It gives me no pleasure to slag on Jeremy Saulnier’s Hold the Dark; his previous two films, Blue Ruin and Green Room, were good bleak fun, laconic in general, tersely amusing when dialogue emerged. But Hold the Dark has no interest in being fun; it’s much more interested in being taken Seriously, as a Serious Movie, and that’s a very bad trade. I have not read William Giraldi’s source novel, but I conferred with someone who has, who confirmed that many of this movie’s bad ideas — primarily, a heavy metaphorical and literal emphasis on the disastrous invasion of Afghanistan — are organic to […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 13, 2018Talk to Kirsten Sheridan, director of August Rush and her latest Dollhouse (pictured and premiering in the Panorama section of the 2012 Berlinale) about The Factory, the collective she co-founded with fellow filmmakers John Carney (Once) and Lance Daly (Kisses), and it soon becomes apparent that Ireland’s recent financial woes have done little to dampen Dublin’s DIY spirit. If anything the collapse has, ironically, helped artists, Sheridan theorizes, by making their outsized dreams affordable. Indeed, in a thriving economy just meeting the rent on a space big enough to house everything from production studios, to a fully equipped camera department […]
by Lauren Wissot on Feb 10, 2012