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The Marvel Cinematic Universe is a franchise known for huge action blockbusters, with some deviations to their formula for applicable content, while A24 is an independent movie and television company that prioritizes an auteur’s aesthetic as well as more intimate character dynamics. Marvel capitalizes on a specific opportunity with Thunderbolts* and framed its latest marketing material for the upcoming movie within the context of the cast and crew’s A24 connection.

Kevin Feige and the MCU decision-makers clearly perceive A24 productions as having a niche filmmaking advantage, at least in terms of a project’s quality. And most importantly, the filmmakers may have purposefully brought some of those cinematic practices and perspectives to Thunderbolts*.

After all, the Thor trailer does not highlight director Kenneth Branagh’s Shakespearian background, and the advertisements for Avenger epics do not point out that many of the stars are Oscar nominees. This Thunderbolts* campaign...

Marvel Studios has apparently heard fans' complaints about the most recent slate of MCU movies, as the marketing team for Thunderbolts* have made some against-the-grain moves to promote the McU's next film. In a recent interview, Florence Pugh, who reprises her long-running role as Yelena Belova, piled on to the eccentric marketing campaign by describing the McU's latest as an "A24-feeling" action film.

Speaking to Empire Magazine, Pugh teased how different Thunderbolts* will feel from the rest of the MCU filmography. "It ended up becoming this quite badass indie, A24-feeling assassin movie with Marvel superheroes," the actress revealed. Over the past few years, Marvel fans have criticized MCU movies for all feeling very similar and lacking any distinct voice -- with Martin Scorsese even piling on to the discourse. However, the first full trailer for Thunderbolts* gave fans hope again that the MCU can produce actual "cinema."

Meanwhile,...

Could Marvel be trying to get in on some of that indie popularity? With Sean Baker’s Neon release “Anora” running away with five Oscars last weekend, including the top honor of Best Picture, big Hollywood studios like Disney may want some of its own fare to have that independent touch. Such is the case it seems for its upcoming entry in the MCU, “Thunderbolts,” starring Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, David Harbour, Lewis Pullman, Wyatt Russell, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

Speaking in a recent interview with Empire, Pugh said of the tone the film “ended up becoming this quite badass indie, A24-feeling assassin movie with Marvel superheroes.”

And while A24 and “Anora” studio Neon are decidedly not “rivals,” as Neon CEO Tom Quinn recently said (Neon instead counts Netflix as their “biggest competitor” for acquisition titles), could Marvel be trying to square off with A24?

Marvel and Disney definitely were...

Following the lackluster response to Captain America 4, the MCU is now preparing for its next release in the form of Thunderbolts*. Marketing is now in full-swing for the upcoming team-up movie, with a new trailer recently dropping online. However, the movie has seemingly opted for a strange marketing strategy.

Florence Pugh and David Harbour in Thunderbolts* (Credit: Marvel Studios).

In the latest trailer, the marketing has opted to highlight one aspect of the movie that is commonly seen in trailers for A24 movies. However, a film from the multi-billion dollar MCU choosing the same strategy seems like a desperate move for the franchise. Here is what fans are saying about the latest trailer for Thunderbolts* and why I cannot defend the MCU anymore.

The new Thunderbolts* trailer opts for a strange marketing strategy

Thunderbolts* is the upcoming thirty-sixth installment in the MCU and the final entry in its fifth phase.

"The Avengers are not coming. Who will keep people safe?" These guys? Doubt it. Marvel has debuted a wacky joke (or not?) trailer for Thunderbolts*, the kooky anti-hero MCU movie kicking off the summer movie season on May 2nd. This whole trailer is a riff on A24's trailers with the same style & title cards. A ragtag group of bad guys is sent on covert missions for the American government. The fun ensemble cast includes David Harbour as Red Guardian, Hannah John-Kamen as Ava Starr / Ghost, Wyatt Russell as U.S. Agent, Sebastian Stan as Bucky, Lewis Pullman as Bob aka "Sentry", and Florence Pugh as Black Widow Yelena Belova, plus Olga Kurylenko as Taskmaster, Geraldine Viswanathan as Mel, and finally Julia Louis-Dreyfus as the handler Valentina Allegra de Fontaine. The trailer points out this has: The Green Knight cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo, Hereditary production designer Grace Yun, Minari editor Harry Yoon,...

Marvel has released a new teaser for their next movie, Thunderbolts*!

The new minute-long teaser clip shares some of the cast and crew’s past indie credits, seemingly trying to give the movie a lesser-than big Marvel blockbuster look.

Previously, the film has been billed as being presented by “Marvel Studios

and a crew of indie veterans who sold out.”

