“The idea was to bring Vincent Lindon to uncharted waters in terms of his acting.” That’s director Stéphane Brizé describing the main reason behind using non-professional actors alongside the French veteran for his latest little slice-of-life film, The Measure of a Man. Slice-of-strife is more like it, as the story follows Lindon’s Thierry Taugourdeau, an everyman struggling with unemployment and an increasing sensation that his humanity is being eroded in the process. It’s Brizé’s third time working with Lindon, and first time working with DP Eric Dumont, whose previous work was solely on documentaries. Thanks to this naturalistic environment, the cinéma vérité style with the camera constantly following and observing Thierry, and the actor’s familiarity with the director; the weighted resonance in The Measure of a Man oscillates entirely from Vincent Lindon. The film may be little in terms of scale, but the performance at its centre is massive beyond measure.

Lindon disappears into Thierry so completely that he overpowers every other aspect of the film. The sole exception is perhaps Brizé’s and Olivier Gorce’s naturalistic screenplay, which teems with the kind of verbal exchanges that softly tighten the squeeze around a man’s soul. We follow Thierry in the middle of arguments, salvaging whatever pride he’s got left while talking to ex-colleagues from the factory that’s made him redundant. Sitting through partially-humiliating and demoralizing Skype interviews. Getting dissected like a frog in a lab by fellow job seekers, only to hear how none of his organs are functioning. We see him spending time at home with his wife and son, or enjoying a bit of dancing, and our hearts sink lower and lower at the hardships this good man is forced to endure because of an inhumane, profit-driven, system. Thierry finally does get a job, which brings a whole new type of moral challenge.

The kettle is boiling, that piercing whistle grows louder and louder, and it’s impossible to switch off. That’s what Lindon manages to convey through every pore in The Measure of a Man, one of the most depressing films of the year because of how realistic and immediately relevant it feels. The dedication on display by Lindon is let down by Brizé’s handling of the third act, wherein the climactic buildup isn’t nearly as gripping as anything that occurs in the first half of the film, while Thierry desperately searches for a new vocation. This is due to the stylistic choice of keeping Lindon mostly off-screen or on the side for the last half hour, hammering the point that the film is at its best whenever the camera is on Thierry. Those “uncharted waters” Brizé mentions earned Lindon a welcomed Best Actor award at Cannes, and important subject matter notwithstanding, it’s really the biggest reason one should go and seek this film out.

Originially posted on October 11th, 2015 as part of our NYFF coverage.

Now that the 2016 Berlin Film Festival has officially come to a close, and I’ve had a full day to get my bearings (get it?), it’s time I ran down the Top 5 films I’ve seen at the festival. Now, it would’ve been more than 5 had I not felt too disappointed (Midnight Special) or indifferent (Soy Nero) towards many of the films I saw (some of which were so horrendous and inconsequential, they didn’t even call for coverage)—but these are things you cannot predict when it comes to festivals. Especially one like the Berlinale, which has such a wide range of selections for its competition titles.

Read below for my 5 favorite films from the 66th edition of the Berlinale. They’re all quite different from each other, but every one is highly recommend for when you’re in a specific kind of mood for a specific kind of movie night. Unfortunately, many things went against me in Berlin and prevented me from watching the eventual big winners like Fire At Sea (Golden Bear), Death In Sarajevo (Jury Prize) and United States of Love (Silver Bear for Screenplay), but that doesn’t mean the films below are any less deserving of recognition and praise.

Favorite 5 Films of the 2016 Berlin Film Festival

#5. War On Everyone

Sandwiched between philosophical quips that give the film its few injections of thoughtfulness, John Michael McDonagh’s War On Everyone is mainly filtered through a scandalous, satirical and borderline psychedelic vision of American police work. Skarsgard and Pena make the unlikely central duo in this bad-cop-worse-cop buddy comedy work with such a generous dose of hilarity and raunchiness that you’ll easily forgive the film its naive moments and predictability. It’s so unabashedly anti-PC that it’s definitely not recommended for the sensitive souls out there. But that’s part of the appeal. [Review]

#4. Being 17

Andre Techine’s spirited film about two teenage boys in a French mountain countryside town is brimming with raw, untethered emotion and naturalistic performances. So much so that you’ll end up understanding Damien (Kacey Mottet Klein) and Tom (Corentin Fila) through so many scenes where a darting glance speaks the loudest. Flowing like an evergreen waterfall, Being 17 captures teenagehood on the precipice – and only falters near the end, but by then your heart won’t care that much. [Review]

#3. Zero Days

It’s a bit funny that I caught the two films above and Alex Gibney’s Zero Days on my very last day of movies in Berlin. It’s like the festival took pity on me for drudging through the pain of watching Creepy or almost being struck by angina pectoris while watching Lav Diaz’ 8-hour mega-epic (more on that at the end). In any case, Gibney’s Zero Days is a must-watch documentary by everyone interested in understanding just how far our world has advanced. Michael Mann’s Blackhat was pummeled by critics, but it’s getting a bit of a boost with a recent director’s cut – and will surely be looked at more closely once Zero Days hits public theatres. Cyber warfare is now, and countries need to start talking about it. [Review]

#2. A Quiet Passion

Terence Davies’ soft, luscious, and impossibly refined biopic of Emily Dickinson should appease lovers of exquisite shot composition and immaculate sense of character depth. Davies’ camera glides through the Dickinson household, while Cynthia Nixon, Jennifer Ehle, and the rest of the dazzling ensemble dive into Davies’ treasure chest of a screenplay in search of gold. They keep finding it in almost every scene, and thanks to Florian Hoffmeister’s blindingly beautiful cinematography, the audience feels the glow right on their skin. Aside from a couple of slips, A Quiet Passion enthralled me and I was a bit shell-shocked from how closely I felt to this woman, this American introverted poet from the 1800s felt more real to me than most of the characters I’ve seen on the screen in Berlin. [Review]

#1. Things To Come

All due respect to Davies, but nothing, and no one, felt more real than Mia Hansen-Love’s Things To Come and Isabelle Huppert’s Nathalie. It’s hard to fathom how a young director like Hansen-Love can show so much maturity, poise, control, and life experience while still in her early 30s; inspiring what will very likely be one of the most tender and memorable roles for the iconic French actress. Watching Nathalie go through the motions of losing touch with modern school system, letting go of her husband and kids who have moved on, trying to connect with today’s youth, and hopelessly falling in love with a cat ended up being the very best cinematic experience I’ve had at the festival, and indeed, the year so far. What makes it all the more special is that it was the very first film I saw at the Berlinale. [Review]

The Albert Bauer Honorable Mention

Lav Diaz’ new film goes against the conventional grain so much, you can almost feel the granulation forming on your skin as you sit there watching it. With a colossal running time of 485 minutes (nothing Lav Diaz fans will be too surprised about), A Lullaby To The Sorrowful Mystery is made of static shots of various characters lamenting, musing, longing, confessing, discussing, sharing, divulging, singing, listening, and crying over the intolerable cruelty suffered by the Filippino people under an oppressive Spanish rule. It’s absolutely stunning, with the greatest production design and cinematography (well, Crosscurrent might slightly have the edge in cinematography, but they’re milliseconds away from each other) I’ve seen at the festival, but the indulgence is, at too many moments, insufferable.

Alex Gibney’s excellent new documentary, Zero Days, is infused with a sense of urgency, relevance, and terrifying propinquity. You’ll never look at your cell phone the same way again.

The way countries fight wars has evolved away from the sea (19^th century) and the sky (20^th century) to what it is today: a bunch of 0’s and 1’s in mind-bogglingly complex computer codes with the enormous potential to shut down a country’s entire nervous system, rendering them vulnerable to danger and destruction. It’s the 21^st century, and the name of the game is cyber warfare. Nations have already caught on whether they can talk about it or not, something viewers will either accept or be infuriated by. The documentary tells the story of Stuxnet, a kinetic cyber weapon of potential mass destruction, which was behind various reactor failures in Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility during President Obama’s first year in office.

