RAW
-
Hereditary, Horror and the Power of Choice
It was the closing night of the Overlook Film Festival and everyone was gathered at a mansion on the outskirts of town. I was coming out of the bathroom, spooked, because A24 had planted some Hereditary sound effects next to the toilet. Jesus. The film, which comes out today, had closed the festival earlier that night and had left everyone on edge — deliciously so. I grabbed a glass of wine, discussing the experience with a stranger who was leaning against a wall outside next to some friends. Why do we put ourselves through all this? There was a number […]
by Meredith Alloway on Jun 8, 2018 -
In the Light of History: Rachel Morrison on Shooting Mudbound
With Rachel Morrison the first woman cinematographer nominated for a Best Cinematography Academy Award, we’re running today online from our current print issue David Leitner’s interview with her about shooting her nominated film, Dee Rees’s Mudbound. When Dee Rees’s Mudbound premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, the director was returning to the fest six years after her feature debut, Pariah, launched there. The same year also marked DP Rachel Morrison’s first feature to be included in the festival, Zal Batmanglij’s Sound of My Voice, and she returned the following year with Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale Station; Mudbound is her eighth […]
by David Leitner on Jan 23, 2018 -
2017 in Ten Double Features
Why not pair, rather than pit against one another, the great films of a given year? This was the question that led me to reconsider the year-end top-10 list in terms of double features. In 2016 and 2015 I ranked my favorite double features of the year on this very site. I love the double bill for its flexibility. You can pair films based on any connective tissue: style, setting, subject matter, theme, time period, director, star. Viewing and thinking about films this way urges you to consider them anew. What do we think of the suburban woes of Lady […]
by Soheil Rezayazdi on Jan 3, 2018 -
When It Comes to Raw, Focus World Sees Red: On Red Band vs. Green Band Trailers
“Aberrant behavior, bloody and grisly images, strong sexuality, nudity, language and drug use/partying.” So reads the information box on the R rating for Raw, Julia Ducournau’s tasty little horror film about a vegan who becomes a cannibal. Explicit films (gross-out horror flicks, bawdy comedies, sexy dramas) always face the same marketing challenge: how do you show the best parts of a movie when those moments might be too graphic? In the case of Raw, Focus World gave the movie two trailers: a mainstream gothic green-band trailer and a frenetically disturbing red-band trailer. Ironically, the two share a lot of the […]
by Stephen Garrett on Feb 15, 2017 -
Meat is Murder: Julia Ducournau On Her Wildly Creative Female Cannibal Film, Raw
Julia Ducournau’s debut feature film Raw is an earnest, sincere work with a clean pop sensibility that also happens to be about cannibalism. When mild-mannered vegetarian college freshman Justine (Garance Marillier) joins her older sister Alexia (Ella Rumpf) at veterinary school, she discovers an appetite for human flesh that she didn’t know she had. Raw is first and foremost their story, and the plot hinges entirely on whether or not their relationship is tearing itself apart or stitching itself back together. Like all siblings, they understand each other better than anyone else, simultaneously totally devoted and flippantly cruel. Marillier and Rumpf’s […]
by Zach Clark on Jan 18, 2017 -
Festival Beat: Toronto, Camden and Fantastic Fest
Toronto International Film Festival By Scott Macaulay Following 2013’s The Flag, Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker returned to the Toronto International Film Festival this year with an entirely different meditation on national identity, Karl Marx City. Here Epperlein, who emigrated to the States following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, travels back to her East German homeland, attempting to uncover the reason for her father’s suicide in 1999. Evidence he may have been a Stasi informant deepens the urgency of her journey, with a visit to Stasi archives revealing thousands of hours of footage, somewhere in which may be the clue […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Oct 20, 2016 -
“As Spare and Sparse as Possible”: Peter Suschitzky on Maps to the Stars
Before David Cronenberg evolved – or rather, in keeping with Cronenberg’s preoccupations, mutated – into a respected auteur, he rose to prominence as the purveyor of a distinct subset of genre films labeled as “body horror.” At the heart of his early tales of transmogrification, decay and disease lay an innately human fear of mortality. In Cronenberg’s latest, Maps to the Stars, the director explores a uniquely post-millennial form of mortality he has christened “pre-death.” In a culture obsessed with recording and sharing, to not be photographed is in some sense to cease to exist. That existential crisis runs through […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Mar 10, 2015 -
Digital Bolex Report: An Interview with Creative Director Elle Schneider
Elle Schneider, Creative Director at Digital Bolex, spoke about the project at this weekend’s Hacking Arts conference held at MIT’s Media Lab. The Digital Bolex project, the creation of a digital camera that is operated and styled like a 16mm camera, was funded through a Kickstarter Project. Held in March of 2012, the campaign raised twice the $100,000 goal and pre-sold 93 cameras. Schneider announced that they expect the camera will be available to order in six weeks, and they will ship the original orders even sooner. Schneider, who had an early beta version of the camera with her, talked […]
by Michael Murie on Sep 30, 2013
