Awards season is officially in full swing as the folks at Film Independent have officially announced the nominations for the 2019 Independent Spirit Awards, honoring achievements in independent film for the year 2018.
Jeremiah Zagar‘s film We the Animals led the indie pack with five total nominations. But coming in close behind are two wildly different A24 films, Bo Burnham‘s coming of age comedy Eighth Grade and Paul Schrader‘s challenging drama First Reformed, each with four nominations. Other films landing nods include You Were Never Really Here, Hereditary, The Tale and more
Get the full list of the 2019 Independent Spirit Award nominations below. Read More »
(Welcome to Now Stream This, a column dedicated to the best movies streaming on Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and every other streaming service out there.)
In this edition of Now Stream This, you’ll find one of the best movies of 2018, a holiday classic that you can watch any time of the year, a prophetic sci-fi film, Jamie Lee Curtis as a rookie cop, an old violin, a kick-ass action movie, an ’80s horror throwback, a true crime documentary, a tale of resurrection, and Liam Neeson wearing a kilt. What a line-up!
These are the best movies streaming right now. Let’s get streaming!
Read More »
Lynne Ramsay was never really trying to break the mold. The director of this year’s critical darling You Were Never Really Here chooses her movies with discretion, with a six-year gap between the Joaquin Phoenix-starring noir thriller and her last film, the haunting psychological drama We Need to Talk About Kevin. Only four feature films total populate Ramsay’s entire catalogue, each of them critically beloved, each of them inflicting a different kind of violence upon the audience. “We’ve seen a lot of violence in film that it’s become almost banal,” Ramsay told /Film in an interview ahead of You Were Never Really Here‘s digital release on the Amazon Prime streaming platform. “It’s actually more scary not to show it.”
That’s the genius of You Were Never Really Here, a taut and moody thriller centering around Phoenix’s PTSD-suffering hit man who rescues trafficked girls. In other hands, the film would paint Phoenix as a glamorous lone wolf, an anti-hero who beats down societal corruption with his bare fists. But in Ramsay’s hands and in Phoenix’s gaunt, weary performance, You Were Never Really Here shows us a different kind of anti-hero.
Here is what Ramsay had to say about defying the “knight in shining armor” clichés, Phoenix’s role in shaping the character of Joe, and what Ramsay thinks about Phoenix’s current role as the Joker.
Read More »
(Welcome to Not Dead Yet, a feature dedicated to new Blu-ray releases and what special features you should be excited about. Because yes, some of us still like to own physical copies of our movies.)
This week’s physical media round-up brings you two of the best films of 2018 – A Quiet Place and You Were Never Really Here. There’s also the Criterion release of Bowling for Columbine, Arrow Video’s The Addiction, and Shout! Factory’s release of John Carpenter‘s Memoirs of an Invisible Man.
Here are the new Blu-ray releases and their special features you should check out this week and beyond.
Read More »
Good job guys, we’ve made it halfway through 2018! Now there’s only six months left of this hellish year to go. But we’ll always have movies, and thank goodness this year’s movies have been more than up to the task of alternately letting us escape reality or tapping into our deepest intimate and sociopolitical anxieties.
Each day this week, a different member of Team /Film has been counting down his or her favorite films of the year so far. I’m the last to go this week and may have a few surprises on my list — which ranges from heartwarming family films, to pitch-black comedies, to meditations on life, love, and grief. So without further ado, here are my top 10 movies of 2018 so far.
Read More »
The nightmare that is 2018 is almost over! Current events may be terrifying, but movies have been pretty damn good this year. Each day this week, a different member of the /Film team will be counting down his or her favorite films of the year so far, and now it’s my turn. My favorite films this year run the gamut from indie curiosities to films of absolute horror. And just to keep things from being a complete dour-fest, there’s a very nice movie about a very nice bear as well. These are the top 10 movies of 2018 so far, according to Chris Evangelista.
Read More »
You know you’re not going to see an average genre piece from writer-director Lynne Ramsay (We Need to Talk About Kevin). With her new Joaquin Pheonix-led movie, You Were Never Really Here, Ramsay has made an unflinching thriller that follows its own rules instead of conventions. Based on Jonathan Aames‘ (Bored to Death) novel, Ramsay uses a few familiar genre elements to tell a story that’s as much about PTSD as it is about an assassin searching for a kidnapped teen.
A thriller told through Ramsay’s lens has the physical action play off-screen, and what’s going on within Phoenix’s character take center stage in almost every frame. The way Ramsay and her collaborators depict the character’s point-of-view and New York City is unnerving, sometimes hellish. Even a shot of a jelly bean is hard to shake after watching You Were Never Really Here.
We recently spoke with Ramsay about her fourth feature film, her first experience shooting digitally, making her first genre piece, Johnny Greenwood‘s score, and more.
Read More »
(In our Spoiler Reviews, we take a deep dive into a new release and get to the heart of what makes it tick…and every story point is up for discussion. In this entry: Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here.)
There’s a lot going on in Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here, and we see almost none of it. And yet, we still see everything we need to see. With a shockingly sparse presentation, Ramsay has concocted a lean, mean movie that skimps on specifics yet still packs a wallop. It’s one of the most remarkable examples of less-is-more storytelling in recent memory.
Read More »
Revenge thrillers are usually a dime a dozen. A bad guy messes with the wrong guy at the wrong time in the wrong way, and all hell breaks loose. These kind of movies seem to have gotten even more redundant ever since Taken became a hit and revitalized this subgenre of action films, but thankfully there are also standouts like Blue Ruin and John Wick proving that these kind of movies can still kick-ass and feature quality filmmaking. Now, another revenge thriller has come along, this time for the arthouse crowd to eat up.
You Were Never Really Here follows Joaquin Phoenix as a hired gun recruited on the down-low through a simple but secretive operator service to deliver pain to people who have done some bad things. In the hands of a blockbuster filmmaker, this would be a straightforward action movie, but in the hands of We Need to Talk About Kevin director Lynne Ramsay, the experience is so much more cerebral. This film, based on Jonathan Ames’ novel of the same name, is also painfully brutal and intense. Read More »
Cool Posts From Around the Web:
After a six year break from features, director Lynne Ramsay (We Need to Talk About Kevin) is back with You Were Never Really Here, a film that looks to be a cross between Taken and Taxi Driver. This violent drama debuted at last year’s Cannes Film Festival and earned high praise from those who caught it, and it’s easy to see why: this movie looks like it rules. Check out a new UK trailer for the film below.
Read More »
