There are some filmmakers who stamp their personality on their work from the outset. With a distinctive blend of horror and humour present in Neal Dhand’s dialogue and shot choices, together with the grainy character and soft hues of Charles Ackley Anderson’s cinematography, Dark My Light announces itself quickly, sets out its stall, and proceeds to deliver a story which, though it shifts gears several times and moves between genres, still achieves a tonal consistency which helps it stick in the memory.
There’s a scream – perhaps roar would be a better term – over the openings credits which is reminiscent of one delivered by Ray Wise in Twin Peaks, and viewers familiar with that will find themselves shuddering. Others may not fully take it in, or may be confused by it, because it doesn’t seem to fit the character of police detective Mitchell Morse (Albert Jones).
In his dress and.
There’s a scream – perhaps roar would be a better term – over the openings credits which is reminiscent of one delivered by Ray Wise in Twin Peaks, and viewers familiar with that will find themselves shuddering. Others may not fully take it in, or may be confused by it, because it doesn’t seem to fit the character of police detective Mitchell Morse (Albert Jones).
In his dress and.
- 4/20/2024
- by Jennie Kermode
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
The 24th edition of Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (Bifan) closed off on Thursday in limited capacity, finishing up the first fully-hybrid film festival in the world. Unlike many of its peers this year, Bifan hosted screenings in-theaters (at 35% capacity) alongside its online program on local streaming service Watcha. Because of the in-person offering, Bifan unwittingly witnessed the world premiere of more films than originally intended, including Annecy contender “Beauty Water”. The famous genre film festival has stood as a monumental alternative to the popular online festival format.
Among this year’s winners, German production “Pelican Blood” (Katrin Gebbe) won Best of Bucheon with raving reviews. Pouya Aminpori’s Iranian short “The Third Person” championed the Best Short Film, and regularly sold-out screenings “Saint Maud” and “Sheep Without a Shepherd” carved out their own fair share of recognition. Perhaps the most stand-out feature in the festival, however, is Kim Lok-kyong’s first feature,...
Among this year’s winners, German production “Pelican Blood” (Katrin Gebbe) won Best of Bucheon with raving reviews. Pouya Aminpori’s Iranian short “The Third Person” championed the Best Short Film, and regularly sold-out screenings “Saint Maud” and “Sheep Without a Shepherd” carved out their own fair share of recognition. Perhaps the most stand-out feature in the festival, however, is Kim Lok-kyong’s first feature,...
- 7/18/2020
- by Grace Han
- AsianMoviePulse
Pánico
Directed by Julián Soler
Mexico, 1970
Julián Soler’s Pánico is part-understated horror gem, part-mad scientist absurdism. This three-part anthology film starts really strong, with visible influences from Welles and Kurosawa, and then takes a left turn with something that would be very much at home in a Rex Carlton-produced episode of Tales from the Crypt.
There’s virtually no dialogue in the first seventeen minutes of the film. But there are a whole lot of screams. Ana Martín plays an unnamed woman shrieking and running through a forest away from a purple-clad woman wielding a knife. There are a few flashbacks, one indicating a possible gang rape, the grotesque close-ups of which remind of Janet Leigh’s interaction with a gang of thugs in Touch of Evil, but for the most part this first short film (titled, simply, Panic) gets its mileage out of some pretty compositions and camera movements from Soler.
Directed by Julián Soler
Mexico, 1970
Julián Soler’s Pánico is part-understated horror gem, part-mad scientist absurdism. This three-part anthology film starts really strong, with visible influences from Welles and Kurosawa, and then takes a left turn with something that would be very much at home in a Rex Carlton-produced episode of Tales from the Crypt.
There’s virtually no dialogue in the first seventeen minutes of the film. But there are a whole lot of screams. Ana Martín plays an unnamed woman shrieking and running through a forest away from a purple-clad woman wielding a knife. There are a few flashbacks, one indicating a possible gang rape, the grotesque close-ups of which remind of Janet Leigh’s interaction with a gang of thugs in Touch of Evil, but for the most part this first short film (titled, simply, Panic) gets its mileage out of some pretty compositions and camera movements from Soler.
- 10/3/2015
- by Neal Dhand
- SoundOnSight
Picking the best movies that come out in any given year is no easy feat. With over 800 movies released theatrically, there’s plenty to digest. As we reach the halfway point of the year, we decided to publish a list of our favourite movies thus far, in hopes that our readers can catch up on some of the films they might have missed out on. Below, you shall find the list of the top 30 films of 2015 to date, a list that ranges from independent horror films to documentary to foreign films and so much more. Here’s is part two of our three part list.
****
20. The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared
Eccentrically layered yet simple in plot, the Swedish adaptation of Jonas Jonasson’s novel does a fine job in balancing satire with tenderness. Telling the story of Allan Karlsson (Robert Gustafsson), a 100-year-old explosive enthusiast...
****
20. The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared
Eccentrically layered yet simple in plot, the Swedish adaptation of Jonas Jonasson’s novel does a fine job in balancing satire with tenderness. Telling the story of Allan Karlsson (Robert Gustafsson), a 100-year-old explosive enthusiast...
- 6/3/2015
- by Staff
- SoundOnSight
It is hard to trust a cop in a noir.
This is still true in the U.K. trailer for Black Coal, Thin Ice. The film won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival last year and is starting to make its way to both U.K. and U.S. distributions. It comes from writer/director Diao Yinan.
The film follows an ex-cop who looks for redemption when a serial killer, at the heart of gruesome coal-plant murder he couldn’t solve years before, strikes again. It stars Liao Fan, Gwei Lun, Mei and Wang Xuebing.
Our own Neal Dhand caught the film at Tribeca and called it ‘a gorgeous, meticulous, wryly funny police critique couched in thriller terms.’
The first trailer seems to sell that idea also as the stylish film noir look seems to play well with this thrilling story. Yinan seems to have captured the despair...
This is still true in the U.K. trailer for Black Coal, Thin Ice. The film won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival last year and is starting to make its way to both U.K. and U.S. distributions. It comes from writer/director Diao Yinan.
The film follows an ex-cop who looks for redemption when a serial killer, at the heart of gruesome coal-plant murder he couldn’t solve years before, strikes again. It stars Liao Fan, Gwei Lun, Mei and Wang Xuebing.
Our own Neal Dhand caught the film at Tribeca and called it ‘a gorgeous, meticulous, wryly funny police critique couched in thriller terms.’
The first trailer seems to sell that idea also as the stylish film noir look seems to play well with this thrilling story. Yinan seems to have captured the despair...
- 6/2/2015
- by Zach Dennis
- SoundOnSight
Léolo
Directed by Jean-Claude Lauzon
Canada, 1992
Jean-Claude Lauzon’s semi-autobiographical Léolo is not for the squeamish. This isn’t horror, blood and guts stuff. It’s a film with a smell and a texture.
Leo Lauzon (Mazime Collin) lives in a crowded Montreal apartment with his largely insane family, but spends most of his time in his imagination as the Sicilian Leolo Lozone, bizarrely conceived by a tomato, and entirely in awe of the world around him.
Léolo is obsessed with body parts and secretions. There’s an emphasis on liquids, fecal matter, and colossus bodies. Characters eat, things squish and slide. It’s a mélange that sometimes verges on the uncomfortable, but is always tangible – it has the feeling of concrete memory, not the stuff of distant nostalgia.
One bit of Léolo’s voiceover sums the film up nicely: “I was always divided by me desire to vomit and my desire to jerk off.
Directed by Jean-Claude Lauzon
Canada, 1992
Jean-Claude Lauzon’s semi-autobiographical Léolo is not for the squeamish. This isn’t horror, blood and guts stuff. It’s a film with a smell and a texture.
Leo Lauzon (Mazime Collin) lives in a crowded Montreal apartment with his largely insane family, but spends most of his time in his imagination as the Sicilian Leolo Lozone, bizarrely conceived by a tomato, and entirely in awe of the world around him.
Léolo is obsessed with body parts and secretions. There’s an emphasis on liquids, fecal matter, and colossus bodies. Characters eat, things squish and slide. It’s a mélange that sometimes verges on the uncomfortable, but is always tangible – it has the feeling of concrete memory, not the stuff of distant nostalgia.
One bit of Léolo’s voiceover sums the film up nicely: “I was always divided by me desire to vomit and my desire to jerk off.
- 4/6/2015
- by Neal Dhand
- SoundOnSight
It Follows
Directed by David Robert Mitchell
USA, 2014
Is David Robert Mitchell’s atmospheric horror film It Follows parody? Its ambiguous decade could be the heyday of ‘80s American horror, replete with tube TVs, a very retro-looking aboveground pool, and costuming that’s very Blue Velvet. But then there’s a reading device that looks like a rather chic Kindle
There’s the slow-walking, silent killer, and the equation famously satirized in Scream: sex = death (and also, counter-intuitively to that trope, sex = life). But there’s also a prevailing sense of loneliness and characters that play everything straight-faced and never for a laugh.
Much of Mitchell’s gorgeously staged, formalist film plays out both ways: it’s at once satire (or homage) and new-school, serious-minded horror.
19 year-old Jay (Maika Monroe) has a great new boyfriend in Hugh (Jake Weary). They take things slow, but finally sleep together on a lazy fall night.
