I do and those filmmakers you mention happen to be among my favorites as well. Perhaps engaging would be a better word?

I've also never understood the tendency some people have to knock one artist, in this case PTA, to lift another.

Laura Dern in conversation with the New Yorker.

Isn't that how this thread started?



You can't really complain if somebody follows your lead in making further comparisons between exactly the same filmmakers.

Well yes in the sense that I read the article Frau posted and responded to what Reichardt said about those directors.

Well no that was an entirely different conversation about financing and box office, not how good or bad one thinks a director is. In any case like I said it wasn't my lead, Reichardt made those comparisons bringing those directors up not I.

I'm afraid I don't see how your comment from the opening thread isn't a case of using PTA and Linklater as sticks to beat up on Reichardt. Her films, apparently, "aren't personal" in the same way as theirs, and she deserves to be broke because she isn't making films like theirs (which we later discovered meant "not as entertaining").

That's certainly far more snarky than what Reichardt actually said, which seems like a perfectly reasonable comparison between herself and other American filmmakers who do similar work:
“I couldn’t point to a woman and say, ‘I’d like to have her career'. Linklater can make personal films and make a living, as can Gus Van Sant, Wes Anderson, P.T. Anderson, Todd Haynes, David O. Russell, and I can go on and on and on and name the list of men that can make personal films and make a life doing that.”

Like I said I would never have mentioned them in reference to her if I hadn't read the interview. Not sure how you're not seeing how or why I made that connection, but that's ok.

What I would like to make clear is I never said she 'deserves to be broke'. I would love to live in a culture where an artist like her would have full reign to create as she pleases while having many zeros in her bank account, but unfortunately we live in a culture that's perilously close to voting in a grotesque vaudeville act as its leader.

Personally, I've repeatedly said I respect Reichardt's talent and am looking forward to seeing the rest of her films. As for Certain Women, I saw it once at a press screening and twice at IFC Center, places you would think are as close to her target audience as can be and I have never seen more people asleep during a movie. Now it's certainly true that some of the best sleep you will ever get is at the movies, but I think this says something regarding how mainstream commercially viable a film would be. This last point is where this whole conversation started as in my view those guys are far closer to mainstream sensibilities than she which is why I felt it disingenuous for her to make the comparison.

To clarify more I don't think a film putting you asleep automatically makes it a bad film. Tarkovsky for me is one of, if not my favorite filmmaker, and I've dozed off during each of his films multiple times.

While I see the talent on display in Certain Women, I simply failed to connect with it enough to meet Reichardt on her level. Now you could say the problem is me, but in my view I think she is culpable too.

This is a film about ascribing value to things through our actions. The stories are simple so I will be brief.
I don't write about very many new films. I've just made this into one of them.

An analysis as elegant as the film itself.

This was beautiful. Thanks man.

I saw this film a couple weeks back. What most surprises me still is how many times I laughed aloud--how many moments I found genuinely funny. I'm thinking mostly of the first act (and its epilogue), but even the second and third acts had their moments.



I wasn't rolling in the aisles in a fit of riotous laughter, of course, but based on what I had read before seeing the film, I just wasn't expecting it.

Yes. Also, almost everything James Le Gros ever does or says.

swo, you magnificent value-ascribing bastard. That was a great take on the film. Thanks.

Thanks everyone for the kind words. I also just realized that the three stories here pretty broadly cover the areas of work, family, and friendship, respectively, which (along with health) are often brought up as the main contributors to personal happiness.

Given their status on Blu-Ray,what are the chances that Criterion pick up Meek's Cutoff/Wendy and Lucy from Oscilloscope?

Or Old Joy from Kino! PLEASE.

It's as if Reichardt listened carefully and respectfully to the many and various objections of her critics, and then incorporated into one film everything anybody ever complained about, raised to the power ten. I don't know why the hell I liked it, I can only report that I left the theatre feeling bemused, yet refreshed and somehow lighter of heart. The best I can come up with is that Reichardt knows how to show someone driving a truck -- for one small example -- in a way that is immersive and pleasurable.

And oh my god it just kills me the way Kristen Stewart delicately dabs her mouth with a napkin that Magnificent. I'm still basking in the afterglow.

The moral of the story is:
1) if the filmmaker has a cinematic eye, it doesn't matter whether or not the subject is supposedly 'uncinematic'; and
2) no subject is uncinematic.

Disgracefully I've only just watched this.

I thought she reached a formal and expressive peak with Old Joy. With Certain Women she just wiped me out again. She has virtually mastered a form of personal cinema in which every single thought or emotion is expressed entirely visually. I don't think there's anyone working in movies today with her total formal control. Not even directors I regard hghly like PTA and Refn at his best. To say nothing of what drives her and her seemingly endless compassion and empathy.

The comments from the person above called black hat seem to me to embody nothing in themselves about Reichardt or her movie and everything about the viewer.