‘American Horror Story’ fails to punch above its weight with a deep, raw idea that’s unfortunately stuck in a shallow episode and grave.
“For a minute. For a thousand years. Forever.”
Horror is full of fascinating figures who make enthralling arguments for why the dead are more valuable than the living and the persecution that frequently follows this philosophy. Titles like Re-Animator, Deadgirl, The Autopsy of Jane Done, and so many others uniquely examine life, death, and the blurred lines in between the two. American Horror Stories’ “Necro” attempts to also bring grief and romance into the equation with this failed experiment that falls short in some seriously tone deaf ways, but still manages to scratch the surface of some compelling ideas.
“Necro” focuses on Sam, a passionate mortician who finds herself at a crossroads in life. Sam has to shoulder most of this episode and Madison Iseman rises...
“For a minute. For a thousand years. Forever.”
Horror is full of fascinating figures who make enthralling arguments for why the dead are more valuable than the living and the persecution that frequently follows this philosophy. Titles like Re-Animator, Deadgirl, The Autopsy of Jane Done, and so many others uniquely examine life, death, and the blurred lines in between the two. American Horror Stories’ “Necro” attempts to also bring grief and romance into the equation with this failed experiment that falls short in some seriously tone deaf ways, but still manages to scratch the surface of some compelling ideas.
“Necro” focuses on Sam, a passionate mortician who finds herself at a crossroads in life. Sam has to shoulder most of this episode and Madison Iseman rises...
- 9/1/2022
- by Daniel Kurland
- bloody-disgusting.com
Sometimes it takes an actor a little while to fully come into their own. For Robert Pattinson, he has certainly been doing his best to have a distinctive post Twilight identity. Working multiple times with David Cronenberg, taking a turn in The Lost City of Z, and now in Good Time, Pattinson is determined to gain full on respect for his talents. This latest film has been making a run at the independent box office and is his best work to date. With an expansion for the movie on the horizon in a few days, I wanted to double back and talk about it a bit. It marks the latest outing by filmmakers Josh and Benny Safdie, who are directors to watch out for. Armed with Pattinson, they’ve crafted something top notch. The film is a crime drama indebted to the genre entries of the past. Bank robber Connie...
- 8/21/2017
- by Joey Magidson
- Hollywoodnews.com
The story of how the directorial brothers Benny and Joshua Safdie found their muse and star, Arielle Holmes, for their latest feature seems like a shadowy tale from a gritty Craigslist missed connection. After Joshua and their producer Sebastian Bear-McClard spotted her on a subway platform while working undercover for research on an abandoned genre film, they approached her. A subsequent series of no call, no shows seemed like a dead end, but then Holmes reached out, admitting that she’d been homeless, out of touch and had recently attempted to take her own life and was just recently released from the hospital. Since then, her life has been transformed since Heaven Knows What became a festival hit, winning the C.I.C.A.E. Award in Venice and the Tokyo Grand Prix and Best Director prizes at the Tokyo International Film Festival. Riding a wave of critical acclaim despite its white knuckled edge,...
- 9/15/2015
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
From the streets to the screen, the unbelievable story of Arielle Holmes is a fascinating example of the rare occurrence when cinema and reality blend almost unnoticeably. New York-based filmmaker duo Josh and Benny Safdie followed Holmes story from her days as a heroin addict living destructively to her film debut starring as a version of herself in a film based on a book she wrote about those very experiences. To call it a miraculous story would be to minimize it, because it's even more improbable than it sounds. Once again, reality overpowers fiction.
Enthralled by Holmes, the Safdie brothers decided to make a film about her life and have her star in it, a choice that might seem risky for some but that felt absolutely correct for the filmmaking team. The result is “Heaven Knows What” an exquisitely raw and ferociously truthful film about people lost in a corrosive lifestyle. Drug addiction and emotional dependency go hand in hand as Harley (Arielle Holmes) tries to regain her boyfriend’s love while finding ways to support her habit and stay alive. Humanizing their characters while never condoning or passing judgment, the directors explore the realities of their lives with a documentary-like visual style that is as vivid as it is heart-wrenching.
An accomplishment both in technique and emotional power, “Heaven Knows What” is an eye-opening experience brimming with unflinching truth. We had the chance to talk to the Safdie team about their latest film and how they manage to put so much of the real world into each frame.
Aguilar: Arielle Holmes is evidently the driving force of this incredibly truthful and bold project. At what point in her journey did you meet her? How did you find her and her story and decided to make a film about it?
Josh Safdie: I found Arielle, that’s what happened really. I was doing research in the Diamond District. I was there for like a year and a half and I thought I knew every person who was a part of the fabric of that street, which is 47th between 5th and 6th, in Manhattan, New York.
One day at the end of the workday I went to the subway with my producer Sebastian Bear-McClard and saw Arielle. When I saw her she was dressed in a really nice dress, which I later found out she spent all of her money on, and she appeared clean because she’d washed herself in a public bathroom that morning. She woke up that morning on the steps of a Buddhist church.
At the time she paid for her habit and for her dress moonlighting as a dominatrix at a place called Pandora’s box. I knew none of this when I met her, all I knew was this was a beautiful girl who had real composure to her and who had a real star quality to her. I wanted to try to find a way to put her in this other movie we were trying to do, but when I met up with her to get to know her better, I soon realized that she had a very different life.
