Directors
Interviews - Directors
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“Maybe I Hate Pity:” Nathan Silver on Uncertain Terms
Nathan Silver first courted audiences in 2012 with Exit Elena, his charming, claustrophobic take on arrested development through the eyes of a live-in aide. His follow-up, Soft in the Head, also captured an outsider’s rambunctious navigation of new environs, so it should be no surprise that Uncertain Terms, premiering this Saturday at the Los Angeles Film Festival, treads the familiar territory of interloper interrupted. Silver may be a premature embodiment of Fassbinder’s creed that “Every decent director has only one subject and finally only makes the same film over and over again,” but Uncertain Terms feels more patient in execution than its predecessors, mirroring the bucolic enclave which houses a bevy of […]
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Cannes 2014: 5 Questions for Wild Tales Director Damián Szifrón
Argentine director Damián Szifrón’s Wild Tales opens with the ultimate revenge fantasy, one that unfolds into a firestorm before the credits finish. The film’s six stories get only more wicked, quickly descending into the depths of the human psyche on the verge of imploding. There is truly never a dull moment, a rarity for the Cannes lineup. A waitress gets help paying back the loan shark who drove her father to suicide. A quick road rage incident unfolds into a searing tale that will warn anyone against yelling at another driver. An explosives engineer fires back against his city’s criminal […]
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“Wait, That’s Your Dream Project?”: Michael Tully on Ping Pong Summer
Summer, 1985: Casey Kasem is on the radio and mastering the moonwalk is a must. Radford “Rad” Miracle (Marcello Conte) has to go on family vacation with his patient mom (Lea Thompson), sneeringly cool goth sister Michelle (Helena May Seabrook), and cheapskate cop dad (John Hannah), who insists on driving to Ocean City, Maryland in his police car to save money. All Rad wants to do is play ping pong, get cooler, and get the girl, but the local rich kid bullies are an impediment. Can Rad up his ping pong craft enough to beat them? And what’s up with […]
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10 Lessons on Filmmaking from Queen and Country Director John Boorman
English filmmaker John Boorman returned to Cannes this year with Queen and Country, his autobiographical sequel to Hope and Glory. At 81 years old, Boorman claims this is his very last movie, and after such an illustrious career — with films including Point Blank, Deliverance, Excalibur, and The Emerald Forest — he ends on a very high note. In 1952, young Bill Rohan (Callum Turner) must leave his idyllic countryside home on the River Thames for two years’ Army conscription. Rather than being shipped out to fight the Chinese in the Korean War, Bill is enlisted with his friend Percy (Caleb […]
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Status Update: Livia De Paolis on Emoticon ;)
In Livia Di Paolis’ Emoticon ;), the actress-turned-first-time-writer/director plays Elena, a thirtysomething graduate student whose thesis revolves around “modern means of communication.” She’s dating Walter (Michael Christofer), a nearly AARP-eligible divorcee whose extravagant ex-wife Julia (Christine Ebersole) isn’t terribly involved with their kids. Perhaps Elena can be? Adopted teenagers Luke (Miles Chandler) and Mandy (Diane Guerrero) are closer in age to Elena than her new(ish) beau is. That doesn’t mean she’s any good at communicating with them though; they spend all their time on their computers and smart phones, staring into the electronic clouds of their devices, proving they aren’t going […]
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“Why Don’t We All Go Blow Stuff Up?” Kelly Reichardt on Night Moves
In Night Moves, Jesse Eisenberg’s baleful, twitchy intensity finds another fitting incarnation. His Josh is an environmentalist visibly dissatisfied with perceived half-measures who plans to blow up a dam as an act of eco-terrorism-/-activism with the help of ex-Marine buddy Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard) and Dena (Dakota Fanning). To do this, they’ll need to purchase suspicious quantities of ammonium nitrate and buy a boat to pack it into. The middle-aged suburban guy selling his fishing vessel couldn’t be more innocuous in his personal manner, but we see his neighborhood through Josh’s angry eyes: the backyard waterfall is a clear misallocation of […]
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“I Was Too Young For Punk”: Lukas Moodysson on We Are the Best!
Back in 1998, Swedish director Lukas Moodysson’s debut Show Me Love (original title: Fucking Åmål) offered up a tender story of teenage lesbian love. His follow-up Together, which depicted a troubled commune in the late ‘70s, continued in much the same vein, but starting with his third film, Lilya 4-Ever, his work grew darker and more experimental. The change in tone really didn’t suit him. Fortunately, his latest film, We Are the Best!, is a return to form. It follows three 13-year-old girls in 1982 Stockholm as they form a punk band and try to master one song (a protest […]
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Director Amy Scott on Her Upcoming Doc, Once I Was: The Hal Ashby Story
You know the films — Harold and Maude, Coming Home, Shampoo, The Last Detail, and Being There – but little about the man behind them. A quarter century after his death, director Hal Ashby remains one of the more mysterious figures to emerge from the New Hollywood movement. His rise as a director coincided with the brief but glorious period in American cinema when difficult, complex films were actually supported and encouraged by studios. That era came to an end with populist hits like Jaws and Star Wars, shifting the zeitgeist towards blockbusters and making it tough for uncompromising directors […]
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Underground: Sam Fleischner on Stand Clear of the Closing Doors
Sam Fleischner’s Stand Clear of the Closing Doors centers on Ricky (Jesus Sanchez-Velez), a remarkably intelligent, often unfocused midrange autistic 13-year-old boy who gets lost in the NYC subway’s endless subterranean tunnels. After his older sister (Azul Zorrilla) fails to pick him up from school, Ricky finds himself entranced by the dragon decal on a stranger’s jacket while trying to get home. That Sanchez-Velez, a non-actor making his screen debut, does in fact have Asperger’s syndrome adds a layer of verisimilitude to one of the year’s most fascinating performances. Ricky is a Rockaway Beach native whose mother (Andrea Suarez Paz) is […]
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IFFBoston: Freeload Director Daniel Skaggs and Editor Ryan Seitz
For 18 months Daniel Skaggs rode freight trains with a DSLR, a consumer video camera and some GoPros, documenting the lives of train riders. The resulting film, Freeload, was co-produced and co-edited by Mather McKallor and Ryan Seitz. This was the first full-length feature film project for all three. We interviewed Skaggs and Seitz at the recent Independent Film Festival Boston, where Freeload was an official selection. Filmmaker: What is Freeload about? Seitz: It’s a documentary about modern day train riders. Daniel road trains for 18 months and really got acquainted with the guys who ultimately became the characters of […]
