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| Scene from The Vanishing of Sidney Hall |
Released: January 25, 2018
Release Number: 61
Directed By: Shawn Christensen
Starring: Logan Lerman, Elle Fanning, Kyle Chandler
Plot: Sidney Hall finds accidental success and unexpected love at an early age, then disappears without a trace.
With another year in the books, A24 had no choice but to look forward with another slate of great films. While it's arguable that 2018 would be the studio's least successful year to date (more critically than financially), it still produced an impressive onslaught of films. This included a film that feels prime for their January release model. Director Shawn Christensen's The Vanishing of Sidney Hall featured an A24 favorite (Elle Fanning) returning in a drama about growing up in a controversial environment. While it hit all of the familiar notes of the DirecTV branch of distribution, it would end up being one of the studio's least successful films in several years, leading to one of its lowest Rotten Tomatoes score and a very quiet release. While this is expected for an A24 January release, it still felt like a bad omen for the year to come.
The story begins with Christensen and friend Jason Dolan. They were performers in a band named Stellarstarr and passed the time by writing screenplays while on tour in 2004 with The Killers. Among those that Christensen wrote was about how people change between being 18 and 30. There was original intent to make the film about a musician, though the idea was eventually dropped when Christensen and Dolan realized that there was too much effort in making a wholly original soundtrack. It's then that they changed the film into being about an author. The screenplay would be pitched around to various studios. At one point it was scheduled to be a Scott Free production from brothers Ridley and Tony Scott and to be directed by future Captain America: Civil War filmmaker Joe Russo. There was also a point where Fox Searchlight was up for consideration. At the end of the day, Christensen felt that it was best to release the film independently.
This would result in long periods of inactivity in the production of the film. Among his accomplishments in this time was winning an Oscar for Best Live Action Short for Curfew in 2012. With acclaim now flourishing his career, Christensen would follow it up with an adaptation of Curfew in 2014 called Before I Disappear. It received negative reviews. The aforementioned screenplay, then called Sidney Hall, would soon gain his interest following Before I Disappear's completion. With all other options exhausted, Christensen decided to direct the film himself. In 2016, he finally began to shoot the film that he had been working on for 12 years. The plan was to focus the film over three time periods and jumble it up. It was meant to reflect the character's growth over time and to see where the behavior stemmed from.
Christensen was attracted to Logan Lerman as a lead because of one reason. Due to the film's complicated structure, there was worry that the budget would inflate due to needing prosthetics for age make-up. Lerman was said to be one of the only actors who auditioned for Sidney Hall who could pull off looking 18 and 30. Christensen would love his work on the film so much that it would lead the young actor into an executive producer credit on the film. The other actors would follow sometime after. The shooting began on April 22, 2016, in New York and would include shooting in Wappinger's Falls, which was the director's hometown. The cinematography was predominantly natural lighting on digital photography and the composer Darren Morze would try and capture an atmospheric score reminiscent of Phillip Glass, of whom they also used another track by. With 12 hour work days shot over a month, the film was finally complete and ready for competition.
The film would premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. It was sometime after this that the title was changed to The Vanishing of Sidney Hall. The film wouldn't be bought until April 2017 through the A24 and DirecTV distribution model. Whether intentional or not, the film would be released on the one year anniversary of its Sundance premiere. A little over a month later on March 2, it would have a limited theatrical release on 10 screens. As of this publication, there are no public figures of any box office revenue it has made. For the most part, the film lived up to its title and vanished shortly after release. Not even the box office draw of Lerman following Percy Jackson and The Perks of Being a Wallflower would provide an edge, especially given that this was a darker role for the young actor. As a result, this is Christensen's least successful film to date.
This is also among A24's least critically acclaimed movies ever. On critics aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes, the film currently holds a paltry 12% rating. Among the most notorious negative reviews was Glenn Kenny of RogerEbert. com, who decried "In the unlikely event that you've ever been truly curious as to how much M.F.A.-style toxic masculinity can be packed into one motion picture, you ought to check out The Vanishing of Sidney Hall." Another attack came from Kate Erbland of IndieWire, who noted: "Unspools into nearly two hours of baffling narrative choices, weak character development, and so many offensive cliches that it would be funny if they wasn't so, well, offensive." Emily Sears of Birth Movies Death was one of the few that liked the film and suggested that "The ambitious sophomore effort from Shawn Christensen and team is more about the journey than the big reveal." Overall, the film proved that Christensen's post-Oscar victory lap was firmly over and that it would take a miracle for him to make anything worthy of attention again.
With that said, Christensen is currently working on a screenplay about coach Jerry Tarkanian. He's continuing to remain busy. However, the success of Curfew has not reciprocated over his feature-length career, with many accusing him of misogyny and toxic masculinity. Who knows if he will be one of those directors that will team up with A24 again. For now, he's got quite a hurdle to overcome. With that said, A24 would take their niche of casting actors against type and give one of Hollywood's greatest icons a swan song for the ages. Even if it wasn't intended as Burt Reynolds' farewell, The Last Movie Star did more than remind audiences of why they loved him. It gave him a grace note to end on that would only continue to give the film longevity as the year progressed.
