Features
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Border Crossings: Paul Schrader on Oh, Canada
Jacob Elordi in Oh, Canada
The face of Leonard Fife (Richard Gere) is a slab—gaunt, ashen, with a firm, unsmiling mouth. In front of the camera, he’s at once impassive and confessional before his two interlocutors, Malcolm (Michael Imperioli) and Diana (Victoria Hill). They’ve recruited… Read more
Sentient Images: RaMell Ross on Nickel Boys
Brandon Wilson in Nickel Boys
RaMell Ross’s 2018 feature debut, Hale County This Morning, This Evening, is a non-narrative portrait of its Alabama locale, shot entirely by the filmmaker over years of immersion, his instinctually captured material assembled into intricate juxtapositions. Few scale-ups for a… Read more
The Truth Exhumed: Emily Kassie and Julian Brave NoiseCat on Sugarcane
Chief Willie Sellars in Sugarcane
Beginning in 1894, the Canadian government forced Indigenous children to attend segregated boarding schools. The schools were designed to “get rid of the Indian ‘problem.’” Most were run by the Catholic church. For years, students spoke of abuse and whispered… Read more
Order Fulfillment: Halina Reijn on Babygirl
It’s appropriate that Halina Reijn, the Dutch actress-turned-filmmaker who previously directed the Gen Z whodunnit Bodies Bodies Bodies, would look to ’90s erotic thrillers as fodder for her next feature. After all, her countryman Paul Verhoeven (she has a supporting… Read more
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The Monster You Become: Coralie Fargeat on The Substance
Even for the most callous horror-heads, Coralie Fargeat’s debut feature, Revenge (2017), stunned with its gruesome rape-revenge plot and blunt-force style, announcing the French director as a genre talent on the rise, capable of invoking her cinematic inspirations while departing from them on her own frenzied, feminist terms. The Substance, which won the award for Best Screenplay when it premiered at Cannes earlier this year, somehow cranks up the madness even further, unfolding a dark Hollywood fairytale about aging and feminine beauty standards that stands among the most adventurous in the body horror genre. Demi Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle, a […]
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Offscreen Dialogue: India Donaldson on Good One
In writer-director India Donaldson’s feature debut, Good One, 17-year-old Sam (outstanding newcomer Lily Collias) embarks on a weekend camping trip with her father Chris (James LeGros) and his lifelong pal Matt (Danny McCarthy). For Sam, a meek college-bound lesbian, the interactions with the two adult men with whom she treks through the forest fall back on conventional gender dynamics ranging from idly domestic to outright degrading: She cooks dinner, washes utilitarian dishware and fields insensitive comments about her sexuality without protest, demonstrating the extent of her excellent manners, so defining of her character that they’re referenced in the film’s title. […]
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Sequential Notes: Angela Schanelec on Music
Since her debut feature, My Sister’s Good Fortune (1995), Angela Schanelec has steadily established herself as one of the Europe’s most idiosyncratic filmmakers. Across nine features, Schanelec’s style has evolved but retained consistent qualities: stark, clean visuals and crisp editing combined with elusive narrative techniques that crescendo into unexpected moments of emotional catharsis. A subject of hardcore cinephile fandom since her 2019 feature I Was at Home, But…, Schanelec seems to be gaining broader acceptance. Still, the peculiarities of her approach can be off-putting for general audiences. I first encountered Schanelec’s work at the Locarno Film Festival, where I was […]
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Internal Lives: Annie Baker on Janet Planet
For a playwright, making their feature directorial debut comes with a certain degree of anticipatory hype, and the results are evaluated with a fine-toothed comb to make sure they aren’t too “wordy” or “stagey.” As with David Mamet’s House of Games, Kenneth Lonergan’s You Can Count on Me, John Patrick Shanley’s Joe Versus the Volcano or Celine Song’s Past Lives, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker’s Janet Planet should put any fears to rest as to how the director would take to creating specifically for the screen. Not that there should have been any doubt: Her interests have long been steeped […]
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The Cold Realities: Producer Kurt Ravenwood on Hundreds of Beavers
Visit the website of Emmy-winning Milwaukee-based advertising and marketing company SRH, and you’ll be presented with a graphic extolling the firm’s concept of “empirical marketing.” In return for a mailing list signup, a free ebook download promises to teach you how to “burn fat & grow muscle” and to “trim flabby, underperforming campaigns.” And while many of the clients listed on its site hail from the health and wellness space, the lean, low-fat philosophy suggested by the company’s branding can extend to film as well, as Kurt Ravenwood—the “R” in SRH—has proven with the independent adventure comedy hit Hundreds of […]
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Late in Life: Jonathan Lethem in Conversation with Between the Temples‘s Nathan Silver
Our Summer issue cover story, Between the Temples filmmaker Nathan Silver interviewed by novelist Jonathan Lethem, is being brought out from our paywall today as the film arrives in theaters from Sony Pictures Classics. — Editor In Between the Temples, Jason Schwartzman, looking suddenly on the verge of middle age, and with a disconcerting new depth to his eyes, plays a cantor unable to find his singing voice. “The cantor who can’t” might be the hook for any number of lively (or annoying) comedies set in a synagogue, but Nathan Silver has delivered not only the version I’d actually want, […]