It was the one you see in the film, and we didn’t agree to make this movie until months later. I knew her when she attempted to kill herself, it happened in the time span of me getting to know her. I was just trying to hook her up with other jobs and just be her friend, and I eventfully asked her to start writing about her life. I directed the writing and I paid for it. The book is pretty special, she wrote most of it in Apple stores.
Aguilar: Once you were so invested in her story, was it a logical step to have her star in the film?
Benny Safdie: It was logical
Josh Safdie: Yes, we wanted to make the movie because of her.
Aguilar: Did you have any concerns about the fact that she probably had never acted before?
Josh Safdie: No. Never. That’s not unusual for us. She was a star, we just needed to figure out a way to work with her star quality and find her greatest strengths during the rehearsal period. We put her on camera a lot before we started filming to see how she acted with the camera. We actually found that the more regimen we gave her the better she was. If we just turned on the camera and have her improvise it was Ok, but she needed the structure of a script to be even better.
Benny Safdie: She wanted to take her own emotions to another level.
Aguilar: She is incredible in the film. Is this perhaps her first film of many to come?
Josh Safdie: She did another film in the wintertime, a Sci-Fi, and right now she is acting in another one, a big one.
Aguilar: The rest of the cast is also outstanding. Was there a mix of professionals actors and non-actors? They are all so great is impossible to differentiate.
Josh Safdie: Caleb Landry Jones, who plays Ilya, is an actor. He’s been in “X-Men,” “Byzantium,” “Antiviral,” and others, he is a young Hollywood actor who was introduced to me through one of our casting directors Jennifer Venditti. He was by far the most professional. Then there was Eleonore Hendricks who played a very small role as Erica. Buddy Duress, who played Mike, the dealer, was a real revelation to us. He blew us away with his rawness and his energy. He got arrested the day we finished filming the movie and he was in jail for a year, now he is out and he is in an acting class and he is doing pretty great. He was like a street legend, everyone knew him in the streets, and he’d been in and out of jail his whole life. Oddly enough we had a similar upbringing, so I could have easily made the left when he made the left, instead a made a right, and did what I ended doing. Now I think that he will hopefully make the right. Necro, who plays Skully, is a pretty big underground rapper, who I was a big fan of.
Aguilar: The entire cast disappears completely into their roles. It’s hard to even think these are actors playing a part.
Benny Safdie: The goal is to make it seem like nothing has been done.
Josh Safdie: Testament to the success of the film is when people see the film and think Buddy, playing Mike, is the big professional in the movie. Everyone hears “Oh, there is a big actor in the movie,” because Caleb has a real following, but when people see the movie they think Caleb is the non-professional actor and Buddy is the professional. That’s a real testament to Caleb’s performance as well.
Benny Safdie: It’s a matter of complete immersion into the fabric of that world, and accepting it. At the same it’s also about mixing the professionals and the firs-time actors. We use improvisation as a form of getting the people’s language right. We use it as a tool to get the dialogue perfect. It always sound better when it’s coming from someone’s own voice as opposed to from above, from us. If somebody doesn’t feel comfortable saying it a certain way we change it, and then that makes that person more comfortable.
Aguilar: Surely Arielle’s own experiences informed a lot of your choices. Did she ever come to you and say, “This didn’t happen that way” or “This doesn’t sound right”?
Josh Safdie: That’s funny because when she said that, most of the time it was in accordance to whether or not something happened the way it should have in real life, and we had changed it because it needed to be changed so that somebody watching the movie could feel how she felt. But then that actually helped her because when she started understanding the reasoning behind it and it made her acting even better. She realized, “Ok, I can make myself emotional more extreme to get the point across.”
Aguilar: Shooting a film like this in NYC was probably a great challenge. Did you guys shoot inconspicuously or on the fly to get such a realist and raw visual style?
Josh Safdie: No, it was all very structured because we were shooting a lot of our close-ups from a block away. There was not much freedom to the movements of the actors. Some scenes we did like 13 or 14 takes, sometimes we shot scenes twice. We would shoot them and then we would go back to the same location on another day when we had some free time. We would reshoot the scene if after watching the dailies we felt like it wasn’t quite right.
Benny Safdie: In New York you are not allowed to shoot without a permit if you have a tripod. We pretty much shot the whole movie with tripods or Steadicam, and if you have something like that on the street you need to legally have a permit or you’ll get stopped. We wouldn’t have been able to do it without it, so we had to be very regimented with how we shot just based on the equipment we were using. We had that restriction upon us and for the actors, like Josh said, they had to be on their marks perfectly or else we’d miss it.
Aguilar: The constraints are definitley not noticeable, the city feels and the characters feel completely free.
Josh Safdie: We did not block the sidewalks. we allowed the city to exist as the city, we were just using it to our advantage.
Benny Safdie: At some point you let the city live within the frame and let the actors live on their own within that circle, and it all kind of folds into itself.
Aguilar: Tell me about the film’s structure. The way it starts and the way it ends, it feels like an endless cycle in a sense.
