My hope is always that if I have an audience of 30 people, they see 30 different films. I ask the audience to participate with the film and you can only participate through your own self, through your own beliefs.
—James Benning
I met up with James Benning when he was in Chicago a couple months ago and talked with him about growing up in Milwaukee, his experiences with organizing, pedagogical strategies, and numerous films from throughout his career including…
Until now, I’ve always felt I really, really had to offer a clear-cut explanation for a film so that the audience could have no mistake in understanding the issue. I felt I had to give them impactful scenes and a detailed explanation until it became too much. Now I feel like as long as you offer some basic important information, the rest you can edit quite a bit. As long as you have some essential information in it you can…
Was reminded of Thoroughbreds for how its soundtrack really demands that you feel anxiety. It's a real shame, too, because the central story here is stressful enough. And while I'm always game for any piece of art that has me feeling such a physiological response, Seligman's decision to eschew naturalism only reveals the cracks in her filmmaking. The blocking and framing rarely feel claustrophobic, and the misfortunes that fall upon Danielle just compound cruelty (which I'm ok with) to the point of feeling schematic (which I'm not), diluting all these characters such that the ending feels incredibly unearned.
The jokes themselves aren’t terribly good or even memorable (I couldn’t recall any highlights when walking out of the theater lol) but some of the deliveries, the brisk pacing, and the cavalier attitude towards realism keep things afloat. Really appreciated the running gag pertaining to the lack of people at the school/rival school, as well as the Avril Lavigne needle drop—it functions as a simulacrum of what the entire movie aims for in terms of reconciling its absurdism with the…
Has a painful hour-long setup with poorly timed jokes, and then a second hour of “reveals” that are wholly the result of withholding information. There’s no real surprise when a mystery operates in this way, nor is there any opportunity to find satisfaction in noticing and following specific clues. So really we’re just led through everything one step at a time, with flashbacks shaking up the structure to provide a shallow sense of complexity. No one’s acting is noteworthy, and…
I don't think I've seen a film with such on-point millennial representation that my primary reaction was secondhand embarrassment, albeit in a good way. The Impact-font memes, the way this particular age group talks about race (and talks about how people talk about race), the unironic crypto art bro, and so much of the soundtrack, which ranges from Objekt's "Porcupine" to Jai Paul's "Jasmine" (that these aren't timely songs ensures their inclusions aren't trendy; they're just reminders of how generation-specific…
