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- DirectorGillian ArmstrongStarsAnn RothJane FondaMarc EliotA documentary about the life of the Australian costume designer and three time Oscar winner Orry-Kelly.ORRY-KELLY, PROBABLY THE MOST UNRECOGNIZED NAME THAT HAS IMPACTED ALL OF US CINEMA LOVERS IN SO MANY WAYS. JUST WATCHING THE CLIPS OF ALL OF HIS IMPACTED FILMS IS SO WORTH YOUR TIME AND EFFORT TO FIND AND WATCH. THIS IS ABSOLUTELY A MUST FOR ALL OF US WHO CONSIDER OURSELVES AS STUDENTS OF CINEMA.
Today the name Orry-Kelly typically draws blank looks. But in Hollywood's golden age, he was a leading costume designer who won Oscars for An American in Paris, Les Girls, and Some Like it Hot. Emigrating from Australia to America in the 1920s, Orry George Kelly took on his hyphenated name for show business and, as a gay man, kept many secrets until his death in 1964. In Women He's Undressed, filmmaker Gillian Armstrong delves into Kelly's untold stories with an approach that's as bold and playful as he was. She casts the Australian stage actor Darren Gilshenan to portray Kelly, who speaks directly to the camera. She interviews real-life associates including Ann Roth, Angela Lansbury, and Jane Fonda; and others with perspective such as designer Catherine Martin (the only Australian to exceed Kelly in Academy Award wins). Topping it off, we're treated to a vast array of film clips showcasing Kelly's costumes in Gold Diggers of 1933, Casablanca, Irma la Douce, and other classics. Armstrong knows what it means to break out of Australia. Starting out in documentary, she made her fictional debut at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival with My Brilliant Career. - DirectorHsiao-Hsien HouStarsShu QiChang ChenYun ZhouA female assassin receives a dangerous mission to kill a political leader in eighth-century China.TO ME A MAGNIFICENT FILM LONG ON CINEMATOGRAPHY, SETS, COSTUMES, BUT SHORT ON STORY. PROBABLY BECAUSE I HAVE LITTLE KNOWLEDGE OF ANCIENT CHINESE HISTORY. THE ASSASSIN, SHU QI IS AN EXCEPTIONALLY BEAUTIFUL WOMAN.
In the seven years since Hou Hsiao-hsien began working on a ninth-century wuxia epic, his admirers have been madly curious about how the Taiwanese auteur known for such refined historical panoramas as “Flowers of Shanghai” and minor-key urban portraits like “Cafe Lumiere” would handle his rite of passage into one of China’s most storied and vigorous popular genres. We have the answer at long last in “The Assassin,” a mesmerizing slow burn of a martial-arts movie that boldly merges stasis and kinesis, turns momentum into abstraction, and achieves breathtaking new heights of compositional elegance: Shot for shot, it’s perhaps the most ravishingly beautiful film Hou has ever made, and certainly one of his most deeply transporting. Centered around a quietly riveting performance from Shu Qi - DirectorLászló NemesStarsGéza RöhrigLevente MolnárUrs RechnA Jewish-Hungarian concentration camp prisoner sets out to give a child he mistook for his son a proper burial.FROM HUNGARY COMES AN EXTRAORDINARY FILM. THIS FILM TO ME WAS THE MOST INTENSE AND INSIGHTFUL OF ALL THE HOLOCAUST FILMS EVER MADE. NOT EASY TO WATCH, TRAGIC, YET THE QUALITY OF EVERY SCENE WAS AMAZING. DESTINED TO BE ONE OF THE ALL TIME CLASSICS OF CINEMA AND AN OSCAR WINNER IS A SURE THING. VERY HIGH 90 FROM METACRITICS. Winner of the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, this powerful and gripping Holocaust drama follows a concentration-camp inmate who goes to desperate lengths to secure a traditional Jewish burial for a young boy. In the horror of 1944 Auschwitz, a prisoner forced to burn the corpses of his own people finds moral survival upon trying to salvage from the flames the body of a boy he takes for his son. This astonishing debut film, about a prisoner in the concentration camp employed in the industrial processes of body disposal, is a horror movie of extraordinary focus and courage. Son of Saul is set in the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in 1944, and one Hungarian Jewish prisoner named Saul (played by Géza Röhrig) is a member of the Sonderkommando, a group of prisoners given humiliating and illusory privileges as trusties, with minor increases in food ration in return for their carrying the bodies from the gas chambers to pyres to be burned, then carting the ashes away to be dumped. A season in hell is what this devastating and terrifying film offers – as well as an occasion for meditating on representations of the Holocaust, on Wittgenstein’s dictum about matters whereof we cannot speak, and on whether these unimaginable and unthinkable horrors can or even should be made imaginable and thinkable in a drama. There is an argument that any such work, however serious its moral intentions, risks looking obtuse or diminishing its subject, although this is not a charge that can be levelled at Son of Saul. By any standards, this would be an outstanding film, but for a debut it is remarkable. The director is László Nemes.
