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outdoorcats
Programmer - IMDb Film Festival 2016
Best Film: Tokyo Tribe Best Actor: TIE between Kôji Yakusho in The World of Kanako and Liao Fan in Black Coal, Thin Ice Best Actress: Emily Baldoni in Coherence Best Supporting Actor: TIE between Dovale Glickman in Big Bad Wolves and Nicholas Brendon in Coherence Best Supporting Actress: Gwei Lun Mei in Black Coal, Thin Ice English-Language Section Award Winner: Tracks International I Section Award: Mustang International II Section Award: Why Don't You Play in Hell? Arthouse Award: Eisenstein in Guanajuato Documentary Section Award Winner: Life Itself Just Before Dawn Award Winner: Late Phases
Audience Award: Mountains May Depart
Programmer - IMDb Film Festival 2015
Best Film Winner - The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears
Audience Award - Norte, the End of History
When you see the films of certain young directors, you get the impression that film history begins for them around 1980. Their films would probably be better if they'd seen a few more films, which runs counter to this idiotic theory that you run the risk of being influenced if you see too much. Actually, it's when you see too little that you run the risk of being influenced. If you see a lot, you can choose the films you want to be influenced by. Sometimes the choice isn't conscious, but there are some things in life that are far more powerful than we are, and that affect us profoundly. If I'm influenced by Hitchcock, Rossellini or Renoir without realizing it, so much the better. If I do something sub-Hitchcock, I'm already very happy. Cocteau used to say: Imitate, and what is personal will eventually come despite yourself. You can always try.-Jacques Rivette
A bearded man descends from the clouds. Is it Jesus Christ? No, It's Nicholas Cage and he says We have to steal the declaration of Independence!
-An IMDb user
20 great films from 2016:
1. Moonlight
2. Goldstone
3. Personal Shopper
4. The Rehearsal
5. Harmonium
6. Manchester by the Sea
7. The Age of Shadows
8. Neruda
9. I, Daniel Blake
10. My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea
11. 13th
12. I Am Not Your Negro
13. Staying Vertical
14. The Salesman
15. Raw
16. The Unknown Girl
17. The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki
18. Spa Night
19. Toni Erdmann
20. The Handmaiden
20 great films from 2015:
1. Carol
2. The Assassin
3. Evolution
4. Mustang
5. Bridgend
6. Room
7. My Golden Days
8. Embrace of the Serpent
9. Mia Madre
10. The Invitation
11. Mountains May Depart
12. Cemetery of Splendour
13. Mad Max: Fury Road
14. Inside Out
15. (T)ERROR
16. Dheepan
17. Tangerine
18. The Boy and the Beast
19. The White Knights
20. The Pearl Button
+1 great miniseries:
Show Me a Hero
30 great films from 2014:
1. Girlhood
2. Inherent Vice
3. Jauja
4. Selma
5. '71
6. The Wonders
7. White God
8. It Follows
9. Listen Up Philip
10. Imperial Dreams
11. Dear White People
12. Faults
13. Whiplash
14. Force Majeure
15. Two Days, One Night
16. Breathe
17. Beyond the Lights
18. Love & Mercy
19. La Sapienza
20. Wild Tales
21. The Blue Room
22. Tales of the Grim Sleeper
23. Gone Girl
24. A Most Violent Year
25. The Normal Heart (TV)
26. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
27. The Salt of the Earth
28. Goodbye to Language 3D
29. Maidan
30. Kilo Two Bravo
+4 excellent genre films:
Let Us Prey
The Signal
The Guest
John Wick
+4 unusually good, or at least very fun blockbusters:
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Edge of Tomorrow
Guardians of the Galaxy
The Maze Runner
+1 perfect miniseries:
P'tit Quinquin
And here is the 10 list - a chronological list of all the films I give a 10 rating to...I consider these all essentially perfect films, the best of the best, as aesthetically beautiful as they are rich and profoud or powerful:
La roue (Abel Gance - 1923)
Sherlock Jr. (Buster Keaton - 1924)
The General (Clyde Bruckman and Buster Keaton - 1926)
The Fall of the House of Usher (Jean Epstein - 1928)
Island of Lost Souls (Erle C. Kenton - 1932)
A Story of Floating Weeds (Yasujiro Ozu - 1934)
Tange Sazen and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo (Sadao Yamanaka - 1935)
Modern Times (Charlie Chaplin - 1936)
Grand Illusion (Jean Renoir - 1937)
Pépé le Moko (Julien Duvivier - 1937)
The Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir - 1939)
