Writer/Director Martin McDonagh on his Dark, Brilliant Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

*We’re sharing some of our favorite interviews of the year this week in our ‘Best of 2017’ roundup.

With his thrillingly raw new film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri just released, writer/director Martin McDonagh is happy to chat about the movie,

Alexander Payne’s Longtime Editor On Stepping into the Directing Chair for Crash Pad

If you’ve seen Sideways, About Schmidt, The Descendants, or Nebraska, you’re likely headed to the theater this weekend to see Alexander Payne’s newest project Downsizing. You have also seen the work of longtime collaborator Kevin Tent who has been the editor on all of those movies and more. After years of collaborating with Payne, Tent stepped out on his own to direct the neurotically funny Crash Pad this year.

I, Tonya Director Craig Gillepsie on Revisiting the Second Most Surreal Sports-Related Crime in the ’90s

Back in 1994, when  tabloid TV shows such as “Hard Copy” and “Inside Edition” became the rage and CNN fed the public’s hunger for 24-hour news coverage, two crime-related stories revolving around sports figures would provide ample sustenance. One involved the arrest of football hero O.J. Simpson for the lurid murders of wife Nicole and Ron Goldman. The other was a good vs. evil  scenario that pitted skating princess Nancy Kerrigan against the less-polished, more athletic Tonya Harding.

Writer/Director Dan Gilroy on Bringing Roman J. Israel, Esq. to Life

Writer/director Dan Gilroy “can’t conceive of directing a movie I didn’t write.” Although Gilroy has written a number of scripts for other directors  —  from 2012’s The Bourne Legacy to 2017’s Kong: Skull Island  —  he says that the ones he chooses to direct himself tend to be more personal.

“If I’m going to spend a year of my life on something it’s got to be personal,” he told The Credits.

Talking to Director Bharat Nalluri About The Man Who Invented Christmas

Director Bharat Nalluri says that in a very personal way, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol taught him the meaning of Christmas. His new film, The Man Who Invented Christmas, is the story of the six weeks Dickens, under enormous professional, financial, and family pressure, wrote and published the book, which sold out its entire printing within a week after publication. Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey, Beauty and the Beast) plays the author and Christopher Plummer plays the Scrooge he imagines as he creates the story.

Talking to Gary Oldman & Director Joe Wright About Darkest Hour—Part II

In Part 2 of an interview with Darkest Hour director Joe Wright and star Gary Oldman, who has been receiving glowing reviews for his portrait of Winston Churchill in the film that opens November 22, they discuss the physical part of his performance, a few noteworthy props and why the actor who brought to life everyone from Sid Viscious to Beethoven on the big screen has only been nominated once for an Oscar.

Talking to Gary Oldman & Director Joe Wright About Darkest Hour—Part I

In a film career that spans four decades, actor Gary Oldman, 59, has displayed a chameleon-like ability to play a multitude of far-ranging roles. That includes punk pioneer Sid Vicious, JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, Count Dracula, classical composer Beethoven, Harry Potter wizard Sirius Black and John le Carre’s spy guy George Smiley.

Writer/Director Martin McDonagh on his Dark, Brilliant Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

With his thrillingly raw new film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri just released, writer/director Martin McDonagh is happy to chat about the movie, which has received critical acclaim and film-fest accolades, including Best Screenplay at Venice and People’s Choice at Toronto.

Writer/Director Richard Linklater on his Timely, Devastating Last Flag Flying

Richard Linklater originally tried to get war veterans’ drama Last Flag Flying off the ground 12 years ago, shortly after reading Daryl Ponsican’s novel of the same. “The timing wasn’t right,” he says. But the timing for the now-completed movie, which opened this past Friday, couldn’t be much more attuned to national concerns. Shot last fall, the film gained unexpected resonance two weeks ago when White House chief of staff John Kelly described the exact same process dramatized in Last Flag Flying,

Man Goes Ape in Director Ruben Östlund’s Surreal Satire The Square

Swedish filmmaker Ruben Östlund probed a family man’s ethical quandaries in acclaimed 2014 avalanche drama Force Majeure. In his new satiric drama The Square (opening Friday) the writer-director-moral philosopher critiques “civilized” people running amok in Stockholm’s art scene. Winner of the Cannes Film Festival Palme D’Or, the movie chronicles everything that can possibly go wrong when museum curator Christian (Claes Bang) commissions a square-shaped public installation as sanctuary for citizens in need of help from passing pedestrians.

