Gotham Awards Revue: "Blue Sun Palace"

by Nick Taylor

The variations of melancholy on display in Blue Sun Palace, ranging from everyday stressors to self-recriminating shame, to the profoundly dull ache of existing in the shadow of life-shattering upheavals, are an exquisite feat. Director Constance Tsang’s penchant for choreographing scenes in one shot allows her to parse the emotional gradations and inflections with a fine-toothed comb. Sometimes, she distills her character’s moods in a single static shot. At others, she has her camera pan back and forth across a conversation, as if it’s a silent but active participant. Her directorial choices always feel deliberate without being show-offy, even when teeing up another self-consciously beautiful image or logistically challenging camera movement...

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Gotham Awards Revue: "Eephus"

by Nick Taylor

While all five Breakthrough Director nominees have writer/director credits for their films, only Eephus' Carson Lund can boast additional duties as his own editor, composer, sound designer, and casting director. If he can make three more films in the next eighteen months, America might finally have an answer to South Korea's most multi-hyphenate auteur, Hong Sang-soo...

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Gotham Awards Revue: "Urchin"

by Nick Taylor

As with Familiar Touch, I am very solidly impressed by the filmmaking debut on display in Urchin, but first I need to know how the leading turn at the center of this wasn’t nominated. Frank Dillane is magnetic as Mike, the unhoused addict trying to reintegrate into London society after his latest stint in prison. He gives a very extroverted, mannered performance of a strung-out young man rooted in an empathetic understanding of Mike’s decision-making and needs. He never showboats at the cost of the other cast members, instead showing himself to be a receptive, active scene partner. Dillane finds a man who isn’t particularly malicious even when he uses others. At no point does this character stand in for any social issue or personality type, even as the film posits his story as a parable of how an individual’s recovery and downfall are informed by the support they receive. Nothing affects Mike’s ability to take care of himself more than the government housing he receives and later loses...

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Gotham Awards Revue: "My Father's Shadow"

by Nick Taylor

The Gotham Awards ceremony is tomorrow night, and to celebrate I'll be devoting the next 24 hours and change to the nominees of the Breakthrough Director category. I've already gone long on Familiar Touch, the only nominee represented here and in the Best Feature lineup. Double dipping has historically led to winning the Breakthrough Director category, so we might give Sarah Friedland some pre-emptive congrats if we felt inclined to run stats. I'll reveal my own favorite after I've posted my final review, but suffice it to say that all five films would be worthy winners. So to start, let's dive into Akinola Davies Jr. and My Father's Shadow...

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Gotham Awards Revue: "Familiar Touch"

by Nick Taylor

First, let me express how happy I am that, at least from my filmgoing corner, the Gotham nominations have encouraged more people to watch some of their lower-profile selections. The number of folks I’ve seen log Familiar Touch and Lurker and East of Wall on Letterboxd this past week has been extremely heartening. Hell, I never would’ve prioritized Familiar Touch without Nick Davis’s glowing review, I finally got our own Cláudio Alves to watch it last night, and now everyone who’s going to see it after today will obviously have done so because of me, so trust the power of good word-of-mouth reception! If anything I should have had Sarah Friedland’s film on my radar after she won the Someone to Watch award at the most recent Indie Spirits. Oh, and the three prizes the film won in the Orizzonti selection of last year’s Venice Film Festival.  

Friedland’s clearly got a great pedigree even before factoring in the Best Feature and Breakthrough Director nominations from the Gothams. Luckily for those of us who’ve caught up to Familiar Touch, this adulation is fully deserved, and the crafty, intelligent film is proof enough of her talent . . . .

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