Reflecting in 1983 on her early years at a literary agency, novelist Isabel Colegate ruefully recalled writing reader reports that involved ”mostly explaining in detail why the typescripts concerned were quite unpublishable, falling as they did so very far below the standards set by the world’s greatest literature, which in my ignorance of there being any other standards I was applying to them. My reports must have been deeply disheartening.” There are two tones at work here: one a rueful regret at her past self’s lack of charity, the other a reminder that if we’re not striving for greatness on […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 28, 2025After the unscheduled drama of BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions’ abrupt removal from Sundance’s lineup, financier Participant Media’s attorney’s open letter accusing public director Kahlil Joseph of creating a secret cut as justification for said removal and the feature’s reinstatement in the lineup thanks to a new buyer, the film finally screened with the now-very-known context that somewhere in there is an extra minute not in the Participant-cleared cut. I can’t imagine where; this sprawling 113-minute essay film is all tangents and free association, to the point where it seems like you could subtract or add an infinite amount of material […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 27, 2025“Is it even possible for something designed as entertainment to be a public service?” Predators cinematographer-editor-director David Osit asks this question of ethnographer Mark de Rond about NBC TV show To Catch a Predator and its successors, but it also applies to this project’s of-the-moment anxieties about nonfiction practice. Documentaries seem to have entered a phase of self-reflexive fretting about their own impact; I think one reason No Other Land has become so popular is because it explicitly states this, having its subjects worry about their Facebook click rates and wonder out loud whether the film they’re making can possibly […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 26, 2025A Brigham Young University graduate and longtime Utah resident, Cole Webley’s repeatedly testified how much it means to have his debut feature premiere here after years of rejected shorts. The Utah runs deep in Omaha, whose opening minutes seem to take place in, if not the exact neighborhood, a dead ringer for the suburban setting of fellow BYU alum and screenwriter Robert Machoian’s The Killing of Two Lovers. One morning a father (John Magaro) wakes adolescent daughter Ella (Molly Belle Wright) and even younger son Charlie (Wyatt Solis), piles them and adorable golden retriever Rex into the car, and gets […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 25, 2025Stagnation (long-term) and change (imminent) hang over this year’s Sundance. In 2027, the festival will relocate to one of three finalist sites—potentially still a Salt Lake City/Park City split, with the balance of power now reversed between the latter and former, through the rumor vine says Cincinnati or Boulder are more likely. (Please, lord, deliver us unto the midwest or thereabouts.) A Variety article headlined “Sundance in Cincinnati? Hollywood Worries Film Festival Won’t Be the Same Without Park City” actually reports nothing of the sort; the voices regretting Sundance’s imminent departure to a less demanding altitude come from two Utah […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 24, 2025This year was a peak travel year for me, mostly festival-enabled, and I was pleased by the number of good films I was privileged to see along the way that I wouldn’t have otherwise. While the globalization of film via the internet has improved access all round, it’s a mistake to think that everything good winds up somewhere legally accessible, even if only as an obscure VOD option. Some films remain unaccounted for, which is both unfortunate and a reminder of how many good films there remain to see. Here are ten of the year’s best, with links to their longer […]
by Vadim Rizov on Dec 19, 2024RaMell Ross’s 2018 feature debut, Hale County This Morning, This Evening, is a non-narrative portrait of its Alabama locale, shot entirely by the filmmaker over years of immersion, his instinctually captured material assembled into intricate juxtapositions. Few scale-ups for a second film have been more dramatic: Nickel Boys is a narrative feature adapted from a pre-existing text (Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer-winning novel The Nickel Boys), proceeding in more-or-less linear order through an incident-filled narrative, with an on-record budget of around $23 million and production handled by Plan B Entertainment and Louverture Films. The latter’s Joslyn Barnes was also a producer and […]
by Vadim Rizov on Dec 16, 2024I was delighted to be invited to the Tokyo International Film Festival, which came with the particularly desirable bonus of being elsewhere during the US election cycle’s final days. Taking into account the time difference on my date of return, I hoped an election-night nailbiter would let me fly back in unperturbed ignorance, but… The route back flew over the international date line; the metaphorical obviousness of literally going backwards in time to the States was too hamhanded for my taste, albeit appropriately overstated in keeping with the bludgeoning that’s about to occur. Before that hammer fell, the city more […]
by Vadim Rizov on Nov 15, 2024Telling the story of a small, subsistence farming mountain community whose few remaining members keep drifting away to nearby cities, Tsuta Tetsuichiro’s second feature, 2013’s The Tale of Iya, drew upon his background growing up in rural Japan. “I was actually born near there,” he explained. “As I observed the lifestyle of the people of Iya, the idea came to me naturally to make a film set there.” After shooting his first feature on 16mm film in black-and-white, Tetsuichiro upgraded to 35m color for Iya, whose physicality throughout the seasons overwhelms with brutally immersive snowstorms and epic mountain panoramas. For his […]
by Vadim Rizov on Nov 7, 2024Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist took seven years to realize, a process he understandably seems to have found traumatic—both the film and interviews he’s given about it are about how financiers are monsters. Per Corbet, The Brutalist “was made for under $10 million. But I still need millions of dollars. That’s very complicated because it means I often have to interface with people with whom I don’t share the same ethics and morals.” Process is text: Anyone who’s ever worked for an equally oblivious and imperious rich person, one whose underlings can only work out how their near-impossible plan of action […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 27, 2024