As actors, Patricia Clarkson and Ben Kingsley have bottomless resources. They’re two of the best working today, and Learning to Drive is simply a vehicle for them to pilot smoothly toward the finish line. It’s really nothing more than that; the lead performances are extraordinary, but the script, the imagery, the sound—every other element—is decidedly ordinary. Director Isabel Coixet and screenwriter Sarah Kernochan paint New York City from an ignorant tourist’s point of view as it weaves a rudimentary tale of a vehophobic book critic named Wendy (Clarkson), who’s just been dumped by her husband, and her noble Sikh driving instructor, Darwan (Kingsley), who’s determined to teach her how to grab life by the wheel. It’s thin, copacetic material (the source material, a short story by Katha Pollitt, has more edge), but it lays enough of a foundation to allow Clarkson and Kingsley to work.

At the outset, Wendy’s left alone in her Manhattan home by her asshole of a husband of 21 years (Jake Weber). They had a huge fight in the back of a cab the night before, and in the morning, the driver, Darwan, shows up on Wendy’s doorstep to return a package she left on the seat. She notices from the big-lettered advertisement on his cab that he doubles as a driving instructor, and she asks him to be her vehicular Jedi master of sorts.

A teacher-student friendship blossoms at a steady rate, with Wendy and Darwan using each other as a rock to cling to as the rapids of life threaten to wash them downstream. Wendy wants desperately to visit her daughter (Grace Gummer) in Vermont (especially with her impending divorce looming), but can’t clear her head of her husband’s memory, an obsession that inhibits her abilities behind the wheel (her mind drifts frequently as she daydreams about he and his new girlfriend). Darwan has a seemingly tighter grip on reality though he lives with complications of his own. A political refugee, he and his illegal-immigrant roommates are under constant threat of deportation. Making things more knotty is the fact that his sister has arranged for him to marry a complete stranger to gain her access into the U.S.; Darwan finds he has more affection for Wendy than his new wife.

The script isn’t flawed in any major way, but it’s resoundingly underwhelming. Its views of New Yorkers (Wendy) and immigrants (Darwan) are as one-dimensional as can be without being offensive though Clarkson and Kingsley do a lot of heavy lifting to give their characters more depth. There are actually several moments of delight in which the acting between them is so good and dynamic you almost forget about the artifice that is the movie around them. In fact, it sometimes feels like the actors abandon the cross-cultural themes completely as they get lost in playing off of one another. In these moments, it becomes woefully apparent that the heavy-handed driving metaphor Kernochan drives home so incessantly is nothing but a pestering distraction from the real work being done by Clarkson and Kingsley.

Learning to Drive has some sweetness to it, most of which comes from the compassion in Kingsley’s eyes. The thought of someone in a scrambled mental state such as Wendy’s getting behind the wheel of a car is terrifying for its dangerous implications. If only Coixet and Kernochan would flirt with danger a little more in their filmmaking, we could have had a more memorable film on our hands.

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:

There’s nothing like a Friday the 13th for survival film releases. 2015 is a rare year in that we’ll have three such Fridays, so if you squandered February and March’s there is still time come November. This probably works in filmmaker’s favor in that we might just be in the mood for more thrillers, horrors, and harrowing survival tales this year. But demand or not these overdone genres need to step up their game if they are going to continue to keep viewers’ interest. October Gale, a somewhat weepy drama masked as a thriller, is not the model on which others should be going. With its undercooked plot and overly-sentimental back story the result is just another split-personality home invasion thriller minus the thrills.

Helen (Patricia Clarkson) returns to the cabin she and her recently deceased husband have had for years. He died a year ago in a storm on the lake that surrounds their island cabin and she returns to pack up his things. Their life together flashes back as she cleans—moments of intimacy and flirtation. She’s set to leave the cabin when her motorboat has engine trouble and she ends up stuck for a few days with only a smaller paddle boat. Her quiet cabin reverie is disrupted, however, when Will (Scott Speedman), a young man with a bullet wound in his shoulder, drags his way into her living room. She patches him up (she’s a doctor) and tries to get some answers out of him about his situation. He won’t tell her and they back and forth more than once about her wanting him gone while knowing they are on an island and with a storm brewing neither of their small boats would last.

When a local comes by to check on Helen, Will recognizes him as one of his assailants. Helen lets slip that she has an injured young man in her home and asks the man to take him to the mainland. When he bolts instead, untying her small boat, she realizes Will had reason to be scared of him. Now trapped together on the island, they anxiously await the return of Tom (Tim Roth), the man out to kill Will.

