Two siblings’ underlying resentment for one another is put to the test by a new love interest in My Blind Brother, a rom-com that often feels like it’s cutting with a blunt edge. In a clever bit of character building, the film opens with Robbie (Adam Scott) effortlessly running through the end of a marathon while his brother, an able-sighted Bill (Nick Kroll) sweats the last leg out trailing behind on Robbie’s guide rope. Here both the plot and joke remains purely on the surface; Bill’s life and accomplishments are performed in his blind brother’s shadow. Often, the unsatisfying aspect to Sophie Goodhart’s directorial debut is in its inability to mine its premise further.

The brothers become increasingly petty to one another over Robbie’s new girlfriend Francie (Jenny Slate), a woman in crisis after her ex-boyfriend gets blindsided by a bus. Slate and Kroll have worked together previously and share a dynamic chemistry on-screen as a romantic pair. Her presence elicits a warmer, more verbally unhinged side to his character—the only version of him in My Blind Brother with charisma. She also has moments of unexpected vulgarity spoken with her delightful, squeaky tone. This movie and everyone in it knows that Francie is dating the wrong brother; however, in the frustrating tradition of romantic comedies, the tension is left to linger everyone cowers away from confrontation.

Considering the level of comedic talent involved, one of the most surprising elements to My Blind Brother is its saccharine quality. Robbie is treated as an unrepentant dick throughout the movie, only to be given a tearful confession at the movie’s end. The character’s disability provides a few solid gags but is handled with a level of naturalism. Kroll, Scott and Slate are all charming presences in their roles—as is a totally magnetic and slightly underserved Zoe Kazan as Slate’s roommate—but knowing each of those actors’ penchants for hilarity, My Blind Brother feels lean on humor.

My Blind Brother is mostly amusing and its performances are strong, however, the tone remains unwavering until the film’s ending: lightly comedic, but unrelentingly self-serious. With so little actively happening in the plot the movie grows dull between stretches of more consistent humor. Sophie Goodhart’s My Blind Brother is thinly plotted and familiar, but this mostly pleasant comedy has a winning romance at its center which elevates the film beyond standard fare.

With her discomforting new psychological thriller Always Shine premiering as part of the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival, filmmaker Sophia Takal has already drawn comparisons to Brian De Palma, David Lynch, and even Ingmar Bergman with her new film. Yet, reviews of Always Shine that point to the film’s central pair of femme fatale-style blondes or the voyeuristic lens it applies to its actresses overlook a significant quality of Takal’s 2nd feature. “I don’t really know that there are a lot of movies about female friendships that ring true to me,” she begins during an early interview one morning in Midtown. “At least none that I’ve seen that I can think of right now.”

The tension in Always Shine is fueled by the mutual envy between its leads Anna (Mackenzie Davis) and Beth (Caitlin FitzGerald) best friends who decide to rebuild their broken bond by spending a weekend together in Big Sur. More than just spending time with one another, the trip is a chance for both actresses to escape how the outside world views them, as well as the roles—both personal and professional—in which they feel trapped. As the two old friends reconnect, their underlying resentment for one another turns their vacation into an anxiety nightmare with dangerous consequences.

In her sit-down interview with Way Too Indie during Tribeca, Always Shine director Sophia Takal discusses the competitive jealousy that inspired her film, the thematic importance of having female characters portray actresses, and how Always Shine helped the filmmaker come to terms with the competing aspects of her own personality.

Always Shine was written by your husband [screenwriter Lawrence Michael Levine, who also plays Jesse in the film], were you part of the initial development of this idea?
Sophia Takal: I came up with a tiny seed of the idea of wanting to make a movie about my own struggles with fitting into a normal idea of femininity. I made a movie called Green, and right after that movie came out something got triggered in me where I felt insanely competitive with all my friends—actor friends, director friends – and I was sabotaging those relationships. I was filled with all this rage and I was so angry.

I was taught that the right way to be a woman was to be shy and deferential—to not take up too much space—but I felt so big and bossy and aggressive and I just felt so bad about myself. It was creating this very violent conflict within me, and Larry was sort of just watching me unravel, go totally crazy and alienate everyone around me. We started talking a little bit about how I was feeling. I always gravitate toward making movies about really personal things.

I started talking to other women about saying “I really don’t feel like a woman, I don’t feel like I’m doing a good job at this,” and they would say “I don’t feel that way either.” I realized that it wasn’t just specific to me, but maybe there was a little bit more of a universal struggle that we were experiencing as women. So I wrote a one-page outline of ideas for how I could make it into a movie.

Larry really connected with these feelings. He had felt [competitive] towards me, [like] I was feeling towards other people. He had similar feelings about not fitting into the typical masculine roles of being really, really rich, and really, really powerful, and not emotional, and not crying. He said, “I felt a similar alienation from the set of expectations of my gender and I think that we could do something really interesting.” He’s an incredible writer, a much better writer than I am. So I just trusted him to create a script based on our shared set of experiences.

We did think it was important to address femininity rather than [make it] about a man. He read a lot of feminist books about female archetypes. There’s this one really great book called “Down From the Pedestal” [by Maxine Harris], which was all about different female archetypes and how women fit into them. He read books about celebrity obsession, “Fame Junkies” [by Jake Halpern] and “Gods Like Us” [by Ty Burr]. A lot about feminism and celebrity.

So that increased attention to your careers was a part of the inspiration, as well?
Definitely. Larry and I both got very career-obsessed. Just striving, grasping, not being satisfied with anything we had. Really feeling that our self-worth was bound up in this idea that we needed to become famous. And I feel like we just fell prey to what our society tells us, where celebrities are the new gods. It’s hard to feel valuable in a society that tells you that the most valuable people are these tall, beautiful men and women. It’s a bummer.

I was talking with Andrew Kevin Walker, who wrote Nerdland, about this desperation from the fringes of the entertainment industry. The tangible aspects of modern fame, I think, makes it seem not so out of grasp, which can drive you insane if you’re in that periphery.
Yeah. Also, because a lot of people are famous for no reason. The act of getting famous is a focus, rather than the act of creating and fame [coming] as a byproduct of that. It seems to have taken people over more and more. I talked with Mackenzie and Caitlin about that a lot. That when you become an actor you become an actor because you want to create something and enter this secret space where you’re connecting with someone. Then the weird by-product of being successful at that and getting to work is being pigeonholed into these tinier and tinier boxes.

[You] go to fashion shows and wear makeup and it’s not at all to do with why you started wanting to be an artist. A lot of business type people in the industry convince you that that’s essential in order to be an artist. Especially with actors. The less you know about an actor, the better the experience watching them work is going to be because you don’t have all the baggage. This internet age where you know everything about everyone is especially bad for everyone. Who’s someone really famous?

Ben Affleck.
Ben Affleck, yeah!

We spent a whole two years saying, “He doesn’t look like Batman.”
There’s just so much stuff, yeah. Like, “He had an affair with his baby sitter,” or whatever.

The femininity aspects in the film are really interesting, too. Particularly relating to the whole duality of these characters, balancing, “is this who I am?” with, “is this who I want to be?”
Definitely. To me, thematically, those are two sides of one woman. The process that I’ve undergone in my life is to synthesize those two aspects, rather than feeling pulled toward feeling small, getting angry that I wasn’t that way, and getting pulled in two directions. My personal journey has been to merge those two sides to become a more whole, balanced person. To not be mad at myself for not feeling one way, or reacting another way. They are two sides of the same person. And some people may naturally gravitate towards one. But both are kind of a performance.

There is that really interesting moment when you first introducing Mackenzie’s character and it’s made to look like an audition scene. Do you feel like that desire to be a certain type of person forces us to be performative in real life?

Yeah, I can only speak to my experience. But I feel like I’m performing all the time. Interacting with people is a negotiation. And I think as a woman, you’re taught how to perform to get what you need. Like, to seduce, or all these [prompts] that you could give to an actor at any time in a scene.

I think that was true, and that’s something we wanted to hone in on in the movie. And that’s why we used a lot of alienation and breaking of the fourth wall techniques, too, to remind people it’s not just actors who perform. It’s all of us who perform in our everyday lives and are choosing to present something to the world, [something] that’s been fed to us, rather than [present] who we really are.

To literalize some of that conflict by making them both actresses, was that something you debated at any point or was that there from the beginning?
It was always going to be actors in my mind. Mainly, because I started as an actor, so I really related to that. Then, a couple of producers and money people said, “Does it have to be actors? Because that’s not so accessible,” but I disagree. Birdman won an Oscar.

I always said, “No, it has to be actors.” I could never really articulate exactly why. And then this one filmmaker named Elisabeth Subrin has this really awesome blog called “Who Cares About Actresses?” And she articulates it so well, so I’m kind of just copying what she says. But it says that actresses represent to women what women are supposed to be. So when you choose how to portray a woman by picking an actress, you’re just telling women how to behave.

And then they become these archetypal figures.
Yeah, they’re just like tools to pigeonhole. I wanted to play around a lot with how actresses are used, which is why one thing I was excited about when I came onto it was obscuring the nudity. Almost showing them naked so that the audience would feel in their bodies that they wanted to see them naked and have to confront that feeling. Or obscuring the violence was another thing. I don’t know if this is the reaction people had, but it would be so cool if people were like, “Why can’t I see her kill her?!” and then get frustrated and say, “Why do I want to see her kill her?”

It’s that thing where you’re sort of seeking an answer that you already know. I found myself sitting there waiting to see a death scene but also knowing I didn’t need it. That’s a weird impulse.
Yeah, I just thought it might be interesting for people to sit with their desires rather than being given everything.

What were some of your visual influences? The quick splicing of scenes, the unsettling, disorienting style was really engaging and disorienting.
Mark Schwartzbard shot the movie and we watched Three Women like eight or nine times, and Images, the Robert Altman movie. We bought this 1960s zoom lens that was totally unused off of eBay, which was really cool. That was the only one we used for the whole movie.

Then Zach Clark edited it, and I had shown him a couple minutes of something that I had cut myself. I said, “I really want this to be weird and unsettling but I have no idea what to do.” Then he cut the opening credit sequence first and I was like, “Oh yeah, do that always, everywhere in the movie.” He kind of just brought the blinky, splicy stuff to me, and I thought it was amazing. He’s the one kind of responsible for more of the avant-garde elements. Seeing the slates – all those things – he added a whole other layer to the film. He really found visual ways to make it interesting.

A lot of what’s happening on-screen is not that unsettling or strange, but it’s the presentation of it – whether it’s the score or just that interstitching – that makes it so tense. Particularly, the scene where they’re running lines together.
Yeah, it’s so cool, they were really good!

Were you deliberately looking to make seemingly smaller moments play big?
Yes, definitely. My first movie, Green, I was also playing around with elements of genre, but it wasn’t as much of a genre movie. And this I really wanted to make it a psychological thriller, but I still wanted to root it in naturalism and [keep it] performance-driven. So all the choices we made with shooting was to make it as scary as possible

Same with music and editing. And I got really lucky with the actors because I love single-take scenes and they were so talented that we didn’t need to cut a performance. They were just able to do it on set. Not cutting away in certain tense moments built more tension, so I was really glad to be able to have that.

How did Mackenzie and Caitlin get involved? Did you seek them out?
They both came to me through agents and casting directors in the more traditional way. We cast Mackenzie first, and she just really understood Anna, understood the script. I was really excited and I was a huge fan of her work. Caitlin’s agent reached out to me, I was also a huge fan of her work. They were the two women that I spoke to that totally understood the script backwards and forwards, and had clear, specific ideas for their characters.

For me, as the director, casting is essential. Part of the way I decide to cast someone, I choose the person who I think is going to need the least amount of help. For everyone in the cast and crew, I just want everyone who can do their job so I stay out of the way. That’s a big part of what I was looking for. People who really understand this material, people who were willing to come out with me into the woods, work with a really small crew, do the weird hippy new-agey warm-ups I insist on doing and the meditation. People who feel that this is an important movie to make with important themes. Not just people who say “Oh I get to have the lead in an indie.” There was a lot of trust between the three of us that really moved me. It was really exciting and cool. It was the first time I worked with actresses that I didn’t have a relationship with before.

I was wondering if at any point you had considered casting either of them in the opposite role.
No.

It was clear from the start?
It was clear from the start. Yeah.

You’re a multi-hyphenate, actress being one of them. Was there any point where you thought you might be in this film?
At the very beginning when I gave Larry that one page I was like, “let’s just go into Big Sur and improvise a movie.” And he was like, “No, this could be better than that,” And I said, “I’m only going to give up my part if I find someone who I think can do a better job than me.” Then I did. And the role is so intense and aggressive that in order to inhabit that space I would be a terribly mean director.

The process was really important to me. Not knowing what was going to happen to a tiny independent film, I just focused on making sure that making this movie was as fulfilling as possible for everyone involved and that we learn and grow as a group and as individuals through this one month. So I thought that I could facilitate this kind of energetic whatever by being just a director. And it was so much easier than acting and directing. I acted in my first movie. Part of what’s fun about acting is losing yourself in the moment, but if you’re directing too, you can’t.

So you prefer to focus your energy in that way?
I think I do now.

Are you planning any other projects now?
Yeah, I have a script ready, but still not really big. But it’s more of a light dramedy. It will be an interesting shift to move away from these genre elements and focus more on like real life. I definitely don’t want to get pigeonholed as a genre director. Someone talked to me after the movie and said, “There are so few female genre directors, you could really make a big career out of it, do studio stuff,” and I was like, “Uh, I don’t know.”

That to me seems weird, I don’t like genre movies more than any other movies. For me, the through-line with all my ideas is that I’m talking about issues that women have that they’re maybe ashamed to acknowledge publicly. It can spark a dialogue and make them feel less alone, and I don’t think it needs to be any particular genre to do that.

One of the very interesting things about Always Shine is that it does talk about jealousy between friends in a way people tend to not acknowledge or not want to acknowledge, at least. Have you thought about why it’s so difficult to confront?
Do you have that feeling with other male friends?

I think I do. For me, it’s about relative positions in life. And certain people get, like, a nice apartment, or a nice promotion. It’s like a milestone type of thing.
Yeah, I guess I could go deep into an anti-capitalism rant right now. I think it’s the nature of capitalism to have a scarcity mentality and to feel like there’s not enough to go around for everyone. I think that’s particularly true about actresses. That’s another reason I think it’s a cool career to give these two characters. There’s one part and one person can get it.

And it’s not necessarily about talent or anything.
Yeah, I really think that’s true for everyone, I think that that’s a big problem with this society’s obsession with money and power.

It’s an unflattering obsession to have.
Yeah, and then it’s embarrassing. The reason I asked you about men was because with women there’s a huge emphasis on perfection and quietness and not challenging, and so that’s why I was wondering if that was why we don’t like to talk about it, but I don’t know. If everyone feels that way then I don’t know what it is.

Maybe it is just the sense of acknowledging that you don’t feel good enough or you haven’t accomplished enough.
Right. Because everyone’s performing, so you want to create this image of success or having it all together and not being jealous. But then it’s eating away at you inside, making you go crazy, and all of the sudden you’re screaming and crying in the post office. Just like, “Why can’t you give me my package without an ID?!” That didn’t actually happen.

It’s a metaphorical post office.
But I did really shove my boyfriend’s manager because he called me a primadonna. So [the movie’s] based on real life.

Transcription assistance from Jason Gong

As a Brit who lived for many years in Spain before coming to America during New York City Football Club’s inaugural season, documentarian Justin Webster’s background mirrors that of many of the players on Major League Soccer team rosters. Benefiting from his personal connection to the City Football Group, as well as some fortunate timing, Webster found himself preparing to start a new vérité-style film project right as City were ready to announce their entry into America’s 20-year-old soccer league. Yet, the final result of Win! is about as far from PR promotional product as one could imagine. Using unprecedented access to locker rooms, player retreats and board rooms, Justin Webster’s new documentary gives an intimate look into the lives and struggles of a professional soccer organization going through the ups and downs of its founding.

In his sit down interview with Way Too Indie from the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival, Win! director Justin Webster talks about getting access to world-renowned superstars like David Villa and Frank Lampard, the challenge of vérité-style documentary filmmaking, and making calculations about how much information to make explicit.

How embedded did you want to become in this process? How day-to-day was your involvement following the birth of NYCFC?
Justin Webster: For viable, practical reasons, and budget reasons, we couldn’t follow the whole thing for a year and a half every day. So we had about four and a half months of filming and I had to choose when to go. It was spread out to try to capture the twists, stories and the characters. Sometimes things happen that needs to get covered by somebody else. But as this style of filming isn’t that easy to do, that was a challenge, too. So to get somebody else to film while we weren’t there wasn’t the ideal situation. My production team is highly trained and highly skilled in this kind of filming.

The vérité style really lends a really immersive aspect to Win! It gives an unfiltered look at professional athletes that isn’t often on display. Was it tricky to coordinate, or to get these athletes to open up and allow themselves to curse or say something off-color on camera?
Sure. There’s a whole art to this observational filming, done well. Part of it is explaining very carefully and then filming an awful lot. Because when they trust you and they ignore you, then you’re in the position to start getting some real scenes.

And you may not [get good footage], you may be filming for hours and hours and hours and nothing gets into the cut. The team filming has to be on the same level of attention the whole time. When it comes to the players, we got along very well. They very, very graciously ignored us.

And enough to get some of those really candid, interesting moments that anyone interested in the sport wants to see. Those little interactions between a coach and a player or a coach and a manager aren’t normally for public consumption. Was part of your interest in capturing those moments that might seem minor but reveal bits of personality?
I couldn’t put it better myself, in fact. People ask me, “What was the message of the film?” and in a way the message of the film was the style. You see what you think you know, but you don’t really know until you see it. It’s like they’re acting. They’re not acting, but if an actor glances one way, or twitches some way, or looks up, it becomes much more revealing. You see everything in a slightly different light. It’s like actually being there, and that’s stimulating for you to think about what you thought you knew. I think you put it better. Those little details can be very revealing.

There’s a version of this movie that could be made where you explain the MLS rules of the expansion draft, or the protected players clauses; however, a lot of it is left for the viewer to piece together. How much of a calculation is that for you? Explaining the complexities of a world without become bogged down by those intricacies?
Well, that’s a really interesting point when it comes to making film. You need to tell enough that it’s not confusing, but if you start telling too much it becomes boring. Things like the expansion draft, even Claudio and Jason when we interviewed them said, “I’m not sure we can explain it completely,” it’s so complicated. You just have to know enough so you’re not confused. So you know the in expansion draft they’re competing to get some players, actually American players. That’s the important thing.

I’m hoping, and it was a calculation, you’re right, that I put in the right layer of information so that it helps the story, because there is a storyline about how this is the tipping point of soccer in the US, for instance, and the pressures around that.

You pick up that this is this post-World Cup wave, but it’s only a few clips in the actually movie where we see them. Is that something you decide to include in post or is this something you feel you have a natural felt would be part of the story?
I have a boring, kind of [mantra] I repeat again and again. I always say that you have to have two opposing ideas in your mind at the same time and still maintain the ability to function, which is a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald. The two ideas are, “this is the script,” “there is no script.” So you start off with an idea. And so those sort of ideas about the World Cup and where we were, I think they’re always there.

Of course, just a little is enough. Threading in the right level of information, the longer cuts were around 2.5 hours. I started editing fairly early on. It’s a process. With any luck you end up with everything in the right kind of proportion.

