Initially, Poor Things seems like it might be a Yorgos Lanthimos provocation about the value of provocation, a suspicion prompted when medical student Max McCandless (Ramy Youssef) first sees Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) and, awestruck, describes her as a “beautiful retard.” Given the film’s steampunk trappings, the 19th-century setting doesn’t offer “period verisimilitude” as a cover for vocabulary that feels suspiciously like a Red Scare shout-out. Bella is seen naked for the first time while unconscious; depending on how you want to take this visual language, the viewer could be aligned with a non-consensual gaze. Learning through transgression turns out to be […]

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“I literally finished the film at three in the morning last night,” director Matthew Heineman says on a video call with Filmmaker on Tuesday, just past the airport security on his way to the 50th Telluride Film Festival. “I’m barely alive right now.”  Thankfully, Heineman is alive and well, and at the height of his powers as a documentarian with sharp instincts and artistic finesse with American Symphony, which marks the second time a feature of his world premieres at the annual Colorado gathering. The first was last year’s stunning Oscar-shortlisted Retrograde, on the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.  In a […]

The post “I Felt an Enormous Amount of Pressure to Deliver Something That Wasn’t Just a Music Doc”: Matthew Heineman on His Telluride-Premiering Jon Batiste Doc, American Symphony first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

In December of 1964, principal photography finished on the pilot of Star Trek, featuring captain Christopher Pike (played by The Searchers’ Jeffrey Hunter) as the commander of the Enterprise. When the show’s first episode finally aired almost two years later, Pike was nowhere to be found. The initial pilot had been scrapped and re-shot, with William Shatner’s James T. Kirk taking the helm and a different crew boldly going where no man had gone before. However, that wasn’t the end of Christopher Pike. The character returned as a Kirk mentor in the J.J. Abrams-directed reboot films. Now, with the Paramount […]

The post “Each Episode is Like Its Own Movie”: DP Benji Bakshi on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The conclusion of Fantasia International Film Festival’s 27th edition brings the temptation to paint a “big picture overview” of the state of the film industry in general, in particular the genre community. The Montréal-based three-week event has never been about blinding star power (while Nicolas Cage was scheduled to be onhand to receive this year’s Cheval Noir Career Achievement Award, the actor had to cancel due to the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strikes), instead putting directors and audiences front and center. Like last year, a highly anticipated A24 horror release made an appearance just days before opening theatrically (last year Halina Reijn’s […]

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Check out the trailer for Wim Wenders’s Cannes-premiering 3D documentary Anselm, which follows German painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer. His fourth feature shot in the format (with a fifth already in the works), Anselm will have its North American premiere at Telluride tomorrow. An official synopsis reads: In Anselm, Wim Wenders creates a portrait of Anselm Kiefer, one of the most innovative and important painters and sculptors of our time. Shot in 3D and 6K-resolution, the film presents a cinematic experience of the artist’s work which explores human existence and the cyclical nature of history, inspired by literature, poetry, philosophy, […]

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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. […]

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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 […]

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Onur Tukel is a boldly independent writer-director-actor who, for more than a decade, has been making cutting edge comedies in New York City that sometimes land in the horror category, sometimes social satire, are often absurd, mostly hilarious and always thoughtful—Catfight, Applesauce, Summer of Blood, The Misogynists, Scenes From An Empty Church, to name just a few. His latest, Poundcake, about a serial killer who only targets straight white men, is maybe his boldest yet, which says a lot. In this hour, he talks about his reluctant approach toward acting in his own films, the ways he has navigated low […]

The post “If We’re All Gonna Die…Then Why Wouldn’t You Take a Risk as an Artist?” Onur Tukel (Back To One, Episode 265) first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Taking place from August 11-18, this year’s 29th edition of the Sarajevo Film Festival, the largest film fest in (and focused on) Southeast Europe, unsurprisingly presented a wealth of cinematic gems to choose from. (And in a variety of venues, from the storied National Theater, built during the Austro-Hungarian takeover, to the evening-only Open Air Cinemas.) That is, when one wasn’t scrambling to catch the numerous talks and masterclasses—taught by this year’s Honorary Heart of Sarajevo recipients/hot tickets Mark Cousins, Lynne Ramsay and Charlie Kaufman—or attending the equally busy CineLink Industry Days (which, like the festival itself, is smartly geared […]

The post Heart of Darkness (and Light): The 29th Sarajevo Film Festival first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

“How To Watch Birds,” episode five of How To with John Wilson’s final season, presents a familiar trajectory: eponymous documentarian follows through with stated premise before being diverted into a completely different context. Not more than seven minutes into Wilson’s episode about birding he’s interviewing UFO expert Travis Walton, whose alleged abduction story inspired Fire in the Sky (1993), and not long after that he voluntarily agrees to a lie detector test. “Have you ever lied to someone on your show?” asks the administrator. “No,” Wilson replies, following a pregnant pause. When informed he is lying, Wilson quietly mutters, “Fuck.” […]

The post How to Explode a Car: John Wilson on How To with John Wilson‘s Final Season first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.