With the tone of the film split almost down the middle, director and writer Ruba Nadda (Cairo Time, also starring Clarkson) spends too much of the film focusing on Helen’s past with her husband, setting up her grief as an overwhelming element. Then she abandons this dreamy state too quickly when Will shows up with a new plot. Granted, as a savvy doctor and obviously strong-willed woman—she’s an ace with her rifle—Helen is well-prepared for the danger Will brings to her doorstep, but her interactions with Will almost negate the nostalgia so recently thrust on us. In an entirely misplaced scene she kisses Will, the confusion of her actions playing out on her face and literally mirroring the audience’s confusion as well. The implication that her grief could be overcome by some new romance—not to mention the strange fact of their age differences and whether or not Nadda intended this as some sort of statement against the usual older-male-younger-female dynamic—or that a distraction from her grief through life-threatening danger is also a good thing, all seems very naive. Her connection with her past is so overly developed that it only makes the lacking understanding of her fondness for Will more pronounced.

Clarkson and Speedman are two of those interesting Hollywood-vampire types, well-preserved and with dashing boyish/girlish type looks. Clarkson could act the heck out of an encyclopedia, her cleverness and subtlety always an engaging watch. She carries her badassness like a pro but is given very little opportunity to showcase it. Speedman is adorably likeable, almost to a fault—the hardness we’re supposed to believe around his back story just doesn’t add up in his demeanor.

Not to decry cinematographer Jeremy Benning’s work, but it’s not exactly difficult to turn on the rain machine, add some wind and make a situation seem dire. The cabin is cozy and the obvious safe haven of the film, which rather makes one wonder why so much of the film takes place inside it. Clearly the more unnerving locale would have been outside. But when it gets down to it, October Gale isn’t that harrowing at all. Tim Roth is underutilized as Will’s sadistic would-be-murderer and when his reasoning is revealed—in a highly yawn-worthy monologuing scene—any and all tension crumbles.

In some ways October Gale is a story of two people (Helen and Tom) dealing with their grief in two very different processes. But unfortunately the film forgets to draw that parallel and thereby add any level of depth. You’ll find more scares in Home Alone, not to mention more emotional connection. Clarkson and Speedman showcase both their talents, but neither can be a life vest for a film lost in its own storm.

With its ethereal atmosphere and stunning vistas you can’t help but gawk at, it’s baffling that Lake Tahoe is so underrepresented in cinema. Co-directors Tom Dolby and Tom Williams’ debut feature Last Weekend gives the Northern California destination some much-deserved screen time, though the characters they choose to plop into the heavenly locale are far from angelic. It’s a film about miserable, self-centered people so obsessed with taking their frustrations out on each other that they take their beautiful surroundings for granted. If you’ve been to Lake Tahoe, you know that people like this are in great abundance. You also know that you probably wouldn’t want to watch a movie about their petty squabbles. Trust your gut.

The Green family is a perpetually dysfunctional clan of well-to-do yuppies who have been summoned to the family’s grand lakeside estate by their free-spirit matriarch, Celia (Patricia Clarkson). She along with her husband Malcolm (Chris Mulkey), who earned the family their wealth with his fitness center empire, welcome their sons Roger (Joseph Cross), a petulant investment banker, and Theo (Zachary Booth), a screenwriter. The boys are less than thrilled to obey Celia’s marching orders for different reasons, though Roger’s is the darkest: He made a multi-million dollar mistake and got fired by his firm, the news of which should be reported in the business papers shortly, surely spelling years of shame in the eyes of his father.

Theo’s brought along his boyfriend Luke (Devon Graye), who feels out of place in all the opulence, and another couple (Fran Kranz and Rutina Wesley, whose characters’ significance to the story is beyond me). His actor friend Blake (Jayma Mays) pops in later in the weekend. Roger’s brought his girlfriend Vanessa (Alexia Rasmussen), who’s stealthily trying to convince Malcolm to back her line of organic flavored water. (This mini-plot is genuinely funny.) Roger eventually fools around with starlet Blake on the lake, but this leads nowhere, like the rest of the film’s crises.

What he film boils down to is a maelstrom of unpleasant people slinging hateful barbs at each other over dinner tables, jacuzzis, king-size beds, and kitchen counters. The barrage of impoliteness is taxing. These people are so unsympathetic in their narcissism, bull-headedness, and obsession with their non-problems that it’s a challenge to want to stick around to see what becomes of them by the end of the weekend. Almost everything about the Greens is authentic to the idea of American affluence, but the film endeavors to do little more than observe the Greens and their idle bickering, which is so uninteresting you may feel more inclined to count the various tchotchkes peppered throughout the background. A handful of eye-rolling contrivances–a groundskeeper getting electrocuted, someone choking on food at dinner–do little to alleviate the monotony.

It’s a shame, because the cast is actually very, very talented across the board. Clarkson’s prowess is proven, and her scathing exchanges with Cross are wickedly intense and shocking. Mays takes a potentially cartoonish role and skillfully grounds it, and Graye provides the most fleshed-out, emotionally layered performance of the bunch. But the material is more sizzle than steak, giving excellent actors like Kranz and Rasmussen no room to flex.