Directed by David Robert Mitchell
USA, 2014
Is David Robert Mitchell’s atmospheric horror film It Follows parody? Its ambiguous decade could be the heyday of ‘80s American horror, replete with tube TVs, a very retro-looking aboveground pool, and costuming that’s very Blue Velvet. But then there’s a reading device that looks like a rather chic Kindle
There’s the slow-walking, silent killer, and the equation famously satirized in Scream: sex = death (and also, counter-intuitively to that trope, sex = life). But there’s also a prevailing sense of loneliness and characters that play everything straight-faced and never for a laugh.
Much of Mitchell’s gorgeously staged, formalist film plays out both ways: it’s at once satire (or homage) and new-school, serious-minded horror.
19 year-old Jay (Maika Monroe) has a great new boyfriend in Hugh (Jake Weary). They take things slow, but finally sleep together on a lazy fall night.
- 3/2/2015
- by Neal Dhand
- SoundOnSight
I spoke with Zero Motivation director Talya Lavie about mixing genres and surrealism in her debut feature film
Neal Dhand: Did you always consider this a comedy? There are some rather dark moments – sexual violence and suicide – that could easily move this into darker territory. Were they always in the script?
Talya Lavie: The film is defined as a “dark comedy”, but while writing the script, I didn’t want to constrain myself in a specific genre. I put a large scale of emotions in it and the scenes you mentioned were there from the first draft of the script. I was actually interested in mixing different spirits in this film: humor, sadness, nonsense and tragedy.
Nd: Do you consider those scenes mentioned above to be unique to a female-military perspective?
Tl: Since the main characters of the film are women and I’m a female director, I...
Neal Dhand: Did you always consider this a comedy? There are some rather dark moments – sexual violence and suicide – that could easily move this into darker territory. Were they always in the script?
Talya Lavie: The film is defined as a “dark comedy”, but while writing the script, I didn’t want to constrain myself in a specific genre. I put a large scale of emotions in it and the scenes you mentioned were there from the first draft of the script. I was actually interested in mixing different spirits in this film: humor, sadness, nonsense and tragedy.
Nd: Do you consider those scenes mentioned above to be unique to a female-military perspective?
Tl: Since the main characters of the film are women and I’m a female director, I...
- 2/28/2015
- by Neal Dhand
- SoundOnSight
40. Night Moves
Since 2006, Kelly Reichardt has found a way to reach inside of the hearts of her audiences, plucking out strings one by one with desolate re-imaginations of the American Pacific Northwest, seen through the eyes of people not so different than ourselves. With Meek’s Cutoff, she departed from her typical genre and moved in to the Old West, but you could still see her stark realism, perfectly imagined on-screen. Now, Reichardt has shifted gears again, this time to present day (still in the Pacific Northwest), following three environmental activists as they plan to blow up a dam. But this time Reichardt has eschewed all sense of dry, dirty characterization for a much more flowing story where the characters emerge from their settings more fully. It’s still methodical, but somewhere in between the planning and heist itself, Reichardt’s star Jesse Eisenberg finds notes we haven’t seen...
Since 2006, Kelly Reichardt has found a way to reach inside of the hearts of her audiences, plucking out strings one by one with desolate re-imaginations of the American Pacific Northwest, seen through the eyes of people not so different than ourselves. With Meek’s Cutoff, she departed from her typical genre and moved in to the Old West, but you could still see her stark realism, perfectly imagined on-screen. Now, Reichardt has shifted gears again, this time to present day (still in the Pacific Northwest), following three environmental activists as they plan to blow up a dam. But this time Reichardt has eschewed all sense of dry, dirty characterization for a much more flowing story where the characters emerge from their settings more fully. It’s still methodical, but somewhere in between the planning and heist itself, Reichardt’s star Jesse Eisenberg finds notes we haven’t seen...
- 12/28/2014
- by Staff
- SoundOnSight
Good People
Written for the screen by Kelly Masterson
Directed by Henrik Ruben Genz
USA, 2014
Tom and Anna Wright (James Franco and Kate Hudson) are a financially-struggling American couple giving UK life a try. The money from a robbery-gone-wrong ends up in their basement and they make the ill-fated decision to hold onto it, unaware that the cash will bring two separate criminal gangs and a worn police detective charging into their lives.
Good People plays out like a combination of A Simple Plan and Shallow Grave, though it has neither the cold irony of the former nor the sweaty shiftiness of the latter. Still, director Henrik Ruben Genz’s stateside debut is a capable thriller with sequences of strong suspense.
The opening scene may in fact be the strongest. Jack Witkowski (Sam Spruell) and crew prepare to rob a stash of heroin from drug importer Khan (Omar Sy). Genz...
Written for the screen by Kelly Masterson
Directed by Henrik Ruben Genz
USA, 2014
Tom and Anna Wright (James Franco and Kate Hudson) are a financially-struggling American couple giving UK life a try. The money from a robbery-gone-wrong ends up in their basement and they make the ill-fated decision to hold onto it, unaware that the cash will bring two separate criminal gangs and a worn police detective charging into their lives.
Good People plays out like a combination of A Simple Plan and Shallow Grave, though it has neither the cold irony of the former nor the sweaty shiftiness of the latter. Still, director Henrik Ruben Genz’s stateside debut is a capable thriller with sequences of strong suspense.
The opening scene may in fact be the strongest. Jack Witkowski (Sam Spruell) and crew prepare to rob a stash of heroin from drug importer Khan (Omar Sy). Genz...
- 9/25/2014
- by Neal Dhand
- SoundOnSight
15. Stranger by the Lake
Directed by Alain Guiraudie
Written by Alain Guiraudie
France
Though Stranger by the Lake premiered at last year’s Cannes Film Festival (and appeared on Sound On Sight’s best of 2013 list), it finally reached North American audiences in January of this year. Alain Guiraudie’s stunning noir-tinged thriller is set entirely against the backdrop of a secluded lake–known to locals as a popular gay cruising spot. A tale of murder complicated by intense sexual obsession (garnering equal parts praise and criticism for its frank depiction of unsimulated gay sex) it accomplishes the rare feat of subtly guiding the way we pay attention to details as we watch. The film’s deceptively simple geography is mapped out as much aurally (and orally) as visually. By the time of the pulse-pounding climax, Guiraudie has masterfully taken hold of all of our senses in an ever-tightening claustrophobic grip.
Directed by Alain Guiraudie
Written by Alain Guiraudie
France
Though Stranger by the Lake premiered at last year’s Cannes Film Festival (and appeared on Sound On Sight’s best of 2013 list), it finally reached North American audiences in January of this year. Alain Guiraudie’s stunning noir-tinged thriller is set entirely against the backdrop of a secluded lake–known to locals as a popular gay cruising spot. A tale of murder complicated by intense sexual obsession (garnering equal parts praise and criticism for its frank depiction of unsimulated gay sex) it accomplishes the rare feat of subtly guiding the way we pay attention to details as we watch. The film’s deceptively simple geography is mapped out as much aurally (and orally) as visually. By the time of the pulse-pounding climax, Guiraudie has masterfully taken hold of all of our senses in an ever-tightening claustrophobic grip.
- 7/1/2014
- by Ricky
- SoundOnSight
I spoke with Michael Lacanilao, the creator of the clever Stairwell video that’s been making the Internet rounds, about short-form filmmaking, YouTube videos, and realism. You can support Michael’s project via his Kickstarter page.
Neal Dhand: Your film is, in so many ways, a product of the YouTube generation: short attention spans and immediate payoff. How much of that informed the length and structure of the film? Did you feel that you needed to have a “reveal” or “surprise” early in the video in the event that some impatient viewers might not make it to the end?
Michael Lacanilao: We actually decided not to worry too much about hooking the audience in early. We simply asked: What would a university science show look like, and how would this particular episode, which happens to feature the endless stairwell, unfold in actuality? The conceit is that a brilliant...
Neal Dhand: Your film is, in so many ways, a product of the YouTube generation: short attention spans and immediate payoff. How much of that informed the length and structure of the film? Did you feel that you needed to have a “reveal” or “surprise” early in the video in the event that some impatient viewers might not make it to the end?
Michael Lacanilao: We actually decided not to worry too much about hooking the audience in early. We simply asked: What would a university science show look like, and how would this particular episode, which happens to feature the endless stairwell, unfold in actuality? The conceit is that a brilliant...
- 5/9/2014
- by Neal Dhand
- SoundOnSight
The Tribeca Film Festival, which was founded in 2002 by Jane Rosenthal, Robert De Niro and Craig Hatkoff, in response to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center – has continued to grow and impress each year with their incredible line-up. Sound On Sight has had the privilege to cover the fest for five years now, and so I asked our writers who attended this year, to list their favourite film. Considering the abundance of riches, this was no easy task. In other words, take note of these films, and put them on your list of essential viewing.
****
Traitors
Among perfect pacing, thrilling suspense, and a tight script, Traitors is a good-looking film due to Gullette’s collaboration with cinematographer Niko Tavernise. After making films with Darren Aronofsky at Harvard, Gullette went on to play and share story credit on Aronofsky’s debut feature Pi. Through Aronofsky, Gullette went on to develop a relation with Tavernise,...