Keep reading to find out more…

In the teaser, the below credits are shown across the screen:

From the stars of Midsommar (Florence Pugh), A Different Man (Sebastian Stan), & You Hurt My Feelings (Julia Louis-Dreyfus)

The writers & director of Beef (director Jake Schreier and writers Joanna Calo and Joanna Calo)

The cinematographer of The Green Knight (Andrew Droz Palermo)

The production designer of Hereditary (Grace Yun)

The editor of Minari (Harry Yoon)

The composers of Everything Everywhere All At Once (Son Lux)

Also starring in the upcoming movie include David Harbour,...

The latest preview for “Thunderbolts*” touts the Marvel movie’s connection to another cinematic universe — that of indie film favorite A24.

The new clip ditches Marvel’s traditional sweeping orchestrations and big action setpieces in favor of slick techno music and title cards highlighting that many of the film’s stars, creatives and artisans have previously worked on A24 films.

First revealed by Letterboxd, the “exclusive first look” intercuts shots of Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan and Julia Louis-Dreyfus in their Marvel gear with their A24 acting credits.

The teaser gives the Marvel Studios logo an A24-esque makeover and features stylized cards for “the editor of ‘Minari'” (Harry Yoon) and “the writers and director of ‘Beef'” (director Jake Schreier and co-writers Lee Sung Jin and Joanna Calo). “The Green Knight” cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo and “Hereditary” production designer Grace Yun also get a shoutout, with “Everything Everywhere All At Once...

A new “Thunrderbolts*” trailer dropped Friday, and it this time, the Marvel Studios blockbuster took a surprising approach to its own material: It wants more indie cred.

In the trailer exclusive to Letterboxd, the 65-second spot highlights the behind-the-scenes creative team’s credentials across some of the decades most successful indie films, from “Minari” to “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” In other words, the Marvel film began marketing itself as an A24 movie.

Title cards include:

From the stars of “Midsommar,” “A Different Man” and “You Hurt My Feelings” … the writers and director of “Beef” (referring to director Jake Schreier and writers Joanna Calo and Joanna Calo) … the cinematographer of “The Green Knight” (Andrew Droz Palermo) … the production designer of “Hereditary” (Grace Yun) … the editor of “Minari” (Harry Yoon) And the composer of “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (Son Lux)

Watch the full trailer below:

Exclusive new look at @MarvelStudios' Thunderbolts* starring Florence Pugh,...

Marvel’s next big hit, Thunderbolts*, is set to hit theaters on the first weekend of May 2025, kicking off the summer movie season. Unlike the Avengers, this team isn’t full of heavy hitters. Instead, it’s a group of misfits—assassins, anti-heroes, and villains—brought together by Valentina Allegra de Fontaine for a risky mission. Directed by Jake Schreier, the movie promises a unique feel, blending Marvel action with an indie edge.

Schreier, known for the indie hit Robot & Frank and Netflix’s Beef, was told by Marvel to “make it something different,” he said. The result? A film that stands apart from other MCU projects.

Florence Pugh, who returns as the Black Widow-trained assassin Yelena Belova, describes it simply: “It ended up becoming this quite badass indie, A24-feeling assassin movie with Marvel superheroes.”

Schreier agrees, pointing to a familiar vibe from his past work. “There...

What a difference a decade makes. When Timothée Chalamet arrives at this year’s Berlinale for a special gala screening of James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown, in which he plays an inscrutable Bob Dylan, he’ll be hailed as a star: He’s headlined such blockbusters as Wonka and the Dune movies and also just earned his second best actor Oscar nomination.

When Chalamet first walked Berlin’s red carpet in 2015, it was a different story. Then just 19, he was starring opposite Kiernan Shipka in Andrew Droz Palermo’s indie feature One & Two.

Following supporting parts in Showtime’s Homeland and Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, it was Chalamet’s first lead role; he and Shipka portrayed siblings with the ability to teleport.

During a visit to THR’s lounge, Chalamet explained, “The movie’s about their separation journey — getting back together in the end or maybe not.” But the...

Documentarian Tracy Droz Tragos has plenty of experience with California wildfires.

After all, she was on the ground with a camera not long after the November 2018 Camp Fire in Butte County as the community of Paradise tried to rebuild, shooting footage for Ron Howard’s 2020 National Geographic movie Rebuilding Paradise. She sat with people who’d seen everything they owned go up in smoke; she chronicled their heartache as they were unsure of where they’d live or if they’d ever see a penny of Fema money.

On Wednesday, she became one of her subjects.

“We learned at midday today from a neighbor who walked back many miles to see what happened: Our house is gone,” she says. “Everything in it is gone.”

The night before, Droz Tragos, her husband, their teenage daughter and their two dogs stood outside their Pacific Palisades home and saw the flames coming toward them.