The only nugget of thought the film offers is the reality that one day, the wealth and comfort the Greens enjoy will be gone. The bigger tragedy is that Theo and Roger have already slipped through Celia’s fingers, made clear by their venomous treatment of her. She and Malcolm secretly plan to sell the family vacation home, because there’s barely a family left to enjoy it. Clarkson elucidates this epiphany well, with her acceptance of loss acting as the film’s grand arc. But since Celia and her flock are long-since disbanded from the moment we meet them, it’s hard to identify the weight of what she’s lost, what she’s lamenting. The love is so anemic in Last Weekend that the film winds up being little more than a shapeless, cold family drama set in a pretty place.

Last Weekend trailer

A handful of siblings and their significant others gather at their wealthy parents’ home in Lake Tahoe for a weekend of awkward arguments, divulged dark secrets, and a couple of near-death experiences in Last Weekend, the debut feature by co-directors Tom Dolby and Tom Williams. The film stars Patricia Clarkson and Chris Mulkey as the parents, with the rest of the ensemble filled out by young stars on the rise: Zachary Booth (Damages), Joseph Cross (Lincoln), Alexia Rasmussen (Proxy), Devon Graye (Dexter) and Fran Kranz (Cabin in the Woods).

In a roundtable interview with other journalists, we spoke to Cross, Rasmussen, Graye, and Kranz about what drew them to the project, the restraint of the material, shooting in a beautiful place like Lake Tahoe, their “intimate” rehearsal process, learning from their more experienced co-stars, getting permission to jump over couches, and more.

What about the screenplay hooked your interest? What made you say, “This is a movie I want to do.”
Devon: I thought it was just so funny. I was doing another movie at the time, and I was laughing out loud in my trailer. I never laugh out loud. It’s taking real things, and it’s hard to do to make those things funny. It’s grounded so much in reality and almost doesn’t know it’s funny.

Alexia: It’s that acerbic wit that Patricia’s character has. And one has the feeling that every mother is a little bit like that, you know? [laughs] It was nice to see that portrait and to see all these different people’s feelings about her. Throughout the script you can tell that each person’s perspective on the house is very clear.

Fran: Definitely Patricia’s character was pretty fantastic. It’s weird, because someone gets electrocuted and there’s a helicopter and she jumps in a lake, but at the same time, I liked how it was very un-dramatic. It seems strange, because I say that a lot. “It’s really wonderful how it’s realism, and yet it’s not so overblown.” And yet, there are these really momentous occurrences that would be very extraordinary in a typical weekend. I just thought there was a lot of restraint in the script, which I think is different and unique. I was happy to be a part of it, and the cast is really excellent.

Joseph: I think it was Patty that made us all want to do the project. When the script came Patricia was already attached, so when you see in your email box a movie that has her in it, you just go all-out and try to do it. Usually with a movie, somebody who’s already in it has to be somebody you want to work with. Whether it’s the writer, the director or the actors.

Talk a bit more about the restraint in the script. Jayma’s character could have been a cartoon, but isn’t, for example.
Joseph: She did such an amazing job of rooting that role. She’s fantastic in that part, and across the board with all the actors, nobody was hamming it up or playing into anything silly. With family dramas, I feel as if any moment it could tip into melodrama, and I think you want to explore all the exciting drama you can without making it seem over-the-top. It’s always this funny balance.

What was it like living in such a beautiful place during shooting? Were you living near the house?
Joseph: Lake of the Sky Motel. It was beautiful. We were right across the street from the lake, and we would go swimming every morning. Lake Tahoe was too much fun.

Fran: We might as well have been living with each other. When we were working on set, we were in a house, so that’s where we all hung out. It was like summer camp. It was an incredible experience. It was also September, so it wasn’t the tourist rush of Tahoe. It was [really hot] out when we started, and we could jump in this cool lake or go on a boat.

Alexia: It was dream location time.

You all have intimate relationships in the film. How did you work on bringing that chemistry to set?
Joseph: We all made out all the time.

Alexia: A big orgy.

Joseph: It was a big orgy, all the time. [laughs] We all spent a lot of time together.

Devon: We had a rehearsal period before [shooting]. We had three days of rehearsals in L.A. We’d sit at the table and script-read through the scenes, and we kept finding [scenes] where we were like, “We’re going to ruin this. We’ve got to save it.” We had to rehearse a little bit, especially with my character and Zach’s being a new relationship.

Joseph: It’s a really funny thing about making movies, whether or not to rehearse.

Alexia: [Me and Joseph] would read lines a lot together. I hung out with him and his real girlfriend.

Joseph: I was like, “I’m really sorry, but my real-life girlfriend is going to be home.” [laughs]

Alexia: It was nice to get to know each other before we went up with the group. You’re so nervous. Am I going to hate these people?

Joseph: It was a good group of people.

Chris was very complimentary of you younger actors. You had these two veteran actors around in he and Patricia; did you try to pick their brains, or did you learn from them by simply being around them?
Devon: I worked with Patty before on another film where she played my mom, and I found that I was doing little Patty things a year later. On this film, with this being a very different character, she does things so well that you just have to find where you fit into that equation.

