Features
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In Dark Trees: David Lowery on Pete’s Dragon
David Lowery has directed love stories about siblings, spouses, parents and children, so it follows logically that his next film would be a love story between an orphan and his dragon. Pete’s Dragon, Lowery’s nominal remake of the 1977 Disney film, lives in a tender, magical world that exists outside of time, in the wilderness of childhood imagination. The wonder, lack of cynicism and strong imagery of the natural world evoke cinema of the late ’70s and early ’80s; The Black Stallion and E.T. come to mind. Lowery seems fascinated by the stories we tell ourselves, the tall tales, the […]
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When the Film Festival Comes to Town
Regional film festivals all start to feel the same after a while. There’s at least one feature dramatizing the life of a white guy in Brooklyn. The organizers tell you about a farm-to-table restaurant down the street from the movie theater with craft beer you just have to try. When you ask the volunteer driving you around if they grew up in town, they answer, “sort of,” and give the name of some nearby suburb. And usually there’s a VIP party in an antique store or a mansion owned by the town’s historical society where you meet white-haired locals wearing […]
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Danger Man: Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg on Weiner
From where we currently sit in the middle of the Great Reality Show Presidential Primary Race of 2016, it seems like a point so obvious as to be nearly mundane: Politics can be the greatest show on earth. And, since the birth of the technology, that show has played out in front of the camera. Picking apart the symbiotic relationship between the media and politicians is an old conversation, merely updated with an ever-evolving set of tools: From Andrew Jackson, who controlled at least one newspaper and also blamed the press for ruining his wife’s good name, to Gary Hart, […]
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Precision Moves: Anna Rose Holmer, Lisa Kjerulff and Saela Davis on The Fits
“Stop thinking as an individual and start thinking as a team,” says Legs (Makyla Burnam), one of the Lionesses — a dynamic Cincinnati high-school drill team — to a group of young recruits, who include the shy, diminutive, but quietly purposeful 11-year-old boxer Toni. Played in writer/director/producer Anna Rose Holmer’s terrific, formally assured dramatic feature debut, The Fits, by the self-possessed and emotionally transparent Royalty Hightower, Toni has been drawn away from the comforting routine of her boxing practice by the sounds, music and movement of the Lionesses and, by extension, the more adult world they represent. But soon after […]
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The Marriage Plot: Whit Stillman on Love & Friendship
In several ways, Love & Friendship has Whit Stillman coming full circle to his 1990 debut Metropolitan, which includes a heated discussion of Jane Austen’s merits. “I love anachronism, and this was the chance to film, essentially, a costume picture set in the present day or recent past,” he told Betsy Sussler in a 1991 BOMB interview. With this Ireland-shot adaptation of Jane Austen’s comparatively obscure epistolary novella Lady Susan, he finally discards the husk of the present, indulging his sentiment expressed on Twitter last summer that “The 18th century just keeps getting better & better.” The puckish opening introduces […]
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Human Highway: Daniels on Swiss Army Man
Some of the images and ideas that have turned up in the commercials, music videos, short films and feature films of Daniels are: A man gets his foot stuck inside another man’s ass; the more he tries to get it out, the deeper it goes. A grieving widow is relentlessly prank-called by a child. A man has bottomless pockets. A woman’s breasts begin to move and spin inside her shirt. A man dances so hard that he falls through the floor, where he meets a hard-dancing woman who crashes her ass into his face; together, they fall through the floor. […]
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In Every Dream Home a Heartache: High Rise Director Ben Wheatley on Adapting Ballard, Practical Special Effects and ’70s Parenting
I first met and spoke with Ben Wheatley in Brighton, where he lives with his wife and collaborator, Amy Jump. I was there for the inaugural Dark and Stormy Crime Festival, where Wheatley was screening his existential hit man thriller, Kill List. That film, along with Sightseers, Down Terrace and A Field in England, comprise a body of work that has rightly cemented Wheatley’s status as a raucous, disruptive, independent voice within the sometimes staid confines of the British specialty film industry. Wheatley’s new film High-Rise — an adaptation of J. G. Ballard’s 1975 dystopian sci-fi novel and his highest-budgeted to […]
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The Data Says, “We Have a Problem”: Finding Solutions for Film’s Problems with Diversity
Since the publication of “The Data Says, ‘We Have a Problem’” in our Winter print edition, the conversation around diversity and the movie business has become louder and even more urgent. As more and more studies are published detailing Hollywood’s biased hiring practices and hashtags like #oscarssowhite explode across social media, now, during the lead-up to the Academy Awards, is an apt time to unlock from our paywall this article by Esther Robinson. It cogently articulates the reasons why all of us must care about these issues before it then goes on to offer actual and practical solutions that we […]
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Mathieu Amalric on My Golden Days
I spoke with Arnaud while he was here for the festival. One of the things he talked about is that he’ll model things for you, that he’ll show you where to touch your nose or how to grab a glass. He’s very specific when he’s blocking. It’s very good. He said that that’s something that you’re not supposed to do when directing actors. Were you the one who asked him to do that for you, initially? Oh, he does that for himself, to find all the characters. He plays all the characters, especially women, extraordinarily well. It’s impressive. He’s such […]
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Learning Not to Share: The Benefits and Pitfalls of Social Media for Independent Films
Mynette Louie, president of Gamechanger Films, recently had a problem. She caught a stand-in on set not only taking photos of her film’s star, whose contract had specific photo approvals in place, but posting the photos to Facebook. “I told him to delete them from his Facebook, then I went through his phone and deleted all the photos he took on set.” Traditionally, producers, marketing departments and publicists labor over key stills and publicity images, methodically crafting a film’s identity in careful, strategic installments. This practice continues today, but can quickly be subverted by a tweet, post or status update. […]
