the films of IRA SACHS (Keep the Lights On, Forty Shades of Blue etc)

His new one with Alfred Molina and John Lithgow kinda sounds like... a gay Make Way for Tomorrow! Seeing next week, hoping for a happy ending.

I've been close to two or three couples, gay and straight, who have been together for 45 years. I have a sense of the chapters in those stories. I think as a screenwriter, you want to reveal that history as organically as possible. And it's interesting how quickly you can accomplish something, you know? And that also helps that those two actors, I think, are they're doing something for both of them was very new, particularly Lithgow. This kind of naturalistic performance where you fully buy the history, I think is something that he does beautifully in the film but it's not something that he's been asked to do previously.

http://gawker.com/tribeca-ira-sachs-love-is-strange-is-more-than-a-gay-m-1564388578

not entirely on topic but: oh man i didn't know pearl paint was closing!

i can't think that i've seen any of this guy's stuff, receptive to recommendations if you're enthusiastic about anything, dr m

The two mentioned in thread title I quite like.

Add this one to the list. Maybe closer in spirit to Tomorrow's more famous antecedent, tho.

it was ... oooookay

This one's going to stick with me a lot longer than Forty Shades.

Admittedly, it seems inherently easier to engender sympathy for a) the elderly or near-elderly, and b) kids.

I loved this movie.

One of the rare movies whose script is sometimes better than the direction. It got poky in a couple of spots -- mostly when Chopin played for long interludes -- but I forgive them because those spots happen to be when Ben and George are working (with a student and painting, respectively), and cameras so rarely gaze on characters doing what they love. Career best from Molina and Lithgow, and Tomei and her son are fine too.

nice to see the table stage left in Julius where J0rdan, Stevie D, L0u, and I had drinks in spring '13.

Also: that spontaneous chat about infidelity was staged and acted with a freshness I rarely see in movies.

i believe there's a plaque there

liked the cop parties

Quite liked Love is Strange. Sachs' method of leaving out expository connecting scenes has a considerable emotional effect, eliminating moments that would have belaboured the melodrama. The "spontaneous chat about infidelity" that Alfred cited above is likely the best scene in the film--there's a complete lack of hysteria to this moment that I found frankly astonishing (had they had this conversation before?).

Not sure how I feel about a gay film ending with a shot of a young hetero couple, though, and the book-stealing subplot was...puzzling?

Little Men is in a similar key to the last one. viewing Brooklyn gentrification through the friendship of two recognizable NYC boy types. Goes fairly easy on the hero-villain stuff; possible breakthrough performance (in the arthouse realm, at least) by one Paulina Garcia as a Chilean-American dressmaker. And there's Greg Kinnear!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dk9-5M-PerQ

One of the main locations is down the block from Williamsburg noisedude bar Daddy's.

currently in a couple dozen theaters (Coral Gables, Soto), expanding thru September

what happened to starting a thread

(watching it tomorrow night)

i object when a thread devoted to a director's other film has nu-film content. this is not the case here.

possibly in yr burg now

My review.

saw Love Is Strange again, it is a really nice film

of his other films I’ve only seen Keep the Lights On. Would like to see Frankie. The imdb page for Ira Sachs includes a future entry for a miniseries based on Christodora, one of my favorite novels of the last few years

Little Men was impressive too. understated in a very appealing way

I like your review Alfred

there wasn’t much going on plot-wise in Frankie and like all of his films it was very restrained, but the Sintra setting and cinematography were beautiful and I liked its maxim “find it before you look for it”

the last two films seemed to be about the effects of gentrification on families in NY, this film also had undertones of generational wealth but its focus was more on relationships and it was more enigmatic. thought the ending was really nice

I like your review Alfred

― Dan S, Thursday, July 9, 2020

Thanks!

I liked the unexpected connection between two characters toward the end of Frankie, and the view of it once and then twice removed

can't believe he got Franz Rogowski and Ben Whishaw as a couple in the new one, feels like something I dreamed

Was thinking something similar

I can't wait to watch it. Have you two seen it?

Ira Sachs has quietly amassed one of the firmest of filmographies.

