IndieWIRE
Emma Myers
Writer
United States of America
Columbia MA Grad | Sundance Fellow | I watch movies and write about them.
United States of America
Columbia MA Grad | Sundance Fellow | I watch movies and write about them.
IndieWIRE
Nancy Kates' new documentary, premiering tonight on HBO, reveals that the dark lady of American letters was as complex as her work. There's an immensely satisfying moment in Nancy Kates' documentary "Regarding Susan Sontag": In archival footage, Sontag goes head to head with Norman Mailer after he mistakenly defines her as a "lady writer," and Mailer surrenders in a room full of militant feminists, playfully promising never to use the word "lady" in public again.
Indiewire spoke with Ingmar Bergman's muse about her hot-blooded adaptation of August Strindberg classic play "Miss Julie," and how things haven't changed that much during her many years in the business. There's a moment in August Strindberg's 1888 stage play, "Miss Julie," when the titular aristocrat flirtatiously requests that her valet, John, relinquish the formal "Miss" when addressing her.
A feature-length reprise of Damien Chazelle's award-winning short of the same name, "Whiplash" stars Miles Teller ("The Spectacular Now") as Andrew, a budding young drummer at the country's top music school who thinks he's the next Buddy Rich, and who's instructed by the brutal Fletcher (J.K. Simmons).
Film Comment
Appearing on the scene as Pier Paolo Pasolini’s assistant on Accattone (61), director Bernardo Bertolucci has been everything from wunderkind (The Grim Reaper, 62) to perverted genius (Last Tango in Paris, 72) to Oscar-winner (The Last Emperor, 87) to critical failure (1900, 76). But for the past decade, the Italian maestro has been sidelined by health problems that have left him heavily reliant on a wheelchair. Me and You marks the end of this long hiatus with his first Italian-language...
“If it’s all going to be over anyway, then why does it matter?” Teddy, one of the tortured teens in Gia Coppola’s debut feature Palo Alto muses to his peers. It’s a cool evening in central California and the bored pack of lanky youths are casually contemplating a classmate’s suicide: “Pain only matters if it’s prolonged,” he adds. The flippant remark could only come from someone so young, and the words prove an apt metaphor for the film’s fully grown vision of adolescence—fraught but also...
Bulking up with an additional day of screenings and a brand-new theater—a comfy 650-seat converted ice rink named after longtime festival favorite Werner Herzog—the 40th installment of the annual Telluride Film Festival managed to live up to its benchmark anniversary’s “XL” status. Securely nestled in a dramatic canyon amid the San Juan Mountains, Telluride’s isolated location has historically kept it all but under the radar of mainstream press, but this year the fest seemed to be bursting at...
Right on cue, the summer yields yet another Woody Allen movie—only this time its not “just another Woody Allen movie.” Leaning heavily on A Streetcar Named Desire and propelled by the sheer force of the central performance by Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine is (almost) free of shtick and full of substance.
Daily Beast
Listen Up Philip opens with a bombastic bang. Philip Lewis Friedman (Jason Schwartzman), the belligerent writer at the center of Alex Ross Perry's third feature film and first cinematic novel, arrives at a Brooklyn bodega to meet his ex-girlfriend, Mona, for lunch.
Little White Lies
Emma Myers separates truth from illusion in the veteran director's latest work, Magic in the Moonlight. There is no question that there is an unseen world. The problem is, how far is it from Midtown and how late is it open?
With awards buzz around his latest performance in Dallas Buyers Club growing, LWLies explores the former rom-com king's career rebirth. It doesn't take a stockbroker to know that in the world of high finance, numbers mean everything.
Guernica
The documentary filmmaker on reenacting atrocity as an allegory for impunity in his new film, The Act of Killing, which exposes the perpetrators of Indonesia's mid-century genocide. Image by Oliver Clasper "It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers to the sound of trumpets."