Tribeca 2022: David Lynch is The Man Behind the Curtain in "Lynch / Oz"

by Jason Adams

Like many of you I have deeply embedded childhood memories of watching The Wizard of Oz on television as a child. And probably also like many of you the film was presented to me as a generational hand-off, a passing of the cinematic baton. My mom was a lifelong fan, and now twas my turn to become the latest Friend of Dorothy (if she only knew). That yellow brick road stretches in one ear and out the other across eighty entire years of movie-lovers, mother to son to son to daughter and on to every Auntie Em adjacent, with something in there for everybody. I can trace my love of Horror Movies right to it – how many nightmares have those short-jacketed cater-waiter flying monkeys stormed through? Others, probably you, can trace your love of the Movie Musical from sepia-toned Kansas where Judy first regaled us of rainbows...

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FYC: "The Green Knight" for Best Costume Design

by Cláudio Alves

While we're at the dawn of a new year, the 2021 awards season is far from over. Academy Award nominations are still a month away, so there's plenty of time to champion one's cinematic favorites before hope withers away on Oscar morning. To start 2022 off on the right foot, let's investigate our predilect craft category – Best Costume Design. There are plenty of glamorous contenders, but the one I'm most rooting to see nominated chooses a more understated path to greatness. Costume designer Malgosia Turzanska outfitted David Lowery's adaptation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in simple designs rich in visceral textures, colors shining through the shadowy cinematography, ancient symbolism, and more…

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TIFF Review: "The Old Man and The Gun"

by Chris Feil

David Lowery has already proven a difficult director to pin down easily, giving us film’s as divergent as Aint The Bodies Saints, Pete’s Dragon, and A Ghost Story. His newest film, The Old Man and the Gun, fills some of the spaces between those, and a clearer directorial voice is beginning to take shape. Lowery’s films want to immerse us in a feeling, to mire over circumstances that have inevitable ends we fight against. And this time, his film also pointedly faces its own metafictional end by showcasing what is to be the final performance of Robert Redford as a con man refusing to give up the habitual ghost of robbing banks.

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Review: Pete's Dragon

By Chris Feil

It's at the outset of David Lowery's reinvention of Pete's Dragon that the titular beast is intended more as a puppy to our namesake hero. What follows is a sharp left turn from the original's vaudevillian slapstick, with the "boy and his dog" approach used as a distinguishing characteristic from the aimless original and as an easy emotional access point for the audience. Gone are the musical numbers (though the hipster rock is cranked up to 11) and the buffoonery in favor of something more genuinely wraught straight from the heart.

But more importantly, this iteration of Elliott the dragon serves to stir more than just cutesy, cheap surrogate affection. Lowery is unafraid of scaring the kids and making the grown ups weep along the way. What remains is a family film about coping defenses, especially how we lean on our furry friends in the face of trauma.

This nuanced angle is made plain in the film's stunning prologue, confidently announcing those stark differences from its source and the emotional rollercoaster to come. The film is fascinated by moments of magic in the real world, and luckily Lowery has conjured a film that does just that, from Elliott's reveal to the organic emotions it creates. Yep, we finally have some magic at the movies this summer.

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