Authors — Vadim Rizov
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“I’m Finishing My Bathtub of Whiskey”: Arnaud Desplechin on Ismael’s Ghosts
In 2014’s My Golden Days, Arnaud Desplechin revisited the childhood of Ivan Dedalus, brother of the anchoring protagonist of his 1996 breakthrough My Sex Life… or How I Got Into an Argument. With Ismael’s Ghosts, Desplechin continues toying with the Dedalus brothers — in this iteration, Ivan is played by Louis Garrel in a movie being written by Ismaël Vuillard (Desplechin’s regular on-screen alter-ago Mathieu Amalric). Vuillard is a director writing his latest film on a severe, mood-altering constant cocktail of whiskey, wine and pills. His longstanding relationship with scientist Sylvia (Charlotte Ganisbourg) understandably takes a hit when first wife Carlotta (Marion Cotillard) — […]
by Vadim Rizov on Mar 30, 2018 -
New Directors/New Films 2018: An Elephant Sitting Still, Notes On An Appearance and Those Who Are Fine
New Directors/New Films concentrates on first/sophomore features on the more ambitious/undistributable side of the festival ledger; with that mission, it may be my favorite annual NYC fest, so all the more regrettable that deadlines and hellacious MTA/personal dysfunction limited my press screening attendance to three films. (I’ve written from elsewhere about the following titles: 3/4; Black Mother; Hale County This Morning, This Evening; Matangi/Maya/M.I.A.; The Nothing Factory. The latter is especially recommended.) When I finally made it out, Hu Bo’s Berlinale premiere An Elephant Sitting Still made for the kind of textbook intimidating object I crave: a nearly four-hour-long debut by a filmmaker who […]
by Vadim Rizov on Mar 28, 2018 -
Watch: Pure Flix and Chill: The David A.R. White Story
Several months ago I got an email with the subject line “Pure Flix and Chill,” which raised three possibilities a) I was on the receiving end of algorithmic spam cycling through the tail end of the least plausible word combinations b) I was being targeted by an especially inept publicist c) someone had, as they say, “seen me.” The last option was correct: to my equal gratification and shame, the email cited my “appreciation for Pure Flix and the genre of ‘Evangelical Cinema’ as evidenced in your many thoughtful AV Club reviews.” This is true: I do write for other […]
by Vadim Rizov on Mar 27, 2018 -
True/False 2018: What Can the Documentarian Do?
In 1976, German screenwriter/producer Peter Märthesheimer wrote the punchily titled essay “What Can the Hero Do? He Can Change the World! A Few Problems Concerning Drama Production.” He began: Many television plays, good and bad, have come about because a drama producer or script-writer has said at some time or other, ‘Something ought to be made about…’ Then a so-called ‘theme’ usually follows, a ‘problem’ which the person who thought it so serious that he wanted to ‘make something about it’ considers relevant […] Now there would be nothing against this approach, which cautiously and discerningly commits itself to the […]
by Vadim Rizov on Mar 14, 2018 -
Paris By Night: Making a Nathan Silver American Independent Film in Paris
Foreign productions shooting in France have two options to obtain tax rebates. One is to officially become a French production, which requires a co-production treaty and going through the French Ministry of Culture’s CNC agency. For Nathan Silver’s Thirst Street, that wasn’t a practical option: the United States is one of the few countries to have no co-production treaty with France. (The United States has no coproduction treaties with any country, in fact, but that’s another story.) According to Thirst co-writer/producer C. Mason Wells, the production had to go the more common Tax Rebate for International Productions (TRIP) route. The […]
by Vadim Rizov on Mar 8, 2018 -
Sundance 2018 Critic’s Notebook, Day 6: Madeline’s Madeline, Of Fathers and Sons, A Futile and Stupid Gesture, The Price of Everything
Context is everything — I’m writing this final Sundance dispatch at a remove of a day/continent from Park City, back in NYC, with a day’s pause between marathon-writing while reconsidering the chronological melange of what I saw and what, if any, narrative can be extrapolated about this year’s fest. My feeling, overall, is of a weak year, despite having (per usual) missed some of what appear to be the standout titles (Mandy, alas), which framed my response to Madeline’s Madeline, the last film I saw there. Is this a great movie? With a day to think about it, I’m not sure […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 25, 2018 -
Sundance 2018 Critic’s Notebook, Day 5: Matangi/Maya/M.I.A., Skate Kitchen
During its many years of gestation, the only thing known about Matangi/Maya/M.I.A. was that it was a beyond-troubled production. In 2012, director Steve Loveridge wrote that he’d “rather die” than finish the profile of the musician/his friend since college; as of last March, M.I.A.’s official position was that she hadn’t spoken to Loveridge — a friend of hers since art school — “in years” and had no idea what, if anything, was happening with the film. Whatever was going on in the background of those statements, a finished film has emerged, both director and subject were there for its premiere, and the […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 23, 2018 -
Sundance 2018 Critic’s Notebook, Day 4: Eighth Grade, Shirkers, Piercing
I suppose I should lead with Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade, one of the fest’s breakouts or something along those lines — it arrived as an A24 production with Scott Rudin as one of the producers, so clearly people were going to be curious. The title is basically the movie: in her last week of middle school hell, awkward Kayla (Elsie Fisher) — voted by her otherwise indifferent classmates as most quiet — fumbles through a cool kids’ pool party she shouldn’t be at. Kayla shadows a high school senior and is invited to hang out with her crew. That temporary boost […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 22, 2018 -
Sundance 2018 Critic’s Notebook, Day 3: Crime + Punishment, Monsters and Men, Bisbee ’17
I’ve written before about my fondness for local news: “a fun, seemingly randomized mash-up of crimes caught on security cameras, traffic and weather updates, forced banter, cooking segments, deep concerns about marijuana use and ‘reporting’ that’s thinly veiled support for the NYPD.” One segment in the latter mode still regularly replays in my mind: following the 2014 shooting of two NYPD officers, one channel — playing to that unflappable demographic which believes the police are always in the right — aired a particularly shameless segment in which a reporter found a seven-year-old black child to tearfully state how much he […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 21, 2018 -
Sundance 2018 Critic’s Notebook, Day 2: Clara’s Ghost, Hale County This Morning, This Evening
For the second consecutive year, Sundance showed an Academy-ratio film with Ghost in the title, but Bridey Elliott’s feature directorial debut Clara’s Ghost is decidedly not A Ghost Story. Bridey stars along with father Chris, sister Abby and mom Paula (the only non-actor in the bunch, though she easily holds her own). The plot’s loose: sisters Riley (Bridey) and Julie (Abby) — former child stars as the Olsen-esque Reynolds sisters — come for a one-night visit home. Father Ted (Chris) has just lost his casting in a show being put together by Julie’s fiance and is feeling rancorous. Some magazine photographers come over to take […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 20, 2018
