Category Archives: Features

Independent film studio A24 is a powerhouse that just won’t stop

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In 2013, A24 made waves promoting the wild indie film Spring Breakers, even going so far as to launch an Oscar campaign for James Franco with the slogan “Consider this sh*t.” Immediately, they were different. Immediately, they were refreshing.

In 2014, A24 distributed critical gems still talked about today. Most notably among them were Enemy, Under the Skin, Locke, Obvious Child and A Most Violent Year.

In 2015, A24 didn’t just stick its foot in the Oscar door — it shoved it open and sweeped nametags off the table to make a spot for itself. Ex Machina won Best Visual Effects. Brie Larson won Best Lead Actress for Room. Amy won Best Documentary Feature. And they still made other darlings: Slow West, While We’re Young and The End of the Tour.

In 2016, A24 made history, as Moonlight won Best Motion Picture, making it the first film with an all-black cast and the first LGBTQ+ film to do so.

David Bornfriend/A24/Courtesy

Its other films that year continued to expand how we perceive cinema. The Witch further defined the contemporary horror film. Krisha introduced us to Trey Edward Shults. Green Room reminded us of Jeremy Saulnier. 20th Century Women made the word “sublime” tangible. And The Lobster and Swiss Army Man are two of the most fucking bizarre and wonderful movies of recent memory.

And in 2017, A24 looks to do more.

In an age where film is dying in a bland spate of sameness, A24 not only knows to be different, but to have a purpose and to be true. That’s why each film it distributes feels specifically like an A24 film, like a part of the A24 brand. Nothing really feels out of place or, what would be worse, indistinguishable, as the creatives are like gallery curators with little of the stereotypical snob and far more fun.

They go from making a Tinder account for the artificially intelligent robot in Ex Machina to starting a Twitter page for the goat in The Witch, from sending media physical messages in a bottle for Swiss Army Man to opening a shop with ghost sheets for A Ghost Story. And it’s not just out-there gestures like these; A24 hosts meticulously designed plans that place each film in a spot to succeed.

A24/Courtesy

The company also knows to diversify within that brand. This isn’t your Fox Searchlights or your Sony Pictures Classics, where there’s almost too much that’s indistinguishable. With A24, even films seen by only a few feel singular in and of themselves. Free Fire is an action packed, guns-ablazing joy ride, with ravishingly badass posters to accompany. The Lovers is an odd yet deeply realized, deeply felt and deeply funny romantic comedy that’s a bit more friendly to an older crowd, featuring the ever wonderful Debra Winger and Tracy Letts. It Comes At Night haunts our paranoid nightmares, subverting horror expectations and getting people talking. Good Time is a neon trip — a frenetic, chaotic and deliciously addictive crime film with a Robert Pattinson we’ve never met before. And A Ghost Story transcends the dimensions of cinema, glaring into our bodies and our souls like only the most profound pieces of art can.

That’s only what A24 has released in 2017 so far. It would be tough to be evaluative of an upcoming slate, but it’s not surprising that A24 films are the current talk of the festival circuit, as the company has four more that could make their own weird and gleeful stamp on the year.

First, at the beginning of October, comes The Florida Project, from Tangerine director Sean Baker. A testament to diversifying, the film stars children, with the lead, Brooklynn Prince, being merely 7. Critics have already deemed it as one of the great films about childhood with others guaranteeing that Willem Dafoe is nominated for an Oscar.

A24/Courtesy

Nearing Halloween, the more horrific side of Yorgos Lanthimos, director of The Lobster, will be unveiled with The Killing of a Sacred Deer. A Cannes premiere like The Florida Project, Sacred Deer has been received with a bit less unanimity than Baker’s film, but the intensity of the divide makes it all the more fascinating. A24 is a distributor that will take chances, a distributor that wants to make “radical work,” and Lanthimos’ picture certainly falls in that realm.

As November comes, something quite special arrives: Greta Gerwig’s directorial debut Lady Bird. An incredibly successful writer and actor already, giving one of her most moving performances in A24’s 20th Century Women, Gerwig is a talent that needs further platform, and for good reason. Premiering at Telluride Film Festival and moving to Toronto International Film Festival, Lady Bird is one of the most lovingly spoken about films to have traveled to one or both of those cities. More than a few critics have deemed it their favorite of the Colorado festival, and as it’s traveled to Canada, some have even expected the film to resonate in a similarly way to the landmark Boyhood, which, in turn, could lead to a legitimate Oscar threat.

Wrapping up the busy year, A24 will release The Disaster Artist, the James Franco-directed-and-uarring film about the making of the iconically trashed The Room, in December. The film visited South by Southwest as a work in progress, and was lauded at the time. Screening as a prepared cut last night at Toronto International Film Festival’s Midnight Madness, the film received a standing ovation from the crowd, who stayed on their feet throughout the entire Q&A afterward, something many festival frequenters had never seen before. Maybe with The Disaster Artist, an A24 James Franco awards campaign could have some results. “Oh, hi Oscars.”

A24/Courtesy

No other distributor (and production company) garners buzz quite like this. The Shape of Water premiered to adoration, but no one is really mentioning Fox Searchlight. Call Me by Your Name is said to be one of the most emotionally affecting films of the year, but few go out of their way to talk about it within the context of the Sony Pictures Classics brand. None of this is to put down those films, but it really does make something clear.

