Buzzard
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“We Had a Real Permit For Once in Our Lives”: Joel Potrykus on His Tribeca-Premiering Vulcanizadora
Vulcanizadora, the latest film from Grand Rapids-based guerilla filmmaker Joel Potrykus, is predicated on a conceit that’s faithful to his overarching artistic interests. Two volatile buddies (Potrykus muse Joshua Burge and Potrykus himself) embark on an extended hike to a remote beach, where they plan to execute a plan fit for a Faces of Deathsequel (indeed, the film’s newly-released poster even emphasizes this parallel). While the complicated lives they’ve seemingly fled—a pending jail sentence and the crushing weight of having lost child custody—suggest warranted comeuppance, the men nevertheless retreat into childishness. They set off snake fireworks, gorge themselves on convenience […]
by Natalia Keogan on Jun 8, 2024 -
Alex Ross Perry on Joel Potrykus’ Buzzard
Editor’s note: with Joel Potrykus’ new film The Alchemist Cookbook now available for purchase, we’re unlocking writer/director Alex Ross Perry’s appreciation of his work from our Summer 2015 issue. Joel Potrykus’s Buzzard is either an extremely difficult or very simple movie to embrace. On the one hand, it contains enough juvenile/dumb/low humor to elicit honest guffaws alongside of-the-moment ’90s nostalgia to appeal to those of us raised on horror VHS tapes and Nintendo. Insults are clever and land with precision. The characterization of idiot manchild culture is somehow at once both obvious and insightful. More challenging to embrace, notice or even appreciate are the […]
by Alex Ross Perry on Oct 13, 2016 -
Load and Play: Killers, Wage Slaves and Varda in the Sun
Agnès Varda in California Several directors of or related to the French New Wave flirted with Hollywood, from those who actually completed studio pictures (François Truffaut, Jacques Demy) to those whose efforts crashed and burned (most famously Jean-Luc Godard, whose proposed gangster picture with Robert De Niro and Diane Keaton remains one of the most tantalizing unmade films of all time). None of them managed to turn their detours in Los Angeles into as singular a cycle of films as Agnès Varda, whose two periods in the city (in the late ’60s and early ’80s) yielded five highly personal works […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jul 23, 2015
