve Got to Have Rules”: Brooke Kennedy on The Good Fight
In the first episode of The Good Fight, a spinoff from and sequel to the acclaimed legal drama The Good Wife, liberal attorney Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski) watches Donald Trump’s inauguration in horror. In the premiere episode of the series’ most recent season (season four), Diane wakes up to find herself in an alternate reality in which Hillary Clinton won the presidency. Both episodes – and the 38 others that have aired to date – exhibit a satirical sense as sophisticated as it is original; series creators Robert and Michelle King consistently engage with issues related to race, sex, gender, […]
by Jim Hemphill on Oct 16, 2020 -
“By Reconnecting Us To Our Humanity, I Believe Nostalgia Could Be the Very Thing That Saves Us”: Director Jenni Olson on Her Criterion Channel-Streaming Films
Like many cinephiles I know, I’ve found the Criterion Channel to be a sort of emotional life preserver during these anxiety-ridden times; while it’s nearly impossible to achieve a state of total calm, one can come close by revisiting old favorites and making new discoveries while browsing through the streaming service’s expertly curated selection. This month the programmers have given audiences a great gift by showcasing the work of Jenni Olson, a director who understands the restorative power of nostalgia and reflection better than any other – it’s a key component to her work, and one of many reasons why […]
by Jim Hemphill on Oct 16, 2020 -
Requiem for a Dream, The Haunting and Sergeant York: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
This month marks the 20th anniversary of the U.S. theatrical release of Requiem for a Dream, Darren Aronofsky’s visually dazzling and emotionally shattering adaptation of Hubert Selby Jr.’s novel about doomed addicts. When it came out in 2000, Requiem for a Dream more than delivered on the promise of Aronofsky’s 1998 debut feature Pi, taking that film’s ambitious experiments with subjective point of view to a whole new level; in Requiem, Aronofksy utilizes split screen, speeded up and slowed down motion, multiple exposures, impressionistic digital and practical special effects, unnatural lighting and clashing color temperatures, extreme focal lengths at either […]
by Jim Hemphill on Oct 16, 2020 -
Graveyard of Honor, ivansxtc, The Gunfighter, The Pale Door: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
When director Kinji Fukasaku adapted the yakuza novel Graveyard of Honor for the screen in 1975, he was coming off of an extraordinary streak of Japanese gangster films that began with Street Mobster in 1972 and ended with New Battles Without Honor and Humanity in 1974. In between were six other yakuza pictures that transformed the genre in the same way that Francis Coppola reinvented the American gangster movie with the Godfather films. Like Coppola, Fukasaku was intent on deepening and critiquing the conventions he was working with, and in placing his stories at an intersection between myth and socioeconomic […]
by Jim Hemphill on Oct 11, 2020 -
The Great American Lie, John Lewis: Good Trouble, Eli Roth’s History of Horror and More: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
This week is a good one for documentaries, with several excellent non-fiction films on a wide array of subjects newly available on demand and/or DVD. First up is Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s The Great American Lie, which opens today on most major streaming platforms. The film examines class inequality through the lives of five people: a public school principal in an underfunded and forgotten district; a social justice advocate fighting for low-wage women workers; an attorney devoted to criminal justice reform; a steelworker whose community has been decimated by layoffs and opioid addiction; and a Southern conservative single mother working to […]
by Jim Hemphill on Oct 2, 2020
