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“We’re Magnifying Stupid”: Jeff Tremaine on Jackass: Best and Last
In Jackass: Best and Last (2026), some of the cast get unexpectedly wistful about the possibility that this will be the final chapter of the brilliantly sophomoric series. The man who has been behind the camera and orchestrating the madness from the start, director Jeff Tremaine, has been feeling a bit emotional about it, too. “I really felt it in the edit bay when we started opening up the old footage and looking back on how long we’ve been doing this,” Tremaine told me last Thursday. “Seeing all these guys as babies, that hit me a little bit. We thought that we would get one episode on TV—if we did—and it would just get shut down. We weren’t built to run long-distance, but… Read more
Fix Your Heart or Die: Adrian Chiarella on Leviticus
Leviticus (2026)
Leviticus (2026), Adrian Chiarella’s debut feature, begins with an archetypal horror image: a “little death” that begets a big one. In this cold open, a lesbian lifeguard succumbs to the lubricious persuasions of an invisible lover in a poolside shower, a moment of illicit pleasure that ends in her murder. The sinister seducer, which appears to its victims as the person they desire most, is the spawn of a hex cast upon gay teens by their local church as a form of conversion therapy. This conceptual hook, already a clever spin on the horror genre’s predilection for teenage sex and death, is premised upon the pious dictum so often used to keep queer youth in line: your desires will kill… Read more
Slow Burn: Dispatch from Cannes
All of a Sudden
The wearied refrain—Cannes 2026 was a ho-hum edition, no masterpieces to see here, take the earlier flight home—obscured the quiet revolution taking place in film after film. This was a year of stories that build: All of a Sudden, The Dreamed Adventure, and La Gradiva are accumulative works, beautifully wrought and devastating in different ways, but not in the white-knuckle, nerve-racking manner of last year’s Sirat or It Was Just an Accident. Again and again, I had the sense of these movies having a bodily impact on me—not a wham-bam blow, but a more incremental emotional effect, as if the filmmakers were instilling a sense of dramatic muscle memory within me as I watched. That’s how All of a Sudden,… Read more
Live From Cine Gear Expo 2026
Cine Gear Expo
If NAB Show seems to inspire a mini–existential crisis in me each year, as I am forced to reckon with cinema’s diminishing relevance amidst other growth arenas in video, Cine Gear Expo invites more optimistic vibes with its film focus and Hollywood backlot setting. Cine Gear acts as a two-day gathering of Los Angeles cinematographers, gaffers, and lighting technicians to check out the latest gear and see what everyone has been up to over a beer and maybe a hot dog, if one is lucky enough to get invited to an offsite barbecue. I made plans to meet up with Alec Moeller (New Faces class of 2022), who—while very knowledgeable about vintage lenses—didn’t strike me as the gearhead type. He confirmed as much… Read more
Colbert, Kimmel, and the Battle of Late Night
The Late Show
While covering the Academy Awards may have its challenges, the Emmys are a much bigger venture. Twenty-three awards will be handed out at the Primetime Emmys on September 14, honoring nominees across the comedy, drama, and limited series categories, plus variety and reality competition shows. Meanwhile, about 100 more Emmys are awarded in craft-focused categories (and, randomly, guest acting) at two Creative Arts Emmy ceremonies a week before the main show. If all of this weren’t enough to keep up with, the Television Academy’s ever-changing rules and regulations also mean its award categories are in constant flux. Take, for example, a new rule this year that prevents a performer from being nominated as a guest actor for a role they’ve previously… Read more
I Shot I Shot Andy Warhol
I Shot Andy Warhol
Before she brought the charismatic serial killer Patrick Bateman to life in American Psycho (2000) Mary Harron devised a portrait of another kind of New York pathology with I Shot Andy Warhol (1996). When I went to college, there was a poster for the film hanging in the hallway of the cinema studies building: Lili Taylor, patron saint of 1990s indie cinema, staring down the camera with a gun in her hand. Even then, I knew the story carried a particular charge. Valerie Solanas was the radical feminist who shot the pop artist, nearly killing him, and her 1967 SCUM Manifesto remains one of the most intriguing documents of 20th-century radical feminism. Harron’s debut feature follows Valerie (Taylor) through the margins… Read more
