- Light the Fuse: Lalo Schifrin (1932-2025) (June 30, 2025)
The world lost one of its greatest musical talents on Thursday when the great Argentinian composer Lalo Schifrin died after complications from pneumonia. The sheer genius of Schifrin was evident throughout his storied career, which included composing music for film and television, with iconic themes from notable works such as “Mission: Impossible” and “Enter the Dragon.” However, he also played with some of the greatest jazz musicians in history, all while constantly musically redefining the term “cool.”
Through his stylistic tendencies for complex rhythms and use of piano and woodwinds, the influence of jazz on his soundtracks was considered one of his hallmarks. However, Schifrin’s talent was never confined to one genre, and he was equally adept at writing scores for a symphony orchestra or a minimal chamber ensemble. His career is peppered with thrilling jazz scores, such as “Bullitt” and “Dirty Harry,” but often takes a left turn into material like “The Amityville Horror” and his unused score for “The Exorcist,” music that unsettled Warners so much that they demanded he be taken off the film.
Schifrin’s career was also defined by collaborations with other artists, some of whom were some of the biggest names in their field. Clint Eastwood and Don Siegel–the actor and director of Dirty Harry, respectively–were regular collaborators, resulting in such films as “The Beguiled” and “Charley Varrick.” He scored the unforgettable “Cool Hand Luke” for Paul Newman, and provided the music for George Lucas’ first feature, the dystopian “THX 1138.” And of course, there was the bebop great Dizzy Gillespie, who recruited Schifrin into his circle, although only after the composer audaciously turned him down.
While he went by Lalo (a contraction of his second name, Claudio), his birth name was Boris. Born in 1932 in Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, to Luis and Clara, he absorbed classical music from an early age thanks to his father’s position as the leader of the Buenos Aires Philharmonic. However, he was determined to become a lawyer, studying both law and music. An early encounter with the school band led him to reconsider his career. Still, he continued to study both until he won a scholarship to the prestigious Conservatoire de Musique in Paris.
Studying abroad also allowed him to indulge in one of his musical obsessions—jazz. Some of the biggest names in American jazz would come to France to play, such as Oscar Peterson and Ella Fitzgerald. Seeing them helped improve his own skills, which he honed while performing nights at the Club St Germain; after three years in Paris, he took everything he had learned back to Argentina, where he would start Lalo Schifrin Y Su Orquesta. The band introduced contemporary jazz to the country, and even had a big hit with a fabulous big band arrangement of Horace Silver’s standard “Doodlin’.” It was thanks to them that Schifrin had his first encounter with the great trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in 1956, who was touring Argentina.
Gillespie was so impressed he offered Schifrin a place in his band, but the composer was just beginning to branch out into the new medium of film scoring. He scored two features in Argentina—1957’s “Venga a bailar el rock” (“Let’s Dance to Rock”) and 1958’s “El Jefe” (“The Boss”). Once he had finished with those, he moved to America’s East Coast, where he recorded a five-moment jazz suite that he had written for Gillespie not long after the pair had met. An essential record, “Gillespiana” was a big success, and the collaboration reinvigorated Gillespie’s career.
Nominated for a Grammy, the album was released by the legendary jazz label Verve, which was sold to MGM in the same year. This meant Schifrin was under contract with the studio, and after three years and several albums with Gillespie, MGM decided to hire him to score his first American picture—1964’s “Rhino!”, a typical sixties adventure yarn with Robert Culp as a zoologist fighting rhinoceros poachers in Africa. Schifrin wrote about fifty minutes of exotic score with previews of what was yet to come, including elements of his beloved jazz music.
Schifrin would often play down how much jazz was in his film music, but it was jazz that helped his film and television music career explode. It was a case of both bringing something new and being in the right place at the right time. The new was his effortless ability to present complex music, including different time signatures, and the time was the mid-fifties into the sixties, where cool jazz had become the zeitgeist in New York.
Led by the likes of Miles Davis, Chet Baker, and Bill Evans, cool jazz had a huge effect on the genre, and this was reflected in film music of the time. 1951’s “A Streetcar Named Desire” was a powerful drama with an equally powerful jazz score by Alex North that underpinned the complex psychological makeup of the characters. Davis himself joined the fray in 1957 when he recorded a defining jazz classic score for Louis Malle’s “Elevator to the Gallows,” with a gorgeous, lonely trumpet becoming an icon of noir, despite coming at the end of the classic age of the genre. Meanwhile, Elmer Bernstein brought powerful jazz to film and television, with the soundtrack to Otto Preminger’s “The Man With the Golden Arm” and music for John Cassavetes show “Johnny Stattaco,” who himself was a jazz player as well as a private dick. Duke Ellington also got in the act with Preminger, composing a classic score for Anatomy of a Murder.
But it was Schifrin who brought his unique style to the heart of new American culture, with the television. 1965 saw him not only scoring two episodes of “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.”, but also rearranging Jerry Goldsmith’s theme. Schifrin brought his Latin heritage by placing it into a bossa nova setting that transformed it into something much catchier, and more likely to have viewers running to the television. And then producer Bruce Geller called.
