Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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2019’s Ten Best Films Directed By Women
I wasn’t going to do this list this year. I naively thought the dawn of a post-woke film world was upon us. Even though not so long ago I had to explain to a male film programmer editing my program blurbs that woke is a word, and even though an NDA keeps me from naming that male film programmer, I still thought maybe, just maybe, there was progress being made somewhere out there. Then, the Golden Globe nominations were announced and not a single woman was nominated for Best Director. As I struggled to winnow down to ten films this […]
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A Decade of Hope: A.D. Calvo on Loneliness, Passion and 10 Years of Filmmaking
2010 began with hope, as I wrapped a small indie that looked like it might have legs. But the film soon faded into obscurity and hope faded with it. Two more efforts received little attention, and my heartache grew. But optimism sprung up again in 2015 when I collaborated with indie veteran, Mike S. Ryan, and the first film we made together got into Toronto. It felt like things were turning a corner. With barely a breath, we jumped into another. And for a moment, I saw through rose-colored glasses. Sadly, however, like with most small films, they too faded […]
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“I Had Hundreds Of Thousands Of Dollars Worth Of Jewelry In My Bag. Someone Could Just Steal Me.”: On-Set Prop Deneice O’Connor Juggles Uncut Gems
Uncut Gems traffics in the upscale loot sold and loaned in the Diamond District. A bejeweled furby necklace and a pendant of Michael Jackson pinned to a cross are fan favorites in a claustrophobic rain of riches. But a rare black opal trumps the pile. Howard (Adam Sandler), a jeweler with debt gnawing at his heels, lifts one off the black market from the Ethiopian Jews who discovered them, and sees it delivered to his show floor inside a vacuum-sealed cooler of fish. As the gambit in some of his biggest bets yet, the opal might just clear his life’s […]
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David Lynch, Breitbart and Star Wars: Episode IX—The Rise of Skywalker
I was reading Room to Dream, David Lynch’s memoir-of-sorts, on the way to Star Wars: Episode IX—The Rise of Skywalker. For Lynch, writes his biographer/interlocuter Kristine McKenna, “The 1950s have never really gone away […] classic rock ‘n’ roll; diner waitresses wearing cute little caps; girls in bobby sox and saddle shoes, sweaters and pleated plaid skirts—these are elements of Lynch’s aesthetic vocabulary.” It then occurred to me to check whether Lynch and George Lucas are contemporaries, which they are (born 1/20/46 and 5/14/44, respectively). For Lynch, these images are eternally recurring, whereas Lucas got them out of his system exactly once, in American […]
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“We Have a Relationship with Fear from an Early Age… We Understand What It Means to be Prey”: Jennifer Reeder on Her Female Teen Horror Film, Knives and Skin
Genre filmmaking is arguably one of the most exciting and provocative sectors of cinema right now, with fresh perspectives and elevated messaging challenging the screen and its audiences. Case in point: Jennifer Reeder’s new feature, Knives and Skin. The filmmaker, who has crafted a number of successful short films over the past few years, has a bold aesthetic and isn’t afraid to put complex characters — especially young women — in bizarre and provoking situations. “I love seeing so many women not just like reclaiming, but claiming,” says Reeder about women in horror. Women have often been the subject of so many […]
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Are We the Baddies? Ecological Catastrophe, Complicity and 2019 at the Movies
“Are you worried about the future?” The question on everybody’s mind, posed repeatedly by Brett Story in The Hottest August, became a nagging chorus as she and her crew hopscotched New York to take the temperature of a city already experiencing the effects of climate change. (Shot in large part around neighborhoods hit by Hurricane Sandy, the documentary made its local premiere in June, just before the hottest month ever, full stop.) Day by day, interview by interview, Story found urban rituals and residents persisting uneasily—many of the people she met and interviewed seemed almost to gaze past her camera […]
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Hits & Misses 2019: Surveying the Success of the Sundance Film Festival’s Theatrical Releases
The times, they keep a-changin’. In its immediate aftermath, the story out of Sundance 2019 was its bounteous acquisition market and record-setting sales numbers—from New Line’s $15 million purchase of Blinded by the Light to Amazon Studios’ $27 million splurge on Late Night and Brittany Runs a Marathon. By the summer, a different narrative began to emerge. While these top acquisition titles earned millions of dollars at the box office, they all still under-performed in theatrical release. Then, Amazon Studios’ veteran head of theatrical distribution Bob Berney left the company, a departure that potentially signaled shifting priorities at what had […]
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“The Studios Don’t Really Make Movies Like This… We’re Like Dinosaurs”: DP Phedon Papamichael on Shooting Ford v Ferrari
Based on the real-life friendship between Ken Miles and Carroll Shelby, Ford v Ferrari unfolds deeply within the racing culture of the mid-1960s. Egged on by future Chrysler head Lee Iacocca, Henry Ford commits to an expensive attempt to defeat the Ferrari racing team at the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans race. Shelby, an engineer and former racer, works with Miles to develop and test the GT40. Ford v Ferrari is the fifth collaboration between director James Mangold and cinematographer Phedon Papamichael. Christian Bale stars as Miles and Matt Damon as Carroll Shelby. Other performers include Tracy Letts (Henry […]
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“Happiness Has Become a Kind of Ideology”: Jessica Hausner on Motherhood, Genetic Engineering, Being a Female Filmmaker and Her Sci-Fi Drama, Little Joe
Jessica Hausner’s unsettling and weirdly beautiful sci-fi drama Little Joe is named for the infertile red bloom that Alice (Emily Beecham), a scientist on a genetic engineering team, has developed as a supposedly harmless form of heroin: savoring its scent makes people feel happy. She has named the flower for her son (Kit Connor), and illicitly brings one home for young Joe to tend and talk to in his bedroom. What Alice supposedly doesn’t reckon with is Little Joe’s capacity for influencing whom Joe wants to live with as he approaches adolescence, herself or his father, her former partner. Or […]
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Marriage Story Wins Four Awards, Including Best Picture, at the 2019 IFP Gotham Awards; American Factory Wins Best Documentary
Marriage Story writer/director Noah Baumbach seemed a bit flustered his second trip to the podium last night at the 2019 IFP Gotham Awards. Minutes earlier he had accepted the Best Screenplay Prize and, in prepared remarks, thanked his various collaborators as well as Ted Sarandos and Netflix — not just for financing his film but saving the Paris Theater too. But when Natasha Lyonne announced Marriage Story for the Audience Award, Baumbach perhaps began to realize that he hadn’t written enough speeches for the evening. “I hope you all remember what I said in the last speech because it’s still […]