The Wolf Man (George Waggner - 1941)
A Canterbury Tale (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger - 1944)
Brute Force (Jules Dassin - 1947)
The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles - 1947)
Odd Man Out (Carol Reed - 1947)
Bicycle Thief (Vittorio de Sica - 1948)
Late Spring (Yasujiro Ozu - 1949)
The Third Man (Carol Reed - 1949)
In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray - 1950)
Gun Crazy (Joseph H. Lewis - 1950)
Orpheus (Jean Cocteau - 1950)
Early Summer (Yasujiro Ozu - 1951)
On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray - 1951)
Monsieur Hulot's Holiday (Jacques Tati - 1953)
Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi - 1953)
The Wages of Fear (Henri-Georges Clouzot - 1953)
Journey to Italy (Roberto Rosselini - 1954)
Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock - 1954)
Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa - 1954)
La strada (Federico Fellini - 1954)
Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich - 1955)
Ordet (Carl Theodor Dreyer - 1955)
Pather Panchali (Satyajit Ray - 1955)
A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson - 1956)
Nights of Cabiria (Federico Fellini - 1957)
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock - 1958)
North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock - 1959)
Blood and Roses (Roger Vadim - 1960)
Leon Morin, Priest (Jean-Pierre Melville - 1961)
Harakiri (Masaki Kobayashi - 1962)
Jules and Jim (Francois Truffaut - 1962)
The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer - 1962)
The Trial (Orson Welles - 1962)
High and Low (Akira Kurosawa - 1963)
The Silence (Ingmar Bergman - 1963)
Escape from Japan (Yoshishige Yoshida - 1964)
Pale Flower (Masahiro Shinoda - 1964)
The Red Desert (Michelangelo Antonioni - 1964)
Major Dundee (Sam Peckinpah - 1965)
Red Beard (Akira Kurosawa - 1965)
The Saragossa Manuscript (Wojciech Has - 1965)
Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky - 1966)
Black Girl (Ousmane Sembene - 1966)
The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo - 1966)
Blowup (Michelangelo Antonioni - 1966)
The Sand Pebbles (Robert Wise - 1966)
Seconds (John Frankenheimer - 1966)
The Witness (Péter Bacsó - 1969)
Silence (Masahiro Shinoda - 1971)
Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky - 1972)
Lisa and the Devil (Mario Bava - 1973)
Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky - 1975)
Overlord (Stuart Cooper - 1975)
Picnic at Hanging Rock (Peter Weir - 1975)
The Ascent (Larisa Shepitko - 1977)
Dawn of the Dead (George Romero - 1978)
Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick - 1978)
Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett - 1978)
Alien (Ridley Scott - 1979)
Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola - 1979)
Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky - 1979)
The Thing (John Carpenter - 1982)
Blood Simple (Joel Coen - 1984)
Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders - 1984)
Shoah (Claude Lanzmann - 1985)
Blue Velvet (David Lynch - 1986)
Wings of Desire (Wim Wenders - 1987)
Salaam Bombay! (Mira Nair - 1988)
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (David Lynch - 1992)
Sátántangó (Béla Tarr - 1994)
Dead Man (Jim Jarmusch - 1995)
Safe (Todd Haynes - 1995)
How I Got Into An Argument... (My Sex Life) (Arnaud Desplechin - 1996)
Lone Star (John Sayles - 1996)
Lost Highway (David Lynch - 1997)
The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick - 1998)
In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar Wai - 2000)
All About Lily Chou-Chou (Shunji Iwai - 2001)
Mulholland Dr (David Lynch - 2001)
Take Care of My Cat (Jeong Jae-eun - 2001)
Far From Heaven (Todd Haynes - 2002)
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (Peter Weir - 2003)
Memories of Murder (Bong Joon-ho - 2003)
Evolution of a Filipino Family (Lav Diaz - 2004)
Kings and Queen (Arnaud Desplechin - 2004)
The World (Jia Zhang-ke - 2004)
There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson - 2007)
Love Exposure (Sion Sono - 2008)
Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt - 2008)
Mysteries of Lisbon (Raoul Ruiz - 2010)
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul - 2010)
The Gatekeepers (Dror Moreh - 2012)
Laurence Anyways (Xavier Dolan - 2012)
The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson - 2012)
