Adam Leon
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Tribeca Critic’s Notebook: My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To, Roaring ’20s, Italian Studies
Blood’s thicker than the mud in the family affair that is My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To, a contemporary vampire tale utterly stripped of the genre’s romance. In place of mythic hoohah, writer-director Jonathan Cuartas focuses on the grim, quotidian details of day-to-day caregiving for an extremely pale invalid named Thomas (Owen Campbell), a frail wisp of a young man who is wholly dependent on older siblings Dwight (Patrick Fugit) and Jessie (Ingrid Sophie Schram) for survival, sheltered inside a drab house on the forgotten edge of an anonymous city, its every window blanketed from fatal sunlight. […]
by Steve Dollar on Jun 23, 2021 -
TIFF Critic’s Notebook 4: Austerlitz, Planetarium, Tramps
Sergei Loznitsa’s Austerlitz, a record of tourists visiting the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, could be loglined as a movie about why it’s a transparently bad idea to take selfies at Holocaust sites, but that would be reductive and far too banal a point to need making at feature length. The film is in low-contrast black-and-white, and how could it be in color? The visual language of extant Holocaust footage is B&W, so Loznitsa maintains visual and historical continuity. The opening movement is not that far off from, of all things, In the City of Sylvia, with long shots of tourists milling about in multiple compressed planes the […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 11, 2016 -
TIFF 2016: Five Questions for Tramps Writer/Director Adam Leon
Adam Leon’s fleet-footed Gimme the Loot was a giddy discovery out of SXSW in 2012. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize there, it went on to Cannes’ Un Certain Regard and announced Leon as a promising new voice in American independent film, one who married specificity of character and location with keen storytelling chops. Four years later, Leon has made a follow-up feature, Tramps, which premieres in Toronto in the Contemporary World Cinema section. Once more, there’s a man and a woman — in this case, rising stars Callum Turner and Grace Van Patten — and a peripatetic caper. Here, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 9, 2016 -
Gotham Awards’ Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Screening Series
In the lead-up to the Gotham Independent Film Awards on December 2nd, IFP announced it will hold a screening series to highlight the nominees of the Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award. From Thursday, November 21 through Saturday, November 23, the category’s five directorial debuts will screen at the new Made in NY Media Center by IFP in Dumbo. The films are Stacie Passon’s Concussion; Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale Station; Adam Leon’s Gimme The Loot; Alexandre Moors’ Blue Caprice; and Amy Seimetz’s Sun Don’t Shine. Adam Leon, Alexandre Moors, and Sun Don’t Shine lead actors Kentucker Audley and Kate Lyn Sheil will be on hand for a Q&A following their respective screenings. […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Nov 13, 2013 -
Gimme the Loot — A Hammer To Nail Review
(Gimme the Loot world premiered at the 2012 SXSW Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize. It was picked up for distribution by Sundance Selects before landing a coveted slot in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard. It opens theatrically in New York City on Friday, March 22, 2013. Visit the film’s official website to learn more.) Writer/director Adam Leon’s Gimme the Loot is set firmly in present-day New York City, in the comparatively still rough-and-tumble Bronx. It is filled with curse words. There are drugs. There is thievery. And yet it’s just so gosh darn adorable. How is that […]
by Michael Tully on Mar 22, 2013 -
Just Playing
ADAM LEON’s graffiti-scrawled debut film Gimme the Loot crackles with young romance and the energy of the streets.
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 21, 2013 -
COMING OF AGE IN CANNES
Cannes No.64. Côte d’Azur. Film, film, film and more films. As a matter of fact, more films than you can even imagine are made. That was my first impression last year as I popped my cherry at the Palais, bringing my 30-minute short film, The Sea Is All I Know, starring Oscar winner Melissa Leo (above), to the festival. It was overwhelming. How could so many films be made? Where are they seen? Where does the funding come from? How does one sell them? Who were these people selling the films? What are pre-sells? How is that different than distribution? […]
by Jordan Bayne on May 25, 2012 -
5 Questions for Gimme the Loot Director Adam Leon
Writer-Director Adam Leon’s feature debut Gimme the Loot is an urban drama about two teenage graffiti artists from the Bronx who hatch an elaborate plan to get back at a rival gang for defacing one of their latest creations. Gimme the Loot was part of IFP’s/Lincoln Center’s Emerging Visions program and follows the director’s hugely successful short film Killer which premiered at the New Directors/New Films festival. Filmmaker: What inspired you to make a film about teen graffiti artists from the Bronx? Leon: I grew up in the city surrounded by graffiti and have close friends who wrote while we […]
by Byron Camacho on Mar 10, 2012 -
SXSW REVEALS FULL 2012 FEATURE FILM LINEUP
SXSW has announced their complete 2012 feature film slate. Over 90 films will screen across the festival’s ten categories, including the already announced opening night premiere of Joss Whedon’s Cabin in the Woods and a special preview screening of Lena Dunham’s new HBO series Girls. New additions include the sixteen films premiering in narrative and documentary competition. The eight films competing on the narrative side include Booster, directed by Matt Ruskin, Eden, directed by Megan Griffiths, Gayby, directed by Jonathan Lisecki, Gimme the Loot, directed by Adam Leon, Los Chidos, directed by Omar Rodriguez Lopez, Pilgrim Song, directed by Martha […]
by Jane Schoenbrun on Feb 1, 2012