Geller wanted that instant identification for his new show, “Mission: Impossible.” A branding just like the Wrigley’s Doublemint gum commercial or the Oscar Mayer Weiner jingle, Schifrin went above and beyond and created a theme that became cultural shorthand for achieving difficult tasks, much like Monty Norman and John Barry’s James Bond theme. Written in an off-kilter time signature of 5/4, it continues to reverberate around the world, with the eighth instalment of the film series—“Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning,”—having been released in May. The films have afforded the likes of Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer, and Michael Giacchino the chance to put their own stamp on Schifrin’s theme. But while it’s had all sorts of different orchestrations, the melody itself hasn’t changed a bit. And probably never will.
As well as “Mission: Impossible,” Schifrin wrote a number of popular themes for the small screen, including another Geller project, “Mannix,” “Medical Center,” and “Petrocelli.” He also wrote a fanfare for Paramount Television in 1974 and composed the main titles for the first season of “Starsky & Hutch.” The theme was replaced for the second season in favour of Tom Scott’s “Gotcha” ditty, however, it was another pair of detectives that threw Schifrin into the ring of major film scoring, and once again, jazz was at the centre of it all.
Peter Yates’ 1968 thriller “Bullitt” saw Steve McQueen as a cool but hardened detective in San Francisco investigating the murder of a gangster, with the accompaniment of Schifrin’s ice cool jazz score. It was perfect for the picture, not only for the title character, but the way he used the unique textures and colours of jazz to create a murky world of crime and death. Just listen to ‘Ice Pick Mike’ and its deft snare combined with a threatening low piano motif, instantly tense and threatening.
By the time Schifrin scored “Dirty Harry” in 1971, he had already worked with Clint Eastwood and Don Siegel several times, composing music for such pictures as “Coogan’s Bluff” and “The Beguiled.” For the title character, Schifrin decided on mood instead of theme—like Bullitt, Harry is as cool as can be. Schifrin employed a groovy jazz-funk approach in the main titles, which instantly establishes Eastwood’s nonchalant attitude. He did, however, write a theme for the villain of the piece, psychotic sniper Scorpio. It’s almost like a horror movie score, with a chilling female vocal that both captivates and haunts us, much like the city he’s terrorising.
While jazz is the style for which Schifrin was known, he consistently demonstrated his talent in other musical idioms. For 1967’s “Cool Hand Luke,” he used a blend of country music and Aaron Copland-esque Americana to underline Paul Newman’s folk hero, and he went on to write a number of symphonic scores in his career, with 1973’s iconic “Enter the Dragon” mixing both eastern and western influences. The same year, he was asked to compose the music for “The Exorcist,” but when Warners heard the score to the film’s teaser trailer, they demanded director William Friedkin ask Schifrin to make it a little less intense. Friedkin, stubborn as ever, fired Schifrin instead.
False rumours later abounded that the composer used some of that music in his score to 1979’s “The Amityville Horror,” but they are clearly different tonally. Schifrin’s score is quite lyrical in places, with an undercurrent of religious doom that is responsible for much of the picture’s overall effect, which garnered him a fourth Oscar nomination. He received a total of six nominations and was presented with an honorary statue in 2018.
Schifrin often found his home with genre pictures, not only scoring a further three Dirty Harry instalments, but also films such as “The Cat From Outer Space” for Disney and violent thriller “A Stranger is Watching,” which was director Sean S. Cunningham’s first film after the notorious “Friday the 13th” (1980). Genres like science fiction gave Schifrin the opportunity to experiment, such as with his fascinating score for George Lucas’ debut “THX 1138,” and he liked the way electronic synthesisers added another range of colours to his palette.
Schifrin is survived by his second wife Donna, whom he married in 1971. He had two children, William and Frances, from a previous marriage, and later had a son, Ryan, with Donna. Both have collaborated with Schifrin in their own ways; Donna founded the record label Aleph Records in 1997, which served as a springboard for releasing many of Lalo’s soundtracks, as well as new compositions by him. Ryan became a filmmaker, and his father composed music for two of his projects, 2013’s “Abominable” and 2015’s “Tales of Halloween.”
Lalo Schifrin was 93. A legend of jazz and one of the figureheads of the silver age of film music, he never rested on his laurels and always created fascinating music, for movies or otherwise. He will be missed tremendously, but he will be even more greatly remembered.
- Sex and Threads: The Major Works of Takashi Miike (June 30, 2025)
The major works of filmmaker Takashi Miike, “Audition” (1999) and “Ichi The Killer” (2001), are proclamations of a filmmaker with a shameless thirst for style. On the surface, these films are about violence, but once the blood is skimmed off the veneer, a froth of psychosexual power dynamics bubbles its way to the top. Perhaps our most animal behavior coupled with our most human, Miike crochets sex and fashion with masterful finesse, elevating his worlds and his thesis with undeniable attitude.
However, these mainstay pieces of his filmography are as disparate as they come, with the former shot bare in the office buildings and side streets of Japan. Stable camerawork, long shots, and slow pacing lure us in with quietude and near-meekness, much like its lead femme fatale, Asami. Meanwhile, “Ichi The Killer”’s vivid world is flashy, fast, and voguish, much in the spirit of the comic book from which it was adapted, with boss Kakihara most often footing the bill.
