As a moviegoer, there are few things I find more satisfying than a filmmaker who not only fulfills but wildly exceeds the promise of their early work. With his third film, A Most Violent Year, writer-director J.C. Chandor has done just that, elaborating upon the themes and techniques of his previous movies (Margin Call and All is Lost) to create a work far deeper and more ambitious than anything he’s done before. It’s another portrait of men and women under extreme pressure, but this time the broader implications are simultaneously more complex and more seamlessly woven into the narrative. Ambitious immigrant Abel […]

The guy’s a tease. Up until the end of Margin Call (2011), the debut feature of A Most Violent Year director J.C. Chandor (All is Lost), our moral compass in the story of a New York investment firm at the onset of the 2008 financial crash is brainy risk analyst Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto). The young MIT graduate is so upright that he not only disentangles the masked electronic numbers signaling impending doom for those who can least afford it but also allies himself with the mid-level powers who prefer to forestall than cash in. In the penultimate sequence, once […]

J.C. Chandor is a filmmaker who looks to be carving a rather eclectic oeuvre. The near dialogue-less All is Lost was made in direct contrast to the motormouthed Wall Street floors of Margin Call, and his latest, A Most Violent Year, sees Chandor wading into genre waters. Starring Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain, the film, which is due from A24 in December, tracks a year in the life of an immigrant couple in crime-addled 1981 New York. Your first look is above.

The cover story of our 2013 Fall issue, All is Lost proved a herculean exercise in filmmaking. Nearly dialogue free, J.C. Chandor’s sophomore feature plots its arc from the timeless motif of man versus nature, miraculously abstaining from repetition. Chandor exhibits a clear confidence in silence, allowing the surroundings and sun-stained face of Mr. Robert Redford to propel the story forward. Despite its effortless looks, making the movie was surely no cakewalk. In this behind the scenes video from HitFix, key players including underwater d.p. Peter Zuccarini, production designer John P. Goldsmith and editor Pete Beaudreau discuss their experiences in realizing […]

At sea — we have all felt it, paradoxically unmoored even in our hyper-connected age. In only two pictures, that sense of disconnection, emotional confusion and fear is the metier of New York-based writer/director J.C. Chandor. His 2011 debut film, Margin Call, was a tightly focused drama about Wall Street traders fighting for their financial lives amidst the economic meltdown. Unfolding over 24 hours, Margin Call is a talky and claustrophobic movie plumbing the specific ethical quandaries of our current political moment. Assuredly directed and extremely well-acted, it would seem to have set Chandor up to make any number of […]

I’m very excited to see J.C. Chandor’s follow-up to Margin Call, the sea-bound one-hander starring Robert Redford, All is Lost. The film comes out October 18 through Roadside Attractions, and at this point seems to be a lock to get Redford a Best Actor Oscar nomination. Scott saw the film at Cannes, and below is some of what he wrote about it for the Filmmaker newsletter: The film opens as an adrift shipping container hits Redford’s sailboat somewhere in the middle of the Indian Sea. Its hull punctured, the boat takes on water, quickly awakening a sleeping Redford. That’s minute two […]

Is there such a thing as an opportunity of a lifetime? During the first two days of IFP’s Independent Film Week, it became clear that the answer is yes and no. Yes, a conversation, a short film, a meeting, a festival acceptance, can be the opportunity that changes everything, but a career isn’t just a year or one film – it’s a lifetime of dedication to craft. In his impressively extemporaneous speech, J.C. Chandor (above) recalled not the glories of having his first feature, Margin Call, nominated for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay, but the 15 years he spent trying to […]

For many supposedly serious cinema folk, there is no secret pleasure more pleasurable than the disaster film. What makes the genre so familiar – predictable plotlines, one-dimensional characters and an ever-present threat that only kills the people who deserve it – is also what makes it so damn fun. In the late ’90s, people cheered when the alien spaceship blew up American monuments. A full decade after September 11th, it’s still hard to imagine that happening now. During the past decade, disaster films have become more serious, less The Towering Inferno and more District 9, but it is only in the […]

With last night’s Gothams Awards ceremony in New York, awards season is now in full swing. Adding to the momentum, Film Independent just announced the nominees for its 27th annual Independent Spirit Awards. Leading the pack with five nominations each is Jeff Nichols’ apocalyptic southern gothic, Take Shelter and Michel Hazanavicius’ silent romance, The Artist. Next in line, receiving four nominations, were Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive and Mike Mills’ Beginners (which split Best Picture with The Tree of Life at the Gothams last night). J.C. Chandor’s Margin Call will receive the annual Robert Altman Award, given each year to one […]

In a release sent out today the Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center announced the full lineup for the 40th edition of New Directors/New Films, which will take place March 23 – April 3. Highlighting 28 feature films (24 narrative, 4 documentaries) from 22 countries, ND/NF will open with J.C. Chandor‘s investment banker drama, Margin Call. His debut feature stars Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany, Demi Moore, Stanley Tucci and Jeremy Irons. Closing the festival will be Maryam Keshavarz‘s Circumstance, which looks at today’s Iranian youth culture through the eyes of two teenage girls. The film […]