The sophomore effort from Tze Chun (Children of Invention), thriller Cold Comes the Night, uses invigorated noir conventions to evoke the betrayed modern social compact in a dreary, post-industrial strip of upstate New York. Chloe (Alice Eve), a poor widow and single mother, manages a fleabag motel, the type that charges prostitutes and johns by the hour. Social Services is on Chloe’s case for providing such a rotten environment for her eight-year-old daughter Sophia (Ursula Parker), giving her two weeks to straighten out their circumstances before they intervene. Then things get worse — a Slavic drug runner named Topo (Breaking Bad‘s Bryan […]

Bryan Cranston as a Polish gangster; Chuuk immigrants in Guam; a Japanese superhero dressed only in women’s panties; Honolulu transit controversies; a home run-hitting gorilla; and filmmaking initiatives from the Cook Islands — all these and more were on display during last month’s Hawaii International Film Festival. New films by Jia Zhang-ke, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Hayao Miyazaki, Brillante Mendoza and Dante Lam dominated the festival’s solid Asian lineup, while emerging talents such as Tze Chun and Steven J. Kung led its selection of American work. Casting its nets far closer to shore, the festival also highlighted local Hawaiian and Pacific Islander […]

Digital cinema has afforded independent filmmakers many benefits, one of which is the ability to achieve something previously only the province of big-budget films: very high shooting ratios. However, the resulting mass of footage can overrun the typical understaffed, underfunded, low-budget edit room. “You’re shooting more footage, and usually with two cameras,” says Paul Frank, editor of the recent Maggie Carey comedy The To Do List. While he notes that there are many pros to this way of shooting — it benefits performance, it allows for more improvisation and, ultimately, more options in the edit room — he also notes […]