Up Next: The Last Movie Star (2018)
With another year in the books, A24 had no choice but to look forward with another slate of great films. While it's arguable that 2018 would be the studio's least successful year to date (more critically than financially), it still produced an impressive onslaught of films. This included a film that feels prime for their January release model. Director Shawn Christensen's The Vanishing of Sidney Hall featured an A24 favorite (Elle Fanning) returning in a drama about growing up in a controversial environment. While it hit all of the familiar notes of the DirecTV branch of distribution, it would end up being one of the studio's least successful films in several years, leading to one of its lowest Rotten Tomatoes score and a very quiet release. While this is expected for an A24 January release, it still felt like a bad omen for the year to come.
The story begins with Christensen and friend Jason Dolan. They were performers in a band named Stellarstarr and passed the time by writing screenplays while on tour in 2004 with The Killers. Among those that Christensen wrote was about how people change between being 18 and 30. There was original intent to make the film about a musician, though the idea was eventually dropped when Christensen and Dolan realized that there was too much effort in making a wholly original soundtrack. It's then that they changed the film into being about an author. The screenplay would be pitched around to various studios. At one point it was scheduled to be a Scott Free production from brothers Ridley and Tony Scott and to be directed by future Captain America: Civil War filmmaker Joe Russo. There was also a point where Fox Searchlight was up for consideration. At the end of the day, Christensen felt that it was best to release the film independently.
This would result in long periods of inactivity in the production of the film. Among his accomplishments in this time was winning an Oscar for Best Live Action Short for Curfew in 2012. With acclaim now flourishing his career, Christensen would follow it up with an adaptation of Curfew in 2014 called Before I Disappear. It received negative reviews. The aforementioned screenplay, then called Sidney Hall, would soon gain his interest following Before I Disappear's completion. With all other options exhausted, Christensen decided to direct the film himself. In 2016, he finally began to shoot the film that he had been working on for 12 years. The plan was to focus the film over three time periods and jumble it up. It was meant to reflect the character's growth over time and to see where the behavior stemmed from.
Christensen was attracted to Logan Lerman as a lead because of one reason. Due to the film's complicated structure, there was worry that the budget would inflate due to needing prosthetics for age make-up. Lerman was said to be one of the only actors who auditioned for Sidney Hall who could pull off looking 18 and 30. Christensen would love his work on the film so much that it would lead the young actor into an executive producer credit on the film. The other actors would follow sometime after. The shooting began on April 22, 2016, in New York and would include shooting in Wappinger's Falls, which was the director's hometown. The cinematography was predominantly natural lighting on digital photography and the composer Darren Morze would try and capture an atmospheric score reminiscent of Phillip Glass, of whom they also used another track by. With 12 hour work days shot over a month, the film was finally complete and ready for competition.
The film would premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. It was sometime after this that the title was changed to The Vanishing of Sidney Hall. The film wouldn't be bought until April 2017 through the A24 and DirecTV distribution model. Whether intentional or not, the film would be released on the one year anniversary of its Sundance premiere. A little over a month later on March 2, it would have a limited theatrical release on 10 screens. As of this publication, there are no public figures of any box office revenue it has made. For the most part, the film lived up to its title and vanished shortly after release. Not even the box office draw of Lerman following Percy Jackson and The Perks of Being a Wallflower would provide an edge, especially given that this was a darker role for the young actor. As a result, this is Christensen's least successful film to date.
This is also among A24's least critically acclaimed movies ever. On critics aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes, the film currently holds a paltry 12% rating. Among the most notorious negative reviews was Glenn Kenny of RogerEbert. com, who decried "In the unlikely event that you've ever been truly curious as to how much M.F.A.-style toxic masculinity can be packed into one motion picture, you ought to check out The Vanishing of Sidney Hall." Another attack came from Kate Erbland of IndieWire, who noted: "Unspools into nearly two hours of baffling narrative choices, weak character development, and so many offensive cliches that it would be funny if they wasn't so, well, offensive." Emily Sears of Birth Movies Death was one of the few that liked the film and suggested that "The ambitious sophomore effort from Shawn Christensen and team is more about the journey than the big reveal." Overall, the film proved that Christensen's post-Oscar victory lap was firmly over and that it would take a miracle for him to make anything worthy of attention again.
With that said, Christensen is currently working on a screenplay about coach Jerry Tarkanian. He's continuing to remain busy. However, the success of Curfew has not reciprocated over his feature-length career, with many accusing him of misogyny and toxic masculinity. Who knows if he will be one of those directors that will team up with A24 again. For now, he's got quite a hurdle to overcome. With that said, A24 would take their niche of casting actors against type and give one of Hollywood's greatest icons a swan song for the ages. Even if it wasn't intended as Burt Reynolds' farewell, The Last Movie Star did more than remind audiences of why they loved him. It gave him a grace note to end on that would only continue to give the film longevity as the year progressed.
Up Next: The Last Movie Star (2018)
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