In Review: Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot

On July 24, 2018 By ChrisLeave a comment

Gus Van Sant is a warmly holistic filmmaker, typically taking affectionate approaches to outsiders or internalized characters in fictional and true stories alike. His latest film, Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot looks compassionately at cartoonist John Callahan as he copes with alcoholism and the paralysis that resulted from a booze-induced accident. But unlikely Van Sant’s more complete visions, this film is defined almost exclusively by those cozy feelings to dull effect.

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In Review: “A Ghost Story”

On July 27, 2017July 27, 2017 By ChrisLeave a comment

David Lowery’s A Ghost Story was filmed in secrecy last summer, both in a response to and with the financial aid from Lowery’s experience creating the big-budgeted Disney remake of Pete’s Dragon. That off-the-grid air is present in the film, feeling like a found artifact or talisman from beyond. But what makes the film really register is the deep well of feeling that made Lowery’s Disney effort more than a retread into familiar emotional territory. Here, Lowery delivers something more than the cosmic and intellectually minded. What surprises in A Ghost Story is that it comes from the heart.

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In Review!: “Carol”

On January 9, 2016 By Chris1 Comment

As gay people, we’re acutely cognizant of nuances of perception and communication. When a portion (or entirety) of one’s life is spent forced to suppress self-expression, we become scientists of our own behavior and scrutinize how any minute tic will reveal our identity. Whether we have hidden because of social norms or for safety, the necessity to do so results in a social class of experts in subtle social interaction. The hyper-sensitivity electrifies when we meet one of our own and use these adaptive skills to acknowledge shared truths, to show compassion, to express romantic interest. The liberated YouTube generation knows nothing of the experience of not being able to speak plainly to your own camp.

Somehow, we find eachother.

Such are the fascinations of Todd Haynes’s passionately observed Carol, a love story of stolen glances and charged embraces that is as interested in the queer longings of the central duo as it is with what remains unspoken between any of Haynes’s 50s era denizens. Rarely has every frame been so essential and packed with specific behavior in contemporary cinema, and the film is a staggering assemblage of craft that services the truth for which Haynes reaches and richly achieves. Haynes captures the breathlessness of flirtation and first touches, the cured infection of prior loves into the dynamic, the ease of feeling accepted fully. Yes, it’s relatable to anyone who’s been in love, but make no mistakes: this is a gay story, the stakes raised by the language unavailable to two women in a time where they have to hide in plain sight.

Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara) is an unimposing shopgirl whose life gets a kickstart by the intrigued Carol Aird (Cate Blanchett), a soon-to-be divorcé shopping for a Christmas present for her prized daughter. Naturally, things are complicated by Therese’s boyfriend (Jake Lacy) pushing for next steps and Harge Aird (Kyle Chandler) open to reconciliation if Carol plays it straight. The vulnerability that Mara and Blanchett bring to the lovers as they discover each other in the moment is breathtaking as Therese and Carol are by turns awkward, turned on, patient, and enamored. These women aren’t stoic enigmas, but social outliers discovering how to communicate their mutual interest without words.

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Coming Soon: Rooney Mara & Ben Mendelsohn in “Una”

On November 8, 2015November 8, 2015 By ChrisLeave a comment

Two images have arrived for next year’s Una, starring Rooney Mara and Ben Mendelsohn and based David Harrower’s play Blackbird. We get a small hint of the intensity of the source material, an intimate two-hander where the adult Una finds the man who sexually abused her to confront him about the aftermath of their relationship.

Mara is flawlessly cast here, a natural fit to embody Una’s simmering rage and deep longing. With as much discomforting material that has to be met head-on, it requires a performer as game as Mara. Mendelsohn is called here to play a little more passive than we’ve seen from him, and he is a bit miscast. His skill with intensely focused one-on-ones (especially seen in Netflix’s “Bloodline”) will be an asset here, though.

The play is written in clipped, overlapping dialogue, with Una and Ray often unable to complete sentences before other details sidetrack them. It vibrantly immediate and intimate, giving the actor’s such a tool to create the tensions within themselves and between eachother. Harrower is adapting himself, and the play will be opened up to more than the two central characters (with Nightcrawler‘s Riz Ahmed showing up). If their is an element to hope is kept in transition, however, it is the real-time unfolding of events.

The incendiary elements of the play – do Una and her abuser Ray still harbor affection for one another – are going to have a tough battle with audiences and film Twitter, especially if not downplayed in the adaptation. Perhaps we’ll see how a broader audience handles the material, as Broadway will see an new production this spring, with Jeff Daniels (reprising his role from the original off-Broadway production) and Michelle Williams.

Trailer Drop: “Anomalisa”

On November 2, 2015 By ChrisLeave a comment

I spent today recruiting guest voices for a coming post I hope you will all have fun with, but we were also finally given a look at one of filmmixtape’s most anticipated of the year: Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson’s stop-motion Anomalisa.

After playing most of the fall festivals, including debuting at our beloved Telluride Film Festival, Anomalisa has only had a still or two floating around to tease the masses unable to seek out a festival screening. Anything Kaufman gets my butt in a theatre without a second thought, and you can guarantee hearing about his pasts efforts like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation, and Synecdoche, New York in this space in due time.

If I could pick any fall-season release to watch immediately, this would be the immediate choice (perhaps jockeying against Son of Saul, and not only because they’ll likely be the longest wait at this point). And what else are we still chomping at the bit for?

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