Interviewing a range of professionals and people in-the-know, from Symantec coders to government insiders, nuclear physicists, and one anonymous NSA source that becomes the mother load of insider intel, Gibney and producing partner Marc Shmuger approach the subject of Zero Days as a techno-thriller choking on red tape, brimming with confidential state secrecy and mysterious agendas. As the source of Stuxnet unravels to something that ultimately makes it “look like a back-alley operation,” Zero Days will grip the viewer in ways that something like All The President’s Men must have been gripping when it opened people’s eyes to the Watergate scandal.

In the post-Snowden era of leaked information, it’s often humorous to see how much Gibney still runs into dead-ends and walls. Frustratingly, at a certain stage, there is a bit too much focus on finger pointing, which will give conspiracy theorists who have deluded anti-government stances more rope than they deserve. But Gibney pulls back on the politics just in time to conclude the frightening findings on a note of openness and discussion. If cyber warfare is the new normal, which technological advancement has turned into a foregone conclusion, nations need to start talking about it honestly and openly. Engaging from start to finish, Zero Days reminds us that Gibney is at his very best when documenting universal subjects as opposed to the Going Clear and Man In The Machine docs of last year, which, though compelling in their own right, are limited by the very nature of their own subjects.

Rating:
8/10

The French have a special knack for telling naturalistic, intimate stories. The nation’s treasured André Téchiné has been due for a strong film, since his post-2000 output (with the exception of Witness) has been leaving too much to be desired. To fill this void and remind everyone why some hail him as the greatest post-New Wave director, Téchiné focuses on the youthful crossroads of desire in Being 17 in order to capture the complexity of a relationship between two boys. From mutual animosity to forced friendship to the awakening of something neither expect, Damien (Kacey Mottet Klein) and Tom (Corentin Fila) evolve through an expertly paced 2 hours on screen in ways that should leave audiences celebrating the spirited farrago of youth.

The lively beautiful rush of the opening credits create a comforting ease that’s usually attributed to someone who’s got a world of experience to work with. “Here is a director who knows what he’s doing, put your trust in him and enjoy this emotional ride,” they seem to say as the scenic country setting whizzes by over glorious music. The vibrancy of the opening foreshadows the tone that will go on to pervade over the entire film and the tense push-and-pull dynamic between Damien and Tom. They’re schoolmates, a couple of high-school loners who get picked last for basketball practice, and who—for no discernible reason—become enemies.

Tom lives in the mountains with his adoptive mother Christine (Mama Prassinos) and father Jacques (Jean Fornerod), and is in a constant state of detached ambivalence with the world around him, feeling assuaged only when swimming naked in the lake or tending to the farm animals. Damien lives with his mother, Marianne (Sandrine Kiberlain), the country doctor with a heart of gold, while his father Nathan (Alexis Loret) is on active tour duty as a helicopter pilot. Damien practices defensive techniques with neighbor Paulo (Jean Corso), an old-school vet and friend of his dad’s, and loves to cook meals for his mom. When Marianne gets called in to see a sick Christine, she takes a liking to the quiet and polite Tom, who pays her with a chicken in the film’s first organic laugh-out-loud moment.

When it’s discovered that Christine is pregnant with another child, a surprise considering the many miscarriages she had to endure before adopting Tom, Marianne suggests that Tom stay with her and Damien after school, in order to get his grades back up and not lose three hours commuting from the farm. Reluctantly the two boys agree to this arrangement, but tensions escalate until they decide to fight it out once and for all on a mountaintop. When the rain interrupts them mid-fight, however, they seek refuge in a cave and share a sneaky joint in silence. That’s when something shifts in the atmosphere.

Téchiné, and co-writer Celine Sciamma (the writer/director of the excellent Girlhood) have a gracefully raw cinéma vérité approach to their subject, creating a sense of effortless familiarity and attachment with the two leads. It reminded me of Blue Is The Warmest Color in many ways, but most of all in its agenda-free approach to the theme of homosexuality; without putting it in your face (in contrast to, for example, how it’s done on the small screen in American shows like Sense8). There’s no preaching and no politics here; just organic evolution of confused teenage feelings, and super strong character-building, blossoming into something fundamentally universal. Klein is the more experienced of the two young actors in the lead, and while he is undoubtedly strong, the revelation is Fila, who makes his screen debut with subtle ferociousness and irresistible charismatic presence. Of the adults, Kiberlain gets to the do most and she is wonderful as the lonely, warm-hearted, motherly Marianne.

The story’s build-up and progression in the first two thirds of Being 17, laced with intelligent and spontaneous humor, is rock-solid. It’s when we get into the third trimester that faith gets lost, thanks to some see-through conventional plot engineering and a roundabout focus on Marianne. The closing moments as well break the naturalistic spell with an overloaded dose of sugary optimism, in stark contrast to the rest of the film’s prudence. But even with its noticeable rough edges, Téchiné’s film breathes with a poetic temperance; a beautifully structured, finely acted ballad on teenage angst and passion.

Considering how perceptibly poignant his first two features are, it was hard to picture a John Michael McDonagh movie quite like the unapologetic and misanthropic War On Everyone. But hey, you know what they say: everything is bigger in America. With War, McDonagh turns away from the finesse we witnessed in The Guard and Cavalry, perhaps as a way to satirize the version of the US everyone else sees. It’s tonally erratic, loud, and rude, and a hundred times funnier than his previous works. Unhinged, like a rabid dog running around that you still have the urge to pet, this anti-hero buddy cop movie has cult status written all over it, giving us a good hard look at the funny side of Alexander Skarsgard and reminding us that Michael Pena is a comedic national treasure.

Terry (Skarsgard) and Bob (Pena) are close friends and partners on the force, a job they use as a springboard and get-out-of-jail free card to do shady, corrupt business. Never starting their sentences with “You have the right to remain silent,” Terry and Bob abuse lowlifes to score drugs and money while trying to keep their private lives in some kind of order (but not really giving a shit about it). Bob is married to Delores (Stephanie Sigman), with whom he has two overweight sons; Terry is the loner alcoholic with the vibe of private eye in the 1940s from a parallel universe with a country twist, one that plays Glenn Campbell 24/7 on the jukebox. When a major deal goes bad, a British criminal (Theo James) gets on Terry and Bob’s radar, and the shitstorm starts brewing.

If you start looking at War On Everyone as anything other than a hilarious journey with entertainment as the only destination, you’ll be left with a pretty shallow outer shell. It’s all about setting up scenes, throwing punchlines, working off of McDonagh’s zing-tastic screenplay, and the unlikely dynamic that builds between Skarsgard and Pena (oh, and Caleb Landry Jones looking he stepped out of a post-modern stage play of A Clockwork Orange is not to be missed). Underneath the garish surface, there’s philosophy a-brewing; but too many swerves to random dead-end scenes stopped me from wanting to explore further. Luckily, it keeps getting back on the main road with a mean streak of anti-PC humor that’s ballsy, vibrant and refreshing.

Rating:
7/10

As I mentioned in our Top 10 Anticipation feature for this year’s Berlinale, the last film Dogme 95 alumnus Thomas Vinterberg directed was the hushed-up epic Far From The Madding Crowd. With his latest, re-teaming with old-school buddy and fellow Dane Tobias Lindholm on the typewriter (err, computer), Vinterberg narrows his focus on a tight-knit self-made commune in 1970s Copenhagen, creating a film that’s all the better for being so intimate in scope. Acting thesps Ulrich Thomsen and Trine Dryholm join Vinterberg and Lindholm for the project, and the fact that all four crossed professional paths at one point or another gives The Commune a sense of instant familiarity; something that keeps the film glued together even when it threatens to fall apart in the third act.

Local news anchor Anna (Dryholm) is happily married to a professor of architecture Erik (Thomsen). Together with their 14-year-old daughter Freja (Martha Sofie Wallstrøm Hansen), they move into Erik’s old childhood home after his father passes away. In order to spice up their lives and fill the house with more excitement, Anna has the idea to create a commune and invite all the fantastic people they know to live with them. It’s the 1970s, and co-op lifestyles are all the rage. A group of colorful characters round up the household, and everything is rosy up until Erik meets and falls hard for 24-year-old mini-Brigitte Bardot Emma (Helene Reingaard Neumann). Instead of pulling a fit, kicking him out, filing for divorce, or anything else we might expect a woman living in the 21^st century to do, Anna suggests something much more radical: invite Emma into the commune and see if they can all make it work.

