Lynne Ramsay
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Outrage, Morvern Callar, Man on the Moon: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
In the 1940s, actress Ida Lupino was one of Warner Bros.’ most reliable contract players, a performer who exuded a tough intelligence in terse genre movies like High Sierra and They Drive by Night. As independent-minded as her characters, Lupino irritated the front office with her refusal to accept sub-par roles and was eventually fired, a development that might not have been great for her bank account but which instigated her most fertile period as an artist. Instead of waiting for the phone to ring, Lupino formed an independent production company and began directing her own pictures, some of which […]
by Jim Hemphill on Feb 18, 2022 -
The Explosions Within: Lynne Ramsay on You Were Never Really Here
Joe uses a hammer. A tough guy for hire — one who specializes in cases involving pedophilia and child trafficking — Joe owns a gun, of course, and he uses that, too. But for the jobs that truly matter, ones triggering the dark memories that clank painfully around inside his brain, he prefers the brutal simplicity of a simple hammer that can fell an adversary with one silent, well-timed swoop. Arrestingly embodied by Joaquin Phoenix in Scottish director Lynne Ramsay’s fleet, impressionistic work of hardcore noir, You Were Never Really Here, winner of the Best Screenplay prize at last year’s […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 8, 2018 -
Trailer Watch: Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here
The U.S. trailer for Lynne Ramsay’s contemporary neo-noir, You Were Never Really Here, which won the Best Screenplay and Best Actor (for Ramsay and Joaquin Phoenix, respectively) at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, has just dropped. An adaptation of a Jonathan Ames story, it stars Phoenix as a modern-day gumshoe tracking down a kidnapped kid. Amazon releases in early ’18.
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 6, 2017 -
Cannes Dispatch #4: Thoughts on Prize Winners 120 Beats Per Minute, You Were Never Really Here, The Killing of a Sacred Deer
For the third year in a row, Cannes’s Main Competition jury — this year comprised of jury president Pedro Almodóvar, German filmmaker Maren Ade, and several celebrity industry professionals whose tastes in cinema had never previously been of much concern to anyone — awarded the Palme d’Or to a movie I didn’t much like. Considered by some to be True Cinema’s answer to the Oscars, the medium’s actual most prestigious prize has suffered some blows to its reputation in the last two years after being handed to mediocre films (Dheepan in 2015 and I, Daniel Blake last year) that weren’t […]
by Blake Williams on May 30, 2017 -
Watch: Lynne Ramsay Through Details
The latest in Tony Zhou’s Every Frame a Painting series centers on a filmmaker who is relatively unscrutinized in the realm of the video essay: Lynne Ramsay. Though Ramsay’s films turn on watershed moments in the lives of her characters, she often chooses to relate their emotional impact through a string of details, rather than a single overblown reaction. Such a notion is the subject of Zhou’s essay, “The Poetry of Details,” wherein he dissects Ramsay’s use of framing and repetition.
by Sarah Salovaara on May 8, 2015 -
THE MOTHER AND CHILD REUNION: “WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN”
The title is ironic: The conversation never happens. (Kevin’s mom suggests it in a voiced-over letter to her husband, but, if it is even sent, it is — seemingly — ignored.) Eva (the chameleon-like Tilda Swinton, brilliant as ever) and Franklin (John C. Reilly) are the parents of a troubled boy who tortures his mother with line-crossing defiance. (He is played by three kids of different ages. The principal action revolves around the oldest, perfectly portrayed by Afterschool’s Ezra Miller as an intimidating glop of arrogant negativity.) Eva never wanted the unplanned child. She yells much more loudly than necessary during childbirth and appears desolate in her hospital bed. […]
by Howard Feinstein on Dec 9, 2011 -
SOUND AND FURY: BELA TARR’S “THE TURIN HORSE” PLUS MORE AT THE CANNES FILM FESTIVAL
Sound design can be a filmmaker’s secret weapon. Psycho (1960) and Dirty Dancing (1987) aside, moviegoers are often hard pressed to remember the popular songs played in a film, let alone what a film itself sounded like. Yet in these layered, dense aural textures, every footstep and cigarette burn is meticulously tuned. Though it may never climb to the level of conscious analysis, this can have a deep psychological and emotional effect–particularly if the audience is treated to the top tier acoustics and audio systems of the theaters at the Cannes Film Festival. The sound work and soundtrack in director Lynne Ramsay‘s Morvern […]
by Livia Bloom Ingram on May 16, 2011 -
ANTICIPATION OF THE NIGHT: LOOKING AHEAD TO THE CANNES FILM FESTIVAL
In a time zone six hours away, the espresso is stockpiled. The line-up is out. The hotels are booked. The contestants are in their corners. It’s time for the industry’s storied annual trade show/summer camp, the Cannes Film Festival. Actors, producers and executives will tend to prioritize networking events, while film programmers, distributors and journalists will gorge on films until the juice runs down their faces. I plan to gobble movies until my eyes glaze over, flickering like bionic screens. A colleague recently complained about the tendency of festival goers to refer to films not by title but by the director’s name, which […]
by Livia Bloom Ingram on May 13, 2011