Timothée Chalamet is an increasingly popular young movie star that has acted in numerous major films. Chalamet's range has seen him play in heartfelt holiday movies to gritty dramas, acting as everything from sensitive gentlemen to cannibals. As a result, his repertoire is filled with a versatile, highly-acclaimed filmography that show off the virtuosic performers acting chops.

Chalamet is already slated to appear in the upcoming films, Dune 2 and Wonka, and shows no signs of slowing down. Since he launched himself into stardom due to good looks and genuine talent, Chalamet has become a household name and Academy Award regular. Here is a breakdown of every Timothée Chalamet movie, ranked worst to best.

Related: Every Oscar Isaac Movie Ranked From Worst To Best

17. Love The Coopers

The 2015 movie Love The Coopers is the one and only holiday movie actor Timothée Chalamet has been in. The ensemble film follows the...

When I last spoke to cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo for The Green Knight, he detailed the learning curve for creating that film’s all-cgi fox. On his latest project, Moon Knight, the degree of difficulty has been raised from small woodland creature to towering, vaguely avian mummified Egyptian god. The Marvel adaptation stars Oscar Isaac in dual roles as a man suffering from dissociative identity disorder who oscillates between a meek museum gift shop employee and a mercenary serving as the human avatar of Khonshu, the aforementioned god of the moon. With the full series now streaming on Disney+, Palermo talked […]

The post “A Final Hurrah for Sodium Vapor”: Dp Andrew Droz Palermo on Moon Knight first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

When I last spoke to cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo for The Green Knight, he detailed the learning curve for creating that film’s all-cgi fox. On his latest project, Moon Knight, the degree of difficulty has been raised from small woodland creature to towering, vaguely avian mummified Egyptian god. The Marvel adaptation stars Oscar Isaac in dual roles as a man suffering from dissociative identity disorder who oscillates between a meek museum gift shop employee and a mercenary serving as the human avatar of Khonshu, the aforementioned god of the moon. With the full series now streaming on Disney+, Palermo talked […]

The post “A Final Hurrah for Sodium Vapor”: Dp Andrew Droz Palermo on Moon Knight first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

[Editor’s Note: This is the second of two parts analyzing the sci-fi craft contenders. Click here to read part one.]

It’s been a great season for large-scale, character-driven, socially relevant sci-fi dramas: Marvel/Disney+’s time-jumping “Loki” and mind-bending “Moon Knight;” Isaac Asimov’s legendary “Foundation” (Apple TV+); the sequel to Nicolas Roeg’s cult classic, “The Man Who Fell to Earth” (Showtime); the latest Star Trek” and “Star Wars” spin-offs, “Strange New Worlds” (Paramount+) and “The Book of Boba Fett” (Lucasfilm/Disney+); and the return of the blockbuster “Stranger Things” (Netflix).

But as you break the shows down in terms of their Emmy crafts potential and how they stack up against one other, four big questions emerge:

1. Can “Loki” and “Moon Knight” Pull a “WandaVision”?

What they offer: After the wild retro TV antics of “WandaVision,” Marvel followed up this season with two trippier shows: “Loki,” in which the titular Norse God of Mischief (Tom Hiddleston) teamed up with detective Mobius (Owen Wilson) to capture dangerous time criminals,...

“They really do respect and collaborate and include the visual effects team as part of the creative process,” reveals Oscar-nominated visual effects supervisor Sean Faden (“Mulan”) about the upside of working on a high-profile Marvel Studios project. For our recent webchat, he adds that “it really felt like we were along for the ride the entire time and we were giving our ideas, and sometimes they were bad ones and sometimes they were good ones, but there was always a back and forth and we would kind of all reach the final look of things together.” Watch our exclusive video interview above.

“Moon Knight” was created by Jeremy Slater, based on the Marvel comics featuring the character of the same name. Slater’s vision as head writer was then shepherded during production by Egyptian helmer Mohamed Diab (who directed four of the six episodes) with collaborators Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson...

Love it or hate it, “Moon Knight” at least pushes Marvel’s Disney+ programming into ambitious psychological territory. The mind-bending story of Oscar Isaac battling Oscar Isaac — in the dueling roles of hardened mercenary Marc Spector/Moon Knight and sensitive museum gift shop worker Steven Grant/Mr. Knight — is a confounding rabbit hole of childhood trauma, dissociative identity disorder (Did), and Egyptian mythology. By comparison, “WandaVision” and “Loki” seem like a walk in the park.

But when it came to visualizing “Moon Knight” through the costume design of Meghan Kasperlik and the cinematography of Gregory Middleton (“Game of Thrones”) and Andrew Droz Palermo (“The Green Knight”), the great challenge and opportunity was to convey Did through two distinct POVs. It was almost like making two shows: horror meets superhero. Isaac, who also serves as an executive producer, was a key collaborator.

