richard_longman Reviews

Bob Sinclar: Cinderella (She Said Her Name) (2013 Music Video)

Fabulous light hearted road trip video

[10/10 · 21 December 2019]

The director is normally shooting sports spots for GoPro and travel videos. Here Tikhomirov tries something more personal, chronicling an effervescent affair with a summer party girl (Alyona Ponomarenko). Ponomarenko is incredibly beautiful dappled in the warm Crimean evening sunshine. She embodies Ivan Bunin's notion of "light breathing" which characterises feminine beauty.

Bob Sinclair's song is great as well. Together Ponomarenko's beauty, Tikhomirov's cinematography and Sinclair's song make for a perfect pick-me-up for anyone suffering through a dark and depressing winter day.

Marfa Girl (2012)

Not sure there is a spoiler but just in case

[8/10 · 25 November 2012]

Larry Clark likes to make movies which shock. Particularly about teenagers. They f*ck and swear and sometimes kill (Bully). On the other hand, William Golding's Lord of the Flies is on the reading list in most English language high schools around the world. Nothing Larry Clark has done can outdo the horror of those kids on an island.

Homo sapiens are a brutal and savage species, probably responsible for the elimination of Neanderthal man and since then we have sent thousands of species into extinction, from mammoths, to bison, to the dodo. If there's a bad animal around, we're it.

Clark like Golding is busy with representing the what is, ripping off of your rose-coloured glasses and then stomping on them to boot. Yes, your girlfriend in high school betrayed you. Deliberately. And your son's girlfriend is probably betraying him now too. It's just what people do. Your wife probably cheated on you at least once or twice too. Go and read Jane Goodall's study of chimpanzees: how they mate and how they stalk their neighbours and kill.

Anyway back to Marfa Girl: it's the same unlikeable group of teenagers smoking up and screwing as we've seen in other Clark movies. This time it's on the US/Mexican border. There are some very dislikable adult border patrol officers and some slightly less dislikable promiscuous kids. It's a film about ideas and loyalties. There are some extended Socratian dialogues between kids and cops, cops and cops.

Those ideas are played out through the bodies and lives of the Clark's kids. Unlike in a Rohmer film, ideas are not apart from human existence. Ideas have a real human price.

Performances are convincing all round from mothers to daughters to cops. I really didn't like either Adam (Adam Mediano) or Marfa Girl (Drake Burnette). But that's not their job to make me like them. Their responsibility is to play their role convincingly and that they did.

If you are looking to be uplifted or dream of a brighter tomorrow, no Larry Clark film is for you. If you are looking to take a cold hard look at today's passage from childhood to adulthood, Larry Clark is your man.

I'm not sure I liked Marfa Girl, but I respect the craft. Anyone concerned with border issues will find a lot to think about. There's a tall pile of DVD's of films waiting more important to me than Marfa Girl. While I respect Larry Clark's craft (I was lucky enough to see a premiere of Bully at TIFF with Clark in attendance in 2001), one of the reasons I am among the first to watch and buy is its direct online distribution. Direct digital distribution is the only future for independent film. Larry Clark is both wise and brave to choose exclusively online digital distribution with no cut to iTunes or any other of the conglomerates.

It's an experiment worth supporting. If works the quality and the honesty of Marfa Girl are what direct distribution brings us, the future of independent film looks brighter than it has in over ten years.

If you are on the fence, please give Larry Clark your support to send a clear signal to both independent film makers and to Hollywood. Give us something better than the sequels and focus grouped rubbish which commercial filmmaking has become and we'll pay for it.

The online viewing experience was very easy. You pay via Paypal with no extended offer nonsense or other advertising and you get a login key which lets you see Marfa Girl in very good quality HD right away. Absolutely no problem playing it in the browser.

