In The Menu, entitled dinner guests get more than they bargained for when they travel to a remote island to feast upon the culinary delights of a disillusioned celebrity chef (Ralph Fiennes). Despite being surrounded by exquisite works of gastronomical artistry during the shoot, cinematographer Peter Deming did not partake. “I didn’t taste any of it. I’m not a big food person,” said Deming. “I’ve actually talked to a number of people who said the first thing they did after seeing the movie was go have a cheeseburger.” While Deming may not have an appetite for ornate cuisine, the cinematographer certainly knows […]
An Olivier Award-winning success in the West End and a Tony Award-winning one on Broadway, the musical adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Matilda now arrives as a toe-tapping motion picture, with addictive song-and-dance numbers meant to be streamed over and over again. The key plot details from Dahl’s book (and Danny Devito’s 1996 crack at the material) and characters remain: the title character (Alisha Weir) is a charming young girl with a great imagination and special powers, something that comes in handy once she’s sent to a grade school run like a military bootcamp by the demonic Miss Trunchbull (Emma Thompson). Disavowed […]
Watch the trailer for Pacifiction, the latest from Spanish filmmaker Albert Serra. It premiered at Cannes last year before screening at TIFF, NYFF, BFI London Film Festival and AFI Fest. The film stars Benoît Magimel, Marc Susini, Alexandre Melo, Pahoa Mahagafanau, Matahi Pambrun, Sergi López and Montse Triola. Pacifiction‘s official synopsis reads: “On the French Polynesian island of Tahiti, the High Commissioner of the Republic and French government official De Roller (Magimel) is a calculating man with flawless manners. His somewhat broad perception of his role brings him to navigate the high end ‘establishment’ as well as shady venues where […]
What could be more heartless than selling abandoned babies? Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Broker asks just that, and against all odds, finds a way to understand how people could behave that way. It’s the Japanese writer-director’s first feature shot in South Korea, having most recently worked in France for his previous film La Vérité. Broker stars Song Kang-ho as Sang-hyeon, a tailor in debt to the mob, and Gang Dong-won as his younger business partner Dong-soo, an orphan. Using Dong-soo’s professional connection to a local church, the two begin covertly snatching babies from the building’s baby box, which people use to anonymously […]
A perk of living in New York is the arrival each autumn of the New York Film Festival, which this year marked a milestone, its 60th edition — kudos to The Film Society of Lincoln Center. I’ve long thought of NYFF as a sampler of what’s happening in world cinema, a box of fine chocolates à la Forrest Gump. New Yorkers attending NYFF are privileged to enjoy choice selections from Cannes, Venice, Berlin, even Sundance. Which is to say, if there are new winds blowing somewhere in Cinema, they will be felt at NYFF. This year, the drained-color look of […]
The abstract yet oppressive sensation of an anxiety attack is captured through intense corporeal movement in Waves, the latest from Brooklyn-based filmmaker Nat Gee. The film stars Lily Baldwin as a woman in the throes of an anxious episode, her oft-idyllic surroundings transformed into hostile environments. A well-manicured flower garden becomes a frightening, frenzied feast (and viny prison); gentle waves crashing upon a sandy shore morph into a violent assailant; a stroll in a verdant, tranquil park turns into an uneasy exercise in losing bodily autonomy. Yet as fascinated as Gee is in conveying the unsettling feeling of being consumed […]
The last time Vicky Krieps (Phantom Thread, Bergman Island) was on this podcast (episode 174), we learned about how she approaches the work through a kind of “emptying out” of herself, and a “deconstruction” of everything in her obit, even her preconceptions regarding the role. This time she’s back to talk about her astounding work in Marie Kreutzer’s film Corsage, an imaginative re-telling (or perhaps a “correcting?”) of a year in the life of Empress Elisabeth of Austria. Krieps talks about treating the work as an invitation to play, how dealing with the coldness of the character had an effect on relationships outside of […]
On Halloween night 1992, the BBC switchboard became inundated with an estimated one million phone calls related to a now-infamous TV broadcast. Convincingly filmed as a live news report—even featuring recognizable BBC presenters Michael Parkinson, Sarah Greene and Mike “Smitty” Smith—Ghostwatch convinced a wide swath of the British populace (reportedly including Parkinson’s own mother) that a real-life possession was unfolding in front of their eyes, and that a demonic entity was being channeled through their own screens. Though programmed as part of the network’s narrative anthology series Screen One, many viewers tuned into the program after the identifiable drama banner […]
Ahead of its opening weekend at NYC’s Quad Cinema, Filmmaker shares an exclusive clip of Mark Pellington‘s Going All the Way: The Director’s Edit. This re-edit and 4K restoration of Pellington’s feature debut includes a new title sequence created by Sergio Pinheiro as well as 50 additional minutes of previously unseen footage accompanied by new music from composer Pete Adams. Based on the 1970 novel by Dan Wakefield (who also penned the script), the film stars Jeremy Davies and an early-career Ben Affleck as Sonny and Gunner, two young men who return home to Indianapolis after serving in the Korean […]
Alejandro G. Iñárritu has labeled Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths the most difficult film of his career—a bold categorization, considering the intricate single-take illusion of Birdman and the famously frigid filming conditions of The Revenant, both of which earned Iñárritu Oscars as Best Director. But for Bardo cinematographer Darius Khondji, the lure of the project wasn’t the technical challenges, though they were plentiful (including shooting in Mexico City at the height of COVID with long takes, deep focus photography and surrealistic imagery), but the emotional pull of the material. “Almost every single scene in Bardo was a […]