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Cutting Costs in Black and White: Phạm Ngọc Lân ơn Cu Li Never Cries
Unfolding in a Hanoi of twisting alleyways and cramped apartments, Cu Li Never Cries follows a half-dozen intertwined characters whose lives are in upheaval. Mrs. Nguyện (Minh Châu), a widow, has been gifted with a pet slow cu li, a tiny primate that may be more trouble than it’s worth. Her niece Vân (Hà Phương) helps run a day-care center on the verge of bankruptcy. Her fiancé Quang (Xuân An) has doubts about both their wedding and his future. The film’s glistening black-and-white imagery and soundtrack of patriotic anthems evoke a timeless world rarely seen in Western cinema. At the […]
by Daniel Eagan on Apr 8, 2024 -
“We Shot for Four-and-a-Half Days”: Tynan DeLong on Dad & Step-Dad
Cringe comedy and pathos converge with unlikely grace in Dad & Step-Dad, the debut feature from director Tynan DeLong. Expanded significantly from short films that DeLong crafted with recurring collaborators Colin Burgess (recent star of Ryan Martin Brown’s debut feature Free Time) and Anthony Oberbeck, the premise of the feature is nonetheless pretty straightforward. On a weekend trip to an Airbnb in upstate New York, titular dad Jim (Burgess) and step-dad Dave (Oberbeck) quarrel incessantly, both over the affection of teenage ward Branson (played hilariously by adult Brian Fiddyment) and for inconsequential paternal bragging rights over the other. Passive aggression […]
by Natalia Keogan on Apr 4, 2024 -
Six Recommendations from the 2024 New Directors/New Films Festival
The 53rd annual edition of New Directors/New Films kicks off tonight and continues through April 14. Jointly presented by Film at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art, New Directors showcases work from emerging filmmakers, largely culled from festivals such as Berlin, Cannes, Karlovy Vary, Locarno, Rotterdam and Sundance. The “New Directors” part of the name shouldn’t be taken too literally — in past years, selections were limited to first and second features, but that seems to no longer be the case: one director spotlighted below, Stephan Komanderev, is in his late 50s, with six features under his belt. […]
by Nelson Kim on Apr 3, 2024 -
“We Accidentally Did Everything Wrong, But It’s Starting to Work”: Dad & Step-Dad Stars Colin Burgess and Anthony Oberbeck, Back To One, Episode 285
Colin Burgess and Anthony Oberbeck star in Dad & Step-Dad, an independent comedy film they co-wrote with director Tynan DeLong. It follows Jim and Dave, a dad and a step-dad, as they struggle with bonding during a weekend upstate with Branson, the 13-year-old son they share. It’s about family, communication, insecurity and the fragility of the male ego. On this episode, Burgess and Oberbeck describe the development of their comedy tastes and take us back to the improvised shorts that preceded the feature, where they were able to hone their characters and comedic sensibility before growing the project to feature-length. […]
by Peter Rinaldi on Apr 2, 2024 -
Trailer Watch: Small Town Universe, Director Katie Dellamaggiore’s Astronomy Documentary
In advance of its premiere April 7 at the Cleveland International Film Festival (and, the next day, North America’s solar eclipse), the filmmakers have shared a trailer for Katie Dellamaggiore’s documentary, Small Town Universe. The documentary explores Green Bank, West Virginia, home to the world’s largest fully steerable radio telescope. While the telescope explores the universe for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, the town’s residents communicate in more traditional ways; in order for the telescope to function, wi-fi and cell phones are banned in the town. “Within the telescope’s orbit, Green Bank residents experience defining moments of life and loss and […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 1, 2024 -
“The Empathy Machine”: The 2024 CPH:FORUM
CPH:FORUM, CPH:DOX’s international financing and co-production event, is growing in terms of attendance and international interest. Its overall remit is promoting and amplifying development and financing for risk-taking, visually strong projects leaning towards nonfiction—but impact journalism features, as well as a deep interest in science and technology, are equally vital, making for an interesting mix of ambitious projects. This year was the Forum’s 16th edition and the first without the electric, dedicated and loving presence of the late, great Jess Search as the OG MC. Search dedicated her career to nurturing, caring and challenging the wider documentary community, and her […]
by Pamela Cohn on Mar 29, 2024 -
Fluid(s) Filmmaking: Lance Oppenheim and Daniel Garber on Spermworld
Like Lance Oppenheim‘s first feature, 2020’s Some Kind of Heaven, his follow-up Spermworld follows three nonfiction protagonists through a niche American context. Heaven focused on three residents of The Villages, a retirement community in Florida that’s the largest in the world, through cleanly composed, academy-ratio images of seniors who’ve self-selected to live in something like Back to the Future’s ’50s backlot suburbia writ large. Per its title and subject, Spermworld is a grimier follow-up in the wider 2.1 ratio, all sickly blue and green colors and degraded frame edges, following three main sperm donor subjects who tell themselves different stories about […]
by Vadim Rizov on Mar 29, 2024 -
“Sometimes the Cinema is Here To Make You Watch Something You Don’t Want to Watch”: Director Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire on Asphalt City
With his features Johnny Mad Dog and A Prayer Before Dawn — the former a breakneck, road-to-ruin chronicle of child soldiers in war-torn Liberia and the latter a visceral portrait of a British expat, imprisoned in Thailand on a drug charge and conscripted into a violent kickboxing competition — French-born director Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire has consistently dropped viewers into extreme, ultra-violent scenarios, employing a mis-en-scene steeped in hyper-graphic realism to compel a one-to-one relationship between his audience and protagonists. His most recent feature, Asphalt City, is no different. Sauvaire’s first film to shoot in the US, where he has lived for over a […]
by Evan Louison on Mar 29, 2024 -
“Nine Pages a Day of Heavy Dialogue”: Bob Byington and David Krumholtz on Lousy Carter
In 2012, Bob Byington won a Special Jury Prize at the Locarno Film Festival for Somebody Up There Likes Me; last year, he returned with Lousy Carter. Writing about the festival, I said of the film: Introducing Bob Byington’s Lousy Carter alongside the writer-director, star David Krumholtz preemptively noted that while the film was shot and is set there, “Whatever you think of Texas, its politics have nothing to do with the film.” The disclaimer is accurate—this is another of Byington’s immaculately mean comedies with an underlying sentimental streak, a blend he’s been iterating with various degrees of sharpness for […]
by Vadim Rizov on Mar 28, 2024 -
“I Operate From a Trans Lens, or Frame, as Though It Is the Only Choice Available”: Jules Rosskam on Desire Lines
For me, watching Jules Rosskam’s Desire Lines, which won this year’s Sundance Special Jury Award in the NEXT competition, was a cinematic breath of fresh air. The experimental feature combines no holds barred interviews with transmen (of all shapes and colors) who are attracted to men, with a fictional storyline involving a real archive (one that includes shamefully buried history, like the story of author/ activist Lou Sullivan, probably the first transgender man to publicly identify as gay). The result is a riveting look back in time, and to the present and possible future, to reveal how, in the words […]
by Lauren Wissot on Mar 28, 2024