- DirectorTerence DaviesStarsKen BlackburnMark BonnarStuart BowmanThe daughter of a Scottish farmer comes of age in the early 1900s.TERRENCE DAVIES TO ME IS ONE OF THE FINEST DIRECTORS OVER THE PAST 40 YEARS. HIS DISTANT VOICES, STILL LIVES 1988, AND THE LONG DAY CLOSES 1992, TO THIS DAY THEY ARE STILL 2 OF MY FAVORITES. I HAVE TALKED MY FILM CLUB ASSOCIATES INTO A NEW WAY OF RATING FILMS. THE USUAL 1-5 STAR IN 4 DIFFERENT CATEGORIES: 1-STORY, 2-CINEMATOGRAPHY, 3-DIRECTING, 4-PERFORMANCES.....AND I WOULD ADD A 5TH TO MANY FILMS AND THAT WOULD BE MUSIC. IN ALL CATEGORIES TO ME THIS FILM IS A 5 STAR. IT EXPLORES RURAL LIFE IN NORTHERN SCOTLAND IN THE 1930'S TAKEN FROM A 1932 CLASSIC SCOTTISH NOVEL. THE STRUGGLES OF REAL PEOPLE. DEFINITELY WORTH YOUR TIME.
Terence Davies is responsible for some of the most important UK cinema of the past forty years, each film a nostalgic labour of love. Sunset Song, the long-awaited feature adaptation of Lewis Grassic Gibbon's classic 1932 novel (a staple in Scottish classrooms), is another meditation on the past, delving into the life of a farming family in northeast Scotland. Exquisitely shot, each scene looks like an Old Masters painting as Davies applies his distinct "memory realism" style to a twentieth-century northern British milieu that many will recognize from the writer-director's previous films.
In Sunset Song, Terence Davies takes on the adaptation of one of the great works of Scottish literature – well-known to Scots, but not so celebrated outside that country. As expected, he’s made it a tour de force of drama, composition and colour - DirectorKent JonesStarsWes AndersonPeter BogdanovichDavid FincherFilmmakers discuss how Francois Truffaut's 1966 book "Cinema According to Hitchcock" influenced their work.THIS IS A DOCUMENTARY ABOUT THE ART OF FILM CREATION THAT IS ESSENTIAL TO ALL SERIOUS CINEMAPHILES. MANY DO NOT RECOGNIZE HOW MUCH HITCHCOCK CONTRIBUTED TO THE EXCELLENCE IN CINEMA. Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, James Gray, Kiyoshi Kurosawa and others discuss the importance of the epochal book that transcribed the week-long 1962 interview between Alfred Hitchcock and French New Wave luminary François Truffaut. In 1962, François Truffaut conducted a week-long interview with Alfred Hitchcock, going through the master's career film by film. The resulting book, Hitchcock/Truffaut, remains one of the most influential cinema publications ever written. It was a project of lasting importance for Truffaut: seventeen years after the book's first publication in 1967 and just before his own untimely death, he went back and prepared an updated edition. This documentary deepens the legacy of the project, bringing in contemporary directors to discuss the galvanizing effects of both Truffaut's book and Hitchcock's films.
- DirectorGabriel MascaroStarsJuliano CazarréMaeve JinkingsJosinaldo AlvesIremar works at the rodeo in North East of Brazil. From his home, the truck used to transport the animals, he dreams of a future in the region's booming clothing industry.VISUALLY CAPTIVATING THIS FILM GRABBED ME AND KEPT MY EYES GLUED TO THE SCREEN THROUGHOUT. UNFORTUNATELY THIS LEVEL OF FILM HAS VERY LITTLE CHANCE OF A USA DISTRIBUTION. HOPEFULLY IT WILL BE AVAILABLE AT THE PSIFF, AND PERHAPS BRAZIL WILL SUBMIT IT FOR OSCAR CONSIDERATION.
