Cut off from civilization, two lighthouse keepers fight the elements and themselves in The Lighthouse, a period drama directed by Robert Eggers and written by Eggers and his brother Max. Starring Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson, the film premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight section of the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. Cinematographer Jarin Blaschke shot Eggers’s previous feature, The Witch (2015), as well as the Eggers shorts The Tell-Tale Heart (2008) and Brothers (2015). The Lighthouse was filmed in Nova Scotia in black-and-white and a 1:1.19 aspect ratio. It screened in the Debut Cinematographers series at Camerimage, the International Film Festival […]

At the height of her fame, actor Jean Seberg was targeted by the FBI for her political beliefs. Clandestine surveillance and smear campaigns helped damage her career, destroy her personal relationships, and led her to doubt her sanity. In Seberg, director Benedict Andrews explores both the actor, played by Kristen Stewart, and an FBI agent assigned to her case (Jack O’Connell). The script (by Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse) also shows how the COINTELPRO operation helped undermine the civil rights movement. The Amazon Studios release opened theatrically December 13. Cinematographer Rachel Morrison worked with Andrews and production designer Jahmin Assa […]

During lunch break on a Western TV series, fading star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) settles into a director’s chair next to his nine-year-old co-star. The young actress is armed with a Walt Disney biography, Dalton a pulpy Western novel. The girl asks Dalton about the story in his book and he recounts the tale of an over-the-hill bronco buster that eerily mirrors his own circumstances. Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood is a loving valentine to an era of studio filmmaking that was coming to an end in 1969, but it’s also a rumination on the inevitability of aging and mortality […]

I loved shooting on film. Nothing was more exciting than the day of the telecine transfer—I finally got to see how the movie would look—but the day the bill was due, my attitude would always change. I hoped that one day the inflated price of the film transfer would come down to a realistic number that made sense. That day is now! My film making career started in the mid-1990s in Florida, around the same time digital was born. I can remember all my friends shooting on Mini-DV and nudging each other saying, “Check out how great the Canon XL-1 looks on TV. It […]

For five years, I’ve been rounding up the previous year’s US theatrical releases of films shot, in whole or significant part, on 35mm—yes, this year’s tally is lower than any of my previous totals. The total number is unlikely to soar above 40 anytime in the foreseeable future, and every film loyalist taking the year off makes a large difference. Part of the low tally can be attributed to lack of new films from J.J. Abrams, Quentin Tarantino, P.T. Anderson, Ken Loach, Christopher Nolan, Martin Scorsese, Zach Snyder, James Gray—directors who simply won’t budge on working from film. That aside, […]

At the time of our Skype call, director of photography Sayombhu Mukdeeprom (Call Me By Your Name, Cemetery Of Splendour, Arabian Nights Vol.1 & 2) was celebrating the news that Nakee 2, a film he shot in Thailand last year, had just broken box-office records. He was also celebrating a friend’s wedding party in Bangkok, his choice venue for the interview, and its jolly attendees enjoyed hollering their two cents in Thai from off screen. Spirits were high. It was midnight in New York and 11:00 AM in Bangkok. My questions were too prepared. I had mistaken Guadagnino’s complex reimagining […]

Early in Spike Lee’s collaboration with Chayse Irvin, the venerable director asked his cinematographer if there was anything special he needed for BlacKkKlansman. Irvin answered, “a third camera”—an extravagance on a low budget movie, but one Irvin believed would allow him “to take massive risks on every scene, whether it be a unique angle or the freedom to use a lens that was flawed.” Irvin embraced that self-imposed mandate for boldness by employing imperfect vintage lenses, “flashing” the image with a contrast-reducing filter and dusting off long-expired film stock. Never one to wilt in the face of risky choices, Lee […]

Since its May 5th launch, Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” video has been viewed more than 215 million times on YouTube, a testament to the power of the internet as mass medium. According to Variety, the average ticket price for the first quarter of 2018 is $9.16; using that math, a music video shot in two days with nine rolls of film has been viewed by as many people as Avengers: Infinity War. “I was a bit shocked at the scale and speed of the reaction. It was released on a Saturday evening and on Sunday morning I woke up to […]

A few months after my son was born, I took my wife to see the Tommy Lee Jones western The Homesman. If you know that movie, then you know why it was a bad idea: minutes into the film, a woman driven mad by the harshness of pioneer life kills her infant child. My wife nearly walked out. I didn’t understand that impulse at the time, but as my kid has gotten older I’ve become equally squeamish toward onscreen violence directed at children. It’s not an uncommon sentiment for parents, which is why it’s a perilous choice to open the new horror […]

This is my fourth time rounding up the previous year’s US theatrical releases shot, either partly or in full, on 35mm, and it increasingly feels like I’m asking the wrong question. If the number of films originating on 35 has remained more or less consistent the last three years, they fall into an increasingly limited number of categories: auteur films by directors too old or stubborn to change and with the clout to follow through on that; period pieces; and enormous blockbusters. (To these we can now add the return of 70mm-originated and released films with Dunkirk and Murder on the […]