Joseph: You’re attracted to working with older actors like Chris and Patty because you can just let them set the tone and follow and learn from them as you go.

There were two directors, so how was it working with them on set?
Alexia: It was interesting, because Tom Dolby is the writer, so there was that authority on that end, and Tom Williams had a more practical authority on filmmaking. [It was] like a right-hand-left-hand thing where they needed each other, so I thought it balanced out really well.

Fran: Personally, I think all the input you can get is great. It didn’t necessarily bother me. You had two people you could talk to in a position of authority.

Joseph: It was almost like with parents: If you knew one was going to tell you no, you would go to the other one. [laughs] You knew who to go to for what you wanted to do. One time, I wanted to jump over the couch and Tom Dolby was like, “No! You can’t jump over these couches! These are very expensive couches!” And Tom Williams was like, “Maybe Roger would jump over the couch.” I was like, “Thank you, Tom. I’m jumping over the couch!”

A handful of siblings and their significant others gather at their wealthy parents’ home in Lake Tahoe for a weekend of awkward arguments, divulged dark secrets, and a couple of near-death experiences in Last Weekend, the debut feature by co-directors Tom Dolby and Tom Williams. The film stars Patricia Clarkson and Chris Mulkey as the parents, with the rest of the ensemble filled out by young stars on the rise: Zachary Booth (Damages), Joseph Cross (Lincoln), Alexia Rasmussen (Proxy), and Fran Kranz (Cabin in the Woods).

We spoke with Mulkey in a roundtable interview about working with Patricia, the talent of the film’s young cast, whether his on-screen marriage reflects his own, working with Dolby and Williams, shooting a love scene at the exact right time, and more.

Just as a preface, we interviewed Chris in a room at Hotel Kabuki in San Francisco. The setting was very…casual. Check out the images below and you’ll understand why this was the most amazing, epically sexy interview setup of all time.

Had you worked with Patricia Clarkson before?
Chris: No, but I like her work. It’s such a great match. You meet people and you go, “Oh this’ll work.” Like you guys. You guys walked in here and I was like, “I got you guys. It’s good.” Sometimes you walk into a place and you go, “Oh dude, this is so wrong.” You know what I mean? I think it’s magnetic electrical. I met Patty and Tom Williams and Tom Dolby, and I went, “Oh my god.”

In the film you play a couple that’s been married 35-40 years. What did you do to sort of ferment that relationship on set?
Chris: We talked about our love lives. I’ve been married for 32 years. We had a simpatico going. It was amazing. Patty and I had a ritual. She had a voluminous verbiage that she delivers with great acumen. The reason she delivered that well is because, every night when we wrapped, she would come up to me, put her little fingers together, and go, “Mulkey. After dinner. My place. Let’s go over the lines, please?” She’d learn ten more pages and we’d just run them and run them. Then we’d get on the set, and she was just…[makes some kind of spaceship noise]. There used to be a great TV show called “Soul Train”. Don Cornelius would come on. “Soul Traaaain!” Patty would get on set and it would be like “Soul Train”. She would smoke that stuff. Realistically, she wouldn’t smoke anything…but we did drink a lot of wine learning those lines.

You’ve been honing your craft for a long time. When you come onto a project with talented young actors like this one, do you make a conscious decision to impart knowledge?
Chris: Well, being an experienced actor, one of the things I try not to do is tell too many stories or anecdotes, because I appear to be the ancient sage on the hill. You know what I mean? All the actors in this film are super smart. I don’t have to say anything to them. Fran Kranz and I just finished shooting another film called The Living out in New York. We’d go back and forth, but these guys came fully loaded.

You were working with two directors. What was the division of labor like? What are they each like as directors?
Chris: In truth, it felt seamless. We never got to a point where there was a lot of indecision at all. Tom Dolby was the author of the piece, and Tom Williams was his editor, in a way. It was the originator and the shaper. I think that’s the term. They both worked on all the shots. I felt completely comfortable.

The family dynamics in the film are sometimes shockingly authentic. Do those dynamics reflect what you’ve experience in your own family?
Chris: The dynamic on screen was that…I think Malcolm was in the moment as far as time having gone on. He realized that he was nearing retirement and that the kids had grown. Things had freaking changed, right? Whereas, Celia hadn’t quite arrived there yet and still treated the boys as if they were in junior high school. Malcolm’s job was to wait for her to arrive patiently at that timeline. You do that with someone you really love, and they loved each other very much. Patty and I talked about that. A spouse gives another spouse a leash as far as how long they want to let them run with a certain assumption before they [talk to them about it]. Usually my wife gives me a long leash, and then she goes, “Honey, you’re done. You’re done. It’s been great, but no. That’s over now.” We did a Jane Martin play about the war in Iraq, and we did the world premiere in Minneapolis, took it to Los Angeles, and then took it to New York. On the third production we played husband and wife. We started this one particular scene, and I said, “Remember in Minneapolis and Los Angeles we did it this way.” And she said, “Honey, we’re in New York. We have a different cast. It’s a different show. Okay?” and I went, “Got it.”