Few films have explored the particularities of rodeo life (though Nicholas Ray's ruggedly beautiful The Lusty Men is a definite precursor to Neon Bull). Fewer still have brought to the rodeo the sort of painterly vision that Mascaro and cinematographer Diego Garcia display here, with sweeping widescreen images that not only capture the pastoral beauty of the Brazilian landscape but also embrace their characters with deep affection. We come to love this ragtag band of labourers — even Iremar, who, though ornery and boastful, possesses an artist's heart and an optimism that's tougher than leather. it displays sensitivity to the demands of this life, as co-worker Galega (Maeve Jinkings) struggles to balance long hours with the demands of being a single parent — the scenes involving her young daughter are among the film's most touching. - DirectorAndrew HaighStarsCharlotte RamplingTom CourtenayGeraldine JamesA married couple preparing to celebrate their wedding anniversary receives shattering news that promises to forever change the course of their lives.APPEALING FILM TO THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE MANY DECADES OF MARRIAGE. EXTREMELY WELL CONSTRUCTED AND THE UNDERPLAYED BUT CONTROLLED PERFS ARE REALLY AMAZING. I NEEDED SHARON'S INPUT TO UNDERSTAND THE SUBTLE NUANCES....TYPICAL OF THE MALE SPECIES.
It is an immensely moving and nuanced portrait of long-term love and marriage.
Retired couple Geoff (Courtenay) and Kate Mercer (Rampling) pass their days quietly on their country property near a small Norfolk village. One day Geoff receives a letter notifying him that the body of Katia, an old girlfriend of his, has been discovered, perfectly preserved in the Swiss Alps where she fell on their hiking trip nearly fifty years earlier. As the news sinks in, hidden tensions between Geoff and Kate begin to emerge. Geoff, though not insensitive to his wife's feelings, can't help but be drawn into the past while Kate becomes consumed by jealousy and uncertainty. Outwardly composed as she sets about planning the details of their upcoming forty-fifth wedding anniversary party, Kate begins to contemplate the "what ifs" of her life, a line of thought leading to the realization that maybe she's the one who made a mistake all those years ago. - DirectorPablo TraperoStarsGuillermo FrancellaGastón CocchiaralePeter LanzaniThe true story of the Puccio Clan, a family who kidnapped and killed people in the 80s.PABLO TRAPPERO OF ARGENTINA CREATED ONE OF MY FAVORITE FILMS OF 2012, WHITE ELEPHANT. SO I WAS ANXIOUS TO SEE HIS NEWEST FILM AND I WAS NOT DISAPOINTED. HE IS AN EXTREMELY TALENTED DIRECTOR AND IN GENERAL THE PRODUCTION OUT OF ARGENTINA GETS MORE IMPRESSIVE EVERY YEAR RIVALING THE BEST OUT OF EUROPE. UNFORTUNATELY THE FILM TELLS THE TRUE STORY OF A VERY NASTY FAMILY THAT HAVE NO CONSCIENCE IN WHAT THEY DO. I HATE FOR BAD GUYS TO BE THE PROTAGONISTS IN A FILM. THE TELLING OF THE STORY IS EXTRAORDINARY.
The new film from Argentine auteur Pablo Trapero (Crane World, White Elephant) recounts the astonishing true story of a seemingly normal middle-class family that trafficked in the kidnapping, ransoming and murder of the wealthy.
The disappeared — los desaparecidos — are words that carry special resonance in Argentina. Long associated with the crimes of the military junta of the 1970s, the term takes on a different, but no less chilling, meaning in the hands of filmmaker Pablo Trapero. Based on a true story that rocked Argentina, The Clan tells the almost unbelievable tale of the Clan Puccio, a seemingly normal middle-class family who kidnapped wealthy people off the street, held the victims for ransom, and, once paid, killed them. On the surface the Puccios look like most other families. Steely-eyed patriarch Arquimedes (Guillermo Francella) presides over a household where his wife, sons, and daughters gather for evening meals and discuss their days. Alejandro (Peter Lanzani), the eldest son, is a famed rugby player on Argentina's national team, and the film turns on his relationship with his father. Arquimedes is coolly efficient, his "hits" meticulously planned, but he relies above all on his son's complicity. Alex shares in the ransom money; his mother and other siblings seem blissfully unaware, or they choose to ignore what is happening right under their noses. - DirectorAlex van WarmerdamStarsTom DewispelaereAlex van WarmerdamMaria KraakmanOn his birthday, a hitman reluctantly takes on the easy task of killing a writer, only to find the job a lot more difficult than expected.AN UNUSUAL BUT DELIGHTFUL CAT AND MOUSE DUTCH FILM THAT IS MAINLY COMEDY, WITH MILD THRILLER PROPERTIES. BASICALLY 2 HIT MEN GO AFTER EACH OTHER. STORY 4, DIRECTION 3, PERF 3, CINETOG 3, ENJOYMENT 4.