“I worked closely with Oscar on both [Marc and Steven],” Kasperlik told IndieWire.

"Moon Knight" doesn't look or feel like any of the other Marvel Cinematic Universe shows or movies, and a big part of that is because of the series' cinematography. Episodes 2 and 4 were shot by "The Green Knight" cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo, and the rest of the episodes were shot by Gregory Middleton, best known for his work as cinematographer on HBO's "Game of Thrones" and "Watchmen." For all but episodes 2 and 4 of "Moon Knight," Middleton was in charge of making sure everything was properly lit, in focus, and that the camera helped tell the story while also delivering beautiful imagery...

The post Moon Knight Cinematographer Gregory Middleton Discusses Mirrors, Darkness, and the Desert [Interview] appeared first on /Film.

As "Moon Knight" enters its home stretch, it's become clear that it's one of Marvel's most unique properties. The thrilling adventure series about a man (Oscar Isaac) with dissociative identity disorder who's also channeling the moon god Khonshu is creative and strange, especially when compared to the rest of the MCU. As the team behind the series opens up about the process of making it, it's increasingly clear that this, too, was a unique experience.

Cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo spoke with /Film about his time spent filming episodes 2 and 4 alongside directors Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson. Over the course of the conversation,...

The post Moon Knight Cinematographer Was Surprised By Marvel's Hands-Off Approach [Exclusive] appeared first on /Film.

For Marvel fans, the production of "Moon Knight" as a Disney+ streaming series presented a unique opportunity for a uniquely fascinating superhero. Here was a chance for a pair of immediately recognizable stars, Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke, to lend a sense of gravity to a character that even the most ardent fans would admit had a lot to prove to mainstream audiences. Steeped in Egyptian mythology and billed in the weeks leading up to release as a departure from the norm of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Isaac's exceptionally strong work in portraying multiple personalities of the same character has...

The post Moon Knight Cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo On Creative Freedom & The Green Knight's Oscars Snub [Interview] appeared first on /Film.

Variety's Awards Circuit is home to the official predictions for the upcoming Oscars and Emmys ceremonies from film awards editor Clayton Davis. Following history, buzz, news, reviews and sources, the Oscar and Emmy predictions are updated regularly with the current year's list of contenders in all categories. Variety's Awards Circuit Prediction schedule consists of four phases, running all year long: Draft, Pre-Season, Regular Season and Post Season. The eligibility calendar and dates of awards will determine how long each phase lasts and is subject to change.

To see all the latest predictions, of all the categories, in one place, visit The Oscars Collective

Visit each category, per the individual awards show from The Oscars Hub

Revisit the prediction archive of the 2021 season The Archive

Link to television awards is atTHE Emmys Hub

2022 Oscars Predictions:

Best Cinematography

Updated: Jan 30, 2022

Awards Prediction Commentary: The ASC Awards recognized Ari Wegner in the theatrical...

Exclusive: Hollywood and London-based below the line agency Wpa is expanding its international and domestic teams with the hires of June Dowad and Daniel Starikov.

Veteran agent Dowad has joined the Wpa UK office as Partner. She joins from Sandra Marsh & Associates in Los Angeles. Starikov, most recently at Anonymous Content, has joined Wpa’s Los Angeles office as a feature agent focusing on the indie space.

Dowad brings with her clients including production designer Barry Robison (One Night In Miami) editor Adam Recht (Downton Abbey: A New Era), production designer/art director Neal Callow (No Time To Die), costume designer Keith Madden (The Forgiven), cinematographer Luka Bazeli (Trim Season), and costume designer Kate Carin (Raised by Wolves).

The industry vet joined Sandra Marsh & Associates in 2011 and in 2015 purchased the agency – along with two partners – and became a co-owner. She started her career as a documentary filmmaker, and has produced films for the BBC,...

For almost half a century, the National Society of Film Critics (Nsfc) , which was founded in 1966, rarely previewed the Oscar winner for Best Picture, doing so only five times in 49 years. But it has done just that four times in the last six years: “Spotlight” (2016), “Moonlight” (2017), “Parasite” (2020) and “Nomadland.”

That stat bodes well for the Oscar hopes of “Drive My Car,” which dominated this year’s awards with wins on January 8 for Best Picture, Director (Ryusuke Hamaguchi), Actor (Hidetoshi Nishijima) and Screenplay. The Japanese film has already been feted by both the New York Film Critics Circle and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association this awards season.

The three-hour film tells the story of a grieving theater director (Hidetoshi Nishijima), who is assigned a young woman (Toko Miura) as his chauffeur when he helms a production of “Uncle Vanya.” It debuted at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival and won Best Screenplay,...

