TSPDT

Key Production Countries: UK, USA
Key Genres: Drama, Psychological Drama, Science Fiction, Mystery, Crime Thriller, War
Key Collaborators: Paul Watts (Editor), Mica Levi (Composer), James Wilson (Producer), Sam Sneade (Editor), Chris Oddy (Production Designer)

"Despite earning a degree in theatre design and direction and beginning his career on the stage, it was the pop videos that he made for Radiohead, Massive Attack, Jamiroquai and Blur that established Jonathan Glazer as one of the most visually inventive young directors in the business… Unlike the prototypical promo-director, Glazer brought intellectual depth, a feeling for character, emotion and drama, and a surrealist's delight in psychological mischief to his first two highly acclaimed features, the radically different Sexy Beast (2000) and Birth (2004)." - Tom Charity (The Rough Guide to Film, 2007)

"With not just one but several commercials and music videos that are regarded as the best examples of their form ever, to his name, it feels like Glazer has been honing and refining his filmmaking skills for years in these shorter formats, the better to come to features more or less fully-formed as an auteur… There’s often an element of darkness, of something creepy going on even in the most celebratory of spots; he has a fondness for nighttime cityscapes and unusual faces; he’s overtly influenced by Kubrick; he finds the uncanny in the everyday; and even in his simplest cuts he has a peerless eye for a still image, but also an innate feel for the beauty of motion, that can often makes his work feel dynamic as well as iconic." - Jessica Kiang (IndieWire, 2014)

"In the 1990s, British director Jonathan Glazer established himself as one of the world’s premier commercial and music-video directors, with credits including Jamiroquai’s Virtual Insanity and Radiohead’s Karma Police; the latter won him an MTV Director Of The Year award in 1997. His 2000 film debut, Sexy Beast, carried over his bold visual style to a nasty British gangster thriller that’s vibrantly colorful both in its photography, and in its profane dialogue. His peculiar follow-up, 2004’s Birth, divided critics with the bizare story of a woman (Nicole Kidman) who becomes convinced that her late husband has been reincarnated as a 10-year-old boy. But there was no doubting Glazer’s meticulous craft, which has lately drawn comparison to Stanley Kubrick." - Scott Tobias (The Dissolve, 2014)

"No one could ever accuse Jonathan Glazer of opting for quantity over quality. The British filmmaker has made only three movies in the span of 14 years, including his latest, Under the Skin. During that time, and before he made his feature debut in 2000 with Sexy Beast, Glazer directed music videos for Radiohead, UNKLE, Massive Attack, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and more of your favorite bands. He’s also done commercials for Nike, Audi, Guinness and Motorola… The most notable distinction between the two formats is the work ethic. Glazer could make a commercial every month or two for a big payday instead of taking a cut developing a feature project for years, but he’s willing to spend as much time as he has to on a film, if his passion is there." - Jack Giroux (Film School Rejects, 2014)

"With Under the Skin, Jonathan Glazer boldly cements himself as one of few directors deserving of being called a master despite having a markedly slim filmography. It's been 10 years since the release of his last film, Birth, a romance about reincarnation that's gradually amassed one of the greater art-house cult followings of recent memory. What seems much less discussed, though, is that Under the Skin, a virtuoso audiovisual experience whose comparisons to the works of Kubrick, of all people, actually feel reductive, is only Glazer's third film (his first was 2000's Sexy Beast)." - R. Kurt Osenlund (Slant Magazine, 2014)

"I believe cinema is a frontier. Absolutely. And the films I'm most interested in are the ones with that in mind." - Jonathan Glazer