A24 isn’t just a vehicle through which its movies are funneled. It becomes a part of the movies themselves, almost as an auteur figure behind them, which is undoubtedly a reason why, by the end of the year, A24 will be the studio that stands out the most. Its films are almost like events nowadays, something previously ascribed only to studio blockbusters.

But most importantly, A24 is making the movies fun again — not just the movies themselves, but the anticipation of them, the promotional and paratextual consumption of them and the discourse created in their aftermath. Movie-going isn’t just sitting in a theater; it’s everything else too. And if companies like A24 keep innovating, the movies might have a chance.

Featured image via A24.

How ‘It’ made a killing at the box office, laughed away initial expectations

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We have an arm-severing, face-chomping, immortal demon-clown to thank for saving the box office. New Line Cinema and Warner Bros.’ It raked in a record-breaking $123.1 million — finalized numbers after $117.2 estimates. Like a red Derry-branded balloon floating skyward from an evil death-sewer, the box office rose from its historic slump. Considering that the film’s initial box office projections were in the $50 million range, It’s runaway success becomes all the more remarkable. But just how did It conquer the box office?

For starters, It didn’t have much to compete with. Since the other film opening this weekend was the critically-panned Home Again, the biggest threat to It was The Hitman’s Bodyguard. That film has been meekly holding up the box office since it opened three weeks ago, so the arrival of It injected some much-needed fresh energy into movie-goers. Additionally, there hadn’t been an event film arguably since Dunkirk in July, and even that juggernaut of a film didn’t have as broad of an appeal as It. Slim pickings at the marquee can create the right circumstances for an opening weekend triumph, but not necessarily one that generates $100 million. For those numbers, It needed the support of its target audience, and I’m not just talking about the demon-clown enthusiasts out there.

While that demographic is hopefully small, the appeal of It casts a wide net. Fans of the original 1990 miniseries likely came out in droves to see an updated version of the story that traumatized them 27 years ago. Then, there’s fans of the original novel, and in broader terms, Constant Readers — Stephen King’s own base of devotees, also known as the poor souls that sat through The Dark Tower. Of course, It attracted horror junkies in general, some of whom likely brought large groups of friends, as the genre entails, which accordingly gave the film’s box office numbers an extra boost. It also came hot off the heels of Stranger Things, and the film’s trailers released at around the same time that Stranger Things 2’s marketing campaign began. Both properties are 80’s-set horror stories featuring Finn Wolfhard, so fans of the hit Netflix show likely contributed to the massive opening weekend.

Ignoring the wide demographic that It appeals to, the film’s marketing was exemplary. Despite some lukewarm reactions to the first photo of Pennywise, a series of stellar trailers — creepy music and terrifying shots that tantalized without spoiling anything — ensured that It maintained a significant amount of hype. Per Variety, when footage for the film was displayed at CinemaCon last March, It started 235,000 new social media conversations, just slightly trailing behind the most talked about film, Spider-Man: Homecoming, which started 251,000 conversations. Even as It’s release date came nearer, the marketing maintained its successful streak — just watch this.

And then reviews dropped. Critics were largely favorable toward It — our own Levi Hill called it “the best Stephen King adaptation outside of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.” Of course, not all critically favorable films are box office hits — look no further than It Comes at Night — but still, critic responses undeniably play a part in determining financial success. Horror films too often rely on jump scares alone, so when one like It is praised for its craft and emotional resonance, cinephiles will show up for opening night.

It’s positive critical reception points to one simple fact about the film’s box office success: It is just damn good, and audiences will pay for damn good filmmaking. The script — credited to Chase Palmer, Gary Dauberman and Cary Fukunaga — deftly balances scares and character development, while Andrés Muschietti’s direction brings those scares to life. The way he directs Bill Skarsgård, who is sublime as Pennywise, makes the character hilarious at times, but always frightening. Additionally, Chung-hoon Chung proves why he is one of today’s best cinematographers — his unnerving shots amplify the terror, and he can now add It to a filmography that already includes The Handmaiden and Oldboy. Of course, the ensemble cast includes a host of incredible child actors, all with terrific careers ahead of them.

It’s financial success fits within the box office narrative of late — audiences can still parse cinematic quality, and they will pay for it. The fact remains that Michael Bay still has a Hollywood career, but Transformers: The Last Knight underperformed in the global box office — even in China, whose market made the franchise’s previous entry a billion dollar movie. Similarly, the critically panned King Arthur: Legend of the Sword was an outright flop, making $146 million on a budget of $175 million.

In contrast, original films like Get Out, Dunkirk, The Big Sick, Baby Driver and Girls Trip are all box office successes, and while they’re not pulling in cash like Wonder Woman or any of this year’s Marvel films, all of these movies show that quality filmmaking pays off in spades — Get Out made $252 million on a $4.5 million budget, Dunkirk will end up with $500 million worldwide and Girls Trip broke $100 million domestically, which is a first for a Black-led, Black-written, Black-directed and Black-produced film. It’s massive opening weekend is the latest film that speaks to an obvious message — good movies will generally make good money. Whether or not Hollywood listens is up in the air.

Featured image via Warner Bros.