Reverse Shot

What will future generations of film folk make of the countless American indies made in the latter half of the twenty-first century’s inaugural decade that follow inarticulate youths as they graze absent-mindedly through overgrown fields of urban anomie? If these films are taken en masse, future sociocultural dissection may yield winning theories about a coddled generation, but on what level will they actually be enjoyed? Every era has its own claim on ennui and spiritual dislocation, especially trendy topics when paired with youthful hesitation and sexual confusion. But often such umbrella terms give unambitious artists license to justify their artistic…

Damon Smith talks to Bong Joon-ho (Mother, The Host) about the psychological costs of making better films, the blurring of reality and fantasy, and the drinking habits of Korean auteurs. The marvelous Mother, perhaps the best film of 2010 thus far, opens today in theaters.

Actress Zoe Kazan and filmmaker Bradley Rust Gray talk to host Eric Hynes about how their offscreen friendship gave birth to The Exploding Girl, and how sneaking shots on the New York subway turned them into criminals.

Early in Bong Joon-ho’s last feature, 2006’s The Host, there’s a scene in which the dysfunctional Park family assembles to publicly mourn their youngest member, whom they (as well as the audience) believe has been eaten by a giant aquatic mutant that has emerged from the Han River. Each of the Parks is uniquely, comically pitiable: the poor, overindulgent father; the daughter left with a bronze medal in archery after choking at the last minute; the belligerent, unemployed alcoholic son. Each of the characters bawls loudly for their departed, but this mourning goes just a bit too far. Soon the…

In honor of this weekend's Oscar ceremony, we've rounded up all of Reverse Shot's predictions, think pieces, and insider trivia about the awards that we've posted this season. Hold on, actually we don't have any. We're not saying that makes us special, or somehow above it all . . . wait a second . . . actually, yes, that does make us pretty special. So rather than run down yet another list of "fearless" predictions about who will win the big prizes (Bigelow or her ex-husband?! Streep or a frosted-tipped gorgon?! Waltz or Waltz?! Mo'Nique or a flying pig just…

In 1922, a formerly blue-collar pharmacist named Dr. Albert C. Barnes used his newly acquired millions to create a most unusual art museum in South Merion, a small suburb near Philadelphia. With no previous exposure to the art world, Barnes made brave purchases based on his own tastes rather than those of the respected art institutions, acquiring artists unknown or unpopular among elite American society at the time, including Picasso, Monet, Manet, Matisse, and Cezanne. Barnes amassed what later came to be known as the largest and most significant collection of Impressionist, Postimpressionist, and Modernist art in the entire world.…

Check out our Talkie with Academy Award-nominated, ASC-winning cinematographer Christian Berger.

Those of us who get easily swept up in the tender, boundless empathy of Yi Yi may find it difficult to remember (or, due to the general lack of availability of Edward Yang’s other films, may not even realize) that much of this great Taiwanese director’s career sprang from his bitter sense of irony. While Yang’s final masterpiece suggested an artist beginning to make peace with an unjust world, his other major works were made in a spirit of indignant protest against a culture he felt was actively suppressing its own history and cheating its youth. Now that the World…

Reverse Shot has announced a partnership that brings their curated video interview series to a global audience via Babelgum’s online platform and its free applications for Apple’s iPhone & iPod Touch and Google’s Android devices. Babelgum will be the new home of Reverse Shot’s “Talkies” and “Direct Address” videos, which feature candid, off-the-cuff interviews with celebrated and emergent figures in film. When we decided to branch out from printed criticism into video we wanted to set a new standard for web-based interview content. We couldn’t imagine a better home for the Talkies and Direct Address than Babelgum, which has proven…

We needed another delicate, comedy-tinged American independent drama about a socially awkward, emotionally stunted creative guy who has a hard time communicating with girls like a hole in the head. At the very least, what immediately sets the new film Easier with Practice apart from many recent installments in this ever-ready subgenre is that first-time director Kyle Patrick Alvarez knows where to point a camera. As overly self-aware and photo-album-ready as much of the film’s shots are, especially in its opening moments, it’s clear that we’re in the hands of a genuine moviemaker. Unfortunately it takes a little digging to…

One of the first things viewers will inevitably remember from A Prophet is an early sequence in which the film’s young hero, Malik El Djebena (Tahar Rahim) murders a fellow prison inmate, by extracting a concealed razor blade from inside his mouth with his tongue, and slicing open the unsuspecting victim's throat. Notwithstanding the stygian brutality of this scene (from which a residual dread is likely to remain with the viewer throughout the film), A Prophet is ultimately as memorable for the responsibility it assumes, as it is for the savagery it depicts. At a time where an entire sub-genre…