Described by its renaissance man creator Alex van Warmerdam as a “ stylistic exercise”, Schneider Vs. Bax is an expertly crafted campfire yarn with a chaotic plot that pirouettes between coincidence, contrivance, bad timing and costly errors. There are no hidden depths, no overt moralising or secret meanings, just playfully subversive genre storytelling that engages from moment to moment but eventually runs out of steam. - DirectorTodd HaynesStarsCate BlanchettRooney MaraSarah PaulsonAn aspiring photographer develops an intimate relationship with an older woman in 1950s New York.DESPITE THIS FILM BEING STAGEY AND PARLOUR CONSTRUCTION, STYLES NOT ORDINARILY APPRECIATED BY ME, THIS WAS TRULY A WONERFUL FILM THAT AS TIME GOES ON IS MORE AND MORE A PLUS FOR ME. IT IS PROBABLY THE INTENSITY OF THE LOVE THAT IS SO WELL TOLD THROUGH THE EYES, FACIAL EXPRESSIONS, ETC AND NOT THROUGH INTIMACY BETWEEN THE SHEETS. THE PERFORMANCES WERE SO OSCAR WORTHY, THAT IT WOULD SURPRISE ME NOT TO SEE CATE GETTING THE TOP AWARD. NOT TO BE MISSED BY THE TRUE CINEMAPHILES. STORY 5, PERF 5 PLUS, DIRECTION 5 STAR PLUS, CINETOG WITH SETS, CLOTHES, CARS, MAKEUP, ETC 5, ENJOYMENT 4.
With his groundbreaking examinations of queer identity and his fondness for the heyday of classic melodrama, Todd Haynes seemed almost too perfect a choice to film an adaptation of “The Price of Salt,” Patricia Highsmith’s ahead-of-its-time 1952 novel about two women who boldly defied the stifling social conformity of the era. Still, even high expectations don’t quite prepare you for the startling impact of “Carol,” an exquisitely drawn, deeply felt love story that teases out every shadow and nuance of its characters’ inner lives with supreme intelligence, breathtaking poise and filmmaking craft of the most sophisticated yet accessible order. An obvious companion piece to Haynes’ “Far From Heaven” and “Mildred Pierce,” and no less painstaking in its intricate re-creation of a mid-20th-century American milieu, the Weinstein Co. drama (set for a Dec. 18 release) should have little trouble translating critical plaudits, especially for Cate Blanchett’s incandescent lead performance, into significant year-end attention. - DirectorDeniz Gamze ErgüvenStarsGünes SensoyDoga Zeynep DogusluTugba SungurogluWhen five orphan girls are seen innocently playing with boys on a beach, their scandalized conservative guardians confine them while forced marriages are arranged.FROM TURKEY COMES A VERY POPULAR COMING OF AGE FAMILY DRAMA INVOLVING 5 SISTERS. THE EMOTIONAL DEPTH OF THEIR TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS WILL BE FELT BY ALL. THIS FILM ACHIEVED A VERY ELITE POSITION AS IT MADE THE TOP 5 OF THE OSCAR FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILMS, OUT OF ABOUT 80. NAR-4, CIN-4, D-5, PERF-4, E-4.
It’s not hard to see why Mustang has been dubbed the “Turkish Virgin Suicides.” Like Sofia Coppola’s dreamy, unsettling 1999 debut, it’s another first film by a young female director that focuses in feverish close-up on the adolescent awakening of five restless, radiant sisters—and the ruin that follows when their family tries to contain it. But death isn’t the great equalizer it is in Suicides; instead, each girl has to negotiate the limits of her own defiance, and her definition of freedom, too. A– - DirectorKlaus HäröStarsMärt AvandiUrsula RataseppHendrik Toompere Jr.Fleeing from the Russian secret police, a young Estonian fencer is forced to return to his homeland, where he becomes a physical education teacher at a local school. The past however catches up and puts him in front of a difficult choice.INTERNATIONAL CINEMA AT ITS FINEST......AN ESTONIAN STORY CREATED BY A FINNISH DIRECTOR. TRULY A MASTERPIECE THAT SHOULD NOT BE MISSED. THE AUDIENCE EMOTION FOR THIS ONE WAS EXTRAORDINARY. STORY 5, DIRECTION 5, PERFS 5, CINEMATOG 5, ENJOYMENT 5.....A PERFECT 5 ACROSS THE BOARD.