You mentioned that you lived in Spain, and you get some really great access with David Villa in the documentary. Was your ability to speak with him or relate to him part of what facilitated getting some of those honest, revealing moments where you see him frustrated with his inability to communicate?
I think so. It’ll be very interesting to see what he says. It wasn’t necessarily easy to film closely with anybody, and he opened up steadily. The fact that we speak Spanish – not just me but the director of photography, my assistant director and producer, the sound person, we’re all bilingual Spanish-English. We talked a lot with David’s father, as well, when he came to training sessions. I think it all helped; building trust like that was essential.

With her background as the star and creator of Pulling, as well as her other work British TV shows, Sharon Horgan has become a recognizable face on British television; however, her latest show Catastrophe marks her first with an American audience. The Channel 4 / Amazon Studios co-production dropped its entire second season earlier in April, picking up years after the drama of the first season, with Rob and Sharon (the show’s co-creators Horgan & Rob Delaney share first names with their characters) married and struggling to raise two children. Both seasons of the Catastrophe are not only hysterically funny, they’re warm and optimistic in a way that runs counter to many cynical, modern TV comedies.

In her short interview with Way Too Indie on the red carpet for Catastrophe‘s panel at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival, Sharon Horgan discusses the advantage television has when developing romantic comedies, the importance of making a show that was more than just gags, and why it’s better to just laugh at Rob’s jokes on screen.

Romantic comedies in film haven’t been quite as popular this decade as they were in the past; however, the first season of your show Catastrophe, as well as several others on TV right now, function as really successful romantic comedies. Do you think romantic comedies function better in that episodic format rather than in film?

I guess it does but it’s also easier to make a romantic comedy because you’re not pandering to a huge audience. I think a lot of romantic comedy in film is aimed at a massive audience, so you’ve got to tick a lot of boxes and please a lot of people. The only people we had to please [on Catastrophe] were ourselves.

Also, we never thought about it as a romantic comedy so we weren’t trying to fit it into a formula. I think that can sometimes be the problem with romantic comedy in film. It has to hit all [those] beats.

We had an easy job. I think it’s harder on film but it’d be fun to have a go.

You and Rob Delaney have a delightful chemistry on the show, even small details like laughing at one another’s jokes really illustrates the healthy dynamic between your characters as a couple.

Yeah, I mean it is a bit of a cheat because it’s easier to laugh when someone says something funny on film than not laugh. But also, the big thing about the characters and why they like each other is because they find each other funny. Any romance or relationship is generally – apart from sex – based on someone who makes you laugh.

We thought it was really, really important that even in season two, even when they’re in the deep quagmires of marriage that they still made each other laugh. It just felt like more of an honest representation. I don’t think anyone tells anyone a joke in real life and they meet it with a frozen face.

But that is something you’re consciously making sure is a part of the dynamic?

Sure, but also it’s easier to do it that way. It’s easier when Rob says something funny to just laugh.

Your characters face adversity, different ups and down on the show, but it retains a hopefulness throughout. Was that something you wanted to be part of Catastrophe from the onset or did that come from writing the show?

It was really important from the outset. I think we both got to a point in our lives where we felt like we didn’t just want to make a show with a load of gags. We wanted it to be saying something and to hit all those spots. So that people who are watching feel that we’re invested in them and therefore they’ll invest in us. None of it’s easy. Having kids isn’t easy. Being married isn’t easy and we kind of wanted to tell people that things can be ok. All these terrible, shitty things can happen to you but there’s quite often a light at the end of the tunnel, and you’ll get through it.

I think comedy is just such a brilliant medium for that. It’s so great to be able to talk about serious subjects through making people laugh.

Feeling oddly jealous—and embarrassed about that jealousy—when her sister was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, Sophie Goodhart began developing a story about a tense sibling relationship largely built around resentment. That inspiration led to her 2003 short film My Blind Brother, which at the time seemed like a launching point for her smooth transition into feature filmmaking. “Since then I’ve had three or four films green-lit, ready to go, and then something happened,” Sophie laments from the Tribeca Film Festival. Her new feature-length directorial debut, also titled My Blind Brother, has been a long time coming, but the version Sophie finally got to make comes with a standout cast.

In her interview with Way Too Indie, My Blind Brother writer / director Sophie Goodhart discusses the long path to production for her debut, spending her option money too quickly, and the benefits of working with longtime friends like Nick Kroll, Adam Scott, and Jenny Slate.

I wanted to ask you about the film’s journey into development because this is a story that’s personal to you, but it’s also a movie that was based on a short film that you had directed.
Sophie Goodhart: Yeah, [the idea started with] my sister being diagnosed with M.S. [multiple sclerosis] when I was in my early twenties. I was sort of embarrassed and kind of surprised to find that I was feeling kind of jealous—and really embarrassed by my jealousy—about the fact that I knew that she was always going to be this incredible hero that battled against great misfortune. So that’s where the short came from.

I got incredibly lucky and worked with three great actors—Tony Hale, John Mattey and Marsha Dietlein—in the original. The short kind of got me agents, and got me certain contacts. Immediately I got these films optioned, and I was like, “Look at me, I’m about to really do it!” I had parties where I bought lots of people drinks where I celebrated my success. Unfortunately, I was, like, way, way, way too soon. I realized that was an expensive mistake to make.

Since then I’ve had three or four films greenlit, ready to go, and then something happened. 2008 happened, everyone needed their money and you couldn’t make films. Or one of the actors leaves and I can’t find a replacement or you couldn’t spend a certain budget on the film. I was writing something completely separate from [My Blind Brother], and was just focused on the Jenny Slate character—about a woman who was going out with this guy who gets killed by a bus just after she’s dumped him. She feels terrible, she kind of hates herself and finds herself on a weird path where she would have been a tragic victim and instead she was just a cruel ex-girlfriend. I realized that her story fit really, really well with this other story so I put them together in this feature. I had to wait around for the perfect cast, the perfect three people, who would mean that I could get over a million to shoot the movie.

There’s a way to interpret the logline of this movie as a broad, Mr. Magoo-style comedy, but your movie stays very tethered to reality. Was there an impulse to go broader or do you prefer to keep your writing grounded?
SG: I always write about things I’m feeling, or worrying about, or have experienced in one way or another. You know, I could research the whole world, or a new environment or a new job, but to have that kind of basic character issue that I’m not connected to I think would make it difficult. I think that the fact that it’s based on some of these feelings that I’ve had, meant that it could [depict] a mean-spirited aspect of humanity. Because it wasn’t just an outsider looking in and mocking it. It was something familiar that I felt and believed.

You had mentioned your three lead actors came aboard as a kind of package. How did you get Jenny Slate, Adam Scott, and Nick Kroll all become involved?
SG: It’s one of those things where you never know which people you meet in your life are going to be the ones to make things happen. It turned out that Sharon Jackson at William Morris Endeavor really connected to the movie, and she had confidence in it. She had enough power to make connections to these people. But I didn’t know that when I initiated talking to her. I wasn’t like, “This is the woman that’s gonna package it.”

The three people who kind of made it happen were my initial producer, Tori, who found the short film. That was reassuring and good news for people doing shorts is that [making them] actually can make a huge difference. Somebody can like it, and they can mention you to try and help you get a feature. Then, Sharon; it’s not often in big agent’s interests to put their time into small films—and this kind of a low budget indie film—but she took a fancy to it and sent it to these bigger actors. Finally, Tyler Davidson saw [our cast], read the script and was like, “Fine, I’m happy to give you a bit more money” than he originally would have been inclined to. It just takes so many happy accidents to get off the ground. And it took such a long time. I felt like I was ready for those happy accidents.

Sometimes it can feel fated in a way.
SG: Yeah, I think after 13 years sitting in my kitchen writing I was like, “oh my god.” It was only hardcore delusion and denial that has meant that I made this because any other human would have just thought, “fuck this, it’s not working.”

What was it like for Jenny Slate and Nick Kroll—who have worked together several times before—and to work with them on developing a romantic dynamic, especially one that is played pretty straight throughout?
SG: With Jenny and Nick and Adam, you just get this unbelievable mix of people who are so intelligent and so good at acting. So nimble about playing jokes and playing them so straight or so small, that they can do pretty much anything. When they read this script, they knew that it was this romantic element, and I didn’t want to play it jokingly. I think they totally delivered. I think the fact that they’re friends meant that I didn’t have to do as much work as I might’ve. And there’s such a beautiful ease between them that I could just say, “And kiss now,” and they just were comfortable, grown-up and intelligent. They were good at acting so it was easy.

What other movies and directors did you look to for influence when putting this movie together?
SG: Two directors that I love are James L. Brooks and Elaine May. I also looked to David O. Russell and Silver Linings Playbook. Then, Knife in the Water, even though tonally it’s so weird—I love the kind of graphic quality of [Polanski’s] work. Elaine May! Her original The Heartbreak Kid is just so fucking good. So those are my inspirations, obviously.

There aren’t many professions in which asking your co-workers whether or not they’ve participated in an orgy is part of regular life, and even fewer outside of the adult film industry. Between Us filmmaker Rafael Palacio Illingworth doesn’t want to shy away from exploring sexual fantasy, as well as the disparity between those desires and reality. It’s what prompted him to appear fully naked as the lead actor in his debut feature film Macho. It’s also what inspires his deeply intimate story about a couple tempted with adultery in Between Us.

As for the filmmaker’s penchant for asking frank, sexually-skewed questions of his co-stars during their first meetings over coffee, Rafael explains that he was seeking, “an assurance that we can tell an honest story. For me, when somebody shows up and he comes with his social media in mind or publicist in mind, all these things are blocks to the story. If they have a problem with telling that truth then I have a problem.”

In Rafael Palacio Illingworth’s interview on Between Us with Way Too Indie during the Tribeca Film Festival, the filmmaker discusses the real-life spat that inspired the movie, what types of questions he peppered the actors with prior to casting, and how Mad Men helped put Ben Feldman on the director’s radar.

What lead you to the creation of Between Us?

I developed it for three years but the idea first came to me a couple years before that. I had this fight with my girlfriend, and I stormed out of the apartment – which I had never done before – and then walking I thought to myself, “What I find the perfect girl right now?”

Of course, that never happened. I came back 20 minutes after. Actually, I’m married to her now, even. It was then I realized that all these fantasies are more like an antidote for your anger than anything [else]. It’s easy to think, “If I leave you I’ll have a line of girls waiting for me.” But the reality is not that.

So that idea came a long time ago and I wanted to shoot it as an unscripted thing before having my first child – only child for now – but I didn’t have time. So then I connected with Caviar [Production Company, which also produced last year’s The Diary of a Teenage Girl] and it just organically happened from there with a script.

How did the idea mold from your writing process?

Talking about these impulses – these kinds of naïve impulses – of doing something unscripted and powerful. Usually, at that point, your ideas are like, “I’m going to do a movie about everything.” You know? [A movie] about everything that’s ever existed. QW you sit down to write the words and realize you have to translate whatever you’re feeling to something it becomes real.

I think the process was really good for the project, and really helped shape it into something because it had to become real and intimate. For example, there are these bookends of the clouds. The movie used to be called The Force, up until recently. Because it spoke about that force always wants to push us around and make you think there’s someone else around; all this temptation and desire. In early versions of the script, [this sense] came from outer space to the inner world through clouds.

I realized whatever it is, it’s between them. It’s there in that apartment where they’re sitting. In front of them, between them, no pun intended.

That [process] is what I went through for the whole script. It was a grand story that tried to talk about everything until we shaved it down to be about this intimate couple and these struggles that they have.

Right, at some point you have to hone in on your focus.

So finding that was the challenge but compared to the general structure, the script didn’t change much. It was always the story of this guy walking out of the house in a rage and then dealing with the consequences of finding this girl that he thinks is the perfect girl.

How early did you get Ben Feldman and Olivia Thirlby involved, and what made you know they’d be right for their parts?

When we went out to start casting it was very important for us to get that main couple right. First, we started going out to guys. The first person that really responded on my list of preferred guys was Ben. This was when he had just finished Mad Men, and he had done an amazing job there. He liked the script. At that moment he hadn’t done any dramatic films, he had only been in horror films.

So I found it interesting that he was not a guy who would come with his own baggage or his own brand. He responded to [the script], we met, had a nice conversation and we connected really well as friends. That was the most important thing to me because being a small movie I needed someone that I could trust that was going to help me out. Whatever that means.

I wasn’t experienced in directing A-list actors, so I also wanted to be open in expressing what I was expecting and what I was fearing. I shared all that and I realized this guy’s a friend. We barely talked about our film; it was more about, “Where do you live? What do you like?” I knew we could sit down for a coffee regardless of any movie. That was what made me think that this guy was going to be right.

After [Ben was cast] we went out for girls, and Olivia also responded [to the script]. Funny enough they hadn’t met until after they were both cast. I had the same experience with Olivia when we met. In a different way, obviously, but I also felt like she was into exploring, and helping, and being open. I realized that if they both can do this then the three of us could do it. It was risky but I think it was fine and they’re both so open and nice.

Were those conversations with the actors partially about their own views toward love or intimacy, since those feelings play such major roles in Between Us?

Yes, I think most of our conversations were about our very private lives. Look, I have nothing to lose. Everything’s on the screen. Sometimes I would just come to them and say, “How is it? You’re married. Have you ever cheated? Have you ever gone to an orgy?” It was all these things. It was kind of rushed, very quick, but it was nice. The advantage that I have is that my movies are clearly self-referential so there’s no secret. I’m not talking about a character.

Especially if you’ve seen my first feature film, which has me acting [in it] and I also get naked. That gave me a really good platform to say, “It’s not going to be as explicit as my first movie but it is in this world of honesty.” I don’t want the camera or the Hollywood desires to be in front of us telling an honest story.

So I would ask if they were okay getting naked or how okay they were with sex scenes. How not [okay they were]. Where could I go with it. I had that conversation with Ben although he had no nudity [in the movie]. It was just about knowing that if needed we will go there.

And also to know that they would be open to feeling that necessity. They could suggest it to me. Which would happen with Olivia. Sometimes I would be like, “Cover her here,” to be very proper and she would say, “Come on, it has to be real.” I expect that and those are the things I make clear from the beginning.

From their collected experiences around Hollywood, both screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker and animation director Chris Prynoski are familiar with the trappings of fame, as well as the desperation of those without it to attain it. Wearing a pair of outfits that Walker noted, “could combine for a really great Hunter S. Thompson costume,” the Nerdland creative team was at ease discussing the first feature film to emerge from animation house Titmouse, Inc. where Prynoski also helms Metalocalypse. Nerdland (read our review) takes a satirical look at a pair of ne’er do well Los Angeles roommates—aspiring actor John (Paul Rudd) and wanna’ be screenwriter Elliot (Patton Oswalt)—hung up on fantasies of making it big in the movies.

In their sit-down interview with Way Too Indie, Andrew Kevin Walker and Chris Prynoski discuss Nerdland‘s nihilistic vision of modern society, their shared appreciation for improv in moderation, and how the dream of writing the Great American novel has shifted.

What was the launching point for this story?

Andrew Kevin Walker: It was an original script I wrote and I tried in different ways to get it made. It was written to be live action – that was kind of the way I imagined it. It’s kind of loosely based on mine, and my best friend John’s life, trying to break into showbiz.

I tried to get it made as an animated TV show; I took the script and broke it down into smaller episodes then left it open-ended. Then when that didn’t happen because no one was interested, I broke it down into little five minute, bite-sized pieces that probably would have added up to one feature but they were made to be little internet shorts and that didn’t work out.

So I just regrouped again. I went back to the feature and I tightened it up. I had been watching and loving Metalocalypse and all the stuff that Titmouse, Inc. does. I’m wondering, “who are these geniuses? These mysterious weirdos who do all this amazing animation.” I managed through agents to get a meeting where I went with my script, they took a look at it, and it was a beautiful thing from there on.

Chris Prynoski: A lot of times you get these scripts and there’s a lot of work that has to be done, but this was very clear. I’ve been those people, I know those people, our studio exists in that neighborhood. It was very clear, I could see how this would worked and I was super stoked.

So the script you brought in to Titmouse was the feature version?

AKW: It was the feature version and that’s what we ended up doing. Fully independent, self-financed, sweat equity feature.

That’s despite Titmouse having not done a feature to that point?

CP: Yeah, we work on features. We do pre-production on features but our own movie that we have control over. We’ve done some direct-to-TV features but this was our first real feature that we had control over. I’m stoked, I’m really proud of it.

There’s a real nihilistic presentation to the world of these characters – is that your general perspective on society?

AKW: I think it’s exclusively about the entertainment industry and the kind of sweaty-palmed desperation you have when you’re outside looking in, trying to get in. I do think it’s interesting that in modern day society, fame can be this big (Andrew spreads his hands apart) like it always was, or fame can be this big (Andrew holds two fingers an inch away from one another). Small fame can become big fame and go back to small fame again then you really want another taste of that.

I don’t think there’s as many people looking to write the great American novel like there used to be, I think everyone’s either trying to write the great American screenplay or shoot the great American YouTube video. Looking in at Hollywood at this point is just kind of looking out at the world, in a way.

There’s a de-evolution in our popular entertainment that you can see through these characters aspirations – is that something concerning for either of you?

CP: I don’t know if it’s concerning as much as it is the way it is. It’s not like we’re trying to be like, “Hey, we’re making this important movie that’s going to change the way things work. If people just like watch this they’re going to have this revelation.” It’s more like, “Hey, this sucks, right?”

AKW: Yeah, isn’t this funny?

CP: This is the way we live. It’s funny, it’s weird. Society is obsessed with fame for fame’s sake.

AWK: Hopefully there’s a certain amount of recognition – especially for our peers. It does go beyond that now since everybody can be famous in their own way, in their smaller or larger social circle.

CP: Yeah you’ve got a phone. You can make your own YouTube video. Everybody’s got their own movie studio.

Andrew, a lot of your previous writing had been comedic but not quite so overtly comedic. You mentioned you had been working on this script for quite a while, was this your desire to do an out-and-out comedy?

AKW: I really do love comedy, I watch a lot of comedy. Humor comes into everything that you’re writing – no matter how serious or self-serious it is. I’ve written darker stuff that’s kind of balanced with comedy and this is almost a comedy that’s balanced with darkness.

Chris, when it comes to the character design, many of the characters have traditionally attractive features that get exaggerated in discomforting ways. What kind of calculation did you make to decide how far out the look of the world would be?

CP: Oh it was definitely a calculation because these days it’s kind of – in a weird way – easier to make stuff look beautiful and shiny and clean. With computers that’s the default. We made a conscious effort to make this very crunchy and rough around the edges. [Make it] feel like hand-drawn drawings. Not use a lot of the bag of tricks we use on other things like there’s no depth of field in this, there’s hardly any lighting on the characters – really just used in special circumstances – there’s not a lot of the, like, fancy stuff we use on other productions.

We really wanted to make this feel almost like films that were shot under an oxberry. You know, the production designer Antonio Canoobio, we really wanted to challenge ourselves by not going slick with it. It sounds kind of counter-intuitive.

That has its own appeal, too. It’s a distinctive look. People talk a lot about “the Adult Swin aesthetic” but it’s got its own distinctive style so it’s not so easy to just lump them all together.

CP: I think it’s more of a sensibility or a tone than an aesthetic with the Adult Swim stuff. I did the first character lineup but beyond that I pretty much handed the whole movie character-wise to Joe Bennett, who did most of the character designs. Obviously I had input on it but you see a lot of his hand there. He’s got a great mind for comedic detail. Little things you’ll notice on the characters that are really, really smart.

At what point did Paul Rudd and Patton Oswalt become involved and what did they help bring to Nerdland?

CP: Patton was the first actor of any of the actors to get involved. He had done voices for other cartoons and is a fan of Andy’s. He said yes in the room to it, which was great, and kind of had a cascade effect.