All is Lost (J.C. Chandor - 2013)
The Immigrant (James Gray - 2013)
Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson - 2014)
Jauja (Lisandro Alonso - 2014)
The Assassin (Hou Hsiao-Hsien - 2015)
Carol (Todd Haynes - 2015)
Évolution (Lucile Hadzihalilovic - 2015)
I also read and loved:
[pre]
AUSTEN, Jane Emma
Persuasion
Pride and Prejudice
BRONTE, Charlotte Jane Eyre
BRONTE, Emily Wuthering Heights
CERVANTES, Miguel de The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha
CONRAD, Joseph Heart of Darkness
Lord Jim
DICKENS, Charles Bleak House
DOSTOYEVSKY, Fyodor The Brothers Karamazov
Crime and Punishment
ELLISON, Ralph Invisible Man
FAULKNER, William As I Lay Dying
GOLDING, William Lord of the Flies
HELLER, Joseph Catch-22
HEMINGWAY, Ernest A Farewell to Arms
HUGO, Victor Les Miserables
HURSTON, Zora Neale Their Eyes Were Watching God
JOYCE, James Dubliners
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Ulysses
MCCARTHY, Cormac Blood Meridian; or, the Evening Redness in the West
MELVILLE, Herman Moby Dick; or, the Whale
MISTRY, Rohinton A Fine Balance
MORRISON, Toni Song of Solomon
MURAKAMI, Haruko Norwegian Wood
A Wild Sheep Chase
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
NABOKOV, Vladimir Lolita
Pale Fire
ROBINSON, Marilynne Housekeeping
PLATH, Sylvia The Bell Jar
PYNCHON, Thomas Gravity's Rainbow
WHARTON, Edith The Age of Innocence
WOOLF, Virginia To the Lighthouse
ZOLA, Emile Germinal[/pre]
Ah, the concerto in A Minor for Cello and Werewolf...
Reviews
City Hall (2020)
An essential Wiseman
There's no need to convince Wiseman fans to watch this. All I'll say is that it is one of his best films that I have seen (out of only a tiny fraction of his filmography), and critics who have seen much more of his films seem to agree.
There's also no point trying to convince Wiseman haters to watch this. It's more than 4 and a half hours long, and it's about day-to-day city politics.
If you've never seen a Wiseman, or particularly a late-period Wiseman, a film this long is probably not a good place to start. But if you like being shoved into the deep end of the pool, know beforehand that Wiseman is a documentary filmmaker who does not directly interview subjects or insert any commentary. He points and he shoots as a fly on the wall, often looking behind the scenes at how major institutions function. There will be plenty of boardroom meetings. You will either find his films extremely boring or extremely fascinating. I come out of his films feeling smarter and more educated. They don't tell you what to think, but they provide knowledge about the world that often feels useful and applicable.
City Hall was filmed in late 2018 and early 2019. A lot of the film follows Boston mayor Martin "Mahty" Walsh. I tried to analyze throughout the film why I liked him so much. What I came up with was that he was a workaholic who genuinely loved his job as a mayor - not the power that comes with it, but the actual job. In contrast, I found myself thinking of a fictional mayor, Aiden Gillen's portrayal of Thomas Carcetti from The Wire, who writers and political consultants based on Martin O'Malley--a mayor who craved power and popularity, who wanted to do "good" but hated the grunt work.
The film also watches everyone from city hall telephone operators to road workers. We watch meetings where people discuss solutions for the opioid crisis, homeless services, and how to develop neighborhoods without displacing their original residents. One other big thing I noticed: no one debates whether these things are important or necessary, only the best strategy to solve them. Frank Capra wasn't this idealistic.
Which isn't to say the film is all rainbows and sunshine. We get a very long community meeting about the opening of a dispensary in a poor neighborhood where residents vent their concerns and the developers don't always have answers. Throughout the film, many point out Boston has a reputation as a racist city and it's racial and ethnic conflicts can't be solved overnight. Some meetings are about trying to contain the damage by Trump administration policies, such as changes to the Fair Housing Act of 1968's Desperate Impact Rule, or the emotional fallout of his Muslim bans on Boston's immigrant communities.
This year in particular, City Hall is surreally hopeful. But that is very welcome.
