Interview: We the Animals' Jeremiah Zagar

by Murtada Elfadl

We the Animals has been compared to Moonlight (2016), The Tree of Life (2011) and Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012). While the comparison is reductive it provides a shorthand for describing this film. It’s a story of three young brothers - one of whom is queer - and their relationships with each other and with their unpredictable parents. There are elements of magical realism in a story grounded in the economic desperation of a working class family in upstate New York.

Raul Castillo (HBO’s Looking) and Sheila Vand (A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night) give perceptive performances as the adults. However it is newcomer Evan Rosado, playing the central character of Jonah, who’ll take your breath away. More sensitive and conscious than his older siblings, Jonah increasingly embraces an imagined world in the secret journals in which writes and sketches. It is an assured narrative debut from documentary filmmaker Jeremiah Zagar. We loved the film when it played Tribeca last spring. We had the chance to speak to Zagar recently in New York.

The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Murtada Elfadl: You've said that you read the book in one sitting while still at a bookshop, before even buying it. What popped in the book for you and made you want to make it into a film?  

Jeremiah Zagar: Literally the first page of the book is so visceral, rhythmic and immersive that I couldn’t stop reading it. Beyond that it felt like something I knew how to visualize. I read a lot of books but very few where I feel that I know how to make them into a movie. Somehow I felt this connection to the material that wasn’t only emotional, it was technical almost. I didn't want to change it at all, I just wanted to figure out how to put it on screen. I could see it, I could hear it, I could feel it in my head before it happened...

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Blueprints: "The Americans"

Jorge continues to look at the pilot episodes for the Best Series contenders of this year’s Emmys. 

The Americans did a lot of things at once. It was a spy show, a family drama, a heavy exploration of the human psyche, a look into a broken marriage, and a workplace series, all neatly tied into one disguise-heavy package. That multi-tasking is what made it one of the greatest shows in the so-called New Golden Age of Television. 

The series premiered in 2013, and ended this spring after six seasons, so the pilot may be a bit removed from our collective memories. But let’s take a look at the very first sequence of the entire show, anyway. It immersed us immediately in the world of these people, no explanations given, and put us on high gear from the get-go...

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60 Reasons Cinephiles Should Love Madonna

Happy 60th birthday to the coolest bitch in the world since 1958.

Because we are first and foremost a film site, here are 60 reasons you should love Madonna that are at connected to the cinema.

They're listed in no particular order, numbered only so we can keep count because when the subject is Madonna we tend to go on...

1. She makes a perfect animated character in the credits sequence of Who's That Girl  (1987)
2. She's been close friends forever with one of film & television's secret actress weapons, Debi Mazar
   
   
3. Dick Tracy (1990) is awesome.
4. As is Desperately Seeking Susan (1985).
5. She deserved a Best Original Song nomination for "Into the Groove" from Desperately Seeking Susan
6. She loves movies
7. "Greta Garbo, and Monroe..."

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Movies to Make You Hot (& Sweaty)

by Seán McGovern

If summer is making you all hot and bothered (and sticky and sweaty), you should crank your movie watching up to your body heat. What are your favourite films set in the long, hot summer? My suggestions after the jump, cool off in the comments...

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Months of Meryl: A Prairie Home Companion (2006)

John and Matthew are watching every single live-action film starring Meryl Streep. 

 

#33 —Yolanda Johnson, a Midwestern songstress and longtime staple of the titular radio show.

MATTHEW: Two of the most revered artists in American cinema history, Robert Altman and Meryl Streep each built their lauded careers by probing into characters from countless corners of the world, driven by an ardent and undiminished interest in the micro — but never minor — idiosyncrasies of collective human behavior. For those who believe in the supernatural forces of fate, there is something undeniably kismetic in Streep and Altman’s first collaboration, which would turn out to be this mighty auteur’s valedictory effort. A Prairie Home Companion, Altman’s final film, is a moving backstage comedy that sketches out the (fictional) final broadcast of the historic and beloved Minnesota radio variety show of the title, created and hosted by Garrison Keillor, who also scripted the picture. (Keillor was fired from his program in November of last year over allegations of sexual misconduct.) Brimming, like all of Altman’s work, with an abundance of people and all their peculiarities, A Prairie Home Companion relies on the character-inhabiting talents of an irresistible and excitingly-paired ensemble, whose every member gets ample opportunity to ingest spirit and specificity into a wide array of oddballs and straight-men, from Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly’s ribald cowboys to Maya Rudolph’s quietly panicked and heavily pregnant stage manager to the pair of aging songbirds brought to fanciful, rueful life by Streep and Lily Tomlin.

As Yolanda and Rhonda Johnson, the two surviving members of a four-sister singing act, Streep and Tomlin are, quite simply, a match made in acting heaven...

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