While Anna’s blasé attitude towards Erik’s infidelity takes a bit of getting used to, Dryholm—with the support of Lindholm’s crackling screenplay—does an outstanding job of making us understand why she wants to give the unusual scenario a go. Besides, the foundation of a commune during the 1970s is built on open-mindedness and acceptance. The realizations that Anna goes through, while predictable, keep The Commune interesting throughout. It’s not long before we realize that the crux of the matter lies in the struggle between personal issues in an open-space environment. The central performances are fantastic, Lindholm packs in enough boisterous humor to keep entertainment levels high throughout, and Vinterberg’s direction is airtight; but there is a disingenuous imbalance in the characterization of all other members beside the original family unit, including much too much focus on an overtly engineered character that transforms from young boy to old ploy at the drop of a hat.

Rating:
7/10

The Night Manager packs so much promise with its cast, crew, and material that it would’ve definitely made our Top 10 Anticipated were it not designed for the small screen. And while we’re mostly all about movies here on Way Too Indie, this BBC/AMC co-produced miniseries gets special coverage for a number of reasons. It’s the latest John Le Carré material adapted for the screen, it packs a wallop of an ensemble cast in Tom Hiddleston, Hugh Laurie, Olivia Colman, Tom Hollander and Elizabeth Debicki, and it’s directed by Oscar-winner Susanne Bier. So there was very little standing in the way of me catching the first two episodes at the Berlinale, and I’m happy to report that the pieces are aligned just right to make this one of the most talked-about TV events of the year.

Hiddleston plays Jonathan Pine, a hotel night manager with a mysterious past who becomes privy to a massive state secret involving aspiring British Lord and all-around millionaire entrepreneur Richard Roper (Laurie). Together with British intelligence handler Angela Burr (Colman), who’s got something of an obsession with catching the crooked Roper, Pine will infiltrate Roper’s inner circle in an attempt to build enough surefire evidence to bring him down once and for all.

That’s the gist of it, and the first two episodes lay the foundation in tantalizing fashion. Beginning with a sleek, sexy, opening credit sequence that sees fighter jets morphing into champagne bubbles and a chandelier crashing in a mushroom-cloud puff, the world of The Night Manager is one of elite danger. The golden color tones, postcard locales (especially breathtaking once the story moves to the alpine top of Zermatt, Switzerland), and lavish lifestyles that festoon the series create an impossible-to-decline invitation. This being a John Le Carré story, the air is full of suspense and intrigue from frame one, when we meet our hero during the eve of the Arab Spring in Cairo.

As one might expect, the actors fire on all cylinders. Hiddleston gets to show why he’d make a perfectly cool (if perhaps still a little too dainty) James Bond, Colman steals every scene she’s in, Laurie is absolutely scrumptious as the sleazy, serpentine Roper, and Hollander makes a fantastic early impression as Roper’s Iago-esque right-hand man Corcoran. If there’s a weakness to be detected, it’s in the series’ iffy structure involving time-jumps and a weak groundwork in establishing a key relationship between Pine and one Sophie Alekan (Aure Atika). Regardless, the first two hours of this miniseries flew by thanks to the story’s reliable espionage elements and tangible charisma seeping through every element. The cliffhanger that ends the second episode had me digging my nails into the seat, so April 19^th—which is when the series is to premiere stateside on AMC—can’t come soon enough.

Rating:
8/10

Even though Emily Dickinson would become one of America’s most celebrated female poets, she led a hard life in the 1800s. She didn’t share her family’s ecclesiastical leanings, her passion was firmly rooted in poetry (not homemaking), she judged those around her too harshly, and, of course, she was a she. Beside her innate urge to express herself through poetry, which she would write in the quiet of night while the rest of the world slept, Emily’s other passion was her bottomless love for her close-knit family. Through exquisitely framed medium shots, supple camera movements, and a screenplay full of wealth and wit, legendary British filmmaker Terence Davies creates a lush biopic that does justice to a unique artist, slightly meandering on a few tangents along the way.

It feels like Cynthia Nixon is in the middle of her own Nixonassance, especially when you consider her searing portrayal of last year’s indie hit James White in addition to the powerhouse portrayal she conjures up here in A Quiet Passion. She so wholly embodies the poetess, you’d think she found a time machine to travel back to the 1800s and trace every inch of gesticulation and countenance befitting the introverted and rebellious woman. Emma Bell does a fine job as Young Emily in the first part of the film, when we get introduced to the Dickinson household and get a taste of conservative life in Massachusetts. But once Nixon enters the stage, you hear pins drop till the final curtain.

Scenes flow into one another like liquid being poured by The Queen’s butler, tracing the ebbs and flows of Emily’s emotional and mental state as she comes to terms with her own personality, the love she feels for her family, and her growing bitterness towards high society values. Her sister Vinnie (Jennifer Ehle, continuing to prove how unforgivably underused she is), her brother Austin (a slightly spotty Duncan Duff), her father (a brilliantly stoic Keith Carradine), her sweet mother (an outstanding Joanna Bacon), and Austin’s wife Susan (a revelatory Jodhi May)—all play vital roles in shaping Emily. Outside her immediate family, no one makes a bigger impact than Miss Buffam (a sensational Catherine Bailey); with a wit and banter second to none, she outplays every man in the room and always leaves room for more. It’s little wonder that Emily becomes instantly infatuated with her spirit. A Quiet Passion exposes a singular personality through the relationships and conversations she has with those closest to her. And for much of the running time, it’s consuming to the point of forgetting everything else in the world.

Davies’ bountiful screenplay takes the cake in terms of how rhythmic and effortless the viewing experience feels. It’s so vibrant with its verbiage, 1800s colloquialism, and sharp comebacks that there are scenes where it almost trips over itself, creating the “too much of a good thing” excess feeling. The first half of the film also overflows with a wonderful sense of humor. Then there’s, of course, the director’s signature painterly camera movements, pivoting around interiors to create an astonishing sense of intimacy and closeness. He would stay on characters during their most fragile moments (especially during the heart-wrenching scenes featuring Bacon) and gradually grind the viewer’s emotions into sawdust. The way he transitions from the early to the later years during a photo shoot sequence is breathtaking. All this is helped by Florian Hoffmeister’s brilliant work with lights and shadows; whether by candle or by sun, the glow that overwhelms A Quiet Passion is palpable.

Moving beyond the formal aesthetics and award-worthy performances, it’s Emily Dickinson’s character that keeps the film’s heart beating. Her flaws, her virtues, her desires, her idiosyncrasies, her painstaking love and love-wound pain—all are ironed gently to create a truly complex and mesmerizing personality. Affronted by obviousness in every aspect of life and art, so sharp in demeaning the overt piety and patriarchal Puritanism she was faced with on a daily basis, the Emily Dickinson that emerges is one fiercely intelligent, determined, funny, empathetic, and infinitely interesting woman. This, above all else, makes A Quiet Passion the magisterial film that it is, and confirms Terence Davies as director who knows how to tackle femininity from all angles.

While all this stands, the picture does tend to lose the plot on a few occasions, especially towards the end during what looks like a fever dream sequence involving Emily and an anonymous man. It’s a jarring moment that broke the magic spell for a few brief minutes, and though I understand its intention, I find myself wishing that it were executed in a more refined way. A blasphemous thought to have considering this is Terence Davies, but there it is. The in-and-out narration of Emily’s select poems will also ignite frustration in a lot of viewers I imagine.

Thanks to these quibbles, the film is a step below the enchantment of Sunset Song and The Deep Blue Sea. But no matter how well versed you are with Emily Dickinson’s poems, A Quiet Passion still manages to envelop the senses in warm, gentle waves of cinematic opulence for most of its running time.

