Accompanying his debut article in Filmmaker’s print edition, “Did You See (and Hear) That?),” Devan Scott posts today a video essay, “Why Are Movies So Dark?”, that provides visual backup for his points. “Contemporary visuals are commonly diagnosed as dark,’ ‘underexposed’ or ‘underlit’. In actuality, they describe an array of phenomena, many of them widely misunderstood,” he writes. “The most common charge, dim,’ is often used interchangeably with ‘underlit.’ Tools are frequently blamed; ‘the digital look’ is as much an accusation of modern equipment as an assessment of its apparent effects.” Watch Scott’s new video above.
Koyaanisqatsi director Godfrey Reggio returns with his first feature in a decade, Once Within a Time, opening this Friday at New York’s IFC Center from Oscilloscope Labs. In Filmmaker‘s Fall, 2014 issue, Reggio, co-director Jon Kane and DP Trish Govoni discussed the “perfect image” of his last feature, Visitors, which was comprised of just 74 black-and-white shots, each running 70 or so seconds. Made during the COVID-19 pandemic, the animated Once Within a Time is a very different work, described as “a bardic fairy tale about the end of the world and the beginning of a new one, tinged with apocalyptic comedy, rapturous cinematography, unforgettable vistas, and the innocence and hopes of a new generation.” Reggio’s longtime collaborator, composer Philip Glass, contributes the score, with additional vocals from Sussan Deyhim, and, like Visitors, the film is co-directed by veteran editor and filmmaker Jon Kane.
A teaser has landed for Michael Mann’s Ferrari ahead of its Venice world premiere tomorrow. Mann’s long-awaited return will then screen at the New York Film Festival before it hits theaters just in time for the holidays.
Based on Brock Yates’s book Enzo Ferrari: The Man, The Cars, The Races, The Machine, the film stars Adam Driver as the eponymous race car driver and entrepreneur, Penélope Cruz as his wife Laura and Shailene Woodley as his mistress Lina Lardi. Sarah Gadon, Gabriel Leone, Jack O’Connell and Patrick Dempsey also star.
Per an official synopsis:
It is the summer of 1957. Behind the spectacle of Formula 1, ex-racer Enzo Ferrari is in crisis. Bankruptcy threatens the factory he and his wife, Laura built from nothing ten years earlier. Their volatile marriage has been battered by the loss of their son, Dino a year earlier. Ferrari struggles to acknowledge his son Piero with Lina Lardi. Meanwhile, his drivers’ passion to win pushes them to the edge as they launch into the treacherous 1,000-mile race across Italy, the Mille Miglia.
Mann sheds more light on the making of Ferrari in his director’s statement on the Biennale website:
Well before I shot Ferrari, I was able to walk through Enzo’s rooms, see his diaries, learn his habits, wonder at the wallpaper in Laura’s bedroom where she spent the last years of her life, quiz their doctor, meet Lina’s niece, understand her manner and modernity, sit in Enzo’s barbershop chair, walk the sidewalks and inhabit his neighborhood, where I also lived, explore the gleaming mechanicals inside a Lampredi V12 engine and the sculpture of 50’s racecars and, most importantly, engage with Enzo’s son, Piero, from whom I learned and absorbed so much, I’ve tried to make come alive passions and allure, Enzo’s strafing wit, the devastation of losing a child, operatic tirades, emotional sanctuary, tragedy, a monumental wager on one race and a struggle to survive, all of which collided in four months of 1957.
Ferrari will hit theaters on Christmas via NEON. Watch the trailer above.
The first trailer has arrived for David Fincher’s The Killer ahead of its imminent Venice Film Festival premiere. Based on Alexis Nolent’s graphic novel series, the film stars Michael Fassbender as a professional assassin embarking on an international manhunt and also features Tilda Swinton, Charles Parnell, Arliss Howard, Kerry O’Malley, Sophie Charlotte, Sala Baker, Emiliano Pernía and Gabriel Polanco. Fincher’s follow-up to Mank has the director reuniting with Se7en screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker.
