Columns
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“If You Put Up a Video Village You’re Going to Get 10% Less Material Every Day”: DP Giles Nuttgens on Hell or High Water
In Hell or High Water two brothers (Chris Pine and Ben Foster) embark on a spree of heists intended to fleece predatory Texas banks, with an about-to-retire Texas Ranger (Jeff Bridges) hot on their heels. The film is an elegy to a dying way of life – not only for family ranchers Pine and Foster, but also for lawman Bridges. Making the movie was an elegy of sorts as well for cinematographer Giles Nuttgens, a vocal celluloid proponent who ultimately opted to shoot with an Alexa Studio on the project. In the words of another great western requiem The Wild […]
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The 20 Best American Films of 2016
Let’s start with a disclaimer about bias. I’m drawn to a certain type of film, which is why this list is going to look pretty different from the one you’ll find in, say, Entertainment Weekly. I don’t really look to the movies I consume for entertainment or diversion. I’m more drawn to emotional honesty. To work that comes straight from the heart and from the gut. I’m interested in movies that force me to challenge myself. That feel urgent and personal. That show me something new or shocking or unexpectedly truthful, that are enriching for the same reason they might […]
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Notes on Truth (Or, Documentary in the Post-Truth Era)
Since Election Day, many in the documentary community have been asking the question, “What do we do now?” The most common response is, “We need to make great politically-engaged films.” I hope a lot of people do exactly that; I might even do it myself. Okay, I probably won’t. My answer is a lot more basic: we need to love, seek and defend truth. I’m not fucking around, you guys: the truth might be hard to find sometimes, but it exists, and it is crucially important to the survival of our species. As plainly stated by the great moral philosopher […]
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Entertaining Violence (Or, The Walking Dead and the Future of America)
Warning: This post contains major spoilers for The Walking Dead and the future of America In case you’re behind on your DVR, allow me to catch you up on the much-talked about cliffhanger ending from last season’s Walking Dead finale. After a ton of build-up, the show finally introduced Negan, a well-known villain from the comic source material infamous for bludgeoning his victims to death with a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire. His weapon of choice. In the final moments of the finale, Negan overpowered the show’s main characters, lined them up in a circle, and wielded his iconic […]
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“I’m Like a Flare Hunter”: DP Natasha Braier on The Neon Demon
With the fantastical levels of post-production digital alchemy now possible, there’s an increasing trend toward not committing in-camera. But not when you’re working with director Nicolas Winding Refn, as cinematographer Natasha Braier discovered on The Neon Demon. “Most of the time directors love all the radical things I try to do in-camera, but then they’ll still say, ‘Just in case, let’s do a safe version.’ Nic doesn’t do that. He’s not scared to not have that safety net,” said Braier. “Instead, Nic says, ‘Give me that times 10. If you’re going to jump, let’s jump even higher.’ That’s why it’s […]
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Filmmaker Black Friday through Cyber Monday Sale: Subscriptions 50% Off!
We tastefully waited until noon to post here our first-ever Filmmaker Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale. (See coupon codes below.) It’s simple and straightforward: subscriptions, both print and digital, are 50% off. That means a print subscription is $9 and a digital subscription is only $5.00. Digital gets you a year of online access to not just the four print editions — which you can read online, through your browser, or which you can download as PDFs — but also all back issues up until 2007. It’s a huge resource. For $4 more, you get all of that and the print […]
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A One-Camera Show: DP James Laxton on Moonlight
Moonlight traces the path from childhood to young adulthood of a black gay man named Chiron growing up in a poor part of Miami. For me, it’s a film about identity and how that malleable construct shifts as a reaction to the world around us and the people in our lives. Unfolding as a triptych, each section of Moonlight places a different actor in the lead role, allowing the audience to see a physical embodiment of Chiron’s transformation as those close to him drift in and out of his world — Chiron’s troubled mother (Naomie Harris), surrogate father figure Juan (Mahershala […]
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Recommended on a Friday: Manchester by the Sea, Uncle Howard, Off the Rails, Daughters of the Dust, J’Accuse, Pitch
Kenneth Lonergan’s masterful Manchester by the Sea is the high-profile opening of the week, and one strongly recommended by all of us at Filmmaker. The writer/director is our current print issue cover, with James Ponsoldt’s interview now online as well. In his intro, Ponsoldt wrote: Lonergan’s films all feature stand-out performances, and the constellation of actors in Manchester by the Sea — Kyle Chandler, Lucas Hedges, Michelle Williams, Gretchen Mol and Affleck — are beautifully cast. Their family could be your family. The Chandlers’ struggle to find a new normal in the wake of tragedy is surprisingly funny, human, messy […]
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“You Gotta Be Ready for Anything”: DP Kris Kachikis on Shooting Christopher Guest’s Mascots
After a decade’s hiatus from feature-length faux documentaries, Christopher Guest returns to his enthusiastically delusional dreamers and kitschy subcultures with the Netflix original Mascots. Set in the world of competitive mascottery, Mascots finds the globe’s preeminent purveyors of plushy entertainment descending upon Anaheim in hopes of winning the World Mascot Association’s highest honor – the Golden Fluffy. The usual suspects from Guest’s repertory company fill out the cast – Jane Lynch, Fred Willard, Ed Begley Jr., Parker Posey. But behind the camera is a new face in cinematographer Kris Kachikis. Kachikis talked to Filmmaker about choosing the Sony F55 over […]
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Recommended on a Friday: National Bird, Uncle Kent 2, The Love Witch, DOC NYC, L.A. Rep Screenings and More
This week writing “Recommended on a Friday” is a way of tempering myself before tackling this week’s newsletter, which will be some form of screed about the election. Depending on your reaction to the surreal and seismic week, you may or may not be in the mood to go to the movies. If you are, however, there’s a lot in theaters we can recommend. I’ll start with 25 New Face Sonia Kennebeck’s National Bird, a provocative, thoughtful and cinematically ambitious documentary about the U.S. Air Force’s drone warfare program that focuses on the impact the program has had on the […]