****
Traitors
Among perfect pacing, thrilling suspense, and a tight script, Traitors is a good-looking film due to Gullette’s collaboration with cinematographer Niko Tavernise. After making films with Darren Aronofsky at Harvard, Gullette went on to play and share story credit on Aronofsky’s debut feature Pi. Through Aronofsky, Gullette went on to develop a relation with Tavernise,...
- 5/2/2014
- by Staff
- SoundOnSight
Black Coal, Thin Ice
Directed by Diao Yinan
China, 2014
Diao Yinan’s Black Coal, Thin Ice is a gorgeous, meticulous, wryly funny police critique couched in thriller terms.
Police officer Zhang Zili (Liao Fan) has a rough go of it from the outset. He parts ways with his ex-wife after a pitiful attempt to (literally) hold onto her and he’s the last man standing in a horrific shooting, the product of a bumbling attempted arrest. Flash forward and he’s a lowly security guard and a drunk on the case of the same serial killer whose trail he followed 5 years prior.
While Black Coal, Thin Ice may play as a murder mystery from its first severed-limb frames, the noir sensibility is less about plot than mood. At the forefront of Yinan’s mind is social commentary. It’s not for poor directing that a hapless, over-confident cop gets slashed...
Directed by Diao Yinan
China, 2014
Diao Yinan’s Black Coal, Thin Ice is a gorgeous, meticulous, wryly funny police critique couched in thriller terms.
Police officer Zhang Zili (Liao Fan) has a rough go of it from the outset. He parts ways with his ex-wife after a pitiful attempt to (literally) hold onto her and he’s the last man standing in a horrific shooting, the product of a bumbling attempted arrest. Flash forward and he’s a lowly security guard and a drunk on the case of the same serial killer whose trail he followed 5 years prior.
While Black Coal, Thin Ice may play as a murder mystery from its first severed-limb frames, the noir sensibility is less about plot than mood. At the forefront of Yinan’s mind is social commentary. It’s not for poor directing that a hapless, over-confident cop gets slashed...
- 5/1/2014
- by Neal Dhand
- SoundOnSight
I Won’t Come Back
Directed by Ilmar Raag
Russia, 2014
Anya (Polina Pushkaruk) is an orphan on the track to success. She receives top marks in school and makes her way into graduate school as a professor’s assistant. When an old friend, Dima (Sergey Yatsenyuk), gets her into trouble with the police she goes on the run, meeting a young girl, Christina (Vika Lobacheva) along the way.
The second half of I Won’t Come Back is far stronger than the beginning, which features an affair that plays as close to implausible, a drug deal arrest staged unfortunately comically, and two leads whose interactions feel forced and redundant.
Luckily, things change once Andrey (Andrey Astrakhantsev), the older man with whom Anya is infatuated, is absent from the film and the stakes are raised on Anya and Christina’s journey. Two particular scenes – one where Christina is very nearly, and casually,...
Directed by Ilmar Raag
Russia, 2014
Anya (Polina Pushkaruk) is an orphan on the track to success. She receives top marks in school and makes her way into graduate school as a professor’s assistant. When an old friend, Dima (Sergey Yatsenyuk), gets her into trouble with the police she goes on the run, meeting a young girl, Christina (Vika Lobacheva) along the way.
The second half of I Won’t Come Back is far stronger than the beginning, which features an affair that plays as close to implausible, a drug deal arrest staged unfortunately comically, and two leads whose interactions feel forced and redundant.
Luckily, things change once Andrey (Andrey Astrakhantsev), the older man with whom Anya is infatuated, is absent from the film and the stakes are raised on Anya and Christina’s journey. Two particular scenes – one where Christina is very nearly, and casually,...
- 5/1/2014
- by Neal Dhand
- SoundOnSight
I spoke with Andrew T. Betzer about his new film, Young Bodies Heal Quickly, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.
Neal Dhand: Probably for obvious reasons, this film reminds me a lot of your short, John Wayne Hated Horses. Was that the impetus for making it? Did you expand from the original script or write an entirely new one?
Andrew T. Betzer: I feel that all of my shorts are part of a body of work that is reflective of my preoccupations on a whole…both conscious and subconscious. The script for Young Bodies was totally original, but perhaps taking place in the same world as the dad and son from John Wayne. Who knows, maybe they were neighbors? Perhaps attended some of the same re-enactment events?
Nd: Like in John Wayne, Young Bodies Heal Quickly deals with the relationship between an older man and a younger child.
Neal Dhand: Probably for obvious reasons, this film reminds me a lot of your short, John Wayne Hated Horses. Was that the impetus for making it? Did you expand from the original script or write an entirely new one?
Andrew T. Betzer: I feel that all of my shorts are part of a body of work that is reflective of my preoccupations on a whole…both conscious and subconscious. The script for Young Bodies was totally original, but perhaps taking place in the same world as the dad and son from John Wayne. Who knows, maybe they were neighbors? Perhaps attended some of the same re-enactment events?
Nd: Like in John Wayne, Young Bodies Heal Quickly deals with the relationship between an older man and a younger child.
- 4/30/2014
- by Neal Dhand
- SoundOnSight
Love and Engineering
Directed by Tonislav Hristov
Finland, Germany, and Bulgaria, 2014
The apartments of the four main subjects of Tonislav Hristov’s documentary Love and Engineering are illuminating. Literally. Each Finnish flat glows with at least three computer and TV screens, always displaying a video game. Hristov’s question is age-old – can love be calculated? – but the approach is entirely 21st-century. Engineer Atanas Boev uses formulas, mechanically-inclined metaphors, and scientific studies to help find his hapless friends love.
Both nerd-funny and heartfelt, Love and Engineering cracks plenty of jokes but never mocks its subjects. At the heart of the narrative is Todor Vlaev, the most outgoing and stylish of the geek group, but also, perhaps, the most susceptible to the perils of infatuation and dating. Hristov captures Todor in disparate states of dreamy elation and absolute despondence and the young man feels realer than an internet profile might suggest.
Hristov...
Directed by Tonislav Hristov
Finland, Germany, and Bulgaria, 2014
The apartments of the four main subjects of Tonislav Hristov’s documentary Love and Engineering are illuminating. Literally. Each Finnish flat glows with at least three computer and TV screens, always displaying a video game. Hristov’s question is age-old – can love be calculated? – but the approach is entirely 21st-century. Engineer Atanas Boev uses formulas, mechanically-inclined metaphors, and scientific studies to help find his hapless friends love.
Both nerd-funny and heartfelt, Love and Engineering cracks plenty of jokes but never mocks its subjects. At the heart of the narrative is Todor Vlaev, the most outgoing and stylish of the geek group, but also, perhaps, the most susceptible to the perils of infatuation and dating. Hristov captures Todor in disparate states of dreamy elation and absolute despondence and the young man feels realer than an internet profile might suggest.
Hristov...
- 4/26/2014
- by Neal Dhand
- SoundOnSight
Life Partners
Written by Susanna Fogel and Joni Lefkowitz
Directed by Susanna Fogel
USA, 2014
You’ve seen Life Partners before. While it isn’t always a bad thing that the late-20-something romantic comedy narrative seems overly familiar, its tropes eventually detract.
Sasha (Leighton Meester) and Paige (Gillian Jacobs) are best friends. Sasha is gay, Paige is straight. They call each other husband and wife, never miss America’s Next Top Model, and bemoan their respective dating woes regularly. When Paige starts dating Tim (Adam Brody), one newfound relation threatens to tear the old one apart.
Writers Susanna Fogel and Joni Lefkowitz have a funny script filled with great one-liners, and hilarious observations (of, particularly, slogan T-shirts). Supporting actor Beth Dover, as Jenn, the lesbian who thinks everything is funny even when it’s really, really not, and Kate McKinnon in an all-too-brief cameo as an egotistical star of To...
Written by Susanna Fogel and Joni Lefkowitz
Directed by Susanna Fogel
USA, 2014
You’ve seen Life Partners before. While it isn’t always a bad thing that the late-20-something romantic comedy narrative seems overly familiar, its tropes eventually detract.
Sasha (Leighton Meester) and Paige (Gillian Jacobs) are best friends. Sasha is gay, Paige is straight. They call each other husband and wife, never miss America’s Next Top Model, and bemoan their respective dating woes regularly. When Paige starts dating Tim (Adam Brody), one newfound relation threatens to tear the old one apart.
Writers Susanna Fogel and Joni Lefkowitz have a funny script filled with great one-liners, and hilarious observations (of, particularly, slogan T-shirts). Supporting actor Beth Dover, as Jenn, the lesbian who thinks everything is funny even when it’s really, really not, and Kate McKinnon in an all-too-brief cameo as an egotistical star of To...
- 4/25/2014
- by Neal Dhand
- SoundOnSight
Manos Sucias
Directed by Josef Kubota Wladyka
Colombia and USA, 2014
Jacobo (Jarlin Javier Martinez), a world-hardened but innocent fisherman, and naïve, 19 year-old Delio (Cristian James Abvincula) set out on a dangerous drug mission on the coast of Colombia in Josef Kubota Wladyka’s directorial debut. This film is reminiscent of the recent La Jaula de Oro: young lives searching for escape, caught amidst a harrowing circle of inevitable violence and peril. Wladyka shoots entirely on-location and it shows. There’s a real sense of place here, made more authentic by small touches: children jumping from waterside bungalows into the bay as a boat approaches; makeshift motorcycle-driven railroad carts, their wheels precariously hugging the thin strips of train-track metal; freestyling teenagers on the street.