Josh Safdie: That’s the cycle of the lifestyle. You kind of can’t get out of it, it’s almost impossible to get out of it. The reality of that lifestyle is that the two ways out are usually prison or death, or you get cast in a movie and you make that movie [Laughs]. Ariel Pink, a great musician who did a song for the movie and who was also in the film at one point, came to the L.A. premier at AFI Fest, and someone asked him about heroin and his reply was, “ You do heroin and get a movie made out of you.” He said it as a joke because he is a cynical guy, but it’s very rare to get out. Breaks don’t usually come, they are few and far between, and there are a lot of people who are stuck in that lifestyle. It takes a lot of courage to get out of it, and a lot of will power. It’s a trap.
Benny Safdie: It’s a physical addiction to the drug, and then there is the mental addiction to this lifestyle that you think you are living.
Aguilar: It is a lifestyle. Even as chaotic as their lives seem, they do have a certain structure and specific patterns and things they have to do to continue living this way.
Benny Safdie: Exactly, it’s just a different structure. It’s not the one that we follow, but it is a structure. We were just talking about the rent that they have to pay, it's only $15, for the tow of them that’s $30 a night, that’s cheap, that’s nothing. But $30 a night, that’s $900 a month, with that money you can find yourself a pretty descent room.
Josh Safdie: That’s without mentioning their habit, which adds to thousands of dollars a year.
Benny Safdie: And also, who would rent a room to somebody like that? At the same time that’s a lot of money that they are raising, that they are earning by having to get up 8:00 to make sure that they make the morning rush.
Aguilar: The music in the film is something that I really enjoyed and that feels cohesive with the story being told, in particular the ominous track that includes the lyrics, “explore the power of the mind.”
Josh Safdie: That’s funny because there are two pieces of music in the movie that are from Arielle’s life, which her boyfriend, the real Ilya, and Arielle turned me on to. It’s hardstyle music, it’s from a very hardcore electronic scene, and it’s by a very famous DJ called Headhunterz. There is also a big movement in Australia called Melbourne shuffle, which is basically like punk and stomp out music, except that it’s hardcore electronic, but it’s also very beautiful and classical. I consider it to be “Invincible music,” it makes you feel like you are invincible when you listen to it, it’s superhero music. The piece of music you mention, we always say that is diagetic because it’s inside of her head, the movie is just hearing what’s inside of her head.
Benny Safdie: When that track comes in it’s very different than when the music is playing in the beginning of the movie. It comes in and it’s so motivated by what’s happening on screen. It might as well be the sound effects from the park, they are interchangeable.
Aguilar: Did you guys look at any other films that depict addiction to see how it has been represented before?
Josh Safdie: No, we looked to that world itself. If we were looking for any inspiration or any way to be guided, we looked to the world and the characters themselves.
Benny Safdie: We knew there were some pitfalls that other films fall into not just by accident but by the nature of making a movie about somebody who loves a drug. We had conversations about how to film the shooting of the drug, and how to shoot the drug in certain ways to avoid glorifying it, or fetishizing it.
Aguilar: On a more specific note, the film premiered in 2014, but for the theatrical release you include a note in the credits dedicating the film to the real life Ilya, who sadly passed away this year. Is what we see in the film Arielle's premonition?
Josh Safdie: In her writings, Arielle mentions she had a vision in which he had died. She thought he was dead, but in reality he wasn’t. He was in a fire, and he survived the fire. The irony is that Ilya died on April 12th this year under different circumstances.
Benny Safdie: It’s very strange.
Aguilar: The way you approach the subject is so truthful and uncompromising, were you ever concern about audiences having an uncomfortable reaction or that it could be perceived as provocative?
Josh Safdie: I never feel uncomfortable, or dark or heavy. I’m actually very excited by everything in the movie because I kind of previewed a little bit of the mindset that the characters have. I never saw the movie as dark. It is what it is.
"Heaven Knows What" is now playing in Los Angeles at the Acrlight Hollywood and in NYC at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema...
Enthralled by Holmes, the Safdie brothers decided to make a film about her life and have her star in it, a choice that might seem risky for some but that felt absolutely correct for the filmmaking team. The result is “Heaven Knows What” an exquisitely raw and ferociously truthful film about people lost in a corrosive lifestyle. Drug addiction and emotional dependency go hand in hand as Harley (Arielle Holmes) tries to regain her boyfriend’s love while finding ways to support her habit and stay alive. Humanizing their characters while never condoning or passing judgment, the directors explore the realities of their lives with a documentary-like visual style that is as vivid as it is heart-wrenching.
An accomplishment both in technique and emotional power, “Heaven Knows What” is an eye-opening experience brimming with unflinching truth. We had the chance to talk to the Safdie team about their latest film and how they manage to put so much of the real world into each frame.
Aguilar: Arielle Holmes is evidently the driving force of this incredibly truthful and bold project. At what point in her journey did you meet her? How did you find her and her story and decided to make a film about it?
Josh Safdie: I found Arielle, that’s what happened really. I was doing research in the Diamond District. I was there for like a year and a half and I thought I knew every person who was a part of the fabric of that street, which is 47th between 5th and 6th, in Manhattan, New York.
