Arts Culture

Master vs. apprentice

Longtime Albemarle County resident Jack Fisk ranks among movie-making’s greatest production designers. His current Academy Award nomination for Best Production Design for Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon is well-deserved. Another frontrunner in the category, Ruth De Jong, is nominated for her work on Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. De Jong’s cinematic path to designing acclaimed […]

Justin Humphreys | March 6, 2024

Arts Culture

Take a seat

The Holdovers Director Alexander Payne is a devoted cinephile who loves the style of intimate, wryly funny, character-driven films that were plentiful 50 years ago but are now nearly extinct. Payne’s films honor this bygone era of storytelling in welcome ways, including his newest work, The Holdovers. Set in 1970, the reliable Paul Giamatti stars […]

Justin Humphreys | October 25, 2023

Arts Culture

Iconoclastic as ever

For many years, filmmaker and UVA film professor Kevin Jerome Everson has figured prominently in Charlottesville’s moviemaking community. His experimental films have continually bypassed cinematic conventions in favor of “formal exercises,” he explains. A regular Virginia Film Festival guest, Everson will screen nine shorts on Friday, “all shot this calendar year,” he notes, and marked […]

Justin Humphreys | October 25, 2023

Arts Culture

Heads will roll

Set in ninth- and 10th-century Europe, Robert Eggers’ brutal revenge saga The Northman is a lavish, sweeping film, but its unrelenting gore will undoubtedly repel many viewers.  Loosely based on the Scandinavian legend that inspired Hamlet, with elements of Macbeth thrown in, The Northman’s antihero, young prince Amleth, vows revenge after seeing his father, King […]

Justin Humphreys | May 11, 2022

Arts Culture

Carnival swindle

From start to finish, Guillermo Del Toro’s Nightmare Alley is a dreary, plodding, flashy reminder of why filmmakers should leave great movies alone. The William Gresham novel was adapted into a 1947 film noir classic, and again by Del Toro­—but Del Toro’s misuse of excellent source material is the real nightmare here. The film follows […]

Justin Humphreys | January 26, 2022