Yet despite the dissimilarity of the worlds crafted, Miike is interested in the authorities of sex, and clenches his costuming in firm hands to enforce it. In “Audition,” Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi), a father and widower, feels at first pressured, and then liberated, by the proposition that it’s time for him to find a new wife. Working in the entertainment industry, he leverages his position to host a fake audition to find a girlfriend who specifically matches his qualifications. He’s disinterested in all but one, the young, beautiful, pristine Asami (Eihi Shiina), a former ballerina. Despite her ideal, literal resume, Asami harbors a darkness of which Aoyama could never begin to anticipate.
Aoyama is dressed as a prototypical default masculine figure. We know him for his roles: father, worker, seeker. His presence is vague: not shy, but simply unremarkable. Costume designer Tomoe Kumagai dresses him clean and inoffensively. He is clearly a man who comes from enough means to maintain the structured suit sets he dons, but the impression is that he coordinates primarily for function. Between his polos, suits, and trousers, patterns (even slight) are nowhere to be found amidst the weavings of grey, brown, white, and black. He dresses plainly but smartly, seemingly melting into the architecture around him. Whether it’s his office, home, or the streets of Japan, he becomes one with them: the culture’s patriarchal everyman.
Aoyama’s practical romantic desires match his wardrobe’s aesthetics: he wants the kind of smart, “mature” woman with achievements who looks good on paper. But in his selection of Asami, he chooses a woman counter to his requirements. Purely motivated at first by her photograph in a stack of dozens – her gentle face on a white backdrop, somehow whiter than the paper itself, with a white tank and cardigan to clothe her—his interest deepens on account of her essay, chronicling her forfeiture of ballet as a result of an injury. All the while, the factor of her youth becomes hard to ignore.
Miike furthers the tension of her youth by artfully leaning into Aoyoma’s fantasy. As we watch Aoyama’s eyes scan Asami’s photo and dart across her essay, with a held-breath yearning, his pristine ballerina ideal provokes implied costuming: form-fitting leotards, pink nylon, tutus, and ribbon. These elements are inherent to the craft, but intentionally inspire peak playful girlishness: a perfect femininity.
Yet concurrently, Miike’s camera constantly captures her from behind, both protecting her from our gaze as well as sharpening our view of the animal of her: the cutting jut of her spine beneath the pale, delicate skin of her back. Her black hair hangs heavily over her shoulders, with a feminine cascade that proclaims not just the contrast of her beauty, but also, as it moves, falling like molasses over her body’s structure, her primality. But with her modest, coquettish presentation consisting of a coterie of textures and fabrics that are near-always white, we’re thrust into an ease that is somehow made vigilant by its own insistence on itself.
Miike smartly intensifies Aoyama’s fantasies when Aoyoma and Asami meet for the first time during her audition. Asami wears an over-the-knee-length white skirt, a white cardigan, a white tank, and white kitten heels. Nothing baggy nor tight, though nothing feels particularly tailored. Her clothes just kind of exist. She sits calmly but rigidly, with her heels together and hands on her lap, taking up no more space than the structure of her compacted body. Virginal quality is at the fore. The blank slate-ness of it all is perpetuated, leaving her ripe for whatever inclinations and expectations Aoyama inks onto her page. Already, the modesty of it all echoes with imbalanced sexual tension on account of how pervasive his want is. He asks her nothing more than what he already knows from her essay, and the desire is decided with no new citations needed.
At the insistence of his boss, who believes the ghostly cobwebs of her so-called life should eliminate her candidacy, Aoyama reluctantly pauses his pursuit. Days pass in silence, and Asami sits in her living room beside the phone and a rustling body bag. When Aoyama can’t get her out of his mind, he finally calls, and she picks up only after calculating the number of rings that feel most natural to let pass. He wants to go for lunch.
And so, Asami struts down the road in an ostentatious, fabulous cherry red trench coat with fur trim that billows in the wind. In accordance with what we previously knew about Asami, this coat seems incredibly out of place. The boldness of it is a bellowing holler made louder by the context of her previous silences. It feels like an indiscretion. What it is, though, is a reinvigoration: her knowing re-entry into the cat-and-mouse game. Authority has been restored, and the coat itself is a signifier that there’s a side to her – a power and assertiveness she possesses, or even a sinister quality – that’s starting to come into focus.
This sudden change in shell begs a question. For us, it’s become clear that there’s a facade at play, but this chicanery is outside of Aoyama’s gaze: the secrecy of the body bag and the vision of her in the red coat remain contained. Aoyama is a pawn in a puppetted game. At lunch, the coat sits idly beside her, tucked and folded beneath the tabletop and out of sight. It’s just beneath the surface, and like everything else, represents what Aoyama allows himself to see; the cost of his fickle curiosity.
Continued, every time they are together, Asami wears variations of an all white ensemble in delicate fabrics, chaste and vaguely bridal in silhouette. At dinner, a white blouse with chantilly lace; at their hotel getaway, a white satin shin-length dress. Yet, as the film unravels, and we catch glimpses of Asami’s brutal underbelly, the relationship between pursuer and subject comes to a subversive head in her final confrontation with Aoyama.
She’s made him promise to love only her. She’s revealed the dark scars that mar her upper thighs, territory of a lover, and they finally have sex. Waking up to an empty bed, the next time Aoyama will see her is after this veil of purity has dissolved – when she stands above his quasiconscious body with a syringe in her hand and his manipulations on her mind.