One day at the end of the workday I went to the subway with my producer Sebastian Bear-McClard and saw Arielle. When I saw her she was dressed in a really nice dress, which I later found out she spent all of her money on, and she appeared clean because she’d washed herself in a public bathroom that morning. She woke up that morning on the steps of a Buddhist church.
At the time she paid for her habit and for her dress moonlighting as a dominatrix at a place called Pandora’s box. I knew none of this when I met her, all I knew was this was a beautiful girl who had real composure to her and who had a real star quality to her. I wanted to try to find a way to put her in this other movie we were trying to do, but when I met up with her to get to know her better, I soon realized that she had a very different life.
It was the one you see in the film, and we didn’t agree to make this movie until months later. I knew her when she attempted to kill herself, it happened in the time span of me getting to know her. I was just trying to hook her up with other jobs and just be her friend, and I eventfully asked her to start writing about her life. I directed the writing and I paid for it. The book is pretty special, she wrote most of it in Apple stores.
Aguilar: Once you were so invested in her story, was it a logical step to have her star in the film?
Benny Safdie: It was logical
Josh Safdie: Yes, we wanted to make the movie because of her.
Aguilar: Did you have any concerns about the fact that she probably had never acted before?
Josh Safdie: No. Never. That’s not unusual for us. She was a star, we just needed to figure out a way to work with her star quality and find her greatest strengths during the rehearsal period. We put her on camera a lot before we started filming to see how she acted with the camera. We actually found that the more regimen we gave her the better she was. If we just turned on the camera and have her improvise it was Ok, but she needed the structure of a script to be even better.
Benny Safdie: She wanted to take her own emotions to another level.
Aguilar: She is incredible in the film. Is this perhaps her first film of many to come?
Josh Safdie: She did another film in the wintertime, a Sci-Fi, and right now she is acting in another one, a big one.
Aguilar: The rest of the cast is also outstanding. Was there a mix of professionals actors and non-actors? They are all so great is impossible to differentiate.
Josh Safdie: Caleb Landry Jones, who plays Ilya, is an actor. He’s been in “X-Men,” “Byzantium,” “Antiviral,” and others, he is a young Hollywood actor who was introduced to me through one of our casting directors Jennifer Venditti. He was by far the most professional. Then there was Eleonore Hendricks who played a very small role as Erica. Buddy Duress, who played Mike, the dealer, was a real revelation to us. He blew us away with his rawness and his energy. He got arrested the day we finished filming the movie and he was in jail for a year, now he is out and he is in an acting class and he is doing pretty great. He was like a street legend, everyone knew him in the streets, and he’d been in and out of jail his whole life. Oddly enough we had a similar upbringing, so I could have easily made the left when he made the left, instead a made a right, and did what I ended doing. Now I think that he will hopefully make the right. Necro, who plays Skully, is a pretty big underground rapper, who I was a big fan of.
Aguilar: The entire cast disappears completely into their roles. It’s hard to even think these are actors playing a part.
Benny Safdie: The goal is to make it seem like nothing has been done.
Josh Safdie: Testament to the success of the film is when people see the film and think Buddy, playing Mike, is the big professional in the movie. Everyone hears “Oh, there is a big actor in the movie,” because Caleb has a real following, but when people see the movie they think Caleb is the non-professional actor and Buddy is the professional. That’s a real testament to Caleb’s performance as well.
Benny Safdie: It’s a matter of complete immersion into the fabric of that world, and accepting it. At the same it’s also about mixing the professionals and the firs-time actors. We use improvisation as a form of getting the people’s language right. We use it as a tool to get the dialogue perfect. It always sound better when it’s coming from someone’s own voice as opposed to from above, from us. If somebody doesn’t feel comfortable saying it a certain way we change it, and then that makes that person more comfortable.
Aguilar: Surely Arielle’s own experiences informed a lot of your choices. Did she ever come to you and say, “This didn’t happen that way” or “This doesn’t sound right”?
Josh Safdie: That’s funny because when she said that, most of the time it was in accordance to whether or not something happened the way it should have in real life, and we had changed it because it needed to be changed so that somebody watching the movie could feel how she felt. But then that actually helped her because when she started understanding the reasoning behind it and it made her acting even better. She realized, “Ok, I can make myself emotional more extreme to get the point across.”
Aguilar: Shooting a film like this in NYC was probably a great challenge. Did you guys shoot inconspicuously or on the fly to get such a realist and raw visual style?
Josh Safdie: No, it was all very structured because we were shooting a lot of our close-ups from a block away. There was not much freedom to the movements of the actors. Some scenes we did like 13 or 14 takes, sometimes we shot scenes twice. We would shoot them and then we would go back to the same location on another day when we had some free time. We would reshoot the scene if after watching the dailies we felt like it wasn’t quite right.
Benny Safdie: In New York you are not allowed to shoot without a permit if you have a tripod. We pretty much shot the whole movie with tripods or Steadicam, and if you have something like that on the street you need to legally have a permit or you’ll get stopped. We wouldn’t have been able to do it without it, so we had to be very regimented with how we shot just based on the equipment we were using. We had that restriction upon us and for the actors, like Josh said, they had to be on their marks perfectly or else we’d miss it.
Aguilar: The constraints are definitley not noticeable, the city feels and the characters feel completely free.