As far as stuff that those guys added… it’s interesting. The way I record, is you record the exact page, you do a loose pass and then you do an improv pass. These guys did so much incredible improve but what ended up in the film was really, largely, what the script was. There’s heightened parts where we used the imrpov but it’s all woven in to what’s there on the page.

AKW: Patton and Paul did amazing improv. Paul Scheer really stuck out to me. He was insanely amazing. Kate Micucci and Riki Lindhome in a way had such thankless parts and they made a lot of very little. But every actor did improv in great ways.

I think Chris was very judicious in choosing a balance between improv keeping the flow moving forward. I think we’ve all seen improv where you see a piece of a film get caught in an improv bubble for a minute. You’re kind of there on the day with them, appreciating that moment, and it might be a little longer than maybe [necessary] and then things get started again. So I think [Chris] was kind of great in judging stuff and choosing it very thoughtfully.

CP: Yeah it’s so easy to get caught up when you’re in the booth recording with these guys making you laugh. It’s like, “That’s great! That’s genius!” Having done Metalocalypse it happens all the time. There’s so much more than we can use in any episode. You really, really have to work hard on focusing. Not falling in love with something that is not going to work or ultimately not work as well.

AKW: It’s almost like unless you were there on the day it’s not the same. It stops the movie for a second. But that’s what blooper reels and Blu-Ray extras are for.

At some point you have to kill your darlings.

AKW: Absolutely. Or the darling has to be the thing from the script that gets taken out, and the improv goes in its place.

CP: I got to say, too, the combination of Paul and Patton – they had such good chemistry together. You really felt that these guys knew each other very well, they lived together, they were roommates. These guy were recording on opposite coasts. They could hear each other and see each other on a screen but Paul was in New York and Patton was in LA.

They made these characters likable while they were riding a dangerous line where people could have just checked out and been like, “these guys are assholes and I’m not with them anymore.”

AKW: The most embarrassing thing for me… Every actor was bringing so much more to everything that was on the page. I would be the one laughing the hardest at my own stuff I had written. To hear Patton Oswalt’s voice saying these lines after all this time living with it on the page, and then Paul Rudd and on and on from top to bottom… there’s not a lot in here by an actor or actress you don’t know.

For Rudd and Oswalt particularly they’re not even altering their voices much, it’s a lot through their natural congeniality.

AKW: And also I think it’s selling the friendship between them. It lets you keep caring about them no matter what semi-despicable things they discuss doing and attempt to do.

Is there a future for the characters of Nerdland?

AKW: That will be determined out there rather than in this room but they certainly live in my heart.

CP: I’d love to work with Andy again on something, who knows.

AKW: We’re already trying to figure out what to be able to do next together. It was just the best experience ever.

Even actors Lindsay Burdge and Arthur Martinez have trouble separating what’s real and what’s fiction from their new movie Actor Martinez. A documentary-style film ostensibly about Arthur’s life as a Denver-area actor, the plot takes a meta-narrative twist when filmmakers Nathan Silver and Mike Ott interrupt the docudrama – in several scenes with the actors – to nudge the film in more interesting directions. “You would feel like you’re authoring something,” began Lindsay, “but it’s like—I honestly don’t know to what extent they were just manipulating me into thinking I was doing these things on my own. I just don’t know.”

Arthur, supposedly the initiating force behind the movie, often appears to be the biggest subject of the filmmakers’ manipulation. Or is he helping to pull the strings alongside Mike and Nathan? In this sit-down with Way Too Indie, Actor Martinez stars Lindsay Burdge and Arthur Martinez discuss the complex concept behind their new film, the freedom of working without rehearsal and the livewire aspect to its production.

Actor Martinez recently held its US premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. It is currently seeking distribution.

How did this project first come to you both?

Arthur: I was actually, inadvertently, one of the pitchers. I didn’t know what I was pitching for. I knew I was throwing, but I didn’t expect this weird curveball.

Lindsay: Nathan [Silver] and I had hung out at another film festival shortly before he pitched this to me. Then, we were in New York and he said, “We came up with this movie in Denver, we want to make it soon. Do you want to do it?” He said it was about a man, Arthur, and this woman falling in love. I was supposed to be a gardener or something like that and it was supposed to be a regular movie. Next thing I knew months had passed and I was sent this outline which was not that movie at all.

Arthur: Wow, you got an outline though.

Lindsay: You knew that [Laughs].

Arthur: That still blows my mind [Laughs].

Lindsay: I know! I got an outline and it said, “Arthur does this.” Then it says, “Lindsay Burdge, actress from New York, does this.” I was like, “Oh, this is not the movie that I thought we were making at all.”

Arthur: I still haven’t seen the outline. That’s why I’m amazed at what she’s saying. She’s told me this before and I still have a hard time believing it.

Once you actually got into the production phase, were you anticipating the extent to which this would blend between documentary and narrative? Were you caught off guard when you were actually filming?

Arthur: That whole film is me caught off guard. Yeah, no, they didn’t tell me anything. They went to extra pains to hide what was happening. They would hide me off set somewhere and have somebody guard me so I wouldn’t go look beforehand.

What’s it like going into that situation where you don’t have that safety harness—or a script—to guide you?

Arthur: My classical training got in the way. I had to throw it out. You just have to throw it out. So after the first three days, I figured just throw it out.

Lindsay: There was definitely an adjustment period. I definitely knew more than Arthur did, about how it was going to be this blended thing, but there were a couple layers that I didn’t know were going to be there. I knew I was going to be playing myself. I knew I was going to be playing this character, but then there were these other characters also that I didn’t know I was going to have to sort out.

So the first day was very stressful and the second day got a little less stressful and then it became fun once I understood the rules, but until I knew the rules of the game we were playing it was very stressful and uncomfortable. We didn’t have anything really to hold onto at first. There’s no script, there’s no character, and so we weren’t working on a scene together. It was more like manipulating each other [Laughs].

Arthur: She’s right. They used us as weapons against each other and I’m sorry about some of those things I had to say [Laughs].

Lindsay: You got me once. I was like, “Ah nice, they got me. The tables have turned. Fair enough.”

It sounds a lot like theater exercises, almost more so than the traditional narrative structure of film. Did you find it liberating at all?

Lindsay: Yes, I thought it was really fun. It became really fun for me.

Arthur: Yeah, it was always scary, but I’m down.

Lindsay: Sometimes you had fun, right?

Arthur: Well… yeah. I mean, there’s a reason I did this. It’s like riding a roller coaster, I’ve been screaming the whole time. It’s awesome.

Lindsay: But also, we were playing different games. We had different rules that we’re playing by. Because you were like, “I’m going to know nothing,” and I was like, “I gotta know something.”

Arthur: I don’t remember actually making that rule, I think that was [co-directors] Mike [Ott] and Nathan [Silver].

Lindsay: I remember saying to you, “Do you want me to sneak you the outline?” And you were like, “No no no.”

Arthur: Nah, you can’t mess with the director. Not on set.

It must take a lot of faith then to just throw yourself into that process and trust it.

Arthur: You trust the talent that you’re working for. It was a lot of pressure to make sure if they spent five hours setting up a shot that I actually did my job. Which is difficult when you don’t know what your job is, but that’s ok. You just do it. Hope for the best.

Lindsay: It was mostly just being. At least from watching you, it seemed like just being kind of open and available and reacting, which was cool to watch actually.

There’s a lot of tension though in some of those interactions. How much of that was authentic?

Arthur: You just defined acting. Serious, that’s the definition of acting and if it’s not, you’re not doing your job.

Lindsay: I think some of it was definitely real and some of it was manipulated. And I’m not sure Arthur still knows which is which [Laughs].

Arthur: I don’t know. I’m just going with it.

Lindsay: And I don’t either sometimes. Some of those times, I think we were recreating that tension or the tension was to swerve the plot of the movie, which there is actually a plot. Other times it was real frustration. It was fun kind of fun for me. Sometimes I felt like your advocate.

Arthur: Thank you, I did need that. It was brutal. They just beat up on me until she showed up. They’d got me so far off what I realized center was and she did a great deal to re-center me.

Lindsay: And also just to have somebody else say, “This is frustrating.”

It gave you a partner in the process.

Lindsay: Sometimes they would do this thing where they were like, “I don’t know, I’ve worked with a lot of different actors who don’t have a problem with this kind of work.” And I’m like, “Oh yeah? I know a lot of them, and they do.”

How much of what’s on the screen do you actually feel responsible for injecting into the narrative?

Arthur: This is like taking bunch of colors—everybody who worked on this—and swirling them all together. How much of that is me? I can’t even tell anymore, maybe none of it. Maybe some of it. I don’t know.

Lindsay: Did you even suggest shooting in your apartment?

Arthur: That was a resource, yes. That was the purpose of it. I didn’t know we were going to shoot what we shot.

Lindsay: I still don’t know what he’s… I don’t trust this guy.

Arthur: I don’t trust me either. It’s crazy.

Lindsay: I don’t how much of it is you… because I arrived and it was already underway.

Arthur: You’re right about that. I was part of the early production process, I just didn’t know what was coming out of it. I just made the decision to trust Mike and Nathan. Those guys are crazy.

Now that you’ve had the chance to see the final film, how closely did it resemble what you thought you were making?

Lindsay: Very closely for me.

Arthur: Ok, I’m down with that. It must have matched the outline at least.

Lindsay: It didn’t match the outline. The outline was four pages long and had almost nothing in it, but it matched what I felt like we were making while we were making it.

Are there any things from this experience, the looseness of it, that you maybe miss in other films that you make?

Arthur: I think they all should be different. They’re all very different experiences and that’s ok.

Lindsay: I feel like there definitely was a sort of livewire element to this because we had to be so on our toes and just ready to go with whatever came at us. Nothing ever became polished, which was really nice. Often we would do a scene and I’d be like, “So are gonna do that again?” And they’d be like, “No! We got it, that was great!” And I’m like, “We did it one time! Don’t you want to do it again? It’ll be better.” And they were just like, “No.”

I liked that. I like how fresh it was, and it would be interesting to think about how to bring that to other stuff. We had to be so quick on our feet. But I don’t know how you could bring that to something when you’ve read the whole script and you know exactly what you’re saying.

Is it wrong to think about this film as percentages? As 50% documentary, 50% fiction?

Lindsay: You’d probably be wrong if you tried to divide it. Even if we tried to divide it. I still don’t know how much Arthur knew what was going on all the time.

Arthur: She’s right, I was part of the initial production, but it was definitely different [by the end]. There’s no way to identify what’s real or not in the scene. I can say this part of the scene is real. I’m sure it would be like reading a story about yourself in a tabloid. In many ways, this is a tabloid film.

Gangly-armed or thick-necked with off-colored skin tones or noses—the harshly drawn inhabitants of Nerdland don’t have the benefit of beauty to mask their ugly insides. They’re off-putting even when appealing. Like many of the character designs on Adult Swim cartoon shows, the characters’ distinctive features are sharpened and exaggerated in ways that makes their appearances unsettling. It should be no surprise that Nerdland comes from Chris Prynoski (Metalocalypse, Motorcity), veteran of the late night Cartoon Network universe, where absurdist and divisive humor has thrived for the past couple decades.

In the heart of the entertainment industry, nearly 30-year-old roommates John (voiced by Paul Rudd) and Elliot (Patton Oswalt) feel their shot at world fame is dwindling. At first, both seem like familiar characters repurposed for Nerdland’s grimy, stoner sketchbook aesthetic. The pair live together in a rundown Hollywood apartment with old beer bottles and pizza boxes strewn across the floor. Elliot, a would-be screenwriter, who spends more time on the couch playing video games than writing (a depressing familiar conceit) ends up penning a script about a vengeful Rip Van Winkle waking from his slumber to shotgun blast open the skulls of strip club patrons. His roommate John—an aspiring actor—is the gentler, naïf, Lenny Small-type. When John tries to pass off Elliot’s script to a well-known movie star, John fumbles the pages and rips his pants in an effort to pick them up, exposing his puckered anus to the crowd.

The hand-drawn feature animation is the first feature from animation house Titmouse, Inc., a smooth transition to the big screen that borrows animated TV comedies’ fast-paced style. Quick cutaways pepper the dialog-heavy moments with visual gags. They reveal the protagonists’ dreams of red carpets lined with adoring fans or boob-filled, heavenly utopias, many of which feel ripped from an angsty teenage boy’s fantasies. But like a random episode of Family Guy, these jokes range in quality from shocking and fun to predictably cynical. Its misanthropic charms often redeem Nerdland, but John and Elliot’s aversion to productivity can become grating to watch for the duration (even if that length is only 83 minutes).

John and Elliot’s pursuit of fame at any twisted cost makes the pair progressively harder to like. Nerdland‘s mocking vision of LA is short on any redeeming personalities. Filled with silly caricatures of the fame-worshipping underclass, it’s clear that the director Prynoski as well as the screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker hate just about every person in this world. And yes, that’s the same Andrew Kevin Walker who wrote Se7en and contributed an uncredited rewrite to Fight Club—a film with similar nihilistic social satire. With a considerably scattershot plot, one which has a somewhat episode design, Nerdland lacks some of the narrative momentum that comes from more cohesive stories.

While a majority of scenes revolve around the funny duo at the cartoon’s center, recognizable voices make cameos throughout. Comedians such as Molly Shannon, Paul Scheer, as well as Garfunkel & Oats’ Kate Micucci & Riki Lindhome make extended appearances. Among the funniest roles, Hannibal Burress’ discomforting slant on the standard, slovenly Comic Book Guy pairs well with his wry delivery. Like many of the notable comedians that lend their voice to Nerdland, Oswalt and Rudd don’t alter their voice for their roles—they’re each well-suited to the characters and make for an amusing, albeit unlikely pairing.

Victims of a media-driven culture, John and Elliot ultimately determine that their shortest path to recognition is through notoriety—though as a hapless pair of unskilled, intermittently unemployed slackers the duo’s ability to accomplish anything is questionable. Some of their antics are hilarious but as the film progresses, many of the bits drag on too long. Prynoski and Walker find some strange insights on their race to the moral bottom with John and Elliot—a commentary that often acts more searing and urgent than it is—but like a developing TV comedy, Nerdland is often best in small patches.

In examining the role of the sonderkommando in German concentration camps, filmmaker László Nemes was preparing to enter his debut film Son of Saul into a long line of auteur-driven projects made in response to one of history’s most devastating instances of genocide. Drawing influence from Elem Klimov’s final film Come and See as well as the horrifying documentary Shoah, Nemes conceived of a project that would acknowledge the horrors of camps like Auschwitz without placing a direct focus on the actions themselves. His movie Son of Saul utilizes a shallow depth of field to obscure the frame around its central figure, the sonderkommando Saul, allowing the intricate sound design and some clever suggestive filmmaking to fill the visual gaps.

“When I finished [reading] the script I thought that finally this was a movie that was going to do it right,” explained Son of Saul’s lead actor Géza Röhrig. “Two out of three Jews were murdered in Europe during the Holocaust and all the movies I saw were talking about the lucky third.”

Son of Saul is an often-brave depiction of the ill-fated lives of the sonderkommando, Jews forced to work in the Nazi death camps. In this interview with the movie’s filmmaker László Nemes as well as its star Géza Röhrig from before Son of Saul picked up an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, the pair talked to Way Too Indie about the movie’s intimate perspective, the challenges of minimalist filmmaking and the responsibility they felt in portraying these events.

The Holocaust and World War II have been extensively covered in films and other documents, what compelled you to explore that territory for Son of Saul?

László: I think it hasn’t been explored. Filmmakers [have] established, over the decades since the war, a sort of codification of the Holocaust film as a frozen genre in and of itself. I was more interested in making a portrait of one man, one individual, to convey something about the human experience within the camp. Within the extermination machine. With all the limitations and lack of knowledge and frenzy that were at the heart of this experience.

I think these aspects were forgotten by films. I wanted to go back to the experience I had by reading certain text such as the scrolls of Auschwitz and the writings by the sonderkommando. Texts that were written during the extermination process, within the crematorium. These were texts that gave us, as readers, the [feeling] of being there. And it was this feeling of being there that was not communicated in cinema, I think.

How early on did you develop the idea of this very experiential, immersive type of presentation?

László: It wasn’t there at the very beginning. It took me years to develop the project and to discuss it with my cinematographer [Mátyás Erdély]. I think the short films [we made together] were a way to devise a directorial strategy to immerse the viewer. But it took years and several steps to design it.

So many other Holocaust films indulge the violent aspects of that war in a way that lessens the impact of that violence.

László: I agree.

Your film does a remarkable job of putting the viewer in that moment without lessening that experience.

László: Yes! Convention is an invention. My approach is that you cannot truly put your finger on the very clearly horrible aspect of the extermination. It has to be in its essence. I think cinema can do it by giving certain limitations to frenzy of this experience. [Violence] can be diffusing in a way and not as clear-cut as cinema wants to make us believe.

You strip down the elements, in a way.

László: We went against that. We went against those effects. It was very conscious.

Géza, as an actor, how does having less going on around you in the frame impact your performance?

Géza: First I had to fall in love with the project. I believed in this movie because I felt this was going to be credible and authentic. I saw that the crew, Laszlo and the cinematographer, basically everybody involved took it extremely personally. They were very focused. So I wasn’t alone in this.

On the other hand, as an actor, it presented a singular challenge because actors imitate. Actors simulate. But with such a distance from our everyday world and the world of Auschwitz, how do you bridge this existential gap? I did lots of reading. That was my primary source. Every single account I could read. Then I had to realize that the less-is-more concept that the movie was applying is true visually, as well.

There’s this very interesting paradox in the movie that, “you only show my face,” so to speak, but the human face is the place where the world and a person meets. That’s why it’s so expressive. On the one hand, it’s a little but on the other hand, it’s the most. It’s huge because there are so many tiny muscles around the eyes and lips that every single thing is on surface. The key for that is just to put myself there and sustain the right state of being. I had to not just understand intellectually but really grasp it with my whole being. What did it take for these people? How is it to live without feeling? I don’t live like that generally so I had to get to that state of being.

Is it a challenge to perform without a traditional, melodramatic, over-the-top moment?

[László laughs]

Géza: No, first of all, László was very strict to kill any sort of theatricality from my acting. I also understood the concept that when people are in a theater they have to be visible and effective to the 30th row, or balcony. This is film. We have a camera that is 20-30 inches from my face. There is no room for routine or technique. I just had to be in the moment as intensely as I could.

How do you work on striking that balance between the intimacy of those moments and the sweeping nature of this story, which takes place in a busy concentration camp with tons and tons of extras at times, without allowing the intimate style to overwhelm the experience?

László: Well you just asked how to direct a film [Laughs]. That’s something that’s challenging, especially for a first-time filmmaker. You have your material but once you’re on set how do you make it happen? I don’t really have a clear answer but I think for this film it was especially frightening. But at the same time we were very prepared and had time for preparation.

I wanted to have a director instructing everybody on set but I knew I couldn’t instruct all the extras, so I had a director friend—who was hired by the production—and he directed all the background action. In this film, the background sometimes becomes the foreground. We are in this very immersed situation so the central action couldn’t be separated from the rest [of the film]. I think it’s how we worked together as a team that made it believable. That was the most challenging [element].

One of the ways it’s so believable is the textured sound design. I’ve read you spent 5 months in post-production specifically working on the sound design, but how much went into the process in pre-production and how much did you work with that along the way?

László: We knew beforehand it would be a long ride. I consulted with the sound designer throughout pre-production and production, but with sound we worked on it in a very organic way. A lot of indications were there [in the script stage] and we certainly worked using a lot of production sound but the more we worked on it, the more it became evident that we needed more human voices. So we had to go and record more human voices in different languages so this kind of babel of languages is part of the experience and part of the film.