Like Jacobo and Delio, Wladyka and cinematographer Alan Blanco’s camera moves frequently forward. It plows through choppy waters, creeps across calm marshes, hurtles on railroad tracks and into tunnels,...
Directed by Josef Kubota Wladyka
Colombia and USA, 2014
Jacobo (Jarlin Javier Martinez), a world-hardened but innocent fisherman, and naïve, 19 year-old Delio (Cristian James Abvincula) set out on a dangerous drug mission on the coast of Colombia in Josef Kubota Wladyka’s directorial debut. This film is reminiscent of the recent La Jaula de Oro: young lives searching for escape, caught amidst a harrowing circle of inevitable violence and peril. Wladyka shoots entirely on-location and it shows. There’s a real sense of place here, made more authentic by small touches: children jumping from waterside bungalows into the bay as a boat approaches; makeshift motorcycle-driven railroad carts, their wheels precariously hugging the thin strips of train-track metal; freestyling teenagers on the street.
Like Jacobo and Delio, Wladyka and cinematographer Alan Blanco’s camera moves frequently forward. It plows through choppy waters, creeps across calm marshes, hurtles on railroad tracks and into tunnels,...
- 4/25/2014
- by Neal Dhand
- SoundOnSight
Child’s Pose
Directed by Calin Peter Netzer
Romania, 2013
Continuing in the tradition of recent dominant cinematic mothers, ranging from Hye-ja Kim in Joon-ho Bong’s Mother to Jacki Weaver in David Michôd’s Animal Kingdom, Luminita Gheorghiu casts an impressively controlling maternal shadow in Calin Peter Netzer’s Child’s Pose as Cornelia Keneres.
When Cornelia’s son Barbu (Bogdan Dumitrache) strikes and kills a child with his car, Cornelia sees the tragedy as an opportunity to steer her son’s life in the opposite direction of what she believes to be wayward and away from her.
Child’s Pose has several of the trademarks of the films of Netzer’s Romanian peers, making up what many refer to as a Romanian New Wave: long takes, class and bureaucratic commentary, abrupt cuts from scene to scene. It’s Netzer’s anxious camera, constantly panning, tilting, and zooming, that sets it apart.
Directed by Calin Peter Netzer
Romania, 2013
Continuing in the tradition of recent dominant cinematic mothers, ranging from Hye-ja Kim in Joon-ho Bong’s Mother to Jacki Weaver in David Michôd’s Animal Kingdom, Luminita Gheorghiu casts an impressively controlling maternal shadow in Calin Peter Netzer’s Child’s Pose as Cornelia Keneres.
When Cornelia’s son Barbu (Bogdan Dumitrache) strikes and kills a child with his car, Cornelia sees the tragedy as an opportunity to steer her son’s life in the opposite direction of what she believes to be wayward and away from her.
Child’s Pose has several of the trademarks of the films of Netzer’s Romanian peers, making up what many refer to as a Romanian New Wave: long takes, class and bureaucratic commentary, abrupt cuts from scene to scene. It’s Netzer’s anxious camera, constantly panning, tilting, and zooming, that sets it apart.
- 4/12/2014
- by Neal Dhand
- SoundOnSight
Omar
Directed by Hany Abu-Assad
Palestine, 2013
Omar (Adam Bakri in his feature-film debut) considers himself a Palestinian freedom fighter. The Israeli authorities in the central West Bank consider him a terrorist. After participating in an assassination under the guidance of Tarek (Iyad Hoorani) and alongside his childhood friend Amjad (Samer Bisharat) he’s arrested and convinced to work as an informer.
The most thrilling part of this thriller is, oddly enough, not the action and suspense. It’s the love story. That’s rare for the genre, which usually lets any romantic angle stand to the side as filler.
Omar has long loved Nadia (Leem Lubany, the standout performer), Tarek’s younger sister. Their relationship, like the film, begins mostly silently with exchanged looks and notes before becoming something close to melodrama toward the middle of the second act. When Amjad comes into the picture as a potential suitor the plot twists,...
Directed by Hany Abu-Assad
Palestine, 2013
Omar (Adam Bakri in his feature-film debut) considers himself a Palestinian freedom fighter. The Israeli authorities in the central West Bank consider him a terrorist. After participating in an assassination under the guidance of Tarek (Iyad Hoorani) and alongside his childhood friend Amjad (Samer Bisharat) he’s arrested and convinced to work as an informer.
The most thrilling part of this thriller is, oddly enough, not the action and suspense. It’s the love story. That’s rare for the genre, which usually lets any romantic angle stand to the side as filler.
Omar has long loved Nadia (Leem Lubany, the standout performer), Tarek’s younger sister. Their relationship, like the film, begins mostly silently with exchanged looks and notes before becoming something close to melodrama toward the middle of the second act. When Amjad comes into the picture as a potential suitor the plot twists,...
- 2/21/2014
- by Neal Dhand
- SoundOnSight
Coming a year on the heels of Mash, one of his best known films, Robert Altman’s Western McCabe & Mrs. Miller certified the director as a genre revisionist. The opening strains of Leonard Cohen’s “The Stranger Song” lilt underneath a panning wide shot showing McCabe (Warren Beatty in his finest role), unrecognizable beneath bundled furs and astride a donkey, approaching a modest camp. The slow, lyrical pacing is akin to neither the golden-era Hollywood Westerns of John Ford or Howard Hawks, nor the ‘60s explosion of Spaghetti Westerns, emblemized by Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood. Cohen’s style is effortlessly poetic and in opposition to the bravado of Dimitri Tiomkin and the percussive bombast of Ennio Morricone; the protagonist introduction is without the fanfare of a John Wayne saunter or a Charles Bronson cold stare. Vilmos Zsigmond’s cinematography is of murky earth tones, dull snow, and Altman’s trademark slow zooms,...
- 1/27/2014
- by Neal Dhand
- SoundOnSight
Joel and Ethan Coen have built a reputation as two of the most visionary and idiosyncratic filmmakers working today. Dabbling in Film Noir to screwball comedy, from off-beat indies to big-budget studio pieces, their films are adored by critics and audiences alike. The two-man writer-director-producer-editor team, have long been regarded by cinephiles as masters of the craft. Choosing our favourite Coen Bros. film isn’t an easy task, but we asked our staff to rank their films from favourite to least favourite. The results were interesting, with Fargo running away with first place, and two of their 16 films not producing enough votes to justify making the cut (The Lady Killers, Intolerable Cruelty). Here are the results. Let us know which is your favourite Coen Bros. film?
****
13. Burn After Reading, 2008
Leave it to Joel and Ethan Coen to follow-up their award winning mammoth No Country for Old Men just a year later with the spry,...
****
13. Burn After Reading, 2008
Leave it to Joel and Ethan Coen to follow-up their award winning mammoth No Country for Old Men just a year later with the spry,...
- 1/24/2014
- by Ricky
- SoundOnSight
7. Leviafan (Andrey Zvyagintsev)
Andrey Zvyagintsev’s The Return and Elena were mysterious, slow-burning films. His 2014 entry, Leviafan, described by IMDb as “human insecurity in a ‘new country’” should mark a definite return to the Cannes Film Festival.
6. Winter Sleep (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s film Once Upon a Time in Anatolia was one of the best films of 2011, and Winter Sleep promises to be another philosophical brooder, full of dramatic wide shots.
5. Two Days, One Night (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne)
There aren’t many details for the new film by Cannes constants the Dardenne brothers, but a collaboration with Marion Cotillard is reason enough for excitement.
4. A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (Roy Andersson)
Few filmmakers are as unique, wryly funny, and assured as Roy Andersson. His Songs from the Second Floor is one of the best films of the 2000s, and the follow-up,...
Andrey Zvyagintsev’s The Return and Elena were mysterious, slow-burning films. His 2014 entry, Leviafan, described by IMDb as “human insecurity in a ‘new country’” should mark a definite return to the Cannes Film Festival.
6. Winter Sleep (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s film Once Upon a Time in Anatolia was one of the best films of 2011, and Winter Sleep promises to be another philosophical brooder, full of dramatic wide shots.
5. Two Days, One Night (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne)
There aren’t many details for the new film by Cannes constants the Dardenne brothers, but a collaboration with Marion Cotillard is reason enough for excitement.
4. A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (Roy Andersson)
Few filmmakers are as unique, wryly funny, and assured as Roy Andersson. His Songs from the Second Floor is one of the best films of the 2000s, and the follow-up,...
- 1/8/2014
- by Neal Dhand
- SoundOnSight
With Paolo Sorrentino’s latest film The Great Beauty (La grande bellezza) provoking strong reactions, both positive and negative, across the globe, Neal Dhand spoke to the man about his motivations behind making the film.
A lot has been made of The Great Beauty as a new La dolce vita. Are you conscious of a Fellini influence? Do you see your film as having any thematic relation to it?
La dolce vita is a masterpiece, and like all masterpieces, in some way, it alters our way of feeling, our perception of things. It is a movie that has burrowed away inside me for a long time. But La dolce vita is a masterpiece. La grande bellezza is only a movie.
The film seems to me to have more in common with Buñuel or Manoel de Oliveira, particularly in its treatment of religious figures – a Cardinal who would rather chase skunks...
