01.17.14 |
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The Coen brothers are, in my opinion, the most consistently strong directing force in cinema today. There are misfires like The Ladykillers and (arguably) Intolerable Cruelty, but the rest of their output ranges from very good to great. It’s especially incredible when you consider their range, from surreal farces to noir thrillers and westerns.
That genre hopping is exactly why Nelson Caravajal’s latest Press Play essay on the brothers’ output is so interesting; anyone who’s seen their works is probably familiar with many of the scenes, but the way Caravajal edits them together, you can see thematic links among the material.
12.30.13 |
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I watched The Wolf of Wall Street on Christmas last week and while the movie is far from perfect, I liked it a lot. But I’m troubled by the viewpoint promoted on Twitter and in blog posts on how the movie “glorifies” the endless parties of drugs, booze and sex. Yes, director Martin Scorsese spends very little time on the negative impacts of main character Jordan Belfort’s actions, and some are cheering his behavior. But while the movie was entertaining, I was still repulsed by Belfort and everything he stood for. The late great Roger Ebert put it best in this essay from back in 1992:
The most fundamental mistake you can make with any piece of fiction is to confuse the content with the subject. The content is what is in a movie. The subject is what the movie is about. Word counters like Medved are as offended by a Martin Scorsese picture as by a brainless violent action picture, because they see the same elements in both. But the brainless picture is simply a form of exhibitionism, in which the director is showing you disgusting things on the screen. And the Scorsese picture might be an attempt to deal seriously with guilt and sin, with evil and the possibility of redemption. If you cannot tell one from the other, then you owe it to yourself to learn; life is short, and no fun if you spend it disowning your own intelligence.
12.26.13 |
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Niles Schwartz, writing for L’etoile:
Carlito’s Way is a beautiful after-hours ride to nowhere, a late night discotheque frenzy of manic physicality blasting off and crumpling down with the same bullet, where the dancers are passionately moving as if to a final destination of perfection, but are escorted out, dozing, on last call…Now, Carlito’s Way stands as one of his [Pacino’s] last headlining triumphs, his subsequent noteworthy work having shared before-the-title acknowledgement: Robert De Niro (Heat), Johnny Depp (Donnie Brasco), and Russell Crowe (The Insider).
It’s still an amazing film, something I want to potentially revisit during the holiday break. Available on digital rental and Netflix via DVD.
12.13.13 |
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I can’t say Scout Tafoya’s video essay defending Alien 3 won me over on that film based on memory; I found the tone and screenplay way too dark and nihilistic. But given what director David Fincher has done since, from Fight Club to The Social Network, makes me really want to rewatch this soon. It’s been over a decade since my last viewing.
11.15.13 |
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Scott Fennessey and Chris Ryan, writing for Grantland:
As a fine-arts student who got his start in the vulgar world of commercial directing and slick TV shows, he has always subverted expectations…Looking for the quintessential interstellar extraterrestrial adventure? Instead, take the most grotesque body-horror movie ever made. Scott’s movies are delivery systems for ideas, but they’re also Trojan horses — hulking, beautiful objects, meant to distract audiences while those ideas creep in, one soldier at a time, to take over your mind. It’s been an effective, unlikely strategy for the British-born filmmaker.
11.01.13 |
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Director Wong Kar-Wai shot Chungking Express in an unusually brief (by Wong standards) two month period while taking a production break from another film. The Dissolve‘s Keith Phipps writes about the movie’s history, plot, cinematography and more:
Though necessitated by circumstance, shooting faster and looser seems to have opened Wong up to new ideas. Yet, just as in the world of the film, there’s order within the chaos. Though made in an urgent heat, it’s a deeply considered, beautifully constructed film that captures the feel of a particular place at a particular time—and of characters of a particular age, specifically the age when it first becomes apparent that time only runs one way, even if the world seems to be eternally repeating itself.
08.02.13 |
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Director Nicolas Winding Refn, interviewed by The Dissolve:
Television has gotten much more aggressive, and much more mind-expanding and progressive than cinema, which is still the crown jewel, and will always be the crown jewel. We need to remember that cinema is not just about, “How much money did you make on Friday to Monday?” but also, “What is your actual interest?” Filmmaking is an art form, and the art can inspire. But if everyone’s afraid of standing out and risking polarization, which essentially means it’s a singular vision, then the world will become less interesting.
It’s a well spoken point. Among the film critics I follow on Twitter, TV discussion comes up again and again; we’re truly in a remarkable time period. I just haven’t seen film take the same risks over the last year or so, at least compared to years prior.
Alas, Refn’s “singular vision” reached a point of near parody in Only God Forgives. I’m generally a big fan of Refn’s work, and Only God Forgives is a visually striking, haunting film with a great Cliff Martinez score. But by the end the style excess and lack of dialogue felt suffocating.
05.31.13 |
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Matt Zoller Seitz on today’s great era of TV direction:
Where’s their MoMA retrospective? Why is there no auteur theory of TV?
One explanation is that movies have a half-century head start on TV, so there’s been more time for critics to settle on terms and definitions. I like to tell people that TV, as both business and art, is at roughly the same place in its development as cinema was in the late fifties, around the time that the French floated the auteur theory. We’re still figuring out who the “author” is on TV shows. We’re still taking into account whether we’re talking about the show as a whole or a particular episode, and why. We rarely think of TV as being directed, unless the show’s main creative force has already been identified as a theatrical director (as David Lynch was before Twin Peaks) or doubles as the show’s star (like Louis C.K. or Lena Dunham).
I’ve become more aware of reoccurring TV directors on shows as varied as Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones and even New Girl. I know there’s a “voice” there, but I admit I rarely make a connection with what’s onscreen the way I do with a “name” film director. Seitz helps explain why.
05.15.13 |
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I’d argue it’s hard to find someone better equipped to deliver a “State of Cinema” talk than director Steven Soderbergh. Film Comment transcribed his entire talk for reading, There’s also a full SoundCloud embed file if you’d rather listen to Soderbergh’s audio. One of his quick asides on the major studios’ financial dominance was pretty scary:
In 2003, 455 films were released. 275 of those were independent, 180 were studio films. Last year 677 films were released. So you’re not imagining things, there are a lot of movies that open every weekend. 549 of those were independent, 128 were studio films. So, a 100% increase in independent films, and a 28% drop in studio films, and yet, 10 years ago: Studio market share 69%, last year 76%. You’ve got fewer studio movies now taking up a bigger piece of the pie and you’ve got twice as many independent films scrambling for a smaller piece of the pie. That’s hard. That’s really hard.
04.16.13 |
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Grantland‘s Zach Baron:
He [Carruth] is obsessive, won’t deny that. For Primer he taught himself everything, from editing to operating a camera to acting to writing music. It took a while. The movie almost never got made because of it, because of his tendency to go down wormholes for weeks and months and years at a time. “I don’t typically have a social life, I don’t have a family, and I will stay up all night, every night, for days on end, to solve something that I think is solvable,” he says. “And it’s very frustrating sometimes, because I know that I’m like that, and it’s not always a positive result.”
‘Visionary’ and ‘auteur’ are words overused when it comes to describing filmmakers. But Carruth is unquestionably both. I revisited Primer last weekend for a second time, and it’s just as cerebral and deep as I remembered from my first viewing years ago.