Jack Huston has worked with Scorsese, Ridley Scott, David O’ Russell, The Coens, had meaty roles on series like Mayfair Witches, Fargo, and, maybe most notably, Boardwalk Empire, where he played Richard Harrow. His latest project is Lulu Wang’s Amazon series Expats. On this episode he talks about gaining 30 pounds for that part (which wasn’t as much fun as it sounds), why it all starts with the voice for him, writing and directing his passion project The Day of The Fight for Michael Pitt and Joe Pesci, and he reveals a common trait of all great directors he’s known. […]

Music videos have been good to Cristina Dunlap. As a photography-obsessed high schooler, a chance meeting landed the L.A. native a gig shooting stills on a music video. It happened to be for Death Cab for Cutie, leading to a run of jobs with influential directors like Hiro Murai and Ace Norton. After working her way up to the role of cinematographer, a Coldplay video collaboration with Dakota Johnson led to Dunlap shooting a pair of features starring the actress, Am I OK? and Cha Cha Real Smooth, both of which premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. A music […]

The Killer begins with an assassin (Michael Fassbender) in a half-completed WeWork office awaiting the arrival of his latest target. As he waits, he details his vocational mantras for the audience in voiceover: stick to the plan. Don’t improvise. Never yield an advantage. Forbid empathy. Fassbender proceeds to miss his shot and spends the rest of the film breaking each and every one of those tenets in the chaotic aftermath. Many of the pieces written about the film have pointed out perceived similarities between the film’s methodical, detail-oriented titular character and the perfectionist reputation of its director, David Fincher. However, […]

My annual exercise in what our audience — as well as our “audiences,” the latter term used to refer to the concoction of first and possibly last-time readers driven to our site by algorithmic determinism and SEO “best practices” — is always a mixture of the predictable and the unexpected. Regular features like our 25 New Faces series and Vadim Rizov’s survey of 35mm production always show up, as do articles by our excellent columnist Matt Mulcahey and podcaster Peter Rinaldi. I was particularly happy to see this year on the list two pieces that were especially deeply researched and […]

You know Spenser Granese from memorable roles on Better Call Saul, Fear of the Walking Dead, Pam & Tommy, and, perhaps most memorably, the character of Bevel in the final season of Barry. On this episode, he talks about landing that role after trying hard to get on the show for three seasons and the incredible working environment he found on set. He opens up about his unique approach to the craft having no formal training, why he keeps the lines barely memorized, avoids expectations, operates on his instinct, and much more! Back To One can be found wherever you […]

In The Holdovers, a professor, a student and a grief-stricken cook are stranded together at a New England boarding school over the holidays. The story takes place in the early 1970s, an era whose films are beloved by both Holdovers director Alexander Payne and cinematographer Eigil Bryld. However, they took opposing philosophical perspectives in imbuing their movie with the spirit of that epoch. Though he looked at the work of Hal Ashby for inspiration – particularly The Landlord and The Last Detail – rather than attempt to replicate it, Payne’s approach found him imaging what kind of film he himself […]

Discovering Michelle Monaghan in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was like finding evidence that the old-school Hollywood comedy actress gene, long thought extinct, was alive and well. She did more than hold her own opposite Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer — she stole the movie. I’ve been rooting for her ever since. A few Mission Impossibles, Gone Baby Gone, True Detective followed, as well as some significant work in small indies like Trucker, Fort Bliss, and Nanny. She returns to comedy with her latest, The Family Plan, which is streaming now on Apple TV+. On this episode, she talks about […]

I recently found myself sitting between three tech bros on my right and three cinephiles on my left. The film festival panel was meant to be a discussion about AI in the film industry; instead, it was an exasperating—if entertaining—demonstration of the radical gap in knowledge separating people who have some technical understanding of AI and those who don’t. There were tone-deaf proclamations about “generating content” and “optimizing workflows” on one side. And there was shouting, swearing, table-pounding, finger-pointing and (almost) tears on the other side, culminating in the announcement, “We’re very afraid!”  I get it. AI has been foisted on […]

After nearly flatlining during the pandemic years, American independent film saw some signs of life in 2023. While optimists might call it a year of transition as the industry looks for new audiences and a new equilibrium, cynics see an unsustainable and contracting arthouse marketplace, with most producers and distributors increasingly unable to recoup. But, if you look at the fates of last year’s Sundance titles, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.  For all the doom and gloom about the acquisitions market (“No one is buying films!”), 10 out of 12 films in this year’s Dramatic Competition […]

For any artist who works with digital files in the twenty-first century (that’s most of us), the work—in addition to making the art—is making sure it sticks around.  To both archive and maintain your own work is a reminder of the gap between current practice and public markers of success. It can feel like an exercise in futility: If this work was really worth it—if someone other than you believed in its value—wouldn’t you have the time and money and institutional support to do it right? A library would offer to acquire your letters, no? Or, perhaps, with awards, grant […]