Mia Hansen-Løve is on my shortest list of favorite working filmmakers; after the extremely strong opening one-two of All is Forgiven and The Father of My Children, Goodbye First Love and Eden were whiffs. She came back strong with Things to Come, and now there’s Maya, almost certainly destined to be the most poorly-received of her films to date, in part for reasons that I’ll get into below. It appears, talking to a lot of colleagues, that they simply didn’t think the film was very good, but I liked it a lot: Maya‘s got unexpectedly strange energy, does a number of things Hansen-Løve hasn’t done before […]

World premieres x3, appraised in greater haste (and mercifully smaller word counts) than usual, starting with this morning’s viewing. I woke up to a slew of tweets saying that the first half of Alex Ross Perry’s Her Smell is an impossibly testing experience that dares audiences to walk out; now that I’ve seen it, it appears people have a remarkably low tolerance for abrasion. Five real-time scenes tracking the disastrous, inevitable rock bottom and sort-of rebirth of ’90s riot/it-grrl-turned-serious-hot-mess Becky Something (Elisabeth Moss), Her Smell strays noticeably outside of ARP’s normal comfort zone, in which people are reflexively, casually bruising and vicious to […]

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 work 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 […]