Tim Wardle’s life changed at the hands of Three Identical Strangers
People: Interview with documentary director Tim Wardle
When he first heard the story of triplets separated at birth and placed in different families, British director Tim Wardle knew it should be a movie. He didn’t know others had tried, and hit a wall of orchestrated silence. His new documentary takes us inside a secret ‘Twin Study’ and the shocking experience of three unwitting subjects.
Patti Cake$ takes Rocky Road to Success
Movie Review: Patti Cake$
Geremy Jasper cooks up Hollywood's sweetest formula in his debut feature about a young woman from New Jersey who craves to make it big in the rap game
Finding the Real Mensch in Menashe
Movies: Interview with Joshua Z. Weinstein
A documentary filmmaker explores the closed world of New York's Hasidic community in his first narrative feature shot entirely in Yiddish with amateur actors and a leading man who'd never set foot in a cinema
By Katherine Monk
There are approximately 330,000 Hasidic and Ultra-Orthodox Jews living in New York City, yet, the community remains largely closed and somewhat mysterious to outsiders. Filmmaker Joshua Z. Weinstein wanted to know more, so he focused his documentary skills on the world at his doorstep in the boroughs and neighbourhoods of his native New York City.
The result is Menashe, a narrative feature shot entirely in Yiddish with an amateur cast of community members — some of whom had never set foot in a theatre until the film’s debut at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
Weinstein says the experience was rich and memorable, but it’s not something he’ll do again — if only because as a director, he’d like ...
David Lowery Defeated Nihilism with A Ghost Story
People: Interview with David Lowery
His art-house horror hybrid starring Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara is the biggest buzz title of the summer, but David Lowery says he's still figuring out what his movie about ghosts, secret notes and hidden meanings is all about.
By Katherine Monk
David Lowery has been talking about A Ghost Story since January, when it premiered at The Sundance Film Festival. But by year’s end, there’s a good chance everyone will be talking about this low-budget art-house-horror hybrid starring Rooney Mara, Casey Affleck and a ghost walking around under a sheet with two cut-out eyeholes.
Yes, indeed, A Ghost Story is haunting. It wakes the ache that’s always there. Yet, in his bid to dig a little deeper into a single image of a ghost sitting in an empty house, Lowery successfully pulls a long sliver from the calloused sole of the Zeitgeist. He also made a few therapeutic discoveries of his own. The Ex-Press spoke to Lowery, the 36-year-old Texas-raised ...
The Birth of a Nation delivers blood-soaked tropes
Movie review: The Birth of a Nation
Nate Parker adopts the language of his oppressor to create a familiar, formulaic and frequently flat drama designed to celebrate the spirit of an entirely original rebel
The Daniels: Boys with Feelings
Interview: Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, aka 'The Daniels'
The directing team behind award-winning music videos felt their first feature should take some risks, so they paired a farting corpse with a man bent on suicide in Swiss Army Man
By Katherine Monk
Artsy has never been so fartsy. In the new movie Swiss Army Man, Daniel Radcliffe plays a corpse, Paul Dano plays a suicidal introvert and flatulence assumes a central, life-affirming role in the denouement.
Welcome to the world according to ‘The Daniels’ — a unique corner of the universe occupied by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, two first-time feature directors who found themselves in the Sundance spotlight last January when festival director John Cooper pronounced their debut feature, Swiss Army Man, one to watch at the opening press conference.
The Ex-Press caught up with the dynamic duo (who are also responsible for award-winning music videos such as DJ Snake and Lil' Jon's Turned Down for What?) during a ...
Snowtime! animates a Canadian classic
Movies: Snowtime!
The creators behind Snowtime! talk about the challenges of tinkering with an emotional strand of the Quebec's cultural DNA, and getting Celine Dion onboard to sing about loss
By Katherine Monk
PARK CITY, UT — The footsteps they chose to follow were Yeti-sized craters, but that didn’t stop the filmmakers behind Snowtime! from recreating one of the most popular films in Canadian history.
Originally released as a live action feature in 1984, La guerre des tuques went on to become the highest-grossing film of the year in both English and French Canada with well over a $1.2 million in domestic receipts, not to mention several more million in ancillary merchandize in the years that would follow as the film became the go-to Christmas season broadcast — the Rudolph or Frosty for French-Canada.
“What you have to understand is this is part of the DNA of the quebec people,” said producer Marie-Claude Beauchamp, who sat down with The Ex-Press during the ...
The Hollars cried out for Krasinski
Film: Sundance Film Festival
The veteran star of The Office says becoming a father brought new meaning to Jim Strouse's tragic-comedy about a dysfunctional family struggling to connect
By Katherine Monk
PARK CITY, UT — The closing night moment bordered on awkward. Sundance Film Festival director John Cooper celebrated the fact he wouldn’t have to introduce any more films at this year’s festival, and in the next breath, introduced the world premiere of John Krasinksi’s The Hollars.
The veteran star of The Office and Michael Bay’s 13 Hours looked a little surprised at the suggestion of duress, but took it all in stride as he thanked Sundance for the incredible privilege of unveiling his sophomore effort on Sundance’s final night of premieres.
“Sundance was always the goal,” said Krasinski to a sold-out crowd at Park City's Eccles theatre Friday. Originally attached to the script as the star, Krasinski said he took on actor-director duties because he was ...
Audrie and Daisy and Rehtaeh and Amanda
Film: Sundance Film Festival
Audrie & Daisy breaks down the door of teen secrecy to expose flaws in a legal system that allows for social media bullying in the wake of sexual assault
By Katherine Monk
PARK CITY, UT — The movie is called Audrie & Daisy, but it could just as easily have been called Amanda Todd and Rehtaeh Parsons because the stories are so similar: A young woman is sexually exploited, then shamed and harassed on social media to the point where she feels she has no option but to take her own life.
It’s become a tragic fact of modern puberty, and as Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk’s (The Island President) new documentary makes abundantly clear, there are no easy answers to a problem that requires wholesale change to both the legal system and the secret social world of teens.
“You think you’re having the conversation with your kids, but there’s so much more to say… which is why I am so grateful for this film,” said Cohen after the film’s ...