“Drive My Car” racked up several wins from the National Society of Film Critics January 8, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Actor. As “Drive My Car” won Best Picture, the organization’s rules determined that there would not be a separate Best Foreign-Language Film category.

The winners were a distinctly international affair, with Penélope Cruz winning Best Actress for “Parallel Mothers,” Hidetoshi Nishijima as Best Actor for “Drive My Car,” and Anders Danielsen Lie scoring Best Supporting Actor for “The Worst Person in the World.” Ruth Negga picked up Best Supporting Actress for her role in “Passing.”

The critics group convened in New York and Los Angeles to vote January 8 using a weighted scoring system, choosing winners and runners up across a variety of categories. Hidetoshi Nishijima received the the highest weighted score of any single award winner for his Best Actor prize.

Prior to the start of voting,...

The National Society of Film Critics voting for the best films of 2021 is underway today.

The Nsfc features elected and eligible members from major media outlets. The annual awards honors the best in acting, direction, writing, cinematography and more across onscreen and streaming releases in the US.

Any film that opened in the US on a screen or streaming platform during the year is eligible for consideration. Last year, the group handed Chloe Zhao’s Nomadland its top prize, Best Picture, a feat the film duplicated at the Oscars.

The 60-members Nsfc include critics from major papers and outlets in Los Angeles, Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Chicago including from outlets Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, the New Yorker, the Christian Science Monitor and NPR.

The L.A. Times‘ Justin Chang is the organization’s current chair.

We’ll update results as they come in. Winners announced so far:...

Nominations have been unveiled for the 42nd London Critics’ Circle Film Awards. Check out the full list below.

Jane Campion’s The Power Of The Dog leads the field with nine nominations, followed by Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter which received 6 (a Netflix one-two). Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir Part II, released by Picturehouse in the UK, followed with five.

This year’s contenders feature a notably healthy representation of female filmmakers, with the top three most nominated films all helmed by women directors.

More than 180 critics across print, online and broadcast media voted for this year’s noms, which were unveiled by British actors Joanna Vanderham and Gwilym Lee. The ceremony will take place on February 6, 2022, at London’s May Fair Hotel.

“Even though cinemas were closed for half of this year, our members were always watching films,” says Rich Cline, chair of the Critics’ Circle Film Section.

Before shooting David Lowery’s medieval fantasy “The Green Knight,” which screens this week at EnergaCamerimage Film Festival, cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo watched every King Arthur movie he could find, he tells Variety.

“To me, these films always tend to be gray, desaturated. But we wanted to make something modern, also when it comes to the casting of Dev Patel as the lead.”

As Gawain leaves Camelot, forced to uphold his end of the challenge, Droz Palermo turned to “Apocalypse Now” for inspiration, finding some similarities between his ordeal and that of Martin Sheen’s Captain Willard.

“He also loses his mind over the course of this journey. We wanted it to be a bit hallucinatory, a bit psychedelic. I don’t think this film goes to extreme lengths in that respect, but it does get stranger and stranger. We kept wondering: ‘Will people think he has died?,’ ” he says,...

In The Green Knight, King Arthur’s hedonistic nephew Gawain (Dev Patel) leaves the comforts of Camelot for an epic quest to confront the titular verdant specter. Based on the anonymously authored 14th Century poem, the latest film from David Lowery invites a multitude of interpretations. I construed it as a journey from the imagined invincibility of youth to the shadow of mortality eventually cast upon us all—a reading no doubt colored by 18 pandemic months of wondering if a trip to the grocery store would kill me. Days after my screening, […]

The post “The Horse is Constantly Looking at the Technocrane”: Dp Andrew Droz Palermo on The Green Knight first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

In The Green Knight, King Arthur’s hedonistic nephew Gawain (Dev Patel) leaves the comforts of Camelot for an epic quest to confront the titular verdant specter. Based on the anonymously authored 14th Century poem, the latest film from David Lowery invites a multitude of interpretations. I construed it as a journey from the imagined invincibility of youth to the shadow of mortality eventually cast upon us all—a reading no doubt colored by 18 pandemic months of wondering if a trip to the grocery store would kill me. Days after my screening, […]

The post “The Horse is Constantly Looking at the Technocrane”: Dp Andrew Droz Palermo on The Green Knight first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Director David Lowery’s comfort zone with Weta Digital was cemented from the start with “Pete’s Dragon,” and has continued with “A Ghost Story,” and now “The Green Knight” and next year’s “Peter Pan and Wendy.” Eric Saindon, the director’s go-to VFX supervisor from Weta, explains the collaboration as creating “atmospheric landscapes and strange characters and telling time in different ways.”