That’s why you’re still married. [laughs]
Chris: It’s true. There’s that scene [in the movie] where Patty’s like, “I’ve had all these wrong assumptions about how things are with the kids!” She has that big moment, and we look at each other, and we start to kiss each other and make love. It’s at that moment that they come together, and she and I were always going, “How is that going to feel?” Luckily, when we shot it, to Tom’s credit, we shot it late in the movie. We shot that scene at exactly the right time in our relationship. We didn’t have to choreograph anything–we just knew it.

A handful of siblings and their significant others gather at their wealthy parents’ home in Lake Tahoe for a weekend of awkward arguments, divulged dark secrets, and a couple of near-death experiences in Last Weekend, the debut feature by co-directors Tom Dolby and Tom Williams. The film stars Patricia Clarkson and Chris Mulkey as the parents, with the rest of the ensemble filled out by young stars on the rise: Zachary Booth (Damages), Joseph Cross (Lincoln), Alexia Rasmussen (Proxy), and Fran Kranz (Cabin in the Woods).

We spoke to Clarkson in a roundtable interview about questioning whether she could handle the role of Celia, the role taking a toll on her, being opinionated on set, working with her younger co-stars, and more.

Your character in the film says, “30 years ago, I could have never imagined my life turning out like this.” How about you, Patricia Clarkson?
Patricia: You know…be careful what you wish for. I think the life I have now is very close to the life I hoped for, which is very moving to me. Is it perfect? No. I’m 54 and I’m working like crazy, and it’s a struggle sometimes, but I think my life is pretty great. I’m quite happy with where I am now.

Your character takes a lot of crap from her family, and represents a mother’s struggle in a way.
Patricia: I always play mothers, but I’m not a mother myself. I have sisters who are mothers, I have a mother who is very much present in this world. But I think Celia was a bit of a tough “yes” for me, which is good for me. She was a complicated woman. Unsympathetic. I thought, can I do this? Can I enter this woman’s world and shift my sight? I had to change the way I viewed her life, and suddenly when I entered her world I realized, she’s right! [laughs] That’s all I needed to know. She’s right! That’s what I had to come to. I don’t care what anybody else says; she’s right!

Was that discovery a surprise to you?
Patricia: Yes. When I was preparing for this and we got to Lake Tahoe I was thinking, “I’m not prepared for this”.  I don’t look like Celia. I’m not a west coast person. I had to become more malleable, more loose and odd and different and lose my edge. I had to lose my lipstick, my tight skirts. I was like, “She doesn’t wear heels?” [laughs] It’s a really massive character. It really ate my lunch. It took a toll on me, and that’s a great thing. The metaphor of jumping off the pier was a little bit of my own metaphor. I didn’t know when I’d come of for air with this character. I just jumped. I had to just jump.

I had Tom and Tom–“Tom Tom” [laughs]–these two beautiful men on either side of me. They’re different men, but they’re both family men. Both very kind and fiercely intelligent. They each had me in different ways throughout this character. And I had these exquisite young actors who are just so beautiful and lovely.

With this being the two Toms’ first film and you with all this experience behind you, what was the working process like? Was it a lot of sharing on your part?
Patricia: Oh yes. I was opinionated as Patty, and as Celia I was even more opinionated! [laughs] I was a little tough, but sometimes the character invades your space, and Celia’s invasive. She knows what she wants, and then she has nothing, which is heartbreaking to me. What is she left with at the end of the day?

She asks Malcolm if he thinks that they’re good people.
Patricia: Can you imagine asking yourself that? Have you ever asked that to your family? “Am I a good person?” You have to come to a very specific place in quite a long, complicated life to say, “Are we good people?” But finally she’s able to ask that question. She wouldn’t have even had the thought of that question, but she finally finds the words and is able to articulate. She had what she thought was a full life, but maybe it wasn’t so full.

Judith Light plays your neighbor, and there’s that scene where she confronts you about selling the house. You don’t receive her with any defensiveness. It’s a beautiful scene of acceptance and forgiveness.
Patricia: That was the breaking down of Celia. That was charting when her cells start to reinvent. I remember for that scene I said, “Tom, she has nothing to lose.”

Your interactions with Joseph are so venomous.

Patricia: Joe is tough. That scene where he grabs me got really tough. Some of that was so close…He’s an intense actor. We had to go there, enter that world. We had to.

A handful of siblings and their significant others gather at their wealthy parents’ home in Lake Tahoe for a weekend of awkward arguments, divulged dark secrets, and a couple of near-death experiences in Last Weekend, the debut feature by co-directors Tom Dolby and Tom Williams. The film stars Patricia Clarkson and Chris Mulkey as the parents, with the rest of the ensemble filled out by young stars on the rise: Zachary Booth (Damages), Joseph Cross (Lincoln), Alexia Rasmussen (Proxy), and Fran Kranz (Cabin in the Woods).

