Cinephilia April 2019
11 Female Film Directors You Need to Know A24’s Must-See Summer Indie Film Review: Robert Pattinson’s Spaced-Out Sci-Fi Will Stun You
Lupita Nyong’o on the mysteries of Jordan Peele’s ‘Us’
Based on the memoir by KRISTEN NEWMAN
A film by SAYNA CASAR
COMING TO THEATERS JUNE 14
Cinephilia April 2019 Contents
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11 Female Filmmakers You Should Know By Jenna Marotta
We assembled a list of 11 directors you should know, a sorority of trailblazers, prize winners, household names, and indie darlings.
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Lupita Nyong’o on The Mysteries of Jordan Peele’s ‘Us’ By Brian Hiatt The Oscar winner discusses her preparation to play two lead roles in the director’s new movie — and why he made her cry.
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Film Review: Robert Pattinson’s Spaced-Out Sci-Fi Will Stun You By Peter Travers
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Collaboration between the star and French filmmaker extraordinaire Claire Denis will blow your mind.
10 A24’s Must See Summer Indie:
‘Last Black Man in San Francisco’ By Zack Scharf
Filmmaker Joe Talbot is behind one of the year’s most confident and unforgettable debut movies.
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Guillermo Del Toro Reveals Which ‘Scary Stories’ Character Frightens Him the Most By Michael Nordine
Passion projects are the only kind Guillermo del Toro makes, but “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” is even closer to his heart than most.
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11 Female Film Directors You Need to Know By JENNA MAROTTA
racism in the U.S. prison system and netted DuVernay an Academy Award nomination for best documentary feature. Recently, with Disney’s “A Wrinkle in Time,” DuVernay became the first black woman to ever helm a $100 million-plus live-action film, as well as a second-time director of her “Selma” producer and co-star Oprah Winfrey. For Winfrey’s OWN network, DuVernay created the drama “Queen Sugar,” a series where all 40-plus episodes and counting have been directed by women. Next, DuVernay is readying the Netflix miniseries “The Central Park 5,” as well as “The New Gods,” another pricy tentpole, this time from Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment.
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lthough women make up half of all film school graduates, they helmed just eight of last year’s 100 highest-grossing films, and account for only 4.3 percent of directors in that total in the last decade. Last year, Greta Gerwig became the fifth woman ever to receive a best director Oscar nomination, a category that has awarded 89 men and just one woman with the honor (Kathryn Bigelow, “The Hurt Locker,” 2010). Below, we assembled a list of 15 directors you should know, a sorority of trailblazers, prize winners, household names, and indie darlings. All happen to be women, but none are “women directors.” With every “Action!” they yell, we get one step closer to retiring lists like this. Desiree Akhavan The daughter of Iranian immigrants, Akhavan first earned laughs and acclaim for “The Slope,” a web series in which she and co-creator Ingrid Jungermann portrayed a lesbian couple in Brooklyn. She also acted on multiple episodes of “Girls” and “Flowers” (a British comedy starring 04 CINEPHILIA|www.cinephila.com
Pictured above: Greta Gerwig and Saoirse Ronan
Olivia Colman), as well as “Appropriate Behavior,” her Film Independent Spirit Award– and Gotham Award–nominated feature directorial debut, which landed in Sundance’s 2014 Next program. Akhavan stuck to writing and directing for her highest-profile project to date, Sundance U.S. Dramatic Competition premiere “The Miseducation of Cameron Post,” winner of the festival’s latest Grand Jury Prize and a Tribeca Film Festival selection. Sofia Coppola As an infant, Coppola made her film debut in none other than “The Godfather,” her father Francis Ford Coppola’s best picture Oscar-winning masterpiece. In 1999, she made her own acclaimed feature directing debut with “The Virgin Suicides.” Her sophomore effort, “Lost in Translation,” netted four Academy Award nominations, anointing her the third woman welcomed into the best director nominee category. Although she lost that trophy, she won best original screenplay and made history again with 2017’s “The Beguiled,” which made her the first woman in 56 years to win the best director prize at Cannes. Ava DuVernay Ava DuVernay famously did not pick up a camera until she was 32 years old, first finding success in Hollywood as the founder of a public relations firm. Four years ago, she directed her first Oscar winner, “Selma,” a best picture nominee. Her next film, Netflix documentary “13th,” delved into the systemic
Nora Ephron Longtime journalist and celebrated wit Ephron followed her parents into the screenwriting business, beginning with two projects for star Meryl Streep and director Mike Nichols. The first, “Silkwood,” garnered Ephron her first Oscar nomination, plus four more for her collaborators, while “Heartburn” was Ephron’s adaptation of her own best-selling novel. Besides also writing “When Harry Met Sally…,” she directed seven of her scripts, including two films for Tom Hanks (“Sleepless in Seattle,” “You’ve Got Mail), plus additional features for John Travolta (“Michael”), Steve Martin (“Mixed Nuts”), and Streep (“Julie & Julia”). The year after Ephron died from leukemia complications, she received a 2013 Tony nomination for writing “Lucky Guy,” the play that brought Hanks to Broadway for the first time. Greta Gerwig More than 10 months after its release, Gerwig’s solo directorial debut, “Lady Bird,” maintains a 99 percent “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The crackling coming-of-age film was shut out at the Oscars despite five nominations—including best picture, APRIL 2019
