Cinema

Rachel Harrison Gordon’s Dazzling Debut Short “Broken Bird” Part of SXSW Collection on Amazon Prime

May 2nd, 2020

As alternative viewing strategies for avid moviegoers seeking fresh content continue, the South by Southwest filmmakers who opted to join the Amazon Prime collection have benefited this week from attention that would have otherwise been more limited by the in-person version of the Austin, Texas showcase. One of the best films in the lineup is Rachel Harrison Gordon’s narrative short “Broken Bird.” Crafted with a level of sophistication and storytelling acumen rarely seen in…

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Foreign Objects: “Swallow” a Convincing Debut for Mirabella-Davis

April 26th, 2020

Carlo Mirabella-Davis’s noteworthy feature debut as writer-director examines, with a degree of precision and deliberateness that would impress Alfred Hitchcock, the actions of a young woman who consumes inedible objects as a way to attain some measure of control in her suffocating marriage to a wealthy man. The disorder, identified in the DSM-V as pica, includes subtypes categorized by the eating of specific non-nutritional items ranging from glass to stones to soil to sharp objects.…

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Crip Camp (2020)

April 17th, 2020

Future Activists Meet at Newnham and LeBrecht’s “Crip Camp”

Sundance 2020 opening night selection and audience award winner “Crip Camp” -- now streaming on Netflix -- recounts the incredible grassroots movement that ultimately led to the passage and implementation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which was signed into law on July 26, 1990. But before that ceremonial milestone, which appears late in Nicole Newnham and Jim LeBrecht’s terrific documentary, audiences are…

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Collecting Movies with Mike Scholtz

April 14th, 2020

My friend Mike Scholtz, the director of “Riplist” and many other fantastic documentaries, collects movies when he’s not making them. He especially likes VHS and once rescued the children of Pine City, Minnesota by purchasing tapes of “Fritz the Cat” and “Flesh Gordon” that had been shelved in the local thrift store’s kid video section.

GC: Are you format agnostic?
MS
: It never bothers me when I watch a movie on VHS, even if I know I could be watching it on 4K. It…

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Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020)

April 4th, 2020

Eliza Hittman’s Sundance favorite “Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” which played in theaters for just three days before Focus Features pulled the film amidst the widespread and unprecedented coronavirus-related closures, will be made available on demand beginning April 3. According to Anne Thompson, the movie will cost $19.99 to rent for a 48 hour period and will be carried on several platforms. As distributors and consumers navigate the unexpected changes brought about by…

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Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound

March 29th, 2020

Veteran sound editor and USC professor Midge Costin educates and entertains as the director of “Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound.” An engaging, entry-level crash course on the role of audio in motion picture storytelling, the film is a sibling to “Visions of Light,” “Side by Side,” and other behind-the-scenes documentaries that examine various aspects of the dream factory. Movies like “Making Waves” follow a common formula: talking head interviews with well-known…

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Veteran Documentary Filmmaker Liz Gaarbus Makes Fiction Debut with ‘Lost Girls’

March 18th, 2020

Documentary filmmaker Liz Garbus visited the Fargo Film Festival in 2002 -- the second year of the event -- to introduce a screening of her Emmy and Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning, Oscar-nominated “The Farm: Angola, USA.” The supremely talented artist would go on to make many other nonfiction films of note before “Lost Girls,” her fiction debut, which premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival before finding its current home on Netflix. Based on Robert Kolker’s book…

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Autumn de Wilde Makes Feature Debut with “Emma.”

March 11th, 2020

Photographer and music video veteran Autumn de Wilde makes a bold statement with her feature directorial debut, punctuating the title of the oft-adapted Jane Austen favorite with an emphatic period as if to suggest she gets the last word with this particular edition of “Emma.” Sumptuously designed, elegantly appointed, and spectacularly costumed and coiffed, de Wilde’s fresh rendition has a piquant flavor complemented as much by self-aware sexiness as the abundant pastel hues on…

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Sam S. ‘Kindred Creatures’ Interview

March 4th, 2020

Bismarck-based filmmaker Samuel Sprynczynatyk’s “Kindred Creatures” is a feature-length documentary that explores the world of farm animals and the sanctuaries that rescue them. The movie also addresses animal rights and animal activism. For Sprynczynatyk, a long-time vegan, “Kindred Creatures” is a dream project that advocates the position that “animals are somebody, not something.”

HPR’s Greg Carlson talked to Sprynczynatyk about the new movie.

GC: You are a very young…

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The Ice Cold Horror of ‘The Lodge’

February 26th, 2020

“Goodnight Mommy” filmmakers Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala continue to carve up chills, thrills, and nightmares in “The Lodge,” a Sundance 2019 favorite finally receiving the theatrical release it rightfully deserves. With an unrelentingly oppressive atmosphere in the claustrophobically framed location of the title, “The Lodge” is perfect slow-burn arthouse horror that never cheats and always rewards the patience and intelligence of the viewer. Accordingly, jump scares…

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