Authors — Soheil Rezayazdi
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“Let’s Make It Feel Like You’re Watching TV During Y2K”: Directors Brian Becker and Marley McDonald on Time Bomb Y2K
Where were you on December 31, 1999? Despite years of hearing Prince’s pleas to party, many Americans spent the evening at home, bewitched by a bizarre mix of sentimental reverie and fear. The end of the century, it turned out, was a time for reflection and mild panic. Media coverage warned that computers might register the year 2000 as the year 1900. Chaos could ensue, and you did not want to be caught in the club when the “millennium bug” caused the lights to go out and nuclear warheads to whirl mid-air. As Lisa de Moraes wrote in the Washington […]
by Soheil Rezayazdi on Dec 15, 2023 -
“Copaganda,” Herzog and Punisher Comics: Ramin Bahrani on 2nd Chance
Richard Davis achieved redneck nirvana. The crude and quotable subject of 2nd Chance, Davis transformed in the 1970s from bankrupt pizzeria owner to small-town kingpin after inventing the bulletproof vest. The phrase “redneck nirvana” had a particular meaning for him: It meant he could suddenly afford to buy anything at the local KMart. Success soon unleashed his inner manchild. Davis devoted his leisure time to blowing shit up, burning through wives and producing straight-to-VHS movies that valorized police violence. “Redneck Nirvana,” it turns out, could serve as an alternate title for a film about Davis, a larger-than-life figure whose story […]
by Soheil Rezayazdi on Dec 2, 2022 -
“For Us Iranians, the Car Has Become a Second Home”: Panah Panahi on His Debut Feature, Hit the Road
Hit the Road, the debut feature from writer/director Panah Panahi, is a 93-minute long goodbye of aptly sweet sorrow. Panah, 38, is the son of Jafar Panahi, one of the undisputed titans of Iranian art-house cinema. Having served as an assistant on his father’s films and edited his most recent feature (3 Faces), Panah emerges with Hit the Road as a filmmaker with a slyly unclassifiable take on the family road movie. Panah has called Hit the Road in many ways “the opposite of Jafar’s cinema,” but the film shares at least one key quality with his father’s work: It’s […]
by Soheil Rezayazdi on Apr 22, 2022 -
“I Wondered if Metaphor and Allegory Weren’t a Way of Integrating Censorship and Accepting Oppression”: Mohammad Rasoulof on There Is No Evil
“Under conditions of terror most people will comply,” Hannah Arendt wrote from the trial of Adolf Eichmann, “but some will not.” This simple, almost simplistic sentiment permeates There Is No Evil, the new film from dissident Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof. The original Farsi title, Sheytan vojud nadarad, translates more directly to The Devil Doesn’t Exist, a phrase that may sound hopeful until you unpack its dark implications. Rasoulof is among that rarified latter group that does not comply. He has continued to live and make films in Iran despite severe restrictions and regular threats of imprisonment. Rather than retreat into […]
by Soheil Rezayazdi on May 19, 2021 -
Martin Eden and the Perils of Viewing from Home
In a normal year – one not defined by a global pandemic or its protracted, deeply politicized response – I would have seen Pietro Marcello’s Martin Eden in a theater. Here in New York, options would have abounded: BAM, the Angelika, Lincoln Center. Instead I took the advice of critics like Bilge Ebiri to “see it any way you can,” which in my case meant an HDMI setup to my TV. As we limp toward the end of 2020, it seems every week brings another harbinger of doom for the theatrical experience. HBO Max announced that major 2021 titles will stream […]
by Soheil Rezayazdi on Dec 16, 2020 -
“I Have Not Seen My Film with Anyone Other than Two People”: Dea Kulumbegashvili on Beginning
Dea Kulumbegashvili should have had the year of her life. At any other moment, the Tbilisi-based writer/director would have already travelled to Cannes, Toronto and San Sebastián to screen her new film for festival audiences. A remarkable accomplishment for anyone, let alone a young director with a first feature, the success of Beginning has instead been a strange, bittersweet ride. In the absence of sold-out screenings and sponsored afterparties, the festival experience in 2020 has given way to far less glamorous rituals: Zoom Q&As, geo-locked streaming links and the solitary act of viewing from home. For Kulumbegashvili, 34, the process […]
by Soheil Rezayazdi on Sep 28, 2020 -
The 2010s in 10 Double Features
“I can’t commit to a movie.” In the era of limitless streaming “content,” no phrase has more irrevocably warped our viewing habits. If a single film now represents a commitment, then a double feature might as well be a back-to-back life-sentence. Why trudge through all that first-act boredom, after all, when you’re already so behind on The Good Place? Despite the siren song of bingeable TV, the dual bill holds strong as a way to burn a night at the movies. Art-house theaters, digital programmers, and genre festivals still love them, as does any cinephile looking to hunker down with […]
by Soheil Rezayazdi on Dec 30, 2019 -
NYFF 2019: Bacurau, Varda by Agnès and The Irishman
A number of cinematic styles, narrative modes, and political agendas collide in Bacurau, one of two South American films on NYFF’s Main Slate this year. Urgent, yet vague enough to feel timeless, the film depicts a form of unhinged white supremacy in the outback of northern Brazil. We’re told up top, quite ominously, that Bacurau takes place “a few years from now,” as if to suggest that the wholly irrational racism herein is just around the corner. An angry movie, at once frightening and funny, it’s bound to rattle viewers aesthetically, politically, or both. Bacurau, a fictional town, is already […]
by Soheil Rezayazdi on Oct 9, 2019 -
“We Didn’t Try to Colonize the Boy in Making the Film”: The Dardenne Brothers on Young Ahmed
For 20 years running, the films of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne have confronted a single fundamental facet of modern life: class. From their breakout La Promesse (1996) to The Unknown Girl (2016), the messy tangle of money, employment, and morality has defined their work. The brothers take a hard turn, in subject if not style, with Young Ahmed. The film debuted at Cannes, like their previous seven features, where it won the Best Director prize earlier this year. Despite that honor–which they won over Almodóvar, Tarantino, and Malick among other heavyweights–the film has earned the harshest reviews of the Dardennes’ career. […]
by Soheil Rezayazdi on Oct 4, 2019 -
“In a Way, It is My Most Gentle Film…”: Manfred Kirchheimer on His NYFF-Premiering Free Time
There’s poetry in the misery of a hot New York summer day. Spike Lee found it, in 1989, with Do the Right Thing: the sun-drunk torpor, the beads of sweat gliding down bare skin. Where winter tends to drive us indoors, away from the streets, summer promotes a more collective suffering. Rear Window hits a similar note of mutual, summertime malaise. The heat forces characters to sleep on their fire escapes and keep their windows open, turning the private public. Before air conditioners, where else could you escape the heat but outside, with everyone else? Manfred “Manny” Kirchheimer considered many […]
by Soheil Rezayazdi on Sep 28, 2019
