Joining A24’s pantheon of beautifully crafted, enigmatic thrillers is The Lighthouse, the sophomore effort by horror auteur Robert Eggers. Based on two seamen on an isolated lighthouse in the late 1800’s, this strange thriller tackles a simplistic setting from a mind-numbing perspective and is more than enough evidence to support the resounding resurgence of unsettling,…
Recapturing old memories can be challenging, especially when the line between what really happened and what may have happened is so fragile. Like Joanna Hogg’s recent film memoir, “The Souvenir,” Chilean director Dominga Sotomayor Castillo (“Thursday Till Sunday”), in her third feature Too Late to Die Young (Tarde para morir joven), is uncertain where memory…
“And if the earthly no longer knows your name, whisper to the silent earth: I’m flowing. To the flashing water say: I am” — Rilke, “Sonnette an Orpheus” (II, 29) Chiron, in Barry Jenkins’ Oscar-winning film “Moonlight,” in addition to being gay and black, has to deal with drug abuse, bullying, and the lack of…
“Is an intelligent being likely to be much more than a large-scale manufacturer of misunderstanding?” — Philip Roth, The Counterlife With Indignation, James Schamus makes his directorial debut from his own adaptation of Philip Roth’s 2008 book of the same name. Schamus is most well known as the screenwriting and producing partner of Ang Lee,…
In a trailer commentary video that can be viewed on IMDb, Robert Eggers, writer and director of The Witch, explains that what he set out to accomplish with his debut film was to transport twenty-first century viewers back to the seventeenth, to a time when “the real world and the fairy tale world were the…
In fiction as in life the secret lies in believing too much while knowing too little. This lack of self-awareness, which often translates in a very low awareness of one’s own environment, can be a blessing in such difficult times as the ones we live in. Naiveté is the closest we can get to innocence,…
Being called “undateable” is sort of like a team player being labeled “uncoachable,” not a strong recommendation. This label tags maturity-challenged Frances (Greta Gerwig) in Noah Baumbach’s warm-hearted comedy Frances Ha, a film that has genuine affection for its characters. Co-written by Baumbach and Gerwig and supported by an eclectic soundtrack that includes music by…
