The Paul Schrader Renaissance began the moment “First Reformed” debuted to the director’s best reviews in at least 15 years, back in 2017. The spiritual trilogy formed around it — “The Card Counter” and “Master Gardener” — have fostered in a new generation’s mind this frankly narrow vision of what constitutes a Paul Schrader movie: men in rooms, pens across diaries, peculiar revenge plots.
It’s likely that audiences anticipating another drama in which a man’s profession comes dressed as the sick soul of America will be baffled by “Oh, Canada,” his newest feature now in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. It’s based on Russell Banks’ 2021 novel “Foregone.” Those well-acquainted with Schrader’s half-century of cinema may find themselves on the edge of bafflement with this film, which uses the last will and testament of documentary filmmaker Leonard Fife (Richard Gere) as a trickle-down device for 55 years of guilt,...
It’s likely that audiences anticipating another drama in which a man’s profession comes dressed as the sick soul of America will be baffled by “Oh, Canada,” his newest feature now in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. It’s based on Russell Banks’ 2021 novel “Foregone.” Those well-acquainted with Schrader’s half-century of cinema may find themselves on the edge of bafflement with this film, which uses the last will and testament of documentary filmmaker Leonard Fife (Richard Gere) as a trickle-down device for 55 years of guilt,...
- 5/18/2024
- by Nick Newman
- Indiewire
“How can so much suffering have no meaning?”
That’s a question posed by decorated documentary filmmaker Leonard Fife in Paul Schrader’s meandering ode to death, dying, aging, and regret, “Oh, Canada.” It’s inevitably one also felt by audiences who will be left bewildered by the Oscar-nominated filmmaker’s most experimental and alienating work in some time, which loses itself in the process.
With “Oh, Canada,” Schrader splices timelines, color palettes, and aspect ratios to tell Fife’s story as a now-revered nonfiction movie-maker who fled the United States in the late 1960s for Canada to avoid the Vietnam War draft. Schrader is a gifted filmmaker who has given us so much more than “First Reformed” and “The Card Counter,” the only movies audiences of late seem to remember him by. He’s not unfamiliar with unpacking a great and morally complicated artist’s work in wildly subversive...
That’s a question posed by decorated documentary filmmaker Leonard Fife in Paul Schrader’s meandering ode to death, dying, aging, and regret, “Oh, Canada.” It’s inevitably one also felt by audiences who will be left bewildered by the Oscar-nominated filmmaker’s most experimental and alienating work in some time, which loses itself in the process.
With “Oh, Canada,” Schrader splices timelines, color palettes, and aspect ratios to tell Fife’s story as a now-revered nonfiction movie-maker who fled the United States in the late 1960s for Canada to avoid the Vietnam War draft. Schrader is a gifted filmmaker who has given us so much more than “First Reformed” and “The Card Counter,” the only movies audiences of late seem to remember him by. He’s not unfamiliar with unpacking a great and morally complicated artist’s work in wildly subversive...
- 5/17/2024
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
Paul Schrader’s 1999 adaptation of novelist Russell Banks’ Affliction, led by scorching performances from Nick Nolte and James Coburn, was an unsettlingly bleak meeting of two writers who share a fascination with conflicted morality and complicated relationships pushed to dark extremes. But Schrader’s return to the late author’s work, this time the 2021 novel Foregone, yields fewer rewards. For a film about big themes like mortality, memory, truth and redemption, Oh, Canada feels both slight and stubbornly page-bound, too unsatisfyingly fleshed out to give its actors meat to chew on.
Published two years before Banks’ death in early 2023, the book is an intimate portrait of a man contemplating his legacy while approaching the end of his life. It’s easy to see what drew Schrader to the story, given his own pandemic health scares and the diagnosis of his wife, the actress Mary Beth Hurt, with Alzheimer’s. But...
Published two years before Banks’ death in early 2023, the book is an intimate portrait of a man contemplating his legacy while approaching the end of his life. It’s easy to see what drew Schrader to the story, given his own pandemic health scares and the diagnosis of his wife, the actress Mary Beth Hurt, with Alzheimer’s. But...