Josh Safdie: We did not block the sidewalks. we allowed the city to exist as the city, we were just using it to our advantage.
Benny Safdie: At some point you let the city live within the frame and let the actors live on their own within that circle, and it all kind of folds into itself.
Aguilar: Tell me about the film’s structure. The way it starts and the way it ends, it feels like an endless cycle in a sense.
Josh Safdie: That’s the cycle of the lifestyle. You kind of can’t get out of it, it’s almost impossible to get out of it. The reality of that lifestyle is that the two ways out are usually prison or death, or you get cast in a movie and you make that movie [Laughs]. Ariel Pink, a great musician who did a song for the movie and who was also in the film at one point, came to the L.A. premier at AFI Fest, and someone asked him about heroin and his reply was, “ You do heroin and get a movie made out of you.” He said it as a joke because he is a cynical guy, but it’s very rare to get out. Breaks don’t usually come, they are few and far between, and there are a lot of people who are stuck in that lifestyle. It takes a lot of courage to get out of it, and a lot of will power. It’s a trap.
Benny Safdie: It’s a physical addiction to the drug, and then there is the mental addiction to this lifestyle that you think you are living.
Aguilar: It is a lifestyle. Even as chaotic as their lives seem, they do have a certain structure and specific patterns and things they have to do to continue living this way.
Benny Safdie: Exactly, it’s just a different structure. It’s not the one that we follow, but it is a structure. We were just talking about the rent that they have to pay, it's only $15, for the tow of them that’s $30 a night, that’s cheap, that’s nothing. But $30 a night, that’s $900 a month, with that money you can find yourself a pretty descent room.
Josh Safdie: That’s without mentioning their habit, which adds to thousands of dollars a year.
Benny Safdie: And also, who would rent a room to somebody like that? At the same time that’s a lot of money that they are raising, that they are earning by having to get up 8:00 to make sure that they make the morning rush.
Aguilar: The music in the film is something that I really enjoyed and that feels cohesive with the story being told, in particular the ominous track that includes the lyrics, “explore the power of the mind.”
Josh Safdie: That’s funny because there are two pieces of music in the movie that are from Arielle’s life, which her boyfriend, the real Ilya, and Arielle turned me on to. It’s hardstyle music, it’s from a very hardcore electronic scene, and it’s by a very famous DJ called Headhunterz. There is also a big movement in Australia called Melbourne shuffle, which is basically like punk and stomp out music, except that it’s hardcore electronic, but it’s also very beautiful and classical. I consider it to be “Invincible music,” it makes you feel like you are invincible when you listen to it, it’s superhero music. The piece of music you mention, we always say that is diagetic because it’s inside of her head, the movie is just hearing what’s inside of her head.
Benny Safdie: When that track comes in it’s very different than when the music is playing in the beginning of the movie. It comes in and it’s so motivated by what’s happening on screen. It might as well be the sound effects from the park, they are interchangeable.
Aguilar: Did you guys look at any other films that depict addiction to see how it has been represented before?
Josh Safdie: No, we looked to that world itself. If we were looking for any inspiration or any way to be guided, we looked to the world and the characters themselves.
Benny Safdie: We knew there were some pitfalls that other films fall into not just by accident but by the nature of making a movie about somebody who loves a drug. We had conversations about how to film the shooting of the drug, and how to shoot the drug in certain ways to avoid glorifying it, or fetishizing it.
Aguilar: On a more specific note, the film premiered in 2014, but for the theatrical release you include a note in the credits dedicating the film to the real life Ilya, who sadly passed away this year. Is what we see in the film Arielle's premonition?
Josh Safdie: In her writings, Arielle mentions she had a vision in which he had died. She thought he was dead, but in reality he wasn’t. He was in a fire, and he survived the fire. The irony is that Ilya died on April 12th this year under different circumstances.
Benny Safdie: It’s very strange.
Aguilar: The way you approach the subject is so truthful and uncompromising, were you ever concern about audiences having an uncomfortable reaction or that it could be perceived as provocative?
Josh Safdie: I never feel uncomfortable, or dark or heavy. I’m actually very excited by everything in the movie because I kind of previewed a little bit of the mindset that the characters have. I never saw the movie as dark. It is what it is.
"Heaven Knows What" is now playing in Los Angeles at the Acrlight Hollywood and in NYC at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema...
- 5/29/2015
- by Carlos Aguilar
- Sydney's Buzz
Heaven Knows What Radius-twc Reviewed by: Harvey Karten for CompuServe ShowBiz. Databased on Rotten Tomatoes. Grade: B- Director: Josh Safdie, Benny Safdie Screenwriter: Josh Safdie, Benny Safdie, Ronald Bronstein Cast: Arielle Holmes, Caleb Landry-Jones, Necro, Buddy Duress Screened at: Review, NYC, 4/30/15 Opens: May 29, 2015 Every day in America, 2,000 mostly young people start on the road to addiction. These numbers are probably correct, give or take a thousand, but you’ve got to wonder: don’t people see movies about the dangers of dope? Slogans, like “Don’t be a dope?” News items like the recent death of Philip Seymour Hoffman? The movie industry has been sending out warnings at least [ Read More ]
The post Heaven Knows What Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.
The post Heaven Knows What Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.
