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Against the rugged Oregon backdrop, A Perfect Day for Caribou follows Herman and Nate over the course of a fateful day. Director Jeff Rutherford’s debut feature explores the complex bond between these two estranged men through long, soulful conversations and sweeping landscape shots that complement the film’s meditative pace.

Herman planned to end his lonely travels with suicide but received an unexpected call from his adult son, Nate. They arrange an impromptu meeting at a cemetery, where Nate brings along his young son, Ralph. But shortly after the reunion, Ralph wanders off unnoticed. His disappearance prompts Herman and Nate to work together to search the nearby fields and forests, retracing their steps as they open up about the years lost between them.

Through it all, Dp Alfonso Herrera Salcedo’s gorgeous black-and-white cinematography captures the wide-open vistas that mirror the emotional distance these characters have placed between themselves and the world.

Written by Emily Jisoo

Director Grant Hyun’s short film “Koreatown” is based on a true story about a male do-umi (Korean for escort) who works in Los Angeles’ Koreatown, one of the largest of its kind. With Korean-American films, you might expect stories of hardworking parents who build their lives on sacrifice, and second-generation kids who struggle with their cultural identity. Koreatown offers something very different, almost surreal, but very much grounded in its surroundings and approach.

Follow our coverage of the deeper depths of Asian cinema

Set in 2007, the film follows Kyeong, a do-umi at a noraebang (Korean karaoke bar). He entertains his female clients, pouring them drinks and singing for them. Through a series of snapshots, his precarious life of excessive alcohol, violence, and emotional labour comes into focus. When an older Korean woman pays him extra to come to her house, he acquiesces and gives in to her disturbing request.

Perhaps deciding that the relationship tribulations of white, coastal-American men of medium-to-high class-privilege levels — which were well-served on the big screen in previous decades — have been rather overlooked of late, writer-director Noah Pritzker goes back to the well of male midlife neurosis for his sophomore feature and dredges up not quite enough to fill up one amiable indie dramedy. Powered largely by the affability of Griffin Dunne playing a reluctant pending-divorcé whose aging father has recently left his aging mother and whose adult son is having woman troubles of his own, “Ex-Husbands” which world-premieres at the San Sebastian Film Festival, is likable enough in intention, but flounders en route to its destination. Not unlike its befuddled protagonists, who can’t seem to translate meaning well into doing well.

We meet Peter Pearce (Dunne), a New York dentist, in the Walter Reade Theater in New York’s Lincoln Center — like...

A cemetery is not an auspicious choice of rendezvous point for an estranged father and son arranging what might be one last meeting in “A Perfect Day for Caribou,” but the dry joke of Jeff Rutherford’s tender, affectingly reserved first feature is that things get more melancholic still when they leave its glum confines. Set over the course of a single day on the fringes of some dead American anytown, this at once quiet and talkative two-hander covers no especially new ground, but strides known territory with a keen eye for lonesome landscapes, and an ear for the eternal communicative impasse felt by men who know each other all too well and not at all. Sturdy, thoughtful performances from Jeb Berrier and, in particular, rising star Charlie Plummer should hook distributor interest in this low-key indie following its premiere in Locarno’s newcomer-oriented Cineasti de Presente strand.

The gruffly...

Two men occupy diagonal ends of the poster for Jeff Rutherford’s first feature film, “A Perfect Day for Caribou.” One hangs suspended in space, like a kite held in the air, but with cassette tape instead of rope. The tape spools down into a dictaphone, held by a man with a reindeer head.

This absurdist image is illustrative of the film, in which a father finds himself tethered to his son, despite attempts to depart from these family ties. As the film unravels into a meditation on memory, loss and abandonment, interspersed with uncanny cutaways to, for instance, men on fire, audiences may realize that “A Perfect Day for Caribou” is intent on building an intimacy with the visually absurd.

Premiering at the Locarno Film Festival, the film portraits an extended encounter between Herman (Jeb Berrier) and his son, Nate (Charlie Plummer). They grapple with their relationship against a...

This review originally ran following the film’s world premiere at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.

If a weathered heart still searching for tenderness in the twilight of life were a movie, it would be “A Love Song.” This miraculously radiant first feature from writer-director Max Walker-Silverman tells a Western romance amid constellations and birds, delayed letters and brief encounters, and the worthwhile sorrow of loving and yearning to be loved.

Placid in her self-sufficient lifestyle, lonely widow Faye (Dale Dickey) eagerly awaits the arrival of an important guest in the mountainous vastness of the Colorado terrain. On campsite seven, she catches shellfish for dinner and listens to her trusty radio, a battery-fueled portal to her emotional state that always plays a pertinent tune at the appropriate time.

With early shots of sturdy flowers, gorgeous in their bravery as they thrive on arid ground, Walker-Silverman makes a visual analogy to his leading lady’s gentle fortitude.

