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- DirectorJee-woon KimStarsLee Byung-hunGong YooSong Kang-hoKorean resistance fighters smuggle explosives to destroy facilities controlled by Japanese forces in this period action thriller.THIS EXTRAORDINARY KOREAN FILM WITH A VERY HIGH METACRITIC SCORE DESERVES EVERY POINT OF IT AS THE FILM MAKING TALENT IS AT THE VERY HIGHEST LEVEL.....BE IT ACTING, STORY, SETS,CLOTHING, ACTION CHOREOGRAPHY, ON AND ON... TWO SCENES NEAR THE END ARE ALONE 2 OF THE BEST i SAW ALL YEAR LONG.....THE TRAIN, AND THE POLICE CHIEF ARE AMAZING. Cult director Kim Jee-woon delivers the goods with an ultra-stylish cloak-and-dagger actioner set in 1920s Korea, under the Japanese occupation. The irresistible pull of a spy thriller, the heightened stylishness of a 1920s setting, and terrific technical specs make “The Age of Shadows” an unabashed delight. Korean director Kim Jee-woon (“The Last Stand,” “I Saw the Devil”) surpasses himself, returning to the screen after a three-year hiatus with an electrifying double-agent drama loosely based on the clandestine fight between South Korean resistance fighters and the country’s Japanese occupiers. Unfolding in classic action style, this rousing gem has everything one wants for an evening’s entertainment: no wonder South Korea chose it for its Oscar candidate. “Shadows” is destined to be a local sensation with strong international legs. The first of several stunning set-pieces comes during the opening minutes, when resistance fighter Kim Jan-ok (Park Hee-soon) is betrayed by a mole and surrounded by Japanese police, led by Captain Lee Jung-chool (Song Kang-ho). Exciting camerawork captures the chase, with seemingly an entire platoon in expertly choreographed movement jumping from roof to roof across Cho Hwa-sung’s striking sets, until Jan-ok is cornered. Jung-chool, a former classmate of Jan-ok but now working for the other side, wants to bring him in alive, but he’s denied his prize.
- DirectorJacob BergerStarsBruno GanzAndré WilmsAurélien PatouillardAKA....A JEW MUST BE KILLED.....THIS WONDERFUL SWITZERLAND FILM BASED ON A TRUE STORY REVEALS THAT THE SWISS WERE NOT LILY WHITE IN THEIR NAZI CONNECTIONS. THIS TRAGIC SET OF EVENTS WAS REVEALED IN A 2009 NOVEL IN WHICH THE SWISS WERE HORRIBLE TO THE AUTHOR FOR REVEALING THE TRUTH. THE FILMAKER REVEALED THE NASTINESS OF THE SWISS TO THIS AUTHOR AND FELT THAT THE CURRENT USA POST-TRUMP POSTIONS ARE SIMILAR TO THE HATE AND WHITE SUPREMACY IS SIMILAR TO 1942 EUROPE. A JEW FOR THE EXAMPLE In 1942, the Payerne campaign seems far from the world war, even if the economy suffers and some are attracted by the great Reich. Fernand Ischi is one of those, he who was sworn in with 20 Nazis to the Nazi Party. He decides to illustrate himself by murdering Arthur Bloch, Bernese cattle dealer and ... Jew. In 2009, the Swiss writer Jacques Chessex will come back on these facts that he met, and will be subjected to the popular vindicte for having stirred the mud. It is these two events that the Swiss director Jacob Berger links in a film with a heavy and glacial atmosphere. Dull photography, winter landscapes and dark light, it transmits the gravity of the subject, which it makes resonate with our time by voluntary anachronisms (cars, uniforms, buildings). The other good idea being to link the epochs by showing Chessex child curious in 1942, then fragile old man in 2009, wounded by the reaction of the Payernois to his book shock.
- DirectorKim Ki-dukStarsRyu Seung-beomLee Won-geunKim Young-minA North Korean fisherman breaks his boat engine by accident and drifts down to South Korea. After enduring brutal investigations in the South, he eventually gets sent back to North Korea.A SAD MISFIRE FROM AN EXCELLENT DIRECTOR REMINDING OF THE IDIOCY OF TRUMP NOT EXCEPTING THE FINDINGS OF OUR SECURITY AGENCIES. I AM ALSO UPSET AT THE THROWNG ALL OF OUR AMBASSADORS OUT OF THEIR HOMES 13 DAYS AND NOT ALLOWING A SMOOTH TRANSITION. I WALKED OUT OF THIS FILM FOR MANY REASONS.
- DirectorKiyoshi KurosawaStarsTahar RahimConstance RousseauOlivier GourmetWhen an assistant to a daguerreotypy photographer falls in love with the latter's daughter the relationship mirrors the art form as love and pain combine.THIS FILM FROM A JAPANESE DIRECTOR IN FRENCH HAS ITSEXCELLENCE IN MANY WAYS, BUT JUST TOO CONFUSING AND THE SUDDEN AMBIGUOUS ENDING LEFT ME EMPTY. PERHAPS IN TIME IT WILL COME THROUGH. Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa's first film shot outside of Japan, 'Daguerreotype' ('Le Secret de la chambre noire') stars Francophone actors Tahar Rahim, Olivier Gourmet and Mathieu Amalric. Though he has made terrific mainstream dramas, such as Tokyo Sonata and Shokuzai/Penance, when Asian film lovers hear the name Kiyoshi Kurosawa, the first thing they’ll likely think of is the gifted Japanese director’s ghost and horror movies (Pulse, Journey to the Shore). It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that for his France-set Daguerreotype (Le Secret de la chambre noire),a feature with a lot of firsts — Kurosawa’s first project shot abroad; his first in another language; his first with a European crew… — that he falls back on a familiar genre. The result is a film that feels at once familiar and different and, surely not coincidentally, it would be hard to find two words that better describe the ghosts of people we know have passed on. Beautifully made, though with just a faint hint of mothballs about the project, this Platform premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival should find be of interest to fans of the director but also to a slightly wider, Francophile audience. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, the most versatile and in-demand French actor for international directors in recent years has been A Prophet star Tahar Rahim, who since his breakout in 2009 has worked with such renowned directors as Fatih Akin, Ashgar Farhadi, Kevin Macdonald and Lou Ye. In Kurosawa’s film, Rahim plays Jean, a Parisian who has difficulties making ends meet but then stumbles into a job as the assistant of reclusive photographer, Stephane (Belgian veteran actor Olivier Gourmet in a role that would’ve been for Kurosawa regular Koji Yakusho had this film been in Japanese).
Stephane lives and works in a beautiful if somewhat rundown old mansion on the outskirts of Paris with his 22-year-old daughter, Marie (Constance Rousseau, Simon Killer), an otherworldly blonde who reminds the outwardly stoic but not-so-secretly melancholic Stephane of his dead wife. Marie poses for the daguerreotypes of the English title, which often require hours of standing still, with creepy constructions of metal bars behind her back and limbs helping her keep her body in place. Though the film is set in the present, there is a distinct — and often slightly eerie — pull from the past that permeates every frame. When Jean first visits the old mansion, doors squeak and he thinks he sees a woman in an old-fashioned dress in the monumental staircase, as if the home’s first inhabitants were still around. And Stephane not only seems to mourn his wife, Denise, but there’s the distinct sensation that he’s trying to make her come back to life again in the life-size, silver-plated copper plates he shoots of their daughter (daguerreotypes were the first type of “photos” available, some 175 years ago). As if to underline the point he’s stuck in the past, it’s made clear in a chuckle-inducing interlude (which features Mathieu Amalric), that regular fashion shoots, on which he has to occasionally rely for money, are something Stephane abhors. Adding to the sensation that the contemporary story lives at least partially in the past is the classically elegant camerawork of French cinematographer Alexis Kavyrchine — who, coincidentally, also shot the documentary Kurosawa’s Way, about Kiyoshi’s colleague and namesake, Akira Kurosawa — and Gregoire Hetzel’s ditto, occasionally swelling score, with its harp and violin solos. The refined and feather-light haunting quality of Kurosawa’s best ghost movies is certainly present here but the narrative in the second part isn’t streamlined enough for constant character identification. The events that unfold after Jean falls in love with Marie create a kind of parallel narrative that feeds into the film’s final act though the specifics of this aren’t always clear. There are also several subplots, including one with a realtor (Malik Zidi) with designs on the house and Marie’s plan to move to Toulouse where she could work as a botanist, that feel like they’ve been boiled down from more novelistic and thematically relevant stories to snippets that aren’t always entirely legible anymore. - DirectorAndrey KonchalovskiyStarsJakob DiehlPeter KurthYuliya KhlyninaFollows three people whose paths cross during a terrible time of war: Olga, a Russian aristocratic emigrant and member of the French Resistance; Jules, a French collaborator; and Helmut, a high-ranking German SS officer.THIS SO FAR IS MY FAVORITE OF PSIFF 2017. Andrey Konchalovskiy OF RUSSIA IS TRULY A MASTER FILMAKER IN EVERY SENSE OF THE WORD. EVERY FRAME IS AMAZING.....THE STORY, SETS, ACTING, BLACK AND WHITE CINEMATOGRAPHY RATES A 10 IN EVERY CATEGORY. RUSH TO SEE THIS FILM. Russian veteran Andrei Konchalovsky is on robust form in this richly monochrome, perspective-rotating Holocaust drama.
