All posts by Jesse Klein »
Interview: Amy Seimetz, Kate Lyn Sheil, Kentucker Audley (Sun Don’t Shine)
[Editor's note: Interview took place during the 2012 SXSW Film Festival.] In actor/producer Amy Seimetz’s Sun Don’t Shine, a lost and forlorn couple, Crystal and Leo (exquisitely played by Kate Lyn Sheil and Kentucker
Read More »
Sun Don’t Shine | Review (SXSW)
Orange State: Seimetz ninety minutes. Between them, they barely own one T-shirt. Crystal and Leo, two people with next to nothing, roam the deserted highways and murky backwaters of central Florida, running away from
Read More »
The Company You Keep | Review
Return for Redford as Actor/Director in Heated Political Thriller Robert Redford, the actor, has been a staple of American pop culture for half a century, his golden smile and wet eyes long ago solidified
Read More »
Downloaded | 2013 SXSW Review
From Napster to Now, Winter Examines the Downloading Boom Napster’s rise and fall and the ensuing decade of music piracy is at this point common knowledge but it is easy to forget that at
Read More »
I Give It A Year | 2013 SXSW Review
Fanning the Flames: Supporting cast shines in UK Rom-com Romantic comedies are good for you in moderation. More than most genres, rom-coms are forced to adhere to a strict regimen, hardly ever drawing outside
Read More »
Drinking Buddies | 2013 SXSW Review
Supersize Me: Swanberg Remains Intimate Despite Bigger Budget Harkening back to the studio system of the 1930s and 40s, the prolific writer/director Joe Swanberg has managed to direct 15 features since 2005, a staggering
Read More »
Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction | 2013 SXSW Review
Peering in: A Look into the Life of Harry Dean Stanton It took director Sophie Huber one year to convince Harry Dean Stanton to be the subject of her documentary. He finally complied but
Read More »
Computer Chess | Review
Bujalski adds Technology to the Perils of Human Connection In an Andrew Bujalski film, there is nothing harder than making yourself understood. Funny Haha is now considered a watershed moment, a film that spawned
Read More »
Spring Breakers | Review
In Harmony Korine’s previous work, from his incendiary debut Gummo all the way through the almost-impenetrable Trash Humpers, he afforded his audience the luxury of distance. The people who watched his films celebrated Korine’s
Read More »
Pavilion | Review
Tiny Wins and Losses: Sutton Explores Teenage Life At fifteen, your neighborhood is your kingdom. Streets, curbs, lawns are the landscape on which you begin to write your own narrative, to begin making yourself
Read More »
Interview: Victoria Mahoney & Zoe Kravitz (Yelling to the Sky)
‘I think a lot of people miss that life is crazy and rugged and messy,’ writer/director Victoria Mahoney said when talking about her new film Yelling to the Sky. The film, which had its
Read More »
Interview: Dree Hemingway and Sean Baker (Starlet)
[Editor's note: This interview was conducted at the 2012 SXSW Film Festival.] Sean Baker’s third feature film, Starlet, finds him exploring the world of sun soaked California through the eyes of porn star Jane,
Read More »
The Do-Deca-Pentathlon | Review
Men at Work: Duplass Bros. Deliver Painfully Funny Olympiads Over the past seven years, the Duplass Brothers have made five feature-length films with each exploring new ground, telling different stories across different genres but
Read More »
Interview: Brian Cano (A Bag of Hammers)
[Editor's note: This interview was conducted during the SXSW 2011 Film Fesitval - MPI Media Group release A Bag of Hammers in NYC on May 11, 2012 and in L.A. on May 18, 2012.] Brian
Read More »
2012 SXSW: Starlet | Review
POV Shot: Baker and Hemingway Craft Intricate Tale Pornography, prostitution, and pimping, worlds that are often portrayed as a dark underbelly, away from the center, populated by people we’ve never met and would never
Read More »
2012 SXSW: Leave Me Like You Found Me | Review
Californian Flip-Flopping: Romanski Examines the Rekindling of a Past Connection In producer Adele Romanski’s directorial debut, Erin and Cal (Megan Boone and David Nordstrom) rekindle their past connection in Sequoia National Park amidst a
Read More »
2012 SXSW: Booster | Review
Matt Ruskin’s Booster Shrinks Boston down to the Size of its Pint-sized Protag The Boston crime drama is tried and true. The storefronts, the accents, the attitudes all drip with the good guy/bad guy
Read More »
2012 SXSW: Somebody Up There Likes Me | Review
Byington’s Absurdist Comedy Spans a Lifetime To look at it one way, marriage is impossible. And hilarious. You kind of know the person, imagine you might come to know the person, and then you
Read More »
Gimme the Loot | Review
A Bronx Tale: Leon Crafts Subtly Observed Day in the Life In young relationships different emotions mingle and conflate, complicating our roles, blurring how we see each other. A friendship can be indispensable, can
Read More »
SXSW Interview: Adele Romanski (Leave Me Like You Found Me)
Starting off as an editor, Adele Romanski went on to produce a number of well-received indies, among them The Myth of the American Sleepover, and this year’s Sundance Film Fest preemed Black Rock. Now
Read More »
"Ron and I wanted to make a film that looked at what it means to be an outsider and we wanted to explore what it takes to reach out to someone whose life is very removed from your own."