On “The Green Knight,” Lowery’s mystical, hallucinatory adaptation of the 14th-century Arthurian poem about slacker Sir Gawain (Dev Patel) risking his head to earn knighthood, Weta’s work conveyed the story’s long journey and eerie medieval vibe. “It’s all about the experience,” Saindon said. “And it’s the perfect type of movie for visual effects. It goes back almost to ‘The Lord of the Rings.’ But it’s hard to believe that the first one was only 250 visual effects shots. So it was similar...

Every so often, a film comes along that blows your mind. Such is the case with writer/director David Lowery's The Green Knight, a gleefully twisted horror flick and one of the most visceral to come along in quite some time--a masterpiece of form and world-building.

Starring the mighty Dev Patel, The Green Knight doesn't have a lot in common with other epic, sweeping Arthurian dramas. Lowery tells a familiar story but uses camera movement, editing and special effects to create an atmosphere of such startling specificity that you could swear you've never seen or heard of Arthur before. You're in such a daze that by the time Lowery follows a familiar path, you've entirely forgotten where it leads.

The movie is most satisfying when it forges a new path. Patel plays Sir Gawain, the brash young Nephew of King Arthur who wants to be a knight at The Roundtable,...

The arthouse fantasy “The Green Knight” begins with a word from an off-camera narrator who disappears right after he repositions the Christian allegory of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” as a secular fairy tale.

In this pompous introduction, which sounds like a stuffier version of Mako’s preface to “Conan the Barbarian,” Gawain (Dev Patel) is compared with his uncle King Arthur (Sean Harris), though we are told that Arthur’s legend is a story for another time. Gawain is also a different kind of seeker, and the limits of his vision will come to define not only the meaning of his story but how it is told.

In “The Green Knight”, Gawain’s pilgrimage is illustrated by a series of fussily composed vignettes that hint at mysteries that Gawain and his movie’s creators are only superficially interested in. And while parts of this movie are certainly attractive,...

Director Martin Krejcí’s first feature has the fairy-tale surrealism and penchant for oddball outsiders that distinguished Burton’s work, as well as a similar lighthearted quirkiness that balances the undercurrents of gothic dread. Above all, “Wolfboy” suggests “Scissorhands” for the way it grounds an outlandish figure in credible emotional stakes, making the case for a sincere coming-of-age drama along the way.

The “Wolfboy” in question is Paul (a sullen Jaeden Martell), a reclusive 13-year-old who suffers from a condition that causes fur to cover every inch of his face, for mysterious reasons only revealed in the closing act. The movie, written by trans playwright Olivia Dufault, immediately opens itself to complex readings about the nature of an adolescent coming to terms with his true identity: Sulking through a traveling carnival on his birthday, with his encouraging single father (Chris Messina) by his side, Paul refuses to take his mask off — and when he does,...

Most teenage boys would kill for a few whiskers, but not Paul. At 13, he already has a full face of hair, and his peers treat him like a freak for it. So, too, does Martin Krejčí’s “The True Adventures of Wolfboy,” although the movie argues that perhaps being a freak isn’t such a bad thing. You just have to learn to ignore what other people think and embrace your inner other.

That’s an evergreen theme among Ya movies — where bullies serve as bad guys, but lack of self-acceptance is the real obstacle to be overcome — and a useful lesson in such sensitive times. But is “Wolfboy” unique enough to make an impact? Working from a screenplay by playwright Olivia Dufault, Krejcí conjures a vision of Middle America in which magic and myth seem to exist alongside his characters, amplifying the interior struggle of his young protagonist, played by “It” star Jaeden Martell,...

Green Knight

David Lowery has been working in an almost film per year orbit since the release of Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, but Green Knight comes across as a different beast, perhaps not Disney level but a sizeable indie project nonetheless. With no casting announcements made as of yet, and still very much in pre-production, the fantasy epic retelling of the medieval tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was unveiled back in November with Toby Halbrooks and James M. Johnston producing. Look for the talents of cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo and production designer Jade Healy to also join the fold.…...

Zach Clark is a familiar name on this site for his work as a director; he’s also a full-time editor. In this brief Q&A, Clark discusses his work on Hannah Fiddell’s The Long Dumb Road, a road movie and buddy comedy that winds from Texas to Los Angeles. Click here for more from Dp Andrew Droz Palermo on the film’s production. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? Clark: Hannah and I have been pals for years. She asked me if […]...

How do you reinvent the look of the road movie? That was the key question for Andrew Droz Palermo while filming The Long Dumb Road, the third feature film from director Hannah Fidell. Palermo’s recent credits as Dp include last year’s A Ghost Story, the 2014 horror film You’re Next and Fidell’s two previous features (A Teacher and 6 Years). Palermo spoke with Filmmaker ahead of The Long Dumb Road‘s premiere at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. Below he discusses the logistics of filming moving cars and his aim to “live up to our influences, and […] take them into a new […]...

