Reverse Shot

Though few aesthetic experiences are as necessarily social and participatory as concert-going, when live music is captured in that other communal art form known as cinema it is difficult for it to feel anything but awkwardly isolating. Sitting in the darkness of the theater, watching others experiencing the performance at some previous time, the concert-film viewer is always stuck on the outside, unsure whether to clap, stomp, or sing along or just watch reverently. A successful product of the genre, like 2006’s Dave Chappelle’s Block Party, can reduce our awareness of this chasm between ourselves and the onscreen stage, inviting…

Dispatch from SXSW 2010: Kick-Ass, Cold Weather, and Cyrus While the South by Southwest festival may remain the uniquely good time that industry and locals alike have come to cherish, there have been a few hiccups this year as the festival staff has tried to wrap their minds around how to logistically deal with a 25% increase in ticket sales. To wit: a line three blocks in length for opening night film, Kick-Ass, which, to be fair, was probably just as much a result of cult status of the Mark Millar comic book from which it was adapted as festival…

Last year's programming was such a success that we had to prep a 2010 edition. Sorry for the wait, superfans. April 1-15: Lifetime Batting Average .167: The Complete Filmography of Rainer Werner Fassbinder April 16-25: Is My Childlike Awe at the World Reflection of Some Inner Perversion?: The Films of Steven Spielberg April 26-30: Great Dude, Shitty Movies: Let's Watch Some John Waters May 1-13: Mikhail Kalatozov: In Soviet Russia, Movie Watches You May 14-15: I'll Underwrite Your Drug Habit and I Fuck Teenagers: Larry Clark, Still Not in Prison May 16-30: A Life In Pictures, Or: How I Inspired…

Since we cannot belong to all places and cultures at once, films that open a window onto the outside world will always be invested with a certain degree of documentary value. But in the case of China, the idea of cinema as a candid reflection of real life extends beyond this habitual, often unconscious response. The finest filmmaking to come out of the mainland this decade bears a commitment to updating us on the soul of the nation, and this duty has placed it in a tight bond with that old theorists’ whipping boy: realism. Much of the authority we…

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…