The inspirational-teacher movie gets an effective, sober-minded iteration in “The Fencer,” a fictional account drawn from the life of the legendary Estonian fencing master Endel Nelis, who in the 1950s founded a school for aspiring young swordsmen that still thrives today. Unfolding under a cloud of suspicion and paranoia fostered by the postwar Soviet occupation, this well-acted, smoothly crafted drama tells a story of cross-generational bonding in the face of historical oppression, in touching if unsurprising fashion. The story begins in 1953, a time when the oppressive Russian secret police has forced numerous Estonian resisters into hiding, including Endel (Mart Avandi), who flees his home in Leningrad and heads to the small, remote town of Haapsalu. There, “Comrade Nelis” determines to start a quiet new life and accepts a job as a gym teacher at the local school, where his efforts to give his students a proper physical education are frustrated by a lack of resources, as well as by the toad-faced indifference of the principal. - DirectorMika KaurismäkiStarsMalin BuskaSarah GadonMichael NyqvistTHE GIRL KING paints a portrait of the brilliant, extravagant Kristina of Sweden, queen from age six, who fights the conservative forces that are against her ideas to modernize Sweden and who have no tolerance for her awakening sexuality.AN EPIC DRAMA ABOUT QUEEN CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN WHO WAS CROWNED AT 6 AND CONTROLLED BY HER LUTHERAN ADVISORS WITH DECISIONS TO BE MADE BY WHAT TODAY WOULD BE CONSIDERED FUNDAMENTALIST. SHE WAS AN INTELLIGENT HUMANIST WHOSE IDEAS WERE CONTRARY TO THOSE WHO THOUGHT THEY WERE THE TRUE POWER OF SWEDEN. HER LESBIAN TENDENCY FALLING IN LOVE WITH HER FEMALE ATTENDENT ULTIMATELY ENDED HER REIGN. BESIDES THE HISTORICAL INSIGHTFULNESS, THE PRODUCTION VALUES WERE OF THE HIGHEST VALUE. FIVES ACROSS THE BOARD, MY ONLY CRITICISM WOULD BE THAT I SUSPECT THERE WAS SOME DUBBING WHICH I ABSOLUTELY HATE. IMDB LIST 3 LANGUAGES AND FUNDING FROM 5 PLUS COUNTRIES. SO ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE. SARAH GADON THE LOVE INTEREST IS THE DISCOVERY BEAUTY OF THE FESTIVAL FOR ME SO FAR. FROM TORONTO, I SUSPECT HER CELEBRITY STATUS IS FORTHCOMING.
At the age of eighteen in the year 1844, Christina Augusta (Malin Buska) would ascend the throne of Sweden, the sole heir to her deceased father’s kingdom. She’d been officially crowned at five years old, but remained under her mother’s (Martina Gedeck) care until coming of age. A headstrong personality, raised and educated by the affable Chancellor Oxensteima (Michael Nyqvist), the young woman is groomed to question and command. Immediately after taking control, she causes upset by declaring a need for peace, a sore subject considering it was the Thirty Years’ War between Catholic and Protestant countries which had expanded the Swedish empire under her father’s rule. She develops an affinity for Rene Descartes (Patrick Bauchau), and controversially invites him to the kingdom as her personal advisor. Avoiding her many male suitors, including an eager cousin (Francois Arnaud), she falls into a passionate, illicit romance with Countess Ebba Sparre (Sarah Gadon). Rumors of their relationship infiltrate the court, compromising Christina’s control. - DirectorFrederikke AspöckStarsMikkel Boe FølsgaardMercedes CabralJens AlbinusJOHANNES lives together with his father, the middle-aged widower ULRIK in a small fishing town in the northern part of Denmark. They live a quiet routine life, each minding their separate jobs in the fishing industry. Ulrik misses the love and tenderness of a woman and arranges for the young, beautiful, Filipino ROSITA to come to Denmark - just as many other men in the town have done before him. Johannes is reluctantly drawn into this as Ulrik's translator. However, over the following weeks Johannes and Rosita are getting more and more attracted to each other which forces Johannes to take responsibility for his dreams and his future.THIS DANISH FILM EXPLORES THE PHILIPINA MAIL ORDER BRIDE PHENOMENA IN EUROPE. SENSITIVE AND OKAY DONE, IT IS OF MINIMAL ENJOYMENT. NAR 3, DIR 3, CTOG 3, PERF 4, ENJ 3.
The Filipino mail-order bride phenomenon is explored with humanity and authenticity in a story of repressed men and powerful emotions. Johannes lives with his father, the middle-aged widower Ulrik in a small fishing village in Denmark’s north Jutland peninsula. They live a routine life, each working their separate jobs in the fishing industry. - DirectorMarco BergerStarsAilín SalasJavier De PietroMalena VillaThe flapping of a butterfly divides Romina's universe into two parallel possibilities: In the first one, she is abandoned by her biological mother, and then raised by another family with German as a brother. There, destiny causes them to build a relationship of love and tension in which they are forbidden for sexual desire. In the other possible world, Romina and German know each other as friends and their permitted but clumsy relationship will alternate this story with the other reality in a game of constant possibilities.HORRIBLE.....DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME.
