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 […]
Sara Newens and Mina T. Son’s provocatively titled Racist Trees begins as an innocent investigation into the root (no pun intended) of a half-century dispute over a line of 60-foot tamarisks separating a historically Black section of Palm Springs from its historically white (and now overwhelmingly gay cisgender male) neighbors on the other side of a city-owned golf course. The film morphs into something much more shocking than merely another example of systemic inequality and the longstanding “polite” racism of white liberals who prefer gaslighting to admissions of culpability. Indeed, in the slyest and boldest of moves, the white and […]
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 […]
A hybrid collaboration between writer/director Alex Harvey (Walden Life in the Woods, The Last Ecstatic Days, I Am A Seagull) and the theater collective, Banana Bag & Bodice (aka Jason Craig and Jessica Jelliffe), Space//Space screens this weekend in New York City at Anthology Film Archives. Harvey has sent the teaser trailer, posted above, as well as the following notes about the film. It’s been ten years since Banana Bag & Bodice’s beloved experimental production, Space//Space made waves in the New York theater scene (“Waiting for Godot in space” raved the New York Times). Now the married performance artist duo who […]
Filmmaker‘s most recent print issue features our annual selection of below-the-line artists whose work has excited us through this Fall’s awards season. Linked below are profiles by A.E. Hunt, Vikram Murthi, Matt Mulcahey, Isaac Feldberg and Abbey Bender on the most impressive technical aspects of six recent films, which we highly recommend viewing. Editing: Everything Everywhere All At Once‘s Paul Rogers, by A.E. Hunt Production Design: The Fabelmans‘ Rick Carter, by Vikram Murthi Cinematography: Bardo‘s Darius Khondji, by Matt Mulcahey Original Score: Women Talking‘s Hildur Guðnadóttir, by Isaac Feldberg Costume Design: The Banshees of Inisherin‘s Eimer Ní Mhaoldomhnaigh, by Abbey […]
2022 was a quiet year for camera technology, thank goodness. The decade plus I’ve been covering camera breakthroughs on this website has been a rocket ride. So much velocity, so little time to stop, catch one’s breath, smell some roses. Ask yourself, who can any longer tell the difference between film and digital origination on the big screen? Be honest. No less than Roger Deakins declared film a dead issue half a dozen years ago. His latest, Sam Mendes’ Empire of Light, shot using Arri Alexa Mini LF (large format) and spherical Arri Signature Primes, is a loving paean to […]
As 2022 comes to a close, Filmmaker returns with our annual recap of the year’s most read posts. As I click through Google Analytics, this piece always becomes something of a revelation, a mixture of the predictable (our 25 New Faces list); the news-triggered (an old profile resurfacing on the director’s recent success, for example, or, more sadly, their passing); evergreen articles on filmmaking itself; and pieces for which strong content, aided by SEO and provocative headlines, meshed to attract an abnormally large slew of first-time readers. As in the past, the list is divided into two: the 10 most […]
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 […]
“User-generated content” is the future of the moving image, and the present as well. A less sentimental look back at 2022 in film would probably take the measure of TikTok trends, Instagram Reels, Twitch streams, YouTube reaction videos and OnlyFans porn. Before cinema dies, you see the Ring Video Doorbell surveillance footage repackaged, America’s Funniest Cops–style, in the syndicated Ring Nation, which premiered this year (coproduced by Ring and MGM Television, both subsidiaries of Amazon). The overwhelming proliferation of digital images, recorded by consumer-grade digital cameras with ever-greater resolution, storage capacity, and ubiquity, is the story of the century. Such […]