Rarely has the word “Paradise” been superimposed across a gloomier image than in the opening credits of Andrei Konchalovsky’s new film, as the screams of a Russian woman recently arrested by Nazis echo through a dim, dank prison corridor — shot in soberest monochrome. Konchalovsky’s robust, absorbing Holocaust drama is built on such unlikely junctures of grace and despair. Centered principally on the sometimes tense, sometimes tender relationship between an aristocratic concentration camp inmate and the SS officer with whom she shares a fleeting romantic history, the film’s tone and outlook is changeable throughout — down to a striking, only semi-successful framing device of docu-style testimonies that hover deliberately between worlds. An uneasy sit cushioned by lustrous, period-evoking B&W lensing and the outstanding performances of Julia Vysotskaya and Christian Clauß, “Paradise’s” enduringly resonant historical focus should secure it the international distribution that largely eluded its veteran helmer’s previous, Venice-garlanded feature “The Postman’s White Nights.”
After “Son of Saul’s” immersive first-person camera gave viewers a visceral new point of view on the horrors of Nazi concentration camps, the bar for innovation in depicting what is already a comprehensively filmed passage of history was further raised. With its self-consciously classical aesthetic — down to the imposition of artificial wear and tear on the image, creating the impression of a long-buried print — “Paradise” looks emphatically back rather than forward, but its perspective is an unusual one, alternating even-handedly between the raddled, subjective accounts of Nazi oppressor and victim, until they meet ambiguously somewhere in the middle. Among other, less earthly implications, the “paradise” of the title refers to the Aryan idyll that the former repeatedly cites as a motivating dream. Yet the longer he talks — in the bare studio environment, without clear location or era, that Konchalovsky has devised for the film’s “interview” sequences — the less clear it becomes whether or not he believes his own rhetoric. - DirectorCesc GayStarsRicardo DarínJavier CámaraDolores FonziJulián receives an unexpected visit from his friend Tomás, who lives in Canada. The two men, accompanied by Julián's faithful dog, Truman, will share emotional and surprising moments prompted by Julián's complicated situation.TIFF 2016 NOT YET SEEN....CURRENTLY IN THIS THEATRE WAITING TO SEE IT. JUST FINISHED TRUMAN AND NOW EARLY ON THE 3RD DAY, I AM PREDICTING THAT IT WILL BE THE AUDIENCE AWARD WINNER, PLUS OTHER AWARDS. IF I TRIED TO GIVE YOU A SUMMARY OF ITS CONTENT, YOU WOULD NOT SEE IT, BUT SHOULD NOT BE MISSED. SELDOM HAVE I SEEN A FILM THAT HAS SO MANY LEVELS. EVERY ONE OF YOU WHO READ THIS WILL BE TOTALLY DELIGHTED THAT YOU SAW THIS FILM. IT IS NOT A CINEMATIC MASTERPIECE, BUT THAT SPECIAL FILM THAT IS POIGNANT FOR EVERY ONE I KNOW, ESPECIALLY CONTEMPORARIES. A FILM WORTHY OF DISCUSSION IN SO MANY WAYS, EVERY 5' WE WOULD STOP THE FILM AND LAUNCH A CONVERSATION. PLEASE SEE THIS FILM AND GET BACK TO ME TO SEE IF YOU AGREE. The casting of Argentinian and Spanish heavyweights Ricardo Darín and Javier Camara in the lead roles is inspired, not just because of their box office draw in their respective countries - the film is currently performing solidly in Argentina - but because of their ability to move between drama and comedy with a smoothness that stops us seeing the join. This, married to thoughtful and observant scripting from Gay and Tomàs Aragay, results in unexpected moments of bittersweet humour and pathos that feel organic rather than organised for our benefit.
- DirectorKadri KõusaarStarsTiina MälbergAndres TabunAndres NoormetsThis darkly comic crime mystery set in small-town Estonia centers on Elsa, the mother and full time caretaker of Lauri, a teacher who has been in a coma since being shot under shadowy circumstances. Attentive in her duties but at the end of her tether, Elsa receives Lauri's visitors-friends, students, his girlfriend, his boss, and others-who come to update the unconscious Lauri on their lives and unburden themselves of their troubles. But as the police inquiry into the crime progresses, some of his closest ties are called into question. Director Kadri Kõusaar cunningly navigates a script that slowly pieces together the truth behind Lauri's shooting through his visitors' confessionals to the comatose protagonist, cleverly building a web of motives among the tight-knit community. Bathed in the pastel tones of post-Soviet life, Mother is a smartly-crafted whodunit set in a small town where just about everyone is dreaming of something bigger and some are willing to do whatever it takes to get out.THIS WAS WASTE OF TIME FOR ME......NO MORE THAN AN ALFRED HITCHCOCK 30' SHOW ENLARGED TO A FEATURE FILM. SAW IT TO THE END UNFORTUNATELY. Created by a team of talented Estonian women, "Mother" walks a tightrope between deadpan and farce, a portrait of patience and womanly drudgery that then turns itself inside out in the final moment, calling into question all that had been set up before. Directed by Kadri Kousaar
- DirectorAnne ÉmondStarsMylène MackayMilya Corbeil GauvreauMickaël GouinInspired by the life and works of Nelly Arcan, a sex worker turned international literary star, lost between irreconcilable identities, whose life ended tragically.SAT THROUGH THE ENTIRE FILM BECAUSE OF THE FEMALE BEAUTY, BUT THE EXCESS OF COKE WAS VERY DISTURBING. SOME OF THE ACENES MADE IT HARD TO BREATHE FOR ME, SEE THIS FILM IF YOU WANT YOUR HORMONES TO RAGE. TIFF
Émond explores Arcan’s tormented mind by crosscutting the various characters of the author’s persona. There’s Arcan the writer, who shoots to fame when her 2001 book Putain (Whore) becomes a runaway bestseller for its dark and salacious tale of a prostitute named Cynthia. Nelly says in the film that some elements of the book draw upon her own experiences, and Émond plays with the elements of art and life that intersect within Arcan’s prose as she introduces Cynthia, the saucy prostitute of the book, who doubles as Arcan’s own experience as a sex worker. Other aspects of Arcan’s biography and fiction appear in competing storylines with the writer at the age of a budding pre-adolescent dreamer and as a haggard white trash junkie who personifies the darkest corners of Arcan’s mind. Elements of Arcan’s fiction overlap into her life and vice versa as fiction and reality become indistinguishable as actions in one story mirror another and the film culminates with tragic ends for all parties. - DirectorPeter BrosensJessica WoodworthStarsPeter Van den BeginLucie DebayTitus De VoogdtDesperate to return home from a state visit to Istanbul when his country suffers its worst-ever political crisis, but unable to fly due to a solar storm, the King of the Belgians finds himself on a tumultuous road trip across the Balkans.A VERY SILLY MOCKUMENTARY WHICH PUT ME TO SLEEP AS MOST MOCKUMENTARIES DO!
