Review: Lean on Pete

by Eric Blume

Andrew Haigh, the director of the new film Lean on Pete, is a major, major talent.  He pulled a career-best (and Oscar-nominated) performance from Charlotte Rampling in his last film 45 Years, made a splash a few years before that with the lovely two-hander Weekend, and his big HBO show Looking was for my money one of the best gay anythings ever made.

Haigh has a particular talent with actors, and also for establishing moments of quiet power within a story. What's more he trusts that that power is enough.  These talents are firmly on display in Lean on Pete, the story of 16 year-old Charley (Charlie Plummer) who finds himself completely alone alongside the eponymous, discarded quarterhorse...

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Tweetweek: "We Fought a Zoo" and #Filmstruck4

Tweets of the week, curated for you in case you don't want to wade endlessly through twitter feeds each day.

I hate that this will end up being in no way representative of the content of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom pic.twitter.com/rUSj35Ec9K

— Clarisse Loughrey (@clarisselou) April 18, 2018

More after the jump including Rampage, Amadeus, and Love Simon jokes and other little morsels about new and classic films including the popular FilmStruck4 challenge of picking four films that define you...

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Little Crazy Boy in Mask, Why Are You Crying?

Chris here. Remake/reboot culture isn't going to be slowing down anytime soon, and you should be girding our loins for some bizarre iterations if you aren't already. Take this fall's revamp of Halloween which has been taken over by... David Gordon Green? The director is primarily known for intimate dramas and character studies, like last fall's Stronger. While Jamie Lee Curtis's return to the franchise has stoked a high level of anticipation, Green's place in the franchise remains a giant question mark. And from the looks of the first teaser poster, the director has brought his signature ennui and it looks just as weird as that sounds - like a "sorry for your loss" greeting card with a serial killer on it. In the comments, tell us what is making Michael Myers so downtrodden!

Blueprints: "A Quiet Place"

This week, Jorge dives deep into the unconventional formal elements inside the screenplay of the number one film in the country right now. 

A Quiet Place is an immersive experience. The film centers around a dystopian future, in which creatures that are attracted to sound have taken over. In order to stay alive, a family has to stay totally silent through their everyday lives. 

The film utilizes sound (the lack of, its intensity, its threat) as a formal device to guide us through the narrative. There is barely any spoken dialogue. Everything is conveyed visually, using alternative devices than those we are used to seeing in film. It is an experiment in form.  Its screenplay is much the same. Using devices that are rarely found in a regular script, the writers create an immersive, completely different experience that lets the reader know right away that this is not your regular horror flick...

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William Holden in "Picnic"

Our mini William Holden Centennial celebration continues with Eric Blume...

Picnic, the 1955 film version of William Inge’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, came two years after William Holden won his Best Actor Oscar for Stalag 17 and one year after his dashing role in Sabrina.  Holden was at the height of his stardom when this film released, and he’s smartly front and center through most of the picture...

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