- DirectorJaco Van DormaelStarsPili GroyneBenoît PoelvoordeCatherine DeneuveDid you know that God is alive and lives in Brussels with his daughter?WOW! WHAT AN INCREDIBLE FILM. THIS IS CREATIVITY AT ITS FINEST, HOWEVER I SUSPECT IT MIGHT BY DRUG INDUCED i.e. LSD. HURRAH FOR THIS FILM MAKER AND HIS IMAGINATION. I EXPECT THAT THE SUITS OF HOLLYWOOD HAVE BEEN THROWINGG A BUNCH OF MONEY AT HIM TO MAKE SOME CRAP FOR THE LOCAL CINEPLEX, BUT THANK GOD HE HAS RESISTED AND REMAINED TRUE TO HIS CRAFT. JACO HAS BEEN MAKING EXCELLENT FILMS SINCE 1980 AND WILL NOT BE CORRUPTED BY THE GREEDY AMERICAN PRODUCERS. HARD TO DESCRIBE THIS FILM, BUT FOR ME 5'S ACROSS.
A religiously incorrect but irresistibly funny work of the imagination.
God is a mean bastard from Brussels, but his daughter is determined to set things straight in cult director Jaco Van Dormael’s madcap fantasy. Imagining God as a wrathful bastard living in Brussels who gets his kicks watching his creatures suffer, and his 10-year-old daughter Ea as humanity’s no. 2 Saviour after her brother JC retires to become a statue, Jaco Van Dormael confirms his title as Belgium’s wacky philosopher-king of filmmakers. - DirectorYuval DelshadStarsNavid NegahbanAsher AvrahamiDavid DiaanThe son of a family of Iranian farmers in Israel rebels against his strong-willed father.FROM ISRAEL COMES A POWERFUL FAMILY DRAMA SPOKEN IN FARSI AS THE PROTAGONIST FAMILY ARE IRANIAN IMMIGRANTS. IT WON THE EQUIVALENT OF OUR OSCARS FROM THE ISRAELI ACADEMY INCLUDING BEST PICTURE. IT WAS AN EMOTIONAL AND HEARTFELT RENDERING OF A DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILY DYNAMIC THAT AFTER ALL WAS SAID AND DONE HAD A SATISFYING CONCLUSION. THE FATHER WAS CARRYING ON THE TRADITION OF HIS FATHER AS A TURKEY FARMER AND THE DISAPPOINTMENT THAT HIS SON DID NOT WISH TO CONTINUE. S-5, CIN-4, PERF-5, D-5, E-5.
This coming-of-age drama is set in a Persian-immigrant moshav in the Negev during the early 1980s. Three generations of the stubborn Morgian family struggle to manage a ramshackle turkey farm in an isolated desert community of Farsi speakers. There’s the aging grandfather who is still the family’s fearsome patriarch; Yitzhak, who bears the brunt of running the farm; and 13-year-old Moti, who dreads having to work in the barn, an attitude that Yitzhak regards as personal rejection. Yitzhak, who moved from Iran when he was just a lad, remembers how his father forced the job on him when his older brother Darius fled the country. As Yitzhak makes it his mission to impose the family business on Moti, Darius pays a visit from America and catalyzes a chain of events that undermines familial harmony. The film perfectly epitomizes the struggle between the migrant generation, which holds on to the past and traditions from another country, and the sabra generation born into a new identity and seeking a fresh path. Winner: Israeli Academy Awards for Best Film, Cinematography, Art Direction and Score - DirectorCiro GuerraStarsNilbio TorresJan BijvoetAntonio BolívarThe story of the relationship between Karamakate, an Amazonian shaman and last survivor of his people, and two scientists who work together over the course of forty years to search the Amazon for a sacred healing plant.THE GORGEOUS BLACK AND WHITE CINEMATOGRAPHY ALONE MADE THIS FILM WORTHY OF MY HIGHEST RATING. FROM COLOMBIA THIS STORY OF NATIVES LIVING IN THEIR PRIMITIVE CONDITIONS WILL NOT CAPTURE THE INTEREST OF MOST FILM GOERS. NAR-3, CIN-5+, D-4, PERF-3, E-4.
The sublime and the insane make engaging traveling companions in Embrace Of The Serpent (El abrazo de la serpiente), which traces the journey of two different scientists across the Amazon, their destination just as rewarding as the arduous road to get there. Colombian director Ciro Guerra (The Wind Journeys) has some familiar things to say about respecting the natural world and not overvaluing technological advancement, but this widescreen black-and-white odyssey, which crosscuts between two time periods, slowly but satisfyingly transitions from realism to the fantastical, even the cosmic. The going can be a bit slow at first, but the interweaving narratives, which comment on (and sometimes echo) each other, begin to develop a hypnotic grandeur. It’s a hell of a trip. Screening in Directors’ Fortnight, Embrace Of The Serpent looks to be a favourite on the festival circuit, whereas theatrical prospects may be a far trickier proposition - DirectorIris EleziThomas LogoreciStarsFlonja KodheliArtur GorishtiFioralba KryemadhiOne week at the Bota café. Nothing happens. Everything happens.THIS MINIMALIST, YET WONDERFUL FILM FROM ALBANIA IS A DELIGHT. THIS IS WHY WE ATTEND FILM FESTIVALS TO DISCOVER THESE BUDDING FILM TALENTS. EVERY ASPECT WAS DONE METICULOUSLY WITH EXCELLENCE. AND IF I WERE A GILLIONAIRE, I WOULD BRING THIS DIRECTOR TO FINANCE HIS NEXT PROJECT. SETS 5, CINETOG 5, PERF 5, NARRATIVE 3, DIRECTION 5, ENJOYMENT 5.
