Interviews
Interviews
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“You Have to Adjust the Sails to the Winds”: Graham Parkes on Wishful Thinking
Love is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. It’s been the subject of some of the best films ever made for good reason, as it’s something that can grab hold of not just your desires, but your very soul as you search for meaning in a life where it can otherwise be lacking. In American filmmaker Graham Parkes’ feature debut, Wishful Thinking, this is made literal as it paints a portrait of a couple, Lewis Pullman’s Charlie and Maya Hawke’s Julie, whose life in the beautifully-shot Portland, Oregon is about to be upended by the discovery that […]
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“Questions of the Soul”: Director Brian Tetsuro Ivie and Star Sydney Chandler on Anima
A lo-fi sci-fi road trip film that reaffirms the magic of discordant personalities finding harmony, director Brian Tetsuro Ivie’s Anima is at once earthy and spiritual. It focuses on Beck (Sydney Chandler), who, on the first day of a new job, is assigned to accompany Paul (Takehiro Hira) to a facility for an end-of-life procedure. Paul has decided to upload his consciousness into a cloud system, which means that anyone who wishes can visit a digitized version of himself. What is thought to be a straightforward journey becomes an existential winding road, as Paul frequently diverts Beck from their course […]
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“We’re Becoming More and More Disconnected as a Society”: Alex Prager on DreamQuil
These are overwhelming times, and disappointment is everywhere. Wouldn’t it be nice to just get away from it all with a nifty procedure and an automated assistant to take care of things? Tempting as the fantasy sounds, Alex Prager’s sci-fi drama DreamQuil offers a counterpoint: how much humanity will we stand to lose in the pursuit of happiness? The more we give up our responsibilities and human messiness to A.I., the more we risk losing the very connections that mean the most to us. In Alex Prager’s feature debut, Carol (Elizabeth Banks) is stuck indoors with her doting husband (John […]
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“Fungi Dictated the Structure of the Movie”: Otilia Portillo Padua on Daughters of the Forest
For generations, Indigenous women in Mexico have understood the vast power of mushrooms—medicinal, culinary, spiritual, toxic. Their knowledge has been calibrated and passed down matrilineal channels, not unlike the mycelial network that connects individual mushrooms to one another underneath rich soil. In Daughters of the Forest, Mexican filmmaker Otilia Portillo Padua documents two specific women, Lis and Juli, who reside with their families in these verdant enclaves. While they both possess a wealth of ancestral knowledge about mushrooms, Lis and Juli hope to distinguish themselves within academia. But there is no tension between homeopathy and science here. Instead, the women […]
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“Billy Could Have Been My Own Brother”: Rachel Mason on Her SXSW Doc My Brother’s Killer
Rachel Mason’s gripping true crime doc My Brother’s Killer is, first and foremost, a love letter. My Brother’s Killer emerged, in part, from Rachel Mason’s previous documentary Circus of Books, named after her parents’ West Hollywood gay porn bookstore, where she grew up enamored by the men who frequented it. Her latest film is also an ode to West Hollywood’s famed yet notorious stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard of the 1990s. Moreover, it is a love letter to a VHS era; a magazine era; a video awards era (ushered in by the likes of Chi Chi LaRue); a cyberpunk era […]
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Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Monster Mash
In the opening beats of The Bride!, the second feature written and directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, the ghost of Mary Shelley (Jessie Buckley) mutters to herself from some dark corner of the subconscious ether. She rasps about the sequel to her most iconic work, Frankenstein, that she never got to write before she died in 1851. What would this hypothetical book be, she wonders: “Is it a horror story, a ghost story, or, most frightening of all, a love story?” What follows is a cat-and-mouse road movie, a jewel-toned Jazz Age thriller, a romantic caper following Frankenstein’s monster—who goes by […]
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“A Trippy, Psychedelic Musical Odyssey”: Josef Gatti on Phenomena
“I found a way to look into the universe,” says non-fiction Australian filmmaker Josef Gatti in his feature debut Phenomena. Paradoxically, it turns out that the wonders of the universe are perceptible right here on Earth—so long as one has a laissez-faire approach to homemade (and often dangerous) science experiments and access to high-tech camera equipment capable of capturing molecular reactions in real-time. These reactions, subatomic as they may be, possess a staggering beauty. Guided in part by his father, a physics professor, Gatti trains his cinematic eye on the hypnotic (and yes, most would say downright “trippy”) visual effects […]
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How The Secret Agent Became Brazil’s Reluctant Political Rorschach Test
Thursday, March 5 marks the voting deadline for Oscar voters. For The Secret Agent, it’s the end of a long road. The Brazilian Oscar contender is a contender in four major categories, including Best Picture, a stunning outcome for the unique period drama set in the days of Brazil’s military dictatorship. Meanwhile, another voting deadline looms around the corner in the movie’s home country. In October, Brazilians will vote in the first round of presidential elections for the first time since their previous president, the far-right populist Jair Bolsonaro, lost to the Workers’ Party candidate Luis Inácio Lula da Silva […]
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The Sommelier’s Amulet: Nick Corirossi and Armen Weitzman on The Napa Boys
“The Napa Boys—you’ve always known them, and they’re back.” It’s the kind of premise you could imagine only a very tired person nodding along with, but the way The Napa Boys—the new comedy from comedians Nick Corirossi and Armen Weitzman, the former directing and both serving as co-writers—went from this vague concept to a wide release with Magnolia Pictures somewhat beggars belief. “I don’t know if [Magnolia] lost a bet…” Weitzman laughs in our interview. The most concise description of The Napa Boys might run something like “Sideways 4: Beta House,” with all the various and contradictory associations—Fox Searchlight dramedies, […]
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“I’m a Reactor”: Stellan Skarsgård, Back To One, Episode 382
Stellan Skarsgård is a celebrated Swedish actor whose career spans more than five decades across European and Hollywood cinema. He first gained attention in Scandinavia before becoming an international screen presence in films such as Breaking the Waves and Good Will Hunting. He went on to deliver acclaimed performances in movies like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Dune, Dune Part 2, and television series like Andor and Chernobyl. In his latest, Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, Skarsgård gifts us with perhaps his most robust and richest work in the form of Gustav, a once-prominent filmmaker struggling to mend fractured ties with his daughters. On this episode, he details the environment […]