- 5/25/2015
- by Harvey Karten
- ShockYa
Living Through Oblivion: Safdie Bros. Lens Devastating Tale of Desperation and Depravity on the Streets of NYC
The story of how the directorial brothers Benny and Joshua Safdie found their muse and star, Arielle Holmes, for their latest feature seems like a shadowy tale from a gritty Craigslist missed connection. After Joshua and their producer Sebastian Bear-McClard spotted her on a subway platform while working undercover for research on an abandoned genre film, they approached her. A subsequent series of no call, no shows seemed like a dead end, but then Holmes reached out, admitting that she’d been homeless, out of touch and had recently attempted to take her own life and was just recently released from the hospital.
Having dropped out of school at 15 to become a homeless heroin junky running the mean streets of New York City, Holmes’s tale of depravity and desperation struck the Safdie’s with a fascinating idea.
The story of how the directorial brothers Benny and Joshua Safdie found their muse and star, Arielle Holmes, for their latest feature seems like a shadowy tale from a gritty Craigslist missed connection. After Joshua and their producer Sebastian Bear-McClard spotted her on a subway platform while working undercover for research on an abandoned genre film, they approached her. A subsequent series of no call, no shows seemed like a dead end, but then Holmes reached out, admitting that she’d been homeless, out of touch and had recently attempted to take her own life and was just recently released from the hospital.
Having dropped out of school at 15 to become a homeless heroin junky running the mean streets of New York City, Holmes’s tale of depravity and desperation struck the Safdie’s with a fascinating idea.
- 5/25/2015
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
“Heaven Knows What is a horrifying and remarkable piece of cinema that feels both alarmingly alive and alien given its subject matter,” wrote Ty Landis in his glowing review from Tiff 2014. This heroin addiction drama from Ben and Joshua Safdie, is the best of its kind since Requiem for a Dream, as it’s described in this new trailer.
Arielle Holmes and Caleb Landry Jones star in a story about an NYC couple battling addiction while taking part in a love affair. Here’s the full synopsis:
Harley loves Ilya. He gives her life purpose, sets her passion ablaze. So when he asks her to prove her love by slitting her wrists, she obliges with only mild hesitation, perhaps because of her other all-consuming love: heroin.
In Heaven Knows What, by celebrated filmmakers Josh and Benny Safdie (Lenny Cooke, Daddy Longlegs), Arielle Holmes is Harley in her searing film debut,...
Arielle Holmes and Caleb Landry Jones star in a story about an NYC couple battling addiction while taking part in a love affair. Here’s the full synopsis:
Harley loves Ilya. He gives her life purpose, sets her passion ablaze. So when he asks her to prove her love by slitting her wrists, she obliges with only mild hesitation, perhaps because of her other all-consuming love: heroin.
In Heaven Knows What, by celebrated filmmakers Josh and Benny Safdie (Lenny Cooke, Daddy Longlegs), Arielle Holmes is Harley in her searing film debut,...
- 5/13/2015
- by Brian Welk
- SoundOnSight
Read More: Venice Review: Caleb Landry Jones Anchors Safdies' Must-See Junkie Drama 'Heaven Knows What Following critical acclaim at major film festivals in Toronto, New York, Tokyo and Venice, where it won the C.I.C.A.E Award, Ben and Joshua Safdie's extreme love story "Heaven Knows What" is getting ready for its May limited release with a manic, head-pounding new trailer. Blending fiction, formalism and raw vérité, "Heaven Knows What" follows a young heroin addict (Arielle Holmes) who finds mad love on the streets of New York. As she spirals between a love affair and the drugs both her and her partner so desperately desire, the movie manifests the panic, chaos and obsession of its fractured lead character. The film is adapted from Holmes' soon-to-be-published memoir and co-stars Caleb Landry Jones, Buddy Duress and gore rapper Necro. RADiUS-twc will the release the picture in select theaters...
- 5/11/2015
- by Zack Sharf
- Indiewire
Chicago – As the Chicago Critics Film Festival (Ccff) – a film festival as programmed by the members of the Chicago Film Critics Association – heads into its last four nights, the variety and depth of the films that are being screened continues to astound and entertain. It all takes place at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago, May 4 through 7, 2015.
HollywoodChicago.com contributors Nick Allen and Patrick McDonald have been sampling the best of the festival, and offer this preview of the final four nights of films. Each capsule is designated with Na (Nick Allen) or Pm (Patrick McDonald) – to indicate the author – or encapsulates the official synopsis from the festival.
’Quitters’ Screens on Monday, May 4th, at the Chicago Critics Film Festival
Photo credit: Chicago Critics Film Festival
The Ccff Closing Night films are the 2015 Sundance hits “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” and “The Overnight,” screening on Thursday, May 7th,...
HollywoodChicago.com contributors Nick Allen and Patrick McDonald have been sampling the best of the festival, and offer this preview of the final four nights of films. Each capsule is designated with Na (Nick Allen) or Pm (Patrick McDonald) – to indicate the author – or encapsulates the official synopsis from the festival.
’Quitters’ Screens on Monday, May 4th, at the Chicago Critics Film Festival
Photo credit: Chicago Critics Film Festival
The Ccff Closing Night films are the 2015 Sundance hits “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” and “The Overnight,” screening on Thursday, May 7th,...