“A Perfect Day for Caribou,” which stars “Lean on Pete’s” Charlie Plummer, has debuted its trailer, ahead of its world premiere in Locarno Film Festival’s Concorso Cineasti del Presente.

In Jeff Rutherford’s feature debut, Plummer and Jeb Berrier play an estranged son and father, respectively, who spend the day ambling around a cemetery, wandering the wilderness, searching for family, and “stumbling through disharmony and heartache.”

The film is presented in 4:3 aspect ratio, shot in black and white by DoP Alfonso Herrera Salcedo, who has won several awards for his work, including the 2018 Kodak Cinematography Vision Award, the Golden Tadpole in the Student Competition at Camerimage in 2019 for “Lefty/Righty,” and the Bisato d’Oro for best cinematography at the Venice Film Festival in 2021 for Joaquín del Paso’s “The Hole in the Fence.”

“A Perfect Day for Caribou” tells the story of just one day in the life of Herman,...

Yellow wildflowers in the dusty brown dirt, multi-colored rolling hills, and a green-blue lake set the stage for writer-director Max Walker-Silverman’s debut feature film “A Love Song.” A rumination on love found and lost, it’s also a hymn to the beauty and wonder of Walker-Silverman’s native Colorado. Cinematographer Alfonso Herrera Salcedo shoots the film with the hazy, yet hyper-defined colors of an old picture postcard.

Continue reading ‘A Love Song’ Review: Max Walker-Silverman’s Debut Is A Beautiful, Overdue Showcase For Dale Dickey [Sundance] at The Playlist.

Films Boutique has scooped world sales rights to Max Walker-Silverman’s “A Love Song” which is set to world premiere at Sundance and has also been selected for the Berlinale Panorama section.

“A Love Song” stars Dale Dickey (“Winter’s Bone”) and Wes Studi (“The Last of the Mohicans”) who won the Academy Honorary Award in 2020.

Penned and directed by Max Walker-Silverman, “A Love Song” unfolds at an idyllic campsite in the Colorado Mountains, where a woman, Faye, spends her days listening to birds, catching crawfish from the lake, and scanning her old radio for a station. But most of all, Faye is waiting for Lito, a childhood sweetheart she hasn’t seen in decades. “A Love Song” is lushly lensed by Alfonso Herrera Salcedo (“El hoyo en la cerca”).

“I consider ‘A Love Song’ a piece of my home, and so it’s a particular pleasure to partner with Films...

Further prizes awarded to Quentin Tarantino, Edward Norton, Peter Greenaway and Richard Gere.

Joker cinematographer Lawrence Sher won the Golden Frog at Poland’s EnergaCamerimage International Film Festival on Saturday (November 16).

The box-office hit, starring Joaquin Phoenix and directed by Todd Phillips, also won the audience award at the festival, which returned to Torun, Poland.

Scroll down for full list of winners

The Silver Frog went to cinematographer César Charlone for his work on Fernando Meirelles’ The Two Popes, while Vladimír Smutný won the Bronze Frog for Vaclav Marhoul’s The Painted Bird.

Second World War drama The Painted Bird,...

“Joker” cinematographer Lawrence Sher’s bid, along with director Todd Phillips, to try something “perhaps even a bit artful” won big Saturday in Torun, Poland as he took the top prize at the EnergaCamerimage Intl. Film Festival.

The Golden Frog for cinematography, along with the audience prize, went to his work filming Joaquin Phoenix in the dark origin story of Batman’s nemesis for its “dystopian storytelling” that “challenges us and unsettles us,” the jury said.

Sher quipped that such a gritty film from “the guys who made ‘The Hangover’ is not always expected.”

The fest wrapped in its new home, the historic city where it was first launched 27 years ago, after screenings of 188 films, most judged by some of 48 jurors in 10 competition categories.

The filming of cinematographer Cesar Charlone in Fernando Meirelles’ portrait of rivalry within the Vatican, “The Two Popes,” won the Silver Frog, while Vladimir Smutny’s...

Camerimage, the festival in Toruń, Poland dedicated to the art of cinematography, handed out its prestigious Frog prizes this evening. The big winner was “Joker” cinematographer Lawrence Sher, who won the top prize, the Golden Frog, in addition to the Audience Prize. The Bronze Frog was awarded to “The Painted Bird” Dp Vladimír Smutný, while “The Two Popes” Dp César Charlone won the Silver Frog. A full list of winners at the end of this article.

Now in its 27th year, Camerimage has become homecoming week for cinematographers from around the globe, with a vast number of the best DPs, past and present, in attendance. From an awards perspective — considering cinematographers nominate their colleagues — it’s hard to overestimate the value of DPs presenting their work and discussing their craft with their tight-knit community during the week-long celebration.

Sher — whose “Joker” screened early in the fest, and has been in...