May 2013
2 posts
5 tags
Review - Leviathan
A film shot on a fishing ship without dialogue, characters, plot, context or even an apparent structure is an extremely difficult sell. Those willing to take the risk with Leviathan, however, will be rewarded with an extraordinary and purely cinematic voyage as absorbing as anything they’ve experienced on the screen before.
Fixing their GoPro cameras everywhere, co-directors Lucien...
12 tags
Discovering Jacques Rozier at the Arsenal
Jacques Rozier is often conspicuously absent from tributes to the French New Wave. Even though his debut Adieu Philippine (released in 1962) was considered a landmark film of the emerging movement, championed by Godard and Truffaut and featured on the cover of Cahiers du Cinéma’s special edition on La Nouvelle Vague, its commercial failure set the course for Rozier’s subsequent career in...
April 2013
2 posts
8 tags
'Bestiaire' - Interview with Denis Côté
Canadian director and former film critic Denis Côté began his filmmaking career with Les états nordiques (Drifting States) in 2005. In the following eight years he released six more features, exalting the critics at Locarno, Cannes and Berlin. His latest, Vic + Flo ont vu un ours (Vic + Flo Saw a Bear), was one of the few truly excellent entries in the main competition at this year’s Berlinale,...
3 tags
Review - Bestiaire
In the Middle Ages, bestiaries were books made up of illustrations of animals accompanied by descriptions containing moral lessons for the reader. With Bestiaire, Côté has reclaimed this tradition, merging elements of the documentary, the essay film and the art film to craft a superb cinematic equivalent.
The film consists almost exclusively of static shots portraying several dozen species of...
February 2013
2 posts
1 tag
Berlinale Blogs 2013
At this year’s Berlinale I wrote two daily blogs, one for the New York film magazine Film Comment and the other for Berlin’s English-language magazine Exberliner. Here are the links to all of the blog posts, with the titles of the films reviewed in each.
Film Comment
Day 1: The Grandmaster, dir. Wong Kar Wai
Day 2: Paradise: Hope, dir. Ulrich Seidl / In the Name Of,...
10 tags
Berlinale Tickets Go On Sale Tomorrow — My...
This year’s Berlinale kicks off on Thursday and tickets go on sale tomorrow morning at 10:00am. Considering the ridiculously large number of films on the programme, buying tickets is always a bit of a gamble. Having seen a fair number of this year’s films already, I thought I’d put together a selection of recommendations to help with the daunting task of sifting through the...
January 2013
1 post
23 tags
Unknown Pleasures: Viewing U.S. Indie Cinema From...
Catering to virtually every niche, Berlin offers some 70 film festivals each year. Since 2009, the first on the calendar has been the Unknown Pleasures Festival. Held during the first two weeks of January at the historic Babylon Cinema in former East Berlin, it is a work of love run entirely by three enthusiasts of US independent cinema, providing a sorely needed platform for recent American...
December 2012
2 posts
4 tags
'Tabu' - Interview with Miguel Gomes
Miguel Gomes’ first two features—The Face You Deserve in 2004 and Our Beloved Month of August in 2008—piqued the interest of critics through their whimsical filmic tributes and meta-cinematic experiments, with some flagging the Portuguese director as an auteur worth keeping an eye on. This initial enthusiasm was validated by the premiere of his next film in the main competition at this year’s...
4 tags
'Funny Ha Ha' (10th anniversary) - Interview with...
As much as the filmmakers whose films it designates may have grown to hate it, the label mumblecore is pretty much indelible at this point. And while their resentment towards the term is understandable (it doesn’t have quite as romantic a ring as nouvelle vague, does it?), it nevertheless refers to the most creative and influential wave of films to come out of the US independent scene since the...
November 2012
2 posts
3 tags
Review - Argo
Considering the way in which Iran dominated the U.S. presidential debate on foreign policy, Ben Affleck’s Argo, released in the States a month before the election, arrives just in time to stoke the fires of paranoia and xenophobia.