and the coveted best director and best screenplay combo for Gerwig, who began her ascent as an actor before crafting scripts like “Frances Ha” and “Mistress America” with Noah Baumbach. She co-starred in her first directing project, 2008’s “Nights and Weekends,” and has vowed to continue her Sacramento, California–focused oeuvre. However, Meryl Streep, Laura Dern, Emma Watson, Timothée Chalamet, and Saoirse Ronan will first assemble for Gerwig’s “Little Women” retelling. Amy Heckerling Among Heckerling’s nine features are two iconic takes on the hierarchy of high school: “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” (1982) and “Clueless” (1995). She also helmed “National Lampoon’s European Vacation” and “Look Who’s Talking,” a massive box office success that generated almost $300 million worldwide, spurring two sequels. Educated at New York University and the American Film Institute, the writerdirector has also been the architect behind episodes of “The Office,” “Gossip Girl,” and six episodes of the Amazon Studios series “Red Oaks.” This fall, the New Group will debut an Off-Broadway musical production of “Clueless,” also penned by Heckerling. Penny Marshall After becoming a ’70s sitcom star on “Laverne & Shirley”—a series co-created by her brother, the late director Garry Marshall—Marshall began her own career behind sitcom cameras. Her film directorial debut came with the Whoopi Goldberg feature “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” (1986), which she parlayed into six more movies, among them two Tom Hanks classics (“Big,” “A League of Their Own”), plus others led by Robin Williams (“Awakenings”) and Drew Barrymore (“Riding in Cars With Boys,” her last feature released theatrically). Kimberly Peirce A University of Chicago and Columbia University grad, Peirce worked as a paralegal and film projectionist while completing her first full-length film, “Boys Don’t Cry.” The drama won Hilary Swank her first best actress Oscar, while Peirce took home a pair of Film Independent Spirit Award nominations, as well as National Board of Review honors for outstanding directorial debut. In the intervening years, Peirce has helmed episodes of “The L Word,” APRIL 2019
Pictured above: Desiree Akhavan
“Halt and Catch Fire,” and “Dear White People,” along with two more features (the “Carrie” remake and “Stop-Loss”), with another forthcoming for Amazon Studios (“This Is Jane”). She was elected to the Directors Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Board of Governors last year. Dee Rees During her time at NYU film school, Rees began shadowing her professor Spike Lee, and interned on both “Inside Man” and the 2006 HBO documentary miniseries “When The Levees Broke.” Lee went on to executive produce Rees’ feature debut, “Pariah.” The film premiered in competition at Sundance, winning its 2011 cinematography honors for Bradford Young, plus Film Independent Spirit and Gotham Awards for Rees.
Agnès Varda Nonagenarian French New Wave pioneer Varda received her first Oscar nomination in January, less than three months after Angelina Jolie presented her with the Academy’s honorary statuette at the Governors Awards. The prolific photographer-turned-television-and-filmmaker began directing in the mid-’50s with “La Pointe Courte,” which the native Belgian followed with feminist touchstones such as “Cléo From 5 to 7” and “Vagabond.” For nearly three decades, she was married to fellow filmmaker Jacques Demy, chronicling his death from AIDS complications in her 1991 dramatic work “Jacquot de Nantes.” In 2017, she and her friend JR, a former graffiti artist more than 50 years her junior, co-directed the documentary “Faces Places,” which received an Academy nod for best documentary feature. Varda passed away on March 29, 2019.
Her next feature film as a writerdirector, “Mudbound,” was the festival’s biggest acquisition of 2017, selling to Netflix for $12.5 million, en route to four Oscar nominations. She is currently in postproduction on Netflix’s “The Last Thing He Wanted,” an adaptation of Joan Didion’s 1996 novel.
Pictured above: Ava Duvernay
Pictured above: Agnes Varda
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Lupita Nyong’o on the Mysteries of Jordan Peele’s ‘Us’ The Oscar winner discusses her preparation to play two lead roles in the director’s new movie — and why he made her cry By BRIAN HIATT
“I was fairly terrified just reading the script,” says Lupita Nyong’o, who stars in two roles in Jordan Peele’s Get Out follow-up, Us, premiering March 22nd. Playing both a loving mom and a creepy, scissor-toting, probably murderous doppelgänger of said mom (her fellow Black Panther actor Winston Duke plays the dad and his double) posed numerous acting and technical challenges, particularly when she shares the screen with herself. Still, she says, she “thoroughly enjoyed” the experience. Here’s what Nyong’o had to say about Us and Peele in an interview for our latest cover story. Jordan asked you to watch 10 horror movies [from The Shining to The Babadook] to prepare for this movie. What did you take away from that experience? Well, Jordan really does pay homage to the genre and to the canon of horror films. For me, it was useful to know what kind of vocabulary he’d be working from, what kind of aesthetics, what kind of style. So that was what I was taking away from the films, really. Not really acting notes per se, but the things that are going to influence the world he was creating, because the world in Us is so deeply from Jordan’s mind that in order to do my work as an actor, I really had to, like, interrogate him. My first point of research was Jordan’s mind. I had to try and get in there in as 06 CINEPHILIA|www.cinephila.com
many ways as possible. That included spending a lot of time talking to him, asking questions for clarity, that sort of stuff. And then, of course, watching these films.
of focus. I had to focus quite intensely because every time I had to be fully in one character and also kind of having the out-of-body experience of taking notes for when I would play the other.
