The New Classics: It Follows

By Michael Cusumano

Scene: Explaining The Rules
Every movie with a supernatural horror needs the 'rules' scene. The one where we lay out for the hero exactly what it is they’re up against and why they are in deep, deep trouble. These scenes require the film to strike a tricky balance. You want enough info so we can get a firm grasp on the dynamic, without getting bogged down in minutiae. Share the tape in seven days or die. Got it! Too much and you end up like the heroes of Inception, shouting explanations at each other well into the film’s second hour. Not enough and the threat ends up too vague to be scary. Pennywise the Clown can do anything at any time, and kill kids sometimes but not others based on nothing. Whatever. 

The best modern example of this scene, the one that hits the balance exactly right, is the post-coital explanation scene from David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows (2015)...

Click to read more ...

New Podcast: Poms, The Hustle, and Under the Silver Lake

by Murtada Elfadl and Nathaniel R

 

Index (50 minutes)
00:01 Diane Keaton and Jacki Weaver and Pam Grier (sort of) in Poms
10:30 David Robert Mitchell directs Andrew Garfield in bizarre red-herring filled hallucinatory noir called Under the Silver Lake
24:45 Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson in The Hustle 
34:00 Joanna Hogg's The Souvenir starring Tilda Swinton's daughter
40:22 Olivier Assayas' Non-Fiction
42:30 Ralph Fiennes's Nureyev biopic The White Crow
48:18 Bye for now! 

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

Poms, The Hustle

Cannes 2018. The First Films Announced!

by Nathaniel R

Best Actress possibility? Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani (About Elly, Paterson) and French star Emmanuelle Bercot headline the cast of "Girls of the Sun" about a Kurdish female battalion and the journalist embedded in their ranks

The initial Cannes lineups have arrived with films from their semi-typical list of famous international auteurs. Cannes has had problems leaning into super-male lineups (even when hugely acclaimed female directors are available) so it's worth noting that three of the first seventeen films announced in competition are from female filmmakers: Lebanon's Nadine Labaki, Italy's Alice Rohrwacher, and France's Eva Husson.

Which films are you most excited about? We've got the titles as well as a few details we could find about them after the jump...

Click to read more ...