Recently declassified information revealed that during the 1979 hostage crisis at the U.S. embassy in Tehran, six members of staff managed to escape. They hid...
7 tags
Jean Rouch: The Ethnographic Surrealist
For me cinema, making a film, is like Surrealist painting: the use of the most real processes of reproduction, the most photographic, but at the service of the unreal, bringing into being elements of the irrational… the postcard at the service of the imaginary. - Jean Rouch
Anthropologist and filmmaker Jean Rouch (1917 – 2004) is one of those paradoxical figures in film history. His work...
October 2012
2 posts
4 tags
'La vie au ranch' - Interview with Sophie...
Released in her native France in 2010, La vie au ranch is the first feature-length film by 33-year-old Sophie Letourneur. Following a number of short and medium-length films that have garnered her awards from festivals across Europe, her debut feature continues her preoccupation with the theme of friendship among young women, frequently drawn from her own experiences.
In La vie au ranch,...
3 tags
'Wake in Fright' - Interview with Ted Kotcheff
“It’s a friendly place. Nobody worries who you are, where you’re from. If you’re a good bloke, you’re all right. You know what I mean?” These friendly words offered upon arrival in the outback backwater of Bundanyabba serve as an introduction to hell in Ted Kotcheff’s Wake in Fright, an Australian film that despite receiving overwhelmingly positive critical reception when it premiered at the...
August 2012
3 posts
1 tag
Review - Was bleibt
What happens when bourgeois families congregate in arthouse films? Crisis! Such is the case in Was bleibt, except with the customary fireworks replaced by passive aggression and bitter rancour.
All the elements for a good film are there: a convincing script, strong performances – Corinna Harfouch and Lars Eidinger as the mother and elder son are particularly noteworthy – and solid direction and...
1 tag
Review - Holy Motors
Considering his frequent dismissal as little more than a talented yet over-sensationalist fanboy fixated on the Nouvelle Vague, Leos Carax’s first feature in 13 years works as an exultant re-affirmation if not redemption of all the schismatic idiosyncrasies that have characterised his style, plus an extra bucketful thrown on top for good measure.
Without a narrative to speak of, Holy Motors...
1 tag
Review - We Need To Talk About Kevin
Horror films have often dealt with a mother’s fear of bearing a wicked offspring. Rosemary’s Baby and The Omen took it literally, bestowing the seed of Satan on their heroines. What if, however, there are no demonic forces involved? The child is yours and as much as you tried, you’ve never been able to convince yourself that you truly wanted him. Despite all your best efforts and sacrifice, you...
July 2012
2 posts
1 tag
Review - 360
Describing itself on iMDb as a “vivid, suspenseful and deeply moving tale of love in the 21st century”, 360 by erstwhile Cidade de Deus (City of God) director Fernando Meirelles is a veritably trite affair that despite its arthouse and Altman-esque pretensions is only a step above such star-studded atrocities as Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve.
The film depicts the various...
1 tag
Review - Metéora
With its story of an orthodox monk and nun living in monasteries perched atop opposing mountains and lusting for one another, Metéora purports to explore the conflict of spirit vs. flesh. Featuring almost no dialogue and even less action, it’s one of the most insipid renditions of a theme favoured by some of cinema’s greatest directors (Buñuel, Fellini, Bergman, Scorsese, to name only a few).
...
June 2012
6 posts
1 tag
Video Interview - The Family in the Films of...
Earlier this month I posted my interview with Yorgos Lanthimos, published in Exberliner.
I had also made a recording of the interview for Cine-Fils’ series of thematised video interviews with filmmakers, which was published today. Our theme was ‘Family’ and you can watch the video on the Cine-Fils website.
Unfortunately, this time there is no accompanying essay. However, here...
1 tag
'Tomboy' - Interview with Céline Sciamma
In her 2007 debut Water Lillies, French director Céline Sciamma depicted the blossoming sexual experiences of three girls during early adolescence. With her second feature Tomboy, which again tackles issues of sexuality and gender, she has turned her camera to an even younger protagonist.
