Arnaud Desplechin invigorates through assault tactics: aggressive camera movement, even more aggressively fragmented editing, seemingly irreconcilable musical cues that butt chromatic classical cues up against golden age hip-hop, a university library’s worth of citations and allusions. His films are scarcely less restless than their characters, who chafe against themselves and others. In his 1996 breakthrough My Sex Life…or How I Got Into an Argument, Desplechin promoted Mathieu Amalric from supporting bit player (in 1992’s La Sentinelle) to his regular onscreen alter-ego. A philosophy graduate student adept at tormenting both himself and girlfriend Esther (Emmanuelle Devos) while putting off completing his […]
One of the most impressive debuts of this year, Trey Edward Shults’s Krisha — the story of a recovering alcoholic thoroughly derailed by the pressure-cooker of her sister’s Thanksgiving Day dinner — is a work of astonishing performances, formal control, filmmaking ambition and, finally, deep emotional wisdom. It’s a movie that has all the dramatic pyrotechnics one expects from the “home for the holidays” sub-genre, but, loosely based on a true story about one of Shults’s actual relatives, is suffused with a real understanding about issues of addiction and recovery, regret, and the difficulties of being and feeling accepted. Winner […]
If cinematographer Edward Lachman was inclined towards chasing golden statuettes, he would shoot nothing but ’50s-era forbidden romances for Todd Haynes. Lachman’s initial film to match that descriptor – 2002’s Far from Heaven – earned his first Oscar nomination. This morning Lachman landed his second nod for his work on Carol, another ’50s-set romance, this time between an unhappily married New York housewife (Cate Blanchett) and a budding young photographer (Rooney Mara). Carol marks Lachman’s fourth film with Haynes, highlighting a five-decade career that includes collaborations with Robert Altman, Steven Soderbergh, Todd Solondz, Paul Schrader, Sofia Coppola, and a sizable […]
Explaining why Philippe Garrel is one of my favorite working directors can be difficult. Talking with a co-worker, I tried to sketch out his recurring interests: “he makes movies about men, often directors, who cheat on women and have trouble with themselves.” She rolled her eyes, and I’m not blaming her: what, again? Garrel began making movies as a teenager, and his early work that I’ve seen is both gorgeous and the epitome of stereotypical arthouse pretension of the period. There is 1968’s Le lit de la vierge, a very of-its-time film about a particularly mopey Jesus, and 1975’s Le berceau […]
The more money involved in any industry, the more timid and conservative the financiers become about what they are willing to back. When deciding what to greenlight, they cling to outdated ideas of what audiences will want to watch, often lagging behind what the rest of us have always known: both men and women alike will watch, love and cheer a badass female protagonist. Props, then, to Netflix for recognizing that a series based on the Marvel character of Jessica Jones and created by Melissa Rosenberg could be fed to a hungry audience waiting like chicks with tiny beaks open […]
The past year has seen a lot of development in VR cameras – cameras that can shoot 360-degree video. Offerings range from inexpensive rigs for mounting multiple GoPros to custom units that cost many thousands of dollars. It’s an interesting field for sports and experiences, though it remains to be seen how this will impact narrative film making. We recently spoke to Koji Gardiner, Jaunt’s Director of Hardware Engineering, about their Jaunt ONE camera. This is a single unit that contains 24 camera mechanisms. After two years of development the unit is now being used for a variety of production […]
Simultaneously a rebellious yell against Christian authority and an appreciation for growing up with evangelical values, Stephen Cone’s Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party is neither religious condemnation nor agitprop. Its title character is a gay teenager celebrating his birthday with friends and family; the film, unfolding over 24 hours, keenly observes how temptation and buried secrets can rise to the surface when theological and political debates make their presence known. A rather sexy movie — in part because premarital sex is presented as something risqué or taboo — Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party is a beautifully rendered, impeccably scored experience that makes a profound, heady impact. There’s an interesting moment featuring a conversation […]
Distracted fathers and sons left to their own devices; father surrogates and the salve of friendship — these are the themes that circle around Gabrielle Demeestere’s lovely and composed feature debut, Yosemite, which opens today in New York from Monterey Media at the IFC Center. Based on two short stories by James Franco (taken from the same collection that led to the film Palo Alto), as well as Demeestere’s own original material, Yosemite is set in 1985, when pre-adolescent dangers are symbolized by mountain lions descending from the wilds into this Northern California town, and when father-son bonding trips into […]
As the first film to be shot in the Ultra Panavision 70 format since Khartoum in 1966, Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight has deservedly garnered a lot of attention for its cinematography; shot in an extra-wide aspect ratio on a 65mm negative, it’s undeniably a spectacular showcase for director of photography Robert Richardson’s visual gifts. Subtler, but perhaps even more impressive, is the contribution of editor Fred Raskin, who assembles the 2.76:1 images like a maestro of space, timing, and movement. At over three hours in its Christmas Day “roadshow” edition, The Hateful Eight doesn’t have an extraneous frame – […]
When the original Rocky hit screens in December of 1976, the underdog tale’s titular pugilist was a slightly doughy, none-too-bright palooka who guzzled beer after fights and collected for a loan shark. Rocky even loses the climactic bout, but earns a personal victory by going the distance. In a decade cinematically defined by Travis Bickle, Deep Throat, and “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown,” that qualified as a rousing crowd pleaser. By the time Rocky IV arrived less than a decade later, Stallone’s southpaw was now a ripped, perfectly coiffed millionaire who practically ends the Cold War by breaking a hulking Soviet […]