At the age of 64 Dolph Lundgren remains as busy as ever, alternating between Hollywood mega-productions like Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom and small-scale action movies like Castle Falls, which he produced, directed, and co-starred in (alongside Scott Adkins). Castle Falls, which opens December 3rd in theaters, on demand and digital, is a compact crime film in which millions of dollars are hidden in a derelict hospital slated for demolition. A prison guard (Lundgren), an ex-MMA fighter (Adkins) and a desperately violent gang converge on the crumbling edifice hoping to strike it rich before everything explodes. I spoke with Lundgren […]
Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut, The Lost Daughter, adapted from the Elena Ferrante novel, was the big winner at the 2021 Gotham Awards, presented Monday, November 29 at Cipriani Wall Street. The Netflix production, which stars Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Dakota Johnson, Dagmara Domińczyk and Peter Saarsgard, was awarded Best Feature, and Gyllenhaal won Best Screenplay as well as the Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director award. Colman shared the Outstanding Lead Performance Award with The Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain‘s Frankie Faison. Colman and Faison’s wasn’t the only split decision; the Gotham jury also split the Outstanding Performance in a New Series award, […]
Adorned with a wooden sword and a garbage can lid shield, nine-year-old Buddy (Jude Hill) begins Belfast fighting imaginary dragons, cloaked in the bliss of summer. That idyllic youthful revelry is ruptured by an explosion. That blast—and what follows—are based on the childhood remembrances of writer-director Kenneth Branagh, whose family was forced to grapple with the prospect of leaving its tightly-knit neighborhood after sectarian violence erupted in Northern Ireland in the summer of 1969. It’s a dilemma cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos understood well. Born on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, Zambarloukos and his family departed following a 1972 military coup and […]
The Emerald Triangle—three counties in Northern California— represents the largest region to produce cannabis in the United States. Even so, it hasn’t been a free-for-all for growers and sellers. As pot farming has become legalized in select parts of the west coast, the push for governmentally regulated weed distribution has become an expensive business to invest in, with required permits and enforced rules pushing out more experienced old-timers who made a habit of keeping things affordable and independent. As their businesses are crippled by state legalization, these farmers are forced to take desperate measures or risk losing their livelihood. Mario […]
At the root of the word “procession” is “process” — really a fitting description for any Robert Greene film. But the title of the nonfiction veteran’s latest foray into character-collaborative doc-making has other meanings. It nods specifically to the Holy Spirit’s procession and also to the dictionary definition of people moving forward, a march that includes the risk-taking filmmaker himself. Procession (which premiered at Telluride and just hit Netflix November 19) is perhaps Greene’s boldest cinematic move yet. Once again the director (and “filmmaker-in-chief” at the University of Missouri’s Murray Center for Documentary Journalism) blurs the lines between narrative and nonfiction, […]
“Jesus was just another soldier, another war casualty — but on who’s side?” That’s military man JJ, played by Ethan Hawke, in voiceover as he walks the COVID-deserted streets of Rome in Abel Ferrara’s new Zeros and Ones. There’s a terrorist plot to blow up the Vatican but JJ’s got a more personal (and possibly intertwined) mission as well: his twin revolutionary brother, Justin (also Hawke), has been captured, and JJ’s nocturnal journey is an attempt to rescue him and possibly find some sort of spiritual salvation along the way. But the above is just the most reductive parsing of […]
As perhaps one of the few people on the planet who managed to nightclub through the ’90s without any awareness of shooting star Alanis Morissette (her music just didn’t penetrate my punk/goth/new wave bubble) I came to Alison Klayman’s latest doc Jagged, part of HBO’s new Music Box series, with a positively clean slate. The film is an in-depth look at the Canadian-American musician-singer-songwriter-actress through an exhaustive amount of archival material, juxtaposed with straightforward interviews with the mercurial Morissette herself. (For those also in a Morissette-defying bubble, this would be a good time to state that the musician is not […]
Taking place on a Thursday morning in late October at the Gutstein Gallery (or online for pass-holders who didn’t care to brave the rain), the Wonder Women: Below the Line panel at this year’s SCAD Savannah Film Festival (October 23-30) felt like a breath of fresh air. Moderated by Variety’s Jazz Tangcay, the participants included talent agent June Dowad, editor Pamela Martin (King Richard, Battle of the Sexes, The Fighter), and production designers Diane Lederman (CODA, The Americans, The Leftovers) and Ina Mayhew (Respect, Queen Sugar, Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings, Second Generation Wayans): All fiercely self-assured, middle-aged women with a wealth […]
After appearing in the international competition at Sheffield DocFest 2021 (where I then worked as a programmer) and being hailed by press, juries, and audiences alike as one of the major highlights of the festival, Nira Burstein’s Charm Circle went on to international festivals around the world. I finally caught up with Burstein in Lisbon, after the film’s premiere at Doclisboa, one of Europe’s finest documentary festivals. After COVID prevented me—but not Nira!—from attending Sheffield in June, and with that incarnation of the festival now decisively a thing of the past, I was eager to catch up with her to […]
In May of 2015, legendary rapper and Texan Bun B joined the board of directors of the Houston Cinema Arts Society—first conceived in 2007, with the first edition of its annual film festival held in 2009. This Friday sees the start of the 13th Houston Cinema Arts Festival, including centerpiece and closing night screenings of Bushwick Bill: Geto Boy, a documentary that allows the late artist to tell his story in his own words. Bun B will be moderating the latter Q&A, which is far from the first time he’s gotten out and pushed for the organization. My job, by definition, does not […]