- DirectorAndrzej WajdaStarsBoguslaw LindaZofia WichlaczBronislawa ZamachowskaThe story of charismatic painter Wladyslaw Strzeminski, who opposed social realism and maintained his own artistic freedom in spite of political obstacles.THIS FILM DESERVES A 10 TO PAY HOMAGE TO ONE OF THE GREATEST FILMAKERS TO HAVE EVER EXISTED. IN HIS 90TH YEAR HE MADE THIS FILM AND HIS EXCELLENCE IS EVIDENT. TRULY I WAS SADDENED TO CLOSE THE BOOK ON MR. WAJDA....HIS LEGACY WILL LIVE FOREVER. THANK YOU POLAND FOR SUPPORTING HIS TALENT AND PSIFF FOR BRINGING US THIS FILM AS i SINCERELY DOUBT THAT A GENERAL RELEASE WILL NEVER HAPPEN. TIFF 2016
A leading figure in Polish modern art is the subject of Andrzej Wajda’s biopic. While he’s exercising filmmaking muscles that are mighty spry for a 90-year-old, no one will mistake Andrzej Wajda’s latest feature for an expression of joie de vivre: “Afterimage” is a somber portrait of a Polish artist who, unlike his portraitist here, was defeated by the fickle shifts of political ideology imposed on art. This respectable if somewhat monotonous drama won’t be an easy sell to offshore audiences for whom its subject, avant-garde artist Wladyslaw Strzeminski is hardly a household name. Moreover the film references his defining triumphs just in passing, focusing instead on bleak later years when he was persecuted for failing to tow the Party aesthetic line. The result is another significant chapter in Polish history from Wajda, albeit one unlikely to travel as widely as some of his past subjects. When we meet the Soviet-trained avant-garde painter (played by Boguslaw Linda), he’s already in autumn glory of a celebrated career: admired by colleagues, worshiped by his students at the School of Visual Arts in Lodz. He’s rightly regarded as a leader in the Constructivist movement that dominated revolutionary art of the 1920s, as well as a crusading advocate for modern art within Poland. After losing both an arm and a leg in WWI military service, his WWII deprivations were comparatively minor — though by 1948, when “Afterimage” begins, his marriage with ill-fated sculptress Katarzyna Kobro had become another kind of casualty. - DirectorDanis TanovicStarsSnezana VidovicIzudin BajrovicVedrana BozinovicThe major hotel Europe in Sarajevo will receive an important visit on the anniversary of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, attack that triggered World War. As the manager of the place waiting to Jacques, a special French guest, workers in the kitchen preparing a strike because they have spent months without pay and journalist records a television show on the roof.TANOVIC AGAIN ATTEMPTS TO SHOW US THE ENDLESS FIGHT BETWEEN THE SERBS AND BOSNIANS, BUT BRINGS US NOTHING NEW. HIS FILMAKING TALENT IS EVIDENT, BUT THE CHAOS AND DESPAIR ARE HOPELESS. IT HAS WORN ME OUT AND i SHALL PROBABLY AVOID FUTURE FILMS ON THIS SUBJECT. DOES THIS REPRESENT THE DIRECTION THAT OUR COUNTRY IS NOW HEADING WITH ITS POLARITY AND HATE.
In Death in Sarajevo, Danis Tanović directs his camera towards his homeland and its tragic history, still torn between a traumatic past and a fragile present. Although the story is loosely inspired by Bernard-Henri Lévy’s theatrical piece Hotel Europa, Tanović incurs deeper debts to another artist, as his multiplicity of overlapping themes and long-take style distinctly recall Robert Altman’s Short Cuts (1993). The setting here is purely metaphorical: a grand hotel standing in as a representation of contemporary Bosnia, with characters on the roof asking lofty questions about history as they prepare for a centennial commemoration of the First World War, while at ground level the local mafia busies itself with gambling and prostitution, the invisible hand holding the whole structure together. Between these two worlds, ordinary people with ordinary problems are trying to survive while being squeezed between two competing systems of power. Here, communication does not exist; solidarity is gone; nobody listens to one another. With equal doses of malice and irony, Tanović sketches a portrait of a nation that puts more effort into polishing cutlery memorializing Kirk Douglas than catalyzing social change. It’s a bleak, ominous diagnosis that can be extended to the whole of modern Europe, and one for which Tanović is entirely unapologetic. This tragicomedy asks how many times a continent can die and not draw any new conclusions from the experience. - DirectorRúnar RúnarssonStarsRade SerbedzijaIngvar SigurdssonEva SigurdardottirAri's teenage lifestyle in the big city is disrupted as he is sent by his mother to live with his uninvolved father and his grandmother in a small fishing village.FROM ICELAND COMES THIS BRILLIANTLY CONCEIVED AND COMPOSED DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILY. SATISFYING AND NOT SUGAR COATED. THE REALISM WILL REMAIN.
Ari is a quiet, lanky 16-year-old who sings counter-tenor in a Reykjavík choir. When his mother takes off for Africa with her new Danish husband, he's sent to live with his estranged father in the distant western fjords, where the locals medicate the ills of a declining economy with alcohol. While his hard-partying dad and loving but frail grandmother do their best to mend the broken past, local bullies and rough living leave Ari struggling to find his place.
Unfolding with pathos and understated emotion, Sparrows is a bittersweet coming-of-age story about learning to stand up for yourself. Boasting sensitive direction by Rúnar Rúnarsson, fine acting, a hypnotic score by Kjartan Sveinsson (Sigur Rós) and truly spectacular surroundings, the film was a big winner on the 2015 festival circuit from San Sebastián to Warsaw to São Paulo. - DirectorKen LoachStarsDave JohnsHayley SquiresSharon PercyAfter surviving a heart-attack, a 59-year-old carpenter must fight bureaucratic forces to receive Employment and Support Allowance.KEE LOACH HAS A VERY IMPRESSIVE FILMOGRAPHY AND LOTS OF AWARDS INCLUDING THIS YEARS PALME d'OR, THE MOST PRESTIGIOUS OF ALL FILM AWARDS AND THIS IS HIS 2ND. REAL PEOPLE, WITH REAL PROBLEMS, BUT TO ME THIS ONE LACKED HIS USUAL BRILLIANCE AND THE DIALOGUE WAS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO UNDERSTAND. BUREAUCRATIC BULLYING WAS HIGHLIGHTED. NOT AN ENTERTAINING FILM.
Ken Loach's 'I, Daniel Blake,' about an ailing carpenter who fights to stay on welfare, is a film of moving relevance The British director Ken Loach will be 80 years old in June, and he has worked in film and television for more than 50 of those years, but with his bone-deep empathy for the desperate and the downtrodden, you may feel that he was almost put on earth to make a dramatic feature about the current economic moment. “I, Daniel Blake” is one of Loach’s finest films, a drama of tender devastation that tells its story with an unblinking neorealist simplicity that goes right back to the plainspoken purity of Vittorio De Sica. The tale of Daniel Blake (Dave Johns), a 59-year-old carpenter from Newcastle, who is fighting to hold on to his welfare benefits, even though his heart condition forbids him from working, is one that’s sure to resonate across national borders, because it’s about something so much larger than bureaucratic cruelty (although it is very much about that). It captures a world — our world — in which the opportunity to thrive, or even just survive, is shrinking by the minute. With the right handling, the movie has a chance to connect with audiences as few Loach films ever have. It’s a work of scalding and moving relevance. - DirectorErik PoppeStarsJesper ChristensenAnders BaasmoKarl MarkovicsApril 1940. Norway has been invaded by Germany and the royal family and government have fled into the interior. The German envoy to Norway tries to negotiate a peace. Ultimately, the decision on Norway's future will rest with the king.OFL SHORTLISTED FILM WORTHY OF EVERY FILM ACCOLADE IT RECIEVES. THE HISTORICAL CONTENT ALONE IS WORTHY OF YOUR EFFORT TO SEE THIS FILM. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. Classical cinema in the best sense of the phrase, Eric Poppe's perfectly realized period piece looks at a seminal moment in modern Norwegian history: the days in 1940 when King Haakon VII (Jesper Christensen, perhaps best known to North American audiences for playing the shadowy Mr. White in three recent Bond films) faced the momentous decision about whether or not to cooperate with the invading German army. Threatening to abdicate if the government chose cooperation, he advocated all-out resistance, placing himself and his family in great danger, and guaranteeing his place in the annals of Norwegian history.
