Neil Labute
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Tribeca 2015 Critic’s Notebook: When I Live My Life Over Again, Dirty Weekend, Applesauce and Bad Hurt
It’s awards day at Tribeca and judging by the informal polling taking place at parties with free booze and in line at the Shake Shack next to the Regal Battery Park, the cinerati thinks this was a lukewarm edition. The fest’s first weekend provided more than its fair share of dreary viewing, with no films like last year’s still-unreleased Noah Buschel stunner Glass Chin or Angus MacLachlan’s unfairly overlooked Goodbye to All That to salve my hunger for top-shelf small movies that ought to matter. The festival surely has some strong surprises I haven’t uncovered, but time is running out; around mid-fest, everyone’s […]
by Brandon Harris on Apr 23, 2015 -
Five Questions with Some Girl(s) Director Daisy von Scherler Mayer and Producer Patty West
In the battle of the sexes, there has been perhaps no more controversial warrior than the playwright, screenwriter and director Neil LaBute (In the Company of Men). Since the mid-90s, LaBute has made a name for himself by writing movies that are truly, madly, deeply cynical. Adapted by LaBute from his own stage play and directed by Party Girl helmer Daisy von Scherler Mayer, Some Girl(s) stars Adam Brody as a soon-to-be-married writer who takes a cross-country trip to revisit ghosts of girlfriends past. With an all-star cast and a no-holds-barred script, it’s sure to leave people arguing in the lobby […]
by Mary Anderson Casavant on Mar 8, 2013 -
LOVE, HATE, LABUTE AND “HEAVY RAIN”
I took note of the videogame Heavy Rain after reading Seth Schiesel’s wildly positive review in the New York Times. Here are the first two grafs: The big storm has been raging for days. The winds around the eaves make me lonely, melancholy, and yet my guilt forces me forward in search of redemption. I have probably spent 10,000 hours playing various sorts of electronic games. But no single-player experience has made me as genuinely nervous, unsettled, surprised, emotionally riven and altogether involved as Heavy Rain, a noir murder mystery inspired by film masters like Hitchcock, Kubrick and David Lynch. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 22, 2010 -
Lee Toland Krieger, The Vicious Kind
Opening with a blistering, misogynistic monologue by Caleb (a terrific Adam Scott), a newly unemployed construction worker who’s recent breakup has left him with an unquenchable hate for all things feminine, The Vicious Kind seems to announce its intentions very quickly: dramatizing the bitterness of a young, damaged man and the toll his misanthropy exacts on his small, middle class New England family over one long holiday weekend as his virginal brother (Peter Frost) and his gothy, bright eyed girlfriend (Brittany Snow) also return for Thanksgiving. However, as it slowly unwinds, The Vicious Kind reveals a family torn apart by […]
by Brandon Harris on Dec 9, 2009 -
Cecilia Miniucchi, Expired
SAMANTHA MORTON AND JASON PATRIC IN DIRECTOR CECILIA MINIUCCHI’S EXPIRED. COURTESY MCR RELEASING. After observing and learning from some of the best directors around, writer-director Cecilia Miniucchi has put all her acquired wisdom to use in a distinctive and promising debut. Born in Rome, the multi-talented Miniucchi is notable for the number of mediums she has worked in: a prolific maker of documentaries and music videos, she has also written poetry, songs, plays and short stories, and is an accomplished photographer. While in Italy, Miniucchi worked with Federico Fellini and the Taviani brothers, and went on to serve an apprenticeship […]
by Nick Dawson on Jun 20, 2008