Été 85 (2020)
A sensuous and beautiful tale of first-love
A seductive, sumptuous gay teen romance with a noirish twist, this is Ozon at his best - no rug-pulling third-act twists, just chemistry, atmosphere and grainy 16mm aesthetic beauty.
Beginning with its protagonist in handcuffs over a mysterious crime and recounting the story through flashbacks, Summer of 85 charts the budding friendship between gawky and naive Alexis, and the confident and manipulative David. It is full of tonal shifts leaving you wondering what genre of film you are watching at times, which I have a spoilery theory about: that Ozon is playing with genre tropes to conjure up the mystery and danger of first love. Of course, ultimately, this turns out to simply be a sweepingly romantic and tragic look at said first love.
That lack of immediate coherent identity isn't for everyone; not knowing where a film is going is patience-trying for some. For me, on the other hand, it's a quality I love, the thrill of scene-to-scene surprise, forcing me to reserve judgement until the credits roll.
Even though it's based on a YA (!) book from 1982, Ozon hounds will notice many of his favorite motifs returning: gay teens who are budding writers, literature teachers who mentor them, playful cross-dressing, and themes of writing, subjectivity and authenticity. There are more I'm forgetting. If you're a fan of Ozon thus far you're not expecting him to reinvent the wheel at this point, yet Summer of 85 still feels fresh and vibrant. If you've never seen his films before, this wouldn't be a bad starting point. It definitely is one of his best films.
MLK/FBI (2020)
Joins a list of other great Civil Rights documentaries
MLK/FBI is an excellent, excellent documentary/film essay with high production values, but it's important to note off the bat that the intended audience are viewers who already have a basic knowledge of the major beats of the Civil Rights Movement in the US. This is a documentary very specifically about Martin Luther King's persecution by the FBI, not about the Movement in general, so foreign viewers (and sadly, some US ones) might want to glance over a couple Wikipedia articles before seeing the film.
Those who thought that Dr. King's only enemies were some hillbilly sheriffs in Alabama and Mississippi will be shocked to learn that declassified documents revealed that J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI thought of him as a dangerous menace and sent him letters telling him to kill himself. And, depending on what else is revealed in 2027, that may be only the tip of the iceberg.
During the documentary, we hear the historians (and by proxy, the director himself) reckoning with the thorny ethical question that by discussing these issues, whether we are complicit in the FBI's unlawful and invasion of his privacy. Ultimately, the film seems to conclude that hopefully in 2020 we collectively have the maturity to understand that none of it takes away from what he achieved.
The film is more traditionally a documentary than I Am Not Your Negro, but shares some of Peck's stylistic touches. Pollard has various historians narrate the story without showing their faces, relying wholly on stock footage and photographs. This is generally what I prefer in historical documentaries, putting you wholly in a time and place and not cutting away to contemporary talking heads.
Al-murashahat al-muthalia (2019)
One of the best films of 2019 and the decade
Perhaps you've watched too many bleak and depressing films recently and you need a palate cleanser. A film that just radiates positive and idealistic energy, a story that doesn't need to result in literal triumph to feel positively triumphant.
This is Wadjda director Al-Mansour's return to Saudi Arabia after going abroad to make Mary Shelley and Nappily Ever After, and it is an absolute joy from start to finish. I am utterly in love with this film and the headstrong, defiant and no-nonsense spirit of its heroine. I laughed out loud several times at the surprising amount of comedy the film mines from patriarchy and sexism. I adored the film's myriad humanist touches and the intelligent characterization of all of its supporting characters. I didn't want this story to end, but I can hardly fault the incredibly emotional final scene and the actual chef's kiss of a final shot, one of the best parting shots of the decade.
Just see this damn movie!
Rapado (1992)
An ironic "Bicycle Thieves" update
With his beguiling first feature "Rapado," Argentinian director Martin Rejtman crafted a deadpan comedic update to Vitorrio de Sica's classic "Bicycle Thieves." Presumably, the idea was this: what if you took the basic idea of Bicycle Thieves, but instead of the protagonist desperately needing the bicycle for the survival of his family, he's just a bored and aimless middle-class teenager?
That's the setup for this often absurd "film about nothing." Rejtman cited the Taiwanese New Wave as a chief influence but American viewers might find an easier comparison with Jim Jarmusch, who also somehow creates interesting movies essentially just about people hanging out through elegant craftsmanship. Rejtman adds subtle incisive commentary on the lack of purpose of the '90s generation in Buenos Aires, using an arcade game about motorcycle racing as a broader metaphor for the characters trying to find their place in life.