Poppe, a regular fixture at the Palm Springs Film Festival and the only director to have won the Norwegian Film Critics' Award for Best Feature three times, started his career as a war photographer before moving on to cinematography, and his experience shows in the way he shoots both the action scenes and the tense, intimate moments when decisions that will affect thousands of lives are being made. He captures a story for the ages with clarity and impressive attention to detail. - DirectorJean-Pierre DardenneLuc DardenneStarsAdèle HaenelOlivier BonnaudJérémie RenierA doctor gets obsessed with the case of a dead woman after learning that the woman had died shortly after having rung her door for help.THE DARDENNES BROTHERS CONTINUE TO HOLD THEIR LOFTY PLACE IN THE CINEMA WORLD. STORYTELLING AND AMAZING FILM CREATIVITY WERE EVIDENT FROM THE OPENING FRAME. EXTREMELY WELL DONE. One evening, just as she is getting ready to leave for home, Dr. Jenny Davin hears someone knocking on the surgery door. She decides to ignore them-it's late, the surgery is closed. But the next day she finds out that her unknown visitor was a young woman who died shortly afterwards, and not from natural causes. Stricken with guilt, Jenny takes it upon herself to investigate the circumstances around the girl's death-and puts herself in danger. Increasingly, the Dardenne brothers have drafted their social realism in the form of suspense stories, in films like The Child, Lorna's Silence and Two Days, One Night. The Unknown Girl is essentially a mystery thriller filmed in a naturalistic style. But like all their work it is ultimately a philosophical drama, a morality tale about what ethical responsibility we have towards other people, and to seeking out truth. Rising French star Adèle Haenel doesn't just embody the intriguing doctor/detective dichotomy, but suggests a high-achieving, altruistic woman tormented by her own flaws and determined to rectify the world while she's at it.
- DirectorCecilia VerheydenStarsChris LommeJo De MeyereKatelijne VerbekeTwo people meet again after more than 50 years. They were lovers once, but their lives took different turns: she married his best friend. Fifty years later, they meet again and passion flares up. But is it possible to pick up the thread of a life that unraveled fifty years ago? The story of a wonderful last love affair, which is relived with the intensity of a first.aka BEHIND THE CLOUD......FROM BELGIUM COMES THIS FILM THAT PROBES AGAIN THE AGING ISSUE, WHICH APPEARS TO BE COMMON IN THIS YEARS PSIFF 2017. A KEY LINE IS ALL WE HAVE LEFT IS TIME, LET US MAKE THE MOST OF IT. THIS IS A 31 Y/O DIRECTOR DEBUT FILM. TOLD WITH GREAT SENSITIVITY AND DELICACY, BUT ADAPTED FROM A PLAY. I DO THINK MOST OF YOU WILL ENJOY THIS FILM. The film will give us to see how the beloved has engaged or not a relationship with her former suitor and how she will have to handle this with her daughter and granddaughter.
It is also a reflection on sexuality in the third age, on choices of life, on time passing, on fidelity - doubly: that to her husband, out of duty and without hypocrisy, simply because it is so And another, lasting, which transcends time and difficulties. Lovers reprise their roles for the play and are known to have played on television and film, including the fabulous Het Vonnis which seems not unfortunately be available on DVD with French subtitles (used, sorry, of a new rant as we were launching a about Marina , also found on DVD subtitled in french - except surfing the deep web, alas, alas). Note also, once is not custom, a perfect match of the age of the actors with that of their respective roles. A film to be discovered in the original Flemish version and we felt like hearing a very beautiful Flemish, which sounds like a poem to the ears. Proficiat Cecilia ... and make us still beautiful movies, love or others in the future. - DirectorZiga VircStarsSlavoj ZizekJosip Broz TitoJohn F. KennedyExplores the myth of the secret multi-billion-dollar deal behind America's purchase of Yugoslavia's clandestine space program in the early 1960s.A FASCINATING DOCU ON HOW TITO SCAMMED THE USA OUT OF 3 BILLION DOLLARS. ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE AND HISTORY MAKE IT WORTHWHILE TO SEARCH FOR THIS ON NETFLIX.
Žiga Virc makes smoke meet mirrors in his debut film, described as a docu-fiction but with the emphasis surely falling on the latter. It purports to tell the story of the Yugoslav space progamme, which the US thought so successful they bought it for billions, only to find all was not as it seemed. Against this a human story of a scientist who was allegedly spirited away from Yugoslavia to work for NASA, his death faked, his wife left devastated, as he meets up with the daughter he has never seen years later.
"Even if it didn't happen, it's true - and that's the crucial message," says philosopher Slavoj Žižek towards the end of this film, which is interwoven and book-ended by his considerations of what it takes to construct a myth. During these episodes, in which he teases apart the way that a belief is built by both the teller and the person who believes it, he sits in a big easy chair, resplendent in stocking feet within a blank, white space save for an old-fashioned TV - the fakeness of it all a further reminder of how easy it is to manipulate the visual image. Even the exclamation mark at the end of the title, suggests that playfulness lies within. - DirectorMilos RadovicStarsLazar RistovskiPetar KoracPavle EricStatistics show that during their career every railroad engineer working unintentionally kills 15 to 20 people. This is a story about the innocent mass murderers and their lives.EMIR KUSTURICA, IS ONE OF THE MAJOR REASONS FOR MY INSANE CINEMAPHILIA. HIS GYPSY FILMS, TIME OF THE GYPSIES, WHEN FATHER WAS AWAY ON BUSINESS, UNDERGROUND, BLACK CAT, WHITE CAT ARE MY FAVORITES.....ALL BLACK COMEDIES THAT WILL PUT A HUGE SMILE ON YOUR FACE. TRAIN DRIVER IS A SPIN-OFF WITH HIS STYLE STARRING THE MARVELOUS SERBIAN ACTOR, LAZAR RISTOVSKI, A REGULAR ON MOST OF HIS FILMS AND WERY WELL KNOWN TO EUROPEAN CINEMA. HAS BEEN ON STAGE 4000 TIMES AND STARRED IN 40 FILMS. THIS FILM IS SO SIMILAR TO THE KUSTURICA FILMS. IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN HIS FILMS, IT IS WORTH YOUR EFFORT TO FIND HIS FILMS. YOU WILL BE DELIGHTED. TRAIN DRIVER IS ALSO WORTH YOUR TIME IF IT SHOWS UP AT BEST OF FEST.
At a time when the cinema repertoire is characterized by the sovereign rule of blockbusters, we are confronted with a production with a soul that fits far more into the trends set by European cinema and American independent film than into local cinematic templates. THE TRAIN DRIVER'S DIARY is a small film, but also an important indication that domestic cinema can head in another direction, towards more universal, more intellectual, less pretentious themes. The story about train drivers, about their profession and desperation for becoming killers of careless individuals and those who consciously choose to end their life, is nevertheless not so grim. Director and screenwriter Milos Radovic has opted in favor of tragicomedy, even a romantic and melodramatic and witty story about sense of guilt, compassion, solidarity, and forgiveness. The plot of the film is built up by a strange texture of comic-absurd situations which lead to a potentially happy epilogue - despite tragic outcomes. The focus is on the tender parental relationship between a train driver on the threshold of retirement - played by Lazar Ristovski, and his adopted son that chose the same job, albeit fearing that he shall become a killer like his father. - DirectorXavier DolanStarsGaspard UllielMarion CotillardLéa SeydouxLouis (Gaspard Ulliel), a terminally ill writer, returns home after a long absence to tell his family that he is dying.CONFINING, SHORT PERIOD OF TIME, STAGEY AND MANY COSIDER IT A COMPLETE BORE, BUT WRONG IT IS A BRILLIANT PIECE OF CINEMA. A TRUE MASTERPIECE THAT HIGHLIGHTS WHY LIVE THEATRE FALLS BEHIND CINEMA IN CAPTURING EMOTION. I DO NOT REMEMBER SEEING HUMAN DRAMA BETTER THAN WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOLF. MANY OF LARS VON TRIER'S DOGME 95 STYLISTIC FILM CREATION IS EVIDENT HERE. EACH PERFORMANCE IS OSCAR WORTHY. I WOULD NOT BE SURPRISED IF IT WINS THE OFL AWARD.
For this, Dolan has assembled an A-list French cast: Gaspard Ulliel plays Louis, the writer in question; Nathalie Baye is his genial, wittering widowed mother. Léa Seydoux is Suzanne, his sullen, punky sister who respects what Louis has achieved, albeit in a mood of resentment that he has not carried her along with him as a kindred spirit. Vincent Cassel – his inverted triangle of a face permanently set in a scowl – is his brother, Antoine, who has a blue-collar job as a tool-maker and is married to mousy and submissive Catherine, played by Marion Cotillard in a style not far from Olivia Colman. However much these family members might have wanted to keep things nice and polite, it is of course futile. The moment Louis steps through the door, the screaming starts.
