Latest news with #MagicFarm
RTÉ News
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- RTÉ News
Chloë Sevigny's Magic Farm is a vivid but slightly underbaked comedy
Magic Farm, Argentine-Spanish filmmaker Amalia Ulman's second feature after 2021's El Planeta, is a vivid, wacky, convincingly performed but slightly underbaked culture-clash comedy. A team of obnoxious, self-absorbed American filmmakers, who make attention-grabbing, off-kilter online videos, head off to a rural town in Argentina to interview a bunny ear-wearing musician who has gone viral. The only thing is, due to poor communication and lazy research, they've landed in the wrong South American country. Desperate to save their reputations and make good on the considerable expense of hustling this quintet of content creators to such a remote location, they set about grilling the locals about potential stories to shoot, all the while ignorantly ignoring the enormous health crisis story under their noses. The team is headed up by jaded presenter Edna (Chloë Sevigny) and her slimy producer-husband Dave (Simon Rex), who soon hurriedly returns to New York to deal with an icky legal issue. Edna is left to pick up the pieces alongside her three young crew members - the inept, whiny producer Jeff (Alex Wolff), impressively coiffed and sweet sound guy Justin (Joe Apollonio) and steadfast cameraperson Elena, played by Ulman herself, who is both the only Spanish-speaking member of the group and the only one who seems to have her head on her shoulders. They team up with the kindly hostel manager (Guillermo Jacubowicz), connected local woman Popa (Valeria Lois) and her beautiful, chronically online adult daughter Manchi (Camila del Campo) to try and concoct a story. While Magic Farm is breezily watchable, aided by the pleasingly lurid cinematography, perfectly pitched performances and occasional zingy one-liners, there's a sense that we never get to scratch the surface of any of the characters. In a somewhat underwritten role, Sevigny brings a stoic resignedness to Edna, Wolff is transformed as a hot-mess ladies man and Apollonio and Jacubowicz bring a tenderness to their sweet and unexpected bond. Some genuine moments poke through the absurdist, deadpan humour, and the intermittent gimmicky camerawork gives the proceedings an enjoyably trippy feel, there's a sense Magic Farm never quite fulfills its considerable potential.
Los Angeles Times
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
In ‘Magic Farm,' viral video makers go off the grid but can't escape the algorithm
The prickly comedy 'Magic Farm' is a trip to rural Argentina that feels like flipping through a carousel of ironic souvenir postcards. The latest bit of mischief by filmmaker Amalia Ulman ('El Planeta'), it's about how making the world smaller hasn't widened our curiosity as much as shrunk it into snarky bites — in short, it's about going everywhere and seeing nothing. Chloë Sevigny plays Edna, the host of a globe-trotting web series that seeks out human interest stories: Bolivian teenage exorcists, Mexican fashionistas in scimitar-shaped boots and now, a singer called Super Carlitos who dresses like a bunny and bops around a village called San Cristobal. The joke is that Edna and her production staff are fundamentally close-minded. Crew members Elena (Ulman), Jeff (Alex Wolff), Justin (Joe Apollonio) and Dave (Simon Rex) claim they make documentaries, but they really only want catchy headlines and traffic. (It may remind you of Vice Magazine, which covered the same Mexican footwear trend in a 2011 article titled 'Look at These F— Boots!') The film's own director, however, is a sharp and clever social critic who investigates insincerity. Ulman is something of an online anthropologist-slash-modern artist. Her 2014 breakout took place on Instagram, where she spent months pretending to be an aspiring L.A. 