The story of 10-year-old Laure pretending to be a boy to the world outside her home was a critical...
1 tag
'Alpeis' - Interview with Yorgos Lanthimos
With his second solo feature Kynodontas (Dogtooth) in 2009, then 36-year-old Yorgos Lanthimos took the arthouse by storm, winning the Prix Un Certain Regard at Cannes and earning a highly uncharacteristic Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. His next film, Alpeis (Alps, out in Germany on June 14), screened to great critical acclaim in the main competition at Venice last year,...
1 tag
Review - Alpeis
A mysterious group meets regularly in an empty gymnasium. They call themselves ‘Alps’. Their codenamed members (‘Mont Blanc’, ‘Monte Rosa’, ‘Matterhorn’…) seek out recently bereaved families and offer their service: to act as surrogates for the deceased – dress in their clothes, adopt their habits and tastes, fulfil their familial obligations – and thus alleviate the grieving process.
Treated...
1 tag
Freiluftkinos in June
Hoping this summer stops being a capricious little cock-tease, finally decides to set off proper and give us the glorious sunny days and balmy nights we so pine for (and deserve!), Berlin’s beloved Freiluftkinos have again put together a great selection of films from the last year to enjoy under the open sky.
Maybe out of superstition, vindictiveness or simply Schadenfreude, this month’s...
1 tag
Review - Les Adieux à la reine
Opening in Versailles on July 14, 1789, the date of the storming of the Bastille, the film depicts the following three days of escalating panic and crumbling loyalties as realization of the old regime’s impending collapse spreads through the royal halls.
Certainly rich material for a juicy period piece, but director Jaquot is intent on keeping the sensationalism muted. This approach, rather...
May 2012
6 posts
1 tag
Review - Archipelago
Describing Archipelago as dreary would be a gross understatement. The plot (in the most liberal definition of the term) revolves around a middle class family renting a cottage on one of the Isles of Scilly for a holiday. The father isn’t there and the only other people on the island with the mother and two adult children are their hired cook and a paint instructor who also doubles as the most...
1 tag
Review - Kill Me Please
An upscale euthanasia clinic gives terminally ill patients the opportunity of dying in a scenario of their choosing. Although with a premise rich in potential for the brand of delightfully macabre comedy that has become synonymous with Belgian film abroad, despite some inspired scenes at the start, excellent performances and an appealing monochrome aesthetic, Kill Me Please fails to live up to...
1 tag
Review - Marley
Perceiving waning interest in Bob Marley’s music of recent, Kevin Macdonald has put together a loving and exhaustive document of the Jamaican legend’s life and work.
Through archival footage and an impressive collection of interviews both new and old, the film follows Marley’s life chronologically, starting in his birthplace in the hills of Jamaica’s northern countryside and ending in the...
Michael Glawogger: Travelling and Realism
Cine-Fils is a Berlin-based web magazine that regularly publishes exclusive video interviews with eminent film figures, featuring impressive names such as Michael Haneke, Mike Leigh and Isabella Rossellini. Each interview revolves around a specific theme related to the interviewee’s style and career – in the above cases, ‘Violence’, ‘Theatre’ and ‘Sex’ respectively – and is accompanied by an...
1 tag
Review - Bar25, Tage außerhalb der Zeit
What was it that for seven years made Bar25 the signifier of Berlin’s famed club scene, regarded as a Mecca by Berliners and tourists alike until a protracted struggle with Mediaspree eventually closed its doors for good in 2010? Unfortunately, despite the interviewees’ relentless (too often self-)adulation – one goes so far as claiming that they were “riding at the vanguard of evolution”...
1 tag
Young Olympians: New Greek Cinema at the Arsenal
The success of Yorgos Lanthimos’ exceptional Kynodontas (Dogtooth, pictured above), which won the Prix Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2009, went on to be a worldwide indie hit and even garnered an Oscar nomination for best foreign language film, signalled the start of a new wave of films from young Greek filmmakers that count as some of the most refreshingly original works to come out of the...
March 2012
1 post
1 tag
Happy Birthday Pier Paolo Pasolini!
