The Blessing, the latest from the Emmy Award-winning team of Hunter Robert Baker and Jordan Fein, is the story of a Navajo coal miner and single dad as well as his teenage daughter, who navigate life on their reservation in northern Arizona. Other than Erick Stoll and Chase Whiteside’s stealthy stunner América, I can’t think of another documentary I’ve seen this year in which the simplest of premises yields such an emotional powder keg. The film’s a nearly Shakespearean drama, one in which a deeply religious father is forced to choose between sacrilege (taking part in the destruction of his […]

As a documentary addict who probably attends more nonfiction festivals than can be considered sane, I’m always on the lookout for reasons why I shouldn’t wait for Netflix. And this year’s 9th edition of DOC NYC (November 8th – 15th) is chockfull of one-of-a-kind events. With that in mind, here are just five of my picks for getting off the couch and into the theater. Documentary Now! Presents Original Cast Album: Co-op Not only are creators Seth Meyers and Rhys Thomas two of the big names expected to attend this Centerpiece Presentation, it’s a world premiere. You’ll be able to […]

While the new Halloween ignores the plots of the many sequels that followed John Carpenter’s 1978 original, it doesn’t spurn the movies themselves. The film is crammed with loving homages to the franchise — even the Michael Myers-less Halloween III: Season of the Witch gets a brief shout-out. The latest Halloween installment establishes its fondness for its predecessors in the opening credits, which pay tribute to Carpenter’s progenitor with a slow push-in to a rotting pumpkin that magically restores itself to health as the camera creeps closer. Though the sequel’s production budget was a reported $10 million, only a few […]

In his book Making Movies, Sidney Lumet wrote that he once asked fellow director Akira Kurosawa why he’d framed a shot in his period epic Ran in a particular way. Kurosawa replied that if he’d panned the camera an inch to the left he would’ve seen a Sony factory. Panning an inch to the right would’ve revealed an airport. I don’t know if Halloween cinematographer Michael Simmonds has read Lumet’s book, but after chatting with him I’m confident he would appreciate that anecdote. Simmonds, whose diverse credits range from the horror sequel Paranormal Activity 2 to the acclaimed documentary Project […]

Two of the best films from the golden age of made-for-TV horror are newly available on Blu-ray just in time for Halloween: Buzz Kulik’s creepy 1974 gem Bad Ronald and Dan Curtis’ 1975 anthology movie Trilogy of Terror. Bad Ronald has long been a word-of-mouth favorite among genre fans for its flawless execution of a genuinely unsettling premise: a teenage sociopath hidden away by his mother is left living within the walls of his home after she dies, only to resurface and terrorize the teenage daughters of the new family that moves into the house. Adapting a novel by John […]

Jong-Su (Ah-In Yoo) meets Hae-Mi (Jong-Seo Jeon) dancing at a storefront display beside a lottery machine. Her dance partner projects keywords (“Sales,” “Prizes”) over a PA system and through a K-Pop deluge. They are lures. Hae-Mi has rigged the whole raffle, Jong-Su wins a pink wristwatch (per her intervention) and she expects he’ll gift it back to her. This is no meet-cute, it’s an odd-reunion, Hae-Mi reveals to Jong-Su, her old friend. They grew up together, but Jong-Su either can’t remember or can’t recognize her post-plastic surgery. He won’t forget her now. These two characters thicken and sink to form […]

Patrick Wang (a 25 New Face alum) takes a painstakingly nuanced, intimate approach to delicate subjects, specifically the ways in which we deal with — and don’t deal with — loss and the rippling effects in life after a death. His first feature, the breathtaking, Independent Spirit Award-nominated In the Family, and 2015’s Cannes and SXSW-screening The Grief of Others, which will finally be hitting theaters November 2nd, would make for a great marathon viewing alone. (Provided it came with a big box of Kleenex.) And now Wang has created a work that is simultaneously lighter in tone, and his […]

Robert Redford’s final day on David Lowery’s The Old Man and the Gun — perhaps his final day as an actor on any movie set — found him in Texas. Though the amiable based-in-fact caper was shot largely in Ohio on 16mm, Redford’s dapper bank robber actually did most of his pillaging in Texas and its neighboring states. Thus a few pick-ups were needed — the last of which featured Redford’s Forrest Tucker phoning a widowed rancher he’s romancing. “There was a little bit of electricity in the air for that scene,” said cinematographer Joe Anderson. “The shot worked really […]

Wobble Palace is a reverse romantic comedy set in relationship hell tinged by the toxicity of Tinder hookups and Trump’s political rise. “One of the early ideas was to make a movie about a happy break up,” explains director Eugene Kotlyarenko. “The formula for a rom com is whatever happens for the first 90 minutes, by the end, the couple gets together.” Flipping this arc, the film climaxes (spoiler alert!) in the couple splitting up instead. “In a relationship that’s really toxic, staying together is really horrible and breaking up is really liberating,” Kotlyarenko continues. The film follows a millennial […]

It’s long bothered me that all the design work that goes in to film promotion—often deliberated over at length by industry-leading art directors and designers in conjunction with the actual filmmakers—is routinely discarded when that film hits home video. The world of home video is, for the most part, unregulated in such matters; whether it be studios’ own in-house art departments or boutique labels, they all take different approaches to art direction. Some employ actual living and breathing art directors and some leave it to a dilettantish coterie of everyone-including-the-tea-lady chipping in with their own thoughts. Many home video distributors […]