- 5/17/2024
- by David Rooney
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Hard to believe it has been 44 years since Paul Schrader and star Richard Gere last worked together on 1980’s seminal American Gigolo, a film that became not just a keystone in Gere’s celebrated career but also one for one Schrader’s as one of his earliest directorial credits. Of course he has written some of the great screenplays, particularly in his collaborations with Martin Scorsese on Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ and Taxi Driver. But it is what interests him now a half century later as a writer-director that continues to fascinate.
In recent years that has included insular works like The Card Counter, Master Gardener and the critically acclaimed First Reformed. Now he has returned to more of what he labels a “mosaic,” in this case a movie made up of pieces of a life put under a cinematic microscope at different periods, all moving in...
In recent years that has included insular works like The Card Counter, Master Gardener and the critically acclaimed First Reformed. Now he has returned to more of what he labels a “mosaic,” in this case a movie made up of pieces of a life put under a cinematic microscope at different periods, all moving in...
- 5/17/2024
- by Pete Hammond
- Deadline Film + TV
The Sudanese drama Goodbye Julia is continuing its impressive awards run, earning the Grand Jury Award for Best Narrative Feature over the weekend at the Sonoma International Film Festival in California.
Mohamed Kordofani directed the story set in the context of the secessionist movement that led to the establishment of the independent nation of South Sudan in 2011.
“We commend the festival for its impressive selection of narrative features and unanimously select Goodbye Julia as the best film,” jurors wrote. “An outstanding first feature from Mohamed Kordofani, anchored by two stellar performances from Eiman Yousif and Siran Riak, Goodbye Julia provides a glimpse into a culture and region that’s underrepresented and underexplored in contemporary cinema.”
The jury, comprised of Rosa Bosch (Begin Again Films), Tyler Coates (The Hollywood Reporter), Rebecca Fisher (Magnolia Pictures), Jason Hellerstein (Sideshow), and Julie Huntsinger (Telluride Film Festival), awarded a Special Mention to Hesitation Wound, describing...
Mohamed Kordofani directed the story set in the context of the secessionist movement that led to the establishment of the independent nation of South Sudan in 2011.
“We commend the festival for its impressive selection of narrative features and unanimously select Goodbye Julia as the best film,” jurors wrote. “An outstanding first feature from Mohamed Kordofani, anchored by two stellar performances from Eiman Yousif and Siran Riak, Goodbye Julia provides a glimpse into a culture and region that’s underrepresented and underexplored in contemporary cinema.”
The jury, comprised of Rosa Bosch (Begin Again Films), Tyler Coates (The Hollywood Reporter), Rebecca Fisher (Magnolia Pictures), Jason Hellerstein (Sideshow), and Julie Huntsinger (Telluride Film Festival), awarded a Special Mention to Hesitation Wound, describing...
- 3/25/2024
- by Matthew Carey
- Deadline Film + TV
The 27th Sonoma International Film Festival (March 20-24), as always, leaned into wine and food with the sold-out opening night U.S. premiere of Thomas Napper’s “Widow Clicquot” (Vertical Entertainment), starring Haley Bennett as the woman who saves the legendary winemaker’s legacy. The wine country film festival drew its highest audience attendance to date with a robust film slate programmed by artistic director Carl Spence (working with Executive Director Ginny Krieger), in his second year, including upcoming specialty fare like Luc Besson’s “DogMan” (Briarcliff Entertainment) starring Caleb Landry Jones in an incendiary performance, and Sony Pictures Classics’ raucous comedy “Wicked Little Letters,” starring Olivia Colman, along with a smattering of yummy wine and food events.
The five-day festival curated by Spence along with senior programmers Amanda Salazar and Ken Jacobson, showcased more than 100 films. Twenty-five countries were represented in this year’s lineup of 43 narrative features, 16 documentary features,...
The five-day festival curated by Spence along with senior programmers Amanda Salazar and Ken Jacobson, showcased more than 100 films. Twenty-five countries were represented in this year’s lineup of 43 narrative features, 16 documentary features,...