Four Pieces by Morris (1993)

formal reconstruction | not much dance

[3/10 · 4 November 2005]

Four Pieces by Morris is a dance film is exactly that. Four pieces by sculptor Morris. I had somehow thought that the four pieces would be by choreographer Mark Morris so I was attending more. Robert Morris is an extremely ascetic creator whose structural compositions have less to do with the theatre and more to do with installation. We have a workman moving white boards back and forth across a stage finally revealing a female nude reclining on a couch behind the last one. The woman does not move, the workman does not notice her. Nothing happens. The sonic backdrop is an intense recording of street sounds and construction which was distracting and irritating to my ear but was supposed to serve to "heighten the presence of the performer".

Each one was more tedious than the next, with perhaps the exception of the lecture on perception in the third piece.

There were some closeups inserted - the workman playing with his gloves, the lecturer taking his enormous spectacles on and off - the camera as observer. We just watch these four stage pieces happen. The camera tracks back and forth the considerable horizontal movement of props in the first and fourth piece. Little movement on stage, little movement of the camera.

A long evening at 93 minutes.

Lotti auf der Flucht (2003 TV Movie)

Who knew that Austrians could do French dramatic comedy?

[8/10 · 19 May 2005]

Worth a look for a TV movie. The script is amusing enough, setting a very serious young businesswoman in contrast to her very romantic mother.

There are many amusing incidents and for a television movie, the cinematography is good with many interesting shots and extra angles from Raner Gutjahr. They must have been working fast.

The lead actress Elisabeth Lanz is charming enough as the modern businesswoman, while the old guy Charles Brauer is genuinely moving as the down on his luck riverman.

Sometimes a little bit predictable. The lighting is occasionally flat. But Lotti auf der Flucht is a TV movie. My grade is for that category.

The Flower of Evil (2003)

Pas grand chose

[3/10 · 22 February 2003]

really rather boring tale full of promise and depth but delivering nothing. if you have nothing better to do, reasonably good photography compensates for confused performances from good actors in senseless roles.

The Legend of Rita (2000)

truth and consequences of terrorism - mild spoilers

[10/10 · 23 November 2001]

Rita's story is one of the most moving films I have seen in a great long while. It reveals some of the true story of terrorism through the life of one West Germany's notorious RAF terrorists.

The world is at war with itself. We live in a loveless plutocracy of materialism. Once you have understood the spiritual bankruptcy of the paradigm you cease to exist in Western society as a citizen and are horrified everyday by the venality and corruption and callousness on each side.

A select few decide to do something about it. Rita is one of a group of ten in West Germany. They do what they can as long as they can with GDR (East German) support. Rita finally loses the vocation and wishes for a normal life - as a working class person - in GDR. They give it to her.

She is happy, but cannot escape her past. She loves twice as a civilian and loses everything on both occasions as a consequence of her former identity.

The collapse of the wall ends any possibility of a conventional life for her. Unlike her fellow GDR citizens, Rita knew the consequences of reunification and the destruction it would wreak on East German communities and lives. Her speech to her jubilant co-workers a passionate and prophetic plea. But when Rita sees another former comrade arrested she must make a run for it.

The final shot is tragic and beautiful of the collapse of a motorcyle on a rainstrewn country road.

The image of Rita and her struggle for a better world will stay with me for a long, long time. Thank you to Wolfgang Kohlhaase and Volker Schlöndorff for telling honestly a story rarely told. With the events of September 2001, it may be a decade before anyone can make such a film on this subject.

The images are beautiful, if relatively conventional. Much of the art house crowd to whom this movie plays in North America require more avant-garde techniques to satisfy their insatiable cravings for the recondite, difficult and impenetrable. Frankly the story is better told well in the conventional language of good cinematography. The fine closeups are particularly notable.

Good performances all around, especially by Bibianne Beglau in the title role. Nadja Uhl is a revelation as Tatjana, a beautiful self-destructive alcoholic of uncertain sexuality but strong friendship. Jenny Schilly is excellent in the small role of Friederike, Rita's comrade in arms. Harald Schrott has a fantastic intensity as the lead revolutionary Andi. One of the key personalities in the film is their Stasi handler Erwinn. Sadly, most of the time Martin Wuttke's performance is too ironic by half. His Stasi sidekick is much better played by an actor whose name escapes me.