What were the challenges and perhaps joys of playing these very different characters who have to interact? The first reason I signed up for this movie, one, was because Jordan Peele created it. And the minute I found out he was offering me a role I was like, “Yes! What is it?” You know? I read the script in one sitting, and by the end of the script, I realized my shoulders were so high up ’cause I was so concerned and nervous and actually quite frightened as I read it. And then, he was giving me the opportunity to play two characters. That was so exciting to me, the fact that I would get to play both sides, just the two very extremely different roles. It seemed like Christmas had come early. And then I started working on it, and I realized how taxing it is to play two characters with the preparation time it would take for me for one. So, it was quite the challenge to kind of split my mind and split my focus, ’cause I’m so used to investing in one person’s perspective. So, to do both justice is extremely tough. And then the technical challenges, being on set and basically acting with myself, was something that took a lot of sleep to get it right, which is the last thing you’re trying to do when you’re playing two characters, and a lot
And the other thing is, of course, one of the characters is so scary — you were terrifying in the 15 minutes I got to watch! So, you had to find something in yourself that was, I guess, that scary. Well, yeah. But you know, I definitely had to go to some dark, dark corners of my being to embody the one scary character. It was very intimidating to think of that character as scary or evil, you know those kinds of words I found to be debilitating. So, it was about getting beyond that because when you watch these scary movies, the evil is so ominous that it feels larger than life. To try and embody that can be quite daunting. So, it was about just really deeply investigating the character’s emotional motivation and being situated in that and allowing that to magnify the character. Jordan points out that even though this movie — unlike Get Out — isn’t about race, the sheer fact of having a black family at the center of the movie is a statement. Yeah, I agree with him. The subject of race is irrelevant to the experience
“I definitely had to go to some
dark, dark corners of my being to embody the one scary character.” APRIL 2019
that this family is going through. But the fact that this family exists in this particular genre and the legacy that is horror, that is the racial statement. The subject itself, what we’re dealing with in the film, is something else. And that in itself is refreshing as well, that the experience of black people is not always in context of their blackness. At the end of the day, Jordan, by putting black people at the center of his narratives, continues to expand our perception, our understanding of such people. As much as it’s not the subject of this particular film, it still lends itself to the expansion of the paradigms in this country. You were already a fan, but what did you learn about Jordan from working with him? I thoroughly enjoyed being a part of the realization of Jordan’s imagination. He was such a joy to work with from the very beginning. One of the things that makes him an extremely incredible director is how compassionate he is, and he has incredible communication skills. At every turn of making this film, he was just very, very good at keeping everyone informed about what’s going on. And in doing so, you kind of get on board, and you root for him and you root for the work. I took it very personally, as did everybody else. He’s a great partner in that way, and he’s right there with you in the trenches. I remember when I met him over lunch. This is before he disclosed to me what it was about. It was a very, very preliminary meeting, and he asked me a question that no director had asked me. He asked me what my process was. What I needed from him as a director: “What do you need?” I began to weep, and he reminded me of this once we wrapped the film. And I wept because it was the kind of question that an actor would ask. He likes to cater to his actors’ processes, and so he approaches directing the actor with whatever way they APRIL 2019
would work most strongly. That kind of, like, bespoke directing that he’s able to do is invaluable, really. And he’s a great mimic, as we all know from his incredible work in comedy. So that came in very handy, as well — when we were doing the film playing both characters, he would often do my part for me. And it was incredible to experience him do that. He’s so adaptable, which I think is the elasticity of being a performer as well as a visionary director. How else did his background as a performer and in comedy manifest itself? He was always very good at breaking the ice. We’re working on this film,
and it’s really scary. But there’s a comedic pulse at all times. And obviously, his brand of horror is also quite comedic. And he just has a knack for that. He can see the comedic moment in the traumatic moment, and that’s such a skill. Jordan makes the kind of films that he wants to see. And so to experience his enthusiasm… Every take, every scene, he’d be like, “This is my new favorite scene!” It’s so encouraging and exciting to work with someone who loves what they’re doing. It’s like a kid in a candy shop. He gets to make his favorite movie. That was just so refreshing, ’cause there is an expertise to it, but there’s also a sense of play that he never loses sight of. And I think that’s what makes him such a great creator, because he follows the fun. That’s what he does. He follows the fun.
Photography : Willy Vanderperre Styling : Olivier Rizzo Fashion : Printed and glazed silk ruffle gown, $4,576 : Andreas Kronthaler for Vivienne Westwood Viviennewestwood.com
$4.95 US