Fantaspoa 2022 Review: Follow Her is an Inventive Psychological Thriller That Will Keep You Guessing
For director Sylvia Caminer’s debut feature film Follow Her, we are immersed in the dangerous side of online culture as a streamer gets more than she bargains for when she decides to take on a potential job, unaware of just what her potential employer’s intentions towards her truly are. As someone who watches hundreds of movies every year, I can’t even begin to tell you how much my mood improves when something comes along and manages to surprise me, and Follow Her did just that, over and over (and over) again. The script, written by the film’s star Dani Barker, is completely engrossing and thought-provoking but also leaves you with some food for thought while you’re watching it (more on that later), but it also finds some ingenious ways of subverting expectations and turning some tried and true tropes on their head as well, making...
- 4/21/2022
- by Heather Wixson
- DailyDead
A stalled New York City subway carriage serves as a toe-tapping musical Petri dish for six socioeconomically diverse souls in the unique stage-to-screen musical adaptation “Stuck.” Sharing a stylistic template with its 2016 left-coast cousin “La La Land” (which it predated Off-Broadway by a good four years), the film’s 2017 copyright suggests a missed opportunity for momentum that could be made up by the positive word-of-mouth (generated by the film’s fest-circuit delay) for a modest achievement that benefits from a lot of heart and not being like anything else out there.
“I bring a measure of grace to the world,” says Shakespeare-spouting homeless philosopher Lloyd, a dishevelled yet dignified Greek chorus who sets the stage in song: “It’s a common notion that the universe will shove together people who uniquely offer what the other needs.”
With that, the train on which he seems to live grinds to a halt.
“I bring a measure of grace to the world,” says Shakespeare-spouting homeless philosopher Lloyd, a dishevelled yet dignified Greek chorus who sets the stage in song: “It’s a common notion that the universe will shove together people who uniquely offer what the other needs.”
With that, the train on which he seems to live grinds to a halt.
- 4/18/2019
- by Eddie Cockrell
- Variety Film + TV
"Cinematography is kind of a hidden art, even though it's the most visible. It's mysterious," said film critic Eric Hynes in introducing Tribeca Talks Industry: Shooting the Film: An Exploration of Cinematography earlier this week. "You could attribute everything to cinematography...or nothing." Hynes was gathered with a select group of cinematographers with films at this year's Tribeca Film Festival, including Nick Bentgen ("Ballet 422," "Teenage"), Zachary Heinzerling ("Cutie and the Boxer"), Luke Geissbühler ("Match," "Beyond the Brick: A Lego Brickumentary") and Ben Kutchins ("Lucky Them") to discuss and demystify the art of cinematography -- as well as the technical side. Relying on clips from each filmmaker's work, Hynes led a discussion that ranged from filmmakers' training to how they like to collaborate with directors. Here are 4 highlights from the Masterclass: 1. So much of cinematography is about collaboration -- with the director, the actors and the crew. "I love my.
- 4/23/2014
- by Paula Bernstein
- Indiewire
Beware of strange alien lights.
“Alien Abduction” is a fictional found footage movie about the Brown Mountain Lights in North Carolina. It follows a family’s camping trip in the woods, in which they encounter a threat after witnessing the lights.
The movie stars Katherine Sigismund, Corey Eid, Jillian Clare, Peter Holden, and Riley Polanski.
Latino-Review had an exclusive interview with director Matty Beckerman. We discussed the history and origins of the Brown Mountain Lights. We also got into the topics of certain special effects throughout the movie, including the alien costumes and the camera falling from the sky.
“Alien Abduction” is playing in select theaters and on VOD today.
Read the interview transcript below.
Latino-Review: What attracted you to this script?
Matty Beckerman: I spent time living in the mountains of North Carolina working with my family there. There’s a legend over 800 years that lights have been...
“Alien Abduction” is a fictional found footage movie about the Brown Mountain Lights in North Carolina. It follows a family’s camping trip in the woods, in which they encounter a threat after witnessing the lights.
The movie stars Katherine Sigismund, Corey Eid, Jillian Clare, Peter Holden, and Riley Polanski.
Latino-Review had an exclusive interview with director Matty Beckerman. We discussed the history and origins of the Brown Mountain Lights. We also got into the topics of certain special effects throughout the movie, including the alien costumes and the camera falling from the sky.
“Alien Abduction” is playing in select theaters and on VOD today.
Read the interview transcript below.
Latino-Review: What attracted you to this script?
Matty Beckerman: I spent time living in the mountains of North Carolina working with my family there. There’s a legend over 800 years that lights have been...
