Festivals, festivals everywhere
Sept. 5 — Happy Friday, and happy awards season! With the Telluride Film Festival and Venice Film Festivals kicking off this past weekend, awards season is in full swing. There are plenty of films to look forward to, but here are four of my big winners when it comes to buzz.
✍️ “Hamnet” – Much like Paul Mescal, I too find the positive reception to Chloé Zhao’s “Hamnet” to be a huge relief. I read the Maggie O’Farrell novel this movie is based on earlier this year, and it completely wrecked me. It’s nice to hear the movie is doing the same. It’s all I can do to keep my hopes from getting astronomically high.
💼 “No Other Choice” – I’ve never met a Park Chan-wook movie I didn’t like. So, a Park Chan-wook movie about a man who, when faced with the prospect of getting a new job, decides to “eliminate the competition?” Sign me UP. Keep an eye on Venice this weekend, if you have the time. This might win The Golden Lion.
🧨 “A House of Dynamite” – The fact that a new Kathryn Bigelow is getting good buzz? That’s music to my ears! I love a hard-boiled political thriller, and Bigelow’s new film about a mysterious missile launched at the U.S. feels right up my alley. Can you say “Fail Safe?”
⛪ “The Testament of Ann Lee” – Directed by Mona Fastvold and written by Fastvold and her partner Brady Corbet (a sort of inverse of the creative team of last year’s “The Brutalist”) – getting good reviews out of Venice is one of the best things that could have happened to me. This is a sentence I never thought I would write, but I’m beyond pumped for this musical about Ann Lee, the founder of the Shaker religion.
Festival season doesn’t just take place in the abstract. Right here in Georgia, we’ve got Out on Film coming up starting Sept. 25-Oct. 10, the Georgia Latino International Film Festival Oct. 2-5, the Rome International Film Festival Nov. 6-9, the Atlanta Women’s Film Festival Sept. 24-28, the SCAD Savannah Film Festival Oct. 25-Nov. 1, and more.
Without further ado … Action!
📉 According to the Georgia Film Office, 245 film and television productions brought in $2.3 billion in the fiscal year that ended in June. That’s down by nearly 50 percent from the same period in 2022.
📽️ The documentary “Acts of Reparation,” which follows two friends as they try to reckon with the history of slavery, is screening for free at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church on Sept. 26. There will be a Q&A with directors Selina Lewis Davidson and Macky Alston after the screening.
🎉 Submissions for the next iteration of ATLfilmparty, a short film showcase, close TONIGHT at 11:59 p.m. Submit your film for the Oct. 25 event here.
🎭 A new Shakespeare series called “A Shakespeare Happening” will premiere in Avondale Estates on Sept. 13.
🍿 Perhaps there’s hope after all, folks – according to a new NRG study, Generation Alpha (kids 12 and under) prefer going to the movie theater over streaming. Huzzah!
💔 Actor Graham Greene, who you might know from productions like “Dances With Wolves,” “The Last of Us,” or “Reservation Dogs,” passed away this week. He was 73 years old.
This week’s newsletter includes a look into the Georgia International Latino Film Festival and a review of the new film “Splitsville.” Plus, a new segment from me highlighting some of my favorite performances this year, what movies you can see in theaters this weekend, and some reading and listening recommendations for your lunch break.
Thanks for reading!
Sammie
🎬 Experience the power of story at Art Farm’s first Film Showcase Weekend. Join us for a special screening of Parrot Kindergarten and a live conversation with the director and film’s subject. On Sat., Sept. 13. Get tickets here! SPONSOR MESSAGE
Georgia International Latino Film Festival to return Oct. 2-5
🍿 The Georgia Latino International Film Festival will come back to Atlanta Oct. 2-5.
This is the 14th annual iteration of the festival, which is the only curated Afro-Latino film festival in the Southeast. For the first time, this year’s opening night celebration will take place at the Fox Theatre.
The festival has not yet announced its full slate of films, but José Marquez, CEO and co-founder of the Georgia Latino Film Alliance, was able to share the names of a couple of guests the festival plans to honor, including Puerto Rican actor Ramón Rodríguez, titular star of the television series “Will Trent.” Marquez said the festival also plans to honor Puerto Rican actor Carlos Ponce, who has starred in many telenovelas over the years.
🎞️ Learn more about the festival here.
Chamblee has it all this fall
SPONSORED BY DISCOVER DEKALB
✨ A Taste of Chamblee offers something for everyone, ranging from classic American dishes to international flavors, sure to delight and leave you craving more.
The 3rd Spot Watch Party event series invites you to bring your seats, grab your eats from a downtown restaurant, and meet on the green to cheer on your favorite teams. Let downtown Chamblee become your third spot beyond home and work.
➞ From the 3rd Spot Watch Party to A Taste of Chamblee, a truly memorable experience is guaranteed in Chamblee.
In ‘Splitsville,’ relationship anxieties are put to the comedic test
WEEKLY FILM REVIEW
🪓 “Splitsville,” directed by Michael Angelo Covino from a script he wrote with Kyle Marvin, is about the very concept of honesty – when to tell the truth and how – taken to the extreme.
