Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.
Before we highlight this week’s picks, I want to give a special shout-out to our newly-launched Twitter account for Michael Snydel’s podcast Intermission. He’s sharing daily, well-curated streaming recommendations, so be sure to give it a follow!
Beast (Baltasar Kormakur)
There’s no better form of getting over a dead parent or spouse than combatting a killer animal. At least that’s the thesis of The Shallows, Crawl, and now Beast. Arriving in the coveted late-August B-movie spot (basically the January doldrums for slightly cooler people), Beast is a lean and likably earnest, if slightly unremarkable, creature feature. The newest from director Baltasar Kormakur––who has not quite graduated to the IP blockbuster class while his contemporary Jaume Collet-Serra...
Before we highlight this week’s picks, I want to give a special shout-out to our newly-launched Twitter account for Michael Snydel’s podcast Intermission. He’s sharing daily, well-curated streaming recommendations, so be sure to give it a follow!
Beast (Baltasar Kormakur)
There’s no better form of getting over a dead parent or spouse than combatting a killer animal. At least that’s the thesis of The Shallows, Crawl, and now Beast. Arriving in the coveted late-August B-movie spot (basically the January doldrums for slightly cooler people), Beast is a lean and likably earnest, if slightly unremarkable, creature feature. The newest from director Baltasar Kormakur––who has not quite graduated to the IP blockbuster class while his contemporary Jaume Collet-Serra...
- 9/9/2022
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Over the past few years, Ricky D’Ambrose has established himself as one of the more intriguing independent American directors. His shorts, especially Six Cents in the Pocket (2015) and Spiral Jetty (2017), are above all founded upon a radical minimalism enforced by both budget and style, recalling Robert Bresson in the quick, close-up shots of hands, objects, and faces, conveyed with a directness that suggests a shifting complexity just under the surface. Coupled with this predilection is perhaps D’Ambrose’s most singular characteristic: his lovingly crafted, authentic-looking recreations or representations of various scattered material: newspapers, journal articles, postcards, notes, subway maps, correspondence, and other sundry objects. This was especially pronounced in Spiral Jetty, a film about an archivist who uncovers a dark mystery through the papers of a deceased celebrated psychologist.
With his debut feature, Notes on an Appearance, D’Ambrose takes this central idea and elaborates upon it. David,...
With his debut feature, Notes on an Appearance, D’Ambrose takes this central idea and elaborates upon it. David,...
- 8/17/2018
- by Ryan Swen
- The Film Stage
Writing about Ricky D’Ambrose for last year’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film, Vadim Rizov described the script of his debut feature, Notes on an Appearance, then in postproduction, as “giv[ing] a sense of a disciplined, honed gaze refined over years of self-tutoring.” That autodidact’s precision manifests, in shorts like Six Cents in the Pocket (2015) and Spiral Jetty (2015), in straight-on close-ups of people against blank white walls or monochromatic wallpaper, or of pictures and texts and cups of coffee on tables as the sun streams through the window, and an almost monastic sound mix of epistolary voiceover and […]...
- 8/17/2018
- by Mark Asch
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
Writing about Ricky D’Ambrose for last year’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film, Vadim Rizov described the script of his debut feature, Notes on an Appearance, then in postproduction, as “giv[ing] a sense of a disciplined, honed gaze refined over years of self-tutoring.” That autodidact’s precision manifests, in shorts like Six Cents in the Pocket (2015) and Spiral Jetty (2015), in straight-on close-ups of people against blank white walls or monochromatic wallpaper, or of pictures and texts and cups of coffee on tables as the sun streams through the window, and an almost monastic sound mix of epistolary voiceover and […]...
- 8/17/2018
- by Mark Asch
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
Editor’s note: Writer-director Ricky D’Ambrose’s feature debut “Notes on an Appearance” was a discovery at the 2018 Berlin International Film Festival, and it went on to screen at New Directors/New Films. The movie revolves around a small group of young characters in New York City impacted by one man’s disappearance, and the trail he leaves with a series of objects. The filmmaker’s deadpan, observational style relies heavily on voiceover narration and other devices that he developed in earlier short films. He shared two of them with IndieWire here, in addition to some insight into each.
Here are two shorts, made three years apart, the first and the third in a series of nested trial-runs of my first feature, “Notes on an Appearance,” a film I started thinking about and writing, in some form, as early as 2007. They were finished under straitened circumstances, obsessive and repetitive,...
Here are two shorts, made three years apart, the first and the third in a series of nested trial-runs of my first feature, “Notes on an Appearance,” a film I started thinking about and writing, in some form, as early as 2007. They were finished under straitened circumstances, obsessive and repetitive,...
- 8/14/2018
- by Ricky D’Ambrose
- Indiewire
A young man goes missing in Brooklyn after researching a controversial writer in Ricky D’Ambrose’s peculiar feature film “Notes on an Appearance,” which premiered this year at the Berlin Film Festival and is part of the New Directors/New Films Festival. Despite D’Ambrose’s unique storytelling style, the film never fully presents a coherent narrative.
A young man, David (Bingham Bryant) moves from Chappaqua to Brooklyn to help his college friend Todd (Keith Poulson) in a research project on the controversial political writer Stephen Taubes.
A young man, David (Bingham Bryant) moves from Chappaqua to Brooklyn to help his college friend Todd (Keith Poulson) in a research project on the controversial political writer Stephen Taubes.
- 4/5/2018
- by Christian Gallichio
- The Playlist
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