Features
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Shadowplay: The Artistic Benefits and Technical Challenges of Ozark‘s HDR Workflow
Ozark is a “dark” show in every meaning of the word. The story of a criminal Missouri clan laundering Mexican cartel money through their riverboat casino is literally, metaphorically and photographically bleak. “Ozark is about what happens in the shadows of our society, in the underbelly, and the fear and anxiety that permeates that environment,” said cinematographer Armando Salas, ASC. “Everyone can relate to that feeling on some level—the feeling in the pit of your stomach that comes with knowing you’re doing something wrong. We try to embed that feeling in the look of the show.” Sunlight rarely reaches the […]
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The Next Day: Writer/Director Amy Seimetz and Actress Kate Sheil on the Eerie, Darkly Comic Anxiety Dream of She Dies Tomorrow
“It’s so great that you own a house,” biologist Jane (Jane Adams) says to sister Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil) by phone early in Amy Seimetz’s trippy drama of psychological contagion, She Dies Tomorrow. “This is the best thing you could have done.” Amy has only just moved in, boxes are everywhere, but a new L.A. mortgage hasn’t quelled whatever demons have pushed her to a tremulous and despairing state—Jane can hear it in her voice. “I’ll come over,” Jane says. “Don’t do anything you might regret. Go for a walk. Or why don’t you try watching a movie?” “A movie’s […]
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Quantum Entanglement: Creator Alex Garland on the Battle Between Determinism and Free Will in His Hulu Series, Devs
“I throw a spear into the darkness. That is intuition. Then I must send an army into the darkness to find the spear. That is intellect.” These words were spoken by 62-year-old Ingmar Bergman to drama students at Southern Methodist University in 1981, but they’ve been true for artists throughout the ages. And it’s this timeless creative method—throw and retrieve—that writer/director Alex Garland deployed for his FX Hulu science fiction series, Devs. Garland—who began his career as a novelist with the bestselling The Beach and more recently has made his mark as a director with Ex Machina and Annihilation—doesn’t underestimate […]
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How a War Never Ends: Spike Lee Fights the Old New Fight in Da 5 Bloods
In the opening montage of the new Spike Lee Joint, Da 5 Bloods, Neil Armstrong—sporting his white A7-L spacesuit, Old Glory patch on the left shoulder—descends from Apollo 11’s lunar module, cast into relief by the black shadow of the spacecraft on the moon. From there, Lee cuts to a black-and-white photo of Reverend Ralph Abernathy protesting the Apollo 11 launch on the steps of a lunar module mockup with a sign that reads: “$12 a day to feed an astronaut. We could feed a starving child for $8.” Not shown in the film: the 500 or so predominantly Black […]
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This Sweet Sickness: Frank Beauvais On His Obsessive, Archival-Based Memoir, Just Don’t Think I’ll Scream
In 2016, filmmaker Frank Beauvais was rudderless, living in a remote village in the French countryside without a driver’s license and riding out the wake of a breakup in rural isolation. Over the course of a few difficult months, he watched more than 400 movies at home, a torrential—and torrented—flood of film that both sustained and corroded him. Just Don’t Think I’ll Scream is a portrait of that time told through silent excerpts from Beauvais’s cinematic compendium. The films wildly span genre, nationality and time period, and are paired with a spoken first-person memoir narration track from Beauvais. The pairings […]
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Incendiary: Director Alexander Nanau on His Explosive Investigative Documentary, Collective
On October 30, 2015, at the Bucharest venue Colectiv, metalcore headliner Goodbye to Gravity bellowed lyrics denouncing widespread Romanian corruption, inadvertently foreshadowing what happened next. Fireworks were released, the highly combustible club went up in flames and people stampeded for the only, half-closed exit—Colectiv had received an operating license without also obtaining a permit from the fire department. Responsibility lay in part with the mayor of Section 4, the administrative district governing Bucharest, and protesters quickly called for his resignation, as well as that of the prime minister and minister. Inspections of more than 1,000 venues resulted in excess of […]
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Milk Money: Director Kelly Reichardt on the New World and Nascent Capitalism of First Cow
First Cow marks the fifth film in 14 years on which director Kelly Reichardt has collaborated with screenwriter–novelist Jon Raymond. I can’t think of a director–writer team in America that has produced so much superior work during this time period—Reichardt is one of the talents on whom hope for the creative possibilities of American filmmaking now rests. Like Reichardt and Raymond’s first partnership, the critically lauded, microbudgeted Old Joy (2005), First Cow is a lyrical tragicomic story of male friendship, emerging against the background of the almost intoxicating beauty of the Oregon woods. But this time, Reichardt’s telling a more […]
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Air Rights: Shooting with Drones, the Fine Print
In 2010, Eric Austin made a bold choice. The Texas-based father of three quit his day job as a sales rep to focus solely on his side hustle, flying unmanned aircraft systems (UAS)—commonly known as drones. He had a three-month job lined up on a Disney-produced show in Hawaii piloting his single-rotor helicopter adorned with a Canon 7D. In those few months, he would earn more than in a year at his old job. But before Austin ever spun his blades, he was grounded. Inundated by aerial permit requests and unable to get definitive guidance from the Federal Aviation Administration […]
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Her Decision: Eliza Hittman on Her Observational, Intimate and Necessarily Political Never Rarely Sometimes Always
“It’s so important for me to be thinking about a movie all the time,” says writer-director Eliza Hittman, reflecting on her creative process. “I don’t spend so much time sitting at a computer. I want to walk around, be in locations, spend my Saturday on a handball court or in a park or in Port Authority and respond to the environment.” Evidenced by the authenticity and truthful immediacy—laced with deeply neorealist touches—of her films, there must be something to this observational method of writing the burgeoning American auteur calls “experiential.” It births a singular high-stakes quality that guides It Felt […]
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There’s Something in the Air: With The Vast of Night, Director Andrew Patterson Reinvents the UFO Movie
Director Andrew Patterson’s film The Vast of Night, which premiered to great acclaim at the 2019 Slamdance Film Festival, is informed by many genres and influences but beholden to none of them. Part Twilight Zone–esque sci-fi tale, part young adult romance, part David Fincher–inspired suspense movie with a dash of The Last Picture Show’s small town poetry, it is most of all a haunting and startling debut feature that teaches the audience how to watch it as it progresses—which means it not only rewards but demands repeat viewings. Set over the course of one night in 1950s New Mexico, The […]