'It' girl — even faking a boob job — for a three-act tragedy she later called 'Excellences & Perfections.' Her pieces operate on three levels: the superficial, the sarcastic and, buried deep beneath those, an outrage that she holds tight to her chest. Fluent in posturing and hypocrisy, Ulman looks like an influencer and thinks like Luis Buñuel. She's always sniffing out the scam. Ulman also acts in 'Magic Farm' as Edna's producer, Elena, with a biography parallel to her own: Argentinian-born, Spanish-raised, cool and detached. Elena comes across as the most together, but what looks like serenity is actually disdain. As the only team member who speaks Spanish, Elena is aware that only she can keep the others from looking like the idiots that they are. She's often too lazy to bother. In her absence, Rex's Dave pleads at a desk clerk, 'Do you have vape charger para aquí?' The Super Carlito expedition is doomed to failure. The group isn't just in the wrong town — they're in the wrong country. (As is the way of things, Jeff dumps the blame on an offscreen intern he's schtupping.) Adding to the confusion, their on-site contact Marita (Abuela Marita) has disappeared, possibly in connection with her apocalyptic Christian temple. No one thinks to poke into this with a follow-up question like, 'She thinks the world is going to end? When?' Instead, these American Americans, as the Yankees call themselves, are distracted by the personal dramas they bring to this poor farmland. Justin, a sunny Dirk Diggler clone, has daddy issues that mushroom into a crush on Guillermo Jacubowicz's nameless hotel receptionist, a humble single father. Meanwhile, narcissistic heartbreaker Jeff snags the attention of San Cristobal's resident glamour girl Manchi (Camila del Campo), who spends her nights taking selfies for OnlyFans and her days scaling trees to get enough cell service to send them to her subscribers. It would be a mistake to assume the locals are victims. Their polite English only makes them sound accommodating — they've all got their own secrets and desires. Plus, the language gap works in Jeff's favor, with Manchi fantasizing about him in bed while she tunes into his voice on a podcast, pleasantly oblivious to how he's prattling on about a bad sushi dinner. Jacubowicz and Del Campo are amazing discoveries. He has the tender, shining eyes of an ingenue while Del Campo, who has a striking birthmark on her cheek, is a femme fatale able to hold her own against Wolff's selfish, useless playboy. Flopping around like a boiled noodle, Wolff should be too big for the movie. His performance is the loudest thing in it by an amplitude of 10. (When Edna accuses Jeff of taking too much of the horse tranquilizer ketamine, he whines, 'Maybe I am a pony!') But he and Ulman are having so much fun making fun of Jeff and the faux-woke wastrels he represents that his squawking nonsense comes to harmonize with Burke Battelle's score, a funky cacophony of synthesizers that sounds like someone bouncing on a duck. None of these journalists believe they're serving a higher purpose other than content farming. But Ulman has strung together a net of interesting observations: glances, insults, mistaken presumptions and gaslighting fibs. Nearly all of her characters — including the locals — are spending too much energy creating things for online consumption. They're all tangled up in a worldwide web. Every scene has a delight: Manchi stabbing balloons with a knife, Edna's out-of-place cloven-toed high heels, the lilt in Justin's voice as he smiles at a street mutt and says, 'What's up, dog?' Cinematographer Carlos Rigo and editor Arturo Sosa groove along with eye-catching colors and skateboard-video-style visuals, even inserting B-roll from a camera strapped to a horse's head and doing a dramatic zoom to a sheep. You might wonder if the acid-neon grass is too green. These pseudo-reporters won't notice. Pay attention to everything they ignore — the buzzing airplanes out of view, the offerings of bottled soda instead of water, the casual background conversations about cancer and death — and you'll spot that Ulman has seeded another story underneath her comic surface, one about how the people in this town are getting crushed by big business and bad government. It turns out there's plenty worth covering in San Cristobal. But Ulman is too skeptical to suggest these yahoos could redeem themselves by ferreting out the real problems happening in her home country. She has zero faith in their interest in real news and not much more in our own. What's the point of telling the truth if no one will click on it? And how smart to hide her own sincerity inside this marvelous romp.