If there was one movie that I wanted to watch at the Berlinale and say, “now here’s a movie Donald Trump needs to see,” it would be Rafi Pitts’ Soy Nero. The reality is much harsher: it’s hard to think of anyone really needing to see this movie, regardless of their politics, prejudices, or nationality. The story of a young Mexican-American who becomes a Green Card soldier in order to secure his US citizenship and not be deported back to Mexico is ultimately too bare-boned and thinly spread to resonate beyond any given scene. And in most scenes, it’s the kind of resonance that spins its wheels to produce a deafening sound only to signify nothing much at all.

Nero (Johnny Ortiz) is caught by the US authorities trying to cross the border back to the States. He says he grew up in California, and is attending university, but he’s got no ID to back him up so, naturally, they don’t believe a word. He witnesses a burial of a Green Card soldier, a Mexican national who joined the US army to become a citizen only to end up dying in action. Nero absorbs his feelings and continues on his path back home to the States. He eventually reaches Beverly Hills to stay with his cousin Jesus (Ian Casselberry). From there, the story is divided between Nero’s short stay in L.A. and his wartime experience in the Middle East.

Pitts creates a dislodged atmosphere of ambivalent uncertainty throughout, which is just about the only thing that kept my attention with Soy Nero. The most entertaining sequence involves Orange Is The New Black‘s Michael Harney, who plays a random American Joe with such unpredictable verve, he keeps the tension tight and manages to make a conversation about windmills totally engrossing. But he’s in it for a moment, and from there on, the story rolls on with the intensity of a tumbleweed. And it tumbled on. It’s a cascading series of mini-disappointments as Nero goes through all the familiar motions, rarely expressing himself other than literally vocalizing his thoughts. Most of the action in Soy Nero is inert and primarily revolves around Nero slowly discovering something that’s fairly obvious from the start.

As for the second part in the war zone, it’s too staged to feel real. A nameless desert with only a couple of people posted at guard is meant to instil a sense of barren existentialism, but ends up feeling stretched out and headed towards pointlessness. Even a sort-of-funny conversation about West vs. East coast rappers feels stagnant because we’ve heard it all before. But it’s when Nero has to verbalize the absurdity of fighting this war just for a Green Card when I completely checked out, realizing that Pitts is attempting to reveal something new by recycling the old.

Rating:
6/10

The subject of white male platonic bonding is as far from today’s film trends as you can possibly get. Even with its shortcomings, then, the heart of the matter in Michael Grandage’s star-studded Genius goes refreshingly against the grain. Add to that the look in the life of American author Thomas Wolfe (whom many, I suspect, readily forget in lieu of the William Faulkner’s and Ernest Hemingway’s of his time), and a shiny spotlight on the behind-closed-doors role of the editor, and there’s plenty to bite into here. Of course, with a cast featuring Colin Firth, Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Laura Linney, and Guy Pearce, you walk in confident that if all else fails, at least the performances will keep you glued. And they do, but even beyond the curious choice of a dreary gray monochrome as the film’s primary palette, there’re a number of things that bog Genius down. The source is, as ever, the screenplay; in this case, John Logan’s adaption of A. Scott Berg’s biography Max Perkins: Editor of Genius. That said, Grandage takes the lion’s share of the blame for leaving the autopilot on his director’s chair and not trying something a little more enticing in way of presentation.

As it bizarrely shifts from black-and-white into colour, Genius opens with the famous editor of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Maxwell Perkins (Firth), receiving the bulbous first draft of what will eventually become “Look Homeward, Angel.” “Is it any good?” he asks, to which the deliveryman responds, “Good? No. But it’s unique.” That hooks him in. Of course, it turns out to be more than just good or unique, as we follow Max’ endearing routine of reading the manuscript until he reaches the end and gets that look—the title of Genius appearing to make sure there’s no confusion on our part either. During this routine, we get a passing glance at Max’s household, his wife Louise (Linney) and five daughters. Being surrounded by women all his life ends up playing a big part in the strong connection he develops with the erratic, enigmatic, and entirely insufferable Thomas Wolfe (Law).

Genius packs most of its meat into scenes featuring Wolfe and Perkins, as they bulldoze through Wolfe’s protracted manuscripts, first ‘Angel,’ and then—in a period of over 2 years!—Of Time and The River. Debating over how to cut down the chapter where his character falls in love with a blue-eyed girl is the film’s pinnacle; infinitely charming and richly insightful in the dynamic between ambitious author and economic editor. Threatening to steal the show from the two men, though, is Nicole Kidman, who pulls off a fiery and embittered turn as Aline Bernstein—a woman who left her husband and two children to be Wolfe’s full-time lover. Her whole life, it seems, revolves around this man who is too busy wrestling with his mountainous ego to return the love, and if the role weren’t so utterly thankless, Kidman surely would have soared even higher.

The two men’s flippant attitudes towards their respective other halves is never fully addressed (and, ironically enough, Max seems to care more about how much Mrs. Bernstein is suffering while completely ignoring his patronizing attitude toward his own wife). Among other issues that arise out of Logan’s screenplay are the peppered stings of obviousness throughout. The most articulate example comes when F. Scott Fitzgerald (Pearce) talks of “genius friendship,” and the double meaning of the title is neatly spoon-fed. There’s also Law’s exuberant performance as Wolfe. Showy, and something that must have been a lot of fun for the actor, but with just a bit too much pep in his step. This ultimately works against the film’s final moments.

It’s the prickly characterization of Thomas Wolfe that undoes Genius in the end. Whether by weighing the importance of the female characters (especially Kidman’s Aline, as Linney’s Louise is, sadly, much too minor to even mention) a bit more significantly, keeping Law’s performance in firmer check, or fine-tuning the screenplay so that the author’s moments of clarity have bigger impact; I feel Logan and Grandage could have handled it better. The fact that he’s not the main star leaves the film all the better for it. Firth’s mighty sensitive performance as the heart of the film keeps the strength of friendship resonating throughout, and is more than enough reason for a solid recommendation.

Poetry is in the art of subtle suggestion, the lyrical rhythm of words, and the invisible reveal of universal emotion. The more you talk about how poetic something is, the less poetic it becomes. Yang Chao’s Crosscurrent practices the opposite philosophy; literally writing out its poetry on the screen, drowning in a self-referential sea of airy profundities, and so deeply steeped in Chinese tradition that most of us unfamiliar are left one step behind with every turn.

Gao Chun (Qin Hao) travels up the Yangtze River, taking with him mysterious cargo for a shady businessman. His father recently passed, and tradition dictates that he must capture a black fish and let it die of natural causes onboard the ship in order for his father’s soul to be set free. But Gao Chun seems more interested in An Lu (Xin Zhilei), a mysterious woman he keeps seeing at every stop he makes. When he finds an anonymous book of poems on his ship, poems named after the ports along the Yangtze river, Gao Chun embarks on a (mostly inward) journey of discovery. On this so-called journey, he comes to terms with his feelings toward his father. He also remains determined to find out who this mythic woman really is and understand the spirit of the Yangtze river through the poems. Or something.

The end result kept me at bay with its molasses-like pace, overly pontificating screenplay, and awkwardly staged scenes (I’m thinking here mostly of those featuring the two central lovers). Thanks to majestic cinematography from master DP Ping Bing Lee (who is responsible for shooting the most beautiful film of last year, The Assassin) and a deeply emotive score by An Wei, it’s beautiful to look at and listen to. But I’d be surprised if the storytelling doesn’t leave many losing patience and scratching their heads.

Rating:
6/10

Psychopaths and unresolved mysteries in a grim detective tale should be surefire material for someone like the prolific Kiyoshi Kurosawa to successfully tackle, right? Especially when you consider it’s adapted from a celebrated, award-winning novel. The Japanese director’s latest film was one of ten films we’re most excited about for Berlinale. Needless to say, I was very eager to watch Creepy. Alas, the film is an unfulfilling experience; incredulously dull, unwittingly absurd and comical, and featuring the most plank-like lead performance I’ve seen in quite some time.