A lot has been made of The Great Beauty as a new La dolce vita. Are you conscious of a Fellini influence? Do you see your film as having any thematic relation to it?
La dolce vita is a masterpiece, and like all masterpieces, in some way, it alters our way of feeling, our perception of things. It is a movie that has burrowed away inside me for a long time. But La dolce vita is a masterpiece. La grande bellezza is only a movie.
The film seems to me to have more in common with Buñuel or Manoel de Oliveira, particularly in its treatment of religious figures – a Cardinal who would rather chase skunks...
- 12/3/2013
- by Neal Dhand
- SoundOnSight
The Good German
Written by Paul Attanasio
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
USA, 2006
During the mid-2000s, between his exercise in low-budget filmmaking and new modes of exhibition with Bubble, and his big-budget ensemble Ocean’s Thirteen, Steven Soderbergh made a mid-budget return to 1940s style with The Good German.
Announcing the unambiguous Casablanca reference with a mimicking poster, Soderbergh’s black-and-white film is full of classic Hollywood soft-lighting and sinister wartime figures.
The Good German fits squarely alongside two previous Soderbergh efforts in its near-revisionist status: Underneath and Solaris, which are both bold takes on classic source material. Underneath reworks Robert Siodmak’s Criss Cross into a color-gelled suburban world. Solaris is a re-adaptation of Stanislaw Lem’s 1961 novel, moving the film closer to a relationship drama than Andrei Tarkovsky’s famous 1972 adaptation was.
These two films point toward Soderbergh’s willingness to take on and reimagine classic tropes. Though...
Written by Paul Attanasio
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
USA, 2006
During the mid-2000s, between his exercise in low-budget filmmaking and new modes of exhibition with Bubble, and his big-budget ensemble Ocean’s Thirteen, Steven Soderbergh made a mid-budget return to 1940s style with The Good German.
Announcing the unambiguous Casablanca reference with a mimicking poster, Soderbergh’s black-and-white film is full of classic Hollywood soft-lighting and sinister wartime figures.
The Good German fits squarely alongside two previous Soderbergh efforts in its near-revisionist status: Underneath and Solaris, which are both bold takes on classic source material. Underneath reworks Robert Siodmak’s Criss Cross into a color-gelled suburban world. Solaris is a re-adaptation of Stanislaw Lem’s 1961 novel, moving the film closer to a relationship drama than Andrei Tarkovsky’s famous 1972 adaptation was.
These two films point toward Soderbergh’s willingness to take on and reimagine classic tropes. Though...
- 11/12/2013
- by Neal Dhand
- SoundOnSight
Blue Ruin
Directed by Jeremy Saulnier
Philadelphia Film Festival
United States, 2013
Jeremy Saulnier’s sophomore work is an impressive display of slow burn revenge.
Dwight (Macon Blair) is an unassuming vagrant who receives startling news: the man who murdered his parents has been released from prison early. Dwight goes on an improbable quest for revenge, throwing his quiet existence into violent disorder.
Blue Ruin features some clever writing in reworking structural genre tropes. Another revenge film would set its sights on a target and go full Death Wish until a bloody denouement. Instead, Blue Ruin snuffs out its major target in the first act, throwing things for a structural loop and forcing Dwight into increasingly dangerous and unpredictable situations.
Macon Blair plays Dwight as monotone and soft. He starts with a ragged beard and the moment when it’s shaved off, revealing Dwight as a baby-faced ‘anyman,’ who seems more...
Directed by Jeremy Saulnier
Philadelphia Film Festival
United States, 2013
Jeremy Saulnier’s sophomore work is an impressive display of slow burn revenge.
Dwight (Macon Blair) is an unassuming vagrant who receives startling news: the man who murdered his parents has been released from prison early. Dwight goes on an improbable quest for revenge, throwing his quiet existence into violent disorder.
Blue Ruin features some clever writing in reworking structural genre tropes. Another revenge film would set its sights on a target and go full Death Wish until a bloody denouement. Instead, Blue Ruin snuffs out its major target in the first act, throwing things for a structural loop and forcing Dwight into increasingly dangerous and unpredictable situations.
Macon Blair plays Dwight as monotone and soft. He starts with a ragged beard and the moment when it’s shaved off, revealing Dwight as a baby-faced ‘anyman,’ who seems more...
- 10/26/2013
- by Neal Dhand
- SoundOnSight
La Jaula de Oro
Directed by Diego Quemada-Díez
Philadelphia Film Festival
Mexico, 2013
A harrowing immigration-road movie bolstered by three beautifully natural adolescent performances frames Diego Quemada-Díez as a director to watch.
Teenagers Juan (Brandon López), Sara (Karen Martínez), and Samuel (Carlos Chajon) set out from Guatemala to cross the border into Los Angeles. Along the way they pick up Chauk (Rodolfo Domínguez), a taciturn Indian who changes the dynamics of the group as both he and Juan vie for Sara’s attention.
The four leads of Quemada-Díez’s first feature-film are startling strong, made all the more so by the fact that each young actor is making his and her screen debut. While Brandon López starts out as a one-note display of burgeoning masculinity, his Juan soon gains deeper complexities in a nuanced, painful performance from the young actor. Domínguez’s is a deceptively difficult role. Chauk’s Spanish is limited,...
Directed by Diego Quemada-Díez
Philadelphia Film Festival
Mexico, 2013
A harrowing immigration-road movie bolstered by three beautifully natural adolescent performances frames Diego Quemada-Díez as a director to watch.
Teenagers Juan (Brandon López), Sara (Karen Martínez), and Samuel (Carlos Chajon) set out from Guatemala to cross the border into Los Angeles. Along the way they pick up Chauk (Rodolfo Domínguez), a taciturn Indian who changes the dynamics of the group as both he and Juan vie for Sara’s attention.
The four leads of Quemada-Díez’s first feature-film are startling strong, made all the more so by the fact that each young actor is making his and her screen debut. While Brandon López starts out as a one-note display of burgeoning masculinity, his Juan soon gains deeper complexities in a nuanced, painful performance from the young actor. Domínguez’s is a deceptively difficult role. Chauk’s Spanish is limited,...
- 10/26/2013
- by Neal Dhand
- SoundOnSight
As one monthly theme begins, another ends. The former is, of course, Sound on Sight’s monthlong dedication to all films that scare, terrify, or spook us in conjunction with October being the scariest month of the year. (That’s a scientific fact, folks.) The latter is our look at the works of Wong Kar-Wai, inspired by his latest film, The Grandmaster. Though September’s just now ended, a handful of your intrepid Sound on Sight contributors, as well as our benevolent editor-in-chief/overlord, came together to vote on Wong Kar-Wai’s best films, his worst, and everything in between. What follows are capsule reviews of each of his films, listed in order based on the Sound on Sight’s staffwide vote. What’s our favorite Wong Kar-Wai film? Well, read on through the entire list, and you’ll find out. Enjoy!
****
10. My Blueberry Nights
Stylistically at odds with itself,...
****
10. My Blueberry Nights
Stylistically at odds with itself,...
- 10/12/2013
- by Josh Spiegel
- SoundOnSight
The etymologic history of the giallo sub-genre is well-documented by now. Giallo, Italian for yellow, refers to the cheap mystery books that at least partially inspired a cross-section of gruesome murder films from the likes of Mario Bava, Dario Argento, and Lucio Fulci. Bava’s The Girl Who Knew Too Much from 1963 is commonly referenced as the first giallo, where entries from Argento like Profondo Rosso take many of Bava’s tropes and play up the cinematic flair.
While the influence of Val Lewton, Alfred Hitchcock, and other known horror entities is unavoidable, giallos tend toward scare tactics and stylistic flourishes that diverge from those predecessors. Lewton’s expressionist films for Rko in the 1940s favor heavy shadow (sometimes to hide low production value) and an emphasis on the unseen. Hitchcock’s master of suspense moniker, on full display in The Birds, is deserved for his emphasis on the build-up...
While the influence of Val Lewton, Alfred Hitchcock, and other known horror entities is unavoidable, giallos tend toward scare tactics and stylistic flourishes that diverge from those predecessors. Lewton’s expressionist films for Rko in the 1940s favor heavy shadow (sometimes to hide low production value) and an emphasis on the unseen. Hitchcock’s master of suspense moniker, on full display in The Birds, is deserved for his emphasis on the build-up...
- 10/9/2013
- by Neal Dhand
- SoundOnSight
8: Jack the Giant Slayer
Although most of the story follows a predictable trajectory, there are some things to like. It’s enthusiastically acted and at times fun, but Jack the Giant Slayer also feels like it was made by a committee. It’s fast paced, energetic but also overwhelmed by digital effects. And it could be a great recommendation for children under the age of ten, only the CGI-heavy battle scenes, landed it with a PG-13 rating. Ultimately it’s an entertaining diversion but not something you’ll revisit ever again.
- Ricky D
7: Public Access
Playing with the A Face in the Crowd formula (including a sly “naming names” reference), Public Access is the film that started the Bryan Singer-Christopher McQuarrie collaboration. The Sundance splash follows Whiley Pritcher (Ron Marquette) as a preppy drifter who shows up in the idyllic town of Brewster to start...