I remember when I was still working on the first one. Seems like only…a few decades ago

I’m actually thinking of the second one, sorry.

was looking forward to Ira Sachs' miniseries based on Christodora, the 2016 novel by Tim Murphy (who has since disappeared) about the inhabitants of an apartment building in the East Village during the AIDS epidemic. It is one of my favorite novels. The miniseries never materialized

I might have a chance to see Passages in a couple weeks, but otherwise don't know when it's playing outside of festivals

https://variety.com/2023/film/news/passages-nc-17-rating-director-slams-mpa-film-unrated-1235674235/

Sachs otm. Forgot to say I did catch this at the Milwaukee fest, might be my favorite thing he's done. Felt closest to Keep the Lights On, he's so good at filming intimacy. Quite a few times I was like wow, I can't believe I get to see this.

Peter Hujar's Day (!), starring Ben Whishaw (!), premiering at Sundance

Saw this yesterday and it was pretty fantastic, very cozy like a blanket of light

i really loved it, ben whishaw's body language while he holds forth is mesmerizing to watch

Good. I was gonna create a separate thread.

you get lost in the effortless reality of the thing, but every once in a while the director will do a rough cut or otherwise show you the seams of the film just to remind you what's actually going on

Easily one of my favorites of the year: expert namedropping without freezing into chicness.

Still haven't gotten around to seeing

$5 on Fandango.

And well worth it, caught it that way the other night. A perfect two-hander for sure, and the intentional moments of meta are fun without being distracting or wearying, everything 'snaps back' nicely. Whishaw handles the bulk of the dialogue by default and very well at that but Hall has the harder but no less compelling task as the interviewer. The expert namedropping point is crucial.

And at 74 minutes the perfect length

A distinct plus.

was wondering if this might come to Criterion Channel soon since Janus Films distributed it? plus they've already got that new Ben Whishaw collection.

it was so good. finding all that in an interview transcript is amazing.

It began with the Criterion imprimatur.

TIL that the cover of the novel A Little Life is a Peter Hujar photo:
https://ocula.com/art-galleries/pace-gallery/artworks/peter-hujar/orgasmic-man/

Peter Hujar was a great artist. He influenced David Wojnarowicz, another great artist, and Robert Mapplethorpe. All of them died of AIDS. It was an unimaginable loss of a whole generation of artists.

I know you all hated A Little Life, but I was so mesmerized by the audiobook that I listened to it again immediately after finishing it, for a second time, straight through. I know it's mining trauma for effect, but it really spoke to me

As far as Ira Sachs goes, I loved all of his films up until Passages, which I really disliked, so much so that I'm wary now about approaching any new film of his. I will watch it when it is not $20 on amazon prime or apple tv

Peter Hujar's Day: the subject matter was only of passing interest to me, but I really admired the visual approach. I've seen enough attempts at nailing down the 70s in recent film and television that all end up looking just a bit too glossy, whereas this felt authentic. Ben Whishaw is a great camera subject, too. I keep waiting for Sachs to make something else that clicks with me the way Little Men did a decade ago, and while this determinedly esoteric thing isn't quite it, I definitely preferred to the irredeemably unpleasant Passengers.

Just watched Peter Hujar’s Day, man I loved it to pieces. Everything about it was catnippy for me, thought the setting and performances were great, and I loved Sachs’ cinematic flourishes that very much took it out of the obvious staginess you could get with two people talking in a room. Perfect little movie imo.

cryptosicko and I have polar opposite attractions to Sachs: Little Men is his least interesting film (and not bad), while Passengers is one of those, "Yes, I have seen Franz Rogowski in my friends' lives."

loved the new one too

Screening and Q&A at MoMI this weekend

^Went to this and thoroughly enjoyed it

I can try to summarize the Q&A if you want

Also wonder how many of you knew he went to the same Memphis high school as Robert Gordon at the same time.

Would say it is like an Ursula K. Le Guin and Philip K. Dick situation, except that in this case I am pretty sure they knew each other at the time. #onethread

Dancing scene reminded me of
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDm_cptMRNI

Thoroughly enjoyed this, was reminded while watching of the book Talk, reissued by NYRB a decade ago, consisting solely of transcripts of conversations between three friends. Turns out the interviewer in this film, Linda Rosenkrantz, also recorded/made Talk!

Also, I imagined John Mulaney watching a screener of this and kicking himself for not having the chance to do this role.