In fact, brutal honesty sets our story in motion. When Ashley’s (Adria Arjona) attempt to give her husband Carey (Marvin) a handjob on the way to their friends Paul (Covino) and Julie’s (Dakota Johnson) vacation home ends in a fatal car accident, the truth comes spilling out – she has been unfaithful, and she wants a divorce. After quite an amusing credits sequence, Carey seeks solace in Paul and Julie, who offer him another nugget of truth: they have an open marriage, and it’s the key to their healthy relationship – that is, until Carey’s often too-open-and-honest tendencies blow it all up.
Covino and Marvin’s sensibilities feel like a cross between Judd Apatow and Elaine May – think a joke-a-minute extravaganza about a group of people who all feel a little bit like Charles Grodin’s Lenny in “The Heartbreak Kid” (Okay, maybe they’re not that terrible). It’s over the top, but the comic anxiety in “Splitsville” stems from the very real insecurities that plague any 30-or 40-something attempting to navigate romantic relationships.
Spotlight: Josh Brolin, ‘Weapons’
Welcome to a new weekly Scene segment: Spotlight! As awards season heats up, I’ll be taking a moment each week to highlight the actors, directors, writers, etc. who I think are deserving of recognition. Will they be recognized by the Academy? Who knows! But they would be if I were in charge, and that’s all that matters here.
*Slight spoilers for Zach Cregger’s “Weapons” ahead*
✂️ There’s a moment in “Weapons” where, during a dream, Archer (Josh Brolin) steps into his child’s bedroom to find his son awake. We know it’s a dream; Matthew has been missing for a month, and in the bed he’s unmoving – alive, but catatonic. Still, Archer wells up with emotion and attempts to tell his son how much he loves him.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t say it to you,” he says, voice quivering, still unable to name what, exactly, it is. “I wanted to say it to you all the time, because I felt it all the time.”
Brolin is genuinely heartbreaking in this moment, both as a man who has lost a child and as a man who never fully understood how to connect to that child – how to love him, and how to show him that love in earnest. His rugged, handsome face sags under the weight of that realization, the anger he has felt at everyone thus far in the film – at the authorities, at the school – turned inward. As he finally starts to say the actual words out loud, a terrifying image suddenly takes the place of his son, scaring him out of his sleep. He sits up in bed (his son’s bed, where he’s been sleeping since Matthew disappeared), and takes a beat before yelling, “What the F*CK??”
This scene encapsulates everything that makes Brolin wonderful in “Weapons.” Beyond having one of the best faces in cinema – can you say, “weathered?”– Brolin is well-suited to Archer’s particular brand of stunted emotional intelligence. He’s tough and a little bit scary, taking out his pain on those around him – when we meet Matthew a little later and learn he was a bit of a bully before he disappeared, it comes as no surprise – but when he’s alone, Brolin plays Archer depleted of any posturing, sinking into a physicality just on the edge of deterioration. When he’s alone, Archer can admit to himself that one of the reasons he’s so angry is because he doesn’t know if Matthew knows that he loves him. And there’s nobody to blame but himself for that.
🛏️ Read more on “Weapons” here.
At the Movies!
If you’re looking for a movie to see in theaters this week, here’s what you’ve got to look forward to!
Movies releasing this weekend:
🛥️ “Splitsville”
✝️ “The Conjuring: Last Rites”
💌 “Love, Brooklyn”
🍎 “Everything To Me”
🫂 “The Threesome”
📱 “Lurker”
👯 “Twinless”
🌺 “Tinā”
Special Events:
📼 Don Hertzfeldt’s Animation Mixtape @ The Plaza (Friday-Thursday)
🏎️ Reel Friends: “Speed Racer” in 35mm @ The Plaza (Saturday)
🎥 “Heart of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse” @ The Tara (Friday-Sunday)
💊 “Play It As It Lays” in 4K @ The Tara (Friday-Tuesday)
🦈 “Jaws” 50th Anniversary @ The Tara (Friday-Monday)
🇻🇳 “Apocalypse Now” 1979 Roadshow Version @ The Tara (Saturday)
🏰 Nakato: “Castle in the Sky” @ The Tara (Sunday-Tuesday)
🍳 “The Breakfast Club” 40th Anniversary (Friday-Wednesday)
🎬 Experience the power of story at Art Farm’s first Film Showcase Weekend. Join us for a special screening of Parrot Kindergarten and a live conversation with the director and film’s subject. On Sat., Sept. 13. Get tickets here! SPONSOR MESSAGE
Lights, Camera, Action!
💸 A24 took the independent cinema world by storm over a decade ago. What will happen as they try to move into the world of blockbusters? This wonderful Neprofile from The New Yorker on the company discusses how A24 execs approach the world of production and distribution, and how the company’s blockbuster aspirations might affect the long run.
🇮🇹 “The Big Picture” is finally back in earnest! Hosts Sean and Amanda were both recently at the Telluride and Venice Film Festivals, respectively, and are back to talk about what it’s like on the ground and what movies they came away loving. Take a listen here.
🎥 If you’ve ever wondered where the concept of film’s auteur theory came from, now’s your chance to learn. On a recent episode of the “Critics at Large” podcast, host Vinson Cunningham talks to The New Yorker staff writer Richard Brody about the origins of the auteur theory in the mid-twentieth century, and how directors have strived for artistic freedom ever since.
🖊️ Today’s Scene was edited by Julie E. Bloemeke.
Correction: a previous version of this newsletter said that the Shakespeare series in Avondale Estates starts on Sept. 15. It actually starts on Sept. 13, and the date has been updated.