RTÉ News
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- RTÉ News
10 marvellous movies and TV shows to watch this May
As we head towards the summer months there are plenty of movies and TV shows, both new and returning, to keep us entertained. On the movie front, there's the very amusing looking remake The Wedding Banquet, the Chloë Sevigny-starring comedy Magic Farm and Guy Ritchie's action-packed, straight-to-streaming thriller The Fountain of Youth. TV wise, viewers can look forward to a star-studded comedy miniseries from Tina Fey, the return of Poker Face, Nine Perfect Strangers and And Just Like That... and Alexander Skarsgård's new series Murderbot. Check out ten movies and TV shows coming to the big and small screen this May. Movies The Wedding Banquet, 9 May The Wedding Banquet is coming to the big screen on 9 May and it looks highly enjoyable. Andrew Ahn, who directed the very funny romantic comedy Fire Island in 2022, has remade Ang Lee's critically-acclaimed 1993 film of the same name and it seems like it'll live up to its predecessor. The film is set in modern-day Seattle and a synopsis reads: "A gay man makes a deal with his lesbian friend: a green-card marriage for him, in exchange for in vitro fertilization treatments for her. Plans evolve as Min's grandmother surprises them with a Korean wedding banquet." The cast is top notch - including Bowen Yang, Lily Gladstone, Kelly Marie Tran, Han Gi-chan, Joan Chen, and Youn Yuh-jung - and it looks like a fun and joyful comedy of errors. Magic Farm, 16 May This looks interesting - Amalia Ulman (El Planeta) is the writer and director behind Magic Farm - an absurdist comedy about a film crew who lands in South America to profile a musician but discover they have arrived in the wrong country. Chloë Sevigny leads the cast as presenter Edna, alongside Alex Wolff, Joe Apollonio, Camila del Campo, Simon Rex and Amalia Ulman herself. The origins of Magic Farm emerged from hipster journalism, epitomised in the 2010s by Vice News, where unserious, semi-gonzo film crews visited "third world" countries in search of a bizarre story and a catchy headline. Fountain of Youth, 23 May, Apple TV+ Buckle up, because Guy Ritchie's new heist thriller Foundation of Youth looks action packed to the gills. The film follows two estranged siblings Luke and Charlotte Purdue (John Krasinski and Natalie Portman) who join forces in an effort to unearth the legendary pool of water. Along with Luke's colleagues, Owen Carver (Domhnall Gleeson) and Deb McCall (Carmen Ejogo), the group will have to decipher a host of historical clues if they have any hope of fulfilling their epic quest. The star-studded cast also includes Eiza González, Laz Alonso, Arian Moayed, and Stanley Tucci. Judging by the trailer, it looks like a fast-paced and humourous adventure. Television The Four Seasons, 1 May, Netflix This comedy miniseries from writers Tina Fey, Lang Fisher, and Tracey Wigfield is adapted from Alan Alda's 1981 cult classic rom-com. The eight-episode series, which also stars Fey alongside Steve Carell, Colman Domingo and Will Forte, follows three couples, and old friends, as they head off on their annual holiday. The longtime couples Kate (Fey) and Jack (Forte), Nick (Carell) and Anne (Kerri Kenney-Silver), and Danny (Domingo) and Claude (Marco Calvani), are completely blindsided when they find out one couple in the group is about to split up. Over the course of a year, we follow the friends on four holidays, and see how the break-up affects everyone's dynamic, sending old and new issues bubbling to the surface. The series looks like an interesting exploration of marriage, midlife and nurturing friendships. Poker Face, 8 May, Sky Max/NOW The highly-anticipated second series of the acclaimed crime comedy-drama Poker Face returns on 8 May, with Natasha Lyonne back as Charlie Cale, a casino works with the uncanny ability to tell when people are lying. Created by Knives Out director Rian Johnson, the show is a funny and old school case-of-the-week murder mystery which sees Charlie on the run and making her way across the United States as she solves a variety of homicides. There's a bumper cast of guest stars this season - including Cynthia Erivo, John Mulaney, Katie Holmes, Awkwafina, Giancarlo Esposito, Rhea Perlman, Alia Shawkat and Justin Theroux - and judging by the trailer there's plenty of high-jinks to look forward to. Elsbeth, 12 May, Sky Witness/NOW The Good Fight spin-off returns for a second season with Emmy-winner Carrie Preston back as Elsbeth Tascioni, an astute but unconventional lawyer who ends up working with the NYPD to solve murders. The second run brings new cases and challenges when mistakes of the past come back to to haunt Elsbeth, her boss Captain Wagner (Wendell Pierce), and detective in training Officer Kaya Blanke (Carra Patterson). As the new season begins, a womanizing finance executive is found stabbed to death after a night at the opera, and Elsbeth suspects an obsessed opera lover (Nathan Lane) was driven to murder because of a ringing cell phone. Murderbot, 16 May, Apple TV+ Well this looks genuinely unique and funny. From the ever-reliable Apple TV+, Murderbot is a sci-fi action comedy starring the eminently watchable Alexander Skarsgård as a robot who was built to protect and obey