Authors — Vadim Rizov
-
Sundance Dispatch 4: Certain Women, Love & Friendship and Indignation
Even by Kelly Reichardt’s disciplined standards, Certain Women brings the rigor. Opening credits are laid over a overhead static shot of a train making its way from the frame’s upper right corner to the bottom left; not quite James Benning’s RR, but that gives some idea of Reichardt’s patience. The “certain women” of Montana have their stories told in three basically discrete segments (there are overlapping characters between each, but no greater cohesion as far as I could tell at first pass). Lawyer Laura (Laura Dern) represents an injured construction worker; unable to get the settlement he deserves, he takes a hostage for leverage. Laura’s sleeping with Ryan Lewis […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 28, 2016 -
What a Documentary DP Does: Kirsten Johnson on Cameraperson
Documentary DP Kirsten Johnson is probably best known for her work with Laura Poitras (The Oath, Citizenfour), but she’s been shooting for years. Out of her experience comes Cameraperson, an essay film assembled from mostly unused footage shot for many projects. Each segment is labeled by place rather than the project it came from. In eschewing voiceover, the chain of argumentation can be a little heavy-handed for my taste — i.e., cutting from someone talking about death to someone giving birth in a hospital — but the overall effect is constantly surprising and stimulating. The film begins by reminding us that even the […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 26, 2016 -
Sundance Dispatch 3: Kate Plays Christine, Christine 7 The Land of the Enlightened
Sarasota TV journalist Christine Chubbuck shot herself live on-air in 1974 and died 14 hours later. The suicide footage exists on one two-inch tape, which is inaccessibly locked up in the vault of the former president of the Florida station (now part of ABC) Chubbuck worked at, so there are shades of Grizzly Man in Robert Greene’s Kate Plays Christine. The premise is that Kate Lyn Sheil’s preparing to play Chubbuck in a movie that will conclude with a recreation of the suicide, and the climactic question is whether the actress can go through with it. Scenes from this ostensible biopic (a fiction Greene uses to instigate the entire film; […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 25, 2016 -
Sundance Dispatch 2: Manchester by the Sea, Lo and Behold and All These Sleepless Nights
The hype machine has gone well into overdrive on Manchester by the Sea, to the point that many not here but monitoring Twitter are already properly irritable/skeptical. I’ll keep it brief: now past the tribulations of Margaret‘s legal travails, attenuated release and masterpiece status (it’s true!), Kenneth Lonergan has made a very, very strong film. Margaret spun out the complications of a moment’s carelessness and tragedy in multiple directions — legally, personally, professionally — from a single starting point. Manchester processes twin strands of tragedy, both immediate and long-term. Immediate: surly drunk Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck) is yanked out of his Boston handyman routine by his brother’s sudden […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 24, 2016 -
Sundance Dispatch 1: Morris From America, Operation Avalanche and NUTS!
Chad Hartigan’s Morris From America has an unpromising logline, but so did his previous feature, This is Martin Bonner (an unlikely friendship between two men looking for redemption etc. etc.), and that turned out pretty well, so I wasn’t worried. Morris is a coming-of-age crowdpleaser, in the vein of “it’s been 18 years since Rushmore, but this version is different because…” (Son of Rambow, Submarine, et al.). I know a lot of people (I’m one of them, no shade implied) who find a deep satisfaction in action movies novel only in their details and crispness of execution while placing no value upon originality per se. That’s a principle which, of […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 23, 2016 -
Mathieu Amalric on My Golden Days
I spoke with Arnaud while he was here for the festival. One of the things he talked about is that he’ll model things for you, that he’ll show you where to touch your nose or how to grab a glass. He’s very specific when he’s blocking. It’s very good. He said that that’s something that you’re not supposed to do when directing actors. Were you the one who asked him to do that for you, initially? Oh, he does that for himself, to find all the characters. He plays all the characters, especially women, extraordinarily well. It’s impressive. He’s such […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 20, 2016 -
The Pre-Fight: Arnaud Desplechin on My Golden Days
Arnaud Desplechin invigorates through assault tactics: aggressive camera movement, even more aggressively fragmented editing, seemingly irreconcilable musical cues that butt chromatic classical cues up against golden age hip-hop, a university library’s worth of citations and allusions. His films are scarcely less restless than their characters, who chafe against themselves and others. In his 1996 breakthrough My Sex Life…or How I Got Into an Argument, Desplechin promoted Mathieu Amalric from supporting bit player (in 1992’s La Sentinelle) to his regular onscreen alter-ego. A philosophy graduate student adept at tormenting both himself and girlfriend Esther (Emmanuelle Devos) while putting off completing his […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 20, 2016 -
Rep Reborn, Downtown: The Story Behind NYC’s Metrograph Theater
Though NYC is one of the best places in America to see repertory cinema, the number of theaters in the city has decreased greatly over the decades. That’s as true for rep houses as it is for first-run venues; the Metrograph will be programming in both fields. When the two-screen venue opens in March, it’ll be the first new independent movie theater to open in Manhattan in a decade; fittingly, it sits across the street from the long-boarded up Loew’s Canal Theatre. On a mid-December day, founder Alexander Olch, CEO Ethan Oberman and programming and artistic director Jake Perlin walk […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 20, 2016 -
A Conversation with Philippe Garrel (Part 1)
Explaining why Philippe Garrel is one of my favorite working directors can be difficult. Talking with a co-worker, I tried to sketch out his recurring interests: “he makes movies about men, often directors, who cheat on women and have trouble with themselves.” She rolled her eyes, and I’m not blaming her: what, again? Garrel began making movies as a teenager, and his early work that I’ve seen is both gorgeous and the epitome of stereotypical arthouse pretension of the period. There is 1968’s Le lit de la vierge, a very of-its-time film about a particularly mopey Jesus, and 1975’s Le berceau […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 13, 2016 -
“All My Characters Are Like Buster Keaton”: Corneliu Porumboiu on The Treasure
Corneliu Porumboiu is the most drolly despairing filmmaker of the Romanian New Wave. His previous narrative feature, When Nights Falls on Bucharest, or Metabolism, followed a director in the middle of production breaks off an affair with his lead actress while exasperating his patient producer. The opening shot is the director discoursing pedantically on the merits of celluloid; the movie was itself shot on film, and the joke is that this opening shot lasts exactly as long as one reel — deep drollery indeed. Following 2014’s one-off experiment The Second Game (in which Porumboiu and his dad watch a VHS tape of a Ceaușescu-era soccer game […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 8, 2016
