Eric Kohn

"Beginners"? "Tree Of Life"? Nevermind. The Real Winner of the 2011 Gothams Was Patton Oswalt.

• November 29, 2011 11:41 AM
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A Socialist Nightmare: Revisiting "Martha Marcy May Marlene" By Way Of "The Crowd."

• By Eric Kohn
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• November 22, 2011 8:15 AM
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• 2 Comments

When I was an undergraduate at NYU, I attended a career lecture by Garrison Keillor in the journalism department, where the "Lake Wobegon" overseer made his ascent to "A Prairie Home Companion" look easy. "I'm here to encourage you to keep writing," he told the room. Keillor's secret? Freelancing! "I've never had a boss," he said.

Easier said than done, GK. The lovable old timer must have known as much but didn't want to admit it. To a roomful of aspiring writers and reporters facing an industry with fewer jobs than one-off gigs and unpaid internships, not to mention a media landscape with an overall questionable future, the paternal Keillor looked like a beacon of hope.

I was thinking about this conflicting experience over the weekend, when I had the chance to watch "Martha Marcy May Marlene" for the second time. I liked the movie just as much I did when I saw it at Sundance, but during this time through I felt more cognizant of the way the vaguely-defined cult that Martha escapes from serves as a microcosm of society. By breaking away in the first scene, Martha demonstrates her realization, on some fundamental level, that her allegiance to a bunch of lunatics did her no good. It's her Garrison Keillor moment. Which is to say: Easier said than done.

Since most discussions about "Martha" revolve around how it attempts to replicate the trauma of living through a brainwashing experience, its larger significance as a story about growing up and fighting assimilation in general has been largely ignored. This angle occurred to me during my latest viewing experience not only because I had seen it once before, but also because I recently watched King Vidor's classic 1928 silent "The Crowd," which also deals quite eloquently with the struggle between capitalist pursuits and freedom of thought. The balance between assimilation and individualism lies at the root of modern human experience, and both movies tap into it with provocative results.

Catching Up: Brief Thoughts on Soderbergh's "Contagion."

• By Eric Kohn
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• November 18, 2011 9:15 AM
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The end of the world is a fixation that has captured the imagination of countless filmmakers in several eras of the medium's history. Even Charlie Chaplin pondered the apocalypse in an unproduced screenplay co-written by film critic James Agee. While the zombie subgenre, pioneered by George Romero over 40 years ago with "Night of the Living Dead," combined the gloomy scenario with a terrific form of escapism, it led the scenario away from the scarier prospects of what a real threat to humankind might look like. ("Dr. Strangelove" did not become the paradigm.) Steven Soderbergh's "Contagion," which I finally watched this week, gets closer to depicting the real deal.

Serge Bromberg Premieres Colorized "A Trip to the Moon" & Behind-the-Scenes Doc

• By Eric Kohn
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• November 13, 2011 3:39 PM
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• 5 Comments

Usually, the prospects of digital colorization make a large contingency of movie buffs instantly livid. The recent color restoration of George Méliès's seminal 1902 "A Trip to the Moon" provides a rare exception. Exhumed from the archives of a private collection in 1993, the ultra-rare nitrate print fell into the hands of committed restoration expert Serge Bromberg at Lobster Films around 10 years ago. It took a long time to get the print back in shape, and some images were unsalvageable, necessitating the aid of a computer on numerous frames to mimic the hand-colored images that remained. Twenty-first century technology became the crutch, not an update, bringing Méliès' playfully surreal sci-fi snapshot to vivid life in the way he always intended it.