In this moment, where Asami truly flexes her ineffable power, no longer an object of lustful mystique, she has become a canvas for womanly silhouettes combined with hardened, resilient fabrics. Over top of a typical white outfit is a black leather apron with brown rubber straps and a pair of gloves to match. She’s become some surgeon-butcher hybrid, but still maintains an undeniable femininity. The brown straps that wrap her waist cinch in her figure more than anything else she’s worn, and if not for the material, her gloves would be mistaken for opera apparel. Rubber and leather— durable, tough, and resistant—are utilized in a defensive brutality. In her series of torturous acts, she punishes her own objectification: a reclamation of her power worn girlishly and brutally atop her alabaster mask.
A much different film, “Ichi The Killer,” titled not after the main protagonist, but instead the elusive object of his fantasy. Kakihara (Tadanobu Asano) is a sadomasochistic yakuza enforcer who, in search of his missing boss, Anjo, finds his world has been invaded by a psychotic killer. This killer leaves behind unfathomably brutal scenes that turn carnage into weather – blood drizzling from ceilings, floors rendered into flash floods of entrails, and bodies bisected like trees in a storm. And so, a lustful masochist in pursuit of perfect violence, Kakihara endeavors to find the man behind the carnage: the mysterious Ichi (Sakichi Sato).
“Ichi the Killer” starts with a nasty bass line and a kinetic montage of technicolor Tokyo. We race through the neon-lit streets before being dropped into a room of suits: yakuza. In opposition to Aoyama’s everyman, this room of enforcers is filled with the masculine ideal, dressed in flurries of pinstripe suits, strong shoulders, and elegant jacquard fabrics. They’re stylish subjects of wealth, a sea of expected man-ness: the anticipated vision of a yakuza gang.
The first time we see Kakihara, it’s in a hero shot from behind, and unlike the traditional macho of those around him, he’s wearing a brown leather pant and jacket set with flashy red zippers and a red button-down shirt beneath. Immediately, we know he’s singular, but even still, this is an introductory piece to his difference, and the most understated outfit he wears in the whole film. Kakihara defies expectation: frivolous, flamboyant, and subversive, he cruises the streets in jewel tones and laces, sequins and fanciful scarves, blowing smoke, with expert cool, out of the self-made slits in his cheeks. His suaveness is almost funny, and his androgynous, out-loud expression declares both his power and his flippance to convention. Costume designer Michiko Kitamura’s effeminate take on the ensembles of a most-violent higher up in the yakuza brings a contrast that already hints at sexual juxtapositions at play.
However, Ichi’s contrast is not one of androgynous sadomasochism but of sanity and unreality; meekness and power. When Ichi is lucid, he’s a victim. In the aftermath of his crimes, we see him in white t-shirts and underwear, cowering in his room like a little boy. At work, where he is berated by a peer, he wears a white dress shirt and bowtie, a costume of traditional, elevated masculinity that renders him even more infantile in contrast. But the in-between stages of sane and not, those in which he’s vulnerable to be swayed to massacre, it’s always a dark hoodie: incognito and shrouding, a consequential symbol of his temptations.
Kakihara is always tempted, and the diversity of his wardrobe shows just how much he wears it on his sleeve. Whether manning a torture session in a full red plaid suit or offering his tongue as penance in a shimmering purple trench with a silk chartreuse neck scarf, he is always balancing hard and soft, light and dark, feminine and masculine. He’s queerness embodied. Identifying boss Anjo’s death by the taste of his blood, we come to find that Kakihara is in love with him not on account of romance, but on account of the violence he inflicts.
When Kakihara’s recusancy leads him to commandeer the Anjo syndicate, he does so easily on account of how much he’s feared. Despite their attempt to oust him, he saunters down the streets of Tokyo with his henchmen in a ruffled, striped pink and purple silk set, accompanied by a long, draping cranberry-colored overcoat: dressing in femininity while enforcing patriarchal power by leading a coup. Kakihara revels in his own violence, but yearns to be an ultimate victim, even if it means he faces perfect violence as a means of death. When we see him on the receiving end of assault, it’s always his choice. His flexibility and agility in moving through a world of pain and hurt grant him the no-fucks-given essential sexuality of his clothing.
Conversely, Ichi’s wardrobe is marked by dualism and indecision. He is a sadist by means of psychosis and hypnotism, undeniably a perpetrator, but also a pawn, neither on account of willingness. The all-black power jumpsuit he wears when killing is an echo of hardened dominance with a hint of pity. He always maintains his boyishness even when he’s the most formidable person in the room. It’s padded where muscles ought to be, and the plastered yellow “1” on the turtleshell back reads as a pathetic trophy given to oneself: a reminder to feel big and strong. Despite the validity of Ichi’s power, his uniform is a facade of confidence.
In their final confrontation, on the roof of the apartment building, their dualism is firmly set. Kakihara wears his most effeminate outfit, an iridescent purple-turquoise shifting suit with a sequinned lace shirt underneath. His appearance is stacked against Ichi’s trademark suit, a brawny caricature of animalism and power. Nevertheless, their whole relationship is one of subversion. The dom is masochist and the sub the sadist: Kakihara is pursuing a fight that Ichi doesn’t want. He chases him around the rooftop begging, but still is the pursuer, the one with something to gain. Yet when Ichi’s emotions shoulder him from the fight, the film concludes with Kakihara in his sex dungeon, shirtless, cowering in the corner of an all-blue frame. A sadness, vulnerability, and submission we had yet to see showcased by the sparsest wardrobe of all: skin.