This type of film obviously isn't for everyone, but at only 76 minutes, you can't say this film overstays its welcome. For anyone interested in the history and evolution of Argentine cinema, it's definitely worth a look.
Cike Nie Yin Niang (2015)
Not an action film, but a (masterful) film for cinephiles and the meditative
Regarding Ernest Hemingway's 'A Farewell to Arms,' a literary critic wrote, "It is one of those things--like the Grand Canyon--that one doesn't care to talk about. It is so great a book that praise of it sounds like empty babbling." Those words spring to mind while trying to collect my thoughts on Hou Hsiao-Hsien's The Assassin, his masterpiece. It is the kind of great that deserves respectful comparison to the masterpieces of Tarkovsky, Dreyer, and Bresson. Like the films by those directors, Hou has created a film that is not only an aesthetic pinnacle of cinema, but a film that conveys profound spiritual meaning in every image. Though unlike the films by those directors, the spirituality is decidedly more Eastern than Western.
The characters are governed, their lives given meaning, by strict 'honor' codes dictating behavior (based in Confucianism) and one's place in the world, only to find themselves in situations forced to choose between breaking one part of the code or another; or between breaking the code and losing everything you hold dear. The film's style of long, unbroken takes of relative stillness, quiet, and inaction reflect a Taoist approach to filmmaking and observation.
All of this is told at a relative distance, which will come to no surprise to veteran Hou fans. If I remember correctly, Yinniang, the titular assassin played by Shu Qi, speaks about 4 times in the film. With the simple eloquence of haikus (thought of as a Japanese art, but originating in Chinese poetry), ravishingly beautiful landscape shots (framed beautifully in 1.33 academy ratio) convey all the conflict, meaning and emotion necessary to tell the story. Just as Tang Dynasty poets like Du Fu and Li Bai used beautiful descriptions of nature to convey reflections on life and human interactions. Who needs dialogue?
If you've never seen a Hou film, but are curious about seeing this film which I will modestly describe as one of the most cinematically beautiful films ever made, a few words of advice. Slow yourself down. This might be Hou's most action-packed film, but it still doesn't move fast. It's less of a traditional martial arts film and more of critics would call an 'art film.' I don't mean to scare users away, I just want them to come prepared with their patience and most calm, undemanding attitude possible to maximize the experience.
Horící ker (2013)
A powerful, angry political epic
Agnieszka Holland's new historical miniseries, about the 1969 public self-immolation of Prague student Jan Palach and the ensuing fallout, is possibly the biggest triumph of her career.
As with the recent trend of films like Carlos, certain miniseries are being given limited runs in theaters when they were helmed from beginning to end by a well-respected art-house circuit director.
At nearly four hours, Burning Bush is hardly a chore to watch, though. It's a breakneck historical epic, political thriller, and courtroom drama all rolled into one. The result is some sort of cinematic Czech national anthem, but also a reminder to anyone of the limitless potential one act of seemingly-futile protest can have against injustice.
The story is a dazzling juggling act of a large cast of vibrant and fascinating characters. From beginning to end it's consistently powerful without needing to resort to mustache-twirling villains or faultless heroes.
Uroki garmonii (2013)
A cold, unsparing drama about extreme bullying, from Kazakhstan
Harmony Lessons is, I think, the first film I have seen from Kazakhstan.
An austere, very dark film about school bullying and retribution taken to an extreme, it seems to take inspiration from the starkness of Bresson, only without the comforting presence of God or redemption anywhere in sight.
At first it demands patience, and seems rootless and disorganized, more slice-of-life than narrative-driven. But one's patience is rewarded - just about no shot or scene, however small or unimportant-seeming at first, isn't followed up on later to become a motif or develop some thematic significance to the overall story. Only once it's finished does it become clear what a carefully constructed and deliberate vision this film is.
The second half of the film in particular lets all the pieces fall smoothly into place, generating a story with an impressive amount of emotional impact. It also makes a nice parallel with the first half.
The film damns cultures of violence that are allowed to breed and self-propagate in isolated rural areas. But it is also unforgiving to those who choose to lash out in violent retribution. Is it not casually that Gandhi is name-dropped during a history lesson at the school.