What’s the sense of responsibility you feel when you tell a story with such serious, resonate subject matter?

Géza: For László and for myself too, the Holocaust is an inter-generational term. It’s not something that the second or even the third [generation] is learning from the books. We are traumatized by this experience whether or not we’ve experienced it directly ourselves. It’s almost like having a phantom pain in a limb that wasn’t amputated from us but our grandfathers, but still the pain is real.

I feel that this is part of the legacy of modernity—it’s an extremely important thing to speak about, especially the sonderkommando—because there’s a new brand of killers that appeared here in history. People always killed each other, but they kind of took responsibility for it. Here in the middle of the 20th century there is this new type of, “I just obeyed orders, I did nothing wrong.”

There is this distance. The executioners are removed both physically and psychologically from the outcome of their actions. Now the sonderkommando became a software because the killing is going on with drones and pilotless bombers. There is no human sonderkommando anymore and the distance between the murderers who are sitting somewhere underground with a mouse they click and another continent that is being bombed, they are not feeling any sort of consequence just like the Nazis did not face the screaming or the stench of the gas chamber. They left the dirty work for the sonderkommando.

I think it’s an extreme challenge in terms of going into the 21st century. If we are to avoid anything [like the Holocaust] happening again, we have to first recognize we haven’t turned the page yet. Still, the same evil manifests in this world. You can list the alarming frequency of genocides after the Holocaust. The U.N. is consistently incapable to invoke its own genocide convention of 1948. We are still living in the times of Auschwitz. Basically, the driving force behind this movie, is an appeal to vigilance. An appeal to constant reflection.

László: I think we have a responsibility to talk to our world. The new generations are forgetting about the possibility of evil within civilization. The most advanced civilization of Europe, in its peak, killed the entire Jewish population of Europe. So I think it’s true that we have to be conscious of this possibility within humanity. People consider history as a history book. Like history through postcards. But history doesn’t necessarily announce itself, it might just be the present.

Michael Moore (Bowling For Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11) adapts his brash style of documentary filmmaking to a thin, but well-meaning, takedown of American exceptionalism. In Where to Invade Next, the controversial filmmaker goes east, shooting his entire film outside of the United States despite consistently turning his attentions back home. The righteous indignation that’s fueled most of Moore’s work seems replaced by resigned exasperation. More often, he just seems tired of it all. As a result, the humor that once made the documentarian an engaging avatar for liberal outrage lacks its searing edge in Where to Invade Next.

The film sees Moore “invading” European countries—and an African one—to “claim” their policies on behalf of America. Gathering interviews with former government heads, public service workers, and ordinary citizens, Where to Invade Next provides first-hand accounts on the benefits of altruistic policies. He speaks with Italians who get eight weeks of paid vacation, and shows their smiles fade as he explains that Americans are guaranteed none. He takes a tour of French school cafeterias and gawks at the selection of 80 different cheeses in the school chef’s storage. He examines these baffling disparities between The Rest of The World and Us, but does so on a microscopic level that’s unlikely to sway anyone’s mindset. Moore reaffirms leftist ideologies, hardly adding anything to the conversation.

Where to Invade Next reaches for humor that’s simply not there. Moore is a somewhat awkward improvisationalist. His hit to miss rate is close to 50:50, but watching his interviewees awkwardly smile as he stammers through a half-formed punchline grows draining. Reduced to the dad-joke realm of lines like, “You know it’s bad when the French pity you,” Moore lacks the punchy energy to sell his sarcasm. His unfunny cut-aways to a stable of cows or a clip from Talladega Nights slow down the film’s pace. When the documentarian attempts to play the role of pro-American buffoon, you wish he had the concise witticisms of Comedy Central-era Stephen Colbert. Even the clever juxtaposing of anti-terrorism speeches over video of police brutality seems staid and expected from someone like Moore.

The documentarian’s habit of inserting himself into his films inhibits Where to Invade Next’s message from fully resonating. Opening the doc by recounting a make-believe meeting between Moore and the leaders of the American government, joking that he was, “summoned to the Pentagon,” his sophomoric approach feels reductive—a strange tone to set when your film is meant to promote civic engagement. During interviews he prods his guests in obvious ways, repeating his questions with faux bafflement at the responses. It all serves to personalize Moore’s message, but he doesn’t demonstrate the depth of expertise to act as an authority.

Moore likely has knowledge to make a convincing argument, but it—along with almost any statistical data—is not on display in Where to Invade Next. It’s hard to disagree with Moore’s pro-public good sentiments, but his documentary is hardly putting forth the best argument. As if the filmmaker set out to catalog these crazy cool foreign laws he’s heard so much about, Where to Invade Next often lacks the thoroughness to serve as more than an introduction to civic duty.

Originally published on October 3rd, 2015, as part of our New York Film Festival coverage.

Filmmaker Miguel Gomes‘ sprawling six-and-a-half-hour reaction to The Great Recession of Portugal insists its influenced by events that occurred in Portugal between August 2013 to July 2014. A helpful on-screen text reminds audiences of this near the beginning of each of Arabian Nights‘ three volumes: The Restless One, The Desolate One, and The Enchanted One. Despite that, through three volumes, Arabian Nights travels through time, across the country, and to Baghdad. Text is one of the many ways in which Gomes subverts expectations across his trilogy. “I see a connection between the voiceover in the second part of Tabu and the text [in Arabian Nights],” says the Lisbon-born filmmaker. “As you hear the voiceover, you have a completely different sensation. It’s inventing a wall you don’t see. The text here is the same.”

Gomes’ films connect disparate people and elements across Portugal to create a surreal, spellbinding experience. In an interview with Way Too Indie, the Portuguese filmmaker addresses the concept of adapting the “Arabian Nights” structure without adapting the book, creating the sensation of getting pulled in and out of a film, and why he didn’t want to “hit” his audience three times.

Did your interest in “Arabian Nights” predate your desire to talk about Portuguese austerity?
It came before. I started to read Arabian Nights—I never got to the end, though. Because it’s a huge book, but I’m still reading it [laughs]. I do it regularly since 12 years old I think.

My intention was not to adapt any story from the book but [instead] the sensation I had with the book, which is a different thing. It’s kind of a sensation that you’re almost vertical—living in a labyrinth of stories. This kind of baroque structure amazed me when I started to read the book. So for me, Arabian Nights, is like a bible of fiction. You have all the possibilities of fiction—shifting fiction, inventing fiction within fiction—in this book.

And it’s a way to cover a lot of territory. You address so many people from a variety of backgrounds and occupations.
That moment in Portuguese society was very intense and it continues to be—it’s not over yet. People are still suffering the consequences of this financial, economical crisis but I would say that [the film has] the sensation of being alive in that country, Portugal. My intention was also to gather a certain number of stories that were happening at that moment and try to build tales for Scheherazade to tell to the King. Stories about how it is to be in that country nowadays.

There’s also a lot of dealing with the thought process, coming to terms with where society is—from the filmmaker’s struggle to encompass all these stories to the judge who keeps discovering these new layers of malfeasance. They have to come to terms with these elements.
I think every one of them—they have their connection with Portuguese society. For instance, you were talking about the segment of the judge, it has this more global aspect of now having a copy of the Portuguese society in front of the judge. The judge, who’s job is to put order in the world, cannot. She doesn’t have the tools because the situation got out of order. She cannot tell who’s guilty, not guilty. She cannot do her job as a judge. This of course resonates with an issue that’s so important in Portugal: who’s at fault? Who’s guilty?

People try in a very quick way to put the guilt on someone just to protect themselves. It’s a human, natural tendency to defend yourself but I think things are more complex. This is why I had this impression that it would be important to have as many segments as possible because there is not only one way to watch Portugal today, as there is not only one way of making films. So I thought my Scheherazade would be able to tell very different films, to tell and show things in very different ways.

Volume One begins chaotically with all the different voiceovers and settings but as the film goes along it slows down. I wonder if that pace was built into your stories?
It was built in with the editing. When we were shooting the film, we didn’t even know if what we were shooting would appear [in the finished film]. We didn’t know that there would be three volumes when we were shooting. Only in editing we understood that we could control the mood of each volume. This kind of development [of the changing pace] from The Restless One to The Enchanted One was pretty much built in the editing.
Even though I have the sensation that sometimes you have two speeds at the same time. For instance, for me the judge moves absurdly quickly, if you try to really follow the events and the crimes.

It goes out of control fast.
And the same time you have the sensation that it’s not moving at all because it’s all moving in circles so it’s not going anywhere. It’s like not moving and moving very fast. For instance, in part three, in the Scheherazade section, I also have the feeling that sometimes the film goes very fast—she’s always drinking, or singing, going from one situation to the other.

It’s kind of entrancing the way it bounces from sections of extended dialog, or a speech, and then there’ll be silence or just the natural atmospheric noise. Did you try create that sensation of being pulled out and getting pulled back in?
Mostly I wanted have this kind of roller coaster entry in the film [in Volume One] with lots of more radical changes from moods and filmmaking from one to the other. The second one I wanted to be more horizontal. It had three stories and they are different from the first [volume’s stories] that are more up and down and this is like a line.

The final one, it’s the zen, atmospheric film, it has a different construction. You have lots of entries, like in an encyclopedia, and these entries invent for your two kind of communities: one completely fictional, with such absurd characters [in Baghdad] as Elvis the thief breakdancer, and also a community of the guys with the bird song contest that do as surreal things as the guys from Baghdad. Trying to teach your bird to sing by creating [a birdsong] in a computer—it seems quite Arabian Nights. Not quite delirious fictional. So there’s a clash of these two kind of communities with reality and fantasy working at the same level.

That’s the interesting thing when you blend elements of reality and surreality you can accentuate your message with those elements of absurdity.
This dimension is very important in the book. The realistic absurd kind of thing is very important and I really enjoy that. [The surreal] helps reality become more clear for me. It’s important not to try to mask fiction as if it was reality, which is sometimes a problem I have with some contemporary cinema. They make lots of effort to pretend to be reality. To be life.

The place of the viewer in these films is someone who is experiencing real life and I don’t like that kind of cinema. I like cinema where there’s lots of artificial elements and it’s up to the viewer to establish a pact with the film because in the artifice of fiction, there’s always certain truths about our real life. But I cannot also renounce the material world, I think it’s important to have this kind of [films].

I think this last volume. For me it’s like you start delirious like Scheherazade. And what happens to Scheherazade is completely mythological, like myths. It becomes much more down to earth because of the sun, because of the rocks in the landscape. We’re entering the world of Scheherazade and then it gets down to Earth.

I think that then the bird trappers, they do the inverse movement. It starts down to the earth and then they start to get this kind of mythological quality. So bringing the myth down to the earth and bringing [reality] to the dimension of the myth was the proposal of this volume. So for me, it’s always like this fantasy and reality and myth – like our practical, everyday lives – should have a place in the films. They are mixed.

Is that how you interpret the world, with that surreal element?
I think there’s always the world outside and the world that exists in our mind, no? I have to use both but I think we have to be aware of something which is if our mental world, or fantasy world, if we use it to hide reality I think it’s not good. We are trying to run away from things so I think for me it’s important to use both but being really careful with the fact that the fantasy cannot disguise reality.

Is there a version of this film that will exist at 6 hours?
Not really because when edited the film and we cut three volumes, we built every film like it’s a complete film. If you’re at the New York Film Festival, they show one every day. Like Scheherazade telling those stories to the kings, she finishes in the morning and then she continues the day after. This is my way to see the film, I think it’s a good one.

This idea of having the three in a row for me is a little like getting hit three times. I think it’s too violent. Every film has already the possibility of changing to defy the viewer. If you don’t have a little bit of a break and you start to see it continue, I don’t know if this can give you congestion or indigestion. It’s too much. If I would have had it one film of six hours I would not do it like this.

How did you arrive at what the ending would be of each volume? Was that also through the editing process?
It was in editing. Every time we shoot a story we didn’t know anything. Where to put it, if even we put it in the film or in the garbage. So it was in the editing that each end [was discovered]. I would say that for me that the most emotional thing is at the end of the finch volume. The Swim of the Magnificents, with all the unemployed people is emotional and thw ghost of Dixie [is emotional, too]. For me it’s very emotional material and so we thought during the editing of each volume that’s how to end it. It was not simple. Sometimes we changed the stories and it was not simple to get this point.

Nasty Baby lulls you into thinking it’s one type of movie before revealing its true intention. Chilean filmmaker Sebastian Silva (The Maid, Crystal Fairy and the Magical Cactus) has no qualms with pulling the rug out from underneath his audience. In fact, he designed Nasty Baby that way specifically. “How much can I stretch the time for my characters to hang out,” began Silva, “so my audience will have the hardest time possible judging them when they commit a crime?”

Telling the story of gay couple Freddy (Silva, in his acting debut) and Mo (TV on the Radio frontman Tunde Adebimpe), and their attempts to artificially inseminate their friend Polly (Kristen Wiig) while contending with a disruptive neighbor named The Bishop (Reg E. Cathey), Nasty Baby skirts around expectations up through its jarring final moments. In his sit down with Way Too Indie, Sebastian Silva discusses drawing influence from real-life urban landscapes, balancing behind-the-camera duties with acting, and the benefits of introducing new plot elements mid-way through the final act.

Spoilers begin mid-way through article and are identified by the “Spoilers Section” heading.

There are a lot of people in this story who could be considered outsiders, but they feel familiar. Anybody who has lived in a city knows of someone like The Bishop.
Yeah, everybody knows a Bishop for sure. If you’ve been in New York, or any city.

Are you drawing from your own experiences in Fort Greene?
There’s a lot of, I don’t know, beggars or people collecting things. People mumbling to themselves, being crazy in the streets, they are part of the urban landscape. They are there every day. I have experienced that more superficially here. I never got into a quarrel with any of those people. Maybe an exchange of words if they are assholes.

[The Bishop] comes more from one of these characters that I found in Chile. I was in Chile, probably shooting a film, and then I was staying in a neighborhood that is pretty hip. There was a neighbor that lived around there that was very much like The Bishop.

What was weird about him… even though everybody knows a Bishop this one in the movie he has keys to a house. Like, next door. He has access to one of these privileged home. These fancy brownstones in this neighbor. So he’s not a complete invader. He has his place. Nevertheless he’s terrorizing the neighborhood in its own way but it is a very ambiguous character. You don’t know what his business is… This is more based on a Chilean Bishop.

That’s the interesting contrast, Freddy doesn’t think The Bishop belongs but The Bishop doesn’t think Freddy belongs either. There’s a lot of people testing their limits with other people. Were you looking to push these characters outside of their comfort zones?
I feel that all writing is that. You have somebody in a comfortable position and then you give them a challenge. That’s pretty much where storytelling begins. I was not consciously thinking exactly that way just because it seems like a thing I take for granted. You need to push them out of their comfort zone.

The shooting style has lots of handheld, close-up shots, hanging out with these characters in very private moments. Did you want to capture an intimate feel to bring audiences into these characters?
Handheld is mostly what I’ve done in my movies, anyway. The way that I work with my DP Sergio Armstrong it’s always [like that]. On my first film, Life Kills Me, it was more sticks (i.e. tripods) and dollies but after that everything’s been handheld. The kind of stories I’m telling… when you’re telling a story that’s naturalistic, you want to portray some sense of reality to make people feel that they’re actually witnessing a piece of reality. I feel that only handheld makes sense.

Even our heads move. If you’re sitting on a chair, and witnessing something on a street, the way that you see things still feels more handheld than sticks because your head is moving up and down or things get in your way. You never see life as you see it on sticks. Your face is never fixed. In order to reproduce a sense of reality, I feel that handheld is the most effective method.

We also had time constraints as we always do in small, independent films. Going handheld also helps with the pace of shooting. You can move back and forth, do a close-up and a wide in the same shot without ever turning the camera off. It was a movie that was just begging for handheld. I don’t know how else I would have shot this film.

This is also the first time you’ve starred in one of your own films, how much of a challenge was it for you to balance those on-set responsibilities?
It was very challenging. I knew I was not going to have any issues playing Freddy when he’s doing normal shit – celebrating his boyfriend’s birthday, biking on the streets or rock climbing with a friend – I was never scared of playing that part of it. When Freddy has to [do more dramatic, spoiler-related actions] and then react to it, I was terrified of that scene and how I was going to pull that off. I did a little bit of a rehearsal and it was terrible.

I was like, “Fuck! I cannot share this with anyone because I really, truly suck at this.” But then that same fear pushed me to do it. The fear of failure that I could actually ruin this film with the stupid idea of starring in it. It was fun and I overcame the challenge. I don’t think I’m the best performer at all but I think that I look like Freddy. I look like that dude.

The most difficult thing for me that I hadn’t thought of, strangely, was the fact that I was going to be in front of the camera all of the time. I forgot, me as the director, I’m always behind it. We had such little time to shoot the film, I did not have time to look at footage. I was unaware of my performance, really. I would look at some things on the camera when I felt that things were weird or something, but most of the time I was trusting my co-actors like Kristen and Tunde, whoever was with me in the scene, and also my DP who has a really good eye for bad acting. I was among really smart people with good taste and bad acting alertness.

People who could keep you in check.
Pretty much. Also, I have to say, when you’re part of a scene, even more than being behind the camera, you can sense if things feel real. When you are in the situation, there are cameras filming you but you can forget about that for a second. You’re drinking water, you’re interacting with people. If the interactions somehow feel fake you know. You just know because you’re part of it. How could you not know that there’s something odd about it?

If there was something odd about it, I would try my best to overcome that oddness and make it natural. Make myself feel that I was really going through the situation we were portraying. It didn’t feel as hard, to be honest, as I thought it would be but it was definitely adrenaline inducing. At some points you had to delegate your trust to friends. It was a great exercise in letting go and trust.

SPOILERS SECTION

What kicked off your interest in this story?
I think it was the storyline of the Bishop, a gay couple, and the confrontations between them. A figure like The Bishop – an unwanted man in a neighborhood that is really harmonious – and a gay couple with one of them getting really frustrated by the presence of this man then taking the law in his hands by accident. That was the initial idea for a film and it had so many elements, like the crime, the moral question of whether good people do bad things. In the end, if you make [The Bishop] disappear and make this gay couple get away with murder, would the audience hate them forever? Can you make the audience forgive them or have a hard time judging them?

That was kind of the original idea and then it transformed into this hybrid that also mixes in the compulsive desire to reproduce among mid-30s or early-40s people. Why do they want to have babies? How far would they go to have a baby? Those two things then mixed up and created this idea.

Then the Nasty Baby aspect of it, Freddy doing these disgusting performances, came out of a really old idea I had, like, 15 years ago. It was like what Freddy describes in the beginning of the film. I thought that that could be a fun performance, portraying a baby. Embodying a baby in front of an audience and making a total ass of myself, go through the embarrassment of it with other people. Those three things created this film.

You have this trio of characters coming together to form a sort of family just in time for them to face their biggest challenge, I was curious what was the thought process behind combining these two distinctly disparate elements in Nasty Baby?
It’s a very manipulative movie in the first place. I know what I’m doing. I’m adding a very horrifying act for our main characters to perpetrate in the second half of the third act, which is really late in storytelling. By that moment, when this happens, things should be closing out. They should be brainstorming names for the baby at that point. They shouldn’t be trying to clean up blood in a bathtub. It’s a very conscious experiment to make my audience identify or love or understand where these characters are coming from for as long as I possibly can. How much can I stretch the time for my characters to hang out so my audience will have the hardest time possible judging them when they commit a crime?