It is a nightmare: stylised, unreal. We see them in the woozy way Louis sees them. Or perhaps this is the dream that he is later having about the family reunion. For most of the film, Dolan brings his camera tight in for extreme closeups on the characters’ faces. In fact, the action is almost just a sequence of faces, either square on or in profile, and they are almost always quarrelling or shouting. And Dolan keeps a clamorous orchestral score surging through the querulous dialogue. Occasionally, his own memories will cause a power surge of euphoria to crash through, but these are soon submerged again in the ongoing melee. Louis looks very ill, but it is not merely his illness. It is a form of nervous breakdown, mingled with guilt and fear. Being back among his family is causing something like anaphylactic shock - DirectorKleio FanourakiStarsNikos BousdoukosGeorges CorrafaceZoe CorrafaceA love letter to the island of Crete, this gentle Mediterranean pick-me-up posits a back-to-the-land solution to Greece's economic crisis and boasts breathtaking cinematography, haunting, original music and mouthwatering food and wine.HORRIBLE FILM....LEFT AFTER 45' OF TORTURE. IT APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN MADE BY A HIGH SCHOOL FILM CLASS
- DirectorFrançois OzonStarsPierre NineyPaula BeerErnst StötznerIn the aftermath of WWI, a young German who grieves the death of her fiancé in France meets a mysterious Frenchman who visits the fiancé's grave to lay flowers.ANOTHERGEM FROM ONE OF THE MOST TALENTED FRENCH FILMAKER WORKING TODAY. IF YOU ARE NOT AWARE OF HIS PREVIOUS WORK, THEN YOU OWE IT TO YOURSELF TO CATCH UP ON HIS BRILLIANCE. MY FAVORITES INCLUDE 8 WOMEN, SWIMMING POOL, IN THE HOUSE, UNDER THE SAND AND YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL.
Versatile French writer-director François Ozon is arguably as successful as any contemporary auteur at consistently taking his audience by surprise. But his uncharacteristically sombre drama Frantz represents a distinct departure for a film-maker whose love of mischief has often been his foremost trait. A black-and-white period piece in French and German, Frantz is arguably one of the straightest films Ozon has made – in both the dramatic and the sexual senses – but his complex sensibilities and fine-tuned irony are very evident in a mature work that transcends genre pastiche to be intellectually stimulating and emotionally satisfying. - DirectorPernilla AugustStarsSverrir GudnasonKarin Franz KörlofLiv MjönesAn adaptation of Hjalmar Söderberg's novel "The Serious Game" from 1912. The great Swedish love story.THIS FILM IS SO SCANDINAVIAN IN ITS METICULOUS ATTENTION TO DETAIL. A MAGNIFICENT PERIOD ROMANTIC PIECE THAT WILL CHALLENGE YOUR ROMANTIC EMOTIONS. THE VERY TALENTED SWEDISH AUGUST FAMILY AND LONE SCHERFIG H.AVE CREATED A MASTERPIECE. THE ROMANTIC READERS OF MY BLOG SHOULD SEE THIS FILM. CAPTURING THE EMOTION OF STAR CROSSED LOVERS IS PROBABLY THE MOST DIFFICULT CHALLENGE OF A FILMAKER, AND HERE THERE EFFORTS SHOULD BE APPLAUDED. PERNILLA'S 2ND HUSBAND BILLIE HAS ONE OF SCANDINAVIA'S MOST IMPRESSIVE FILMOGRAPHIES.
Based on Söderberg’s classic 1912 novel of the same name, Den Allvarsamma Leken (A Serious Game) takes place in Stockholm at the turn of the century, where Lydia (Karin Franz Korlof), the daughter of a Bohemian landscape artist, meets Arvid (Sverrir Gudnason), a proofreader for the national paper, and their destinies become forever entangled. When Lydia’s father passes away suddenly she is forced to take a husband with a large inheritance. Feeling refused and confused, Arvid does the same but chance and a burning desire to know what could have been bring them back together, time and time again.
Franz Korlof and Gudnason’s chemistry burns with a quiet intensity that keeps the tragic push and pull of their relationship exciting to watch. The melancholic lovers are trapped by the constraints and morals of the oppressive society they are trying to prosper in. What really grabs the attention is the cinematography, which seems to borrow the same gentle light and vivid color palette of the impressionist period it is depicting. The characters’ emotional turmoil is articulated in the luxurious landscapes and interiors that are so filled with intricate details they resemble Renoir tableaux.
The romance at the heart of the story is complicated by the fact that they are both married and need to remain so but also by the idea of love. It is always uncertain as to whether the protagonists are genuinely going against their better judgement and pursuing this romance because they believe in the ideal or simply because they want to be reminded of their more innocent past. The only shortcoming that makes the story a little too simple is a lack of screen for their respective partners that could have broken up the back-and-forth rhythm the film gets mired in.
Den Allvarsamma Leken is a breakthrough with undeniable charm that faithfully captures the look of the period but more importantly the spirit too.★★★★★ Adapted by Lone Scherfig (An Education) and evocatively directed by the veteran actress Pernilla August (The Best Intentions; Star Wars: The Phantom Menace), A Serious Game reflects on the damage wrought by the "pure, untainted" love Lydia and Arvid both dream of, blind to the sacrifices their choices will entail. - DirectorArgyris PapadimitropoulosStarsMakis PapadimitriouElli TringouHara KotsaliOn a hedonistic Greek island, a middle-aged doctor becomes obsessed with a young tourist when she lets him tag along with her group of hard partying friends.TOTAL WASTE OF TIME WATCHING A PHYSICIAN'S PSYCHOSEXUAL DISINTEGRATION
TTThe quicksilver seductiveness of youth drives a doctor to distraction in this deliberately discomforting drama. - DirectorChristian TafdrupStarsSøren MallingBodil JørgensenElliott Crosset HoveWhen their son moves out, a couple buys the condo from their youth and furnish it as back then. They start living as then and one day, they're same age as their son. Other twists follow.aka PARENTS
HERE AGAIN IS ANOTHER FILM DEVOTED TO AGEING AS IS APPROPRIATE FOR THE PSIFF AUDIENCE. THIS MAY BE THE MOST IMAGINATIVE FILM IN THE FEST. FROM DENMARK COMES ANOTHER GENIUS FILMAKER.THE KEY NARRATIVE LINE BEING ARE WE CONTENT WITH WHAT WE HAVE DONE WITH OUR LIVES AS THE INEVITABLE BOREDOM ASSOCIATED WITH WINDING DOWN AFTER OUR VERY BUSY LIVES. THE TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENTS ARE OF THE HIGHEST QUALITY.
If you're close to your parents, you've probably heard them reminisce about "the old times." The good ole days when they they used to go dancing at the crowded club down the block, when they were struggling to rub two pennies together in their 5th floor walk-up--before you came into the picture. The long-winded tales often end with a heavy stare into the distance. If you're like me, you kinda just...let them have that moment of silence on their own. But in writer/director Christian Tafdrup's Danish drama, PARENTS, he sends them down memory lane.
Premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival, PARENTS asks the question: who would we be if we could do it all over again? Would we make the same mistakes, because we know they're just learning trials? Would we change our own narrative? Vibeke and Kjeld (Miri Ann Beuschel and Elliot Crossett Grove) have just watched their only child Esben (Anton Honik) move out of their house, without a single tear in his eyes--grabbed his things and quickly waved goodbye. The seemingly final page in a beautiful story of their lives, Vibeke and Ejeld immediately slump into an autopiloted state, void of purpose and even dialogue. Until they decide to move back into their old studio apartment partly to downsize the space in their now empty home, but also to rekindle that ole feeling they had when they were young. That's when their life takes a startling turn, and they find themselves back in their old bodies. For most people, this is the dream. But for Vibeke and Kjeld, it's life-shattering.
In the saturated climate of sequels and remakes, the originality of PARENTS is one that catches you completely off guard. And, surprisingly, the idea of two-middle aged parents going back in time isn't even the most shocking thing that happens in it. That's just what makes it so refreshing yet strange to watch. Not only are Vibeke and Ejeld's lives dramatically altered, but Esben's relationship with them is as well. Tafdrup delivers an engrossing portrayal of youth, love, and yearning that's highlighted by gorgeous photography and affecting performances.
