Email Author Jonathan Kiefer

2013 Stories by Jonathan Kiefer

• "Frances Ha": Noah Baumbach Finds Greta Gerwig's Best Side

  published May 22, 2013

  A visually pithy victory of bittersweetness over cynicism, and therefore arguably a career highlight for director Noah Baumbach, Frances... More >>

• "Elemental": Three Visions for Saving the World

  published May 22, 2013

  Locally based director-producers Gayatri Roshan and Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee structure their environmental documentary as a triptych of profiles in... More >>

• "Sun Don't Shine": Naturally Lit Killers

  published May 15, 2013

  The foundation for Amy Seimetz's directorial debut, which she also wrote, produced, and co-edited, is boilerplate film noir: There's a dude... More >>

• "Something in the Air": Just in Time for May '68

  published May 15, 2013

  World-cinema mainstay Olivier Assayas' inviting new film is about young French people and the lived legacy of May '68. Interestingly, these are... More >>

• "The Iceman": The Cliche of the Cold-Hearted Hitman

  published May 15, 2013

  Its title and the gentle stress on Chris Evans in a supporting role notwithstanding, The Iceman is in no way another comics spinoff, but... More >>

• "Stories We Tell": Documenting Family Secrets

  published May 15, 2013

  Where fact-fiction hybrid documentaries are concerned, the game of wondering what's really "true" can too easily degenerate into mere... More >>

• "In the House": Hitchcock Gets Meta

  published May 8, 2013

  Yes, the French still love Jerry Lewis, but they also still love Hitchcock -- irrepressibly, deconstructively. More an impassioned... More >>

• Schlock and Awe: A Festival of Flesh Piers, Ghost Cats, and Japan's First Nude Scene

  published May 8, 2013

  "Since last night it's been one horror after another," says a guy in Ghost Cat of Otama Pond, suggesting one possible tagline for the... More >>

• Refill Your Popcorn: San Francisco International Film Festival, Week 2

  published May 1, 2013

  Invasion of the Body Snatchers May 5 at the Castro Theatre This 1978 remake of the sci-fi staple, shrewdly set in San... More >>

• "Bert Stern: Original Madman": A Pioneer of Famous-Naked-Lady Photography

  published May 1, 2013

  Having come up through Look magazine with Stanley Kubrick, whom he recalls, not unapprovingly, as "like his movies: mean, cruel, and... More >>

• "Simon Killer": The Ennui of French Crime

  published April 24, 2013

  Simon Killer A new Sundance scoop from the Williamsburg-via-NYU film collective that brought us Martha Marcy May Marlene, Antonio... More >>

• Shooting the Moon: With "Room 237," Rodney Ascher Confronts Some of the Ghosts of "The Shining."

  published April 17, 2013

  Remember in the climax of The Shining when Wendy Torrance runs for her life through the sinister labyrinth of Overlook Hotel, and she... More >>

• "The Angels' Share": Young Men and Their Lovable Boozing

  published April 17, 2013

  Ken Loach could be the king of kitchen-sink realism, if only he'd tolerate that term or the concept of royal privilege. Socialist stalwart... More >>

• 

  FEATURED STORY

  Upstream Color's Shane Carruth Talks About Interpretation, Control, and Already Getting Into His Next Film

  published Apr 11, 2013

  "Spooky action at a distance" was Einstein's skeptical phrase for quantum entanglement, and as good a summary as any for the mysteries at play in Shane Carruth's Upstream Color. The official synopsis ... More >>

• With The Clock, SFMOMA Lets You Experience Every Moment of Your Day Through the Movies

  published Apr 10, 2013

  Since the beginning, artists have yearned to stop time, or at least to examine their nagging awareness that it's unstoppable. But only San Rafael native Christian Marclay has so successfully managed ... More >>

• FEATURED STORY

  R.I.P. Les Blank: Five Highlights From the Career of a Great Documentarian

  published Apr 09, 2013

  The rich lore of Les Blank includes a story he told about dropping out of grad school at UC Berkeley, feeling aimless for a while, then seeing Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal and being steered away,... More >>

• "No Place on Earth": A Literal Underground Movement

  published April 10, 2013

  Cinematographically, caves are a challenge. So are Nazi survival stories. Set the latter in the former and you've got a double-decker challenge... More >>

• "The Company You Keep": Robert Redford Brings Back Activism

  published April 10, 2013

  Robert Redford's new thriller seems pleasingly to share some DNA with his old thrillers — the ones he starred in, like Three Days of... More >>

• "Disconnect": The Online World is Still a Dangerous Place

  published April 10, 2013

  Director Henry Alex Rubin has only helmed documentaries before Disconnect, so it seems fair to cut him some slack for dramatic... More >>

• Life Wish: The Pleasantly Terminal Films of a Thai Director

  published April 3, 2013

  Death fantasies abound in the films of Thai auteur Pen-ek Ratanaruang, so how is it that they often seem so life-affirming? "Many books say... More >>

• "The Revolutionary Optimists": Life in the Slums

  published April 3, 2013

  Obviously idealism drives The Revolutionary Optimists, a warmly observational documentary by the Bay Area-based team of Nicole Newnham... More >>

• "Renoir": Good Use of Color

  published April 3, 2013

  Imagine how daunting it must have been to make Renoir. We'll be expecting every frame to radiate old bourgeois serenity like a painting... More >>

• "Reality": Reality TV Paranoia

  published April 3, 2013

  A richly empathetic experience, last year's Cannes Grand Prix winner from director Matteo Garrone (and a handful of co-writers) takes serious... More >>

• "Starbuck": Sperm Bank Crisis

  published March 27, 2013

  Not to suggest a Moby Dick spinoff, nor a Kara Thrace-intensive Battlestar Galactica prequel, nor some sort of... More >>

• "From Up on Poppy Hill": Kids Being Magical Kids

  published March 27, 2013

  Nostalgic beauty rules this latest from the gentle animation juggernaut Studio Ghibli, in which Japan's children of World War II come of age... More >>