- 4/4/2014
- by Gig Patta
- LRMonline.com
As enjoyable a documentary as I've seen this past couple of years, Buck is a lively portrait of Buck Brannaman, an altogether remarkable Montana cowboy now aged around 60, who spends 40 weeks a year driving around the States from Maine to California putting on clinics to help people handle and understand their horses. His loving mother died when he was 12, leaving him and his brother in the care of a violent, overbearing alcoholic father, from whom they were taken by the law and handed over to sympathetic foster parents. From this traumatic experience he learned how to treat people and animals, and there is something beautiful about the way he deals with horses and their owners. He was an adviser on Robert Redford's The Horse Whisperer and, so one gathers, virtually took over the direction of a key sequence in which a wary horse and its troubled owner (played by Scarlett Johansson) are brought together.
- 4/28/2012
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Title: Love, Etc. Directed By: Jill Andresevic Written By: Jill Andresevic Cast: Gabriel, Danielle, Albert, Marion, Ethan, Scott, Chitra, Mahendra Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 6/22/11 Opens: July 1, 2011 Jill Andresevic is in love with New York, both the city’s physical attributes and the demographics. Her photographer, Luke Geissbuhler, trains his camera on a variety of neighborhoods including Soho, Forest Hills, Jamaica Hills, Coney Island, Canarsie, Midtown Manhattan and Broadway He implicitly shows that these various sections are inhabited by a wide range of people, living—as Wnyc used to say—in peace and harmony and enjoying the benefits of democracy. Andresevic knows how to avoid the bane of documentaries that...
- 6/23/2011
- by Brian Corder
- ShockYa
With Tsr Buzz, you’ll find links to articles, videos and other random things that will help you waste your time just a little bit more
iDon’t listen to Atomic Tom. If I were in the same train car as them, I would probably bail. But, I do e-congratulate them on a clever tactic to promote their work with pre-existing tools, and for also providing entertainment on a subway train that is more enjoyable than dumb loud fratboys. This video features the quartet performing their song “Take Me Out” using only applications on their iPhones.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAllFWSl998
A Brooklyn dad and his young son help put an iPhone into space. They fly it with a balloon, record the journey with the iPhone camera, and even use the iPhone’s Gps to retrieve it. This is astounding stuff. You must watch this, and in full screen.
iDon’t listen to Atomic Tom. If I were in the same train car as them, I would probably bail. But, I do e-congratulate them on a clever tactic to promote their work with pre-existing tools, and for also providing entertainment on a subway train that is more enjoyable than dumb loud fratboys. This video features the quartet performing their song “Take Me Out” using only applications on their iPhones.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAllFWSl998
A Brooklyn dad and his young son help put an iPhone into space. They fly it with a balloon, record the journey with the iPhone camera, and even use the iPhone’s Gps to retrieve it. This is astounding stuff. You must watch this, and in full screen.
- 10/22/2010
- by Nick Allen
- The Scorecard Review
With Tsr Buzz, you’ll find links to articles, videos and other random things that will help you waste your time just a little bit more
I don’t listen to Atomic Tom. If I were in the same train car as them, I would probably bail. But, I do e-congratulate them on a clever tactic to promote their work with pre-existing tools, and for also providing entertainment on a subway train that is more enjoyable than dumb loud fratboys. This video features the quartet performing their song “Take Me Out” using only applications on their iPhones.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAllFWSl998
A Brooklyn dad and his young son help put an iPhone into space. They fly it with a balloon, record the journey with the iPhone camera, and even use the iPhone’s Gps to retrieve it. This is astounding stuff. You must watch this, and in full screen.
I don’t listen to Atomic Tom. If I were in the same train car as them, I would probably bail. But, I do e-congratulate them on a clever tactic to promote their work with pre-existing tools, and for also providing entertainment on a subway train that is more enjoyable than dumb loud fratboys. This video features the quartet performing their song “Take Me Out” using only applications on their iPhones.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAllFWSl998
A Brooklyn dad and his young son help put an iPhone into space. They fly it with a balloon, record the journey with the iPhone camera, and even use the iPhone’s Gps to retrieve it. This is astounding stuff. You must watch this, and in full screen.
- 10/19/2010
- by Nick Allen
- The Scorecard Review
Another believable and often unpleasant-to-watch visit to the world of drug addicts, in the same wrenchingly rewarding vein as "Requiem for a Dream", debuting writer-director Rosemary Rodriguez's "Acts of Worship" premiered at Sundance.