Welcome to the Jason Mantzoukas show. The Long Dumb Road, directed by Hannah Fidell, leans full-tilt into the anarchic charm of the long-time cult comedian to decidedly mixed results. Though it’s hard to blame the actor. Co-starring Tony Revolori (The Grand Budapest Hotel), the film concerns two strangers brought together on the… road. One is Nat (Revolori), an art school-bound teen lacking in experience; the other a recently-fired, middle-aged wanderer named Richard (Mantzoukas). On the way to Los Angeles, the duo become fast friends before it all starts to get complicated. Running 90 minutes and featuring some lovely southwestern scenery (courtesy of Andrew Droz Palermo), the film moves along at a nice clip until it begins to run out of steam.

Revolori’s doing fine work here, but the bulk of the weight lies on Mantzoukas. As written by Fidell and Carson D. Mell, the script demands a lot from the actor.

There were so many incredibly shot films this year that narrowing it down to 10 wasn’t easy. What follows is not an attempt the highlight the best-looking movies of the year, but the ones that used cinematography most effectively in building expressive, cinematic worlds. This list embraces exploration of form, creative use of limitations, and overcoming challenges with craft and innovation. Often, the awards-season narrative for below-the-line talent is scale and the most obvious use of craft; here, the focus is how form can be used to elicit emotion and tell a story. These are 10 films that do that exceeding well.

10. “A Ghost Story”

A movie made with a small group of friends, shot in small house over a small number of days, is not supposed to be this visually big. But just like David Lowery’s film itself, cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo finds incredible depth and beauty in the simplicity of “A Ghost Story.

Arriving on Blu-ray today is the year’s best film thus far, David Lowery’s narratively audacious, formally astounding A Ghost Story. If one needs more convincing of this proclamation, I’ve raved about this bold story of loss and time since seeing the Sundance premiere, and now with it available on home release, I look forward to experiencing it again (and again).

We’re pleased to present an exclusive clip from the release, which also includes a full audio commentary with Lowery, cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo, production designer Jade Healy, and composer Daniel Hart. There’s also a deleted scene and two featurettes, which this clip comes from as the director and Casey Affleck discuss how, in a sense, this film picks up his relationship between Rooney Mara’s character in Ain’t Them Bodies Saint.

Check it out below.

A Ghost Story is now available on Blu-ray and DVD.

Written and directed by critically acclaimed filmmaker David Lowery (Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, Pete’s Dragon), and boasting a top-notch cast including Academy Award® winner Casey Affleck (Best Actor, Manchester by the Sea, 2016) and two-time Academy Award® nominee Rooney Mara (Best Supporting Actress, Carol, 2015 and Best Actress, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, 2011), A Ghost Story arrives on Blu-ray™ (plus Digital HD) and DVD October 3 from Lionsgate. A24 debuted A Ghost Story to critical acclaim at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, with reviewers calling it “a poetic meditation on time, memory and spiritual connection” (David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter).

Now you can own A Ghost Story on Blu-ray. We Are Movie Geeks has four copies to give away. All you have to do is leave a comment answering this question: What is your favorite movie with the word ‘Ghost’ in the title? (mine is Ghost In The Invisible Bikini!). It’s so easy!

The polarity between director David Lowery’s $65 million Disney film Pete’s Dragon and the micro-budgeted A Ghost Story has been noted repeatedly in reviews and profiles. But the man behind the camera on A Ghost Story has a unique career trajectory of his own. Cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo made his feature debut with Adam Wingard’s tone-mashing home invasion horror flick You’re Next in 2011. He followed that by co-directing a documentary (Rich Hill, an affecting character study of Missouri teens living in poverty) and a narrative feature (One and Two). Palermo is back in director of photography mode on A […]...

Would you have guessed A Ghost Story’s aesthetic was primarily formed instinctually day by day? I wouldn’t have, and I didn’t. The fact derailed everything I thought I knew about Andrew Droz Palermo (Cinematographer: You’re Next, Rich Hill, A Teacher) and David Lowery’s (Writer/Director: Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, Pete’s Dragon) formal motivations and forced the interview to operate in an intuitive mode similar to the film’s process.

Each day Andrew operated with the immediacy of a musician, or as close to that as the film industry allows. Even the most premeditated of shots/scenes could undergo major adjustments on the day, and they weren’t beholden to any rules for the sake of developing their own grammar. The film’s small budget allowed them to take their time and properly evaluate the results of their intuition.

I caught Andrew in between shoots.

