Authors — Vadim Rizov
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Sundance 2015, Dispatch 4: Experimenter, Station to Station and Listen to Me Marlon
It’s been far too long since Michael Almereyda’s last feature, 2009’s dreamy diary film Paradise; his 2015 return with not one but two features (the Ethan Hawke-starring Cymbeline adaptation Anarchy is set for release later this year) is overdue and very welcome. Experimenter, a pared-down biopic of social psychologist Stanley Milgram, ostensibly exists to hit the career highlights, but it’s far from standard issue. As in his career (the writer said with all the authority conferred by a quickly read Wiki), the film begins with, and is dominated by, Milgram’s obedience to authority experiments. The “teacher” sits on one side of a […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 27, 2015 -
Sundance 2015, Dispatch 3: The Wolfpack, Western and Dreamcatcher
I stopped taking notes after a while during The Wolfpack; I was feeling a bit too disturbed to keep at it and it seemed somewhat besides the point. Crystal Moselle’s first feature follows the Angulo brothers: six siblings, born to father Oscar, who for something like 15 years never left their LES apartment, save sporadic supervised summer walks. Oscar named them all Hare Krishna style — Govinda, Bhagavan, etc. — and amassed a collection of some 5,000 films, their sole meaningful connection to the outside world. They were homeschooled and lived in a state of fear — Oscar’s past/present (?) […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 26, 2015 -
Sundance 2015, Dispatch 2: Tangerine, Z For Zachariah and Pervert Park
Sin-Dee (Kiki Kitana Rodriguez) sits on one side of a donut shop booth, her best friend Alexandra (Mya Taylor) on the other. The camera’s on the table, restricted to shot-countershot looking up, with large windows setting both in sharp urban relief against different halves of a large L.A. intersection. With rapid cutting back and forth reminiscent of the dashboard cams in Kiarostami’s 10, Tangerine‘s opening is both intimate and epic, and it’s exciting to see all this space so clearly laid out behind the two. There’s a micro story being established and simultaneously the introduction of a landscape to be explored: an instant […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 25, 2015 -
Sundance 2015, Dispatch 1: Best of Enemies and Eden
Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon’s documentary Best of Enemies, premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, details the particulars of the eight televised debates between William Buckley Jr. and Gore Vidal held on ABC in 1968 — four during the Republican convention in Miami, another four during the infamous Democratic one in Chicago. A very prototypically Sundance-y doc (destined for TV and classrooms, “audience-friendly”), this is a consideration of an Important Topic fleshed out with contextual talking heads and zipped up into a brief, digestible package. Given sufficient interest in the subject, it’s the kind of thing I’d generally watch on […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 24, 2015 -
Watch: The Cinema of Michael Mann
Released this past Friday, Michael Mann’s Blackhat has already proven a colossal flop, which is a shame: following up on Collateral, Miami Vice and Public Enemies, it’s another never-less-than-visually-intriguing investigation of the kinds of truly new images digital cameras can produce in the guise of a cyber-hacking thriller. Go check it out while you still can. Beforehand, you may want to prep with this above-average supercut credited to one “balistik94,” which ties together Mann’s filmography in a number of different ways: dialogue that persists from one film to another (“Time is luck” as recited by both Gong Li in Miami […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 20, 2015 -
39 Movies Released in 2014 Shot on 35mm
Last year, I posited that Boyhood‘s use of 35mm seemed to be a kind of special effect as much as anything: committing to film ensured an internally continuous look over 12 years of production whose uniqueness would survive despite a digital intermediate and no prints being struck for American release. This type of use of 35mm, separate from its ongoing viability as an exhibition format, was one common reason cited for its use in 39 2014 US releases originating in whole or substantial part from it. That’s a list that’s probably not complete: collating the release calendar against the technical specifications primarily quickly […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 15, 2015 -
“He’s Like Napoleon”: Tom Noonan on Making Michael Mann’s Manhunter
With Michael Mann’s Blackhat opening this Friday, last night was an appropriate time to screen an earlier film at New York’s IFC Center. Generally noted as the first Hannibal Lector film (“Lektor” here), 1986’s Manhunter relegates Brian Cox’s (delightful, to be sure) take on the character to a handful of scenes. The bulk of the serial killer action lies with Tom Noonan as Francis Dollarhyde, aka the “Tooth Fairy.” The imposing actor first appears with a stocking tied around his head, which doesn’t disguise his face but only makes him look more sinister. Below, the highlights of Noonan’s Q&A looking back on working with Mann and receiving the director’s […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 14, 2015 -
The Top 10 Movies, in Their Own Ways, of 2014
I’m not much for year-end listmaking — the release calendar variables for potential inclusion are pretty limited, so it feels like a pointless exercise in rearranging the same 20 pieces as everybody else, and I’ve probably written about the movies in question enough for the time being by year’s end. It is, nonetheless, the tail end of the season where people put out their lists and justifications, so I’ve laid out ten arbitrary categories that allow me to tout some titles, released in the US in 2014 unless otherwise noted. Best DTV Casualty Few people have reshaped the multiplex landscape as much in […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 12, 2015 -
Watch: Andrew Bujalski on his New Film Results
“Even when you’re falling in love with somebody, even when you’re having a beautiful kiss that you’ll remember for the rest of your life, something could still be terribly wrong.” That’s Andrew Bujalski (Funny Ha Ha, Computer Chess) in this brief video teasing his fifth feature Results, which premieres later this month at the Sundance Film Festival. We still don’t have all that much detail on Bujalski’s first film to feature honest to goodness name actors: Guy Pearce and Cobie Smulders topline, with Anthony Michael Hall and Giovanni Ribisi also part of the improbable cast. We know it’s a drama about gyms, working out, […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 9, 2015 -
Watch: The Best Films of 2010-14 in Supercut Form
Kicking off with a dose of Skrillex and Spring Breakers, Kevin B. Lee’s latest supercut rounds up the best films of the decade thus far. The ranking was determined on the fairly informal basis of an all-are-welcome Twitter solicitation. I voted and am bitterly disappointed, though I guess not all that surprised, to see Computer Chess didn’t make it into the top 25. The most pleasantly unexpected inclusion is Kenneth Lonergan’s much-postponed, completely wonderful and nearly buried Margaret at #5. The Tree of Life — the closest thing we have this half-complete decade to a consensus milestone in film history — tops the list. For the full of list […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 9, 2015
