Forgiven
Crafts

John Michael McDonagh and Producer/Editor Elizabeth Eves on the Challenge of Making The Forgiven in the Sahara During a Pandemic

John Michael McDonagh came onto the scene with the one-two punch of The Guard in 2011 and Calvary in 2014, both of which were character-driven crime dramas set in the Irish filmmaker’s homeland that starred Brendan Gleeson. 2016’s War on Everyone was a very different kind of movie, a buddy crime-comedy starring Alexander Skarsgård and Michael Peña, and his new movie, The Forgiven, is another pivot from a director who […]

Scott Derrickson
Crafts

The Black Phone Director Scott Derrickson on Recreating His Childhood Fears From the ’70s and How He Met His Co-Writer

Director Scott Derrickson has had a pretty interesting career since making The Exorcism of Emily Rose in 2005. He helmed the Keanu Reeves-led remake of the classic sci-fi film The Day the Earth Stood Still, only to return to the horror genre with Sinister, which put him in business with prolific producer Jason Blum. and marked his first time working with Ethan Hawke. The success of that film led him […]

Columns

Tribeca Film Festival: Kyra Sedgwick on Directing the Quirky Romantic Comedy Space Oddity

A still from Space Oddity (image via Alar Kivilo) Kyra Sedgwick has been acting for most of her adult life, but five years ago, she transitioned into directing with Story of a Girl, which led to her directing episodes of television shows like Grace and Frankie, City on a Hill, Ray Donovan, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. One thing you can say about the annual Tribeca Festival is that it always tries […]

Good Luck to You Leo Grande
Columns

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande Director Sophie Hyde on Casting, Chemistry, and Working With the “Amazing” Emma Thompson

Growing up in a religious household, films like Sophie Hyde’s Good Luck to You, Leo Grande would be considered too “risqué” to watch. The film, which is now streaming on Hulu, is a powerful look at sex work and body positivity as well as self-pleasure and self-discovery, and it features both a standout performance from Emma Thompson and a star-making performance from Daryl McCormack (The Wheel of Time, Peaky Blinders). Good […]

Jurassic World Dominion
Columns

Jurassic World Dominion Director Colin Trevorrow on Working With Animatronics, Reuniting the Original Cast, and the Genius of Spielberg

Back in 2015, when Universal Pictures rebooted the Jurassic Park franchise with an entirely new concept, few insiders predicted that Jurassic World would wind up the top-grossing film of the year in terms of domestic box office — topping both a Star Wars movie and an Avengers sequel. What was certainly more predictable was the fact that there would be more Jurassic World films, culminating in Friday’s release of Jurassic World Dominion. Director Colin Trevorrow was behind […]

Dear Mr. Brody
Columns

Dear Mr. Brody Director Keith Maitland on His Fascinating Documentary and the Fate of All Those Unopened Letters

Those who read my Top 10 list last year might recall that my #2 movie of 2021 was the documentary Dear Mr. Brody, which told the incredible story of Michael Brody Jr., a 21-year-old hippie millionaire who in 1970 promised to give away his $25 million inheritance in an effort to usher in a new era of world peace. Naturally, thousands upon thousands of people were all too eager to write him […]

Robert Eggers
Direction

Director Series: Robert Eggers on His Epic Journey in Making Revenge-Fueled Viking Movie The Northman

Ever since his debut feature The Witch premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, writer-director Robert Eggers has established a reputation as a visionary auteur, something fully confirmed a few years later by his second feature, the black-and-white oddity The Lighthouse. Now, Eggers returns to theaters with The Northman, an expensive Viking epic and a film that Eggers wasn’t sure he even wanted to make until he had lunch with its eventual lead, […]

All the Old Knives
Columns

All the Old Knives Director Janus Metz on Why He Wanted to Work With Chris Pine, Thandiwe Newton and a Female DP

I first heard of Danish director Janus Metz when he made the 2010 war documentary Armadillo, which featured striking poster art depicting a hand grenade with the veins and ventricles of a human heart. It was the kind of poster that made you want to see the movie. It was seven years before Metz made his feature directorial debut with Borg vs. McEnroe, the tennis drama starring Shia LaBeouf, and now, five years […]

Iris Shim
Crafts

Umma Director Iris K. Shim on the Duality of Identity Within Her Sandra Oh-Led Horror Movie

The Evil Dead director Sam Raimi returns to his genre roots with the release of Umma, which marks the feature directorial debut of up-and-coming filmmaker Iris K. Shim (The House of Suh). The supernatural thriller stars two-time Golden Globe winner Sandra Oh (Killing Eve, Grey’s Anatomy) as Amanda, who is living a secluded life on a remote property where she and her daughter Chris (Fivel Stewart) work as beekeepers to produce honey. Amanda’s world is unexpectedly […]

Ti West X
Crafts

X Director Ti West on His Sex-Themed Slasher Movie and His First Question for Potential Cast Members

Writer-director Ti West has been doing the “elevated horror” thing since long before A24, the distributor of his new film X, made the subgenre cool. The filmmaker made a name for himself with his low-budget independent horror movies House of the Devil (2009) and The Innkeepers (2011) before changing things up a bit with his 2013 horror-thriller The Sacrament (produced by Eli Roth and inspired by Reverend Jim Jones) before making a full-on Western in with 2016’s In a Valley of […]