Takashi Miike’s films are tales of power, sex, and desire existing in extremely violent worlds you’d be frightened to witness under a black light. And still, despite the disgust that lies in its gorefest medium, Miike’s approach to each of his stories utilizes a dextrous hand that crafts fashion to not only enforce the style of his worlds but enhance the statements on the themes that bind them. Asami weaponized sheep’s clothing and the male gaze to a frightful end, and Kakihara’s power came from his shamelessness. Neither of these protagonists got what they wanted, but Miike, in partnership with his costume designers, made their desires apparent.
In “Audition,” Miike managed to lull us into a daydream by fixing his camera on a beautiful young woman with delicate features. In “Ichi the Killer,” a yakuza enforcer defies expectations: parading on the surface instead of flying under the radar; his hunger for violence assuaged by being on the receiving end. Miike’s touch is not a gentle one, and the sexuality of his films is equally kinky, but in crafting his characters, he’s always subverting the dom and sub agenda. Whether stripping bare “Audition”’s attire or leveraging florid ensembles in “Ichi the Killer,” Miike investigates the propulsive gaze of desire: how the lure of sex is inevitably worn on the sleeve.
- 59th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival to Honor Stellan Skarsgård, Vicky Krieps, Dakota Johnson and Peter Sarsgaard (June 27, 2025)
The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival will pay tribute to Stellan Skarsgård, Vicky Krieps, Dakota Johnson, and Peter Sarsgaard, welcoming the actors to personally present screenings of their recent films, festival organizers for the upcoming 59th edition announced Wednesday.
In addition, while 11 of the films screening in Karlovy Vary’s Crystal Globe main competition had been announced, a 12th and final film—from Iran, and previously kept secret to ensure the safety of its delegation—has been officially unveiled. “Bidad,” from director Soheil Beiraghi, centers on a young musician who sings in the streets, in defiance of religious laws that prohibit women in Iran from performing in public.
The film “was made as an independent production; otherwise, it would never have been approved by the censors because of its critical tone,” KVIFF organizers emphasized in a statement. “Even so, director Soheil Beiraghi was investigated by the authorities during filming. It was necessary to withhold announcement of the film’s inclusion in the festival’s program until he and the members of his crew could safely travel out of Iran. A few days ago, the festival team was overjoyed to hear that they were on their way.”
Stellan Skarsgård—previously a guest of the festival in 2002, to present István Szabó’s film “Taking Sides”—will be presented with the Crystal Globe for Outstanding Artistic Contribution to World Cinema. He will personally present a screening of “Sentimental Value,” which won the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Directed by Joachim Trier, the family drama centers on a celebrated director (Skarsgård) who seeks to make a film with his estranged daughter (Renate Reinsve).
At the festival’s opening ceremony, Vicky Krieps will be honored with the KVIFF President’s Award. To mark the occasion, the festival will screen “Love Me Tender,” from director Anna Cazenave Cambet, in which a former lawyer (Krieps) navigates a custody battle over her son after coming out as a lesbian. The film premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes this year.
Dakota Johnson, meanwhile, will be honored with the KVIFF President’s Award and attend the festival to present two of her latest films: recently released romantic drama “Materialists,” from Celine Song, and upcoming romantic comedy “Splitsville,” from Michael Angelo Covino. She will be presented with the award at a “Materialists” screening, closing out the festival’s opening weekend.
Elsewhere, Peter Sarsgaard will also receive the KVIFF President’s Award at the festival’s opening ceremony. Though the actor was most recently seen in “September 5,” about a sports broadcasting crew that finds itself covering a hostage crisis involving Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, KVIFF will instead honor Sarsgaard with a screening of journalism drama “Shattered Glass,” in which the actor portrayed New Republic editor Charles Lane.
Others invited as guests of the festival for the Crystal Globe competition include actress Camille Cottin (presenting the world premiere of “Out of Love”), director Bence Fliegauf (presenting the world premiere of “Jimmy Jaguar”), and director Max Walker-Silverman (presenting the international premiere of “Rebuilding”).
Argentinian actor Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, who won Best Actor at KVIFF just over a decade ago for “All Yours,” returns to the festival with “Kill the Jockey,” directed by Luis Ortega.
Hlynur Pálmason will be on hand to present “The Love That Remains,” while Sergei Loznitsa will personally introduce “Two Prosecutors,” both filmmakers having previously premiered their films at Cannes. Mstyslav Chernov, an Oscar winner for “20 Days in Mariupol,” will introduce his latest documentary, “2000 Metres to Andriivka,” and Michel Franco will present “Dreams,” a love story that premiered at this year’s Berlinale. Dea Kulumbegashvili will also present her second feature, “April,” which won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival.
Jay Duplass, whose comedy “The Baltimorons” was an audience favorite at SXSW and the Chicago Critics Film Festival, will attend a screening of his film at KVIFF. Italian filmmaker Paolo Genovese will present “Madly,” his latest work, and Italian actor Valerio Mastandrea will present “Feeling Better,” which he directed and stars in. Finally, Mark Jenkin will be at KVIFF for the world premiere of his short film “I Saw the Face of God in the Jet Wash,” to be shown in the Imagina section.
