Serbia's "Father" is Amazing. And other Calgary Fest thoughts...

by Nathaniel R

"Father" wins Calgary International Film Festival

We're in an unbelievably overcrowded stretch of festivals -- AFI (a month early this year for some inexplicable reason), Middleburg, Chicago, and NewFest. And with all the movie madness, and our just concluded Montgomery Clift series, I realized with horror this weekend that I had neglected to share thoughts on the recently concluded Calgary International Film Festival.

I had the honor of being on the international narrative jury this year and after the jump, takes on the ten films we watched in ascending order of how much I dug them...

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Nathaniel on the Jury at CIFF

by Nathaniel R

All the Pretty Horses (Greece, 2020)

The Calgary International Film Festival begins today and will run through Sunday, October 4th I'm pleased to share the news that I'm on the International Narrative Feature jury this year (the fun kind of jury duty!) with Nancy Campbell and George Smalz. We're all attending virtually this year, of course, rather than in person...

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Krisha Deliriously Dares You Not To Spill The Turkey

Nothing just moves in Trey Edward Shults’ disorienting debut Krisha; it sloshes, slips, tackles, and caws. A dizzying symphony of brain-clattering sound, feverishly unhinged camerawork, and a tightknit, ink-blotter ensemble led by the ferocious Krisha Fairchild, Shults’ get the family together for Thanksgiving drama shoots you right off your seat and holds you hostage over the darkest edge of the human id. Red onions notoriously make you weep but under Shults’ rack-focus eye, they make you want to hurl too. Such portent may lead one to expect a draining, inhumane slog through the mud.

But that alone would be far too easy. This is an exhilarating hostage situation, not just by witnessing a filmmaker’s virtuosic warp over cinematic language but also by the hot cohesion of its richly observed and highly specific setting, and the barbed black comedy that comes along with it. It feels like home, which is to say, Krisha is the waking nightmare of reckoning yourself against the eyes and ears that know you best, a big hug from your aunt that just may choke you from the inside out.

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