It won several awards at the Santa Barbara film fest -- including one for Ana Reeder for best actress -- and made its local bow at the Egyptian on Hollywood Boulevard as part of the American Cinematheque's "Alternative Screen" series.
Set on New York's Lower East Side, "Acts" is Rodriguez's autobiographical drama of an attractive young woman (Reeder) from greener pastures who has given herself over to the false paradise of crack cocaine and heroin, and the pathetic lifestyle that results. Not as stylized and complex as "Requiem", the tersely naturalistic and overall adeptly realized "Acts" is another worthy indie that may go homeless, so to speak, but it has a life on the festival circuit and certainly deserves attention.
With long blond hair and street smarts, the lead has an evil boyfriend and many cohorts in the daily process of scoring and getting high. There's a strung-out couple who deal drugs and let her take their young boy for walks. There are sidewalk vendors who provide her with cash or stash for stolen items. Owing money to crazed crackheads and selling her body for drugs at one point, she is dishonest, volatile and uses everyone -- and expects the same in return.
Her "God" is heroin, and another character, a black woman and reformed addict (Michael Hyatt) who tries to help the lead after an overdose, says knowingly that "crack is like falling in love all over again." For a few scenes, these two support each other in a sober lifestyle, but the struggle to kick the habit is a battle many lose, and the climax is powerfully tragic.
Reeder's impressive performance is utterly convincing, and the supporting cast, led by Hyatt's subtle approach, is equal to the grim milieu. From the sparing use of music to heighten the documentary-like aspects of some sequences to Luke Geissbuhler's harsh but cliche-free cinematography, "Acts" is solid filmmaking.
ACTS OF WORSHIP
Manifesto Films
Screenwriter-director: Rosemary Rodriguez
Producers: Nadia Leonelli, Fredrik Sundwall, Rosemary Rodriguez
Director of photography: Luke Geissbuhler
Production designer: Johnny Hardesty
Editor: Elizabeth Downer
Costume designer: Jan Bohan
Music: Jim Coleman
Casting: Susan Shopmaker
Color/stereo
Cast:
Alix: Ana Reeder
Digna: Michael Hyatt
Mark: Christopher Kadish
Anthony: Nestor Rodriguez
Dan: Brian Burchill
Running time -- 94 minutes
No MPAA rating...
It won several awards at the Santa Barbara film fest -- including one for Ana Reeder for best actress -- and made its local bow at the Egyptian on Hollywood Boulevard as part of the American Cinematheque's "Alternative Screen" series.
Set on New York's Lower East Side, "Acts" is Rodriguez's autobiographical drama of an attractive young woman (Reeder) from greener pastures who has given herself over to the false paradise of crack cocaine and heroin, and the pathetic lifestyle that results. Not as stylized and complex as "Requiem", the tersely naturalistic and overall adeptly realized "Acts" is another worthy indie that may go homeless, so to speak, but it has a life on the festival circuit and certainly deserves attention.
With long blond hair and street smarts, the lead has an evil boyfriend and many cohorts in the daily process of scoring and getting high. There's a strung-out couple who deal drugs and let her take their young boy for walks. There are sidewalk vendors who provide her with cash or stash for stolen items. Owing money to crazed crackheads and selling her body for drugs at one point, she is dishonest, volatile and uses everyone -- and expects the same in return.
Her "God" is heroin, and another character, a black woman and reformed addict (Michael Hyatt) who tries to help the lead after an overdose, says knowingly that "crack is like falling in love all over again." For a few scenes, these two support each other in a sober lifestyle, but the struggle to kick the habit is a battle many lose, and the climax is powerfully tragic.
Reeder's impressive performance is utterly convincing, and the supporting cast, led by Hyatt's subtle approach, is equal to the grim milieu. From the sparing use of music to heighten the documentary-like aspects of some sequences to Luke Geissbuhler's harsh but cliche-free cinematography, "Acts" is solid filmmaking.
ACTS OF WORSHIP
Manifesto Films
Screenwriter-director: Rosemary Rodriguez
Producers: Nadia Leonelli, Fredrik Sundwall, Rosemary Rodriguez
Director of photography: Luke Geissbuhler
Production designer: Johnny Hardesty
Editor: Elizabeth Downer
Costume designer: Jan Bohan
Music: Jim Coleman
Casting: Susan Shopmaker
Color/stereo
Cast:
Alix: Ana Reeder
Digna: Michael Hyatt
Mark: Christopher Kadish
Anthony: Nestor Rodriguez
Dan: Brian Burchill
Running time -- 94 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 7/19/2001
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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