Today would have been Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 90th birthday. One of Italy’s most interesting artists, his work – be it as a filmmaker, poet, novelist, playwright, or journalist – always provided passionate, stimulating and, more often than not, inflammatory commentary on the state of Italian culture and politics. Outside of Italy, he is probably best known for his films and he is widely considered...
February 2012
16 posts
1 tag
Review - Shame
Shame focuses on Brandon, a deeply tormented nymphomaniac hiding behind a façade of affluence and success. Like any addict, he is trapped in a relentless and futile quest for unattainable gratification, his life reduced to a torturous continuity of one-night stands, prostitutes, pornography, and clandestine masturbation in the office toilets.
The abandon with which Fassbender gives himself to...
1 tag
'Al Juma Al Akheira' - Interview with Yahya...
Al Juma Al Akheira (The Last Friday) has been one of the highlights of this year’s Berlinale Forum section. An understated gem of a film, it follows the story of Yousef, a taxi driver in the Jordanian capital Amman, who after losing everything to his poker addiction has to live a life of isolation and contempt, watching impotently as his son follows in his footsteps (read my full-length review...
2 tags
Berlinale Review: Rentaneko (Rent-a-Cat)
Rentaneko in one word: adorable. Considering the Internet’s overflow of cute kitten pictures, this film was just waiting to be made. With its absurd and idiosyncratically Japanese premise and humour, it’s basically Tampopo (1985) with countless cuddly cats in place of the mountains of mouth-watering food. Sayoko (Ichikawa) lives alone with an army of cats. The kitties are naturally attracted...
2 tags
Berlinale Review: Cherry
Cherry presents the archetypal Hollywood story of the poor, underprivileged girl who moves to the big city and through her perky resourcefulness ends up finding success and self-fulfillment (overcoming a number of character-building/narrative-propelling obstacles and disillusionments on the way, of course). It seeks to set itself apart from its countless predecessors by having the protagonist...
2 tags
Berlinale Review: Prílis mladá noc (A Night Too...
Fans of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Dekalog should check out this one, as both its aesthetic and its treatment of the subject matter are strongly reminiscent of the Polish director’s masterpiece. Prílis mladá noc relies on strong performances to present a simple story through which to explore universal human themes. A remarkable feature debut for its 27-year-old director Olmo Omerzu, it’s the type of...
2 tags
Berlinale Review: Hemel
Those who were taken by Steve McQueen’s Shame or are avidly awaiting its German release next month will find a lot to appreciate in Hemel, which in many ways works as a companion film. In fact, as a psychological study, where Shame teetered on the brink of fatuousness, Hemel manages to be much more satisfying.
In the film’s first part we watch as Hemel (Hoekstra), a ravishingly beautiful girl...
2 tags
Berlinale Review: What Is Love
A more appropriate title could have been Where Is Love, because love, just like any sentiment other than tedium, makes no appearance in this film. Or perhaps it’s a really ironic nod to the Haddaway song of the same name, which would be kind of brilliant; sadly, irony is in even shorter supply than love.
The film depicts five different cases of the dreariest vapidity – a single woman, a...
2 tags
Berlinale Review: The Woman Who Brushed Off Her...
This third feature by Macedonian writer/director Teona Strugar Mitevska is one of those typical indie films with relatively high production values that take themselves very seriously and attempt to conceal their lack of substance through highly contrived plots and unduly pretentious cinematography. The Woman Who Brushed Off Her Tears is split up into two parallel narratives. The first is set in...
2 tags
Berlinale Review: La Demora (The Delay)
This is only the second film from Uruguay I’ve seen – the other being the 2009 Silver Bear-winning Gigante – and both have been gems of the typically Latin American brand of social realism, manifesting a sensibility almost spiritual in its humanity. La Demora’s protagonist, Maria (Blanco), is a single mother of three, working long hours in a textile factory and devoting what little time she has...
2 tags
Berlinale Review: Beziehungsweisen (Negotiating...