After a psychotic incident almost kills him, detective Takakura (Hidetoshi Nishijima) quits the force to teach criminal behavior and settle into his new home with doting wife Yasuko (Yuko Takeuchi). He randomly discovers an old unsolved case involving three missing people while Yasuko tries (and doesn’t stop trying…) to befriend their strange new neighbor, Nishino (Teruyuki Kagawa). The parallel narratives converge, obviously. Nishijima plays detective Takakura with all human dimensions scraped off, leaving a vacuous non-person with the instincts of a blind wombat to handle a complex case and keep missing every red flag possible. It’s in Kagawa (reteaming with Kurosawa after Tokyo Sonata) where Creepy, appropriately, lives and breathes. His volatile, eccentric performance is the greatest joy in an otherwise detached, lethargic, and predictable picture.

It really shouldn’t be this easy to trivialize a Kiyoshi Kurosawa film. Even his misses (Journey To The Shore, Real…) usually have something exciting to latch onto. Perhaps he’s been working a little too much? Or his efforts were mostly concentrated on his upcoming Mathieu Amalric film The Woman in the Silver Plate? Either way, apart from a couple of neat camera movements where action is allowed to speak louder than words, Creepy is so disposable it hardly feels directed at all.

Rating:
5/10

There’s no away around it, and it pains me to believe it considering how big a fan I am of his previous films, but Jeff Nichols‘ much-anticipated Midnight Special is a disappointment. How a film that packs so much promise with its director, cast, and synopsis can leave such a flat impression is something that I’ll be mulling over during Berlinale and beyond. A story of a close-knit family with a boy who’s got special powers, on the run from a religious cult and the government, pulsates with potential. But not even the commanding Michael Shannon can save this film from being Nichols’ first major misfire.

As most disappointments often do, things start off so well. With zero exposition, we’re thrust into the action of Ray (Shannon) and Lucas (Joel Edgerton, at his understated best here) on-the-run with 8-year-old Alton (Jaeden Lieberher) and before the brilliant title sequence even comes up, we’ve already got a hundred questions. Why is the young lad wearing goggles? Who are these men? Why is the government, who is making this national news, after them? The mystery is instantly gripping, and even more so once the Ranch—a cult that believes Alton’s words are gospel—gets involved. They want him because they believe he’s their savior, the FBI and the NSA are after him because they think he’s a weapon, and all Roy wants to do is bring him back to his mother (Kirsten Dunst) and make sure he’s where he’s got to be on Friday, March 6th, a.k.a. Judgement Day. Oh, and the boy speaks in tongues, has telepathic connections with radio signals, and shoots blue light from his eyes.

Basically, you’d have to check your pulse if you weren’t totally sucked in by the halfway mark. But as the mystery begins to unravel further, delusions of grandeur set in. The big mystery, all those gripping question marks, amount to one big “OK, that’s it?” shrug by the end. Adam Stone’s cinematography is excellent, the performances are predictably stellar, Nichols expertly directs a couple of stand-out sequences, but the story gets lost in a vague haze of questionable decisions and a final climax utterly deflated of the emotional oomph it’s supposed to have. It has its grand familial Spielbergian flourishes, but Midnight Special ends up being disappointingly ordinary and surprisingly forgettable.

Rating:
6.5/10

Pensive and intellectual to the core, Mia Hansen-Løve’s Things to Come is a remarkably intriguing follow-up to her previous film Eden, mostly in how natural it feels even with subjects that seem (on the surface, at least) like they couldn’t be farther apart. For those who’ve never seen the director’s 2014 EDM tale, it follows a young man (a semi-biographical extension of her real-life brother) as he grows up in the early ’90s Parisian dance music scene. Things to Come centers on a woman, decades older than Eden’s protagonist, who teaches high-school philosophy in Paris and lives with her two children and husband of 25 years. At a certain point, it becomes clear that the City of Love isn’t the only thing binding the director’s latest films. Hansen-Løve is fascinated by the idea of human growth, and her creative way of expressing is growing itself.

Things to Come is a gentle wind; it flows so effortlessly, you can almost feel the warmth of its silky texture on your skin. This is generated by the way Hansen-Løve and her DP Denis Lenoir wield the camera around with a spontaneous, fluid spirit, but much of it is also attributable to a marvelous doyenne of the acting world, who carries the entire weight of the film on her shoulders as effortlessly as ever. Isabelle Huppert has an uncanny knack of conveying a remarkably large range of emotions: turning down-to-earth into larger-than-life with one pout, one sideway glance, or an ever-so-slight intonation in a spoken word. She embodies Nathalie, the philosophy professor who is suddenly faced with a concept she’d long forgotten about. In her own words: “total freedom.” Her husband, Heinz (Andre Marcon), has left her for another woman, and she has retouched base with former student Fabien (Roman Kolinka), whose combination of youth and intellect make him especially interesting for Nathalie. In some other film, perhaps, their relationship would be replete with perverse suggestions; under Hansen-Løve’s wing, their bond is strictly platonic and cerebral.

As the film follows Nathalie and her various evolutions—adapting to a new school regime that takes a modern marketing ax to her dear philosophy, dealing with a demented mother (Edith Scob), etc.—questions are mulled over in the refined, graceful way one images an oenophile tasting vintage wine. Is there a practical place for philosophy in today’s world? What does a woman over 40, whose kids are all grown up and whose memories are now tainted by her husband’s decision, have to hold on to? Is burying yourself in intellectual thoughts and readings enough to be happy? Hansen-Løve bears her old soul through the way she deals with these questions, with just the right balance of humor and melancholy. There’s just enough style to keep it at an arms-length from being a slice-of-life picture in the cinema verité sense, but the story, the characters, and the ideas on display keep the film firmly rooted to the ground and in reality.

Women’s stories, female directors, roles for women over 45—these debates are very much at the forefront of today’s film conversations. Things to Come is a serendipitous celebration of all three. Mia Hansen-Løve, still in her 30s, shows immense sensibility and maturity in tackling insular subject matter that would have most studio heads bolting for the door. In Isabelle Huppert, she has found the perfect collaborator—an actress of incredible depth and range, who makes every frame that much more fascinating to behold. Now, when I think about Eden and Things to Come as companion pieces, it’s hard to imagine another director who handles the subject of “moving on” with the kind of delicate deftness and assuredness that Mia Hansen-Løve demonstrates.

In just a matter of days, the first major European festival will be opening its doors for the 66th time. That’s right (or, stimmt); it’s Berlinale time again and I’m flustered, delighted, honored, and absolutely beside myself to be covering the festival on the ground for Way Too Indie. It’ll be my first time around The Grey City, a first in discovering all the venues and screening rooms that look like they’re located all over the map (i.e., Berlin’s public transportation system shall be discovered as well) and my very first Berlinale! Together with my WTI cohort C.J. (who will be helping me out remotely with some reviews), I’ve gone through the extensive selections and hand-picked 10 films that, to me, sound like the hottest tickets in town during the 10 days of the fest.

Of the major-event films that I’m 100% missing, Joel and Ethan Coen’s Hail, Caesar! is the glaring standout. It’s all good, though, since Bernard has already reviewed it for you guys (and it sounds bloody fantastic). Other than that, I’ll be bouncing around press and public screenings, spilling coffee all over my notebook(s), and writing a mix of capsuled and full-length reviews. If I can squeeze in an interview or two, I most certainly will.

For those interested to see how I go about covering film festivals, jolt your memory with my Cannes 2014 coverage. Other than that, I will let the films do the talking as far as this year’s handsome-looking slate for Berlinale is concerned. Oh, I will just mention one last thing that makes this year’s Berlinale extra special: the venerable Meryl Streep will be handling Jury President duties for the first time in her legendary career. That’s pretty wunderbar no? OK, while I try to restrain myself from fitting German phrases and words into every sentence from now until February 20th, get set to start predicting who takes home the esteemed Golden Bear!

Berlin 2016: 10 Most Anticipated Films

Being 17

France has always played a prominent role in world cinema as a country with one of the richest cinematic histories out there. Now, at Berlinale, seasoned and beloved post-New Wave French auteur André Téchiné will unveil his latest and, hopefully, give us all another future French classic. His elegiac cinema hit a major peak in 1994 with the fantastic Wild Reeds, but he’s been quite prolific in the 21st century as well, working with acting heavyweights (Catherine Deneuve on more than one occasion) and directing the compelling multi-narrative AIDS drama The Witnesses in 2007. Being 17, a story about teenage tension between two boys forced to live together, is more than just a little promising as it feels like Téchiné is just about ready to peak again.