If they commit the crime in the first half of the movie, the audience is not so involved with them. They will find them completely white, gentrified assholes who are killing a black, mentally handicapped man in a bathtub. But then, by the moment that they do it, you even find out that she’s pregnant. So you’re rooting for them so much that you fail to see the fucked-up-ness and the social injustice of what they’re doing in that bathtub. Which I also have conflicts judging. I, personally, as a writer, even as a human being. I’m not completely sure if I want them to get caught for what they did.

I think that the politics in the movie are really obvious. There’s not much to discuss. We all know that shit is very unjust and sad, but for me it’s more about the moral doubts that I leave my audience with. Do good people do bad things or are they actually fucking evil? These people might not be prepared to have a baby. It could even be seen as a homophobic movie. The moral confusion that’s left by the end of the film is the success for me. The open questions to all of these moral riddles.

I feel like in a lot of films a death loses its meaning because we see filmic deaths so often, but to have this one come so late really hits you
Yeah, you have it so late and you don’t even give the audience time to really process it. All the processing comes at their houses after watching the movie or in their cars or when they’re having dinner. I appreciate that, I feel that it’s something that I’m exploring again in a movie that I want to make now. A little bigger film, where again there is a plot that comes in very late and you just don’t expect it.

Nasty Baby, after they kill The Bishop, everything is kind of an epilog. They get rid of the body and it becomes a sort of urban fable. We don’t care about logistics. It’s not important, like, “How did they get the body inside the car? How come nobody saw them?” We’re not caring about that verisimilitude. Is that the word?

Probably.
[laughs] It’s not important to me, for me it’s more important that what’s eating the audience is, “Oh my god, these guys! We like you! How could you kill somebody? Please, god, let them get away with this. Let them have their baby in peace.” Or, “These motherfucking hipsters. I hope they get caught. I hope the police find them.”

You leave people with all of these questions, all of these expectations, projections, desires. These three people who you bond with, an audience projects all of their fears and sense of justice onto them. I find that to be the most fascinating part of this film, to be honest. If this film did not have that twist by the very end, yeah maybe it would be a sweet movie about three friends having a baby in Brooklyn, but it’s very uninteresting as a piece. I would not be into it.

Do you want all your films to leave that kind of impact?
I hope so. I think that maybe Magic Magic has it a little bit but I think even Magic Magic ends in a way that’s a relief. Death comes as a relief for Alicia especially who is suffering so much in this schizophrenic, paranoid episode she’s suffering from makes her so miserable. When she finally dies you’re relieved, at least myself. I don’t see death as the ultimate punishment, either. There are things way worse than death.

I think Magic Magic and Nasty Baby, and more so Nasty Baby, the morals of the story are not clear. You leave the audience with a lot to chew. I like that a lot. I feel that the movie closes nicely. It’s not a movie that all of a sudden cuts to black in the middle of nowhere. It cuts to black in a place that makes sense. I’m not pushing my audience off a cliff, I’m leading them to an end that is a little abrupt but at the same time, there’s nothing left to say.

It’s not quite ambiguous.
Yeah, it’s not ambiguous. You are left with moral ambiguity. That’s an achievement to me. I hope that’s what people take out of it.

Don’t call his movie jazz. Hazily moving back and forth in time, Miles Ahead takes place during the legendary trumpet player’s self-imposed 5-year hiatus from making music during the 1970s, flashing back to memories of his tumultuous relationship with ex-wife Frances Taylor (Emayatzy Corinealdi). It’s a disjointed, bizarre, and oddly compelling structure that Miles himself may have admired. Don Cheadle—playing Miles, co-writing, and making his feature directorial debut—hones in non-musical moments from Davis’ life in creating this muddled biography, with at least one more gun-toting car chase than expected. As cool as Miles Ahead’s stylistic flairs are—bleeding Miles Davis performances into the middle of a boxing ring and elsewhere—Miles Ahead still falls victim to the stiffness of conventional biopics, hampered by its own ambition.

Cheadle has worked nearly a decade on Miles Ahead, co-writing the script with Steven Baigelman (story credit on last year’s James Brown flick Get On Up) and even turning to IndieGoGo for a final bit of fundraising. More than any other element, Cheadle the actor appears ready for the challenge of capturing the soul of Miles. He convincingly resembles Davis when tapping on his trumpet and donning the garish outfits Miles wore at the time. Sounding like a man in recovery from a weeklong binge, Cheadle’s Davis adopts a scratchy, apathetic tone somewhere between conversational dialog and a man mumbling under his breath. His performance brings the dynamic, unpredictable energy Miles Ahead needs, but the film surrounding him is too sparse to keep pace with his rhythm.

Miles Ahead’s frantic assembly loses sight of the characters in Davis’ radius. Though flashbacks (and flashforwards) transport the film back over a decade, the majority of the “present day” action occurs across two crazy days during Davis’ exile. He’s bothered by the unrelenting knocks at his door from fictional and inexplicably pursuant Rolling Stone writer Dave Brill, played by Ewan McGregor, who alternates between authentic and fake bafflement. Davis asks Brill if he can drive before using the writer as a chauffeur to Columbia Records, where he arrives gun-in-hand to demand a $20,000 payment. One of the executives (played by a mustache-twirling Michael Stuhlbarg) makes sleazy attempts to win over Miles before hatching a plan to steal Davis’ latest recordings—which he literally refers to as, “gold.” The subsequent chain of events involved in the losing, tracking, and re-acquiring of this unreleased recording borders on ridiculous, and would more appropriately belong to a Guy Ritchie heist plot than the Miles Davis story.

These distractions pull the film away from the music. Miles Ahead never plays like a greatest hits record, often turning away from the Kind Of Blue hits in favor of obscure cuts from Miles Davis’ career. Even when songs are heard, they are relegated to the background of scenes in which Davis fruitlessly searches for his new sound. In the beginning, pouring a session tape, Davis stares down his trumpet from across the room and mutters, “Fuck you lookin’ at?” Cheadle attempts to define the obstacles Davis had in returning to recording after taking time off, but in the context of his erratic vision, Davis’ inability to compose is reduced to a subplot.

Cheadle reaches for a lot of disparate concepts with his long-in-development Miles Davis biopic. He looks to articulate the impact of his music while focusing on the prolific musician’s least productive period. Cheadle tries to make a film about the essence of Miles’ work but offers an intentionally limited perspective on the man. Miles Ahead remains entirely watchable, yet the ways in which the film falls short of its target are frustratingly apparent throughout. When Cheadle trots out as Davis with #SocialMusic emblazoned on his vest during the film’s finale, it’s one final oblique maneuver that seems as confused as the rest of this incomplete portrait. Despite a tremendous performance at its center, Miles Ahead gets lost in its attempt to embody Davis’ artistic spirit.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s spellbinding music documentary Junun takes viewers on a musical expedition through Jodhpur, India. Following the month-long musical partnership between Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood (composer of film scores for Anderson’s films since There Will Be Blood) and Israeli composer Shye Ben Tzur, who lives in India and records with the group Rajasthan Express, Junun is a fly on the wall look at the recording of their forthcoming album of the same name (set for release on November 13th). Forgoing explanatory talking heads, the documentary encapsulates the experience of witnessing these songs as they are developed. Running at a slight 54 minutes, about the length of the album itself, Anderson’s debut documentary is also the filmmaker’s first time shooting a film digitally.

The director toys with the camera during takes, adjusting focus or repositioning himself. He even implements a drone camera for some stunning shots of the Indian landscape that surrounds Mehrangarh Fort, the intricately designed building in which the group records their album. The moments where the camera veers across the room too quickly, or a pigeon’s coo is picked up by the microphone before the bird gets shooed away, help establish the documentary’s immersive quality. Much of the movie is beautifully photographed, Anderson panning from one emotive performance to the next. Junun‘s opening shot is a cleverly designed, slow 360-spin around the room that lands on specific musicians as they join in on the song. Implementing the touch of a veteran music video director, Anderson creates some magnificent sequences that swell in time with the building tunes.

The real reason to see the documentary is the distinctive, eclectic sound produced by Greenwood, Tzur and The Rajasthan Express. Junun relegates both Greenwood and Tzur to the background in most scenes, though their presence in helping to shape the project is clear—Anderson himself appears just as briefly for a group photo and during the end credits. Instead, the documentary highlights the extremely talented musicians of Rajasthan Express. In particular Aamir Bhiyani’s spastic trumpet lines—the stirring burst of notes from his instrument. Junun captures the collaborative spirit of skilled musicians, chronicling the recording of this team’s fascinating sound in an enjoyable, concise documentary.

With sleek packaging that would make the late Apple CEO proud, Steve Jobs is a biopic told in three extended scenes, over the course of three separate product launches. Alternately taking place in 1983, 1988 and 1998, the newest film from director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire) begins in chaos with arguments bleeding into one another. An audience of eager techies waits outside the 1983 Apple Keynote while Jobs (Michael Fassbender) stands center stage demanding that the Mac on display say, “Hello.” He orders Mac developer Andy Hertzfeld (Michael Stuhlbarg) to fix this problem while Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet) pulls him backstage to handle other issues; he meets with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen) as his estranged wife (Katherine Waterston) and daughter (played by Makenzie Moss, Ripley Sobo, and Perla Haney-Jardine during different time periods) wait for him in a dressing room; he balances all these tasks, never doing just one thing at a time.

Credit the breakneck pace to writer Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network, Moneyball), whose wordy diatribes have been both the subject of praise (The West Wing) and scorn (Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip). Few writers are as capable of making intelligent people sound smart, and here he’s once again demonstrated that ability. In Steve Jobs, Sorkin’s script sends the actors careening into one another. Their piercing verbal takedowns and cleverly dismissive retorts provide a staccato rhythm that remains humorous and enthralling for the duration of the movie. Steve Jobs cares about ego, and characters who demand or want credit for their contributions. “I’m tired of being Ringo when I know I was John,” Woz yells at his friend and collaborator. The script spends as much time building its characters up as it does tearing them down.

Imposing this 3-part structure requires Sorkin to reach for several storylines simultaneously. It’s a structural conceit that asks the audience to overlook that sense of “the gang’s all back together” each time its central characters are reintroduced for later scenes. Steve Jobs is more of an impressionistic portrayal of the tech innovator than all-encompassing biopic, but this assembly is far more entertaining than what the conventional treatment allows (looking at you, Jobs).

New chapters begin with an exposition dump through montage and dialog. The script maintains a high energy, which allows the actors’ emotive line delivery to cover up the expositional nature of some of their interactions. It gets messy during a section in the middle of the film, when editor Elliot Graham (21, Milk) jumps from flashbacks to the height of an argument between Jobs and his former boss, John Sculley (Jeff Daniels). More often, the film is electric, smoothly transitioning between its exciting moments.

Fassbender commands attention on-screen as Jobs. His magnetism transcends Sorkin’s depiction of Steve Jobs as an unrelenting asshole (who relents a bit too much by the end). He embodies the character’s unchecked sense of superiority through his disaffected saunter and casually spoken insults, delivering a well-timed, “Fuck you,” as if it were completely innocuous. It’s one of the actor’s most fascinating roles to date, elevated by the A-class ensemble around Fassbender. In particular, Kate Winslet nails Joanna Hoffman’s subtle Polish accent while serving as a sounding board and frequent scene partner to Fassbender’s Jobs.

Director Danny Boyle blends the dynamism of the script and the actors’ performances with his mastery for technical flairs. Shooting each time period in its own format—16mm for 1983, 35mm for 1988, and digitally for 1998—Boyle implies the technological progress through these periods. The filmmaker matches Sorkin’s rapid-fire dialog by condensing as much visual information into each frame as it will allow. He laces his scenes with the shortest of cutaways to a crowd stomping their feet in anticipation of Jobs’ latest unveiling or a brief glimpse of Jobs and Woz back in the garage.

The overwhelming display of craft makes Steve Jobs among the most stimulating biographical films in recent years. Any liberties Sorkin takes in adapting the famous Walter Isaacson biography of Steve Jobs serves to accentuate the underlying conflicts in Jobs’ life. Its gripping first few moments ultimately prove to be the film’s best ones, as the momentum gradually slows by act three; however, Steve Jobs is nonetheless a highly entertaining look at an icon and the ways in which his hard-headed determination affected those in his radius. Lead by one of the year’s best performances, Steve Jobs is constantly compelling perspective on the shortcomings of a man who achieved greatness.

Weaving a young Irish immigrant’s story into a heartfelt, romantic drama, Brooklyn exudes an entire diary’s worth of emotion with a light-handed touch. Based on Colm Toibin’s 1950s-set novel of the same name, Brooklyn follows Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan) as she leaves her home in Ireland for a new life in America, torn between where she’s comfortable and where she finds opportunity. She arrives as a timid but amenable girl, unsure of what to say or simply too afraid to say it. Director John Crowley (Boy A, Closed Circuit) portrays a world in which the people around Eilis are consistently decent. In Brooklyn, the biggest obstacles facing new immigrants are loneliness and having been displaced.

After arriving in America, Eilis struggles to discover her sense of belonging. Stuck in a boarding house for Irish women run by Mrs. Kehoe (a wonderfully snappy Julie Walters), Eilis unhappily toils away at a department store, silently crying when she opens letters from home. It isn’t until she meets Tony (Emory Cohen), a handsome and soft-spoken Italian plumber, that Eilis starts to smile. His courtship of her is palpably sweet. As she finally opens up with him, talking up a storm through their first dinner together, Eilis’ restrained glee is contagious.

Nick Hornby (An Education, Wild) peppers the film with eloquently poignant lines of dialog. When Eilis first meets with the Irish priest (Jim Broadbent) that sponsored her voyage across the Atlantic, he tells her that homesickness is like any other malady and that it can linger for a while before getting passed onto someone else. The understated manner in which the script allows Brooklyn’s characters to articulate their hopes and fears creates earnestly powerful moments. There’s only one short romantic speech in the film and damned if it isn’t a more genuine expression of love than anything to have come from a Nicholas Sparks adaptation.

In a role perfectly suited to the emerging 21-year-old Irish star, Saoirse Ronan captivates in the part of Eilis. She conveys the anxiety of unfamiliar situations, as well as the joy of developing a real connection to others. Her growth from deferential girl into self-assured woman is a gradual process, enlivened through the subtlety of her acting. It’s an outstanding performance, rich with sentiment and sweetness. Emory Cohen’s charismatic presence is a treat, too, providing an affable quality in support of Ronan’s more serious demeanor. His sincerity as Tony is appealing without becoming preposterous. Even Domhall Gleeson, whose role as a potential new suitor in the story should elicit scorn, proves to be delightful.

The section in where Eilis gets forced into returning to Ireland adds complications to a film largely missing them. She returns as a radiant figure, her bright, American clothes distinguishing her from the crowd. Often, Crowley positions Eilis as a splash of color within a muted frame. As Eilis wavers on her fate, Brooklyn refuses to show its hand. It’s easy to imagine different audiences leaning towards separate conclusions from this love triangle, but its ending is a fitting, beautiful final note.

There’s nothing revolutionary about the love story depicted in Brooklyn; however, the restraint it shows with its dramatic tension makes the film a pleasant, tender drama. In fleshing out Eilis as a woman with a full life who aspires to more than just marriage, she becomes an endearing protagonist in a genre that often lacks those. Brooklyn is a gorgeous illustration of an immigrant’s experience in the mid-20th century, complimented by the touching romance at its core.

Not every spectacular promise reaps the richest rewards. In Romanian filmmaker’s Corneliu Porumboiu’s bone-dry comedy The Treasure, the mild-mannered Costi (Toma Cuzin) can’t resist the allure of hidden treasure after a neighbor claims that there’s a fortune buried in his grandparents’ garden. Lacking the money to fund an excursion by himself, the neighbor—Adrian (Adrian Purcarescu)—enlists Costi to hire a professional metal detector and drive to the countryside in search of lost riches with the agreement of splitting their findings. This is hardly as glamorous or scintillating as it might seem, the opposite of the valiant Robin Hood fables Costi tells his son at night. Porumboiu’s version of treasure hunting avoids grandeur in favor of a lot of talking, and the tranquility of an older man gingerly pacing across lawns with his run-down metal detector.

Reaching the titular treasure involves tedium and process. As Costi, Adrian, and Cornel (Corneliu Cozmel)—the man with the detector—watch hours tick away while making vague progress, rifts begin to occur between them. Unsure of how deep to dig their holes as well as whether they’ll ever find anything, the group’s politeness starts to fade. The Treasure keeps the both characters and the viewer waiting patiently. Porumboiu adopts a stillness that treats each new development like a surprise. Any moment could lead to a discovery, but it could also lead nowhere.

Puncturing the tension with the metal detector’s alien bloops or a well-timed pithy comment, The Treasure wavers between amusing and listless. The wry interplay becomes the focus above its stripped down plot. Most of the fun is in observing how Costi and Adrian handle the changing circumstances. Costi and Adrian get so wrapped up in the possibility of untold fortunes that anything less would ultimately feel like a let down. The experience of watching The Treasure follows suit, delivering an unremarkable but still enjoyable expedition.

An impressionistic profile with a high barrier to entry, Don’t Blink: Robert Frank is a documentary for those familiar with the photographer made by someone familiar with the man. Editor and documentarian Laura Israel had worked along Frank for years, archiving his work, before becoming compelled to profile her occasional boss. The documentary imparts the feeling of time spent in Frank’s presence. Israel films him from the backseat of a car as they pull over for conversations with passersby—be they Frank’s friends or just a random man dressed as the Statue of Liberty. Alternating between brief interviews with the contentious subject of the documentary and glimpses into the archives of Robert Frank’s work, Laura Israel’s Don’t Blink: Robert Frank is a frustratingly sparse profile of an enigmatic artist.

Robert Frank is an uncooperative interviewee, openly dismissive of Israel’s attempts to get him to reflect on his career. In some cases—as in addressing the untimely deaths of both of his children—this reserved nature makes sense. In others—such as when Israel positions Frank in front of footage from his Rolling Stones documentary that almost never was, Cocksucker Blues—Frank expresses his distaste for artists that explain their choices, which forces Israel to cut the interview short. Some insights are elicited from the photographer’s printmaker Sid Kaplan, articulating Frank’s meticulousness when he recounts the photographer’s demand of 24-second exposures instead of 22-seconds.

Frank’s impenetrable disposition makes it hard to get invested in his “sick, sad view of America,” particularly when approaching the documentary with limited knowledge of him or his work. Laura Israel’s debut feature is decidedly not an entry-level look into the man’s career, capturing the abrasive, dismissive personality of her subject. Don’t Blink: Robert Frank is a brash profile of an artist who would rather stay a mystery.

Todd Haynes’ gorgeous new film Carol is a delicate, romantic examination of queer identity in the 1950s. Based on the Patricia Highsmith’s novel “The Price of Salt”, about a virginal shop girl named Therese (Rooney Mara) who falls for the titular Carol (Cate Blanchett), this understated lesbian romance is an often joyous look at a blossoming relationship that transcends all obstacles of its era. Articulating that imperceptible pull of deep affection, Carol is wonderfully acted by its two leads. Mara and Blanchett develop an instant, intriguing chemistry that breaths life into their reserved initial exchanges. The immaculately crafted love story demonstrates the power of genuine connection, regardless of gender.

Haynes and his actors are able to express more with a lingering hand on a shoulder than most romances achieve in an entire film. Opening with a nervous dinner between Therese and Carol, the pair of women communicate an extensive mutual history without the benefit of the context that will later be added. Blanchett brings a dignified elegance to her fiery character, with a controlled outward demeanor Carol tries her hardest to maintain. To paraphrase a line from Carol’s jilted husband Harge (an excellent, but one-note Kyle Chandler), she’s always the most commanding presence in the room.

