When I was thirteen years old I spent a good deal of my free time posting on an online message board dedicated to Wes Craven’s Scream film series. I was a nerdy, creative kid stuck in suburbia, and I’d stay up late on my parents’ basement desktop computer writing long, elaborate, I’m-sure-illegible fan fiction stories to post on the message board. This was a subculture on the forum: users would regularly post their own fictional horror stories (some inspired by the Scream movies, some original). The stories would often feature the characters from Scream mixed with new characters inspired by […]

About a year and a half ago I made the wise decision to stop watching so much mediocre television and start immersing myself obsessively in film history. I wasn’t a total beginner: I had a video store growing up and a traditional film school education — Battleship Potemkin, The Searchers, all that good stuff. Plus I was armed with a near-encyclopedic knowledge of contemporary cinema, spurred on by my work as a festival programmer over the years. But I had (and indeed, still have) countless blind spots. I resolved to fill in as many as possible with the help of a […]

Is there such a thing as a moral or “best” way to finance a movie in this country? Should filmmakers and artists be allowed to earn a living without having to worry about making their work commercial? What and where is the line when “art” becomes “entertainment”? And when “entertainment” becomes pure “product”? With the Trump administration’s proposed gutting of federal funding for the arts, these are some of the questions that have been rattling around my mind lately. I find them more difficult than ever to untangle. Questions about the relationship between art and commerce are exceedingly complex, not to mention […]

Twenty — It’s the first Friday of the Sundance Film Festival and I’m sitting in the lobby of the Park City Marriott. I’m making small talk with some friends about the festival and the election and the films we’re excited to see. There’s a TV mounted on the wall behind me live broadcasting Trump’s inaugural address. Someone makes a joke about how he’s doing everything he can to avoid looking up at the screen. I do the same, pivoting my body and adjusting my eyeline so as to avoid catching a glimpse of our new President’s grinning face. By being here, […]

I implore you to go into Dee Rees’ wonderful Mudbound with an open mind. Here’s a warning to help you do so: this film is more narratively radical than you might imagine. It starts quietly. It’s patient, a true slow burn. It’s well-aware of this fact, even proud of it. At times you might perceive the film to be unfocused or fractured. You might be put off by some of the narrative techniques on display — for instance, the film’s heavy reliance on expositional voice-over. Or its overabundance of subplots (many of which remain unrelated to the central story). Or the fact that […]

It’s a rare privilege to see a contemporary American film as ambitious, emotionally honest, and just-plain-breathtaking as David Lowery’s Sundance entry A Ghost Story. Even from his microbudget beginnings, Lowery’s work has displayed a consistent fascination with American folklore and mythmaking. His films, whether big-budget Disney blockbusters like last year’s Pete’s Dragon, 2013’s love story Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, or his masterful 2011 short Pioneer, concern themselves with the notion of storytelling, its allure and its limitations. With A Ghost Story, Lowery continues to explore this fascination, now through the lens of the haunting genre, a tradition that stretches from […]

Earlier this week, Amazon Video Direct (AVD, a department within Amazon focused on self-publishing distribution tools for filmmakers) announced an intriguing new opportunity available to Sundance 2017 feature filmmakers. Dubbed the “Film Festival Stars” program, AVD is offering, in exchange for a two-year worldwide SVOD (subscription VOD) contract (with one-year exclusive) an up-front “cash bonus” to Sundance titles on a sliding scale based on section ($100,000 for US Narrative Competition titles, $75,000 for US Documentary Competition Titles, and $25,000 for titles in the NEXT, Midnight, Kids, World, New Frontiers, and Spotlight sections). The deal also offers a preferential rate on […]

I write this a few hours before I’ll be hopping on a plane and heading to quaint and quiet Park City, Utah, where I’ll be covering the 2017 Sundance Film Festival for Filmmaker Magazine and surviving on a diet of tuna sandwiches I buy from 7/11 in-between screenings while, it goes without saying, hating myself. I’m lucky to not have a specific beat or set of overt marching orders for what to cover during the festivals. Sweet freedom. I don’t plan to just review films, nor do I plan to spend too much energy covering the “business of the festival” […]

The 2017 Sundance Film Festival is just a few days away, and with it begins a new cycle of stressing out about all of the movies that I haven’t been able to see yet. Hollywood operates on a very fixed theatrical schedule — leftovers dumped wholesale at the beginning of the year (I’m looking at you, Bye Bye Man), CGI franchises dominating the summer calendar, and Oscar bait rolling out from October on. Meanwhile, the landscape for smaller-budget but more adventurous films here in the States has developed its own windowing: the majority of American art films will premiere at […]

The Ten Best TV Shows of 2016 10. Channel Zero: Candle Cove (Syfy) 9. Search Party (TBS) 8. Bojack Horseman (Netfiix) 7. O.J.: Made in America (ESPN) 6. Rectify (Sundance Channel) 5. The Americans (FX) 4. The Girlfriend Experience (Starz) 3. Steven Universe (Cartoon Network) 2. Atlanta (FX) 1. Horace and Pete (Independent) I’ve opted to buck established Top Ten List trends and include my picks for the best TV of 2016 right there at the top. I do this for two reasons: one, to spare you the exercise of having to scroll quickly through a collection of capsule-blurbs that […]