Jeune et jolie (2013)
Another awesome film from Ozon
I can understand why many wouldn't be fans of this. I really can. This is one for Ozon's fans, taking his unique (and I would go so far as to say auteur) approach to cinema even further into inaccessibility for most audience members. To really appreciate his films you have to dive way below the surface, an experience akin to peeling back the cover of a trashy-looking pulp fiction paperback and finding the Tibetan Book of the Dead inside.
As it happens, I decided I was an Ozon fan after I saw the dazzlingly cerebral, witty, sexy, and sneakily profound In the House earlier this year.
Ozon's fetishes are back. Once again we have a film about a young, gorgeous, promiscuous, brilliant, enigmatic object of desire--this time a woman, though she's clearly a stand-in for a man. Are they all Ozon himself, or just his pet erotic obsessions? There are certainly moments throughout the film which would make a lot more sense if Isabelle were a 17-year-old boy. The quote section in Ozon's IMDb page seems to confirm this, "I do films to be behind the camera, not in front of the camera. I'm sure I say very intimate things about myself in all my films, but it's better to say it not too directly, to be hidden behind a woman." Without actually containing any LGBT content, this manages to be one of the gay highlights of the year.
Ultimately, gay or straight, the film is about the discovery of self-worth without empathy, a point (which Ozon sees as a rite of passage) in a young person's life when they realize their potential as objects of desire, without fully realizing their emotional impacts on others or the consequences of their actions.
This leads to some sex scenes in which Isabelle is such a distant emotional participant that they are more disturbing than sexy - particularly the first one, where she matter-of-factly decides to lose her virginity to a random boy and has an out-of-body experience while doing so.
The film begins with this birth of curiosity and self-empowering narcissism but ends on a note of hope. It's a classic bildungsroman.
Stridulum (1979)
Utterly bizarre midnight movie with some charms
This oddball midnight movie is getting a re-release and eventual DVD courtesy of the Alamo Drafthouse.
It's about an evil little girl, who is so evil that John Huston and his pacifist army of intergalactic bald yoga practitioners arrive from space to stop her. Meanwhile Lance Henriksen is the evil boyfriend of her clueless, innocent mother, who sold his soul to the satanic forces nurturing her in a Faustian bargain for...a basketball coach position.
Which leads to the early and highly memorable slo-mo basketball set-piece, easily one of the most unique choices of setting for a horror film sequence I've ever seen!
The atmosphere of this weird, weird film alternates between genuinely and oddly poetic (mostly thanks to the music), pure B-movie cheese, and unintentional hilarity. It's one of the strangest films I've ever seen, but that's not a bad thing in this case. If you give yourself over to its strange charms, this is some kind of consciousness-expanding experience.
Will you like it? There are folks who seek out these sorts of bizarre, unique B-movies. You know who you are. At the very least, you should this film an object of curiosity.
Somehow, and for some reason, John Huston, Glenn Ford, Franco Nero (as Jesus Christ), Shelley Winters, Lance Henriksen, Sam Peckinpah, Mel Ferrer and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar are all in this movie.
Borgman (2013)
An incredible, surreal, funny allegory for social upheaval
One of the best films of the Philadelphia Film Festival, Borgman is a hilarious, darkly satirical, mysterious, sexy, fascinating, and surreal allegory for social upheaval.
In the beginning, there was armed men looking to kill underground hobos. We will never find out why they want to kill them or why the hobos are underground (or why the hobos have nice cellphones). One of them, Camiel Borgman, escapes and warns his friends. He washes himself at a gas station and begins wandering down an extremely affluent street with the intention of getting a proper bath in one of them, simply by asking at the front door. One house in particular strikes his fancy, and he begins a slow process of worming his way into the household and the lives of everyone who lives there.
But that's when things get REALLY strange.
This film is destined for hopefully a good deal of international attention in the art-house circuit due to its exceptional storytelling, unpredictability and very weird plot.
With the matter-of-fact way it presents absurd goings-on, it reminded me of Dogtooth a little.
Coherence (2013)
Low-budget science-fiction deserves attention for its wit and energy
A mind-bending and very entertaining independent science-fiction film, Coherence takes place over a single night in which a group of old friends (an ex-lovers) gather for a party on a night when a comet is expected to pass unusually close to the Earth. One of which is played by Nicholas Brendon of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in a scene-stealing role. I missed him.
