(Not) Showing Up - Kelly Reichardt

[holyzombiejesus]

I really like Kelly Reichardt and have been looking forward to seeing her latest film, Showing Up, since I first saw a review back in 2022. I've just seen that it's gone straight to Prime over here so presumably won't be getting a proper release. But pissed off tbh and don't really get why.
Having said that, I was going to say that First Cow must have been her most commercially successful film and when I checked on wiki (yes, I know) it seems to have lost money.
Anyone understand the decision not to give it a full theatrical release over here?

[Funcrusher]

I rate Kelly Reichardt as the best American director of the last twenty years. I've not been keeping up at all with new releases for the last few months. so I'd just assumed this had been on release and only found out other wise leafing through the latest Sight and Sound and the review of the blu-ray mentioned that it hadn't got a release and that maybe this was a canary in the coal mine for the state of arthouse cinema in theatres in the UK. As far as I know 'Showing Up' got pretty decent reviews. As a Gen Xer I do wonder whether audiences that have grown up on the mainstream cinema of the last couple of decades will age out into some viewers watching arthouse movies in the way I did. I does seem to be a somewhat elderly audience that's maybe declining.

[sevendaughters]

She's very much in the precarious end of independent cinema, which is insane because she is taught on syllabi worldwide and has made major contributions to American film in the 21st century. She struggles less to get things made than she did between River of Grass and Old Joy, but we're still talking about films costing between $1-2m, which isn't a lot given the landscape we're in. You can see why some directors like Chloe Zhou, DD Cretton, and Ryan Coogler have moved from this world to big budget work. She and Sean Baker seem to be amongst the holdouts.

Showing Up was a little slight for me, but I love and value her films and would see her next one no problem.
 

[Sebastian Cobb]

Cheers for the heads up hzg I like her work!

Hal Hartley's at a similar level and I feel his early films had a similar look and feel to RoG. He's had to use kickstarter to get his last film off the ground.

[StewartLeehaslethimselfgo]

Possibly the most boring film I've ever seen

[Mister Six]

Anyone understand the decision not to give it a full theatrical release over here?

It's shit?

Possibly the most boring film I've ever seen

Yes.

I liked it when André 3000 turned up, and thingy from Dawson's Creek was great, but that's about it.

[holyzombiejesus]

Prime haven't even added on the trailer, opting instead just to show a minute from some part of the film. So shit.

Also, has anyone ever read any of Jonathan Raymond's books?

[Memorex MP3]

Thought this was great, very slight and needed a couple of contrived pieces to give it a narrative flow but does a great job covering an area in art production that's a bit bafflingly untapped in films (only similarish thing I can think of is A Bread Factory) and there's some great performances packed in; Michelle Williams and Hong Chau being the obvious standouts.


I think Reichardt is probably not great at navigating the industry tbh. She insisted on doing Certain Women on film as a theatrical anthology project that was never going to do too well at a point when she could've easily either gotten sufficient funding to shoot digital or been allowed do whatever she wanted narratively with it as a vanity project for some streaming service or cable network.
She then shot a period piece about two guys in the west at a point when the market was very strong for projects by women with strong female characters.


It's a bit weird how buried Showing Up has been; like they couldn't decide whether it was too slight to be awards season worthy or not and it kinda just stumbled out the door after being held back for months.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Cheers for the heads up hzg I like her work!

Hal Hartley's at a similar level and I feel his early films had a similar look and feel to RoG. He's had to use kickstarter to get his last film off the ground.

Miranda July also occupies a similar, albeit weirder space come to think of it.

[Blinder Data]

was about to reply to this thread as if I knew anything about the director, but I was thinking of a different female director: Nicole Holofcener

she won plaudits for 'can you ever forgive me' but her 2023 film 'you hurt my feelings' barely made a splash despite good reviews.

it feels like between COVID and Barbenheimer, Hollywood was dumbstruck about the best way to market films. so many got lost with poor releases or onto streaming. hopefully the tide is turning - I know Barbenheimer is hardly arthouse but the success of poor things and the zone of interest and the failure of comic book crap hopefully shows distributors that cinemagoers like something different every now and again

[Mister Six]

TBF You Hurt My Feelings me was extremely middling and nowhere near as good as Can You Ever Forgive Me (or, to an even greater extent, her earlier Gandolfini/Louis-Dreyfuss flick Enough Said).

[Memorex MP3]

I liked You Hurt My Feelings but it's arguably an even less marketable film; probably cost a lot more than Showing Up just because it's shot in New York but is similarly low on drama (which felt very much like the point)


Personally think a lot of the issue is that the audience for these kinds of films has been very negatively hit by years of watching slop on Netflix over the pandemic without going out to see films. If you're actually going to build up the energy to go out and see something it's probably a lot more likely to either be something that seems like more of an ordeal to sit through at home without distractions (longer, slower, subtitled) or something that makes more use of the larger screen and sound system.