The one question I knew I wasn’t going to ask the team behind THE DUNNING MAN was the one about that Oscar™-winning film that shares a name with DUNNING MAN’s director/screenwriter, Michael Clayton. Instead, when I spoke with Clayton, writer Kevin Fortuna, editor Ian Blume by phone on March 6, 2017, I started the conversation by… Read More »
LATTER DAYS
Oh no, it’s another film about a religious good boy moving to the big bad city and discovering that he’s gay. I know, it sounds awful in that we’ve seen this a gazillion times sense, but LATTER DAYS is a cut above the rest for its gentle message about finding the strength to see other… Read More »
GARDEN STATE
Only rarely does a film as profound, as rich, and as deeply affecting as GARDEN STATE come along. Even more rarely is it the handiwork of a first-time filmmaker. That would be Zack Braff, known for his role as the philosophically harried intern on the subversively wicked comedy, Scrubs. Braff is Andrew Largeman, a struggling… Read More »
KINSEY
KINSEY opens with the face of Peter Sarsgaard in close-up looking directly into the camera and asking questions of a sexual nature. An offscreen voice stops him when he uses a euphemism for a sexual act. No, says the voice that we will shortly learn is Kinseys, it wont work unless you are completely straightforward,… Read More »
THE HELP
THE HELP, based on the novel of the same name by Kathryn Stockett, gently but firmly peels away they dry rot of racism that festered beneath the gracious, etiquette obsessed façade of southern gentility before the civil rights movement. What is remarkable, and a remarkably difficult line to walk, is that it does so while… Read More »
Tate Taylor & Octavia Spencer Bring THE HELP to Life
Tate Taylor and Octavia Spencer have a special insight into THE HELP. The novel on which Taylor based his script, which he also directed, was written by his lifelong friend, Kathryn Stockett. Spencer was Taylor’s roommate when she got to know Stockett, and was the inspiration for the character she plays in the film, Minnie.… Read More »
Dylan Kidd and ROGER DODGER
With ROGER DODGER, writer/director Dylan Kidd has taken the war of the sexes in a whole new direction, one that disempowers the male of the species. It’s anti-hero, the cynical and glib Roger, fancies himself a major player in that war. Yet in the course of one awful day which culminates in Roger trying to help… Read More »
Rich Moore Gives WRECK-IT RALPH Serious Depth
Rich Moore spent a healthy part of his youth playing video games, which ultimately paid off when the time came to come up with the story for WRECK-IT RALPH. When I spoke to him on October 17, 2012, the first thing I wanted to know was how he got from video games in general to existential… Read More »
Ursula Meier Finds A Brother for SISTER
Ursula Meier knew she had found her muse in Kacey Mottet Klein when she discovered him in 2008, casting him in her film HOME. When I spoke to her on October 29, 2012, we talked about his evolution as an actor, and how she managed to keep that unselfconscious quality that he had shown in… Read More »
Simon Barrett & Adam Wingard Say YOU’RE NEXT
Director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett take the art and craft of the horror film very seriously. And when I spoke to them on April 28, 2013, it was not all fun and games. They were refreshingly cerebral about horror, and about what they wanted to accomplish with YOURE NEXT. In little things, such… Read More »