The Uncles (2000)

gorgeous film - shot on dv

[9/10 · 8 August 2001]

***SLIGHT SPOILERS*** in july 2001, there were two fabulous digital films released in toronto. one of them was the anniversary party. the other is the uncles.

the uncles is far and away the better looking of the two. in fact the uncles is probably the best-looking digitally originated film out there at this point. director james allodi personally supervised the blow-up to 35mm using the latest and finest methods devised by artist and engineer.

the story, while small, penetrates and resonates long after you see the film. strongly felt and subtly evinced, restaurant manager marco's twin dilemmas - loyalty and personal happiness family obligations or work opportunities - linger with you for days if not weeks. toronto not being paris, i can't say - as some other reviewers have - that the film is rohmerian (contemporary canadian urban prattle just doesn't make the grade, canadians are simply insufficiently articulate to allow rohmerian comparisons), but the uncles does have some of the tough psychology and austere style of pier paolo passolini's work, if we must compare allodi to european directors.

strong performances all round from the little known canadian cast. particularly engaging is montreal actor dino tavarone as marco's compassionate boss. businessman-restaurateur tavarone steals every scene he is in with his enormous eyes and throaty voice. more humanity than was ever in man or life itself: "marco you are like a son to me... take whatever you want".

meanwhile, marco has been sleeping with old guy's daughter-in-law for the last three years. and that's just for starters.

see it if you get the chance. since the uncles is an independent canadian film, you probably won't get that chance. however ten more films like the uncles and canadian independent film might get a wider platform.

buono.

incidentally, the anniversary party is a great film too, if not as pretty as the uncles. and the pair are two of the few good films of summer 2001 (pearl harbour, swordfish, tomb raider, planet of the apes to name just a few of the mind-numbing bombs that the uncles and the anniversary party are trying solage).

Sny (1993)

delightfully absurd chronicle of 18th-c countess's misadventures in present-day Moscow

[9/10 · 12 November 2000]

Time travel is often amusing and is at the core of Russia's most popular comedy "Ivan Vasilyevich Changes Profession"(1973). "Sny" or "Dreams" is masterful comedy director Karen Shakhnazarov's riff on the same theme. In "Sny", a beautiful countess finds herself in present day Moscow, which continually horrifies and astonishes her.

Amalia Mordvinova is gorgeous in the lead role.

As ever Shakhnazarov's adroit sense of the absurd delights. Unfortunately, some of the humour demands an understanding of the cultural context of modern and Soviet Russia -- but many American comedies are equally self-referential.

And frankly, Russian absurdity is a lot funnier than anything that Tarantino or his boorish friends and loutish imitators could ever dream up.

Occasionally production values disappoint -- signs of the times, 1993 wasn't a good year in Russia. Shakhnazarov's "Kurier" is perhaps a more accessible, more evenly brilliant film.

Khrustalyov, My Car! (1998)

boring absurdist trash

[1/10 · 11 May 2000]

This film is for cinematic masochists only. My girlfriend & I attended a ten pm showing. When we walked out we were convinced it was well after two am (in fact it was just 12:30). When a long film seems twice as long as it was, you know you have a problem. Endless repetition, senseless scenes.

The cinematographer did what he could (some of the B&W images are quite striking), but the director appears to have lost his mind during the eight long years it took him to bring this boring atrocity to light. 1992 to 1998 were hungry years for Russian cinema so one understands his plight.

Only avoid his film, unless you enjoy being held hostage in a dark room, wandering the self-indulgent, sick and senseless imaginings of a lost soul. There are such folk in Russian studies, and by all means, they should go & see the film.

Anyone who with a taste for life or art should avoid it.

Terrible.