Category: Artist Spotlight

Matthew Porterfield’s third feature, I Used to Be Darker, is a delicate exercise in restraint. His fingerprints appear everywhere and nowhere in this strained family drama as he infuses naturalism by seemingly relinquishing control. More than ever before, Darker showcases Porterfield’s undervalued acumen for developing characters by simply allowing them to develop.

Jacob Kornbluth would like you to know that he is not an economist. He didn’t matriculate at a revered School of Economics, nor is he especially well-versed in financial markets or models. Quite the opposite, in fact.

For outliers, New York can often appear to wear clashing visages. After all, it is more frequently depicted in art and media than any other city in the world, and often erroneously. Enter: Shaka King’s Newlyweeds, an incisive new film set in a pre-gentrification Bed-Stuy that captures not just the distinct aesthetic, but the entire disposition of an irregular Brooklyn neighborhood.

If it weren’t for her categorical agility as a writer, Jill Soloway might appear capricious. The comedian’s career has seen her journey from writing/producing on the hugely successful television series Six Feet Under to publishing a novel to, most recently, writing and directing a feature film. That film, Afternoon Delight, played in the U.

“The before and after are almost always more interesting to me than any actual event,” notes David Lowery, the boundlessly pensive director behind the 2013 Sundance Film Festival selection Ain’t Them Bodies Saints. “The empty space after a person has left a room is something that always speaks to me.” That personal notion of Lowery’s presents itself early in his directorial debut, as his two leads—played by Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara—are apprehended by officers after a shootout in Texas.

Andrew Bujalski concedes that his best chess-playing days are behind him. He’ll offer even less about his dexterity as a computer programmer. But the director’s latest feature film effort, Computer Chess, operates with such careful and nuanced dedication to both fields that nary a technical flaw presents itself.

Filmmaker Gabriela Cowperthwaite knows firsthand how appallingly easy it can be to put on moral blinders when it comes to entertainment. She concedes that she was one of millions of annual SeaWorld visitors who opted, perhaps subconsciously, for obliviousness in the face of alarming animal cruelty. That all changed with the undertaking of her new documentary Blackfish, an official selection of the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, which depicts the sobering reality that exists for killer whales held in captivity and exposes the well-concealed truth about the dangers that their trainers face.

There is a theme that dominates the longstanding trend of actors opting for a stint behind the camera. More often than not, these are stories fueled by personal experience that no other filmmaker could, or even should attempt to tell. Most recently, Jim Rash and Nat Faxon, the co-directing team behind this year’s nostalgic summer comedy The Way, Way Back, reiterate that refrain.

ESCAPE FIRE premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and made its official theatrical release this past October. Matthew Heineman and Susan Froemke’s new documentary couldn’t have come soon enough. As millions of Americans descended into a media fray wrought with glaring sensationalism and compulsive hyperbole surrounding last fall’s presidential election, the directing duo offered an unparalleled, unflinching, and—quite frankly—unflattering look at one of the most pressing contemporary American issues: our broken healthcare system.

Never has a washed-up Scottish musician appeared more at home in the farm country peripheries of Los Angeles than in California Solo. That’s where Lachlan MacAldonich (Robert Carlyle), the damaged central character of director Marshall Lewy’s second feature, is content to waste away his days in an alcohol-fueled slumber.Facing deportation after a drunk driving arrest, MacAldonich attempts a late-life alchemy in order to preserve his American citizenship, and perhaps repair some broken relationships along the way.

Sometimes the most effective documentaries are those that appear to be misclassified. Stories that, absent of a screenplay, seem decidedly fanciful and improbable. So goes Malik Bendjelloul’s Searching for Sugar Man, a brilliant film that courses with the suspense of a mystery thriller and only further entices with its veracity.

There is an inclination to briskly dismiss films that loiter along the periphery of our interests. After all, many of today’s entertainment services cater to our highly-specific preferences—Oh, you like “Quirky, opposites-attract rom-coms with Noir aesthetics”? Netflix has 50 films queued up for you. It’s a supply and demand formula that favors linearity—a disservice to both audiences and filmmakers.