How anyone ever read this script and thought it would make for an interesting film is baffling.
Dubbing itself as an ‘acted documentary’, the film depicts three couples, played by actors, in marriage counseling sessions with therapists played by real-life professionals. Unfortunately, these people aren’t Tony and Carmela Soprano, but the most bland, ordinary couples sharing banalities that...
2 tags
Berlinale Review: Kid-Thing
The Zellner bros.’ Kid-Thing is a US indie oddity that revels in the squalid and tries very hard to emulate Harmony Korine without managing to be much more than a lesser knock-off (and I am definitely not one of the latter’s admirers). Annie (Aguirre), the film’s protagonist, is a 10-year-old tomboy living in a seedy Texan suburb. Bored to tears and with no company other than her imbecilic...
2 tags
Berlinale Review: Keep the Lights On
Keep the Lights On is director and co-writer Ira Sachs’ autobiographical account of a decade-long gay relationship blighted by drug abuse. It’s clear that this is a story very close to Sachs’ heart (he even resorted to crowd-funding to gather the finances that proved difficult to acquire through traditional means) and the extent to which he is willing to lay his own past bare is remarkable....
2 tags
Berlinale Review: For Ellen
For Ellen, American-Korean director and Berlinale regular So Yong Kim’s third feature, is very similar to Sofia Coppola’s Golden Lion-winning Somewhere. Though not as artistically accomplished as the latter, by being far less pretentious and clichéd, it manages to truly involve the viewer. This is in large part thanks to Paul Dano (from There Will Be Blood and Little Miss Sunshine), who’s able...
2 tags
Berlinale Review: The Connection
This 1961 mockumentary-cum-chamber film by one of the unsung masters of American independent cinema, Shirley Clarke, has hitherto been all but unavailable. This year’s Berlinale Forum will be screening the newly restored version of The Connection, thus granting many a rare chance of catching this extraordinary film. All the action takes place in one room, a cavernous, brick-walled junkie’s...
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Berlinale Review: Al Juma Al Akheira (The Last...
Of this year’s Berlinale films I have already seen, Al Juma Al Akheira is by far the one I was most taken with. Much in the same manner as last year’s Golden Bear winner A Separation, this impressive feature debut by writer/director Alabdallah is one of those understated marvels that manages to convey so much by expressly stating so little. Yousef (Suliman) is a taxi driver living in the...
2 tags
Berlinale Review: Olhe Pra Mim De Novo (Look At Me...
Olhe Pra Mim De Novo is a documentary about Sillvyo Luccio (pictured above, left), a female-to-male transsexual, following him as he travels through his native region of Brazil, the northeast hinterland.
Sillvyo discusses several topics with the camera, including his gender and sexual identity, his relationship with his girlfriend and their wish for a child, the surgical details of his ongoing...
January 2012
2 posts
1 tag
'Cold Weather' - Interview with Aaron Katz
An independent filmmaker through and through, 30-year-old Aaron Katz shot his first two features, Dance Party USA (2006) and Quiet City (2007), on $3000 and $2000 respectively. These were seen as belonging to a recent wave in US indie cinema dubbed ‘mumblecore’: films characterized by shoestring budgets, 20-something non-professional actors and unsensational narratives distinguished by...
1 tag
Long live arthouse cinemas! Here comes the Zukunft
It’s heartening to know that with everyone bewailing the death of independent cinemas, not only does Berlin have one of the largest and best selections of arthouse film theatres, but one that keeps on growing as well!
One of these cinemas is the Tilsiter Lichtspiele. A bit of an insider’s tip, this small, historical and remarkably cheap cinema offers a consistently excellent monthly...
December 2011
26 posts
1 tag
Hell Are the Others: Chamber Films at the Arsenal
What is called a chamber play in theatre doesn’t, as far as I know, have an established definition in cinema. So let’s be crazy creative and call it a chamber film. Capitalizing on our thirst for carnage (Carnage also being the name of a recent, brilliant example of the genre), such films confine a small number of characters to a single setting and let them loose on one another, exposing the...