We spoke with Dolby and Williams in a roundtable interview about the history behind the house they filmed in, the strange effect the isolation of Lake Tahoe has on relationships, the serendipitous nature of the casting process, the deep roots of their partnership, and more.

The place where you filmed is exquisite. It’s significant not only in cinema, but for you personally.
Dolby: My parents bought the house in 1979. And, as you know, it was in A Place in the Sun in 1959, which is part of the amazing history of the house. There was a lot of restoration they had to do to it. There was some awful 1970s “casino carpeting” [as my mom called it]. They tore it up and found these amazing hardwood floors underneath. They found some vintage photographs and were able to restore it to what it was in 1930.

You called the house a crucible for what’s happening inside. Was that true in your personal experience, and was that what you used to propel your characters forward?
Williams: I’d been to the house a couple times before filming because Tom and I have known each other for about 20 years. It’s interesting and unique because of how isolating it is up there. When you’re in Lake Tahoe, you’re an entire world away from anything else. There’s a strange feeling you get there. You’re at a high altitude, you’re in a place where they had to carve out civilization from this really rugged landscape. There’s a sense that you’re sealed off from civilization and all outside influence, which can have an interesting effect on characters who know each other too well and characters who don’t know each other very well. You put them in almost a petri dish and watch the relationships unfold.

Dolby: It’s the fish tank effect.

Williams: You can’t escape, and there’s something great about that from a storytelling perspective. There are the literal gates within the film, but even if you got outside the gates, you’re so far from everything else.

Dolby: That’s what we love about the weekend form; whether it’s in novels or short stories or novels or film, you have this very limited amount of time. You have these people that are thrown together and suddenly put into this very intimate circumstance. A lot of characters in the film don’t know each other, so it’s just sort of seeing what happens in this great social experiment. For me, personally, it’s always been a very relaxing place. I’ve never had that dramatic a weekend there, thankfully, but that’s where the fiction part comes in.

Patricia and Chris have incredible resumes and have been doing great work in film for years, but this young cast is really savvy. Anyone who pays attention to the indie film scene knows they’ve done great work there and that they’re on the brink of coming into their primes as actors. Talk about assembling the young cast members.
Williams: We had three weeks of casting in L.A. and New York. We worked with a wonderful casting director called Mary Vernieu. She gave us some interesting people; there were some people who we asked to meet and some who came out of the woodwork. There were some people where, we had already cast certain actors, but they’d tell us to look at other actors who they knew personally, and we ended up casting them, too. Tom and I knew the characters so well. He’d written the first draft of the script about two years before we started the casting process, so we’d been living with these people for a while and had a good idea of what we wanted. When the people that we casted walked into the room…

Dolby: We knew that they were right. And they came to us through this wonderful sense of serendipity. We had obviously settled on Patty, and that was all set. The script went out to managers, and people started coming to us. Joseph Cross was actually one of the first people we met with, and we we said, “Oh my god, he understands this character so much. He’s Roger.” And then we had to go meet with 20 other people. [laughs] Devon Graye’s acting teacher in San Francisco is a friend of mine, and he had been telling me about Devon for two years. I asked our casting director if we could meet with him, and the second he walked in the door it was that same thing. We had a great conversation, and he totally understood who the character was. He actually helped us find our Theo. He recommended Zachary Booth.

Williams: And by the way, we talked to him on a Saturday and he was in Lake Tahoe with us two days later. Casting turned out to be an easy process.

What was it like working on a first feature together?
Williams: We were in boarding school together, we were at college together, we shared an apartment in New York…One thing that’s interesting about collaborating with someone you know so well is that you’re not worried about offending them. You’ve had every argument you could ever have about anything, from “What are we going to do today?” to “Why did you buy cilantro?” We go way, way back. There’s an honesty required amongst collaborators like that to where you don’t have to worry that anything you say will offend their sensibility. Any process of filmmaking is a collaboration, so to have the ability to both argue out ideas and take in ideas and do it all from a safe place where your ego isn’t on the line is important.

SFFS Awards Night

On May 1st, right in the middle of the 57th annual San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF57), the San Francisco Film Society (SFFS) held and awards night gala, honoring some of the industry’s most vital filmmakers and contributors. It was a star-studded event, with Richard Linklater, John Lasseter, Jeremy Irons, screenwriter Stephen Gaghan, and more receiving awards presented by young stars including Zooey Deschanel, Josh Gad, and Parker Posey. Check out pics from the red carpet below:

The Skeleton Twins

On the same night, a few blocks away in Japantown, Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig were in attendance to introduce their dramedy (heavy on the drama) collaboration with director Craig Johnson, The Skeleton Twins. Hader, ever the entertainer, had fun with the press on the red carpet, pretending to cough to screw with photographers (I still managed to snap a couple good ones), and even conducting almost an entire interview in an Australian accent. Check out the hilarity below:

Palo Alto

Adding to the illustrious Coppola family legacy at SFIFF57 was Gia Coppola, niece of Sofia and granddaughter of Francis, with her gritty slice of teen life Palo Alto. Based on a book of short stories written by James Franco (who also acts in the film), it’s the best representation of modern day teens I’ve ever seen, an impressive outing for a first time filmmaker. Coppola and star Emma Roberts made an appearance on the red carpet at the Kabuki, both looking gorgeous as usual. (Photo credit: Adam Clay)

Last Weekend

Taking over the red carpet this past weekend were the directors and stars of Lake Tahoe-set family drama Last Weekend, which made its world premiere at the festival. Many of the ensemble cast were in attendance, including Patricia Clarkson, Joseph Cross, Chris Mulkey, Alexia Rasmussen, Devon Graye, and Fran Kranz. First time co-directors Tom Dolby and Tom Williams (lovingly referred to by the cast members as “Tom-Tom”) celebrated the film’s successful launch on the red carpet with their stars, as well as on a second carpet at the film’s after party. (Photo credit: Adam Clay)

A 3rd generation filmmaker of one of cinema’s most lauded families, Gia Coppola impresses in her debut feature, Palo Alto, an adaptation of a book by James Franco (who’s also in the movie) that captures the listless, limbo-like haze of high school through interweaving stories of several troubled teens. While the film technically falls into the “teen drama” column, its authentic, unapologetically filthy depiction of adolescence sets it apart.

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Photos Courtesy Adam Clay

Much of Palo Alto‘s authenticity stems from its cast, all appropriately aged (this is important) and all quite…normal looking. It’s a good thing, as most teen movies’ stars are too prettied up to be relatable. Jack Kilmer, son of Val (who makes a brief, comical appearance), and Emma Roberts lead the brilliant cast, who all convince as conflicted, bored, lustful youths partying, getting in trouble, and goofing around in parking lots. Coppola, a photographer whose work impressed Franco enough to entrust the stories of his hometown to her, has a natural eye for composition and color, capturing the intensity and urgency of teen life with her luscious, moody imagery. Each character is chaotically emotional and has a unique set of inner conflicts to reckon with. This is the best representation of modern teens in memory.

SFIFF57 offered up another debut feature, this time from co-directors Tom Dolby and Tom Williams with the world premier of the Lake Tahoe-set Last Weekend. A family drama about an affluent couple (Patricia Clarkson and Chris Mulkey) hosting their spoiled adult children and their significant others for a weekend in their home on the sparkling lake, the film has its moments but is hampered by a script that needs more sharpening. Watching entitled rich folk complain about everything while feasting in paradise is a joke that gets old quick.

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Photos Courtesy Adam Clay

The film, which has almost zero plot to speak of (not a knock), is completely fueled by the contentious family dynamics. The savvy young cast, which includes Zachary Booth, Alexia Rasmussen (Proxy), Joseph Cross (Milk), Devon Graye (Dexter), and Jayma Mays (Glee), all approaching their prime, embody their bratty roles tastefully, never going overboard or outshining each other. Clarkson and Mulkey guide them along, and the fresh faces keep up without a stutter. Cross and Clarkson share some particularly venomous scenes together, epic mother-son spats that steal the show. Fran Kranz (Cabin in the Woods) and Rutina Wesley (True Blood) play nothing roles that amount to a well-acted waste of time.

Tsai Ming-Liang made a Miyazaki-like announcement at the premiere of his new film Stray Dogs in Venice that the stunning film about an impoverished family would be his last, to the sadness of many arthouse aficionados. The lauded auteur is leaving the cinema world on a high note, however, as Stray Dogs is as gorgeous, boundary-pushing, and incomparable as his previous work (What Time is it There?, The Hole).

As has become his signature style, Tsai presents his tale in a series of fixed, ultra-long shots whose uncompromisingly elongated form reveals intricacies and shifting emotion unseeable by way of conventional quick cuts or even shots like Scorsese’s Copacabana classic. Spectacle is not the objective here, with the shot lengths surpassing the ten minute mark in some cases. Tsai paints a dark, stark portrait of a family living in squalor on the streets of Taipei. We see the children bathe in a dingy public restroom, the father hold up advertising signs at a busy intersection in the pouring rain. It’s a haunting, gut-wrenching film, and one whose beauty lies not just in Tsai’s immaculately composed shots, but in the 4th dimension of time itself. And you don’t even have to shell out an extra ten bucks for 4-D glasses!

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the festival so far has been Craig Johnson’s The Skeleton Twins, which from movie stills ostensibly appears to be a star vehicle for SNL all-stars Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig, but actually turns out to be an unexpectedly affecting sibling drama peppered with funny moments for the comedians to please loyalists. Hader and Wiig play the titular troubled siblings Milo and Maggie, each with self-destructive tendencies.

