Richard Jenkins
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“The Interior Lives of People That Aren’t Typically Represented in Cinema”: Andrew Cohn on The Last Shift
Fascinated with the unseen men and women of forgotten America, Andrew Cohn, proud Midwestern and versatile filmmaker, has created a body of documentary work that witnesses modest, real lives without condescension or pity. Features like Medora or Night School engage with their subjects—a teenage basketball team in small-town Indiana or adult students juggling economic and personal struggles—in a compassionate and collaborative manner. Translating that honesty to fiction now with The Last Shift, his first scripted film, Cohn continues to give voice to the working poor, in this case two fast food employees in Michigan, where he’s from, whose relationship exemplifies […]
by Carlos Aguilar on Sep 25, 2020 -
“If You Move in a Hasty Manner, I’ll Put a Bullet in You”: S. Craig Zahler on Bone Tomahawk
With its careful widescreen compositions and painterly period-motivated lighting, Bone Tomahawk possesses a classical visual style that belies its pulpy genre mash-up logline of western-cum-cannibal horror film. There are no elaborate tracking shots in the feature debut of writer/director S. Craig Zahler. No Steadicam moves, no booming Technocranes, no extreme close-ups. “All of that stuff, to me, is like the director is sitting next to the viewer and saying, ‘Hey now, look at this.’ And I wanted as little of that as possible,” said Zahler. “You see a lot of first-time directors really out to impress the hell out of […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Nov 5, 2015 -
Five Questions with Liberal Arts Director Josh Radnor
The hurdles of independent filmmaking–or any creative endeavor–don’t end with a successful debut. If anything, the pressure to live up to the expectations on the heels of a breakthrough looms heavier than ever in the dreaded “sophomore slump.” Following Happythankyoumoreplease, Josh Radnor manages to not only avoid said slump, but also seamlessly captures the voice of a generation; floating between idealistic youth and the discontentment of fitting into adulthood. It’s even more impressive when considering that Radnor is already an established actor on his own hit television show. While utilizing his own alma mater, Kenyon College, at the heart of […]
by Niki Cruz on Sep 11, 2012 -
Into the Splice: Let Me In
I went to see Let Me In with low expectations. Like so many, I had seen and been awed by the original Swedish version, Let the Right One In (directed by Tomas Alfredson), whose quiet pacing and lonely stretches of relative silence only made the horror more horrible when it came. An American version, surely, would speed up the pace and overload the naturalistic violence with CGI-generated hyper-energy. On the way to the theater I asked Lisa about this. “I don’t know,” she said, “give it a chance.” “But I don’t want to give it a chance. I want to […]
by Nicholas Rombes on Oct 14, 2010