- 5/4/2015
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
Dramas do not get much darker than Heaven Knows What -- or more realistic.
Based on the novel Mad Love in New York City by Arielle Holmes, who also stars in the film, Heaven Knows What is bleak from its first horrifying scene. Homeless, heroin-addicted teen Harley (Holmes) is threatening to kill herself, and her emotionally abusive boyfriend Ilya (Caleb Landry Jones) goads her into going through with it. She slashes her wrist, but immediately changes her mind and pleads with Ilya and her homeless friends to call 911.
Harley's desperate act lands her in the psych ward at Bellevue Hospital. True to form, Ilya disappears from her life while she's recovering. Completely alone when she's released, she relies on her friend Skully (underground rapper and cult figure Necro) to help her survive on the streets. But Skully is little better than Ilya; he tells her to forget her useless and...
Based on the novel Mad Love in New York City by Arielle Holmes, who also stars in the film, Heaven Knows What is bleak from its first horrifying scene. Homeless, heroin-addicted teen Harley (Holmes) is threatening to kill herself, and her emotionally abusive boyfriend Ilya (Caleb Landry Jones) goads her into going through with it. She slashes her wrist, but immediately changes her mind and pleads with Ilya and her homeless friends to call 911.
Harley's desperate act lands her in the psych ward at Bellevue Hospital. True to form, Ilya disappears from her life while she's recovering. Completely alone when she's released, she relies on her friend Skully (underground rapper and cult figure Necro) to help her survive on the streets. But Skully is little better than Ilya; he tells her to forget her useless and...
- 3/18/2015
- by Don Clinchy
- Slackerwood
Filmmakers Ben and Joshua Safdie have worked together on numerous short films over the years. However, the duo have only worked on one feature film to date, the 2010 film Go Get Some Rosemary. The duo, however, are once again behind a feature film, called Heaven Knows What.
The film, which focuses on a couple in the midst of drug addiction, is based on the story of Arielle Holmes, who also stars in the film, making her acting debut. Holmes used to live in New York City and was addicted to heroin, managing to disengage herself from the drug just months before the movie began filming. Holmes wrote her memoir as she battled through recovery to get clean, which in turn formed the basis for the screenplay for this film. The screenplay itself is written by Ronald Bronstein, who also worked with the Safdie brothers on Go Get Some Rosemary, and Joshua Safdie.
The film, which focuses on a couple in the midst of drug addiction, is based on the story of Arielle Holmes, who also stars in the film, making her acting debut. Holmes used to live in New York City and was addicted to heroin, managing to disengage herself from the drug just months before the movie began filming. Holmes wrote her memoir as she battled through recovery to get clean, which in turn formed the basis for the screenplay for this film. The screenplay itself is written by Ronald Bronstein, who also worked with the Safdie brothers on Go Get Some Rosemary, and Joshua Safdie.
- 3/18/2015
- by Deepayan Sengupta
- SoundOnSight
Heaven Knows What Red Band Trailer. Ben Safdie, Joshua Safdie‘s Heaven Knows What (2014) red band movie trailer stars Ron Braunstein, Eleonore Hendricks, Arielle Holmes, Caleb Landry Jones, and Yuri Pleskun. Heaven Knows What‘s plot synopsis: “Harley loves Ilya. He gives her life purpose, sets her passion ablaze. So when [...]
Continue reading: Heaven Knows What (2014) Red Band Movie Trailer: Arielle Holmes is Addicted...
Continue reading: Heaven Knows What (2014) Red Band Movie Trailer: Arielle Holmes is Addicted...
- 3/17/2015
- by Rollo Tomasi
- Film-Book
Read More: Venice Review: Caleb Landry Jones Anchors Safdies' Must-See Junkie Drama 'Heaven Knows What' Love is like a drug and there may be no greater addiction. The new trailer for Ben and Joshua Safdie's "Heaven Knows What" explores the power of the mind through a manic relationship lived by its star Arielle Holmes. Based on the book by Holmes, "Heaven Knows What" asks, in the midst of addiction, what's stronger: the love affair between two people, or the drugs they so desperately desire? Panic and obsession are showcased in this new chaotic, Red-Band trailer. "Heaven Knows What" premiered in October at the New York Film Festival and stars Holmes, Eleonore Hendricks and Ron Braunstein. The film will be released later this year by RADiUS. Read More: RADiUS Acquires 'Heaven Knows What' Aead of New York Film Festival Premiere...
- 3/16/2015
- by Travis Clark
- Indiewire
South by Southwest, the multi-faceted film, music and technology festival held annually in Austin, TX will feature such upcoming films as Paul Feig’s Spy, David Gordon Green’s Manglehorn, Alex Gibney’s documentary Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine, and Ondi Timoner’s Russell Brand profile Brand: A Second Coming as headliners in this year’s film festival lineup.
SXSW runs from March 13 to 21 in Austin and is now in its 22nd year. Variety has details of the 145 films and 100 world premieres bowing at this year’s festival. Brand, as previously reported, will be the festival’s opening night film.