humans. Unfortunately, he has come to believe all humans are complete idiots. After hacking his programming, the self-named Murderbot discovers he can do whatever he wants as long as no one finds out he's become self-aware. When he is given a new mission to accompany a group of scientists on a dangerous planet he reluctantly goes along with them, even though all he wants to do is binge-watch soap operas. Filmmaking brothers Chris and Paul Weitz (American Pie, About A Boy), have written, directed and produced the show which is based on the book series The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. Nine Perfect Strangers, 21 May, Prime Video Could this fill The White Lotus -sized hole in our lives? Nine Perfect Strangers was originally created by David E. Kelley (Big Little Lies, Presumed Innocent) as a miniseries in 2021, but was later announced to be returning as an anthology series. The first season followed Nicole Kidman's healing guru Masha Dmitrichenko as she undertook unconventional methods to transform the life of the guests at her health and wellness resort in California. With the first two episodes of season two set to premiere on Prime Video on 21 May, with new episodes to air weekly from then, we're about to find out what Masha has in store for a fresh batch of privileged guests in a resort in the Austrian Alps. The ensemble cast this season includes Henry Golding, Lena Olin, Annie Murphy, Christine Baranski, Lucas Englander, King Princess, Murray Bartlett, Dolly de Leon, Maisie Richardson-Sellers, Mark Strong and Aras Aydin. A logline for the show reads: "Nine new strangers connected in ways they could never imagine are invited by mysterious guru Masha Dmitrichenko (Nicole Kidman) to join a transformational wellness retreat in the Austrian Alps. Over the course of a week, she takes them to the brink. Will they make it? Will she? Masha is willing to try anything in the interest of healing everyone involved, including herself." Sirens, 22 May, Netflix Netflix's limited series Sirens, created by Molly Smith Metzler and based on her 2011 play Elemeno Pea, promises to be a good one. The cast includes the always brilliant Julianne Moore, Meghann Fahy, Milly Alcock, Kevin Bacon and Glenn Howerton, and the show is described as an "incisive, sexy, and darkly funny exploration of women, power and class." Sirens follows Devon (Fahy), who is concerned about her sister Simone's (Alcock) creepy relationship with her new boss (Moore) and decides it's time for an intervention. And Just Like That..., 29 May, SKY/NOW Yes it's not a patch on Sex and the City, there's no denying that, but And Just Like That... remains strangely compelling television. Season three is set to land on 29 May and is set during a New York City Summer as Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) navigates life in her new Gramercy Park home while contemplating her relationship with Aidan Shaw (John Corbett). Meanwhile, Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) is seen exploring new romantic possibilities, Charlotte York (Kristin Davis) continues to balance her career in the art world with the challenges of parenting, as her daughter Lily embarks on a new romance. New cast members this season include Rosie O'Donnell, Mehcad Brooks, Jonathan Cake, and Logan Marshall-Green.
Vogue
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Vogue
Director Amalia Ulman on Her Absurd, Psychedelic New Satire, Magic Farm
Chloë Sevigny and her white Margiela tabis totter through the dusty roads of a rural Argentine village, leading a rag-tag Bushwickian crew as they try, in vain, to film 'a whole new series on subcultures around the world.' Traipsing through San Cristóbal, they are in pursuit of a bunny-eared local musician whom they hope to turn into a viral sensation. But…this is not the right San Cristóbal ('There's one in just about every country in Latin America,' a local says). In any case, this Vice News-esque ensemble has to come back with a story. Such is the premise of Amalia Ulman's Magic Farm, out now. Sevigny is the sour, insecure TV host Edna—her producer-slash-husband (Simon Rex) has secretly absconded to the States to deal with an unfolding sexual harassment scandal—and then there's the inept producer Jeff (Alex Wolff), sound guy Justin (Joe Apollonio), and the only Spanish speaker, Elena (Ulman), all of whom scramble to make a new plan. In time, the group decides to collaborate with (read: exploit) the curious yet shrewd locals (who, at times, exploit them right back) on a documentary about a made-up cult. As they fumble through, they meet a kind, burly hostel receptionist (Guillermo Jacubowicz) whom Justin crushes on, and are regaled with mad-hatter stories by local lady Popa (Valeria Lois), while her acerbic and extremely online daughter Manchi (model and actor-to-watch Camila del Campo) enchants Jeff. The stylish, dry wit of Ulman's first film, 2021's El Planeta, a tragicomedy about a cash-strapped mother-daughter duo in post-recession Spain, pulses through Magic Farm. As the crew mull over their problems back north and attempt to create some clickbait, they miss what the real story on the ground is: the specter of pollution, and the village residents' intense coughing, physical defects, and illness from pesticides in the San Cristóbal they've crashed into.
