Spike Jonze
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Tennessee Johnson, I Spit on Your Grave and Adaptation: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
These days, director William Dieterle is best remembered for his dreamy, stylized melodramas of the mid-to-late 1940s (I’ll Be Seeing You, Portrait of Jennie), but in his own time his greatest successes were mostly sturdy prestige biopics like The Story of Louis Pasteur and The Life of Emile Zola. A key transitional film was 1941’s The Devil and Daniel Webster, which introduced a supernatural element to Dieterle’s work and paved the way for a return to the German expressionist style in which he had worked as an actor. Before the delirious flights of fancy to come, however, Dieterle made one last return […]
by Jim Hemphill on Nov 13, 2020 -
Canon Reformation (3): Adaptation.
So far in this column I’ve written about movies I’ve seen multiple times, but I hadn’t rewatched Adaptation. since December 2002. Regardless, for nearly two decades hence I’ve regularly heard Brian Cox-as-Robert-McKee bellowing “and god help you if you use voiceover!” I don’t think I was actively aware of McKee’s Story before seeing Adaptation. The spine, with its title in distinct marquee lettering, was familiar—I have vague memories of seeing it in the aisles of the film section of the Barnes & Noble I haunted way too much as a kid—but it would never have occurred to me to open it up, so my true […]
by Vadim Rizov on May 4, 2020 -
I’m In You: Director Spike Jonze and Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman Talk Being John Malkovich.
In Spike Jonze’s future, you will be famous for 15 minutes. The catch? You will only be famous as John Malkovich. Confused? Don’t be. Being John Malkovich, Jonze’s devious debut feature, creates from our schizophrenic celebrity culture an original comedy that is as affecting as it is absurd. Scott Macaulay ponders the meaning of it all with Jonze and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman in an interview that originally appeared in our Fall, 1999 print edition. There are auspicious debut films, and then there is Being John Malkovitch. Long a subject of film-geek gossip during its production due to its bizarre premise—a […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 7, 2019 -
Breaking Character: Josephine Decker Talks to Mike Mills about Madeline’s Madeline
Madeline (Helena Howard) has a hospital bracelet on her wrist and a rehearsal to go to. One of the questions fueling Madeline’s Madeline, Josephine Decker’s third feature as a solo director, is how two of the biggest elements of Madeline’s life — some unspecified form of mental instability and her promise as a young actress — interact, or if they even can safely. Howard’s breakout performance as the troubled thespian is part of an unusual triangle. At one point is her mother Regina (the writer, actress and performance artist Miranda July), whose protective custody of her unstable daughter is unreadable: justifiable […]
by Mike Mills on Jun 11, 2018 -
Watch: Spike Jonze’s Amazing, Four-Minute Kenzo Perfume Ad
Whether the performer is Bjork or Christopher Walken or even himself, Spike Jonze has committed some amazing dance scenes to film. Add one more to his impressive choreographic filmography with this brand-new Kenzo perfume commercial. To the beat of “Mutant Brain,” composed by Jonze’s brother, Sam Spiegel, actress and dancer Margaret Qualley escapes the suffocating drone of some kind of charity event by cutting loose in the conference hall’s surrounding hallways, staircases and balconies. The dance was choreographed by Ryan Heffington, known for his work with Sia and Maddie Ziegler.
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 29, 2016 -
Watch Lance Bangs’ Short Documentary Her: Love in the Modern Age
Using Spike Jonze’s her as a springboard, Lance Bangs shot a documentary about the modern person’s relationship to love. Culling a wide range of perspectives — from Charlyne Yi to Olivia Wilde to Bret Easton Ellis — Bangs asks us to consider how we relate to Jonze’s unusual tale of boy meets girl. Offers Yi, “Recently, I was thinking about relationships like shoes, and how it’s cheaper to buy new shoes than work on the shoes that you really love and care about.” If the trailer’s any indication, we can expect an eclectic offering. Keep an eye out for Her: Love […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jan 17, 2014 -
Rome Film Festival 2013
Marco Müller, in his second year at the helm of the Rome International Film Festival, abandoned his insistence on all films being world premieres, but not the ability to program average films. The main reason for the change of tact seems to be to allow higher profile American films to be programmed in competition. The beneficiaries this year were Dallas Buyers Club and Her which were rewarded for their Italian voyage with awards for their actors: Matthew McConaughey has been winning plaudits everywhere for his turn as a drug-peddling carrier of HIV, while one suspects that the competition jury had […]
by Kaleem Aftab on Nov 19, 2013 -
Spike Jonze and Greta Gerwig Team for YouTube’s Live Music Video Awards
In an effort to assure traditionalists that anything television can do the Internet can do better, YouTube got their first slice of the awards show pie last night with their inaugural YouTube Music Awards. In Saturday’s Times, Chris Milk — under the watchful eye of creative director Spike Jonze — revealed that each performance would be structured around a live music video, utilizing the platform to generate viral content in house. For the opener, Jonze enlisted one Greta Gerwig, replete with twinkle toes and jazz hands, to accompany Arcade Fire’s “Afterlife,” through forests, apartments, and a bearded man’s embrace. It […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Nov 4, 2013 -
Spike Jonze’s Her to Close 2013 New York Film Festival
The day after the first trailer for Spike Jonze’s much anticipated, futuristic romance Her was released, the New York Film Festival has announced that the film will close their 2013 edition on October 13. In a press release, Kent Jones, the NYFF’s Director of Programming and Selection Committee Chair, said, “Like many people I’ve come to expect great and surprising things from Spike Jonze, but Her is something altogether new in cinema. To discuss even a little bit of the plot – let’s just say that it’s about lonely people and artificial intelligence – is to deprive first-time viewers of the opportunity […]
by Nick Dawson on Aug 8, 2013 -
Trailer Watch: Spike Jonze’s Her
Four years after 2009’s Where the Wild Things Are, Spike Jonze returns with his fourth feature, Her, starring Joaquin Phoenix as a reclusive writer who develops an ever closer bond with the personalized operating system, “Samantha” (voiced by Scarlett Johansson), tailored to take care of all his needs. Featuring a strong female supporting cast that includes Amy Adams, Rooney Mara and Olivia Wilde, Her is the first feature from an original screenplay by Jonze and it will be interesting to see what a film fully constructed in his mind looks like. In this trailer, Her appears sweet and touching, but I’m […]
by Nick Dawson on Aug 7, 2013
