A long-awaited film for Paul Thomas Anderson fans, Junun doesn’t come as a huge surprise as a next project from a director whose last film took on the immense task of adapting a Thomas Pynchon novel. Instead of jumping right back into narrative filmmaking, Anderson traveled to India and decided to make a documentary.
Noah Baumbach isn’t exactly the first name in a list of directors that comes to mind for a documentary about renowned filmmaker Brian De Palma. With Baumbach’s own work as of late revolving around young and somewhat hip New Yorkers (Frances Ha and his recent release Mistress America), it’s not what anyone might naturally expect him to take on as his next project.
It begins and ends with a look. In that look is hesitance, longing, desire, confusion, confidence, conviction, hope. Even love. On NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour, writer and critic Glenn Weldon described real chemistry between actors living in the look, elaborating on the attraction manifesting in the movement of the eyes.
Maggie’s Plan Written by Rebecca Miller Directed by Rebecca Miller USA, 2015 Is it sexist, or at the very least unfair, to compare Rebecca Miller’s Maggie’s Plan to the works of Noah Baumbach and Woody Allen, but with a tone of derision? Either way, it’s hard to divorce Miller’s manic wit and preoccupation with middle-class …
Robert Zemeckis’s The Walk, based on Philippe Petit’s wire walking across the Twin Towers in the early 1970s, opens on the face of its star Joseph Gordon-Levitt, thereby setting the tone for the film: Zemeckis puts much technical effort and detail into accentuating the depth and various surfaces of the actor’s face, and as the star, as wire walking Philippe, begins to talk, nothing but tall tales falls from his mouth.
Expressing his appreciation for a painting of Proust’s bedroom, Yves Saint Laurent says, “There’s so much fidelity in it. The artist didn’t eclipse his subject.” Something similar can be said of Bertrand Bonello’s biopic of the iconic woman’s fashion designer, as the film seems content with offering fleeting glimpses of its subject drinking, smoking, pill-popping, and sketching in fervid bursts rather than trying to understand him. It doesn’t pontificate or wax philosophical or dig deeply into Saint Laurent’s psyche. It treats the man more like a piece of art to be displayed and observed. (To be fair, this year’s other Saint Laurent biopic, Yves Saint Laurent, does try to explain the man, and it fails pretty hard, so maybe Bonello has the right idea.)
For those unfamiliar with the work of South Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo, his movies typically go something like this: some demotic people get together and drink a lot, and they talk about their menial lives and discuss the profundities of nothing in particular, and in between those moments nothing happens. Sometimes there’s a dog. And it’s hysterical.
Flight Directed by Robert Zemeckis Written by John Gatins 2012, USA Premiering at the closing night of the New York Film Festival, Robert Zemeckis dives back into live-action filmmaking from a twelve year motion capture hiatus with Flight. An audacious, well-matured character ensemble piece about a man whose most heroic venture may have resulted from …
Kinshasa Kids Written by Marc-Henri Wajnberg Directed by Marc-Henri Wajnberg Kinshasa Kids introduces a surreal and hostile world right from the start in its very first scenes. It opens with an exorcism ceremony. Amidst the frantic chanting and bombastic drumbeats, village priests intone their spells and try to channel demonic influences out of inflicted children …
Ginger & Rosa Directed by Sally Potter UK / Denmark / Canada, 2012 Less daring than her adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s gender bending Orlando and more accessible than the erotic Yes (with all dialogue spoken entirely in iambic pentameter)- director Sally Potter’s Ginger & Rosa is emotionally raw but disappointingly uneven in it’s storytelling. Centering …
Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay Directed by Molly Bernstein and Alan Edelstein USA, 2012 On the opposite side of the various muckraking documentaries that attempt to rile the audience over one political or social issue, there is the documentary Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay. This is a …
Leviathan Directed by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel France/UK/USA, 2012 It’s impossible to discuss the documentary Leviathan without comparing it to co-director Lucien Castaing-Taylor’s previous film, Sweetgrass. Sweetgrass was a documentary about sheep herders in Montana, but it eschewed all of the typical tropes of a documentary: no talking heads, no narration, no soundtrack. It …
Hyde Park on Hudson Directed by Roger Michell Written by Richard Nelson Hyde Park on Hudson explores a significant but somewhat obscure moment in history when King George VI (Samuel West) pays a visit to Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Bill Murray), making him the first English monarch ever to grace the United States with his presence. …
Life of Pi Directed by Ang Lee Written by David Magee Ang Lee’s new film Life of Pi has spent four years in the making, an epic attempt by the director of Brokeback Mountain and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to harness developing digital technology to film a novel that would have been utterly unfilmable as …
Life of Pi Directed by Ang Lee Written by David Magee USA, 2012 A major theme woven into Life of Pi‘s narrative is making the incredible believable. Can there be any metaphor more appropriate for the insurmountable challenge Ang Lee and his special effects wizards faced in bringing to life such a complicated story? And …
Roman Polanski: Odd Man Out Directed by Marina Zenovich USA, 2012 It is probably necessary that Roman Polanski: Odd Man Out exists. Once director Marina Zenovich established herself as the definitive documentarian of the famed director’s sexual assault case with 2008’s fine film Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, an account of Polanski’s arrest in Switzerland …
The Bay Directed by Barry Levinson Written by Michael Wallach For whatever reason, very few auteurs have emerged from the genre of the found-footage film. The team behind The Blair Witch Project flamed out after the first sequel; Paco Plaza has done well in his native Spain with three [REC] films, but his American remake …
Miss Bala Directed by Gerardo Naranjo 2011, Mexico You may not know it, but Mexican cinema is alive and has something to tell us. Overshadowed by the big wigs of the American studio system, foreign markets are endlessly trying to compete with the big budgeted, CGI saturated, sequel profiteering that has blindsided artistic talents to …
Miss Bala Directed by Gerardo Naranjo 2011, Mexico You may not know it, but Mexican cinema is alive and has something to tell us. Overshadowed by the big wigs of the American studio system, foreign markets are endlessly trying to compete with the big budgeted, CGI saturated, sequel profiteering that has blindsided artistic talents to …
Miss Bala Directed by Gerardo Naranjo 2011, Mexico Yet another long day at the Lincoln Center, the wait for Miss Bala proved to be just as timely. And rightfully so. With an array of festival passes lining the newly established Beale Theater of the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, it was indeed a sure sign …
Carnage Directed by Roman Polanski Written by Roman Polanski (screenplay), Yasmina Reza (play) 2011, France Carnage is a lean story about a group of people who cannot leave an apartment. Sometimes they manage to go into an alternate room, even as far as getting into an elevator, but somehow each person is pulled together again. …
Carnage Directed by Roman Polanski Written by Roman Polanski (screenplay), Yasmina Reza (play) 2011, USA Today proved to be the most populous screening at the Lincoln Center yet, and I should have known better. As the Q&A for Miss Bala came to an end, a rush of press got up and headed for the exit. …
4:44 Last Day on Earth Directed by Abel Ferrara Written by Abel Ferrara 2011, USA Following the trend of doomsday as with Melancholia, Abel Ferrara brings his own take on the genre with 4:44 Last Day on Earth. Willem Dafoe stars as Cisco, a New York City actor who lives with his younger lover Skye …