Chelsea Taylor and Jake Gyllenhaal spent an hour observing two dead bodies. Taylor, a 2013 UCLA alumna, plays the friend of Gyllenhaal’s fictional deceased daughter in the film “Nocturnal Animals.” In the film, his character’s fictional wife and daughter are brutally murdered by bandits; Taylor’s principal moment comes with observing the actor as he grieves […]
Author Archives: Alexandra Kukoff
Q&A: Alumna, director Donna Deitch reflects on 1985 film ‘Desert Hearts’
Alumna Donna Deitch said it takes a powerful, creative force to stand up to injustice. Deitch attended the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television in the 1970s and identifies as lesbian. In 1985, she released her film “Desert Hearts,” which follows the budding romance between a professor and a sculptor who identifies as a […]
Movie review: Arrival
Amy Adams’ performance in “Arrival” is out of this world, but the film’s antiquated gender ideals are less than alien. In the new military space thriller “Arrival,” Adams delivers a stunning portrayal of Louise Banks, a linguist employed by the military to translate alien language. Banks’ own unraveling – offset by recurrent flashbacks of her […]
Second Take: Recent space films shouldn’t lose sight of human emotion
Cinema recently revived its search for success across the final frontier. In the next two months, an influx of movies either in or about outer space will be released, including the military-thriller “Arrival,” the Christmas-slated melodrama “Passengers” and the teen romance “The Space Between Us,” in which a boy from Mars falls in love with […]
Q&A: UCLA alumna Geeta Malik discusses filmography and Indian heritage
Geeta Malik, an Indian-American Colorado native, grew up watching large-scale Bollywood musical numbers with her mother. Malik said the films inspired the Indian roots in her own film work. The UCLA alumna received the 2016 Academy Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting for her newest script “Dinner with Friends.” The screenplay follows the coming-of-age arc of a […]