Although most of the story follows a predictable trajectory, there are some things to like. It’s enthusiastically acted and at times fun, but Jack the Giant Slayer also feels like it was made by a committee. It’s fast paced, energetic but also overwhelmed by digital effects. And it could be a great recommendation for children under the age of ten, only the CGI-heavy battle scenes, landed it with a PG-13 rating. Ultimately it’s an entertaining diversion but not something you’ll revisit ever again.
- Ricky D
7: Public Access
Playing with the A Face in the Crowd formula (including a sly “naming names” reference), Public Access is the film that started the Bryan Singer-Christopher McQuarrie collaboration. The Sundance splash follows Whiley Pritcher (Ron Marquette) as a preppy drifter who shows up in the idyllic town of Brewster to start...
- 9/2/2013
- by Ricky
- SoundOnSight
I spoke with Joe Swanberg about performance and beer at a Philadelphia sneak peek of his new film Drinking Buddies, starring Jake Johnson, Olivia Wilde, Anna Kendrick, and Ron Livingston.
Neal Dhand: I really love the performances in this film. They’re so real and believable.
Joe Swanberg: I’ve always been into performance. With everything I’ve made, that’s where my loyalties have always been in terms of what’s important in the filmmaking process: performance, number one by a lot, everything else just in second place. In the movies where I did everything myself, if I made performance number one and everything was in a distant second place, and I was in charge of everything else, it meant it fell in a distant second place, too. Cinematography, production design, audio mix, I was like, “As long as the performances are good, they’ll carry the movie,...
Neal Dhand: I really love the performances in this film. They’re so real and believable.
Joe Swanberg: I’ve always been into performance. With everything I’ve made, that’s where my loyalties have always been in terms of what’s important in the filmmaking process: performance, number one by a lot, everything else just in second place. In the movies where I did everything myself, if I made performance number one and everything was in a distant second place, and I was in charge of everything else, it meant it fell in a distant second place, too. Cinematography, production design, audio mix, I was like, “As long as the performances are good, they’ll carry the movie,...
- 8/30/2013
- by Josh Spiegel
- SoundOnSight
We are now officially half way through the year and so I’ve asked our staff to vote for their favourite films released thus far. Hollywood blockbusters may have disappointed us, but thankfully we can always rely on independent filmmakers to create some truly inspiring films. Rounding out the special mentions is Terrence Malick’s To The Wonder, Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel, and Cate Shortland’s Lore – all missing the cut by a couple of points.
****
#15: Iron Man 3 (24 points)
Directed by Shane Black
Written by Drew Pearce & Shane Black
USA, 2013
Fun has become a slightly forgotten commodity in the summer blockbuster, with many studios and filmmakers now inspired by the efforts of directors like Christopher Nolan to be as grim as possible. The modern superhero often has to be angst-ridden or otherwise mentally scarred to make an impact on audiences, so it’s a pleasant surprise...
****
#15: Iron Man 3 (24 points)
Directed by Shane Black
Written by Drew Pearce & Shane Black
USA, 2013
Fun has become a slightly forgotten commodity in the summer blockbuster, with many studios and filmmakers now inspired by the efforts of directors like Christopher Nolan to be as grim as possible. The modern superhero often has to be angst-ridden or otherwise mentally scarred to make an impact on audiences, so it’s a pleasant surprise...
- 7/1/2013
- by Ricky
- SoundOnSight
Prince Avalanche
Directed by David Gordon Green
United States, 2013
Tonally, somewhat close to his effort 2003 All the Real Girls, David Gordon Green’s Prince Avalanche shows a more serious face than his recent run of comedies.
Alvin (Paul Rudd) and Lance (Emile Hirsch) are two highway workers spending their summer painting yellow lines and hammering in road signs. While the younger Lance spends his free time trying to get laid in town, Alvin espouses his best Thoreau axioms and writes letters to his girlfriend Madison, Lance’s sister.
It’s not only that the buddy script for Prince Avalanche is more earnest than all of Green’s work post-Snow Angels, it’s also that the director visually slows things down. Shots linger in Prince Avalanche for a greater duration than in anything from The Sitter or Pineapple Express. Green returns to a style that’s more expressive, using the...
Directed by David Gordon Green
United States, 2013
Tonally, somewhat close to his effort 2003 All the Real Girls, David Gordon Green’s Prince Avalanche shows a more serious face than his recent run of comedies.
Alvin (Paul Rudd) and Lance (Emile Hirsch) are two highway workers spending their summer painting yellow lines and hammering in road signs. While the younger Lance spends his free time trying to get laid in town, Alvin espouses his best Thoreau axioms and writes letters to his girlfriend Madison, Lance’s sister.
It’s not only that the buddy script for Prince Avalanche is more earnest than all of Green’s work post-Snow Angels, it’s also that the director visually slows things down. Shots linger in Prince Avalanche for a greater duration than in anything from The Sitter or Pineapple Express. Green returns to a style that’s more expressive, using the...
- 6/27/2013
- by Neal Dhand
- SoundOnSight
Self-taught writer-director Richard Linklater was among the most successful talents to emerge from the new wave of independent American filmmakers in the 1990s. Typically setting each of his movies during one 24-hour time period – and with non-formulaic narratives about seemingly random occurrences – Linklater’s work explored what he dubbed “the youth rebellion continuum.” In the early 1990s, his debut feature Slacker was hailed as something of a manifesto for Generation X, and ever since, the filmmaker has earned a loyal fan-base world wide with such hits as Dazed and Confused, Before Sunrise. As big fans of the filmmaker, the Sound On Sight staff decided to vote on our ten favourite films from the director.
Note: There was two ties.
****
10: Suburbia
Originally a play by performance-artist Eric Bogosian (who also wrote the script), Suburbia is a character driven mood piece, which delves into the hearts and minds of a group of young adults.
Note: There was two ties.
****
10: Suburbia
Originally a play by performance-artist Eric Bogosian (who also wrote the script), Suburbia is a character driven mood piece, which delves into the hearts and minds of a group of young adults.
- 6/18/2013
- by Ricky
- SoundOnSight
Elia Kazan is one of my top five favourite American filmmakers of all time, and so I decided to ask our staff to rank his films. If you are not yet familiar with the filmmakers work, now would be a good time to start. Kazan was one of the most honoured and influential directors in Broadway and Hollywood history and introduced a new generation of unknown young actors to the world, including Marlon Brando, James Dean, Warren Beatty, Carroll Baker, Julie Harris, Andy Griffith, Lee Remick, Rip Torn, Eli Wallach, Eva Marie Saint, Martin Balsam, Fred Gwynne, and Pat Hingle. Noted for drawing out the best dramatic performances from his cast, he directed 21 actors to Oscar nominations, resulting in nine wins. The source for his inspired directing was the revolutionary acting technique known as the Method, and Kazan quickly rose to prominence as the preeminent proponent of the technique. During his career,...
- 6/1/2013
- by Ricky
- SoundOnSight
Frances Ha
Directed by Noah Baumbach
United States, 2012
Frances Ha, Noah Baumbach’s follow-up to 2010’s Greenberg, shot on the sly in New York City, has all the feel of the (sometimes) dreaded mumblecore tag in its first 15 minutes, but quickly shakes the comparison to be a sweet, funny film that leans heavily on its star and co-writer Greta Gerwig.
Frances (Gerwig) can’t get her life together. 27 years old and everyone around her seems to be growing up much faster than she. She’s a dancer without a company, a traveler without a destination, and an aimless Brooklyn-ite without a best friend once long-time roommate and confidant Sophie (Mickey Sumner) moves on to bigger and better things.
Frances Ha is a simple narrative that should appeal to more than just the few niche audiences it seems immediately tailored towards. There’s the “I can totally relate” 20-somethings, the “I...
Directed by Noah Baumbach
United States, 2012
Frances Ha, Noah Baumbach’s follow-up to 2010’s Greenberg, shot on the sly in New York City, has all the feel of the (sometimes) dreaded mumblecore tag in its first 15 minutes, but quickly shakes the comparison to be a sweet, funny film that leans heavily on its star and co-writer Greta Gerwig.
Frances (Gerwig) can’t get her life together. 27 years old and everyone around her seems to be growing up much faster than she. She’s a dancer without a company, a traveler without a destination, and an aimless Brooklyn-ite without a best friend once long-time roommate and confidant Sophie (Mickey Sumner) moves on to bigger and better things.
Frances Ha is a simple narrative that should appeal to more than just the few niche audiences it seems immediately tailored towards. There’s the “I can totally relate” 20-somethings, the “I...
- 5/29/2013
- by Neal Dhand
- SoundOnSight
Ever since his introduction onto the world stage with Shallow Grave, Danny Boyle managed to carve a unique path without having to give in to studio pressures. He is always reinventing himself, always dabbling in new genres and working with new technology – and despite a string of less-noteworthy Hollywood films, Boyle returned in 2008 with Slumdog Millionaire, which went on to win eight Oscars, and 127 Hours in 2010, which was nominated for six. Despite the recent acclaim, Boyle has always created frantic, highly-stylized films with characters often struggling with human vices and weakness. After directing the opening and closing ceremonies of The Olympic games, which nearly a billion people watched, Boyle is back with his latest project Trance, a psychological thriller in which a hypnotherapist helps an art auctioneer recover memories of where he stashed a stolen Goya. With the release of Trance, I asked our staff to list the films of Danny Boyle,...