The Commune

The Carrey Mulligan film adaptation of Far From the Maddening Crowd was supposed to be Thomas Vinterberg’s big break into international directorial superstardom. At least, that’s what many of us within the film commune figured. The end result was shaky, to say the least, which is why I’ve recharged my anticipation batteries for the Dane’s next project set to compete for the Golden Bear. The Commune brings Vinterberg back to Denmark, zeroing in on a tight-knit self-appointed community where dark secrets no doubt bubble up to the surface (the kind that made the director’s previous stand-out efforts The Hunt and Festen inherently captivating). Featuring what look like riveting turns by a couple of Festen alumni in Ulrich Thomsen and Trine Dyrholm, The Commune has all the makings of the Vinterberg we know and love.

Creepy

When a director makes one of your favourite films of all-time, you can allow them some leeway. That’s been the case with me and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s films ever since I watched Kairo, his apocalyptic horror film that scared the ever living hell out of me. Since then, the quality of his output has taken a slow downward trajectory, with 2008’s Tokyo Sonata marking the last time he made a truly great film. Yet after getting let down once again in 2015 with the interminable Journey to the Shore, I will do my self-imposed duty and watch Creepy whenever it comes my way. Why? The fact that Creepy sees Kurosawa returning to more genre-based fare helps a lot, considering his thrillers tend to hit more than they miss (see the aforementioned Kairo along with Cure and Retribution). From what I know, Creepy is an adaptation from a novel centering around a detective investigating the disappearance of a family while dealing with his potentially dangerous new neighbours. Could this be a return to form for Kurosawa? Potentially. But going by his last several films, all signs point to this one being a dud. I’ll still anticipate and watch, of course; loyalty is the price auteurists have to pay. [C.J.]

Elixir

“A magical or medicinal potion,” is the first dictionary-definition of elixir that pops up, which is—interestingly enough—a spot-on description of how I feel about Russian cinema as of late. With recent gems from Andrey Zvyagintsev (Leviathan), Yuriy Bykov (The Fool), and a posthumous masterwork from Aleksey German (Hard to be a God), Russia is on a bit of tear. All this translates to me not needing much to get riled up when I see that a brand-new Russian philosophic mind-boggler will have its premiere in Berlin. Daniil Zinchenko’s Elixir promises to be a narrative-bending parable with striking visuals (a forest is featured prominently, and the film camera has had an age-long love affair with forests) about a group of people, seemingly suspended from any time or physical space, searching for the elixir of immortality. Expect biblical metaphors, contemporary parallels, and at least one metric ton of deeply cerebral food-for-thought. Mmm.

A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery

Lav Diaz’s films tend to avoid making their way into major festival competitions, usually getting relegated to sidebars or competing in fests more willing to showcase his lengthy, slow-moving works (looking at you, Locarno). So it came as a shock, and further proof of Berlin’s status as one of the top film festivals in the world, when they announced Diaz’s eight-hour A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery would play in the festival’s main competition. A brief synopsis of the film explains that it’s about the search for the body of Andres Bonifacio—described as “the Father of the Philippine Revolution”—but if this is anything like Diaz’s other films (which, based on everything we’ve seen and read so far, it is), Lullaby will have much more going on within it than what its plot suggests. A project that’s taken Diaz years to make, Lullaby looks like yet another immersive, political and contemplative work from the Filipino master. [C.J.]

Midnight Special

Speculations over when exactly Jeff Nichols’ first real big-budget studio film would premiere have been growing over the past few years. Many of us pegged 2015 as the year we’d see Midnight Special, a film that puts a father-son relationship at its epicentre, and gives it a nice (supernatural?) twist when the dad discovers his son has special gifts and they go on the run. Thankfully, the wait is over! The 66th Berlinale gets the honours of world premiering what is, for many, the most anticipated title of the festival. Watching Nichols grow out of his indie roots (Shotgun Stories, Take Shelter) and tackle an all-too common motif with his lyrical script and silky-smooth direction has us pumped and giddy. Helping Nichols tell his story is de-facto awesome Michael Shannon (may these two never stop working together), Kirsten Dunst, Joel Edgerton and the red-hot Adam Driver.

A Quiet Passion

Feels like it was only yesterday when Terence Davies’ gorgeous Sunset Song premiered at TIFF. A skip and a hop and we’re in for another brand-new Davies treat at the Berlinale (not competing though, curiously, but rather as the clear-stand out of the Special Gala). A Quiet Passion features Cynthia Nixon (who, if all goes well, will be consolidating a career boost after her searing turn in last year’s James White) in the role of beloved American poet Emily Dickinson. She was an introverted, philosophical, and wholly unconventional woman and artist, something that Davies reportedly uses to tie into the nature and movements of her poems. Even half as majestic as it sounds and it’s already special. To top off the excitement, the virtuoso director is re-teaming with his Deep Blue Sea DP Florian Hoffmeister, and working with the criminally underrated Jennifer Ehle (she plays Emily’s sister and confidante, Vinnie). Excited is an understatement.

Soy Nero

The subject of immigration and refugee hopes is going to be looming like an ominous, topical, cloud over the 66th Berlinale (get up from under that rock if you don’t know why). While many films will be tackling this hot-button subject, I’m betting all of my chips on Iranian-born, British-bred, Parisian-based Rafi Pitts to broach the subject in the most profound way. A regular at the Berlin festival, Pitts is back this year with his latest displacement drama, Soy Nero. It’s about a young Mexican man dreaming of becoming a US citizen and unusually finding himself in a Middle Eastern warzone fighting for his green card (and a clean conscience, presumably). As a regular who’s never won the coveted Bear, early rumblings suggest that it could be Pitts’ time. A multi-cultural examination of national identity handled by the kind of pedigree that Pitts boasts would’ve had me planted in my seat, regardless.

Things to Come

Mia-Hansen Løve follows up her excellent Eden by teaming up with French acting legend Isabelle Huppert to tell a story about a liberated woman who attempts to put her philosophies into practice. How do you read that and not get excited? Jumping a few decades from the youths of the Parisian clubbing scene circa 1991, the gifted director will be applying her mature sensibilities to mature characters for the first time in a while, which is going to be fascinating to watch even if Huppert wasn’t in the lead. Luckily, having someone with the screen dominance of France’s greatest actress (yeah, I said it) in the mix is the mouth-watering cherry on top. Full of promise to be one of the highlights of the year, let alone the festival, L’ Avenir (a.k.a. Things To Come) is a certified must-see.

War On Everyone

If you’ve seen either of John Michael McDonagh’s two Brendan Gleeson-starring films, Cavalry (2014) and The Guard (2011), then you know why I’m licking my chops at the idea of his next one. War On Everyone sees McDonagh expanding in more ways that one; his cast is younger (led by Alexander Skarsgård and Michael Peña, featuring up-and-comers Caleb Landry Jones and Theo James) and the setting is some miles away from his familiar Ireland. New Mexico to be exact, where we’ll follow two corrupt cops and their corrupt run-ins with local crime lords. All that laced with McDonogh’s caustic humor, sensitive direction, and pensive moral afterthoughts? Yes please.

But that’s not all!

Film festivals are an organizer’s worst nightmare; they are full of unexpected chaotic and frustrating variables. In other words, I’ll do everything possible to catch the above 10 films, but there’s always a chance that I’ll miss one or two.

But the finicky nature of the schedule leaves room for a number of other surprises. Like Eldorado XXI by Salomé Lamas, which promises breathtaking panoramic visuals and an hour-long static shot (who doesn’t love those?) of mine workers going through their day-to-days, and Boris Sans Beatrice from one of the more interesting LGBT art house directors out there, Denis Côte. This one sees the Canadian director veering toward psychological thriller territory and competing for Gold. Joining him in competition is the star-studded Alone in Berlin, featuring a pair of thesps in Emma Thomson and Brendan Gleeson circa 1940s Germany. And while we’re on star-power, I’ve certainly got my eye on Genius, with Colin Firth, Jude Law, Laura Linney (she’s back!) and Guy Pearce, set around an editorial house in 1920s New York.