Compelling, surprising and tenderly performed, this melancholy drama illustrates the complicated relationship Albanians have with their dark past. Set in the country’s isolated marshlands, the cleverly constructed film offers a multi-layered slice of life, and like the swampy ground on which it is set, gradually reveals unexpected depths. The title translates as “the world,” which is the name of the café-bar where most of the action unfolds. Perched on stilts, with a dilapidated Mercedes on the roof, and mint-green walls full of original artwork, Bota is the spot where the hopes and dreams of the three main characters are revealed—and often dashed. Not only does the film weave in little-known Albanian history, but it also tips its hat to Albanian cinema, literature and music with clips from an iconic adaptation of Nobel-winning novelist Ismail Kadare’s The General Of The Dead Army and a music track of beguiling pop hits from the 1960s. - DirectorRaf ReyntjensStarsGene BervoetsNoortje HerlaarPascal MaetensHoliday bus driver Mario has spent his entire life shuttling old age pensioners to the sunny south with his own travel company 'Paradise Trips'. Today, on the verge of his own retirement, Mario has to bring a motley crew of alternative partygoers to a psychedelic festival in Croatia. The journey soon turns into a fascinating trip that confronts Mario with his own prejudices and his long-lost son.AN UNUSUAL BELGIUM/CROATION FILM INVOLVING GENERATIONAL CONFLICTS AND MUSIC IS ANOTHER JOY OF DISCOVERY THAT CAN ONLY BE REALIZED AT FILM FESTIVALS. THIS OLD GEEZER BUS DRIVER FINALLY DISCOVERS CONTENTMENT AND THAT HIS CRANKY VIEWS ARE UNWARRANTED. NAR-3, CINETOG 4, PERF-4, DIR-4 ENJOYMENT 5
An estranged father and son are forced to interact at a Burning Man-like counterculture festival in music-video director Raf Reyntjens’ astute feature debut, “Paradise Trips.” Initially hobbled from full engagement by two leading characters who are all too convincingly unpleasant to be around, the pic earns their (and the viewers’) rapprochement by burying its fundamental generation-gapped, dysfunctional-family formulaics in low-key observation, plus a welcome late dose of druggy absurdism. Already released in home territories, it could pick up modest offshore sales in various formats while marking Reyntjens as a talent to watch. Dutch tour-bus company owner/driver Mario (Gene Bervoets) is miserable in retirement, cranky and uncommunicative with wife Linda (Tania Van der Sanden) despite her valiant attempts to engage him. Rather than accept her proposal that they take a vacation together, he leaps at his former business partner’s emergency request that he take over a group rental trip to Croatia. - DirectorStephan KomandarevStarsAssen BlatechkiOvanes TorosianIna NikolovaA father and a son live in a poor area, near the Bulgarian-Turkish-Greek border.THIS FILM RINGS SO TRUE TO CONTEMPORARY EVENTS REFLECTING THE CURRENT MIGRATION PROCESS. ANOTHER GOOD REASON TO ATTEND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVALS. THIS ONE LOOKS INTO THE LIFE OF ILLEGAL PEOPLE SMUGGLERS...PREYING ON THE LIVES OF DESPARATE PEOPLE. NARR 4, DIR 4, CTOG 4, PERF 4, ENJOY 4.
A co-production between Bulgaria, Germany, Croatia and Macedonia, The Judgment takes place in the soaring Rhodope mountain range that divides southeast Bulgaria from Greece. Eye-catching panoramic views of these mist-cloaked peaks bookend the film, and they also loom large in the plot, as this remote corner of the Balkans is one of the porous border regions where thousands of migrants, mostly fleeing Africa and the Middle East, make their illegal crossings into Europe. Komandarev has shot documentaries in the area on the same theme, drawing heavily on real people and real events for this fictionalized treatment.
