It took me a minute to catch up with Strickland's latest, for a number of tedious reasons. (It never opened here, of course. IFC kept sending me screener links that didn't work. And it took two solid days to find online subtitles that included Stones' Green narration.) And although I remain steadfast i...
2022-08-30 05:17:54 +0000 UTC View Post
Here's how I described the film for the Viennale catalogue:
Beginning with archival footage of celebrations following the election of François Mitterand in 1981, and ending shortly after his second election in 1988, Mikhäel Hers’ The Passengers of the Night might initially be mistake...
2022-08-24 03:59:21 +0000 UTC View Post
So yeah. I've taken some time, and I feel like I have a more measured response to some recent events. And it seems worth sharing them with you, in case you're curious.
There are some major stressors at present, mostly relating to my home life. I am having a bit of a parenting crisis, and I won't ...
2022-08-21 05:49:10 +0000 UTC View Post
I had been under the mistaken impression that I'd seen India Song many years ago. I had a very bad VHS copy and now, having watching the version currently streaming on the Criterion Channel, I recognize two things. 1) The version I had in my possession was so degraded that the film's essential...
2022-08-21 05:12:57 +0000 UTC View Post
10 Things I Prefer to Marguerite Duras:
-a bendy stras
-A Korean spas
-Quick Dras McGras
-broccoli slas
-"Baswitdabas"
-Walter Chas
-"Win, Lose or Dras"
-an early thas
-a circular sas
-"She-Hulk: Attorney at Las"
2022-08-20 06:58:57 +0000 UTC View Post
Aleksandr Sokurov is a director typically perceived as having a distinctive style, a brand even. The work is thought of as being ponderous, grim, even a bit self-important. And while this may be the case for a number of his films, Sokurov actually has a lot of variety in his filmography. Spiritual ...
2022-08-17 19:51:01 +0000 UTC View Post
Following his well-liked (although unseen by me) Summer of Giacomo and his not quite as well-liked (and disliked by me) Happy Times Will Come Soon, Italian director Alessandro Comodin has produced his most accessible film to date, a meandering portrait of a genial cop (Pier Luigi Mecc...
2022-08-16 21:39:43 +0000 UTC View PostI reviewed a couple of Locarno competition titles for InReview Online. Here they are. Please excuse the formatting / kerning issues.
Tommy Guns (Carlos Conceição, 2022)
"The film is a changeling, constantly revising and reversing its apparent intentions. Although it...
2022-08-16 21:03:52 +0000 UTC View Post
Since Wai Ka-fai is "in the news" right now, owing to his very well-received new film Detective vs. Sleuths, I thought it was time to finally go back and watch his defining solo effort, a film that has been recommended to me over the years by numerous friends, most recently Shelly Kraicer. Loy...
2022-08-07 18:53:42 +0000 UTC View Post
Ben Russell's latest film is in part an expansion of his 2020 film What Distinguishes the Past, which was featured in this year's edition of Media City. That film, inspired in part by the death of Russell's friend Jonathan Schwartz, is an elaboration of techniques Russell has used in earlier f...
2022-08-06 19:09:33 +0000 UTC View Post
This new featurette by Baudelaire is actually more of a compilation, comprised to two short films and the longer titular work, a documentary about experimental composer Alvin Curran. One learns a great deal about Curran's post-Cagean philosophy of collective improvisation, in particular how he sees it ...
2022-08-05 05:36:19 +0000 UTC View Post
I have a soft spot for Bertrand Mandico. Granted, I have yet to really embrace his films. That's because they are, for lack of a better way to put it, at war with themselves. Mandico is a fundamentally visual director, driven by outré imagery and amorphous sexuality. In any given frame of After Bl...
2022-08-05 02:57:17 +0000 UTC View Post
This is a graduation film from a student at Berlin's dffb, and judging from the information in the credits, she worked closely with Maren Ade. This was my primary reason for watching Talking About the Weather, and taken as a first film from a young maker, it's very promising. Pinske shows grea...
2022-08-04 19:18:22 +0000 UTC View Post
Looking back, I see I have neglected to honor the dictates of a few earlier polls, including the 1972 films and a selection of semi-random, unseen films. So this is a bit of a hybrid poll.
Although you are permitted only three votes, I will be focusing on the top vote-getters in order. (You can, ...
2022-08-03 11:01:05 +0000 UTC View Post
When I was a younger man, I was a complete idiot. This is not to say that I am some beacon of rationality and wisdom now. I'm sure I'll look back on these days years from now and marvel that I was able to pull off some facsimile of adulthood. But during my high school and undergraduate days, I possesse...