Other notable titles on the list are the Will Ferrell/Kevin Hart comedy Get Hard, a rough cut of Judd Apatow’s Trainwreck, the directorial debut of 28 Days Later screenwriter Alex Garland, Ex Machina, and a new comedy by Michael Showalter, Hello, My Name is Doris.
On the small screen,...
SXSW runs from March 13 to 21 in Austin and is now in its 22nd year. Variety has details of the 145 films and 100 world premieres bowing at this year’s festival. Brand, as previously reported, will be the festival’s opening night film.
Other notable titles on the list are the Will Ferrell/Kevin Hart comedy Get Hard, a rough cut of Judd Apatow’s Trainwreck, the directorial debut of 28 Days Later screenwriter Alex Garland, Ex Machina, and a new comedy by Michael Showalter, Hello, My Name is Doris.
On the small screen,...
- 2/3/2015
- by Brian Welk
- SoundOnSight
Radius has acquired U.S. rights to Heaven Knows What ahead of its screening at the New York Film Festival Thursday. Radius is planning a second quarter 2015 release for the film, which is directed by Josh and Benny Safdie and blends fiction, formalism and raw documentary. The story centers on a young heroin addict (Arielle Holmes) who finds mad love in the streets of New York. It also stars Caleb Landry-Jones and features street legend Buddy Duress and gore rapper Necro. From a screenplay by Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie, Heaven Knows What first premiered at the
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- 10/1/2014
- by Rebecca Ford
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
The 2011 PollyGrind Film Festival recently wrapped up in Las Vegas, and the madman behind the scenes, Chad Clinton Freeman, checked in with Dread Central to share with us exclusively the winners of this year's fest.
Reveling in everything from arthouse to grindhouse to everything in between, PollyGrind has quickly made a name for itself as one of the up-and-coming premiere genre fests out there due to the success of each year of programming. This year's big winners (and flicks that will no doubt go on to find audiences soon) include the highly controversial The Bunny Game, The Super, Dear God No!, The Gruesome Death of Tommy Pistol and Ratline.
"I was very happy with the quantity of quality films and the diversity I was able to program this year," Freeman said. "Being able to world premiere films like Mondo Sexxxx: The Terry Kobrah Story and The Gruesome Death of Tommy Pistol,...
Reveling in everything from arthouse to grindhouse to everything in between, PollyGrind has quickly made a name for itself as one of the up-and-coming premiere genre fests out there due to the success of each year of programming. This year's big winners (and flicks that will no doubt go on to find audiences soon) include the highly controversial The Bunny Game, The Super, Dear God No!, The Gruesome Death of Tommy Pistol and Ratline.
"I was very happy with the quantity of quality films and the diversity I was able to program this year," Freeman said. "Being able to world premiere films like Mondo Sexxxx: The Terry Kobrah Story and The Gruesome Death of Tommy Pistol,...
- 10/27/2011
- by thehorrorchick
- DreadCentral.com
Written and directed by Evan Makrogiannis and Brian Weaver
Featuring Demetri Kallas, Lynn Lowry,Manoush, Ron “Necro” Braunstein, Ruby Larocca, Raine Brown, Brandon Slagle, William McLaughlin
At some point in our lives, all of us are expected to brave the terror of falling out of the nest and trying to fly on our own.
For some of us, that means college; for others, immediate employment or attempting to get it. But regardless of future plans or goals, it usually involves scrounging together rent money and curb-diving for couches that don't smell like urine, and we wind up living in shady apartment buildings. Add to that the real estate market of New York City, where for a few thousand dollars a month you can live in a shoe box (parking space fees not included), and you've got the general feeling of despair and hopelessness that permeates The Super.
The Super follows...
Featuring Demetri Kallas, Lynn Lowry,Manoush, Ron “Necro” Braunstein, Ruby Larocca, Raine Brown, Brandon Slagle, William McLaughlin
At some point in our lives, all of us are expected to brave the terror of falling out of the nest and trying to fly on our own.
For some of us, that means college; for others, immediate employment or attempting to get it. But regardless of future plans or goals, it usually involves scrounging together rent money and curb-diving for couches that don't smell like urine, and we wind up living in shady apartment buildings. Add to that the real estate market of New York City, where for a few thousand dollars a month you can live in a shoe box (parking space fees not included), and you've got the general feeling of despair and hopelessness that permeates The Super.
The Super follows...
- 11/22/2010
- by Amanda Rebholz
- Planet Fury
Guests attending the Bloodbath 2: Film Festival in Texas this November will be in for a treat as slasher tale 'The Super' has it's world premiere! Newcomer Dimitri Kallas stars as the title character George, and is joined by genre co-stars like Lynn Lowry ('I Drink Your Blood', 'The Crazies') and death rapper Ron 'Necro' Braunstein, as well as indie horror icons Manoush, Brandon Slagle, Ruby Larocca and Raine Brown. 'Taking place in a Queens apartment building during the Christmas season, the film follows George as he desperately tries to hold onto his sanity in the face of mounting home and workplace pressure. Also on his already full plate of problems is a wheelchair-bound wife (Lowry) who dreams of the day the family can leave the city behind and move upstate. One of the building's tenants, the vile Olga (Manoush), quickly becomes his partner in depravity.
- 9/22/2010
- Horror Asylum
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