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A.O. Scott Responds to New Yorker Blog on the Value and Definition of Neo-Realism
Carpetbagger —
... , on the magazine’s Web site, a bill of particulars against an article I wrote in The Times Magazine about American neo-realist filmmakers. His numbered list of eight objections, running to more than 1,000 words, was meant to demonstrate that my essay “rests on questionable premises and reaches dubious conclusions.” This is Mr. Brody’s way of saying that he and I like different movies, and that he wishes I had not paid so much attention to “Wendy and Lucy,” “Ballast” and the films of Ramin Bahrani, director of “Man Push Cart,” “Chop Shop” and “Goodbye Solo.” (For some ...
New York Film Writers Clash Over “Neo-Neo Realism”
indieWIRE Recent —
Two of New York’s most respected film critics had a bit of an online altercation over the weekend, with The New Yorker‘s Richard Brody lashing out on The New York Times’ A.O. Scott and his extensive Sunday New York Times Magazine article, “Neo-Neo Realism.” Scott’s piece was posted online Friday, essentially asking, “What kind of movies do we need now?” Emphasizing Ramin Bahrani’s “Goodbye Solo,” Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s “Half Nelson,” Kelly Reichardt’s “Wendy and Lucy,” So Yong Kim’s “Treeless Mountain,’ and others, Scott discusses a new trend in American independent ...
Screengrab Review: "Goodbye Solo"
The Screengrab —
... Goodbye Solo, the third feature from Ramin Bahrani, the 34-year-old, American-born writer-director of Iranian extraction who was recently inducted by A. O. Scott into the "neo-neo-realism" hall of fame, represents a major leap forward for a filmmaker who wasn't in a bad place to begin with. Shot in Bahrani's home town of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, it's one of those rare movies that is hard to discuss, in terms of the story and characters, without making it sound simpler--and more pat--than it is. The title character, Solo (played by Souléymane Sy ...
FILM OF THE WEEK & PODCAST: Goodbye Solo (Ramin Bahrani)
GreenCine Daily —
... As recently discussed in A.O. Scott's piece on the American indie scene's current wave of "neo-neo realism," Goodbye Solo, the latest cultural-outsider drama from rising Iranian-American auteur Ramin Bahrani (Chop Shop, Man Push Cart), is far more riveting in its funny-sad humanism than it might sound on the page: ...
The Neo-Neo Realism Debate
For Cinephiles by a Cinefille —
... Last Sunday, A.O Scott wrote what I found to be an intriguing article on Neo-Neo Realism, films directed by emerging American filmmakers. Here is an excerpt: ...
"Treeless Mountain"
From the Front Row —
... It's often lumped in with the growing realism trend among independent filmmakers, or as A.O. Scott recently dubbed them in a somewhat controversial article , the Neo-Neo Realists. He cites other films in this movement (which really isn't any kind of organized movement as it is an overarching trend) such as Kelly Rechhardt's Wendy and Lucy , Rahmin Bahrani's Goodbye Solo, and Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s Half Nelson , so Treeless Mountain is in some very distinguished company. While I don't think it is as good as the other film's mentioned, I found myself quite taken with ...
Treeless Mountain
The House Next Door —
... I feel positively churlish for disliking Treeless Mountain. Actually, I don't dislike it; I just don't really care for it, which is a distinction worth making. So Yong Kim's second feature was drafted by A.O. Scott for his strange "Neo-Neo Realism" think-piece, and by the time I saw it—through no fault of the film—I was thinking about it both as a stand-alone aesthetic unit and as potentially symptomatic of what Scott was angling at. Taken on their own, both this film and Kim's previous, ...
Review: "Treeless Mountain"
From the Front Row —
... There has been a trend in independent cinema recently toward small, sparse narratives about people dealing with personal and economic hardships. You could see this as part of an overarching trend brought on by the state of the world economy, or as part of a new movement in filmmaking (an controversial opinion held by A.O. Scott ). No matter how you look at it, it's a growing trend both in American cinema ( ...
Neo-Neo
SCREENVILLE —
... . However I'm not following his "Neo-Neo Realism" catch, which was the main article (NYT, March 17, 2009) at the origin of this mini-polemic. George Washington (2000/Gordon Green) Our Song (2000/McKay) Man Push Cart (2005/Bahrani) Iran Half Neslon (2006/Fleck) In Between Days (2006/Kim So Young) Korea Chop Shop (2007/Bahrani) Iran Old Joy (2007/Reichardt) Sugar (2008/Fleck) Goodbye Solo (2008/Bahrani) Iran Treeless Mountain (2008/Kim So Young) Korea Ballast (2008/Hammer) Wendy and Lucy (2008/Reichardt) It's interesting indeed to figure out what looks like the ...
Getting real
Observations on film art —
... Bahrani has mastered a somewhat different narrative tradition than the crisis-driven plotting of Frozen River. “Neo-neorealism,” A. O. Scott has called it, linking Goodbye Solo to Wendy and Lucy, Treeless Mountain, Old Joy, and other films that offer us an “escape from escapism.” Now, Scott suggests, American cinema is having its delayed Neorealist moment. Richard Brody offers ...
Tribeca '09 Review Recap: 'Tell Tale,' 'Paintball,' 'Entre Nos,' 'Fear Me Not,'
:: The Playlist :: —
... Squarely from the newly minted neo-neo-realism genre coined by A.O. Scott (marked by hardluck stories and often, filmmakers with few options and limited choices, just like their characters, read: low budget), the Paola Mendoza and Gloria La Morte directed hardscrabble human drama depicts a Colombian mother (also Mendoza, who is quite beautiful) who sojourns with her two children to Queens, New York to be reunited with her husband, who turns out to be a deadbeat, chauvinistic ...
Deconstructing Cinema of the 2000's - Part 2: Social Realism
DAILY FILM DOSE: A Daily Film Appreciation and Review Blog —
... films of Paul Greengrass (Bourne Supremacy and Ultimatum), Steven Soderbergh and Alejandro González Iñárritu handheld dialogue seemed to become the norm as well. These were just stylistic crutches for directors keeping pace with the times, and few of these films actually drew from the fundamental and core humanism tropes of European Social Realism. We had to look to the American independent film movements to find these influences. New York Times critic A.O. Scott’s widely circulated article earlier this year on neo-neo-realism summarized the American version of the trend ...
