Search results for: Kelly Reichardt

Not only does the photography benefit from the color depth and added resolution from celluloid, but the 35mm format is but another of the film's sly anachronisms. The film posits that things change slowly, but - watching this on the last day of this year's digital-heavy Cannes festival - nothing has felt more rushed than the disappearance of film prints in our theatres.

Continuing with their policy of spreading the joy in all categories, the Gotham independent film award nominations has Sean Durkin’s “Martha Marcy May Marlene” and Alexander Payne’s “The Descendants” leading the pack with three noms each, but mysteriously it is Durkin's gem that is pushed aside in a Best Feature category that includes Fox Searchlight's The Descendants and Tree of Life, the other best indie film of the year in Jeff Nichols's Take Shelter, and a pair of films that many of us associate to 2010 in Meek's Cutoff and Beginners.

Have you ever wondered what are the films that inspire the next generation of visionary filmmakers? As part of our monthly IONCINEPHILE profile (read here), we ask the filmmaker the incredibly arduous task of identifying their top ten list of favorite films. This month we feature Andrew Haigh whose Weekend was released to in late September via Sundance Selects. Here are Andrew Haigh's Top 10 Films of All Time as of October 2011.

#10. Play - Ruben Östlund (Cannes 2011) Riveting, harrowing, infuriating. Never has adolescent bullying and manipulation been so watchably mundane. Östlund has clearly got this meandering realism down to a T; applying it to a clearer form and purpose has its ups and downs in comparison to his previous, more free-form film, Involuntary. Borrows, and expands on, the better moments of Haneke's Code Unknown, which is to say: he understands the depressing impossibility of inter-cultural unity.

Seeing that we're at the half-way mark, I figured I'd round-up the troops and take a mid-season temperature -- assessing the noteworthy film titles that were theatrically released and the the first six months of the film festival season has brought us so far. Including myself, I asked our regular contributors Ryan Brown, Jesse Klein, Jordan M. Smith and Blake Williams to submit their mid-year "Best of" Lists so far, no surprises here: we have a broad range of films to watch out for, some overlapping selections, some unique picks, a consensus top pick in this year's Palme d'Or winner, but the real shocker is the omission of last year's Palme recipient (Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives) which received a small theatrical release.