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After ten years of not speaking, Maggie invites her brother to stay with her after a suicide attempt. She’s in denial about her dissatisfaction with her marriage to the cheerful Lance (Luke Wilson) while Milo, an emotional wreck more aware of his fatal flaws, struggles to tie up loose ends in his past life while trying desperately to keep Maggie afloat in her failing marriage. It would be fair to categorize The Skeleton Twins as a dramedy, though the dramatic element is more intensified here than your average Apatow effort. It’s a dark movie, and Hader and Wiig’s comedic chops translate well to the emotional spectrum of acting (Wiig’s already proven this, but this is Hader’s first dramatic leading role). In fact, the laughs sometimes outstay their welcome, as the comedic scenes are egregiously tailored to the actors’ signature personas and distract from their better, dramatic character moments. This one’s definitely worth keeping on your radar.

I’ll admit that the main reason I was interested in The East was due to it starring Ellen Page, though the story did also appeal to me. I had not seen Zal Batmanglij’s previous thriller, Sound of My Voice, so I went in blind in regards to his style. However, I was thoroughly impressed. The East is Batmanglij’s second Sundance release and I’d recommend almost everyone to see it, but don’t go expecting epicness as you may be disappointed, instead acknowledge that it’s a morally complex ‘we are the revolution’, gripping and profound film featuring an tremendously talented and convincing cast.

Sarah Moss (Brit Marling) is a private intelligence operative hired by a firm titled Hiller Brood. Her first big mission set by her power hungry boss (Patricia Clarkson), requires her to infiltrate an anarchist group called The East. Her main objective is to convince the members she is a genuine supporter of their movement in order to extract names, locations and their personal agendas in order to shut them down before the FBI gets involved.

To me this was a very different take on the ‘undercover special ops’ typical plot that I’ve seen previously in films – you believed Sarah’s intentions were innocent and that she was there to stop these individuals from being sent to prison, rather than exposing the group as hardened criminals. The way in which Batmanglij approached this was to study Freeganism (the practice of reclaiming and eating food that has been discarded) alongside co-writer and actress Marling as to further understand and deepen the actors that portray the anarchist’s, commitment to an anti-consumerist lifestyle. By doing so, you get a real sense of truth and dedication from the cast towards their cause, which brings to light the difficult moral choices Sarah and the audience have to make throughout the film.

Benji (Alexander Skarsgard) who is the founder of The East is very hesitant to give Sarah responsibility in the tasks that they set themselves (referred to in the film as ‘jams’). Initially, Benji does not believe Sarah is as free as they need her to be in respect to how she lives her life, and that her reasons for being around is not to support their movement. One thing leads to another and Sarah is asked by Izzy (Ellen Page – Benji’s second in command) to perform duties to help secure the successful completion of a major jam – one close to the members hearts. In order to play a part in this mission however, she is not allowed to know the details about what they will be doing, only that she has to distract a certain man. When the night is over the group commend her for her efforts. As they begin to trust Sarah they end up explaining to her what they do and why they do it.

Throughout the film The East demonstrates an outstanding ability to take you on several different emotional journeys and intense adventures. There may be a few flaws within the narrative structure, where there seem to be missing sections of information in certain scenes. In some cases this is a good thing, but here it made the film feel a little off balance. Overall, The East did not disappoint my expectations and actually exceeded my expectations on almost all accounts. I left the cinema with a thousand things to talk about and nearly all were very positive. Also, the soundtrack was amazing, something I should have mentioned earlier, but I’m saying it now!

The East trailer:

This is a low-key movie about a lonely dwarf who’s only friend passed away, which he then moves to a new small town. His life has been full of constant ridicule and rude stares. It seems that the only thing he has interest in his life are trains. With his recent move (which is in an old train depot) comes new neighbors and opportunities.

The main character Finbar (Peter Dinklage) after shortly moving in, meets a man named Joe who runs a local roadside coffee trailer. One which doesn’t seem to get a lot of business. Joe is also a lonely soul and is very excited when Finbar arrives. Joe seems like he has all the time in the world on his hands and no one to spend it with, so he forces himself into a friendship with Finbar. Being the recluse that he is, Finbar is very put off about it at first. He seeks isolation and makes it obvious.

The Station Agent is a some what of a slow moving and quiet movie, which is not to say boring. In fact, it was incredibly entertaining the entire way through. Although most of the movie has sort of a depressing vibe to it, there is definitely some comedy in it. In more than one scene I found myself laughing aloud. The music albeit subtle, fits in perfectly. It was interesting to learn that the film was actually shot in just 20 days. The acting is absolutely spot on. It felt absolutely genuine. Actor Peter Dinklage is truly playing himself and you get a sense of hardship he has endured because he just seems natural in this role.

This indie flick is very solid, great acting, great story. Maybe a little slow moving and doesn’t have a satisfying ending for the mainstream watchers, but you would be foolish not to give this one a chance.