Greta Gerwig On Moving Behind the Camera for her Solo Directorial Debut Lady Bird

Fans of Greta Gerwig know her as the go-to muse of indie filmdom’s mumblecore movement  and for her collaborations with such notable  directors as Joe Swanberg  (LOL, Nights and Weekends) and Noah Baumbach (Greenberg,

Writer/Director Margaret Betts on her new Film Novitiate

What happens when a Manhattan socialite turned filmmaker (The Carrier, a  2011 doc about the AIDS pandemic in Africa) makes an impulse pre-flight purchase of a biography about Mother Teresa that contains revealing letters about her passionate relationship with God?

If you are Margaret Betts,

Director Rob Reiner Talks Upcoming Biopic LBJ

Rob Reiner’s long list of directing credits includes An American President (1995), about the romance between a fictional widowed U.S. President (Micheal Douglas) and a lobbyist (Annette Bening) that was, in many ways, a precursor to the landmark TV series The West Wing (Aaron Sorkin wrote both).

Director Shapes Long Lost 16 Millimeter Footage to Shed Fresh Light on Jane Goodall

Shortly after documentary maker Brett Morgen finished Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck in 2015, National Geographic sent him half-a-century old footage taken in the wilds of Tanzania along with an invitation to profile chimpanzee-loving naturalist Jane Goodall. Morgen, who previously documented subversive mavericks including movie producer Robert Evans (The Kid Stays in the Picture), hippie radicals (The Chicago Ten) and the early Rolling Stones (Crossfire Hurricane),

Writer/Director Rebecca Daly on Exploring a Community on the Edge in Good Favour

For her third feature Good Favour director Rebecca Daly, working with co-writer Glenn Montgomery, left her native Ireland, where her first two films were set, for Belgium. She also centered her story more on an ensemble, in this case a remote religious community that’s upended when a young, mysterious man appears out of nowhere and joins them, rather than the more intimate stories anchored by female heroines of her first two films.

Daly’s debut feature was the thriller The Other Side of Sleep,

Oscar-Nominated Jesus Camp Directors Back With Searing new Netflix Doc One of Us

Directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady earned an Oscar nomination for their  2006 documentary Jesus Camp, a searing expose of children being indoctrinated at an evangelical Christian summer camp called Kids on Fire. Now, for their sixth feature length collaboration, the documentarians explore another aspect of a strict religious sect and its effect on vulnerable members in One of Us. The film, a Netflix original documentary launching globally on October 20,

The Florida Project’s Young Stars & Director Discuss Dazzling new Film

The Florida Project shows a side of Disney’s influence on the Sunshine State that tourists rarely see from inside the glittery artifice of the Magic Kingdom in Orlando. Namely, the economic reality of those struggling to make ends meet as they are forced to reside in the budget motels populating roadside areas beyond the theme park.

Amazingly, the film offers an often upbeat view of this lifestyle since filmmaker Sean Baker — who made a splash by shooting his previous effort,

Director Donna Dietch on her Iconic Lesbian Romance Desert Hearts Criterion Release

Donna Deitch is a respected television director with a host of credits including her Emmy-winning, Holocaust-themed The Devil’s Arithmetic (1999). But it’s Desert Hearts, the groundbreaking lesbian romance she made 31 years ago, recently re-released and restored by Janus Films and the Criterion Collection, that allows Deitch to remember and also to look ahead.

“There have been so many screenings, so much press. It’s a strange but wonderful thing,” she says.

Director Sean Baker on The Florida Project‘s Kids on the Fringe

“If you like ‘The Little Rascals,’ you’re going to like The Florida Project.” That’s director Sean Baker, talking about his 21st century riff on the Depression-era comedy shorts featuring adorable mischief-maker George “Spanky” McFarland and his raucous gang.  

Flash forward 85 years and Baker updates the kids-at-play theme, only this time the pint-sized heroes find their adventures amid the cheap motels located outside of Disney World. Once favored by tourists,

Artist & Populist Both: HBO’s Spielberg Goes Deep on a Living Hollywood Legend

Is Steven Spielberg a populist or an artist? Like his exemplar, the iconic director Alfred Hitchcock, critics have often pointed to Spielberg’s fame to detract from or overlook his artistic accomplishments. At what many consider the height of Spielberg’s career in the 1970s and 80s, the director was one of the best-known filmmakers in the world, as well as one of the highest-grossing, with movies like Jaws, E.T., and Raiders of the Lost Ark smashing box office records.