The original Dark Crystal was released on December 17th, 1982 , four days before my fifth birthday. I don’t remember exactly when my mom took me to see it. I can only tell you that when she did, the movie–and its lizard-like villains, the Skeksis—scared the crap out of me. There is a generation of kids who were similarly terrified and enthralled by the film, which was much darker than unsuspecting parents anticipated from Jim Henson, the man behind The Muppets and Sesame Street. Erik Wilson—the cinematographer of Netflix’s new 10-episode prequel The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance—was not among […]
If you’ve heard much at all about Bait, the breakthrough feature of British filmmaker Mark Jenkin, it’s likely concerned the anachronistic means by which he’s constructed the experimental drama. Shot on a hand-cranked Bolex camera in black-and-white 16mm, then hand-processed by Jenkin himself with an assortment of unusual materials that lend scratchiness to the images, the film offsets potential accusations of gimmickry in making these aesthetic choices relevant to evoking something specific about where it’s set, an unnamed fishing village in the county of Cornwall in southwest England. As writer Ian Mantgani describes in his review for Sight & Sound, […]
In Ready or Not, a bride spends her wedding night playing a deadly game of hide and seek with her new in-laws, a clan of board game magnates beholden to a curse that requires them to dispose of the newlywed before dawn. The film unfolds almost entirely at the wealthy family’s estate, an opulent expanse shot mainly at the historic Parkwood Estate near Toronto. Ready or Not’s $6 million budget and 26-day shooting schedule are modest for a wide theatrical release, but for cinematographer Brett Jutkiewicz the scale is downright gluttonous compared to past efforts like Benny and Josh Safdie’s […]
Toni Erdmann, A Fantastic Woman, Western, Tabu, Syndromes: Each bears the name Komplizen Film as either primary or co-producer. Founded in 1999 by Maren Ade and Janine Jackowski at their Munich film school, Komplizen has gone on to produce a body of work that displays a keen and consistent intelligence, is distinctive to their own tastes and avoids the whiff—evident even with many fine arthouse production houses—of the cookie-cutter. Komplizen has produced Ade’s three films to date, providing a backbone to their experiments in other fields and giving them the confidence to draw other directors and co-producers into the fold. […]
Currently playing on SundanceTV, the Blumhouse-produced No One Saw a Thing is a true crime series directed by Avi Belkin, whose unexpectedly riveting Mike Wallace Is Here premiered earlier this year at Sundance (and launched in theaters just last month). It revisits a surreal episode in American vigilante history in which the small town bully of Skidmore, Missouri was shot to death while sitting in his truck, his wife by his side. This occurred back in 1981 —and to this day no one’s been charged. Even though a good chunk of the population witnessed the murder. While this mystery remains unsolved, […]
Last spring, my last Riot Grrrl fantasy unceremoniously came and went. Third-wave feminist trailblazers Bikini Kill reunited to play a few shows in Los Angeles, New York and London—their first time playing together since I was three years old in 1997—and I couldn’t finagle my way into getting a single ticket. They sold out in literally one second, and the original $40-$50 ticket price was already a huge chunk of change for me, not considering that tickets were selling for quadruple times the face value on StubHub. Even after additional dates were added in order to combat the rush of […]
The following interview with Jim Jarmusch was originally published as our Spring, 2004 cover story, and it is appearing here online for the first time. — Editor “Why do people go to the cinema?” Andrei Tarkovsky writes in a book of essays, Sculpting in Time. “I think that what a person normally goes to the cinema for,” he goes on, “is time: time lost or spent or not yet had.” Time lost, spent or not yet had is the stuff of Jim Jarmusch’s new feature, his ninth, Coffee and Cigarettes. Consisting of 11 short vignettes, all featuring two or three people […]
Opening with a wedding and concluding with some kind of funeral, the horror-comedy Ready or Not is a welcomed late summer season addition. Grace (Samara Weaving) and Alex (Mark O’Brien) are married at the Le Domas family mansion. After the ceremony, the family announces that, as is tradition, they will promptly play a children’s game with (or more accurately, against) the bride, as she is the newest member of the Le Domas family and thus must pass a test. The game is Hide and Seek, and if Grace can make it to morning, she lives. If the Le Domas family […]
The award-winning documentary Honeyland marks the second collaboration between directors Ljubomir Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska. Set in Bekirlijia, a rural village in Macedonia, it focuses on Hatidze Muratova, who follows ancient beekeeping traditions while caring for her ailing mother Nazife. Despite her efforts to be self-sufficient, political and economic decisions have a profound effect on Hatidze and her ability to survive. Synopses of Honeyland can make it seem like a dull, self-righteous nature documentary. Instead, it’s a film filled with contradictions and narrative reversals. Characters make self-destructive, at times inexplicable choices, often under the guise of kindness and generosity. Hatidze […]
A conspiracy theory is meant to provide just enough information to send you tumbling down multiple dead ends, desperate for a branch of legitimacy to grasp onto. It must begin with an undoubtable event (say, the death of a famous figure) that lacks concrete evidence as to how it took place. There must be several figures who go on the record and offer conflicting reports (or provoke the sense that they’re hiding something more sinister). There must be multiple probable reasons for this event to have taken place (the famous figure had it coming, the famous figure experienced bad luck). […]