I was scrolling through my HBO Max app the other day and felt like something was just... missing. Not the superhero franchise or the $200 million effects extravaganza. Those are doing just fine. I realized what it was when I saw a childhood classic, _Rookie of the Year_ , pop up.
Where are the mid-budget dramas built around an athlete facing something difficult? A boxer clawing back from…
Look, it should go without saying, but we watch a lot of director interviews, MasterClasses, and film commentary around here. Because that's a huge way to learn this difficult art of making movies—how does a director behave on set? What strange rules do they follow (looking at you, Nolan)? How do they talk to actors? How does a director discuss story and achieve their vision?
Filmmaker Theo…
Steven Spielberg's Disclosure Day hits theaters June 12, which means the man is top of mind right now. And when we think about Spielberg, we think about a career that spans _Duel_ to _Schindler's List_ to _Jurassic Park_ without a decade of coasting. But what keeps him going?
He recently said he still watches Lawrence of Arabia once a year on 70mm just to "stay humble." And he once told…
Steven Spielberg said four words in a 1985 Time Magazine interview that have stuck around for 40 years.
"I dream for a living."
We're pretty romantic about the director and his work around here, as his films have played as a backdrop to our lives, particularly the early stuff— _Jaws_ , _E.T._ , _Close Encounters_. Now, with _Disclosure Day_ nearing release, we're thinking about his career…
Chandler Levack is another of the current class of talented Candian ladies directing fresh, original cinema. Her latest is MILE END KICKS (starring Barbie Ferreira)…and, at the same moment, ROOMMATES, a Happy Madison film starring Sadie Sandler. And she memorably broke onto screen with festival darling I LIKE MOVIES. She joins Jordan to give us a fresh look at our show’s most relatable…
In a 2017 talk with the International Documentary Association, the incomparable Werner Herzog said something that will probably make every filmmaker wince a little.
Young filmmakers shooting 550 hours of footage, he said, made his heart sink. "They don't know what they're doing," he said.
But, seriously, we get both sides. There's nothing like the feeling of being with your editor and…
The great Clint Eastwood has directed more than 40 films.
When the Associated Press asked him in 2010 to name his favorites from that impressive stack, he came up with six: _Bird_ , _Letters from Iwo Jima_ , _Million Dollar Baby_ , _Mystic River_ , _The Outlaw Josey Wales_ , and _Unforgiven_ (via CBS).
His own comments about each film reveal something about how he approaches the craft as a…
I grew up on classic films, the wackier the better. So, of course, I saw my share of movie musicals and high-concept comedies.
In honor of Marilyn Monroe's birthday, we're looking at one of my favorites of all time.
_Some Like It Hot_ is the 1959 Billy Wilder comedy that topped the BBC Culture 100 Greatest Comedies of All Time poll and that the AFI ranked #1 on its list of the 100 funniest…
The Criterion Collection just dropped a 4K release of Body Heat, and with it comes a new interview with writer/director Lawrence Kasdan. And we always love learning from the greats.
This might sound familiar to fellow struggling artists. Kasdan spent seven years writing things that went nowhere before he ever got paid. He wrote _The Empire Strikes Back_ and _Raiders of the Lost Ark_ before…
Growing up, I was always the quiet kid in the back, doodling in a notebook. In 6th grade, instead of a yearbook, my classmates signed my sketchbook, filled with characters I created, action sequences I drew squares for and mapped out, and stories I was yearning to tell.
I’m always trying to get the images out of my head and in front of others, and the camera is my paintbrush.
When I got…
I'm on a contained story kick right now. My creative partner and I are fresh off a short film shoot and want to make something else, but we want to make it as easy on ourselves as possible in terms of production, and _cheap_. So, of course, my mind went straight to single-location, contained ideas.
While contained stories are easier to produce and one of the most practical formats for…
Nobody was fighting to make _Leaving Las Vegas._
The source material was John O'Brien's semi-autobiographical 1990 novel about a screenwriter who moves to Vegas with the explicit plan to drink himself to death. The book had gone out of print.
The story has no redemption arc and no real studio appeal, so it seems a little unmakeable on the surface. Director Mike Figgis took the job…
Obsession was one of the best films we saw at SXSW 2026. Imagine a late-night room full of horror film fans all totally bought into your world, gasping in all the right places, choking out laughter, even crying out, “Hell, no!” That was _Obsession_ in Austin, Texas.
The film originally premiered at TIFF Midnight Madness, promptly sold to Focus Features for $15 million, and then landed its…
Nolan didn't go to film school. Neither did a lot of people reading this, and we obviously love that.
We’re also super excited for _The Odyssey_ coming up, and while that release date ticks closer, we’re going back to some of Christopher Nolan’s _Oppenheimer_ press appearances to get some inspiration ahead of his epic adventure story.
We love to learn from this auteur, who has paved a path,…
Directors Ron Howard and George Lucas go way back. Lucas directed Howard in _American Graffiti_ , and Howard has described him as a mentor. If anyone was primed to be sold on _Star Wars_ , it was Howard.
But he just… really wasn’t, it turns out. He revealed as much during an in-depth conversation with Graham Bensinger.