- 4/14/2013
- by Ricky
- SoundOnSight
Simon Killer
Directed by Antonio Campos
United States, 2012
Philadelphia Film Festival
We probably see the back of characters’ heads nearly as frequently as their faces in Antonio Campos’ follow-up to his 2008 brooder, Afterschool. Favoring a handheld, following camera, a pulsing synth soundtrack that cuts abruptly in and out, slow zooms that seem to be fast becoming a trademark of BorderLine Films, and ambiguous red-light transitions, Simon Killer seems culled equally from Frank Perry character studies and the sinister commonplace dread of a Bertrand Tavernier thriller.
Simon (Brady Corbet) is a college graduate (or so he says) roaming aimlessly in Paris. Recently broken up from his unseen American girlfriend, Simon takes up with a prostitute Noura (Mati Diop). The two spend their days having sex and scheming to rip off Noura’s clients.
Little is explained in Simon Killer. Whether Simon is entirely unreliable is completely up for debate, and left...
Directed by Antonio Campos
United States, 2012
Philadelphia Film Festival
We probably see the back of characters’ heads nearly as frequently as their faces in Antonio Campos’ follow-up to his 2008 brooder, Afterschool. Favoring a handheld, following camera, a pulsing synth soundtrack that cuts abruptly in and out, slow zooms that seem to be fast becoming a trademark of BorderLine Films, and ambiguous red-light transitions, Simon Killer seems culled equally from Frank Perry character studies and the sinister commonplace dread of a Bertrand Tavernier thriller.
Simon (Brady Corbet) is a college graduate (or so he says) roaming aimlessly in Paris. Recently broken up from his unseen American girlfriend, Simon takes up with a prostitute Noura (Mati Diop). The two spend their days having sex and scheming to rip off Noura’s clients.
Little is explained in Simon Killer. Whether Simon is entirely unreliable is completely up for debate, and left...
- 4/6/2013
- by Neal Dhand
- SoundOnSight
Like Someone in Love
Directed by Abbas Kiarostami
France, Japan, 2012
Abbas Kiarostami continues to direct away from, but still in the spirit of Iran with his 2012 effort Like Someone in Love. In a film that is visually different but thematically similar to his Iranian-language masterpiece Taste of Cherry, Kiarostami ruminates on obsessive love and, akin to his 2010 film Certified Copy, the art of reproduction.
Akiko (Rin Takanashi) is a young prostitute (her profession, never stated, is constantly implied). She’s forced into an encounter with Takashi (Tadashi Okuno), a lonely, lively professor and the two unexpectedly bond, much to the chagrin of Akiko’s infatuated boyfriend, Noriaki (Ryo Kase).
While Like Someone in Love isn’t as cinematically playful as Certified Copy, it still finds Kiarostami dipping into a similar bag of tricks and is anything but your standard-fare drama. Made up of only a small handful of long scenes,...
Directed by Abbas Kiarostami
France, Japan, 2012
Abbas Kiarostami continues to direct away from, but still in the spirit of Iran with his 2012 effort Like Someone in Love. In a film that is visually different but thematically similar to his Iranian-language masterpiece Taste of Cherry, Kiarostami ruminates on obsessive love and, akin to his 2010 film Certified Copy, the art of reproduction.
Akiko (Rin Takanashi) is a young prostitute (her profession, never stated, is constantly implied). She’s forced into an encounter with Takashi (Tadashi Okuno), a lonely, lively professor and the two unexpectedly bond, much to the chagrin of Akiko’s infatuated boyfriend, Noriaki (Ryo Kase).
While Like Someone in Love isn’t as cinematically playful as Certified Copy, it still finds Kiarostami dipping into a similar bag of tricks and is anything but your standard-fare drama. Made up of only a small handful of long scenes,...
- 3/25/2013
- by Neal Dhand
- SoundOnSight
How many filmmakers can you think of that have their own verb? “Lynchian” is a part of even the most casual cinephile, though it’s often used erroneously. All too often, anything a little out of the ordinary, with a vague sense of the uncanny, earns the term. Looking back at the man’s filmography, however, it’s clear that there’s much more to Lynch’s work than mere eccentricity, especially given that he’s made films that don’t easily fit into common ideas about what it is for a film or a work of art to even be “Lynchian.” Beyond that, Lynch himself is such a singular presence beyond his films – as a thinker, a writer, and even as a musician – that attempts to Xerox his work are doubly pointless. As it’s David Lynch month here at the site, we decided to poll our writers on their favorite Lynch movies,...
- 3/20/2013
- by Ricky da Conceição
- SoundOnSight
Blue Velvet has plenty of the makings of noir: a sultry and dangerous atmosphere, big city fear, femme fatale (Dorothy Vallens/Isabella Rossellini), an intrepid detective working outside the police force (Jeffrey Beaumont/Kyle MacLachlan), and, of course, Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), a psychopath akin to the best of late-period classic American noirs.
By stirring the pot a bit Lynch moves these ingredients closer to something like revisionist noir or satire. The detective and his love interest Sandy Williams (Laura Dern) are more characters from a Nicholas Ray or John Hughes film than anything hard-boiled; the color scheme pushes the pastel-suburbs so far from the darkly saturated nighttime city as to be nearly comical that the two coexist; even Hopper’s Booth takes the psycho-sexual penchants of the worst of Richard Widmark or Ralph Meeker to new extremes.
Blue Velvet’s centerpiece trope is The Slow Club, a dim, sensual...
By stirring the pot a bit Lynch moves these ingredients closer to something like revisionist noir or satire. The detective and his love interest Sandy Williams (Laura Dern) are more characters from a Nicholas Ray or John Hughes film than anything hard-boiled; the color scheme pushes the pastel-suburbs so far from the darkly saturated nighttime city as to be nearly comical that the two coexist; even Hopper’s Booth takes the psycho-sexual penchants of the worst of Richard Widmark or Ralph Meeker to new extremes.
Blue Velvet’s centerpiece trope is The Slow Club, a dim, sensual...
- 3/14/2013
- by Neal Dhand
- SoundOnSight
Side Effects
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
United States, 2013
Steven Soderbergh’s Side Effects is a smaller thriller than 2011’s Contagion, but as incisive in its critique of the pharmaceutical industry, psychiatry and the justice system.
Emily Taylor (Rooney Mara) suffers from depression, and her condition doesn’t get any better when her husband Martin (Channing Tatum) is finally released from prison after serving time for insider trading. After a suicide attempt Emily convinces Dr. Jonathan Banks (Jude Law) to take her on as a private patient rather than admitting her to the hospital. While sleepwalking on an anti-depressant prescribed by her new shrink Emily commits a brutal crime
Side Effects works in fits and bursts, shifting the focus of the film from Emily to Dr. Banks somewhere around the midpoint and alternating between tragedy, thriller, and commentary. It feels fresh, but it has many forebears. Thriller fans will recognize elements...
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
United States, 2013
Steven Soderbergh’s Side Effects is a smaller thriller than 2011’s Contagion, but as incisive in its critique of the pharmaceutical industry, psychiatry and the justice system.
Emily Taylor (Rooney Mara) suffers from depression, and her condition doesn’t get any better when her husband Martin (Channing Tatum) is finally released from prison after serving time for insider trading. After a suicide attempt Emily convinces Dr. Jonathan Banks (Jude Law) to take her on as a private patient rather than admitting her to the hospital. While sleepwalking on an anti-depressant prescribed by her new shrink Emily commits a brutal crime
Side Effects works in fits and bursts, shifting the focus of the film from Emily to Dr. Banks somewhere around the midpoint and alternating between tragedy, thriller, and commentary. It feels fresh, but it has many forebears. Thriller fans will recognize elements...
- 2/11/2013
- by Neal Dhand
- SoundOnSight
Steven Soderbergh became the poster child for new American independent cinema in the 90′s, after winning the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for his debut feature Sex, Lies, & Videotape. Soderbergh spent the better part of the ensuing decade, directing small idiosyncratic films, and often wearing many hats including producer, screenwriter, cinematographer and editor. Eventually the director entered into a period that saw him make commercially satisfying films; most notably Ocean’s Eleven, Erin Brockovich and Traffic, the latter of which earned him an Oscar for Best Director. Despite his box office success, Steven Sodberergh continued to experiment with such films as the ensemble piece Full Frontal, the smart and ambiguous Solaris, the low-budget Bubble and the four hour long epic, Che. There are very few filmmakers who are able to keep their feet firmly planted in the commercial world, while conserving their independent spirit. With his last...
- 2/10/2013
- by Ricky
- SoundOnSight
Yossi
Directed by Eytan Fox
Israel, 2012
Eytan Fox’s follow-up to his 2002 short-feature Yossi & Jagger is an accomplished, sweet love and regret story.
Yossi (Ohad Knoller) is a closeted young doctor. When Varda (Orly Silbersatz) shows up at his hospital for a routine check-up, Yossi’s military and romantic past leads him to a new crossroads in his life.
Yossi is ostensibly divided into two halves. The first half takes place largely in Yossi’s Israeli hospital and the surrounding city and is a trudge towards obvious exposition. It’s the second-half, taking place almost solely in a beach resort, when director Fox’s compositions feel freer and the narrative takes on a looser lilt that Yossi eventually succeeds.
Ohad Knoller gives a strong performance as the title character, but he too feels limited by the stuffy opening to the film. It’s unclear whether Fox thinks that the narrative...