Rating: A (***** out of *****) - DirectorBavo DefurneStarsIsabelle HuppertKévin AzaïsJohan LeysenA forgotten European Song Contest singer, fading away in a pâté factory, falls in love with a young aspiring boxer. Together they decide to attempt her comeback.THIS MAY BE SUGAR COATED AND PREDICTABLE, BUT WITH THE MAGNIFICENT ISABELLE HUPPERT ON SCREEN, WHO IS COMPLAINING. HARD TO BELIEVE THAT SHE WILL SOON BE 64. THIS YEAR SHE WAS IN 6 FILMS, 3 OF WHICH i HAVE SEEN INCLUDING ELLE FOR WHICH SHE WON THE GOLDEN GLOBE BEST ACTRESS AWARD. UPON LEAVING ELLE, I THOUGHT SHE WAS MOST DESERVANT, BUT SELDOM DOES A FOREIGN LANGUAGE PERF RECEIVE RECOGNITION. SO HURRAH TO GOLDEN GLOBES AND LET US HOPE THAT OSCAR FOLLOWS. SHE IS TO BE IN 7 2017 FILMS. WOW! TALK ABOUT BEING INDEFATIGABLE. SHE WINS THIS AWARD HANDS DOWN.
SOUVENIR is a touching story of woman who struggles in her own way, but does not show it to everyone. Her eagerness to love, to be in love and be loved by the audience is equally strong. Filmmaker’s delicate approach follows Jean as well, a man, who despite being half her age, ignores the gap and fights for his love. Isabelle Huppert flawlessly captures Liliane, showing that love for the stage will never fade away. It was also an absolute delight hearing her perform, as the first time when you see her wearing red to perform a song is such a feast for our eyes. In conclusion, SOUVENIR may not be one of the greatest films Isabbelle Huppert ever appeared in, but it certainly is one of the most unique and worthwhile seeing. - DirectorRaoul PeckStarsSamuel L. JacksonJames BaldwinMartin Luther KingWriter James Baldwin tells the story of race in modern America with his unfinished novel, Remember This House.NEVER HAS A FILM HAD SUCH AN IMPACT ON ME. THE GUILT FELT BY ME WAS INTENSE AND MADE ME WONDER WHY I DID NOT DO MORE. I STOOD IDLY BY SOCIETY WAS SO UNKIND AND INTOLERANT OF THOSE WHO WERE IN SO MUCH PAIN. THIS IS A MUST SEE FOR ALL OF US AND SHOULD BE PAIRED WITH 13TH.
Raoul Peck's transcendent documentary takes a kaleidoscopic journey through the life and mind of James Baldwin, whose voice speaks even more powerfully today than it did 50 years ago.
Raoul Peck’s “I Am Not Your Negro” is the rare movie that might be called a spiritual documentary. It’s a meditation on the prophetic brilliance and the very being of James Baldwin, the African-American writer who was more than a “great thinker” on race — he was the prose-poet of our injustice and inhumanity (and our humanity, too). He saw more than anyone, and he wrote it all down, in essays and novels and plays and poems that were so far ahead of where his society was at that it may only be now, 40 or 50 years later, when he can truly be heard. The times have caught up with his scalding eloquence. - DirectorKore-eda HirokazuStarsHiroshi AbeYôko MakiSatomi KobayashiAfter the death of his father, a private detective struggles to find child support money and reconnect with his son and ex-wife.ANOTHER WONDERFUL FAMILY DRAMA FROM KORE-EDA, WHO IS MASTER AND THOUGHTFUL STORY TELLER. HIS FILM PRODUCTION TECHNIQUES ARE NOT SPECTACULAR, BUT HIS DIRECTION OF PERFS AND NARRATIVE ARE WHY WE CELEBRATE HIS WORK.
A divorced father tries to put his family back together in director Kore-eda Hirokazu’s family tale.
A young divorced dad tries to get back into the good graces of his ex-wife and son in After the Storm (Umi yori mo mada fukaku), a classic Japanese family drama of gentle persuasion and staggering simplicity from Kore-eda Hirokazu. As sweet as a ripe cherry at first glance, it has a rocky pit, as viewers who bite deeply will find out. More casual audiences may not even perceive it. This bittersweet peek into the human comedy has a more subtle charm than flashier films like the director’s child-swapping fable Like Father, Like Son, but the filmmaking is so exquisite and the acting so calibrated it sticks with you. - DirectorBenedict AndrewsStarsRuby StokesRooney MaraRiz AhmedWhen a young woman unexpectedly arrives at her much-older former lover's workplace, looking for answers, the secrets of their dark past threaten to unravel his new life. What follows is an emotional and unflinching excavation of inappropriate love, with shattering consequences.and mouse trade places in the exacting psycho-social drama Una, which depicts the eponymous damaged Englishwoman’s stalking of the outwardly ordinary man who, 15 years previously, had a three-month sexual relationship with her when she was aged 13. Adapted by David Harrower from his 2005 play Blackbird, the first feature helmed by the radical Australian stage director-dramatist Benedict Andrews is a crucible for the combustible combination of stars Rooney Mara and Ben Mendelsohn.
- DirectorIvan SenStarsAaron PedersenAlex RussellJacki WeaverIndigenous detective Jay Swan arrives in the town of Goldstone to search for a missing person, and his simple duty becomes complicated when he uncovers a web of crime and corruption.ANOTHER AUSTRALIAN BRILLIANT FILMAKER IS SOON TO BE DIRECTING BIG BUDGET HOLLYWOOD FILMS. WELCOME IVAN SEN AND YOUR FILM WILL HAVE GREAT SUCCESS IN AMERICA. A RAW BACKCOUNTRY STORY SO COMPATIBLE WITH OUR COWBOY WESTERNS. THIS IS A BRILLIANTLY CONCEIVED AND EXECUTED FILM. I DO BELIEVE THAT EVERYONE WILL ENJOY THIS AND WILL SOON BE THE WORD OF MOUTH HIT HERE. ADD SEN TO THE AUSTALIAN DIRECTORS PETER WIR, BAZ LUHRMAN, GEORGE MILLER, BRUCE BERESFORD, JANE CAMPION, PHILLIP NOYCE, RALPH de HEER, AND FRED SCHEPSI. IF YOU ARE NOT WITH THE ABOVE, YOU MUST FIND THEIR WORK AND ENJOY THEIR CRAFTSMANSHIP. AS AN ASIDE,
CATE BLANCHETT IS PROBABLY THE GREATEST GIFT TO US FROM AUSTRALIA.
Indigenous Detective Jay Swan (Aaron Pedersen) arrives in the frontier town of Goldstone on a missing persons enquiry. What seems like a simple light duties investigation opens a web of crime and corruption. Jay must pull his life together and bury his differences with young local cop Josh (Alex Russell), so together they can bring justice to Goldstone The vast Australian desert is the star of Ivan Sen's latest film, an outback western whose interwoven themes include corruption, human trafficking, Aboriginal land rights and mysticism. The film's space and isolation is in part reminiscent of Sen's 2013 thriller, Mystery Road, and once again Aaron Pedersen imparts great presence as an outsider who is battling his own demons. To my mind, Mystery Road is the more complete film; Goldstone's plot feels less organic. Nonetheless, the film engages for the most part and David Gulpilil's cameo is one of its highlights. - DirectorEmil Ben-ShimonStarsEvelin HagoelIgal NaorOrna BanaiA bar mitzvah mishap causes a major rift in a devout Orthodox community in Jerusalem.TIFF 2016: MY USUAL POSITION IS THAT YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE JEWISH TO ENJOY THIS FILM, BUT HERE IT WOULD ENHANCE YOUR ENJOYMENT IF YOU WERE. THE LANGUAGE IS DIFFERENT, THE LOCATION IS DIFFERENT, BUT THE INSIDE JOKES ARE ALL SO VERY RIGHT ON IN OUR OWN AMERICAN JEWISH WAY OF LIFE. THE COMRADERIE OF THE WOMEN FOR ME WAS THE HIGHLIGHT OF THIS FILM. DO NOT GET IN THE WAY OF A DETERMINED AND ANGRY JEWISH LADY, AND WHO WOULD KNOW THIS BETTER THAN I! ALL IN ALL THIS FILM WAS A GREAT JOY FOR ME AND NOT BECAUSE OF ITS CINEMATIC EXCELLENCE, BUT BECAUSE OF THE STORY.