There is a long unedited sequence 30 minutes into A Ghost Story where a ghost, wearing a white bedsheet with two eye-holes cut out like Charlie Brown with the Great Pumpkin, is observing his sobbing widow. She sits on the kitchen floor and eats a pie. That entire pie, bite by bite, is devoured in a scene that goes on a good five minutes. I think this is where uninformed moviegoers who may have wandered into A Ghost Story expecting a conventional haunted house thriller will have their patience stretched to the breaking point. A Ghost Story is an arty meditation on love and loss, glacial in pace, and on the surface not much happens in it. It’s not for all tastes, but for adventurous film fans it is rewarding, one of those strange movies that promises to stay with you long after the end credits have rolled.

Casey Affleck...

Back in January at the Sundance Film Festival, one of the more anticipated titles to debut was David Lowery’s latest. It was the spooky sounding A Ghost Story, which reunited Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara with the filmmaker. Folks in Park City were surprised, and in many cases, delighted, to find that this was instead an artful meditation on death and time. In fact, IMDb describes it as a “singular exploration of legacy, love, loss, and the enormity of existence”. The movie received some of the fest’s strongest reviews, and now, after a slow build up at other festivals, it gets set to hit theaters this week. The film has gotten the reputation as one of the more acclaimed independent titles of 2017 so far. Having just seen it this week, it’s fresh in my mind, so let us discuss it a bit! The movie is a drama about grief and moving on,...

If the sight of newly-minted Oscar winner Casey Affleck scurrying around with a bedsheet over his head sounds more like a farce than deep-feeling cinema, then feel free to skip A Ghost Story. If, however, you want to see what writer-director David Lowery (Ain't Them Bodies Saints, Pete's Dragon) can do with nothing but unfettered imagination and an abiding faith in the possibilities of movies, then trust us: This is a poetic and profound experiment you do not want to miss.

Affleck plays a musician identified only as "C"; Rooney Mara plays "M,...

Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck in A Ghost Story - this is the story of a ghost and the house he haunts. Photo: Andrew Droz Palermo The full line-up for the Sundance Film Festival: London - running from June 1-4 at Picturehouse Central - has been announced.

The festival will present 14 feature films from this year's Sundance Film Festival in the Us. As previously announced, the festival will open with the International premiere of Miguel Arteta’s Beatriz At Dinner, and it will close four days later with the UK premiere of David Lowery’s A Ghost Story, starring Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara.

Among the other films screening are crowd-pleasing comedy romance The Big Sick, Scots director Marianna Palka's feminist satire Bitch and Apocalyptic thriller Bushwick, which has also been selected for the Cannes Directors' Fortnight. There will also be screenings of Michael Almereyda's consideration of memory,...

The images from David Lowery's A Ghost Story are sort of ridiculous. Some feature star Rooney Mara looking morose, after all the movie centers on her dealing with the loss of her husband played by Casey Affleck, while others feature a white sheet with black eyes. My initial gut reaction is to laugh but now that I've seen the trailer, I'm not so sure.

A24's has released the first trailer for the movie and it's anything but funny. It's beautiful, featuring a dream-like, almost magical approach to the cinematography - in this case from Andrew Droz Palermo of You're Next, A Teacher and Rich Hill fame, but most notably, it's incredibly sad and the ghost? The white sheet with the black eyeholes? At one point it feels downright creepy.

I don't do [Continued ...]...

David Lowery has found his voice. After two fairly remarkable features (Ain’t Them Bodies Saints and Pete’s Dragon) that felt more imitative than original, here emerges something that answers only to itself. Its logline couldn’t be simpler – a man (Casey Affleck, credited as “C”) dies, and his ghost haunts the house he shared with his wife (Rooney Mara, “M”) until he can find peace. But it didn’t take the eventual leaps in time or the fact that C’s ghost is literally a man with a sheet over his head or Will Oldham’s late-film monologue to make it clear that Lowery was finally establishing his own rhythms.

Early on, a simple scene of M taking out the recycling begins with a whip-pan down from the sky, the camera then arching around the front of the house as Mara drags the bin down to the curb.

The premise is a simple one. A man only credited as C (Casey Affleck) dies after a head-on car accident in front of his house, leaving behind his wife, M (Rooney Mara). After examining his corpse at the hospital, she leaves the room, and, covered by the white cloth over his body, his ghost rises up and returns home to observe the grieving widow he left behind. If one thought only a spooky, small-scale haunted house tale is to follow, David Lowery’s latest is proof that a premise is merely a foundation. Beginning with the beauty, patience, and humor of an Apichatpong Weerasethakul movie before segueing into the existential musings reminiscent of Richard Linklater dialogue, and then infinitely expanding its scope to become a stunning meditation on the passage of time, A Ghost Story is one of the most original, narratively audacious films I’ve ever seen.

One of...