One of the oldest film festivals in the world, and the most prestigious of its type in Eastern and Central Europe, the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) will hold its 59th edition on July 4-12 in the Czech Republic. The festival had previously announced that Michael Douglas will present a newly restored version of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” on the occasion of its 50th anniversary, and the official selection for its two main competitions.
- AMC’s “Nautilus” Gives Us Indiana-Jones Worthy Adventure with Imperialist Villains (June 27, 2025)
AMC’s (formerly Disney’s) “Nautilus” is nine-tenths fun adventure. We’re talking otherworldly sea creatures, lost treasure, and 1850s technical marvels, portrayed by the best our 2020s studios can offer. The ten-part first season follows Nemo (an appealing Shazad Latif), the Odysseus-esque captain of the first-ever submarine, sharing the show’s title, in this loose adaptation of “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.” He’s on an adventure to escape the British East India Mercantile Company that enslaved him and most of his shipmates, in addition to committing a whole host of atrocities.
And that’s the other tenth of the show—a clear-eyed portrayal of the evils of imperialism and the colonialism that empowered it. The brown and Black crew members of the Nautilus (including Pacharo Mzembe as the endearing firstmate Boniface) are escaping war crimes and enslavement. They are right to take arms against the unjust system that has gobbled them up along with their homes, even if their primary goal is just to survive personally.
The upper class white women—Georgia Flood as the intrepid, eligible engineer Humility, and Céline Menville as her fierce French maid/chaperone, Lottie—are also stuck in a patriarchal system that treats them as chattel, even as it provides them with good meals and pretty dresses along the way. I do wish Humility were more person and less plucky stereotype, but she gets some meaningful arcs as the story goes on, which counts for something in a show that is much more interested in plot than character development.
Nautilus/Series 1. (L to R) Kayden Price as Blaster, Georgia Flood as Humility, Shazad Latif as Captain Nemo in Nautilus/Series 1. Cr. Vince Valitutti/Disney+ © 2022.
“Nautilus” also shows us how the system shapes white men—there’s Gustave Benoit (Thierry Frémont), the French scientist who builds the Nautilus and engineers its escape with Nemo rather than see his scientific creation become an instrument of horror. The company’s foot soldiers are generally there against their will, having chosen between starvation and conscription. And the leaders—Cameron Cuffe as Humility’s fiance and would-be jailor Lord Pitt and Damien Garvey as the ultimate capitalist and company leader Director Crawley—are insecure snivels of men, certainly no one to envy.
It’s a compelling backdrop for an adventure. The stakes are high, the cause is righteous, and the villains are smarmy. The bad guys in “Nautilus” are akin to the ones in “Raiders of the Lost Ark”—powerful and terrible, driven by malice. It’s just a simple switch between imperialists and Nazis. One red military uniform for another.
And like Indiana Jones’ tale, Nemo’s is powered by escaping peril, not social commentary (even if that is baked in). And the adventure is thrilling. Yes, obviously, we grown-up viewers know that the ship that bears the show’s name will survive past the second episode, as will our leading characters. Yet the threats that face them feel real. My heart was pounding. That’s the magic of moving pictures, and it’s in full effect here, with these sympathetic and attractive characters achieving death-defying acts of physical strength and mental acumen to stay alive and eventually triumph.
Nautilus/Series 1. Shazad Latif as Captain Nemo in Nautilus/Series 1. Cr. Vince Valitutti/Disney+ © 2022.
The monsters—underwater and above land, human and creature, big and small—are terrifying. And the filmmakers know how to harness and hone in on what makes them scary, giving us the close-up of one’s giant eye in one episode and another’s insatiable gaping mouth the next.
Now, some of the beats are pat. The love stories are predictable and obvious, if satisfying. As are some of the deaths and plot twists. Certainly, if you have a favorite sea myth, expect to see it in this first season. But that’s not bad, just part of the genre.
With these well-worn, comforting beats, “Nautilus” is fun to watch and feels ever so slightly subversive.
It’s perhaps a bit rebellious to paint the historical British East India Mercantile Company as the Nazis of their time, particularly as fascism and ethnic cleansing rock any modern pretense we may have of peace. For those unfamiliar with the Company’s atrocities, there’s a lot to learn (or Google), with hopefully some of the evil of it sinking in. For those who are familiar with the history, it’s satisfying to see a visually rich, mainstream story utilize this moral framing.
Certainly, to have an escapist show following righteous fighters who take arms against imperialism feels good. And yes, “Nautilus” shows the human cost and terrible harm of the Company’s historical power grab. But it’s also a rocking good time, an adventure worthy of its budget, with a set of heroes worthy of our allegiance, attention, and admiration.
Full season screened for review. Premieres June 29 on AMC+.
- We’re All In This Together: “Brazil” at 40 (June 27, 2025)
There is a moment in Terry Gilliam’s 1985 dystopian masterpiece “Brazil” where the film stops being dazzling, sets aside the Pythonesque humor, and lets humanity have a moment to itself. The lowly bureaucrat, Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce), drops off a wrongful arrest refund check to the widow of Archibald Buttle, who was taken from his home by stormtroopers on a peaceful evening. It’s an unbearably awkward moment for Sam, who believes–actually believes–he’s doing the right thing by presenting the check to the widow in person. Mrs. Buttle (Sheila Reid) doesn’t let him off the hook so easily. She rips up the check, throws it at Sam, and declares, her voice rising, “He hasn’t done anything. He was good! WHAT! HAVE YOU DONE! WITH HIS BODY?!?”