- 3/24/2024
- by Anne Thompson
- Indiewire
Exclusive: Husband-and-wife duo Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick have landed roles together in a movie for the first time in two decades, with The King of Queens creator Michael J. Weithorn penning and directing Connescence.
Principal photography kicked off this week on the movie from Victoria Hill and Greg Clark’s Fibonacci Films, with Bacon and Sedgwick playing the leads, joined by White Lotus star Brittany O’Grady and Oscar-nominated The Fabelmans actor Judd Hirsch.
Bacon plays Stan Olszewski, a sharp, funny, but chronically underachieving security guard, who breaks up an attempted robbery at the home of Cynthia Rand (Sedgwick), a successful urologist married to brilliant former Watergate prosecutor Warren Rand (Judd Hirsch). From this chance encounter grows a charged and dynamic friendship – first as late-night text sessions filled with humor and intimate revelations, growing into something that shakes the foundation of both their lives.
Bacon and Sedgwick, who married in...
Principal photography kicked off this week on the movie from Victoria Hill and Greg Clark’s Fibonacci Films, with Bacon and Sedgwick playing the leads, joined by White Lotus star Brittany O’Grady and Oscar-nominated The Fabelmans actor Judd Hirsch.
Bacon plays Stan Olszewski, a sharp, funny, but chronically underachieving security guard, who breaks up an attempted robbery at the home of Cynthia Rand (Sedgwick), a successful urologist married to brilliant former Watergate prosecutor Warren Rand (Judd Hirsch). From this chance encounter grows a charged and dynamic friendship – first as late-night text sessions filled with humor and intimate revelations, growing into something that shakes the foundation of both their lives.
Bacon and Sedgwick, who married in...
- 1/30/2024
- by Max Goldbart
- Deadline Film + TV
Movies are slowly starting to trickle back into theaters, emphasis on the word “slowly.” For the time being, audiences’ options are still better at home, as this week’s crop of new films includes outrageous new genre fare — such as “Becky,” from the directors of “Cooties,” which plays a bit like a hard-r version of “Home Alone” — and festival standouts such as Hong Sang-soo’s “Yourself and Yours.”
“The Invisible Man” star Elisabeth Moss elaborates on her ever-widening scope of tortured women in the wildly unconventional Shirley Jackson biopic, a movie which portrays the author of “The Lottery” as the kind of character one might discover in her mind-bending horror tales.
Here’s a complete rundown of the week’s new releases, with excerpts from reviews and links to where you can watch them. Find more movies and TV shows to stream here.
Playing in drive-ins and extremely limited release:...
“The Invisible Man” star Elisabeth Moss elaborates on her ever-widening scope of tortured women in the wildly unconventional Shirley Jackson biopic, a movie which portrays the author of “The Lottery” as the kind of character one might discover in her mind-bending horror tales.
Here’s a complete rundown of the week’s new releases, with excerpts from reviews and links to where you can watch them. Find more movies and TV shows to stream here.
Playing in drive-ins and extremely limited release:...
- 6/5/2020
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
Contrary to her movie’s title, the protagonist in “Feral” hardly fits any indigent stereotype: She’s young, attractive, kempt, modishly dressed, in fact by all appearances rather closer to the cliché of the college-educated, gentrifying if still “quirky” Brooklyn hipster. No one would guess that Annapurna Sriram’s Yasmine is homeless, a deceiving appearance that’s one of the few things she has left to turn to her advantage.
This first narrative feature by cinematographer and documentarian Andrew Wonder is an intriguingly offbeat character sketch that falls somewhere short of a fully-rounded portrait. Nonetheless, his arresting subject matter and refined aesthetic make for a promising debut worthy of discerning viewers’ attention. After a year’s festival-circuit travel, it’s getting a VOD release on June 2.
It takes a while to realize we’re not watching more than one lead figure here, as her arsenal of thrift-shop finery, makeup, hair...
This first narrative feature by cinematographer and documentarian Andrew Wonder is an intriguingly offbeat character sketch that falls somewhere short of a fully-rounded portrait. Nonetheless, his arresting subject matter and refined aesthetic make for a promising debut worthy of discerning viewers’ attention. After a year’s festival-circuit travel, it’s getting a VOD release on June 2.
