Susan Seidelman’s Smithereens (1982) and Alex Ross Perry’s Her Smell (2019), which play back-to-back at the Brattle Theatre next week (Aug. 15) as a punk rock double feature, are films made in completely different keys. One, Smithereens, is a snapshot of a 1980s New York City that no longer exists, captured in its gritty, natural […]
EXHIBITION REVIEW: “ERICKA BECKMAN: DOUBLE REVERSE” AT MIT
When artist Ericka Beckman premiered the first of her two partially animated tech-oriented 16mm musicals about gaming and labor, You the Better (1983), audiences were unwilling and perhaps even unable to pick up on all that it was putting down. The first, most obvious, and indeed most oft-discussed example of this came on the night […]
INTERVIEW: LULU WANG
Lulu Wang is an American filmmaker whose second film, The Farewell (2019), will be released in various Boston-area theaters this week. The movie begins with Billi (Awkwafina), who lives in the US, learning that her Nai Nai/grandmother (Zhao Shuzhen), who lives in China, has been diagnosed with a terminal illness—and that, in line with local […]
FESTIVAL REPORT: ROXBURY INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2019
Though her next milestone birthday will arrive in 2021, acclaimed 88-year-old novelist Toni Morrison is receiving many bouquets now thanks to the Timothy Greenfield-Sanders film Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am. Alongside Una Great Movie, it also kickstarted the 21st Annual Roxbury International Film Festival (June 19-29) on opening night at the Museum of Fine […]
INTERVIEW: CHLOË SEVIGNY
Chloë Sevigny is an actress/writer/director/fashion designer who has been a staple of the American independent cinema since the mid 1990s, with her notable performances including those in Kids (1995), Gummo (1997), Boys Don’t Cry (1999), The Brown Bunny (2004), Zodiac (2007), and Love & Friendship (2016), among innumerable others. In The Dead Don’t Die (2019), […]
SUN SCREEN: OUTDOOR FLICKS TO CATCH IN GREATER BOSTON THIS SEASON
One way to breathe in these next three months of sweaty joy is to take a break from your Netflix queue and check out some of the free screenings in town. Here’s a quick guide that will help you navigate the options…
THE ART OF THE UNREAL: ON FILMS BY DEBRA GRANIK AT THE BRATTLE
When we talk about realism, we talk about it mostly in terms of the banal. The can rolling down the hill, desperate impatience in waiting rooms and lines, offhand gestures and flat lighting––those details that we take to signify everyday life as it is lived. The filmmaker Debra Granik is often described (and on occasion […]
FESTIVAL REPORT: ON THE SOUND OF 70MM AT THE SOMERVILLE THEATRE
Most discussion on the subject of 70mm film exhibition places an emphasis on the texture of the images, for reasons both understandable and entirely justifiable. But what this inadvertently obscures is that advances in audio technology have been tied into the development of 70mm (and other modes of large-format film exhibition) just as tightly as […]
INTERVIEW: ALEX ROSS PERRY
Alex Ross Perry is an American writer/director who has made six films to date, including Listen Up Philip (2014), Queen of Earth (2016), and Golden Exits (2018). His latest film is Her Smell (2019), which depicts the lead singer of a fictional 90s rock band, Becky Something (Elisabeth Moss) in five long scenes (they make […]
FILM REVIEW: TWO BY JA’TOVIA GARY AT THE HFA
The Harvard Film Archive began the “Cinema of Resistance” series in May 2017, with the programmer at the time, David Pendleton, offering something of a mission statement in the notes accompanying the first screening. “Cinema has always been a method of examining the world the way it is, in order to understand it, to begin […]