Assen Blatechki exudes wounded, quiet desperation as the chief protagonist, Mityo Petrov, a widowed truck driver who has recently been laid off his job delivering milk. With deep debts and his house facing imminent repossession, Mityo grudgingly agrees to take on a shady work offer from his former army commander, The Captain (Predrag Manojlovic), an old-school enforcer still nostalgic for the pride and patriotism of the Communist era. The job involves smuggling refugees into Bulgaria via the deserted border guard station where Mityo did his military service 30 years ago — a traumatic period when he was forced to commit state-sanctioned crimes he would rather forget. - DirectorXavier SeronStarsJean-Jacques RausinMyriam BoyerSerge RiaboukineA man's hypochondriacal relationship with his mother.HORRIBLE FILM, TOTAL WASTE OF TIME FOR ME.
Belgium, 2015, 90 min.
This tender, absurdist black comedy transforms hypochondria into high art, focusing on the relationship of anxious, part-time actor Michel and his ailing, overly attached mother, who has been told that she is living on borrowed time but has no intention of dying. - DirectorLaura IsraelStarsRobert FrankSid KaplanJune LeafRobert Frank revolutionized photography and independent film. He documented the Beats, Welsh coal miners, Peruvian Indians, The Stones, London bankers, and the Americans. This is the bumpy ride, revealed with unblinking honesty by the reclusive artist himself.ANY FILM THAT EXPLORES A GREAT PHOTOGRAPHER WILL BE OF GREAT INTEREST TO ME. ENJOYMENT 5.
This rapid-fire, intimate portrait of the great photographer/filmmaker Robert Frank by his longtime editor, Laura Israel, serves as both a revelatory guided tour through one of the key bodies of work to come out of the USA in the latter half of the 20th century (including, most famously, The Americans, and his experimental Beat film, Pull My Daisy, with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso), and as an audience with a thoroughly engaging if sometimes ornery personality. The Swiss-born Frank has the kind of lively mind and erudition that makes him eminently quotable – “Little by little I knew what I had to get: pictures that talked about the character of the people,” – and what’s more, he seems to have known everybody worth knowing in New York City through the most vital years that metropolis has ever seen. The kick-ass soundtrack features music from Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Charles Mingus, The Rolling Stones and many mor - DirectorElmo NüganenStarsKaspar VelbergKristjan ÜkskülaMaiken PiusIn 1944 Estonia, a fratricide war ensues when Estonians of the retreating German forces fight against Estonians conscripted into the advancing Soviet Red Army.FROM ESTONIA COMES ONE OF THE MOST MEMORABLE ANTIWAR FILMS THAT YOU WILL EVER SEE. A VERY POWERFUL TREATISE WHERE THE RUSSIAN SIDE CONSCRIPTED SOLDIERS, AS DID THE NAZIS SO IN THE END NEIGHBORS AND FRIENDS WERE KILLING EACH OTHER. VERY WELL DONE. STORY 5, CINETOG 5, PERF 5, DIR 5, ENJOY 5. LOOK FOR IT IN ALTERNATIVE SOURCES.
In 1940, the Soviet Union annexed Estonia, drafting 55,000 men to serve in the Red Army. But in 1941, Germany occupied the tiny Baltic country, forcing thousands more Estonians to fight as part of the Waffen SS and other military units. By 1944, the bloodiest battles on the Eastern Front were being fought by soldiers from small nations with slim hope for survival. - DirectorPaddy BreathnachStarsHéctor MedinaJorge PerugorríaLuis Alberto GarcíaWhen his estranged father returns, a hairdresser is forced to quit performing at the local drag club.CAN YOU IMAGINE SEEING A HIGHLY RATED TRANSVESTITE FILM SHOT IN CUBA BY AN IRISH FILMAKER AND SUBMITTED BY IRELAND FOR THE OSCAR FOREIGN LANGUAGE PRIZE. IT ACTUALLY MADE THE SHORT LIST OF 10. WELL HERE IT IS WITH LOADS OF CELEBRATION BY MANY FILM FESTIVALS. THE SENSITIVITY AND SHOOT ARE OUTSTANDING AND HOPE ALL MY READERS MAKE AN EFFORT TO SEE IT. NAR 5, DIR 5, PERFS 5+, CTOG 5, ENJOY 4.
An Irish film shot in Cuba, in Spanish, this rousing cross-cultural crowd-pleaser is set in Havana, in what one character aptly calls “the most beautiful slum in the world.” In a drag club in the city, we meet impoverished 18-year-old hairdresser Jesus (Héctor Medina), who helps with the wigs of the drag performers, and dreams of taking the stage himself. His first performance is disrupted by a rugged, unruly man in the audience—Jesus' father, an ex-boxer just out of prison, whom he hasn’t seen for 15 years. The macho, homophobic father insists on moving in with his effeminate, abandoned son, and thus begins a remarkable father and son story; stirring, tender and unexpected. Paddy Breathnach’s irresistible movie was the surprise hit of the Telluride Film Festival.