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Joe Apollonio Enters the Scene with His Idiosyncratic Brand of Comedy and Amalia Ulman's ‘Magic Farm'
When Joe Apollonio, the 34-year-old New York internet comic with a wild coif of reddish hair, names River Phoenix as one of his favorite actors, it all makes sense. They have a similar countercultural vibe — not to mention fashionably unkempt hairstyle — and a hunger to take on roles that scare them, and often put their own autobiography front and center. 'I get shit sometimes from my friends for not watching certain movies,' Apollonio told IndieWire at a brewery in Bryant Park (though Apollonio is five years sober). 'I would say that I'm a huge fan of River Phoenix's work and Gus Van Sant's work. And then also movies that Michael Pitt's been in the 2000s, like 'The Dreamers.' I would say those are the two actors that I look up to the most. Interestingly enough, they're not comedians.' More from IndieWire 'The Accountant 2' Review: Finance Takes a Backseat to Ben Affleck and Jon Bernthal's Budding Bromance Southampton Playhouse Announces Annual Gary Cooper Festival Apollonio broke out from his long-running Instagram feed of quippy queer characters and outsize personalities with a solo show at Joe's Pub in New York's Noho in summer 2023, one that put his very close relationship with his single mom front and center. He now stars in his friend Amalia Ulman's quirky ethnocentricity satire 'Magic Farm,' which premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, followed by Berlin, and opens from MUBI in theaters this Friday. In it, he plays Justin, the flamboyantly gay cohort of a Vice Media-like documentary crew chasing an influencer in a small town in Argentina. Or, where they think is Argentina anyway, until they end up in the wrong South American country in a town also called San Cristobal. Apollonio grew up in the town of Babylon, Long Island, before moving to New York City after high school, training at Stella Adler and finding small roles on series like 'Betty,' 'Hacks,' and 'Young Sheldon.' 'In 'Hacks,' I played a circuit twink with Owen Thiele. It was just two scenes in one episode. 'Betty,' I played a skater,' Apollonio, a longtime skateboarder himself, said. 'Then, I did 'Young Sheldon.' I played some angsty younger brother to Mandy, and it was fun. They turned that character into a main character on the spinoff of 'Young Sheldon' ['George and Mandy's First Marriage'], but they cast someone else.' Was he disappointed? 'At the time, yeah. Now, I'm over it. If I try to play the tape forward, being in something like 'Magic Farm,' it's an edgy enough thing for me to still be myself with things that I create, and it makes sense because it's on par. It's under the same umbrella. To be in something that mainstream and just for nuclear families in middle America [like 'Young Sheldon'], maybe I would have to censor myself and dilute myself down.' Indeed, Apollonio makes his queerness the focal point of his Instagram comedy, where he has more than 14,000 followers and self-made video posts dating back a decade, often outré-costumed and hilariously, grotesquely Facetuned, dating back to 2014. 'I don't place as much value on [social media] as I used to,' he said. 'I would say that's how it really started, and then I think where it's going to continue is stuff like this and taking my writing and putting it up on stage, or making longer-form videos or movies. Instagram is so oversaturated now with people who think that they're funny, and they can just make a joke about something going on in the zeitgeist. I don't really want any part of that. I want to make things that are valuable to me, and I also don't want to make a bunch of shit for no money and just have it completely sidelined in this thralling crazy pool of the comedy algorithm, so I'm kind of over it.' Apollonio's solo show back at Joe's Pub more fully expressed his particular brand of comedy, which is often all about his closeness with his mom. 'She had a knee replacement last year where I took care of her. It's kind of a vignette into what my life is going to look like at some point, which is a bit scary, but I can't be doing a cross-country move right now unless I have enough money to take her with me,' he said of the thought of moving to L.A. 