Her stoicism gives way when in the presence of her younger counterpart. It’s the radiant Rooney Mara who shines brightest in Carol, in spite of her character’s passive tendencies. The reserved manner in which Mara carries herself—burdened by the men and job that take her presence for granted – slowly gives way to reveal a girl simply unsure of herself. To Therese, Carol is more than someone to love, but someone whose self-assuredness is something to which she aspires (during their first get together, Therese admits she, “barely know[s] what to order for lunch”). To Carol, Therese is an alluring presence that needs to be coaxed out of her shell. Each actor seems charmed by the other’s quirks. It’s only in Carol’s presence that Therese learns to stick up for her own desires.

Carol shares thematic and temporal similarities to another Haynes film, 2002’s Far From Heaven, with the notable difference between being how retrospectively coy Far From Heaven seems by comparison. While Far From Heaven treats its homosexual elements as a reveal, Carol gives the gay relationship center stage throughout. No characters go so far as to use the L-word, G-word or H-word, but they are unrepentant about their “immoral” feelings. Therese and Carol have a harmonious bond. Even with Haynes’ history in making gay-centric movies (Poison, Velvet Goldmine), Carol feels like a step towards normalcy.

Carol could have simply been a story about a relationship falling victim to a bygone age. Instead, Haynes constructs a testament to love’s ability to endure. It’s a beautiful story only partly due to its unfettered handling of the lesbian relationship, but for the precision with which it portrays their romance. There’s a certain stiffness typically associated with Period Pieces—where costumes and era appropriate dialog gets in the way of character. That is never the case with Todd Haynes’ newest film, which uses time period as set dressing for a humanistic drama. The production details are flawless and immersive, but Haynes’ camera draws attention to his actors’ faces and their mindsets.

The culmination of Therese and Carol’s romance comes naturally. Haynes teases out the process until it seems as if the two are simply meant to get together, and that first blissful moment they share is exciting and moving. The film’s careful finale is Carol at its most tender, ending on a touchingly delightful note in sync with the rest of the film. It’s hope from the past to give us hope for our future.

Depending on your generation of comedy, the name National Lampoon likely signifies drastically different levels of quality. For decades, the media empire developed some of the most influential comedy and comedians of their era, including names like John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Billy Murray, Ivan Reitman, Christopher Guest, and more. Documentarian Douglas Tirola uses the deep archives of sharp, satirical National Lampoon material to pull together a hilarious, rapid-fire biographical documentary on the history of the Lampoon. Complete with interviews from National Lampoon co-founder Henry Beard, Animal House director John Landis, and former chief executive of the Lampoon Matty Simmons, Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon is replete of material to thrill Lampoon fans.

The documentary draws from years of funny material and the deep roster of iconic humorists associated with the National Lampoon brand. The magazine’s distinctive illustrations become fully animated and the assortment of ridiculous Lampoon photoshoots are arranged into hysterical slideshows. Some of the best insights that Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead provides are into individual gags and issues. In tracing the development behind standout material like the Yearbook issue or the infamous cover of the “Death” issue, Douglas Tirola’s documentary reveals the thought process that birthed such darkly twisted humor.

Recognizable names such as Chevy Chase, Ivan Reitman and Al Jean appear for interviews, but Tirola also pulls from writers like Michael O’Donoghue, Tony Hendra and P.J. O’Rourke for revealing tidbits about the early days at the Lampoon. As Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead moves through the creation and establishment of the National Lampoon brand, it seamlessly integrates profiles on a collection of important figures to the story. The film highlights nearly all the major writers, illustrators and businessmen who brought the company from a small magazine to a nationally recognized media conglomerate.

Large sections are devoted to two chief contributors who have both died: Douglas Kenney and John Belushi. Kenney co-created the Lampoon with Henry Beard, but by Beard’s own admission Kenney was the driving force while the magazine was young and growing. Kenney’s absence from the documentary is strongly felt, since his work resulted in much of the most memorable output from National Lampoon; however, Chevy Chase’s emotional reflection on his last days with Kenney is one of the film’s most touching moment. Belushi, too, is showered with adulation. As the star of Lampoon’s first live show “Lemmings,” and their first feature film Animal House, Belushi’s impact on National Lampoon was massive.

Whenever the interviews veer towards the more upsetting aspects to National Lampoon’s story, the interviewees tend to brush aside the question. For every great success that the National Lampoon had, there was a falling out or a missed opportunity, such as when NBC approached Matty Simmons about creating a Saturday night sketch show before Lorne Michaels had a chance to pull from the Lampoon’s cast. The story is steeped in touchy subject matter, from inter-office hostility to drug addiction and death, but the documentary mostly skirts past these unhappy moments.

The first on-camera interview in Tirola’s film comes from Billy Bob Thornton, who like fellow celebrity fans of the Lampoon Judd Apatow and John Goodman, reminisces on the influential and biting humor of the magazine’s early days. It reveals the documentarian’s intentions to an extent, this is a nostalgia-driven piece meant to celebrate the legacy of National Lampoon. The film treats just about everything that happens after National Lampoon’s Vacation like an ellipsis at the end of a sentence. Instead, it focuses on (mostly) men with decades of separation from the National Lampoon looking back on their fond, funny memories.

Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon may not tell the complete story behind National Lampoon, but it’s the best examination that National Lampoon had to offer. Tirola’s film is energetic, plowing through the hilarious backlog of National Lampoon magazine clippings or radio segments fast enough to stay constantly entertaining. The frequently funny documentary is a fitting ode to one of comedy’s vital institutions.

Originally published as part of our 2015 Tribeca Film Festival coverage.

The whimsy nature of Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Be Kind Rewind) meets the adolescent exploration of the coming-of-age genre in Microbe & Gasoline. Following two young friends that build a house on wheels in order to take a road trip across France, Gondry surprisingly downplays the potentially fantastical elements of this premise. Sure, the filmmaker indulges in a backward dream sequence and a homemade house on wheels, but even the execution of those components is decidedly restrained in comparison to Gondry’s previous effort, his arts and craftsterpiece Mood Indigo. His latest film is an enchanting, youthful romp with a truly laissez-faire attitude towards growing up.

Daniel (Ange Dargent in his feature debut), nicknamed “Microbe” by his classmates for his diminutive size (though he points out he’s not the shortest kid in school), is a social outcast frustrated by being overlooked or mistaken for a girl. He avoids the other boys in school, preferring to sketch portraits of a girl he speaks to but won’t pursue. Daniel finds kinship with the arrival of Théo (Théophile Baquet), a new boy whose souped-up bicycle and engine-repair hobby earns him the name “Gasoline” (as well as snide comments about his diesel smell). When the pair grows tired of their school and their moms, Microbe & Gasoline hatch a plan to build a portable shelter to transport themselves around the countryside for the summer. Should it be a car? Should it have a shack? Why not both?

Microbe & Gasoline is less concerned with the consequences of the boys’ actions than it is with their routes to self-discovery. As the young teens leave behind their families, the film does as well. The policemen whom Daniel and Théo worry will disapprove of their unlicensed vehicle instead want a selfie with their jalopy RV. They undertake this journey with only minor complications. Rather than condescend to its protagonists, the story embodies the boys’ budding desire for independence and treats each moment with the level of significance it has to the film’s characters. Gondry demonstrates real affection for his naively inquisitive pair, and their funny, genuine but juvenile heart-to-hearts.

Despite its eccentricities, Microbe & Gasoline can’t help but feel overly familiar at times. Like too many of these unconfident adolescent stories, Daniel’s insecurities are largely alleviated by a slight makeover and a pep talk about a girl. His mopiness isn’t as engaging as Théo’s defiant goofiness. Among somewhat recent young male-skewing escapist semi-fantasy, 2013’s The Kings of Summer more effectively conveys the annoyance of being caught between childhood and maturity. What allows both of these movies to succeed is the specificity in the characterization of its leads. In Microbe & Gasoline, Daniel and Théo are distinct, charming young men that behave like actual teenagers.

Gondry’s work can feel devoid of cynicism. The only cynical characters in his latest movie are the stifling adults who aim to get in Daniel and Théo’s way. This might be too precious for some audiences, but their exuberant adventure is often fun enough to merit the idealism. The very French Microbe & Gasoline entertainingly captures the adolescent yearning for independence from an adult regimented world.

It can’t get more direct than getting to hear the word from the source himself. De Palma features only one interview subject: the Blow Out, Carrie and Scarface (how do you only choose three?!) filmmaker, Brian De Palma. What could have easily been a self-indulgent or rose-tinted retrospective discussion is made fascinating by De Palma’s openness about his aspirations and influences, as well as his willingness to admit to several failures. That forthright demeanor is what might make De Palma accessible to those who don’t even consider themselves De Palma fans in the slightest. It’s also why, for the De Palma championers, this documentary is an ideal look into the director’s collected works. Brian De Palma’s noteworthy career is put into new perspective by the man at its helm.

Filmmakers Noah Baumbach (Greenberg, Frances Ha) and Jake Paltrow (The Good Night, Young Ones) seem like an odd pair to author a portrait on the legendary Brian De Palma; however, the trio of directors frequently have dinner with one another, engaging in conversations apparently not too dissimilar to this one—filmed in Paltrow’s living room. Baumbach & Paltrow jump cut through De Palma’s responses in a way that maintains a speedy pace. The rapid assembly assures that the film never really wastes a moment. They briefly acknowledge the filmmaker’s upbringing before speeding into De Palma’s early career, leaving most of the runtime for diving into his filmography piece by piece. Certain sections go into greater depth than others, although it’s not always the expected films where De Palma decides to go into detail. His work on the aforementioned films as well as The Bonfire of the Vanities, Casualties of War and Home Movies are all given extended sequences in which De Palma gets specific on his vision, then trashes on all subsequent film and TV versions of Carrie.

De Palma has plenty of name-dropping and behind-the-scenes stories to satisfy movie nerds. Some photosets show De Palma dining with friends Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg—there’s even an old home movie of Spielberg calling Lucas from a car phone. Among the most fascinating looks into the production process that De Palma provides is the director’s account of how he became attached to Scarface, before abandoning the film while Sidney Lumet took over, only to return to the director’s chair before filming commenced. When De Palma brings up his inspirations, from personal experiences like watching his doctor father’s surgeries to cultural influences like Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons, the movie makes the filmmaker’s artistic ambitions much clearer.

There are points where De Palma’s single subject structure limits its insights. De Palma mostly waves off the accusations of misogyny in his films and chooses to not elaborate on his divorces. Yet, De Palma is willing to address his legacy honestly more than one would assume from a director of his stature. The result is a captivating look through an iconic filmmaker’s work that goes far beyond a simple DVD commentary feature. The documentary sheds enough light on the long list of movies attributed to Mr. De Palma that you’ll want to revisit the ones you’ve seen and finally watch the titles that you’ve put off.

Bill Genovese has spent over 50 years haunted by his sister’s murder. When Kitty Genovese was killed in 1964, her case became widely known when The New York Times reported that 38 neighbors had witnessed the attack and not done anything to intervene. This seemingly impossible negligence is the first of many preconceived notions regarding Bill’s sister’s death that begins to crumble under closer questioning in the documentary The Witness. With an unrelenting determination to figure out exactly who his late sister was and the true circumstances of her murder, Bill embarks on a several year journey with documentarian James Solomon to track down the witnesses of Kitty’s life and death.

The Witness benefits greatly from the true events that it depicts providing several layers of intrigue. At the start, Bill looks to poke holes in the initial New York Times article by speaking with any witness he can track down through the public record. In the process, he discovers failures on the part of the police, as well as new aspects to his sister’s life he had never known. Even Bill Genovese himself is fascinating as a subject, a Vietnam War veteran who lost both of his legs, now often refusing help from those around him. Continually, the documentary delves into tangential chapters devoted to the living family of witnesses or Kitty’s work as a barmaid. Its scattered focus can become frustrating as The Witness leaves its audiences with several loose threads to ponder over—in a situation not entirely different from Bill’s.

While the documentary occasionally suffers from its indistinct presentation, the succession of stunning details keeps the case compelling. Bill’s personal need for closure drives him past the point where almost anyone would give up, yet he confront uncomfortable situations with courageousness. The Witness’ cathartic ending is an appropriately melancholic note for a film so fixated on gruesome material, but finding satisfaction from this documentary relies on how highly you value closure.

Every story told becomes filtered through the lens of its storyteller, and rarely does that implication loom as large as when a son directs a film about his mother. In the case of journalist Jacob Bernstein, his debut documentary Everything Is Copy serves as a semi-reverential tribute to his mom, the late great writer Nora Ephron (When Harry Met Sally…, Sleepless in Seattle), but one with a distinctly personal investment in the narrative. The immediacy of Bernstein’s relationship with the film’s subject is consistently evident. Interview subjects from famous faces like Rosie O’Donnell and Meg Ryan as well as family friends and Bernstein’s father occasionally refer to Ephron as, “your mother,” Jacob appears on screen himself, and much of the movie is devoted to Ephron the person rather than Ephron the essayist and filmmaker. Often, Bernstein appears to be discovering aspects of his mother’s life in time with the film, assembling a general, but intimate look at an icon as remembered by those close to her.

Though many of the featured talking heads in Everything Is Copy are well known, it’s people like Ephron’s sisters and below-the-line crew members from Ephron’s films that provide the most illuminating details on the late author’s life. People fondly recall Ephron’s magnetism; Meryl Streep speaks in awe of the Julie & Julia filmmaker’s unparalleled abilities as a party hostess, bouncing between cooking and conversation. They’re small glimpses into a trailblazer’s story but not the primary focus of Everything Is Copy.

Instead, Bernstein examines the people and relationships that mattered most to Nora. As one of entertainment’s most formative writers of romance and women’s voices, Ephron drew much of her inspiration at times from a turbulent personal life. Specifically, her marriage and eventual separation from Jacob’s father Carl Bernstein. This lead to Ephron’s bestselling book and 1986 film Heartburn, a movie that the documentary covers extensively for its implications on Ephron’s family life. It’s disappointing when the rest of Everything Is Copy skims over the rest of her film career with the breadth of a Wikipedia entry; however, Bernstein chooses to explore the impact that producing Heartburn had on Ephron’s immediate family.

Everything Is Copy skews toward slick convention in its scattershot glimpse at the experiences that helped to define Nora Eprhon’s life. With striking black & white vignettes of famous actresses—Lena Dunham and Reese Witherspoon among them—reading excerpts from Ephron’s best essays to the exquisitely composed shots of Jacob typing away on his laptop, the documentary moves quickly through Ephron’s life story. The approach feels glossy, perhaps even to its own detriment, despite sleek packaging which gives the documentary a sense of having been consciously constructed.

Everything Is Copy is not the wall-to-wall puff piece one might imagine, though it only samples from Ephron’s less favorable habits. The self-centered choices she made and her thin patience—firing many crew members for single mistakes—are acknowledged in passing. Bernstein understandably focuses on his mother’s successes. The documentary contains a highlight reel of a storied career, resembling a kind of visual obituary. For lovers of her work or those with only a passing appreciation for Nora Ephron, Everything Is Copy provides an intimate peek at the writer’s path to celebrity.

Be warned: The Walk may trigger latent cases of acrophobia. This thrilling, spine-tingling adventure portrays Phillippe Petit’s daring high-wire walk between the Twin Towers, as previously depicted in James Marsch’s Oscar-winning documentary Man on Wire. Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future, Forrest Gump) unleashes the full might of his CGI prowess into recreating the skyline of 1970s New York City, as well as placing his affable cast atop the North and South Towers. The vividness of those visuals don’t completely mask The Walk‘s staid script or one-note characterizations, but in spite of its flaws, Zemeckis’ latest is a fun, suspenseful experience.

Chronicling Petit’s journey from aspirational French performance artist to the determined obsessive he becomes, The Walk plows through story beats in thinly constructed short scenes. These early moments, featuring excessive step-by-step narration from Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Petit (presumably doing his best Pepe Le Pew impression), are far duller than what will follow. Zemeckis’ talent for visual flair occasionally transforms the mundanity of an origins story into showcase set pieces. As a young Petit walks across a series of ropes tied between trees, those ropes break off one by one and fall away until Zemeckis’ camera pans up to reveal Petit as a man.

It’s in the final sequences, leading up to and on the rooftop, where The Walk begins to soar. Petit and his gang’s ascent up the towers resembles a heist movie. Complimented by the tapping of bongos and jazzy brass instruments, the crew don disguises and persuade guards in order to reach the building’s 110th floor. Watching the tightrope walker take his first steps out into the open air, swooping around in full circles to reveal the breathtaking views of New York, it’s hard to not simply marvel at the creation. You worry that Petit might fall—even with the knowledge that he won’t. This exhilarating section supersedes the rest of the film—though not as significantly as the opening of Flight does to the rest of that movie—but the journey to the top is peppered with enough cleverness to make the trip enjoyable. The view up there is unlike any other.

At this time last year, The Theory of Everything was a week away from its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival, and its star, Eddie Redmayne, was just a 32-year-old British scamp ready to shock the world with his performance as Stephen Hawking. A year later, Redmayne has positioned himself to become the first actor since Tom Hanks in ’94/’95 to win back-to-back golden statues. The Danish Girl reunites Redmayne with Les Miserables director Tom Hooper for an unexpectedly topical biopic co-starring Alicia Vikander, Amber Heard, Matthias Schoenaerts, and Ben Whishaw.

Telling the story of transgender woman Lili Elbe, one of the first identifiable recipients of sexual reassignment surgery. Born in 1880s Denmark as Einar Magnus Andreas Wegener, Lili became an artist and married her wife Gerda Gottlieb before discovering she came to her gender identity realization. The soft lighting, period setting, and expositional dialog all seem reminiscent of director Hooper’s last sweeping Oscars success, The King’s Speech; however, the depiction of Lili’s transition from a man to a woman is bound to become a discussion point as The Danish Girl aims to be part of awards conversations.

The Danish Girl premieres September 5th as part of the Venice Film Festival and will be released Stateside on November 27th.

The 59th BFI Film Festival today unveiled its selection of 238 feature films and 182 shorts set to screen during the 12-day festival. While it was already known that the Sarah Gavron feminist drama Suffragette would open the festival, Danny Boyle‘s Steve Jobs biopic would close it, and the Cate Blanchett / Rooney Mara film Carol would feature in a Headline Gala, several other high-profile additions were part of today’s announcement.

The European premieres of Trumbo, Brooklyn, as well as The Lady In The Van highlight the Gala selections, while other anticipated movies like Black Mass, High-Rise, and The Lobster occupy other slots.

Thirteen features make up the Official Competition line-up, including Cary Fukunaga’s Netflix-bound Beasts of No Nation, the Cannes-awarded Son of Saul, and Sean Baker‘s iPhone shot Tangerine (which has already been released in the U.S.). The First Feature Competition highlights twelve other films from debut filmmakers, with Krisha, Partisan, and The Witch set to take part.

Tickets go on sale to the public September 17th, 20 days before BFI kicks off on October 7th. Check out the full lineup on BFI’s website.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center today revealed the 26 features making up its main slate for the 53rd New York Film Festival running September 25th to October 11th. Joining Opening Night selection The Walk and Closing Night selection Miles Ahead in making their World Premieres at the 2015 festival are Steven Spielberg‘s Cold War drama Bridge of Spies (starring Tom Hanks and Mark Rylance) and Laura Israel‘s documentary portrait Don’t Blink: Robert Frank. Several other highly lauded films taking part in the three-week showcase includes Hou Hsiao-hsien‘s Cannes award-winning film The Assassin, John Crowley‘s romantic drama Brooklyn, as well as Centerpiece screening Steve Jobs.