‘The Women’s Balcony’ has a great sense of humour‘The Women’s Balcony’ is a humorous, feminist narrative about finding the right path to happiness and the subjectivity of righteousness.
If there’s nothing truer about relationships, it’s that each one has to find their own way to be happy; what’s good for one may not be good for another and vice versa. Outsiders can provide as much advice and as many opinions as they wish, but in the end every couple must find what works for them — period. Unfortunately when someone with great influence in your life indicates they believe you are doing something incorrectly, it can be difficult not to heed them. In The Women’s Balcony, longstanding tradition is challenged by a persuasive figure. On the morning of a bar mitzvah in Jerusalem, all the boy’s family and friends walk to the synagogue together to celebrate the blessed event. The men take their place on the lower level, where they adoringly peer up at the women’s balcony from which all the female attendees observe the weekly service. However on this fateful day, the structure gives way and the women are plunged to the ground below. Thankfully no one is killed - DirectorAsaph PolonskyStarsSharon AlexanderShai AviviTomer CaponeAs Eyal finishes the traditional Jewish week of mourning for his late son, his wife Vicky urges him to return to their routine -- but just because the shiva has ended doesn't mean it's life as usual.SAD, FUNNY, SENSITIVE AND A VERY GOOD FILM ABOUT SITTING SHIVA FOR THE LOSS OF THEIR 15 Y/O SON. NEVER AN EASY TASK. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE JEWISH TO APPRECIATE THIS TOUCHING FILM. BRING KLEENEX FOR CRYING AND LAUGHING. One Week and a Day is an Israeli dramedy by writer/director Asaph Polonsky that concentrates on couple grappling with the loss of their child. Eyal (Shai Avivi) and his wife Vicky (Evgenia Dodina) finish shiva (their week of mourning) for their son, but Eyal isn’t quite ready to get back to his daily routine. So he heads back to the hospice where his son passed away in search of a blanket he left behind. Although Eyal doesn’t find the blanket, a dying patient gives him a bag of medical marijuana, which he decides to take home and smoke. Since he has no experience with drugs, Eyal enlists the help of his twentysomething neighbor Zooler (Tomer Kapon) to roll some joints. After smoking together, they embark on a series of adventures that remind Eyal there are still plenty of things worth living for.
- DirectorMaren AdeStarsSandra HüllerPeter SimonischekMichael WittenbornA practical joking father tries to reconnect with his hard working daughter by creating an outrageous alter ego and posing as her CEO's life coach.METACRITIC SCORE 95....VERY HIGH AND THIS SURPRISES ME AS I FELT THIS FILM WAS NO MORE THAN MEDIOCRE AT BEST. WHAT IS GOING ON WITH OUR CRITICS, DUMMING DOWN SEEMS TO BE IN EVIDENCE INCLUDING THE RAVES FOR LA LA LAND. TONI HAS A MINIMALIST STORY LINE, BUT SHORT CHAPTERS SIMILAR TO SNL. THE NUDE PARTY IS AN EXAMPLE OF THIS FRACTURED NARRATIVE. WHY SO MANY AWARDS CONFUSES ME. A SERIES OF FOLLIES, SOME BETTER THAN OTHERS, BUT NO CONTINUITY. PLEASE BRING BACK THE ROGER EBERTS, CHARLES CHAMPLINS, AND PAULINE KAELS WHO TRULY LOVED CINEMA AND TOOK PRIDE IN THEIR CRAFT.
Ade’s film, at its best, shivers with fear—of the direction Europe is going now, of what Germany is becoming, of the values that are becoming common coin in Europe along with the euro, of the moral compromises and sacrifice of human dignity that come along with high-level modernization, of the profits rising to the top and the common citizens struggling to keep up. It’s a story of three generations: the generation of Ines’s grandmother, whose casual racism and nostalgia for militarism are eventually revealed; Winfried’s generation, whose memorial and moral work has seemingly purged their parents’ failings; and Ines’s generation, which has lost that moral compass, that sense of the common good, that sense of belonging. It’s an important film—in the best and worst senses. The troubles that “Toni Erdmann” diagnoses are, obviously, real; the dangers that it senses are at hand; but the personal lives and motives, the needs and desires, the memories and identities of those who are at its heart, as agents, witnesses, victims, remain obscure. The film glimpses European fractures and follies through a personal story that remains as schematic and impersonal as a position paper.
. - DirectorPablo LarraínStarsGael García BernalLuis GneccoMercedes MoránAn inspector hunts down Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, who becomes a fugitive in his home country in the late 1940s for joining the Communist Party.FROM CHILE BY A VERY TALENTED LARRAIN WHO ALSO GAVE US JACKIE THIS YEAR. EVERY FACET OF THIS FILM WAS BRILLIANT...STORY 5, CINETOG 5 PLUS, PERFS 5 PLUS, SETS 5 PLUS, COSTUMES 5.....THIS IS DEFINITELY CAPTURED MY ATTENTION AND STIMULATED AN INTEREST IN LEARNING MORE ABOUT THIS POET AND POLITICIAN. LARRAIN IN THIS BRILLIANT CAPTURED THE ESSENCE OF A GREAT MAN. NERUDA CARED ABOUT THE COMMON MAN AND THE COMMON GOOD AND AND THAT A NON-CORRUPT HONEST GOVERNMENT WOULD CREATE A BETTER AND MORE FAIR SOCIETY. CAN YOU IMAGINE THE TRUMP TWEETS ON THIS SUBJECT.
Not a biopic but a Nerudian take on the famed Chilean politician-poet, “Neruda” is a stunningly inventive take on the function rather than the life of a writer.
Surprises always come at the end of Pablo Larraín’s films, when everything suddenly comes together and the audience sits in the cinema feeling both illuminated and floored. “Neruda” is no different, representing the director at his stunning best with a work of such cleverness and beauty, alongside such power, that it’s hard to know how to parcel out praise: script, cinematography, art direction and performances all vie for kudos and awards, though the film’s placement in Directors’ Fortnight rather than competition at Cannes is a major head-scratcher. “Neruda” is not a biopic but an invention informed by biography, conjuring a richly detailed investigator with notions of self-grandeur who’s hunting the famed leftist writer-politician in 1948 Chile. Sales will be vigorous, and international success practically a certainty. Titling the film “Neruda” might be seen as a marketing drawback, since some will imagine a more straightforward look at the poet’s life, although those familiar with Larraín’s work know that’s never been his style. Instead, he deftly mixes fiction with a form of truth, presenting Neruda (Luis Gnecco) not as the passionate romantic of his verse but a champagne communist very much tied to passing pleasures. Yet what Larraín makes clear by the finale is that who the artist is (any artist) is less important than what they inspire: to give voice to the powerless, and arouse the senses, is the ultimate gift to the masses. - DirectorXiaogang FengStarsBingbing FanWei FanXiaogang FengAfter being swindled by her ex-husband, a woman takes on the Chinese legal system.TANGLED BEUROCRACY IN CHINA MADE THIS VERY BORING WATCH FOR ME.
The heroine of “I Am Not Madame Bovary” has a problem as tangled as the bureaucracy she hopes will fix it. In an attempt to circumvent some of China’s many rules, Lian (Fan Bingbing) gets what she thinks is a sham divorce. But then her ex-husband (Li Zonghan) marries another woman, against their agreement. Now, Lian insists on being allowed to remarry her ex, just so she can divorce him properly.
Although it’s intended as a satire, director Feng Xiaogang’s movie has a literary tone, a leisurely pace and relatively few laugh-out-loud moments. It captures not only Lian’s frustration, but also the exasperation of the authorities who must deal with the demanding woman during her 11-year quest for justice. While Lian is the central focus, the film neatly conveys the self-interest of various other supporting characters, many of them officials who profess to think only of serving “the people.” In this land of collective idealism, everybody’s got an angle. - DirectorRama BurshteinStarsNoa KolerAmos TamamOz ZehaviWhen her fiancé bows out on the eve of her wedding, Michal refuses to cancel the wedding arrangements. An Orthodox Jew, she insists that God will supply her a husband. As the clock ticks down.TTHE PREMISE OF THIS FILM WAS EMBARRASING AND MADE ME FEEL ILL AT EASE. DID NOT ENJOY IT.
Through the Wall, Rama Burshtein’s sophomore directorial effort, is an Israeli romcom, shot in Hebrew and centred on an ultra-orthodox Jewish woman’s search for love through her unwavering faith in God. Although this is certainly a narrow cinematic niche (the many examples of Hasidic tradition and culture may be confusing to many), there is just enough warmly entertaining common ground available here to engage UK audiences.