'The only relieving thing is everyone has to deal with this shit. She's a single mom, and I'm an only child. It's always been just us my entire life; no real semblance of blood family has been in the picture. It's just an added heaviness to it,' he added. 'She thinks my comedy is a little weird. I impersonate her sometimes. It's a central part of my work,' he said. 'It's weird, though, because she's a Baby Boomer, and their notion of Hollywood and acting is far different from what it is now. I've been on TV and stuff, but she's always like, 'When are you going to make it? I wish someone would just discover you.' That's not how it works, though.' Argentine-born Spanish artist-turned-filmmaker Amalia Ulman — the director of 2021's 'El Planeta,' also about an only child's too-closeness with their mother — has been good friends with Apollonio for a few years now, which made it easy to cast him in 'Magic Farm' among an ensemble that includes Chloë Sevigny, Simon Rex, and Alex Wolff. 'People thought Amalia and I were dating,' Apollonio said. 'Maybe we look good together. I don't know.' (In real life, Apollonio is dating trans star Bianca Leigh, who stars on Broadway's 'Oh, Mary!') That friendship eventually led to Chloë Sevigny, with whom Ulman had connected and whom Apollonio met at a Maison Margiela party before they got to work on the script with producer/filmmaker Eugene Kotlyarenko (a producer alongside Riccardo Maddalosso and Alex Hughes). That was not, in fact, the first time Apollonio had encountered the New York City icon. 'I was a barback at this place called Peel's in the Lower East Side. I was like 22, and she was sitting at a table and I had to pour her hot water into her tea, and I was so starstruck that my hands were shaking like fucking crazy as I'm pouring the hot water. She was just kind of looking down. I left the table and was like, 'Wow, I fucking blew it.' I brought that up to Chloe. She didn't remember it,' he recalled. Once production on 'Magic Farm' got underway in 2023, 'We were filming in this town called San Antonio de Areco, which is two hours northwest of Buenos Aires. People go there to vacation; it's kind of like a resort town. It's very small, a lot of horses, a lot of street dogs, a pretty desolate landscape. That's where we shot the whole movie. Then we shot some stuff in New York about a month or so afterward,' he said. 'I don't speak Spanish, so any sort of broken horrible Spanish I would use to order food made me feel super American. I remember the first day I got there, I was feeling pretty good about myself. I was strutting down the street with my aviator glasses on, listening to music. I quickly got out of my own head and realized everyone was staring at me like an alien.' While 'Magic Farm' drummed up buzz at Sundance and then Berlin ('the Germans loved it'), Apollonio said, 'I'm still waiting to see what will come from this,' though he's working on yet another personal project aimed for the stage. 'I don't want to get too much into what it's about, but it's going to be another mother-and-son dynamic show, but it's going to be much more fictional and much more over-the-top and ridiculous,' he said. One thing he's not doing any time soon, and one thing he has in common with his co-star Sevigny? He's not moving to Los Angeles. 'I would need a swimming pool, and a really loving partner, which I do have right now, and a lot of money for me to enjoy L.A. I don't want to deal with the in-betweens of the entertainment industry in Los Angeles. It's excruciating enough to be between jobs. L.A. is really cool when you have something to do. I subletted there a few times, and you don't have anything going on and your friends are busy, it can get dark. And you're getting gaslit by the weather to be happy,' he said. 'Magic Farm' is now in theaters from MUBI. Best of IndieWire Quentin Tarantino's Favorite Movies: 64 Films the Director Wants You to See Nightmare Film Shoots: The 36 Most Grueling Films Ever Made, from 'Deliverance' to 'The Wages of Fear' The 24 Best Vampire Movies Ever Made, from 'Nosferatu' to 'Sinners'