New York Film Festival Director and Selection Committee Chair, Kent Jones remarked, “I could talk about the geographical range of the films in the selection, the mix of artistic sensibilities … but the only thing that really matters is how uniformly beautiful and vital each of these movies are.” Additional special events, the documentary section, filmmaker conversations and panels, as well as the festival’s Projections and Convergence programs will be announced in full closer to festival’s September start date. Tickets go on sale to the general public Sunday, September 13th.

Read the list of features making up the 53rd NYFF main slate below:

Opening Night

The Walk
Director, Robert Zemeckis

Centerpiece

Steve Jobs
Director, Danny Boyle

Closing Night

Miles Ahead
Director, Don Cheadle

Arabian Nights: Volume 1, The Restless One
Arabian Nights: Volume 2, The Desolate One
Arabian Nights: Volume 3, The Enchanted One
Director, Miguel Gomes

The Assassin
Director, Hou Hsiao-hsien

Bridge of Spies
Director, Steven Spielberg

Brooklyn
Director, John Crowley

Carol
Director, Todd Haynes

Cemetery of Splendour
Director, Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Les Cowboys
Director, Thomas Bidegain

Don’t Blink: Robert Frank
Director, Laura Israel

Experimenter
Director, Michael Almereyda

The Forbidden Room
Directors, Guy Maddin & Evan Johnson

In the Shadow of Women / L’Ombre des femmes
Director, Philippe Garrel

Journey to the Shore / Kishibe no tabi
Director, Kiyoshi Kurosawa

The Lobster
Director, Yorgos Lanthimos

Maggie’s Plan
Director, Rebecca Miller

The Measure of a Man / La Loi du marché
Director, Stéphane Brizé

Mia Madre
Director, Nanni Moretti

Microbe & Gasoline / Microbe et Gasoil
Director, Michel Gondry

Mountains May Depart
Director, Jia Zhangke

My Golden Days / Trois Souvenirs de ma jeunesse
Director, Arnaud Desplechin

No Home Movie
Director, Chantal Akerman

Right Now, Wrong Then
Director, Hong Sangsoo

The Treasure / Comoara
Director, Corneliu Porumboiu

Where To Invade Next
Director, Michael Moore

Quentin Tarantino‘s long-awaited 8th film The Hateful Eight is set for release this Christmas, but the first real glimpse at footage has just arrived in the form its new trailer. The Hateful Eight collects an impressive ensemble of actors including Taratino’s returning favorites (Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Walton Goggins, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, and Bruce Dern) along with a couple of new faces (Jennifer Jason Leigh, Demian Bichir, a perhaps-under-wraps cameo from a Foxcatcher star) for this tale of betrayal “six or eight or twelve years after the Civil War.” Filmed in gorgeous 70mm against the snowy mountainscapes of Colorado (in place of Wyoming, where the story is set), this trailer reveals the central cast of characters in all their fur coat, brimmed hat, twanged accent glory.

The Hateful Eight centers on a stagecoach lead by bounty hunter John “The Hangman” Ruth (Russell) as he drives toward the town of Red Rock, where his passenger Daisy Domergue (Leigh) is set to hang. On the road, the two come across Major Marquis Warren (Jackson), a former union soldier who has taken up bounty hunting himself, as well as Chris Mannix (Goggins), a Southern renegade that claims to be the town’s new Sheriff. Attempting to escape an intensifying blizzard, the four duck into Minnie’s Haberdashery to discover four unfamiliar faces in Bob (Bichir), Oswaldo Mobray (Roth), Joe Gage (Madsen), and Confederate General Sanford Smithers (Dern). The travelers attempt to outlast the storm as well as each other, and make it to Red Rock alive.

Let us know in the comments what you think of the latest trailer for The HateFul Eight

Less than a year removed from his Best Director and Best Picture Academy Award wins for Birdman, director Alejandro G. Iñarritu has refueled his addicition to risky filmmaking through another ambitious collaboration with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki. The Revenant, shot over the course of a few months in the largely untouched wilderness surrounding Calgary, was filmed entirely using natural lighting at the expense of the production’s flexibility. This expectedly facilitates some stunning long take camerawork from Lubezki, though much of the trailer more closely resembled the cinematographer’s chaotic work on Children of Men and not his more recent contributions to Birdman.

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio as a trapper in the 1820s who is mauled by a bear, DiCaprio’s Hugh Glass survives his injuries, the harsh winter, and a hostile environment in order to take revenge against his traitorous partner (Tom Hardy). Domnhall Gleeson and Will Poulter star as well. The Revenant is not expected to début until December 25th (in limited release), so you will have to wait nearly half a year for the context of this exhiliarting and epic footage.

Watch the new trailer for The Revenant below:

A common refrain implies that all lawyers are destined for hell; Court seems to insist they are caught in purgatory. After elderly folk singer and political organizer Narayan Kamble (Vira Sathidar) gets arrested on frivolous charges of abetting the suicide of a sewage worker, his lawyer Vinay Vora (Vivek Gomber) endures a litany of hearings and delays while attempting to free his client. Vinay’s shrewdness as a defense attorney is matched against an obstinate judicial system that values archaic colonial law over logic and reason. Patience with these frustrating proceedings might be Vinay’s greatest professional attribute, but he often displays more patience than Court earns.

During a lecture in which Vinay details the procedural obstacles that continually stall Narayan’s right to due process, a pair of workers intrudes to install a rotating fan. Vinay’s life is full of these interruptions: a series of wry, absurdist hindrances that neither facilitates justice nor advance Narayan’s case: a public prosecutor (Geetanjali Kulkarni) cites decency laws penned in the mid-1800s by the British India era’s Indian Penal Code, the judge (Pradeep Joshi) throws a case out because of a female defendant’s sleeveless top, and a key witness fails to appear in court for the first months of the hearing, causing more postponements.

Like Narayan’s legal case, there are times when Court looks as if it may never end. The bone-dry judicial humor in combination with cinematographer Mrinal Desai’s static camera means scene after scene of sleepy Indian legalese spoken in stuffy courtrooms. The tedium of these scenes seems to be writer/director Chaitanya Tamhane’s clever overarching point. The filmmaker depicts a legal system that appears comically stagnant. Everyone in this film is a victim of an outdated process that actively eschews empathy and common sense.

Life continues unperturbed by the legal battles that occupy Court’s characters. Desai shoots from a distance, often from above and the back of a room, which can occasionally feel like surveillance footage. Each shot is layered with texture. Even in the midst of the crux of Vinay’s arguments, it’s impossible to not notice the throngs of Indians waiting their turn with the judge. There’s constant activity within the frame, and it’s only in a couple of rare moments that Court lingers on a single character. All the exasperated faces planted in front of brightly painted walls provides an effective microcosm of the film.

Tamhane illustrates the remove with which many of these legal workers operate through tangential sections following his characters in their time outside the courts. The segmented nature of these breaks stalls what little momentum Court carries through its story; however, they provide rich detail that allows a more immersive experience into this foreign world. Tamhane has gathered an excellent cast, mixing professional and non-professional actors that play everything straight. Vivek Gomber, in particular, demonstrates a keen understanding for the deadpan delights Court’s script offers, while also navigating mouthfuls of legal rhetoric. Folk singer Vira Sathidar makes for a compelling screen presence, even though his character doesn’t speak much. The two songs performed by his character are evocative, poetic highlights to the movie.

Court serves as a mostly amusing indictment of a corrupt practice plagued by inefficiencies and indifference, thought it would be a stretch to call the movie outright funny. A story built to resemble the maddening system it portrays becomes more difficult to engage with by the limited surface pleasures the film offers. While Chaitanya Tamhane shapes the story with a myriad of caste, political, and socioeconomic issues, outsiders may struggle to identify many of these aspects; yet, his movie reflects universal truths beyond India’s penal issues. Court is an impressively complex début, particularly from a 28-year-old filmmaker. The fascinatingly bizarre case Tamhane constructs is a vehicle for his dry and sometimes dull takedown of Indian justice.

Court is now playing in a limited theatrical release.

Before your favorite film junkie started referring to anything she didn’t like as, “not my tempo,” and before Whiplash chugged its way to 3 Oscar wins, director Damien Chazelle worked on a short version of the Best Picture nominated film in order to help sell investors. That short film ultimately felt quite similar to the movie it helped spawn, so it’s no surprise that Chazelle was able to not only make Whiplash, but make it in a way that closely resembled his first attempt at the story. A YouTube user Username Hype sought to analyze the differences between the short and the feature by syncing footage from the two films side-by-side.

This video provides a glimpse at the ways in which Chazelle was already fully prepared to make his feature. Many of the shots that are perfectly timed to the openings notes of “Whiplash” (the song) appear identical in both the short and feature. Likewise, J.K. Simmons‘ Oscar-winning drill sergeant-like presence is just as intimidating in the short form. A collection of the musicians used for the short re-appear (including C.J. Vana as Metz, the trombonist Fletcher throws out of class on Andrew’s first day); however, a notable diversion is Johnny Simmons (The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World) as Andrew Neyman rather than Miles Teller. The video provides an interesting study of a director’s choices, as well as the transition a film must undergo as it comes to fruition. Check out the full side-by-side Whiplash short to Whiplash feature comparison video above.

Sports and sports movies often lend themselves to self-aggrandizement. For professional athletes, it’s understandable: they’ve demonstrated an ability to perform their selected skill at a higher level than nearly every other human being on the planet. The same cannot be said for the amateur athlete. Despite that, the spillover effect of sports-star-cockiness infects regular gym rats everywhere, instilling self-important bros with brash bravado. Dreams of highly celebrated athletic achievements get reduced to victories in flag football scrimmages.

With Balls Out, Director Andrew Disney collects an assortment of upcoming sketch and improv stars to satirize the predictable sports underdog movie subgenre, while deflating the egos of anyone who has ever played backyard sports. Caleb (Jake Lacy) and his college friends attempt to recapture the magic that lead to their winning the intramural flag football championship in their freshman year. Caleb hasn’t seen any of the group since throwing the championship-winning pass that crippled his teammate Grant (Nick Kocher). But in his 5th year at 4-year college, with both marriage and a career on the horizon, Caleb throws himself back into “something that doesn’t matter” by reuniting the old team.

Like the 2004 Ben Stiller/Vince Vaughn vehicle DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story, Balls Out seeks to undermine the genre by re-appropriating its tropes to an inherently insignificant situation. Balls Out goes one step further than its more mainstream predecessor by frequently and openly calling attention to its own story beats. When a wheelchair-bound Grant returns to the flag football team, he acknowledges his own shift to a gruff persona in order to assume the role of the team’s vulgar, grizzled coach/mentor. He melodramatically narrates the training montage, barks nonsensical orders and refers to his team as a ragtag bunch in hopes of inspiring their success.

That irreverent approach both helps and hurts Balls Out in different moments. The film is dense with scattershot punch lines. While not all of them land, the hit-to-miss ratio is solid enough to remain entertaining during the stretches when the film doesn’t take itself seriously. Balls Out might find its gang of roller-rink-dwelling homeless men funnier than I do; however, with a cast featuring Saturday Night Live contributors (Kate McKinnon, Beck Bennett, Nicholas Rutherford and Jay Pharoah), the BritaNick team (Kocher and Brian McElhaney), as well as a Derrick Comedy alum (D.C. Pierson) the comedic ability sells a majority of the jokes.

The satirical throughline is largely absent from Balls Out’s superfluous romantic subplot with the ever-charming Nikki Reed. Whereas the majority of this comedy lampoons clichéd story beats, this section to Balls Out could have just as easily been lifted into a movie starring Katherine Heigl and James Marsden. Both Lacy and Reed provide an affable presence, but their relationship is so clearly forecasted in the script that there’s little reason to care whenever her character is in a scene. Likewise, at 100 minutes long, the film could have probably lost a couple of its strikingly shot but minimally funny flag football montages.

Often, Balls Out is just pleasant enough. Its hilarious cast and the frequency of its laughs offer the movie a kind of lazy weekend VOD appeal, but its story lacks the ingenuity necessary to invest in these characters. The performances are the main reason to check out the film, if only to see some of these funny faces before they become staples of the next generation of comedy (scene stealer Kate McKinnon is already a female lead in Paul Feig’s upcoming all-female Ghostbusters reboot). Balls Out’s giggle inducing send up of sports movies is absurd fun, but its boilerplate plot is stretched transparently thin.

As Universal Pictures continues to pretend that The Bourne Legacy never actually happened, they’ve turned back to a familiar face of the Bourne franchise. Julia Stiles, who played Nicky Parsons in all three of the first Bourne movies, will reunite with Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass in the as-of-yet untitled Bourne 5 movie. Aside from Damon’s Bourne, Nicky Parsons is the only character to have appeared in all three of the first Bourne movies.

In addition to the presence of Julia Stiles, Bourne 5 might feature a notable good guy going bad. Viggo Mortensen (The Lord of the Rings franchise, A History of Violence) has allegedly been offered the villain’s role according to The Wrap’s Jeff Sneider. Beyond Mortensen, Deadline earlier reported that Ex Machina star Alicia Vikander is in negotiations for a major role herself.

All this news likely comes in between bites of caviar at Universal, whose major releases thus far in 2015 have included the mega-successes of Fifty Shades of Grey, Pitch Perfect 2, Furious 7, and now Jurassic World. The company currently plans to release the next Bourne installment on July 29th of next year.

Is it really possible that Lily Tomlin has gone this long without a starring vehicle of her own? The iconic actress has decades of perfectly timed, naturalistic punchlines under her belt, yet for years her parts have been largely reduced to limited arcs on TV shows or small, supporting roles in middling movies. Writer/Director Paul Weitz clearly saw the enormous potential in this market gap. Following his 2013 Tina Fey comedy Admission, in which Lily Tomlin played Fey’s mother, Weitz wrote an entire movie with Tomlin in mind.

Grandma premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival to slew of praise for Tomlin (Way Too Indie caught up with it at Tribeca and had glowing things to say, too). Despite its title, Tomlin’s character is far form a withered, weakened old lady. In Grandma, Tomlin plays Elle Reid, a misanthropic lesbian poet, whose granddaughter Sage (Julia Garner) shows up broke and in need of an abortion. Together, the two journey to collect cash, confront their pasts, and hit Nat Wolff in the balls with a hockey stick.

Grandma also stars a collection of familiar faces, many of them in the trailer, including Sam Elliott, John Cho, Marcia Gay Harden, Judy Greer and Laverne Cox. While New Zealanders will get a early chance to see Grandma at the New Zealand International Film Festival in July, Americans everywhere will have to cope with Granmda‘s August 21st release date by watching and re-watching the pleasant new trailer below:

It can become harder to develop friendships as you grow older. For Emily and Alex, who recently moved from Seattle to Los Angeles with their young son R.J., they’re worried about their ability to make those new connections in an unfamiliar neighborhood. But when R.J. starts to play with another boy at the park, Emily and Alex are introduced to the boy’s enigmatic father, Kurt (Jason Schwartzman). The sleekly dressed, seemingly clichéd Angeleno opens with a joke about his son’s vegan diet before kindly offering recommendations of the best local shops and restaurants.

Kurt can’t resist himself though, there’s so much more to share, so he invites the newly relocated couple over for dinner that night with him and his wife. Emily (Orange Is The New Black’s Taylor Schilling) argues worst-case scenario is they’ll go home after a boring night and Alex (Adam Scott) worries the bottle of Two Buck Chuck they brought with them isn’t fancy enough; however, neither expects their overnight family playdate will test the couple’s openness, and the strength of Emily and Alex’s marital bond.

At the onset of The Overnight, Emily and Alex guide each other through their morning sex. They accommodate one another and exchange helpful instructions, but seem to have made “self-completion” a ritualistic finish. They’re a cooperative couple, even if they’re not perfectly compatible. Their collective anxiety is largely embodied by Adam Scott’s performance as Alex. Shades of Scott’s Parks and Recreation persona manifesting itself in Alex’s neurosis, particularly the character’s habit of impulsively lying in response to questions in order to respond “the right way.” Yes of course he paints with acrylics, who wouldn’t?

Alex is constantly on the back foot in Kurt’s house. Kurt comes on very strong, and from almost the moment that Emily and Alex arrive at Kurt’s house they’re deluged by his conversation. The Spanish lessons Kurt gives his kindergarten-aged son, the water filtration business he’s installing in third world countries, his pompous pronunciation of, “the South of France,” (as if France is pronounced with an ‘aw’). It’s a flood of superfluous character building that takes too long to work through, even with a helping of chuckle-worthy line readings.

For most of The Overnight (which only runs 80 minutes long) we’re waiting for the movie to get to its point. The dynamics of the “family playdate” become increasingly bizarre, but when the alcohol begins to work as a conversational lubricant (as it’s wont to do) the couples’ conversation starts to explore ideas of openness and honesty. Most of the talk steers sexual and you wonder when someone will finally say the word, “swinger,” but there exists a frank and humorous honesty in the characters’ words. When a vulnerable Alex admits to his size-related body issues, it’s uncomfortably funny but oddly touching, seeing new friends bond through understanding.

Taylor Schilling’s Emily appears to be the more self-assured half of the primary pairing. She’s the primary breadwinner for the family and retains more self-control once the adults have worked their way through a couple bottles of red wine. She’s not the butt of nearly as many jokes as her fictional husband, but Taylor Schilling gives Emily a cool, loving energy that makes her performance fun to watch while maintaining a complexity to her character. The Overnight makes it clear that Emily and Alex are very understanding to each other, and refreshingly, they take the time to consult one another throughout the film. The dilemmas here don’t emerge from clichéd bickering, they stem from the complications of a strong couple that are open to each other’s desires.

The instigator for most of the film’s hijinks is Schwartzman’s Kurt, and the potential to enjoy the comedy relies largely on his performance (as well as a tolerance for penis humor). The talkative character Kurt proceeds through the night brazenly dictating the couples’ agenda. It can be hilarious, as he is when confidently strutting naked around the pool, but other times it registers as awkward and unmotivated, like when he shows Emily and Alex a mildly pornographic movie of his wife Charlotte (Judith Godrèche). Schwartzman has an ability to remain charming even as an irritating character, and for the most part, Kurt is mysterious enough to stay intriguing.

The wild night created by The Overnight’s writer/director Patrick Brice (director of SXSW film Creep, also produced by the Duplass Brothers) does uniquely capture the contagious nature of a fun night around people you love. Even as his film plays dumb with its premise a little too much, it’s forgivable within the context of the intoxicating night Emily and Alex share with Charlotte and Kurt. They’re having too much fun exploring their boundaries honestly, and it’s usually entertaining enough to keep watching them.

The Overnight could easily be faulted for its couple of questionable turns, the directness with which the ending lays all the cards out on the table, or the film’s liberal use of prosthetic penises (which might have been the centerpiece in an Apatow or McKay comedy, so kudos to The Overnight). The movie mostly makes up for it by developing a compelling situation, and facilitating charismatic performances from Scott, Schilling and Schwartzman. The Overnight is a sexually adventurous, occasionally uncomfortable comedy with an outrageous ending, but one that feels like the proper result of its story.

A version of this review first appeared as part of our Tribeca 2015 coverage. 

If it’s indeed true that a documentary can only be as compelling as its subject, first-time feature director Crystal Moselle stumbled upon a veritable goldmine when she met the Angulo Brothers and gained access to their lives for The Wolfpack. These lanky, longhaired, half-Peruvian young men ranging in age from 16 to 23 stomp across New York City in ill-fitting suits and dark sunglasses. They absorb the city environment with the eagerness of a flock of tourists. In a way they are, though most of the boys lived in the city for a majority of their lives. That’s because the Angulos spent extended periods of their childhood locked away in their Lower East Side apartment by a paranoid, alcoholic father. That is, until one of the Angulo boys simply decided to leave the apartment.