The story centres around Michal (played convincingly by newcomer Noa Koler), a 30-something Hasidic Jew who is increasingly frustrated by the aspects of life that she feels excluded from without a husband. Companionship, love, children and the respect of a community that pities a single woman on the far side of her 20s are all off the table for Michal until she finds a spouse. These feelings bubble over in the film’s opening scene in a conversation with Hulda (Odelia Moreh-Matalon), a homeopathic practitioner who uses fish innards and bread dough to accent her consultations. Fish guts aside, Koler’s presence is immediately felt in these opening moments, inhabiting the frustrated and opining character of Michal with deft familiarity.
From this initial confession and a subsequent aborted engagement, that together serve as the premise for the meat of Through the Wall, Michal decides enough is enough. Booking a wedding hall for the eighth day of Hannukah, she places her faith in God to send her a husband in the intervening 12 days. As romcom setups go there have been more far-fetched ones, but the earnest religious context here may be off-putting to some. - DirectorFrancesco CarrozziniStarsMarina AbramovicAzzedine AlaïaNaomi CampbellAn intimate portrait of Franca Sozzani, the legendary editor-in-chief of Italian Vogue.IF YOU HAVE A LOVE FOR PHOTOGRAPHY AS I DO THEN FILM BE VERY ENTERTAINING FOR YOU. I AM VERY ANXIOUS TO SEE IT AGAIN, SO THAT I CAN FREEZE FRAME SOME OF THE INCREDIBLE FASHION PHOTOGRAPHY. THIS IS THE MOST CREATIVE COLLECTION OF THIS TYPE OF PHOTOGRAPHY YOU WILL EVER SEE. BASICALLY IT IS FILM ABOUT FRANCA DONE BY HER SON. SHE SAYS THE GENIOUS DOES NOT BELONG TO HER, BUT HER GENIUS IS SELECTING THE brilliant PHOTOGRAPHERS. I HONESTLY BELIEVE SHE COLLABORATED.
The most striking scenes in Francesco Carrozzini's thoroughly engaging documentary portrait of Franca Sozzani, the legendary editor-in-chief of Italian Vogue, occur not on a glamorous fashion shoot or in the hustle and bustle of the magazine's editorial offices, but in the back seat of a car, traveling to one place or another. It is in these interstitial moments that Sozzani, repeatedly provoked by Carrozzini, cracks, and lets down her guard.
Carrozzini gets to her because he is more than just a documentary filmmaker seeking the truth, but a son, raised by his single mother, wanting to know the secrets of her life, as well as his own.
Best known for making news with controversial fashion spreads-including one after the BP oil spill featuring models on a beach covered in oil-Sozzani has tackled such issues as racism, plastic surgery and domestic violence. Probing beneath the glossy surface, Carrozzini discovers a fiercely independent, boldly original, endlessly creative professional woman determined to make her mark in the world. Featuring testimonials from Karl Lagerfeld, Bruce Weber, Baz Luhrmann, Jeff Koons and the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy. - DirectorKristina GrozevaPetar ValchanovStarsStefan DenolyubovMargita GoshevaAlexandra AngelovaA reclusive Bulgarian railway trackman finds millions of cash spilled on the tracks and turns them in to the police. When the transport ministry's head of PR Julia Staikova decides to use him as a diversion from a corruption scandal, his simple life falls victim to the grinder of bureaucracy.FROM BULGARIA COMES ANOTHER FILM ABOUT GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION AND THE UNFAIR TREATMENT OF THE AVERAGE JOE. GLORY IS HIS WATCH....A GOOD FAITH AND HONEST ACTION TURNS INTO A DISASTER. THERE IS NO CINEMATIC EXCELLENCE AS THE QUALITY IS POOR, LESS THAN BAD T.V. ARE WE ENTERING A SIMILAR POSTION HERE?
A hard-edged PR woman happy to hide government corruption indifferently destroys an honest worker’s dignity in this worthy follow-up to the directors’ award-winning 'The Lesson.'
Co-directors Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov’s “Glory” confirms the advanced promise shown in their award-winning narrative debut, “The Lesson.” Largely working with the same exceptionally talented cast and crew, the duo paints a damning portrait of contemporary Bulgarian society fragmented by class and the rural-urban divide, where corruption is a given and even muckrakers ignore the human quotient in their politicized race to bring down their targets. Shot with flexible naturalism by Krum Rodriguez (DP on “Victoria” as well as “The Lesson”), the film quietly builds to a feeling of inexorable disaster, guided by terrific performances as well as spot-on editing. Festivals will be sure to offer welcoming slots in their programs, followed by a likely limited European art-house run. - DirectorHannes HolmStarsRolf LassgårdBahar ParsFilip BergOve, an ill-tempered, isolated retiree who spends his days enforcing block association rules and visiting his wife's grave, has finally given up on life just as an unlikely friendship develops with his boisterous new neighbors.A TOUCHING SENSITIVE FILM OPENING THE GATES TO ALL OF US OPENING OUR ARMS AND HEARTS TO EVERYONE REGARDLESS OF PRECONCEIVED PREJUDICES. A MUST FILM FOR EVERYONE, DELIVERS A POWERFUL MESSAGE.
5 STAR
“A Man Called Ove” tells the familiar story of the curmudgeonly old man whose grumpy life is brightened by forces beyond his control. These forces take the guise of a much younger person who provides a sense of purpose for the old hero. A film like this rises or falls not only with its central performance, but also with its ability to engage the viewer’s emotions in a credible, honest fashion. Movies like this tend to get dismissed as “manipulative” because audience sympathy for the protagonist is at least partially elicited by flashbacks to a litany of tragic or unfair past events. But all movies are manipulative by default; the effectiveness of that manipulation is the more valid measurement to inspect. On that scale, “A Man Called Ove” is a morbidly funny and moving success. - DirectorMartin ZandvlietStarsRoland MøllerLouis HofmannJoel BasmanIn post-World War II Denmark, a group of young German POWs are forced to clear a beach of thousands of land mines under the watch of a Danish Sergeant who slowly learns to appreciate their plight.THIS WAS A WONDERFUL FILM, ONE OF THE VERY BEEST AT PSIFF 2017. EVERY ASPECT OF THIS PRODUCTION WAS OF THE VERY HIGHEST CALIBER. NOT TO BE MISSED. FROM DENMARK BASED ON A TRUE STORY WHERE GERMAN POW'S HAD TO DEFUSE LANDMINES FROM THE DENMARK BEACHES. BE FORWARNED THAT THIS FILM IS VERY INTENSE, AND SOME WALKED OUT AT PSIFF BECAUSE THEY COULD NOT HANDLE THE UNEXPECTED.
“Land of Mine.” Martin Zandvliet’s third directorial feature is a tightly focused narrative that can hardly help but build considerable tension and poignancy, given that it centers on Axis boy soldiers forced to remove still-live land mines that their side left behind at war’s end. Chosen as the kickoff feature for the Toronto Film Festival’s new juried Platform section — which Piers Handling’s stage intro defined as dedicated to “bold, innovative, challenging films from mid-career and emerging filmmakers” — it should parlay good reviews into decentsales among discerning offshore distribs and outlets.
When five years of German occupation come to an end in May 1945, Danish Army Sgt. Rassmussen (Roland Moller, “A Hijacking”) vents his pent-up rage on two unfortunates among the hoards of Nazi soldiers retreating homeward on foot. At least they’re headed away from him; not so lucky are the dozen assigned to his command for the next three months or so. Their job could hardly be more onerous, or perilous: neutralizing and removing some 45,000 landmines the Nazis planted on a local beach, among more than 1.5 million scattered along Denmark’s western coast in anticipation of Allied invasion.
So dangerous is this task that one of the POWs doesn’t even survive their brief training before they begin in earnest. Other mishaps will inevitably further winnow the ranks, though the Germans cling to the promise that if they survive, they’ll be sent home. Rasmussen makes no secret of his loathing toward the enemy combatants and his indifference to their fate — including their immediate starvation, as occupiers at the bottom of the priority list for scarce supplies. No friendlier is the woman (Laura Bro) whose beachside farmstead they’re camped in, though her little girl (Zoe Zandvliet) is too young to understand why these strangers should be shunned