Director Interviews
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Alma Har’el, Bombay Beach
Stunningly shot and formally audacious, Bombay Beach, the first feature of Israeli-born music-video director and cinematographer Alma Har’el, is a rare bird, the type of film that seems to be building its own cinematic language from the ground up. Sure, it embraces some stylistic and thematic similarities with a whole host of filmmaking luminaries, but it is dancing to its very own tune, both literally and figuratively. Har’el, as we discuss below, quickly entered the lives of various people living around the California hamlet of Bombay Beach, a derelict precinct that was once a haven for zealous developers in the ’60s, […]
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Andrew Haigh Weekend
Set in the stark middle-of-nowhere town of Nottingham, Andrew Haigh’s Weekend tells a love story that is destined never to happen. Russell (Tom Cullen), a gay man who works as a lifeguard at the local municipal pool, had no real plans for the weekend: Hang out with his straight friends on Friday, work on Saturday, go to his goddaughter’s birthday party on Sunday. That was before he picked up Glen (Chris New) at a gay club Friday night, and the two fall — at first warily, and then headlong — into a romance with an expiration date. On Sunday […]
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Nicolas Winding Refn, Drive
“Riveting” is an adjective quite frequently used by entertainment journalists when describing crime movies, thrillers, or really anything that might simply offer its fair share of violent and shocking surprises. After seeing Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive, however, one must reevaluate this clear over usage. Refn’s film, for which he took home the Cannes Best Director prize, brings fresh meaning to the term as it regards to narrative cinema. I must emphasize: this is an absolutely engrossing entertainment, surely one of the most potent and unforgettably propulsive stories you’ll encounter on a silver screen this year. A simple recap of its […]
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ANDREI UJICA, “THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF NICOLAE CEAUSESCU”
Romanian émigré and film essayist Andrei Ujica’s acclaimed Videograms of a Revolution trilogy, which includes the 1992 film of that name as well as his profile of cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, Out of the Present (1995), finally concludes with The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu, his genre-bending final chapter, which he fondly calls part of the “new non-fiction” that is taking the world of cinema by storm. Culling through several decades worth of propaganda films from the Romanian National Television and Film Archives, he takes wildly out of context footage and gently stews it together into a three hour epic rumination on Romania’s mid and late Communist periods […]
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ROWAN JOFFE, “BRIGHTON ROCK”
Effortlessly gorgeous and consistently engrossing, Rowan Joffe’s feature debut is an update of Brighton Rock, an adaptation of the Graham Greene crime novel first filmed in 1947 by the Boulting Brothers and starring a very young Richard Attenborough in what turned out to be a breakthrough role of sorts. The earlier film, which has developed a minor cult for its odd mixture of lurid noir stylings and depiction of pre-war British coastal life, is set in the late ’30s, with Europe’s headlong leap into war providing the backdrop for the tale of the sociopathic young gangster Pinkie Brown and the ill-fated […]
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MALCOLM MURRAY, “BAD POSTURE”
If one had to pick a film that represents regional, micro-budget American filmmaking at its finest, Malcolm Murray’s Albuquerque, New Mexico set Bad Posture would certainly have to be in the conversation. The story a recently unemployed graffiti artist with a bad cigarette habit and a dope dealing roommate, its the type of tale that at first glimpse seem superfluous. Our awkward, unassuming outsider artist, played by Florian Brozek, who also wrote the film, begins to hit on a young woman named Marisa (Tabitha Shaun) in a park but is thwarted when his roommate steals her purse and car while he’s laying […]
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John Michael McDonagh, The Guard
You’ve seen it all before. Amidst a sea of police corruption, one last honest, wisecracking cop and an improbable sidekick unravel a series of criminal entanglements.They’re an unlikely pair and one of them is surely way out of his natural element. There will be chases, usually with cars, although likely on foot too, and gunplay, half quotable one-liners, and maybe a dash of suspense, although it’s highly unlikely either of our leads will meet an untimely demise. How could anyone possible make a tired scenario like this fresh? Just ask John Michael McDonagh, brother of Martin, the lauded Irish playwright […]
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American Idol: Tabloid Director Errol Morris
As globalism renders the world ever smaller, national boundaries seem increasingly porous, if not outright irrelevant to the study of cinema. Yet Errol Morris still strikes me as a distinctly American filmmaker. From pet cemeteries in California (Gates of Heaven) to death row in Texas (The Thin Blue Line), from the Vietnam War (The Fog of War) to the Iraq War (Standard Operating Procedure), and in ads for the presidential campaigns of John Kerry and Barack Obama, Morris tends to bring his insatiable curiosity and searing intellect to stories and characters that, for all their strangeness and improbability, are inseparable […]
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ED GASS-DONNELLY, “SMALL TOWN MURDER SONGS”
One of Canada’s hottest filmmaking prospects for much of the aughts, Toronto-based Ed Gass-Donnelly made a reputation for himself as a prolific short filmmaker, making the festival rounds with several shorts during the first half of the decade. He broke through as a feature director with his 2007 drama This Beautiful City, a look at five disparate citizens of Ontario’s largest metropolis that is at once a sprawling ensemble piece and an intimate investigation into ordinary lives intertwined by extraordinary events. A favorite at that year’s Toronto International Film Festival, it went on to be nominated for four Genie Awards […]
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JOHN TURTURRO, “PASSIONE”
For the past twenty-five years John Turturro has been one of the most dynamic presences in American narrative filmmaking, both in the independent world and in Hollywood. His roles in films such as Do The Right Thing, Barton Fink, Quiz Show and The Big Lebowski cemented his place as one of the most versatile actors around, someone who could slip easily between extremely varied character roles while occasionally moonlighting as a leading man. Beyond his work as an actor, he’s also directed a trio of mostly terrific feature narratives, 1992’s Mac, 1998’s Illuminata and 2005’s Romance and Cigarettes. With his […]