We’re not going to be losing our indie focus too much, though. Eugene Greene’s The Son of Joseph, Danis Tanovic’s Death in Sarajevo, Ivo M. Ferreira’s Letters From War and Petr Kazda and Tomas Weinreb’s I, Olga Hepnarova are blinking on my radar and brimming with potential. I’ll be making every effort to catch them.

On a final note, I have to mention Susanne Bier’s The Night Manager. It’s a miniseries, co-produced by heavyweights AMC and BBC, featuring Tom Hiddleston and Olivia always-brilliant Colman, and based on a John Le Carré novel. Excuse me while I roll up my tongue off the floor. The first two episodes are set to premiere in the Special section of the festival, it’s scheduled at a tricky time, but I’ll do everything in my power to get in. Might need crutches by then, but that’s never stopped me before.

Watch this space for Way Too Indie’s coverage of what looks to be another fabulous edition of Berlinale! See you in a few days. Till then, Auf Wiedersehen!

The rhythm of the third and final chapter in Miguel Gomes‘ Arabian Nights shifts gears to the point of bewildering (as opposed to enchanting) those who are already done digesting The Desolate One. The Enchanted One is difficult (I’d even go as far as to say impossible) to fully appreciate as a standalone piece, considerably moreso than the two previous volumes. Its parts are divided up in the most irregular of ways. It begins with a prologue, before morphing almost entirely into something like a documentary about bird-trappers in Portugal. Stylistically, Gomes opts for the written word over Scheherazade’s (Crista Alfaiate) voice-over, asking his audience to literally read (a lot), or get lost. Then, suddenly, a Chinese girl (Jing Jing Guo) narrates her life-changing experience as a foreigner in Portugal, while images of people protesting fill the screen. The method in the meandering and meditative madness of Volume 3 is a mystery solved long ago, leaving the final chapter of Gomes’ masterwork somewhat disarmed of direct excitement.

While it’s considerably tougher to engage with the action here, in the bigger picture The Enchanted One is still a vital piece. For one thing, it feels important to spend a bit of intimate time with Alfaiate’s Scheherazade, even if that time ends up being somewhat disappointing. Her doubts over the effects her stories are having on the king, her sense of imprisonment, and her yearning to experience all the wonders of life outside the castle’s walls; all of these bring her character down to earth and, magically, enhance every story she told in The Restless One and The Desolate One. Once she starts roaming Baghdad’s archipelago, some of her encounters are decadent to an off-putting degree, but all it takes is one conversation with her father, the Grand-Vizier (Américo Silva), and we’re immersed again. Perhaps it’s because he reminds her of the importance of stories, and where they come from.

Scheherazade returns to her king, and begins the story about the songs of chaffinches. While it certainly looks labored, the choice of going with title passages over narration to tell this story must’ve really been no choice at all. As beautiful as Alfaiate’s voice is, it would only serve to disrupt the birds’ stirring songs and the bird-trappers’ silence in attending to their beloved passion. For The Enchanted One is at its most entrancing when it follows Chico Chapas (yep, Simao ‘Without Bowels’ from Volume 2) and other bird-trappers in Portugal—unemployed men, lonely men, men hardened by the harshness of life—in their efforts to find, nurture, and teach new songs to the little feathered crooners.

For the first time in Gomes’ Arabian Nights, Scheherazade breaks from a story and concludes it at a later point. In between, we get a brief, wholly captivating, rendition of Ling’s experience in Portugal. Her voice-over narration (in Mandarin)—as she recounts her experience with falling in love and living with a Countess, told over images of Portuguese demonstrations—is beautiful stuff. The fact that it’s so brief, and that Scheherazade returns to the chaffinches right after it, marries the incantations of the human voice with the musical chirps of the birds in a deeply profound way.

As fitting of an ending to Arabian Nights as it is—with a wondrous cover of Klatuu’s ‘Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft’ to send us off—The Enchanted One is considerably less powerful than the previous two chapters in this unforgettable saga. It would be an interesting experiment to see if its effects would be any different in a single sitting of all three volumes. Viewed as a single entity, though, it’s the least accessible piece of work Miguel Gomes—occupant of interplanetary craft—that he has ever done. In this way, it also feels like the most personal section of Arabian Nights; an impression that’s supported by a final, heartfelt, message from the director himself. As strong a case The Restless One and The Desolate One make as stand-alone films, The Enchanted One embraces all three into one inseparable whole. A whole suffused with a singular poetic imagination, confirming—as all great pieces of film art do—the powerful storytelling medium in cinema.

Originally published on October 2nd, 2015 as part of our coverage for the New York Film Festival.

We plunge into the second volume of Miguel Gomes‘ Arabian Nights without the introductory support of prologues. Only the familiar yellow titles remind us that what we’re about to see is not an adaptation, but an inspiration. Told through fictionalized accounts of actual events that occurred in Portugal between 2013 and 2014, events which left many citizens even more impoverished than before. As soon as The Desolate One ended, only a few fully formed thoughts rose out of the rubble left of my mind. Namely, I silently thanked the director for dividing Arabian Nights into three volumes, for it would be highly detrimental to the overall experience if the audience were tasked with watching all six hours in one sitting.

Partitioned into individual stories—some with multiple narrative tangents of their own—the cinematic wealth of information in Arabian Nights is best digested in fragmented doses. The Desolate One, with its three vastly varied reflections of soul-squeezing desolation, might turn out to be the most emblematic of this richness. A point which—unless I find Volume 3 to be some otherworldly masterpiece—no doubt played a part in selecting this particular volume as Portugal’s Oscar entry for Best Foreign Language Film. For even the most emotionally barren tale here, about a reclusive villager of ill-repute on the run from local authorities, is draped in pensive mystery and fried in sun-dried humor. Simao (Chico Chapas) is a son of a bitch, and part of a population of people who are rarely represented on screen. Throughout his story, Gomes constantly pits our perceptions of him and his actions (often bizarre but harmless) with legendary rumors of evil and violence about him, including the reason why the authorities are hounding him. It’s a story of evil full of curiosities, imbued in the kind of lonesomeness found under the surface of so many Westerns.

The second story, with a Judge (Luísa Cruz, pulling off the most memorable performance in Arabian Nights so far) presiding over a case that gets ridiculously out of hand is, in all respects, an intense masterpiece of imagination. Arabian Nights hits the peak of its seductive powers in ‘The Tears of the Judge’ from the increasingly bizarre buildup of crimes and passive-aggressive blame-avoidance and Sayombhu Mukdeeprom’s purplish tinctures cinematography which adds to the phantasmagoria in the air. This chapter is the epicenter of the entire piece. The Portuguese court system gets a fantastical make-over in this story; a smorgasbord of cultures, traditions, time periods, and social classes. It’s bonkers magic realism with an endless lifespan, peppered with mercurial humor, and momentous beyond words.

The third and final tale in The Desolate One immediately recalls Gomes’ beautiful Tabu, thanks to the familiar faces of Isabel Muñoz Cardoso and Teresa Madruga. Centered around a block of apartments, ‘The Owners of Dixie’ is in the lonely spirit of Simao’s story, yet it borrows heavily from the imaginative streak from in the previous chapter. A woman finds a mysterious dog which uncannily resembles her old one, and gives it to her friends in an effort to add some joy into their depressing lives. The dog goes from owner to owner, and is the adorable witness to a perceptible sense of nostalgia and dilapidated human spirit, held delicately together by that strange little thing called love.

My mind turned to rubble by the end because it completely succumbed to the film’s undeniable charms. The Desolate One continues where The Restless One left off, building a bridge from literature to cinema. And in more ways than one, this chapter of Scheherazade’s storytelling edges closer to the cinematic end of that bridge. As an art form that envelops all others unto itself. It’s similar to a piece of classical music; here’s the midsection that’s more abstract, more contemplative, and slower in sinking in, but only because it’s slightly more profound in execution and style than what came before. With its mesmeric mixture of genres and moods, a superb screenplay and inspirational camera work and composition (naked Brazilian ladies sunbathing on the rooftop, in one jaw-dropping shot), The Desolate One may just be the most haunting movement of Gomes’ glorious, deeply melancholic, symphony. The Enchanted One is the next and final volume, but it’s already clear that we’re in the midst of the director’s magnum opus.