It’s the film’s most devastating moment, and we watch it knowing full well that it hits close to home for many Americans today, except who knows if those living in the horrific aftermath of our current government-sponsored kidnappings will someday even get a check? Gilliam said of “Brazil” that when he wrote it, he wasn’t thinking of it as a futuristic movie. For him, it was Present Day, how he saw the world in the late ‘70s when he started putting it together with frequent collaborator Charles Alverson. Yet, we can’t help but somehow see it as “futuristic,” because how else can we describe such a complex movie so easily? That’s a different matter. But in America and the rest of the world, “Brazil” is a movie that keeps growing and changing every decade or so. It was a different movie in the years after 9/11. It’s a different movie today, perhaps more Present Day than ever.
So it’s fitting that Criterion should release a new 4K disc of the film for the film’s 40th anniversary, though one wishes they would’ve marked the occasion with something more than just the usual extras that haven’t changed since the groundbreaking laserdisc back in 1995, still one of the greatest packages of extras for a film ever assembled. “Brazil” deserves a new retrospective, though, as a means to look back on it as a piece of prescient satire, as a landmark visual stunner that has influenced many films and filmmakers, and as a film that represents why it‘s important to continue to fight for your art, no matter the cost.
I first became obsessed with it in middle school back in 1986 when the film finally came out on video. My family and I sat completely baffled at what we watched, a common experience for many first-time viewers. I simply wasn’t ready for it. At age thirteen, my tastes in movies started changing, but “Brazil” proved to be a bit of a challenge too great for me. Still, because of a paperwork oversight, my local public library forgot to put the red RATED R stamp on the VHS case and I checked it out repeatedly, just to see if I would get caught. I never did and I found myself bringing the movie home and watching it over and over again. With each viewing, the movie’s densely layered storytelling and images became clearer. By my fifth or sixth viewing, it started becoming an obsession, right alongside Martin Scorsese’s “After Hours,” also released in 1985.
For any young cinephile beginning to appreciate the language of filmmaking through editing, cinematography, score and other key elements of craft, Gilliam’s astonishing vision offers a rich tapestry of images, outlandish sets, tracking shots and wide angles to feast on that it becomes easy to forget about everything else taking place. For many, it takes a few viewings to fully appreciate the film’s aesthetic and messaging. As is typical of Gilliam’s work, he throws a lot of information at the viewer right at the start and “Brazil” rarely stops being busy. I’m not about to waste three paragraphs giving a synopsis of the film’s several story threads, since I’m guessing most readers would skip that part anyway.
One of the film’s most memorable and startling shots is a two-part fly-over of Sam’s workplace, where swarms of grey-suited men go about their day, crossing past each other in a perfectly choreographed and complex flow of movement, a self-contained ecosystem of worker bees. Files and folders get exchanged and deposited in various places while Michael Kamen’s score—one of many variations on the opening riffs of the song “Brazil”—suggests an endless loop of activity that takes place every single day in this dreary workplace. That is, until the boss (Ian Holm as Mr. Kurtzman, named after Gilliam’s editor at Help! Magazine back in the ‘60s) closes his door and everyone stops immediately and makes their way quickly to watch a classic movie on their little monitors. How fitting that one of those movies is “Casablanca,” another film in which bureaucracy plays a central role for our doomed heroes, not to mention a downbeat ending in which love does not conquer all.
Janus Films
Gilliam’s film is alive with visual details that become more apparent with every viewing, especially with each new video upgrade that accompanies each new format. Look closely and you can see that everything on Mr. Kurtzman’s desk is stamped with the Ministry of Information logo, including his goldfish bowl. When I revisited the film last December, I noticed for the first time in the shot where Sam is leaving the office, poor Harvey Lime (co-writer Charles McKeown) coming out of the elevator in the corner of the frame, now on crutches after Sam evidently broke his leg during one of their tug-of-wars of their shared desk. A friend of mine, also a devout “Brazil” enthusiast, remarked to me that he only just noticed the young boy in the Buttle household playing with toy stormtroopers before the real stormtroopers invaded their home. There is always something new to discover with each viewing of the film, no matter how many times you see it.
One of the key signatures of the futuristic (for lack of a better word) world Gilliam has created speaks to a kind of backwards technology. There’s an anti-logic to everything: Drilling holes into ceilings so they can do a home invasion from every angle; tiny TV screens with magnifiers; gigantic ducts protruding out of the middle of the floor of an otherwise fancy restaurant; “Thank you for calling, this has not been a recording”; having to plug the stupid cords into the phone to answer it; even Sam’s apartment is made up of removable wall panels, presumably so Central Services can get in and fix miles and miles worth of tubes, ducts and wiring that probably aren’t necessary. Finally, putting detainees into cumbersome potato sacks and fitting them with hooks so they have to be dangled on a wire during interrogation.
