Features
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Caught On Film
In Medan, Indonesia, when the government was overthrown by the military in 1965, Anwar Congo was one of many small-time gangsters who hawked movie tickets and plotted petty crimes in front of cinemas showing American movies. He and his buddies, who translate “gangster” as meaning “free men,” were enlisted as death squads after Communists cut off imports of U. S. films, such as their beloved Elvis Presley musicals. More than a million intellectuals, ethnic Chinese and alleged Communists and leftists were murdered. The “movie theater gangsters” were always eager to dance across the road to garrote an alleged Communist or […]
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Relative Truths
Over the course of two narrative features, and now a documentary, Sarah Polley has made a habit of taking on unexpected subjects, all the while managing to produce a remarkably consistent body of work. Polley’s films explore the vagaries of relationships and intimacy, and in particular, the challenges of marriage. Filled with tonal shifts and narrative reveals, Polley’s naturalism is always accompanied by flights of fancy and spontaneous moments of romance that may twist against the viewer’s sympathies. Her 2006 debut, Away from Her, stars two aging icons of cinema, Canadian actor Gordon Pinsent and the ever-radiant Julie Christie, as […]
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Morning Star: Shane Carruth on Upstream Color
Nearly a decade after winning Sundance with his startlingly original Primer, SHANE CARRUTH returns with a haunting and powerful look at love and regeneration, Upstream Color.
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Just Playing
ADAM LEON’s graffiti-scrawled debut film Gimme the Loot crackles with young romance and the energy of the streets.
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Overlooked: Director Rodney Ascher on His Documentary about Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining
NICHOLAS ROMBES checks in to Room 237 and the underground world of Kubrick obsessives with director RODNEY ASCHER.
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Permanent Vacation: Harmony Korine on Spring Breakers
HARMONY KORINE goes wild with Spring Breakers, a sun-drenched, candy-colored tale of teen queens on the run.
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All At Sea
The world of commercial sea fishing is captured in all its stark and violent beauty in LUCIEN CASTAING-TAYLOR and VÉRÉNA PARAVEL’s Leviathan.
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Negative Reinforcement
PABLO LARRAÍN completes his Pinochet- era trilogy with No, the compelling and unlikely tale of the ad men who unseated a dictator.
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Love Song: Marie Losier on The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye
With Marie Losier’s retrospective, Just a Million Dreams, now running at New York’s MoMA through November 11, we’re reposting our interview with Losier from our Winter, 2012 print issue. The film discussed here, The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye, screens tomorrow, November 3. What should one expect when one artist turns their camera on another? Although the “portrait of the artist” doc is one of nonfiction filmmaking’s most durable sub-genres, audiences often expect the least from it. In the presence of a great painter, musician or author, directors are frequently expected to sublimate their own styles in favor of […]
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Marion Cotillard Q&A
Filmmaker last interviewed Marion Cotillard in 2007, just prior to the release of the Edith Piaf biopic La Vie En Rose. Cotillard’s stunning performance as the legendary French singer won her numerous Best Actress accolades, including a BAFTA, a Golden Globe and an Academy Award. She was subsequently inundated with Hollywood offers, which lead to Cotillard working with a string of great directors, including Michael Mann (Public Enemies), Christopher Nolan (Inception and The Dark Knight Rises), Woody Allen (Midnight in Paris) and Steven Soderbergh (Contagion). All of the above-listed films have boasted all-star ensemble casts, but Cotillard has failed to […]