Let’s start with a disclaimer about bias. I’m drawn to a certain type of film, which is why this list is going to look pretty different from the one you’ll find in, say, Entertainment Weekly. I don’t really look to the movies I consume for entertainment or diversion. I’m more drawn to emotional honesty. To work that comes straight from the heart and from the gut. I’m interested in movies that force me to challenge myself. That feel urgent and personal. That show me something new or shocking or unexpectedly truthful, that are enriching for the same reason they might […]

Warning: This post contains major spoilers for The Walking Dead and the future of America In case you’re behind on your DVR, allow me to catch you up on the much-talked about cliffhanger ending from last season’s Walking Dead finale. After a ton of build-up, the show finally introduced Negan, a well-known villain from the comic source material infamous for bludgeoning his victims to death with a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire. His weapon of choice. In the final moments of the finale, Negan overpowered the show’s main characters, lined them up in a circle, and wielded his iconic […]

If this is showing up on your newsfeed there’s a pretty good chance that you’re an American filmmaker, a member of the American film industry, or just someone who loves art and film. No matter who you are, today is a day for therapy. For outrage. For disgust and shock and personal reflection. But for those of us in the film world, today should also be a day where we reacknowledge and recommit ourselves to an important truth: That every film is a political film. Moonlight is a political film. Manchester by the Sea is a political film. The Birth of […]

If you happen to be a fan of either (1) the Chicago Cubs, or (2) subscription-based VOD streaming platforms, it must be a pretty exciting time to be alive. Last Tuesday saw the launch of FilmStruck, a new subscription-based streaming platform (or, “SVOD Platform,” a term coined by industry insiders who own nice hats). The goal of this platform? To cater to arthouse audiences underwhelmed by Netflix’s dwindling selection of classic films. With the combined muscle of TCM and beloved DVD imprint The Criterion Collection behind it, FilmStruck launched to a buzzing New York Times piece, copious social media fanfare, […]

I recently had the pleasure of watching two of the very best American films of the year on the big screen: Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women and So Yong Kim’s Lovesong. I’d been meaning to catch Reichardt’s film for months but had managed to miss it consistently at festivals. The opportunity finally presented itself this past Wednesday. I had plans in Fort Greene that evening to watch the third presidential debate, a spectacle that I was almost positive would be deeply stressful and troubling. But I, like most Americans, couldn’t bear to look away. Anyway, I had a few hours to […]

What does the term “independent film” mean to you? To me, it’s my profession. It’s the field I’ve always worked in. I try not to talk about this much but when I was young(er) I took a brief gig in reality TV. It took me two months to realize that I’d choose low pay and long hours any day if it meant I got to work on projects that I loved. To others, “independent film” is a genre. Back in the ’80s, when the term was first coming into popular use, “independent film” was a signifier of a certain type […]

Last weekend I took a trip to the Regal Union Square Stadium 14 and paid seventeen bucks to see Blair Witch. Based on the reviews, I was pretty certain that I wasn’t going to like it very much (spoiler alert: I was right). But still I felt compelled to hop the Q train and head into Manhattan to meet my friend at the multiplex. What brought me out there? Maybe it was the changing weather and its subliminal indication of Halloween’s approach. Maybe it was the faint hope that director Adam Wingard — whose previous work I’ve really dug — would elevate what […]

Back in June, Netflix’s VP of Product Innovation Carlos A. Gomez-Uribe and Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt co-published a paper entitled, “The Netflix Recommender System: Algorithms, Business Value, and Innovation.” It’s a fascinating read, and if you care at all about the future of film as an artform, a fairly troubling one. With their 19-page paper, Gomez-Uribe and Hunt provide a rare peek under the hood of Netflix’s inner-workings and technological developments, and go on to discuss the company’s business priorities and philosophy. The basic takeaway? Netflix has built an insanely complex and powerful recommendation system. This sucker has algorithms […]

There’s something comforting about TV show opening credit sequences. In the era of the binge watch, we don’t necessarily need them every single episode. (I mean, we all know what we’re about to watch, don’t we?) But a great credit sequence can serve as a palette cleanser. The cue that we’re about to see something familiar, something we trust. It’s almost Pavlovian. And few opening credit sequences are as comforting as The Simpsons. Sure, that show, which is about to enter its 28th season, is about two decades past its prime. But when we hear Danny Elfman’s theme music, when […]

Last week I released collective:unconscious, a feature film I’ve been working on for the past two years onto the internet. The project is a collaboration with five of my favorite American filmmakers, and it’s a pretty strange and unique thing. We decided early on in the process to give the film away for free because we wanted as many people as possible to see it. Shortly after we let the film loose, the views started to pile up. And with it, the “Social” tab on my Gmail was flooded with alerts that people were “liking” my video. And then that […]