The first shot of Steve McQueen’s Widows is in keeping with the Master Shot Severity of Hunger, Shame and 12 Years a Slave: an overhead two-shot of Veronica (Viola Davis) and Harry Rawlins (Liam Neeson) in bed, held at great length, allowing for durational “naturalistic” acting in a rigorously defined space. “Severity” is descriptive, not necessarily a pejorative: the solemn Steadicam virtuosities and meticulously imprisoning static compositions of Shame only heightened the silliness of the story of a rich man who does zero week onscreen while having sex with an effortlessly accrued slew of partners but who, like Brian Wilson, sometimes still feels Very Sad. McQueen’s […]

Like The Duke of Burgundy, Peter Strickland’s In Fabric isn’t a giallo but feints at the genre, wrapping itself in lovingly reproduced trappings to pursue an entirely different agenda. Burgundy was an unexpectedly emotional examination of the difficulties of mutually negotiating the obstacles of a long-term relationship; Fabric is unemotional, its primary instincts either mischievous or satirical. It’s a pretty good time—too long, which makes it just like pretty much every cult movie ever made, so that’s appropriate. The opening credits list legendary British soundstage Twickenham Studios as one of the production companies, and the credit’s no joke: the movie takes place almost entirely […]

Our Time stars Carlos Reygadas and his wife Natalia López as Juan and Ester, a married couple whose definitely fictional  open relationship in no way bears any resemblance to the performers. Even the TIFF write-up barely pretends to believe in this author-vs-character divide: “It’s fascinating when you realize that the director is effectively filming himself secretly watching his real wife’s affair.” Setting this aside (at least until someone asks Reygadas about it in an interview), the premise isn’t a huge change of pace: for all its Dreyer trappings, Silent Light is an adulterous love triangle, and Reygadas’s manic peak Post Tenebras Lux made one […]

Walking out of László Nemes’ Sunset, I was gripped by the same stupefaction I had felt upon first seeing such films as The Dreamed Path or Post Tenebras Lux: though unable to make full sense of the experience or form a definite judgement, I was pretty sure I had just witnessed something genuinely great. This impression has only grown stronger since. In Sunset, Nemes employs a formal strategy very similar to the one from Son of Saul, stringing together a series of propulsive and staggeringly complex handheld shots that stick close to the protagonist at all times, while the intricate […]

With the Toronto International Film Festival beginning today, Vadim Rizov — who is on the ground and filing his Critics Notebooks — and I offer you this humble list of films that we are more than reasonably sure are worth your viewing time. The Grand Bizarre. In her previous Dusty Stacks of Mom, animator and experimental filmmaker Jodie Mack turned a familial tale of Pink Floyd merch into a formal treatise on the demise of physical media. Mack’s focus in this new short feature (61 minutes) is similarly material: she looks at the semiotic uses of fabric and textiles as […]

For the past eight years London’s Open City Documentary Festival has been dedicated to “celebrating the art of non-fiction,” and the upcoming 2018 edition (September 4-9) looks to be doing so in a creatively cutting edge way when it comes to immersive media. In addition to a wide-ranging Expanded Realities exhibition (divided into three themed sections, A New Lens, Motion and Sonic), OCDF will present a full day (September 7) Expanded Realities symposium featuring deep-thinking speakers tackling some of the most pressing issues affecting new media-makers today. One discussion I’m especially looking forward to is the “Barrier to Entry: Accessibility […]

An adaptation of Garrard Conley’s memoir (which I haven’t read) about attending a “gay conversion” camp at age 19, Joel Edgerton’s Boy Erased scans as, and turns out to be precisely, textbook Oscar-bait: it’s topical, its heart is in the right place, the cast is stacked, and despite all good intentions the final effect is very meh (“powerful” is a word I expect to see used a lot). Edgerton’s directorial debut, The Gift, was (minus its vile ending) a tautly commendable thriller; visually, Boy Erased looks very much in the same pocket at the outset, all nighttime darkness and tightly composed […]

Joana Vicente, a producer and currently the executive director of IFP, Filmmaker‘s parent organization and publisher, has been named the new Executive Director and Co-Head of TIFF, the presenter of the annual Toronto International Film Festival. She’ll join Artistic Director and Co-Head Cameron Bailey in the position beginning October 1. From the press release: “After an extensive search for a Co-Head we are thrilled to welcome Joana to the new role and to the TIFF family,” said Jennifer Tory. “The hiring committee was deeply impressed with Joana’s combined history as a producer, a champion of independent filmmakers, and with her […]

The Camden International Film Festival announced today its 2018 lineup, which includes 37 features, 43 short films, one episodic series and 20 virtual reality and immersive experiences from over 30 countries. Included among the features are three world premieres: Young Men and Fire, by Kahil Hudson and Alex Jablonski (a latter one of our 25 New Faces); Lana Wilson’s series, The Cure for Fear; and Jane Gillooly’s Where the Pavement Ends. The Opening Night film is Morgan Neville’s Orson Welles doc, They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead. Significantly, the festival is reporting that there’s gender parity across all sections, with […]

There was a bittersweet, valedictory quality to the 71st edition of the Locarno Film Festival. Over the past decade or so, Locarno has carved out a place for itself as a space for arthouse true believers, handing out top prizes to the likes of Lav Diaz and Wang Bing and seeing premieres of key films by Pedro Costa and Chantal Akerman, in the process becoming a byword for a certain kind of distinctly 21st-century, boundary blurring art cinema—to tweak the title of one of the festival’s main programs, filmmaking “of the present.” Recently, in both a validation of everything the […]