It takes a while to realize we’re not watching more than one lead figure here, as her arsenal of thrift-shop finery, makeup, hair...
- 6/2/2020
- by Dennis Harvey
- Variety Film + TV
"I'm figuring it out. It's okay... I got this." 1091 Media has unveiled an official trailer for an indie dramatic thriller titled Feral, marking the feature directorial debut of cinematographer Andrew Wonder. A homeless woman living in the tunnels below New York City, Yasmine who has been stuck there ever since her mother was deported, survives on her own terms in the days leading up to a blizzard. Based off real stories of living underground and working with former homeless individuals, the film is an experience that lets you look into Yasmine’s emotional reality, right into her eyes, as she struggles to carry on. Annapurna Sriram stars as Yasmine, with a small cast including Lori Bullock, Annie Henk, Doug Drucker, & Jonathan Rentler. This premiered at the Sarasota Film Festival last year, and also at the Red Rock Film Festival. Check it out. Here's the first official trailer (+ poster) for Andrew Wonder's Feral,...
- 4/19/2020
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
The 2019 Sarasota Film Festival has just recently begun down in Florida, and already they have a noteworthy effort to put forth into the cinematic world. The work in question is Feral, an independent drama that offers up a lot of unique things that should keep you incredibly intrigued. Festivals without A-list films need to showcase art at its most cutting edge, and this is an example of that. It could be a bit too unusual for some, but the acting and filmmaking demand that attention be paid. A look at homelessness with no easy answers and no judgment, it’s oddly captivating and manages to put a lot on your plate in under 80 minutes. This movie is an indie drama about a girl on the streets, looking to survive as a blizzard slowly moves towards the city. Yazmine (Annapurna Sriram) does what she can to get by, which includes lying,...
- 4/8/2019
- by Joey Magidson
- Hollywoodnews.com
There are as many stories of how and why someone becomes homeless, as there are homeless people. Sometimes we ignore them, sometimes we give them some money; there are organizations that help, or that we tell ourselves help. Do we think very much on where they go at night, if they are not visible? What are the spaces they occupy, when they are not allowed to occupy ours? What is their culture? And what about the loneliness that envelopes them when they spaces they do occupy are transient and dangerous? Screened out of the Sarasota Film Festival, Feral, Andrew Wonder's narrative feature directorial debut, tells one woman's story, a story both filled with beautiful imagination and painful reality of her individual journey, one of both...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
- 4/8/2019
- Screen Anarchy
Instant gratification, video on demand, a la carte consumption, post-theatrical cinema. What’s on the horizon for the future of movies? Well, according to director/writer Paul Schrader (“The Canyons”) and filmmaker/cinematographer Andrew Wonder (@andrewwonder) cinema is in turmoil. “Only today, it’s in a crisis of form, not content,” Schrader says in the short film he and Wonder directed called “Paul Schrader, Future of Cinema.” The 90-second short was shot on the High Line in New York and debuted at the Venice Film Festival recently in front of the Bernardo Bertolucci doc, “Bertolucci on Bertolucci.” And you can watch it exclusively in its entirety below. It’s hard to argue with Wonder and Schrader’s posit. The consumption of cinema is changing. Is a room full of people in a dark room watching a projected image going the way of the dodo bird? To Schrader, it’s a...
- 9/9/2013
- by Rodrigo Perez
- The Playlist
Why Watch? A great story is being told all the time, right under your feet. And because you’ve always wanted to go where you were told not to. With this doc, director Andrew Wonder lives up to his name. He joined forces with urban explorer Steve Duncan to dig around the New York subway system where mere mortals aren’t meant to go. “The following was filmed without consent or permits from the New York City Transit Authority,” pretty well sums up the attitude, and there’s certainly a rush of the illegal right at the beginning, but the overall feel is one of grungy beauty that’s there if we dare to view it. Absolutely phenomenal work here. What does it cost? Just 27 minutes of your time. Trust us. You have time for more short films.
- 1/6/2012
- by Cole Abaius
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
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