Ahead of the film’s Venice debut, read Fincher’s director’s statement from the Biennale website:
The Killer is my attempt to reconcile notions I’ve had for years about cinematic stories and their telling. I have always held: “What were you doing in Chinatown?… As little as possible”—to be the single greatest evocation of backstory I’ve ever heard. I was also playfully curious about the revenge genre as a tension delivery-system. So when Mr. Walker came aboard and fully embraced these notions/ questions about broad brushstrokes of understanding giving way to the blind-stitch of “moment expansion” – I felt we needed to try something. Mr. Fassbender’s 3-hour response time for: “Yes, let’s!” sealed it for us both and, of course, we all wanted Tilda (Mr. Walker wrote it with her in mind—but please don’t tell Ms. Swinton, she could become insufferable if she knows literally everyone feels this way about her.)
The Killer will hit select theaters in October before exclusively streaming on Netflix November 10. Watch the trailer above.
A trailer arrives today for Justine Triet’s latest film Anatomy of a Fall, which was awarded the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The film will screen at TIFF and NYFF before hitting theaters later this fall.
Per an official synopsis:
For the past year, Sandra (Sandra Hüller), her husband Samuel (Samuel Theis), and their eleven-year-old son Daniel (Milo Machado Graner) have lived a secluded life in a remote town in the French Alps. When Samuel is found dead in the snow below their chalet, the police question whether he was murdered or committed suicide. Samuel’s suspicious death is presumed murder, and Sandra becomes the main suspect. What follows is not just an investigation into the circumstances of Samuel’s death but an unsettling psychological journey into the depths of Sandra and Samuel’s conflicted relationship.
In his (somewhat spoiler-y) review out of Cannes, Vadim Rizov praised the film, writing:
Triet has made multiple excellent films, but this is a step above and beyond, visually presenting as unostentatious in ways that conceal the clarity and thoughtfulness of its craft. I might be overrating Anatomy, as so rarely do I respond to something this script-based that I might be hyperbolizing due to the sheer novelty of the experience for me. But the screenplay (co-written by Trier with her partner Arthur Harari) is indeed excellent, and the resulting work immaculate on first viewing.
Anatomy of a Fall will release in New York and Los Angeles theaters on October 13 via NEON. Watch the trailer above.
World premiering at TIFF before hitting IMAX and theater screens later this fall, the trailer arrives from A24 today for the 40th anniversary 4K restoration of Jonathan Demme‘s Stop Making Sense. The seminal Talking Heads concert film captures the band—comprised of David Byrne, Jerry Harrison and spouses Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz, married now for 45 years—performing at Hollywood’s Pantages Theater in December of 1983.
The September 11 TIFF world premiere of the 4K restoration will be followed by a Q&A conducted by Spike Lee with all of the original Talking Heads band members (this should be juicy in its own right, as the former bandmates don’t seem to have remained particularly close or friendly with Byrne since they last played together at their 2002 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction).
The film will then hit IMAX screens on September 22 before expanding to all theaters on September 29. Watch the trailer above.
A trailer arrives today for Justine Triet’s latest film Anatomy of a Fall, which was awarded the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The film will screen at TIFF and NYFF before hitting theaters later this fall.
Per an official synopsis:
For the past year, Sandra (Sandra Hüller), her husband Samuel (Samuel Theis), and their eleven-year-old son Daniel (Milo Machado Graner) have lived a secluded life in a remote town in the French Alps. When Samuel is found dead in the snow below their chalet, the police question whether he was murdered or committed suicide. Samuel’s suspicious death is presumed murder, and Sandra becomes the main suspect. What follows is not just an investigation into the circumstances of Samuel’s death but an unsettling psychological journey into the depths of Sandra and Samuel’s conflicted relationship.
