Hammer to Nail
-
Dark Days — A Hammer to Nail Review
(The 10th anniversary of Dark Days will be re-released through Oscilloscope Laboratories beginning Friday.) Things keep happening that make me feel old. No I don’t have any major age-related illnesses. I haven’t been getting copies of AARP magazine in the mail. “Are you even 30 yet?” is still a legitimate question to ask me upon any encounter. For the record, I’m not (yet) 30, but still I can’t help getting the creeping sense that, in the words of LCD Soundsystem, “I’m losing my edge.” Upon learning that the Cinema Village was going to open British documentarian Marc Singer’s seminal 2000 […]
by Brandon Harris on Jun 30, 2011 -
General Orders No. 9 — A Hammer to Nail Review
(General Orders No. 9 is being distributed theatrically by Variance Films. It opens at the reRun Gastropub in New York City on June 24, 2011. Visit the film’s official website to learn more.) Deer trail becomes Indian trail becomes County road. General Orders No. 9 is one of those films where the adjectives used to describe it—dense, meditative, reflective, confounding—are intended as compliments, yet they will be mistaken by many for pejoratives. And while it would be stubborn and ignorant to think that everyone will respond to it with open arms, its refusal to speak to anyone except itself is […]
by Michael Tully on Jun 23, 2011 -
Reindeerspotting: Escape From Santaland — A Hammer to Nail Review
(Reindeerspotting: Escape From Santaland is the opening night film in the MoMA Presents: DocPoint series and screens daily through Monday, June 13, 2011. Go here to learn more.) In the opening minutes of Joonas Neuvonen’s Reindeerspotting: Escape From Santaland, don’t be surprised if you’re overcome with that “here we go again” feeling, and not in a good way. For the eternal question remains, does the world really need yet another film about junky culture? Yes, we know drugs are bad. Yes, we understand by now that they numb your senses and make you behave in illegal, immoral ways. Yes, we […]
by Michael Tully on Jun 9, 2011 -
Out of the Blue — A Hammer to Nail Review
(Out of the Blue opens at Anthology Film Archives for a one-week run on Friday, July 3rd, 2011. Its home video availability is spotty, though hopefully that will change soon.) American cinema has spoken quite well for itself in the first half of 2011, but watching a new 35mm print of Out of the Blue makes even the most graphic new releases seem so utterly tame. As disturbing today as Dennis Hopper’s 1980 drama presumably was back then, Hopper’s long-overdue directorial follow-up to his grand folly The Last Movie unflinchingly depicts the loss of one young girl’s innocence while simultaneously […]
by Michael Tully on Jun 2, 2011 -
The Tree of Life — A Hammer to Nail Review
(The Tree of Life is distributed by Fox Searchlight. It opens in NYC and LA on Friday, May 27, 2010, and expands to many more cities in the subsequent six weeks, before opening nationwide on Friday, July 8. Visit the film’s official website to learn more.) NOTE: While I’d venture to say this movie can’t be “spoiled” by a review, there is a lot of specific detail contained in this (perhaps too lengthy) reaction. For what it’s worth, I suggest that you experience the film having read as little as possible beforehand. It seems implausible to me that anyone would […]
by Michael Tully on May 26, 2011 -
Lord Byron — A Hammer to Nail Review
(Lord Byron opens on Friday, May 6, 2011, at the reRun Gastropub in Dumbo. Read Zack Godshall’s “Revolution and Apocalypse: The Lord Byron Manifesto” if you haven’t already, then visit the film’s official website to learn more.) Zack Godshall’s Lord Byron was not shot on the Canon 5D (aka, the everybody’s-using-it-so-you-should-too-consumer-grade-Digital-SLR-camera-of-the-very-moment !). Instead, Godshall used a Sony Z1U that he purchased all the way back in 2005 (the horror!). This means that the movie’s images were captured at a 29.97 frame rate, as opposed to the more cinematic 23.98. Which is to say that this 2011 narrative feature has a […]
by Michael Tully on May 5, 2011 -
The Arbor — A Hammer to Nail Review
“Time heals all wounds,” goes an old adage with which everyone involved in The Arbor would likely take issue. Clio Barnard’s cinematic assemblage on English playwright Andrea Dunbar is certainly a document of sorts, but to call it a documentary would be to slight it: The Arbor is equal parts fact, reenactment, and archival footage. Adding to the genre-blending is a series of audio interviews recorded with Dunbar’s siblings, children (particularly Lorraine, in many ways the main “character” of the film), and acquaintances which Barnard then had actors lip-synch onscreen. The result is at first off-putting, eventually immersive, and unlike any […]
by Michael Nordine on Apr 28, 2011 -
DAVID GORDON GREEN ON “YOUR HIGHNESS”
“By making this movie, David Gordon Green and Danny McBride have done what all of us have dreamed of doing since we too fantasized about making movies as adolescents. They have used their current success to truly test the boundaries of what they can get away with, and they’ve done it at a time when the Hollywood industry is as timid and fearful and insecure as it has ever been (which is saying something). They have caged their inner scaredy cats and swung for the f**king fence to produce something on a grand scale that has no direct precedent (or […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 8, 2011 -
Meek’s Cutoff — A Hammer to Nail Review
(Meek’s Cutoff is being distributed by Oscilloscope Laboratories. It opens theatrically at the Film Forum in NYC on Wednesday, April 8, 2011. Click on the links to learn more. ) As much as I approve of Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff in every single way, I’ve been finding it incredibly difficult to write a review of it. Not that I don’t have anything worthwhile to say. It’s just that everything I’ve come up with so far sounds like film school pretension. Though term papers could — and hopefully will — be written about how Reichardt revises and revitalizes the traditional Western […]
by Michael Tully on Apr 7, 2011 -
Le Quattro Volte — A Hammer to Nail Review
(Distributed by Lorber Films, Le Quattro Volte opens theatrically at the Film Forum on Wednesday, March 30, 2011. Click on one of the previous links to learn more.) They’re called motion pictures, but in the case of Michelangelo Frammartino’s Le Quattro Volte, that term isn’t quite accurate. Motion painting is more like it. Spiritual yet not overtly religious, playful yet dramatic, patient yet never ponderous, Frammartino’s extraordinary celebration of the cycle of life is as close to church as cinema can get. The beauty of this masterfully wrought docu-poem is that for all its superficial “art film” trappings, Le Quattro […]
by Michael Tully on Mar 31, 2011