Back then, when Howard asked Lucas what his next project would be, Lucas…
When I was a kid, I made a bunch of silly sketch videos with my cousins. I would never want to go back and try to talk about those videos critically because I know they’re bad. And I think most filmmakers would feel the same about things like their student work, which often gets buried in our memories somewhere.
But Avery Dohrmann put his work under a microscope in a recent video. Most…
Hedda writer-director Nia DaCosta has been tapped to direct the pilot and second episode of Sex Criminals, Prime Video‘s series adaptation of Image Comics’ title that hails from Emily V. Gordon, Kumail Nanjiani, Tze Chun, LuckyChap and Amazon MGM Studios. DaCosta also will executive produce. The news was revealed Monday during Amazon’s Upfront presentation in New York […]
Have you been obsessed with the Backrooms since the beginning? I certainly have, so I am among the fans who are absolutely hype for the feature-length adaptation of the Internet’s favorite analog horror series to hit the big screens.
The person behind it, Kane Parsons, is about to become A24's youngest-ever feature director when _Backrooms_ opens theaters on May 29. He's 20 years old. Three…
What does it mean to write cinematically?
You probably want to conjure images in a reader's brain via your screenplay. But you have to do that quickly and economically, because your screenplay isn't a novel. You can't describe every little detail.
So what do you do instead?
Film Courage sat down with screenwriter Brandon Violette (co-creator and head writer of _CoComelon Lane_ on Netflix,…
Back in March 2025, the Academy Museum opened _Director's Inspiration: Bong Joon-ho_ , which was the first exhibition ever dedicated entirely to the _Parasite_ filmmaker, featuring over 100 original objects from across his career, like storyboards, props, concept art, and creature models.
To mark the recent April addition of new _Mickey 17_ objects to the show, Director Bong hosted a special…
The Singers just won an Oscar for live-action short film. It’s a huge accomplishment for a film that didn’t take the usual approach to many elements of its production.
Director and cinematographer Sam Davis set out to make the short with no script, no shot list, and a cast of non-actors he spent a year hunting down on TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram. The result is a warm, funny, deeply felt…
You know what they say—rules are meant to be broken! Yes, even filmmaking rules.
If you’ve had any formal training or studied the craft at all, you know that general guidance is to match your white balance. Shoot a lot of coverage. Respect that 180-degree line in dialogue scenes.
And, look, these rules exist for a reason. If you break them, you risk incohesiveness in your projects and…
I’ll admit pretty readily that I had fairly low expectations going into A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. I remember how _Game of Thrones_ didn’t exactly stick the landing, and prestige TV tends to be hit-or-miss these days. I haven’t read the novella and didn’t know what the show was even about.
But as the opening episodes unfolded, and I realized we were going to stay with mostly one…
Before _Sinners_ , before _Black Panther_ , before _Fruitvale Station_ (and before his Oscar win last weekend), Ryan Coogler was a fresh, young USC grad student with a 16mm camera and a story he needed to tell.
His 2009 short _Locks_ is just six minutes long, set in Oakland, and follows a man with dreadlocks as he walks through his neighborhood. He sees two other men (also with dreadlocks)…
The Western half of the United States is entering a historic heat wave that will subject millions of Americans to sweltering conditions and is forecast to break records across California, Arizona, and neighboring states. Already on Monday, 39 million people were under heat alerts, and the heat wave will continue expanding and intensifying as the week progresses, pushing temperatures 20–30 degrees…
Imagine you’re Robert Eggers. Imagine you made _The Witch_. That’s a dream for many filmmakers, no matter your genre—you make a veritable hit that becomes a horror standard and part of a cultural lexicon.
Now imagine you hate that movie you made.
That’s the reality of Eggers’ relationship with _The Witch_ , a movie he says doesn’t live up to the vision in his head due to his own lack of…
Will Ropp spent most of the start of his career on the other side of the camera. As an actor, his credits include _The Way Back_ , _The Fallout_ , and _Love, Victor._ These projects put him in rooms with directors like Gavin O'Connor and Megan Park.
But with new and different aspirations in mind, he was definitely paying attention.
Now he's on the other side of the camera. _Brian_ _,_ his…
__Usually, when you’re writing a film, a lot of your focus is ondialogue. You're making characters talk about stuff. They share their feelings, goals, and exposition, so the audience gets to know them and can follow the story.
When it comes to actually shooting those pages, you’re probably not doing the talking against high-octane explosions or car chases. It’s probably just two people in a…
I've spoken about finding your own unique voice that makes you stand out among the crowd many times on this site, and today is no different.
Finding what makes you unique can be a lifelong journey. But what happens when you finally find it, achieve massive success, and everyone starts calling you a genius?
That may seem like a fantasy for most of us, I mean, I still get excited when anyone…
I love Oscar week because everyone is unloading BTS of their movies and getting people excited for who can take home the awards. And one of the most exciting films of the year was _Sinners. _
__It actually came out around this time last year, which is kind of crazy to think about in terms of how long awards season has gotten.
And if you go way back, a couple of years ago, Sinners was in…