Directed by Eytan Fox
Israel, 2012
Eytan Fox’s follow-up to his 2002 short-feature Yossi & Jagger is an accomplished, sweet love and regret story.
Yossi (Ohad Knoller) is a closeted young doctor. When Varda (Orly Silbersatz) shows up at his hospital for a routine check-up, Yossi’s military and romantic past leads him to a new crossroads in his life.
Yossi is ostensibly divided into two halves. The first half takes place largely in Yossi’s Israeli hospital and the surrounding city and is a trudge towards obvious exposition. It’s the second-half, taking place almost solely in a beach resort, when director Fox’s compositions feel freer and the narrative takes on a looser lilt that Yossi eventually succeeds.
Ohad Knoller gives a strong performance as the title character, but he too feels limited by the stuffy opening to the film. It’s unclear whether Fox thinks that the narrative...
- 2/2/2013
- by Neal Dhand
- SoundOnSight
Nest of Vipers (Night of the Serpent)
Directed by Giulio Petroni
Italy, 1969
Though Giulio Petroni has only rather few titles to his name when compared with his prolific, and better known, counterparts, the Italian director does have the bragging rights of working with both Lee Van Cleef (Death Rides a Horse, 1967) and Orson Welles (Tepepa, 1969).
It’s Petroni’s Nest of Vipers, recently released alongside Pierro Pierotti’s less successful Tails You Lose (1969), by Wild East Productions, that showcases the director’s talent for complex plotting and atmospheric set pieces.
Similar to the earlier Ringo series by Duccio Tessari, and to the now time-honored traditions of Leone and Corbucci, the structure of Nest of Vipers pits the outsider (here, and often, the“gringo”) versus a band of outlaws, where a largely unassuming and tight-knit community is caught in between and unawares.
Luke Askew, probably best known for roles in Easy Rider and Cool Hand Luke,...
Directed by Giulio Petroni
Italy, 1969
Though Giulio Petroni has only rather few titles to his name when compared with his prolific, and better known, counterparts, the Italian director does have the bragging rights of working with both Lee Van Cleef (Death Rides a Horse, 1967) and Orson Welles (Tepepa, 1969).
It’s Petroni’s Nest of Vipers, recently released alongside Pierro Pierotti’s less successful Tails You Lose (1969), by Wild East Productions, that showcases the director’s talent for complex plotting and atmospheric set pieces.
Similar to the earlier Ringo series by Duccio Tessari, and to the now time-honored traditions of Leone and Corbucci, the structure of Nest of Vipers pits the outsider (here, and often, the“gringo”) versus a band of outlaws, where a largely unassuming and tight-knit community is caught in between and unawares.
Luke Askew, probably best known for roles in Easy Rider and Cool Hand Luke,...
- 1/24/2013
- by Neal Dhand
- SoundOnSight
Clandestine Childhood
Directed by Benjamín Ávila
Argentina, 2011
Philadelphia Film Festival
Benjamín Ávila’s debut feature is a fine balance of youthful longing and militant resistance.
Ernesto (Teo Gutiérrez Romero) has two names. One name – Ernesto – is for his schoolmates, but he goes by Juan at home. His parents also have two names. Horacio goes by Daniel (César Troncoso) and Cristina by Charo (Natalia Oreiro). It’s Argentina in 1979, and five years after Perón’s death, Horacio, Cristina and charismatic Uncle Beto (Ernesto Alterio) continue the fight against the existing regime through violent tactics.
Using a mixed-media strategy where moments of extreme violence are depicted through graphic animations, Ávila’s film keeps the focus firmly on Juan and his budding relationship with a classmate’s sister, María (Violeta Palukas).
Romero’s surprisingly tender and mature performance recalls the two great Ana Torrent roles from the 1970s in Spirit of the Beehive and Cria Cuervos.
Directed by Benjamín Ávila
Argentina, 2011
Philadelphia Film Festival
Benjamín Ávila’s debut feature is a fine balance of youthful longing and militant resistance.
Ernesto (Teo Gutiérrez Romero) has two names. One name – Ernesto – is for his schoolmates, but he goes by Juan at home. His parents also have two names. Horacio goes by Daniel (César Troncoso) and Cristina by Charo (Natalia Oreiro). It’s Argentina in 1979, and five years after Perón’s death, Horacio, Cristina and charismatic Uncle Beto (Ernesto Alterio) continue the fight against the existing regime through violent tactics.
Using a mixed-media strategy where moments of extreme violence are depicted through graphic animations, Ávila’s film keeps the focus firmly on Juan and his budding relationship with a classmate’s sister, María (Violeta Palukas).
Romero’s surprisingly tender and mature performance recalls the two great Ana Torrent roles from the 1970s in Spirit of the Beehive and Cria Cuervos.
- 1/17/2013
- by Neal Dhand
- SoundOnSight
I chatted briefly with Don Coscarelli about as he does the rounds for his latest film John Dies at the End, touching on David Wong’s original novel, his favorite films, and more.
Neal Dhand: This is the first film you’ve directed that you also haven’t written. What drew you to the source material?
Don Coscarelli: It’s certainly, definitely square in my domain. It’s got inter-dimensional travel, it’s got questions about reality – what’s real and what’s not. And then at the same time, the material was filled with so many fantastic images, concepts, dialogue. It’s hard to go through it all. Look, we got a talking dog, we got a monster made out of meat, we got this inter-dimensional drug that chooses you, bratwurst cellphone. It’s a wealth of great ideas. I had read the book and I thought,...
Neal Dhand: This is the first film you’ve directed that you also haven’t written. What drew you to the source material?
Don Coscarelli: It’s certainly, definitely square in my domain. It’s got inter-dimensional travel, it’s got questions about reality – what’s real and what’s not. And then at the same time, the material was filled with so many fantastic images, concepts, dialogue. It’s hard to go through it all. Look, we got a talking dog, we got a monster made out of meat, we got this inter-dimensional drug that chooses you, bratwurst cellphone. It’s a wealth of great ideas. I had read the book and I thought,...
- 1/10/2013
- by Neal Dhand
- SoundOnSight
#20: Cosmopolis (50 points)
Directed by David Cronenberg
Written by David Cronenberg
Canada / France, 2012
Every time Cronenberg answers the prayers of his fans with a new movie, it seems that the first reflex is to attempt to categorize it. Is this new film more like the old Cronenberg, in which very strange, very graphic bodily harm was done to its characters, or is this more in tune with his recent outputs, which, while still quite good, played things a little more on the safe side, at least visually? In a nutshell, and with the help of a little bit of retrofitting, Cosmopolis is cut from the same cloth as the director’s efforts of the early and mid 1990s. The sexuality (but not always sensuality) quota is through the stratosphere and the characters are indeed very peculiar, although there are no hands morphing into organic pistols or telepathic attacks to be found.
Directed by David Cronenberg
Written by David Cronenberg
Canada / France, 2012
Every time Cronenberg answers the prayers of his fans with a new movie, it seems that the first reflex is to attempt to categorize it. Is this new film more like the old Cronenberg, in which very strange, very graphic bodily harm was done to its characters, or is this more in tune with his recent outputs, which, while still quite good, played things a little more on the safe side, at least visually? In a nutshell, and with the help of a little bit of retrofitting, Cosmopolis is cut from the same cloth as the director’s efforts of the early and mid 1990s. The sexuality (but not always sensuality) quota is through the stratosphere and the characters are indeed very peculiar, although there are no hands morphing into organic pistols or telepathic attacks to be found.
- 12/29/2012
- by Ricky
- SoundOnSight
Deadfall
Directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky
United States, 2012
Fargo has so embedded itself in the American film-going consciousness as a cold thriller, that anything with a suspense plot and snow now seems to warrant immediate comparisons, whether deserved or not. While many things can be leveled at Stefan Ruzowitzky’s thriller, including suspense and snow, Fargo-like should not be one of them.
Addison (Eric Bana, closer to his Chopper menace than other recent roles) and Liza (Olivia Wilde) are brother and sister criminals on the run to the Canadian border in a small-town blizzard. After a car accident forces them to part ways Liza comes across Jay (Charlie Hunnam), a former Olympic boxer and ex-con, also on the run for his own reasons. All parties converge on Jay’s parents’ house (played by Kris Kristofferson and Sissy Spacek) for a tense Thanksgiving dinner.
The beginning of Deadfall is tense enough.
Directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky
United States, 2012
Fargo has so embedded itself in the American film-going consciousness as a cold thriller, that anything with a suspense plot and snow now seems to warrant immediate comparisons, whether deserved or not. While many things can be leveled at Stefan Ruzowitzky’s thriller, including suspense and snow, Fargo-like should not be one of them.
Addison (Eric Bana, closer to his Chopper menace than other recent roles) and Liza (Olivia Wilde) are brother and sister criminals on the run to the Canadian border in a small-town blizzard. After a car accident forces them to part ways Liza comes across Jay (Charlie Hunnam), a former Olympic boxer and ex-con, also on the run for his own reasons. All parties converge on Jay’s parents’ house (played by Kris Kristofferson and Sissy Spacek) for a tense Thanksgiving dinner.
The beginning of Deadfall is tense enough.
- 12/8/2012
- by Neal Dhand
- SoundOnSight
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