In his (somewhat spoiler-y) review out of Cannes, Vadim Rizov praised the film, writing:
Triet has made multiple excellent films, but this is a step above and beyond, visually presenting as unostentatious in ways that conceal the clarity and thoughtfulness of its craft. I might be overrating Anatomy, as so rarely do I respond to something this script-based that I might be hyperbolizing due to the sheer novelty of the experience for me. But the screenplay (co-written by Trier with her partner Arthur Harari) is indeed excellent, and the resulting work immaculate on first viewing.
Anatomy of a Fall will release in New York and Los Angeles theaters on October 13 via NEON. Watch the trailer above.
The trailer arrives for birth/rebirth, the feature debut of writer-director Laura Moss, a 25 New Faces alum from 2017. Co-written by Moss and their longtime screenwriting partner Brendan O’Brien, the film is essentially a modern-day take on Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, examining the biological urge to create life (whether through scientific exploits or human procreation) and the true meaning of “motherhood.”
In my interview with Moss out of this year’s Sundance, I provide a general rundown of the film’s plot:
The film follows Dr. Rose Casper (Marin Ireland), a brilliant pathologist lacking in basic social skills. Human connection doesn’t interest her anyway, as she’s developing a highly experimental treatment for reanimating recently-deceased corpses. Part of this process entails Rose mining semen from (oddly clinical) bar bathroom hookups, impregnating herself with it (turkey baster-style) and medically inducing abortion to harvest the highly-valuable embryonic material. When Lila (A.J. Lister), the daughter of a maternity nurse named Celie (Judy Reyes), makes her way down to the morgue, Rose finds the perfect cadaver to serve as her first human test subject (she has, at this point, already successfully revived a pot-bellied pig). When her daughter’s body goes mysteriously missing, Celie tracks it down, arriving at Rose’s apartment, miraculously finding her daughter living and breathing once again. Fully invested in keeping Lila alive by any means necessary, Celie teams up with Rose to further her clandestine research—a union that probes at ideas of motherhood, conception and the human sacrifices that further scientific advancement.
birth/rebirth will hit theaters via Shudder and IFC Films on August 18. In the meantime, check out our interviews out of Sundance with editor Taylor Mason and DP Chananun Chotrungroj, as well as Moss’s answer to our annual Sundance Question.
Watch the trailer for Our Body, the latest from acclaimed French documentarian Claire Simon, director of God’s Offices, The Competition, I Want to Talk About Duras and others. The doc had its world premiere at this year’s Berlinale before screening at MoMA’s Doc Fortnight and True/False stateside.
Per an official synopsis:
French documentary titan Claire Simon observes the everyday operations of the gynecological ward in a public hospital in Paris. In the process, she questions what it means to live in a woman’s body, filming the diversity, singularity and beauty of patients in all stages of life. Through these many encounters, the specific fears, desires and struggles of these individuals become the health challenges we all face, even the filmmaker herself.
While the film chronicles gynecological services received in France, U.S. audiences will no doubt find the film particularly prescient as we continue to experience legislative rollback of reproductive rights and women’s healthcare services.
Director Vladan Nikolic is currently in post-production on his latest film, Everything That Will Happen Has Already Happened, and preparing for a crowdfunding campaign to raise final costs. The filmmakers have shared with Filmmaker a teaser trailer, above, as well as the following statement about the film, which plans to premiere in festivals in 2024
Everything That Will Happen Has Already Happened, a very ambitious no budget narrative feature film is in the works. Billed as a “collaborative film,” led by filmmaker and professor Vladan Nikolic, it was made with the help of filmmakers and actors from around the world. Through a kaleidoscopic collage of stories, the film explores the “here and now” – the current moment we are living in, and how the Covid pandemic, economic inequality, climate change, wars, migration and societal divisions shape our lives globally. These international stories coalesce in a film-within-a-film, set in New York City, about two disaffected millennials, creating this project, trying to make sense of the world and their place in it, while dealing with their own issues and contradictions. They are currently in post production and getting ready to crowdfund for the finishing costs.
For more information about the project follow them on Instagram: @everythingthefilm.
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