We can still laugh at some of this stuff, but you don’t have to look too closely to see we’re edging perilously closer and closer to this world with each headline. The only thing that dates “Brazil“ is the opening title “somewhere in the 20th century,” and certainly Gilliam had government overreach on his mind when he originally conceived of the film over forty years ago, yet for those of us who came to the film at a younger age, we looked at it simply as a Monty Pythonesque take on Orwell’s “1984” (which Gilliam claims he never read, but certainly knew about), crossed with Thurber’s “the Secret Life Of Walter Mitty.”
In the post-9/11 world, though. “Brazil”’s vision of a bent reality took on a chilling new layer of truth as Bush’s America led the un-ironically named “War On Terror,” and paranoia against anyone who might look like a terrorist entered the American consciousness. Suddenly, all those propaganda posters in the background of Gilliam’s film—”Don’t Suspect A Friend, Report Him,” “Loose Talk Is Noose Talk,” “Suspicion Breeds Confidence”—would blend in with our contemporary scenery.
Janus Films
Sam, like many Americans in the early 2000s, becomes convinced he is fighting the good fight against terrorism, when in reality, there are/were simply too many flaws in the systems in place to make for accurate assessments, resulting in wrongful arrests and executions. It’s even worse now, of course, as thuggish I.C.E. agents continue to dominate our headlines with their illegal invasions based on little more than someone’s skin color or place of work. It’s not even a paperwork screw-up at the root of it, but blatant racism and White nationalism. What’s more, the government sponsors it wholeheartedly, espousing their policies of fighting a war on illegal immigration while many families cry out, “What have you done with his body?” Gilliam wasn’t onto something. Variations of these policies had already been occurring in various forms around the world for decades. Even a freelance heating engineer, like Harry Tuttle (Robert De Niro, unusually cast in a bit part), isn’t safe from a paranoid government’s watchful eye.
Even without these political overtones, we’ve all been living in the world of “Brazil” in our daily lives. We all have to deal with cumbersome bureaucracy and can relate to the frustration that Jill Layton (Kim Greist) feels when she tries to report the wrongful arrest of Archibald Tuttle that she witnessed. She has the arrest receipt, but it’s useless without a stamp from Information Adjustments, who were supposed to stamp it before she was sent to Information Retrieval. It’s this endless cycle of paperwork and procedure that accomplishes the opposite of efficiency. It’s not much different from going to the DMV or dealing with Veterans Affairs, health insurance, and/or Social Security. Anything that is supposed to make life easier, but ends up being a bureaucratic nightmare, is a “Brazil” moment, no matter where you live (you can throw plastic surgery malfunctions into that equation as well, which Gilliam also satirizes in the film).
There is much more to say about the long-lasting impact of “Brazil,” from the studio battle Gilliam had with Universal over its release–detailed in Jack Matthews’ invaluable book, “The Battle Of Brazil,” in which Matthews himself was a key player–to the film’s visual influences that can be seen in, among many other films, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s “The City Of Lost Children,” George Miller’s “Babe: Pig In the City” and perhaps its closest cousin, the Coen Brothers’ “The Hudsucker Proxy.” It wouldn’t have been the first, nor the last time Gilliam would have had long fights with a studio, but it remains his most notorious battle, mainly because he won, which inspired many directors to fight a little harder for their films.
Janus Films
The two-fold result of this battle would be lovingly preserved in Criterion’s 1995 laserdisc, which pretty much rewrote the rules on what a special edition of a film could be. It is the first instance I can think of where a laserdisc—a true cinephile’s best resource back in the day—contained not only the Director’s Cut, but the abomination that was Universal’s edit, officially known as the “Love Conquers All” version, which only saw the light of day on network television. Gilliam remains delighted that people can see what Universal was up to while he fought with them. It’s a version of the film that doesn’t make a lick of sense and Gilliam had no involvement with it, but because it is made up of nothing but alternate takes and outtakes, it remains a valuable editing tool for anyone who wants to study the craft and the choices an editor makes when putting a film together.
How does “Brazil” play today for people discovering it for the first time? I had the pleasure of hosting a screening of the Director’s Cut last December (I almost forgot to mention that it’s also a Christmas movie) in Elk Grove, Illinois, and as the movie unfolded, I could tell the uninitiated were not easily adjusting to the film’s brand of world-building. Starting with a random terrorist bombing, the Buttle/Tuttle screw-up, the Buttle arrest, the ministry discovering a mistake, and then, finally, introducing the main character of the film through a dream sequence… that’s a lot. Not surprisingly, when I asked the first-timers how they liked it, many had answers like “I was overwhelmed,” “I need to see it again,” “I’m not sure what I just watched, but I know it was amazing.”
That’s a start. We should all see it again. It doesn’t have to be the Director’s Cut either. The Universal theatrical cut (a mere twelve minutes shorter at 129 minutes) works just fine. “Brazil” still looks like no other movie, still has a fascinating legacy in terms of its release, and still resonates with our world in ways we dearly wish weren’t true. It has often been referred to as a black comedy, but like Mike Judge’s “Idiocracy,” it’s getting harder to laugh at its absurdities these days. Like one of the propaganda signs says, “Happiness. We’re all in it together,” only in one shot in the film—the moment before Sam meets Mrs. Buttle to give her the check—we see graffiti sprayed over it saying, “We’re all in the shit together.”