In the first twenty or so minutes of Kimberly Reed’s marvelous documentary Prodigal Sons, the film’s director, who is also one of its main subjects, returns to her small Montana hometown to attend a high-school reunion. En route, she is reunited with her adopted older brother, Marc, with whom she casually mentions she has been estranged for over a decade. Soon, the first bombshell, uttered by Marc from the backseat of a car: his sister Kim, our narrator, used to be his brother, Paul. A third child, Todd, will waft in and out of conversation and the movie itself. Shot…

Once upon a time, Martin Scorsese’s occasional dabbling in genre filmmaking would come packaged with a twist. Indeed, looking back over his oeuvre, one can spot the musical, the sports picture, the comedy, the horror film, (and, yes, the gangster film). Yet the final product was so far afield from such strictly designated categories that one would never dare reduce them. New York, New York (perhaps the film that most baldly evokes common movie tropes) transcends imitation in its raw performances and abnormal scene duration, in the chilling brutality of its palpable, almost Cassavetes-like marital spats; Raging Bull, of course,…

With the possible exception of the post-Tarantino crime thriller, has any genre been as good to American independent film over the past 20 years as the family dramedy? One can hardly begin to count the stories of estranged children, bickering couples, or wayward siblings who all end up back under the same roof: crying and laughing and truth-telling their way to moist-eyed emotional equilibrium, if not redemption. It’s no mystery why these films keep popping up. For budget-conscious directors, dialogue-heavy screenplays set in a limited number of everyday locations keep the costs down. At the same time, stars looking to…

Jessica Hausner’s Lourdes, a starkly designed inquiry into the nature of miracles, exists in a lineage of films that includes Alain Cavalier’s Thérèse, Jacques Rivette’s The Nun, Robert Bresson’s The Trial of Joan of Arc, and professed inspiration, Carl Dreyer’s Ordet. In each, purity of form (often lazily labeled “minimalism” or even more erroneously “transcendentalism”) dovetails with the main character or filmmaker’s intensity of belief. Aesthetically, Lourdes, with its often unadorned and static compositions, fits in with this group nicely. Yet Hausner, for all the honesty of her investigation, and the asceticism of her visuals, approaches the idea of miracles…

Whatever suspense Julio DePietro’s The Good Guy seems to think it’s generating is predicated upon the supposedly surprising twist that its central Wall Street wannabe tycoon is not, in fact, a standup guy. Though all of the details of his cretinous behavior come as a slap in the face to the film’s central looking-for-love character, Beth (Alexis Bledel), it’s doubtful they’ll pull the rug out from under any viewer who may have previously seen a film about hotshot traders fast-talking whilst pressing a phone to each ear—or indeed anyone who may have previously seen a film. The bullish dude in…

Talkies host Eric Hynes and Academy Award–winning filmmaker James Marsh hit the streets of New York City to discuss Red Riding, Man on Wire, and more. For Talkies #1-8, click here.

The type of introspective, intimate domestic American nonfiction that has sprouted up so much in art-house theaters in the wake of the success of Capturing the Friedmans has come to typify documentary filmmaking of the past decade. Itself somewhat of an acolyte of the far more sensitive Crumb, which at least foregrounded its inevitable grotesquerie, Andrew Jarecki’s sensational depiction of an upper-middle-class Jewish family torn apart by intimations of child molestation tried to pass off its essentially exploitative nature as an investigation into American suburbia. Plus, with its tacked-on faux reconciliation ending and lack of aesthetic engagement, the film played…

In 2001, British satirist Chris Morris drew a great deal of fire from the government and popular press for an episode of his mockumentary series Brass Eye entitled "Paedogeddon!" [The program in question mockingly pondered such matters as why Britain was so completely overrun with pedophiles (some disguising themselves, absurdly, as schoolhouses) and what measures could be taken to protect children from being lured into their clutches (including locking the children up in cabinets, and corralling them in stadiums for the night). With the doleful, self-serious tones of a news broadcaster, Morris ingenuously asked, "Why can we no longer think…

Most of the gay Israeli films that have made their way to the U.S. have seemed to prefer narratives of extreme conflict. Of course there have been exceptions (last year’s glib yet exceedingly hot romantic comedy Antarctica‘s only issues were, refreshingly, those of sex and commitment), but for the most part, they place their central homosexual couplings within larger political or social frameworks that make them seem like extraordinary challenges to embrace or overcome. So in Eytan Fox’s breakout Yossi and Jagger, it’s not just a clandestine gay love affair, but one enacted within the uber-masculine barracks and battlefields of…