At first, glasses start breaking and cellphones shatter. Then the power goes off, except at one house down the street. Then there are strange bangs on the door and bizarre notes left at the house. Things get stranger when two of them decide to go to the lit-up house to make a phone call.
It's a good film to me because the science-fiction concept ends up reflecting the real-life conflicts between the characters in a very clever way. I'm still not sure how I feel about the ending, but the film is a wild and entertaining ride before it gets there. Scenes propel themselves to other scenes with fast and snappy dialogue. Though it will be compared to films like Primer and Timecrimes, it's a pretty original film overall.
Remote Area Medical (2013)
A good documentary with great subject matter
This simple, effective, and narration-less documentary follows a volunteer-run organization called Remote Area Medical whose purpose is to provide free health care service (especially dental and vision) to remote areas around the world. Or was originally for remote areas around the world, but now focuses far more on the United States as the health care availability situation here has gotten worse.
The temporary clinic this film follows over a 5-day period is actually in a small rural community in Tennessee which happens to be the birthplace of country music.
The camera mostly focuses on the patients, most of whom camp out days beforehand to be first in line for tickets. It does not flinch from showing some truly gruesome dental procedures up close on camera. It's nasty stuff. Some come out overjoyed , feeling blessed because they can see properly for the first time in years, or not be in physical pain for the first time in years. Others come out angrier, embittered, and completely hopeless.
It's both a sympathetic and human portrait of rural east-coast Americana and the unbelievable hardships some people are capable of living through. Hopefully it gets lots of people who watch it interested in doing something like these RAM volunteers are doing, because it's really incredible.
Labor Day (2013)
An art film, more focused on emotions and senses than story
Labor Day is an unbelievably gorgeous mood piece, a finely-tuned film which is strongly driven by senses and emotions over plot or story. It's arguably one of the best films of 2013.
I haven't seen a Reitman film since Juno so I haven't caught up. So I'm not sure where he matured from a 'good' director of a quirky script to an 'art' director who can carry an entire film on his shoulders. That's not to say everyone else in this film didn't do a great job. But the film works because of Reitman's meticulous vision.
Heavy use of cross-fades, editing driven by emotional undercurrent over logic, and some stream-of-consciousness flowing from a mysterious source. The music is avant-garde and beautiful, one moment eerie and unsettling, the next pleasant and lilting. Which reflects the way the film, like a piece of classical music, displays sudden shifts of mood or tonality, back and forth, requiring your utmost concentration and appreciation.
Writing too much else would spoil the fun. But the mindset you should bring this film, should you want to see it, is to give yourself over to the experience, rather than bringing an overly (and unnecessarily) critical mind to it's 'unoriginal' or 'uneventful' plot.
Blue Ruin (2013)
It would be a sin to tell you much about it - ingeniously unpredictable
A low-budget independent film that is nevertheless handsomely and confidently shot, Blue Ruin is a consistently unpredictable, twisty, and excellent thriller. At no point will you be quite sure where the film will take you, or what direction it will go next, up until maybe around the final scene.
Indeed, the film is so unpredictable, it would be a sin to tell you much about it.
But-- "Dwight is a vagrant, scavenging for food in dumpsters and sleeping by the beach in a broken-down car. His aimless existence is interrupted, however, when he receives notice that a man from his past is being released from prison." That's an abridged version of the PFF summary, and about all you need to know. I would recommend reading nothing else about the story of this film. Take the risk and dive in blind.
I was shocked how good Saulnier, a director I've never heard of until now, was good at generating suspense.
It was accepted into the Director's Fortnight at Cannes.
Cheap Thrills (2013)
A funny, brutal shocker
Pat Healey of The Innkeepers fame plays a family man and blue collar worker who receives an eviction notice and is laid off on the same day. On the way home, he runs into an old friend at a bar, and the two of them run into an eccentric rich couple played by David Koechner and Sara Paxton (again of The Innkeepers) who propose a twisted series of games for money at their private residence.
To compete against each other for large rewards, Craig and Vince engage in more and more disturbing acts of depravity, self-mutilation and moral bankruptcy.
This is a shocker, and a hard-to-watch one at that. What keeps it bearable is that it's a very FUNNY shocker, particularly with Koechner providing most of the black comedy.
Ultimately this is an allegorical haves-and-have-nots tale that looks at the lengths people will go to in the name of financial desperation. The climax is disturbing and had me doing some sharp self-reflection. Not bad for a first-time director and a tiny budget.