The Wolfpack took home the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary earlier this year before its New York premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. Director Crystal Moselle opens her documentary as the Angulo boys exchange bits of dialog from Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. The boys responded to their captivity by immersing themselves classic movies and remaking them with homemade aesthetics. In a way, the Angulos and The Wolfpack owe a debt to Michel Gondry’s 2008 Be Kind Rewind. The Angulos chop up pieces of cardboard and yoga mats in order to assemble Batman’s suit of armor, or patch on pieces of fake facial hair to more closely resemble Samuel L. Jackson. With limited options, the Angulos escaped into movies to learn about the world. One of the boys articulates it tragically, that movies, “make me feel like I’m living, because it’s magical a bit.”

In total there are seven Angulo children, six boys and one daughter, who is mentally challenged. Growing up, the Angulos would leave their apartment sometimes once, sometimes nine times per year. Occasionally the kids would go a full year without leaving their home. Their father, Oscar, was a Hare Krishna who dreamed of rock & roll stardom with a family of 11 children; however, complications left the Angulo parents in an LSE housing project afraid to leave the home and navigate the negative influences surrounding their residence. This forced seclusion was exacerbated by Oscar’s distrust in the establishment. As one of his sons explained, their father, “didn’t believe in work,” and thought he was either enlightened, or a god himself.

This disposition left Oscar’s wife Susanne the chore of raising and home-schooling the children under his judgmental, watchful eye. Fear was the dominant force in the Angulo household & Moselle’s documentary captures its paralyzing effect on the family. When Susanne discusses rationalizing her children’s confinement by expressing worries about the world outside, it’s easy to understand her thought process. As the victims of an abusive husband and father with deluded worldviews, the Angulos were hostages in their own home. “We were in a prison and at night our cells would lock up,” one of the boys says through a knowing smile, aware of the awful circumstances of his youth. The Wolfpack serves as an intriguing portrait of the lives of a family that’s lives through trauma, but one that ultimately feels hopeful.

Unfortunately, the documentary is little more than its captivating collection of characters. By keeping herself at a distance from the subjects, Moselle fails to elicit deep insights from them. Their story seems so bizarre you hope for a moment when the movie will confront any of the Angulos about how these circumstances hindered their transition into the real world. A scene of the boys at a beach where one of them refuses to get in the water comes close to addressing this dilemma, but rarely does The Wolfpack feel greater than the story of its surface.

That story is a remarkable one, but Moselle’s film only examines the tip of a monstrous iceberg. This is a family that’s undergone a distinctive form of cruelty, but the ramifications are hardly felt. The Angulos are already moving on from their past. Far too many details, such as how Moselle encountered or gained access to the Angulos, are left out of the final film. Several critics have voiced skepticism, either half-seriously or jokingly, of The Wolfpack’s truthfulness. I don’t doubt the authenticity of Moselle’s documentary; however, the murkiness of aspects in the Angulos’ story makes it easy to imagine much of the movie coming from an exaggerated truth instead of the full truth. Moselle discovers an incredibly scary circumstance to grow up in, but doesn’t illustrate a huge amount of detail.

There’s an inevitability to these young men finding freedom with their age, and it’s exciting as Moselle documents their transition into normal people with varied passions. The Angulos’ individual identities aren’t fully explored (truthfully, it’s difficult to distinguish one Angulo from the next for most of The Wolfpack), but they each seem to find a form of vindication for escaping their father’s domain. You can’t help but crave a deeper dive into their lives, but The Wolfpack involves the viewer in a unique struggle and it presents its subjects empathetically. Despite the troubling circumstances of their lives, it’s gratifying to see the Angulos emerge strong from The Wolfpack. The unbelievable story of their upbringing provides an inspirational, albeit uncomfortable, backdrop for Crystal Moselle’s debut documentary.

An earlier version of this review was first published as part of our Tribeca 2015 coverage. 

Robert Zemeckis‘ high-wire adaptation of Philippe Petit’s memoir To Reach the Clouds (made famous by the stunning 2008 documentary Man on Wire) will open the 53rd New York Film Festival, held at the Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. The Walk, which stars Joseph Gordon Levitt as Petit, is only the second 3D feature ever selected to open NYFF following 2012’s selection of Ang Lee’s Life of Pi. The film, whose strong New York ties should seem obvious, details Petit’s daring high-wire walk between the Twin Towers in 1974. This will be Zemeckis’ second straight movie to debut at this festival, following Flight‘s closing night selection in 2012.

New York Film Festival Director and Selection Committee Chair Kent Jones commented in a press release, “The Walk is surprising in so many ways. First of all, it plays like a classic heist movie in the tradition of The Asphalt Jungle or Bob le Flambeur—the planning, the rehearsing, the execution, the last-minute problems—but here it’s not money that’s stolen but access to the world’s tallest buildings. It’s also an astonishing re-creation of lower Manhattan in the ’70s. And then, it becomes something quite rare, rich, mysterious… and throughout it all, you’re on the edge of your seat.”

Robert Zemeckis added: “I am extremely honored and grateful that our film has been selected to open the 53rd New York Film Festival. The Walk is a New York story, so I am delighted to be presenting the film to New York audiences first. My hope is that festival audiences will be immersed in the spectacle, but also to be enraptured by the celebration of a passionate artist who helped give the wonderful towers a soul.”

The 53rd New York Film Festival is a 17-day event that runs from September 25th until October 11th The Walk is the fourth consecutive American-produced film to open the New York Film Festival, following Life of Pi (2012), Captain Phillips (2013), and Gone Girl (2014). The Walk will open wide in 3D and IMAX 3D on October 2nd.

Check out the heart-stopping trailer for The Walk:

Emma Stone is not 1/4 Chinese. You may have become aware to this fact in the onslaught of negative responses to Cameron Crowe‘s latest cheeseburger in paradise rom-com Aloha. Among the many, many criticisms of the movie, the most difficult to accept was Crowe’s decision to cast the big-eyed Easy A star as Captain Allison Ng, a character meant to be 1/4 Hawaiian. It’s a decision that Crowe himself is now calling “misguided” in a nearly 400-word explanapology on his website The Uncool.

In the post “A Comment on Allison Ng” Crowe calls Aloha a “misunderstood movie,” before offering, “a heart-felt apology to all who felt this was an odd or misguided casting choice.” Crowe notes that this character had existed in a similar form since 2007, based on a real-life, red-haired local that the filmmaker had once met. While acknowledging that this element to the film has been the point of a lot of discussion, Crowe maintained his pride in Aloha‘s diverse hires. “I am so proud that in the same movie, we employed many Asian-American, Native-Hawaiian and Pacific-Islanders, both before and behind the camera.”

Aloha has been subject to controversy ever since its appearances in several emails released as part of the Sony Hack. Read the full explanation / apology from Cameron Crowe below:

From the very beginning of its appearance in the Sony Hack, “Aloha” has felt like a misunderstood movie. One that people felt they knew a lot about, but in fact they knew very little. It was a small movie, made by passionate actors who wanted to join me in making a film about Hawaii, and the lives of these characters who live and work in and around the island of Oahu.

Thank you so much for all the impassioned comments regarding the casting of the wonderful Emma Stone in the part of Allison Ng. I have heard your words and your disappointment, and I offer you a heart-felt apology to all who felt this was an odd or misguided casting choice. As far back as 2007, Captain Allison Ng was written to be a super-proud ¼ Hawaiian who was frustrated that, by all outward appearances, she looked nothing like one. A half-Chinese father was meant to show the surprising mix of cultures often prevalent in Hawaii. Extremely proud of her unlikely heritage, she feels personally compelled to over-explain every chance she gets. The character was based on a real-life, red-headed local who did just that.

Whether that story point felt hurtful or humorous has been, of course, the topic of much discussion. However I am so proud that in the same movie, we employed many Asian-American, Native-Hawaiian and Pacific-Islanders, both before and behind the camera… including Dennis “Bumpy” Kanahele, and his village, and many other locals who worked closely in our crew and with our script to help ensure authenticity.

We were extremely proud to present the island, the locals and the film community with many jobs for over four months. Emma Stone was chief among those who did tireless research, and if any part of her fine characterization has caused consternation and controversy, I am the one to blame.

I am grateful for the dialogue. And from the many voices, loud and small, I have learned something very inspiring. So many of us are hungry for stories with more racial diversity, more truth in representation, and I am anxious to help tell those stories in the future.

Thanks again

Cameron Crowe

Following The Imitation Game last year and Captain Phillips in 2013, Sarah Gavron’s Suffragette has set its European premiere date for opening night of the 59th BFI London Film Festival. A story of women fighting for women’s rights at the end of the 19th century, the feminist drama will debut on Wednesday, October 7th at the Odeon Leicester Square with simultaneous screenings taking place throughout the UK. With Carey Mulligan, Helena Bonham Carter as well as Meryl Streep in main roles, Suffragette is among the most highly anticipated films slated to come out in 2015.

Along with the news of its BFI London Film Fest premiere date, Suffragette has revealed two new look slightly different looks into surprisingly explosive upcoming film. Mulligan plays Maud, a working wife and mother who gets swept up by the foot soldiers of a growing feminist movement. Bonham Carter and Streep play fellow members of the movement, while villainous authority figure Brendan Gleeson seeks to dismantle their organization. Fancy period costumes are abound. The two newly released trailers have overlap, though the UK trailer is less ham-fisted in its unveiling of information.

Suffragette is scheduled to be released in New York and Los Angeles on October 23rd, expanding to more cities in the following weeks. While its BFI London Film Fest premiere is scheduled for October 7th, it’s worth noting that the gala has been advertised as Suffragette‘s “European Premiere,” leaving the door open for an appearance at a North American-set fall film festival.

Watch the first trailer here

Check out the Suffragette UK trailer below:

Archer is set to get some original animated company on FX. The cable network has ordered a pilot for Cassius & Clay, a futuristic, post-apocalyptic, action buddy comedy that has been described as in the spirit of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Co-created by Adam Reed of Archer, with Megan Ganz (most notably a writer for Community and Modern Family), Olson will voice a hard-drinking, fast-talking bullshitter named Ordwood Cassius, while Bell voices Shopcarter Clay, the fastest gun in the South.

Susan Sarandon will join Bell & Olson as a series regular should the show get picked up for a full season. Sarandon will play Connie Mack, the ruthless owner of the town brothel. Outside of the main three women, JB Smoove, Kevin Michael Richardson, Jeffrey Tambor, Stephen Root, Katy Mixon, and Robert Patrick will provide guest voices. Cassius and Clay is one of the newest developments by Floyd County Productions, following the 13-episode single-season animated comedies Chozen and Unsupervized (both of which aired on FX).

The predominant theme emerging from Sundance Film Festival coverage of The End of the Tour was the revelatory performance from Jason Segel as David Foster Wallace. Starring alongside Jesse Eisneberg, Segel navigates the complexities of the late author’s troubled mind through the dialog-heavy exchanges about life, identity and anxiety. While Eisenberg has frequently demonstrated his ability to handle dramatic comedy tones, Segel has previously only shown glimpses of nuance through his Freaks & Geeks or Forgetting Sarah Marshall roles. Under the guidance of director James Ponsoldt (Smashed, The Spectacular Now), Jason Segel is said to have given his strongest performance to date, and may even be in store for an Oscar campaign later in 2015 according to some early prognosticators.

The End of the Tour is based on Rolling Stone contributor David Lipsky‘s book Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself, which chronicled the time Lipsky spent shadowing David Foster Wallace during his book tour for Infinite Jest. In the newly released first trailer, Eisenberg and Segel discuss the root of sadness flanked by the Mall of America’s indoor roller coaster, and debate whether or not they’d like to live as the other person. The contemplative, slightly melancholic first look at The End of the Tour provides a good glimpse for the mood audiences are likely to get from Ponsoldt’s new film, set to be released on July 31st.

Check out a new The End of the Tour trailer and poster below:

The End of the Tour poster:

When the film held its North American debut at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, Manglehorn was one of two movies touted for featuring “the best Al Pacino performance in [x] years.” The other, The Humbling, came into theaters and onto VOD January 23rd without much fanfare. Five months later, Manglehorn is set for its own simultaneous theatrical and on-demand release with a new poster and brand-new trailer.

The latest from prolific director David Gordon Green (George Washington, Pineapple Express), Manglehorn is a dream-like look into the life of key maker A.J. Manglehorn (Pacino). Still heartbroken over a woman whose love he lost years ago, Manglehorn pens lovesick letters while serendipitously solving problems for the various people he meets around town. Co-starring Holly Hunter, Chris Messina and Harmony Korine in a scene-stealing role as a degenerate former Little League player that Manglehorn once coached, Green’s film is full of evocative visuals and a trippy sound mix that blends several scenes together. Manglehorn will get a limited release the same day it appears on VOD, June 19th.

Watch Al Pacino walking around with a cat in the Manglehorn trailer below:

Here’s the Manglehorn poster:

You’ve heard of The Wire, haven’t you? It’s only the greatest television show of all–time. Its creator David Simon is a smart guy and has done some other pretty cool stuff for HBO, too (Generation Kill, Treme), but none of that stuff starred Oscar Isaac.

You remember Oscar Isaac, don’t you? The Coen Brothers’ Llewyn Davis whose role in A Most Violent Year> was basically the best Al Pacino performance since Pacino dipped into self-parody. Isaac has already wowed audiences once this year in Ex Machina and is about to become your nephew’s favorite X-wing pilot when Star Wars: The Force Awakens arrives later this year.

In the mean time Isaac is set to play Nicholas Wasicsko, who was only 28 years old when elected the youngest mayor in Yonkers, New York’s history. Show Me A Hero is based on the nonfiction book of the same name by Lisa Belkin, and deals largely with tensions stemming from federally ordered desegregation of public housing in the late ’80s. The 6-part mini-series will debut on August 16th with Catherine Keener, Winona Ryder, LaTanya Richardson-Jackson, Bob Balaban and Jim Belushi (really!) in supporting roles.

Director Jeremy Saulnier‘s second feature Blue Ruin, a stripped down revenge thriller, took the indie world by storm last year on its way to a nomination for the John Cassavetes Award at the 2015 Indie Spirit Awards. Wasting little time in assembling a follow-up, Saulnier is now in Cannes to debut his next color-related movie Green Room. Featuring a larger and more well-known cast than his previous film, including Patrick Stewart, Anton Yelchin and Imogen Poots, Green Room held its Cannes Film Festival premiere over the weekend to a largely positive reception.

Green Room follows a group of punk rockers called The Ain’t Rights, who take an ill-advised gig in the backwoods of Oregon, only to stumble onto violent crime and in the middle of a confrontation with the local, violent, white-supremacist gang. Patrick Stewart plays the leader of the gang. Green Room also stars Alia Shawkat, Joe Cole, Callum Turner, Mark Webber, as well as Blue Ruin star Macon Blair.

Watch the first clip of Green Room below, in which an intimidating Eric Edelstein explains the difference between a bullet and a cartridge:

Oh, poor Dylan O’Brien. Just when you thought you were out they pull you right back in, huh? When last seen as Thomas, O’Brien was darting between walls as they closed in on him to make it through The Maze Runner‘s titular obstacle. This time, he’s out of the maze but stuck in a whole new type of labyrinth. “They could be the key to everything,” Patricia Clarkson says about our very special cast of characters near the top of the trailer before adding, “It’s time to begin phase 2” (in case you forgot this installment was a sequel).

The Scorch Trials is the continued adaptation of James Dashner’s YA dystopian novel series, a series whose success was by no means shaped by The Hunger Games series. Several returning actors from the first chapter are joined by Aidan Gillen, Giancarlo Esposito, Barry Pepper, and a slew of females absent from the pretty-much-boys-only The Maze Runner. While things might seem stable at first, soon the MazeBoyz (how I would refer to the cast of The Maze Runner if I had a Tumblr) learn their new hosts hide some nefarious truths.

The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials will be released September 18th, nearly a year to the day after The Maze Runner‘s September 19th, 2014 release. Check out the first trailer below:

Late last week, filmmaker Luc Besson (The Fifth Element, most recently Lucy) joined Twitter to announce that his next film would be, “a big sci-fi,” called Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. He went on to reveal the film’s logo (pictured above) as well as Valerian’s lead actors Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne arranged together in moody, black-and-white shots (included below). Now, coming from Cannes is news that EuropaCorp plans to release Valerian to worldwide audiences on July 21st, 2017.

Starring @danedehaan & @Caradelevingne. Shooting in December. In theaters 2017. pic.twitter.com/R3STb1aPsf

— Luc Besson (@lucbesson) May 12, 2015

Though this latest news doesn’t come from Besson’s impressively sparse Twitter footprint, where he has followed 2 accounts and favorited 5 tweets while writing 4 of his own, it stemmed from the same announcement that revealed Chinese company Fundamental Films plans to invest $50 million in Besson’s upcoming large scale sci-fi project. While Besson has been busy launching The Transporter franchise, launching the Taken franchise, and launching an Arthur and the Invisibles franchise, fans of his work have awaited his return to The Fifth Element-sized sci-fi productions since 1997. Valerian will be an adaptation of the highly popular French graphic novel series created by writer Pierre Christin and artist Jean-Claude Mézières.

The United Nations may have 193 member states, but many nations continue to exist despite the lack of recognition from the UN. While some of these unrecognized areas are subject to territorial disputes (Kosovo, Taiwan), many others, such as Freetown Christiania or the Principality of Sealand, function outside of other countries’ laws with little fanfare. Jack Black seeks to enter the world of bizarre eccentrics who form their own sovereign nations in the newly announced comedy Micronations from Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess.

Jack Black has been unafraid to throw his weight around for the purposes of comedy and/or self-defense. When last teamed with Hess, the duo turned Black into the Mexican luchador Nacho Libre, a masked wrestler who was often pummeled in the ring. Nearly a decade later, Hess plans on sending the School of Rock star into a very different type of battle, as Black’s character assumes the role of Head of Defense for the tiny nation of Valoria (population: 12), until the micronation finds itself in an overblown battle with the neighboring Wayne County, Nevada.

New Girl writers Robert Snow and Christian Magalhaes wrote the script. Brandt Andersen, Dave Hunter and Hess are producing the film under their newly launched banner Buffalo Film Company. Jack Black’s company, Electric Dynamite, and Damon Ross will also produce.

Stephen King‘s highly anticipated “time-travel thriller” series has already cast James Franco as the show’s lead alongside several other actors. Now it seems Warner Brothers Television has found an additional performer to serve among Franco’s foils in the J.J. Abrams-directed series. Former Grey’s Anatomy star T.R. Knight has joined the Hulu event series 11/22/63 as Johnny Clayton, a salesman in 1960s Texas struggling to move past his estranged wife Sadie Dunhill (Sarah Gadon) despite her developing relationship with Franco’s Jake Epping. The character of Clayton will ultimately pose a threat to exposing Franco’s characters secrets.

11/22/63 is based on a bestseller of King’s from 2011 in which a high school English teacher discovers a portal that transports him back to September 9th, 1958. The teacher attempts to use the portal to stop the assassination of John F. Kennedy, while balancing love, and struggling against a course of historical events that does not want to be altered. The Hulu series is expected to premiere in 2016; Chris Cooper, Brooklyn Sudano, George MacKay, Leon Rippy, Lucy Fry and Daniel Webber have all been set for roles on the show.