2022-08-03 02:30:57 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi folks, and thank you (once again) for your patronage, and your patience.
I'm behind on writing up the films I've seen, including a strong final Rohmer selection. And I need to get a new Director of the Month poll up.
But basically, I had a parenting emergency which required making a 48-h...
2022-08-02 04:14:04 +0000 UTC View Post
A specter is haunting the world of documentary: the specter of the essay film.
Riotsville, USA is a good example of a film that might've been much stronger had its makers decided to attempt less, focusing on the topic at hand. Of course Pettengill has uncovered some amazing footage from ...
2022-07-27 20:16:03 +0000 UTC View Post
My description for the Viennale:
The protagonists of Denis Côté’s films often live on the margins, having been cast aside because of psychological wounds that refuse to heal. In his latest film, Côté considers the therapeutic situation itself. Un été comme ça takes place during ...
2022-07-27 19:52:48 +0000 UTC View Post
Although Elvis is generally better than one might expect, it's strangely shapeless and ungainly. Luhrmann and his three co-scriptwriters have some trouble deciding exactly what sort of film they want to make, and the result is a kind of compromise between print-the-legend mythmaking (the first...
2022-07-22 03:39:23 +0000 UTC View Post
Here's what I wrote for the Viennale catalog description of this film:
Léonor Serraille follows her debut feature, the Camera d’Or winning Jeune Femme (2017) with a film radically different in scope and temperament, confirming herself to be a major new voice in French cinema. A close ...
2022-07-22 03:03:34 +0000 UTC View Post
In her longest film to date, Brazilian experimentalist Ana Vaz turns her attention to habitat encroachment in the city of Brasilia. It is an interesting choice for a first feature, since most of her previous films engage in somewhat more complicated cultural and political histories. Apiyemiyekî? 2022-07-20 02:29:32 +0000 UTC View Post
Clocking in at just under 3 1/2 hours, The Unstable Object II bears the subtitle, "contributions to a future archive." And indeed, there is a comprehensiveness in Eisenberg's film that suggests an attempt at fully documenting a set of industrial procedures, from beginning to end. This is a fil...
2022-07-18 04:56:35 +0000 UTC View Post
Depictions of life under totalitarianism tend to focus on dramatic instances, moments when someone either buckles under to compromise or, sticking to their guns, must be eliminated. Word, a film about the years following the Prague Spring in 1968, takes a different tack. Thematically it resemb...
2022-07-18 02:45:46 +0000 UTC View Post
Encroaching fascism keeps us perpetually off balance, always braced for the next punch in the gut. This state of anxiety has many side effects, one of them being that as we feel ourselves to be under attack, we reflexively turn inward, looking to insulate ourselves and our loved ones from sudden harm. ...
2022-07-15 02:00:58 +0000 UTC View Post
Surface Rites (Ryan Ferko, Faraz Anoushahpor, Parastoo Anoushahpor, 2022)
The Canada-based law offices of Anoushahpour, Anoushahpor, and Ferko have been making reliably deft experimental documentaries for nearly a decade. Although the subject matter of the films varies widely, th...
2022-07-12 04:28:58 +0000 UTC View Post
Yes, I am only just now catching up with Mike Leigh's Palme d'Or winner, his biggest critical and commercial success Stateside so far. When it came out, I was generally disinclined toward seeing what I perceived to be "Oscar movies," and although I'd seen three of Leigh's films by this point, something...
2022-07-10 02:46:39 +0000 UTC View Post
This is a film I would have turned off well before the halfway mark, except for the fact that I have a weakness for old school auteurs. Despite it being clear from very early on that Leonora Addio was not a good film, I guess I feel like a master like Taviani has earned the benefit of the doub...
2022-07-06 03:31:09 +0000 UTC View Post
Having only read about Men and seen the trailer, I popped off on Twitter, as one does. I remarked that the film looked like the version of von Trier's Antichrist that this era deserves. Now that I have actually engaged with Men, I can see that I was only half right. While bot...
2022-07-04 02:18:28 +0000 UTC View Post
Belgian though he may be, Joachim Lafosse seems to fall into a particular category of French director whose work seems primarily designed to win Césars and Louis Delluc Prizes. The films embody a 21st century Tradition of Quality, with their undistinguished realism, acrobatic performances, and above a...
2022-07-02 06:31:04 +0000 UTC View Post