Originally published on October 1st, 2015 as part of our coverage for the New York Film Festival.

It takes 20 or so minutes before we see the vibrantly playful title of the first chapter in Miguel Gomes‘ latest project, all bedecked in gold; Arabian Nights: Volume 1, The Restless One. Before it; a prologue interweaves three narrative threads in a hypnotically potent way, gluing the intended audience to the screen. First-person accounts of Portugal’s declining shipbuilding industry, a wasp epidemic, and a film director (Gomes himself) who is plagued by the apparent stupidity of his own idea for his next film. That is, a metaphorical linkage of the infamous “One Thousand And One Nights” fairytale structure to his interpretation of Portugal’s economic crisis. This meta-documentary approach with the prologue is odd and endearing, but it resonates, above all else, because of its raw honesty.

A single shot stands a cut above the rest from this introduction. A wonderfully long wide shot of a large group of people seeing off a ship from Viana’s seaport, as the voice(s)-over swing between shipyard employees and a self-made wasp exterminator. It’s pregnant with a kind of romanticized melancholia that has become one of Gomes’ signature traits, and augurs—before we’re even introduced to Scheherazade (Crista Alfaiate)—how the director might just pull off his “stupid” idea in remarkable fashion. Indeed, from the moment we delve into the first story about ‘The Men With Hard-Ons,’ to the emotional precipice we’re left with by the end of ‘The Swim of the Magnificent,’ Gomes proves The Restless One is everything under the sun, but never, ever, stupid.

Scheherazade’s unique way of avoiding imminent death at the hands of her mad king husband has attracted Gomes to use her method in order to create a work of surreal, humorous, and vigorously compelling cinematic art. For those unaware of the Arabian Nights premise, a quick brief: the beautiful Scheherazade takes it upon herself to stop her Persian king’s violent ways, a man with a reputation for murdering his wives after taking their virginity. Each night, right before he’s about to sentence her to death, his new wife starts telling him a story, only to stop it halfway. The king, unable to bear the thought of not knowing how the story ends, spares her life for another day so that she may finish recounting it the next night. This surrender to the power of storytelling courses through Gomes’ entire filmography, so it’s easy to see why he’s so attracted to Scheherazade’s method.

Getting into too much detail about the first three stories in The Relentless One would be the equivalent of spoiling the twist in a Shyamalan movie, so I’m not doing it. Suffice it to say that, through finespun camera work, unostentatious cinematography by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom (Apichatpong Weerasethakul‘s DP), and Gomes’ screenplay (written with Telmo Churro and Mariana Ricardo), the allegories of Portugal’s unemployment crisis and her government’s negotiations with the European troika are generated with an insoluble type of electric charge. Though not an actor’s showcase by any means, Adriano Luz (who plays the “haggard romantic” Luis in the third story) and Dinarte Branco (who delivers the greatest monologue of the entire chapter as Lopes in the first story) are vital to The Restless One‘s emotional undercurrent. One that’s in constant flux between love for a country and rage at the state it’s in.

Through all the Luis Buñuel-esque hijinks and splashes of sheer brilliance, moments stick out. An intensely languid tracking shot of a man describing his experience as someone “unemployed by circumstance”. A preadolescent love triangle composed in a humorously exaggerated version of Generation Y SMS language. A man remembering the time he got his finger stuck in Biology class—a memory orchestrated by the most effective shot transition in the whole film. Moments of joy, devastation, despair, love, acceptance, and washed-up whales that explosively birth mermaids. You don’t need to see all three volumes to understand that Arabian Nights sees Miguel Gomes at his most ambitious, exposing his artistic soul in the most honest way he knows how. The realism of the film’s prologue is contrasted with the surrealism of everything that comes after it, but both share Gomes’ impulse to lure the viewer in through the power of story, intimate and epic alike.

The second story, ‘The Cockerel And The Fire,’ is decidedly weaker than the others, or at least the first half of it is, which impacts the glorious momentum of The Relentless One. Anticipation for the second volume, The Desolate One, is no less palpable for it. Even more significantly, the emotions evoked by watching how low fantasy embraces socioeconomics in one of the year’s boldest cinematic events, remain none the wiser.

Originally published on September 30th, 2015.

Documentarian Frederick Wiseman is 85 years old. An odd stat to begin a review with, granted, but In Jackson Heights is no ordinary documentary and in thinking about it, my knee-jerk reaction is to start with something personal. With age comes experience, understanding, and a widened scope of the world around you. For all the exceptional documentaries Wiseman has been making since the ’60s, there is a weighted atmosphere in his latest one that could easily mark it as his magnum opus precisely because of all the things that come with age. Bear in mind that it’s not easy to write ‘easily’ when it comes to Wiseman, especially with the man’s latest works—the riveting At Berkley (2013) and majestic National Gallery (2014)—ranking among the best of his prolific career. But In Jackson Heights is kaleidoscopic in a most humanitarian and intimate sense; it’s the observance of beautiful forms in culture and everyday life. In this case: a bustling neighborhood in Queens, New York, one of the most culturally diverse areas in the whole world, proudly speaking 167 languages as a community. It’s the Tower of Babel converging on Roosevelt Avenue, with Wiseman’s camera observing, documenting, and eternally reflecting, and with the viewer vicariously experiencing a gamut of life’s pleasures and pains.

The documentary is an ode to the bonds of community, where the villain is an off-screen American capitalist system, and the victims are small businesses, the LGBT enclaves, and the illegal immigrants striving for the same humanitarian means of life afforded by their American neighbors. The heroes are found in the young people who create community organizations to fight the thwarted system of the BID (Business Improvement District), or those brave enough to speak up, share their stories, and forge bonds. Wiseman takes us into a commemoration gathering for a murdered Latino member of the LGBT community, Muslim prayer halls, Holocaust remembrance ceremonies in synagogues, tattoo parlors, concert halls, and gay clubs. We listen in on a conference call where bureaucratic jargon bungles the matter of redistricting schools (not to mention the implications that has on the children and the parents). We listen how a 98-year-old woman justifies her sour mood to a group of friends, in one of the many scenes that test your tear ducts (which have already been weakened earlier by a woman’s spontaneous encounter with a Christian group on the streets earlier on).

In Jackson Heights runs for over three hours, but you’re so immersed into the people’s stories, that it literally feels like half an hour. Musical interludes, from street performers and open-air concerts, punctuate the mood like a chorus in a Greek tragedy, imbibing the whole experience with a surplus of emotion and an embarrassment of cultural richness. At times, it’s the silent and bloody behind-the-scenes look at how halal meat is processed that glues us in. In others, it’s Joe’s birthday, an upstanding member of the Jackson Heights community who gets a heartfelt birthday speech from councilman Daniel Dromm. Most of all, it’s the soul-crushing stories from the trans people, illegal immigrants, and small business owners that will bulldoze you into silent submission. But, then, peeping into a classroom of would-be yellow cab drivers will have you grinning from ear to ear.

There’s hardly a misplaced frame, so formally balanced and meticulously crafted is In Jackson Heights. Exterior shots of the vibrant and colorful neighborhood are juxtaposed beautifully with the interior locales. Moments of contemplation nicely sway between long conversational stretches. And for all of life’s trials and tribulations witnessed through stories of discrimination and inhumanity spelled between the lines of fine print, there is plenty of kindness from strangers and reassuring and laugh-out-loud moments of grace and joy. If there’s one thing I feel lacking, it’s that Wiseman could’ve kept his camera a little longer on some people for an even wider spectrum. As such, one gets the impression that In Jackson Heights is a neighborhood where 167 languages are spoken, but mostly Spanish and English is heard.

Harping too much on something like that, however, is biting the hand that feeds. And Frederick Wiseman, with his experience, understanding, and widely empathetic scope, has given us an almost indescribable amount of food-for-thought. Calling In Jackson Heights important would be the biggest understatement of the year, for the greatest thing about getting so immersed with the conversations and quotidian glimpses are the little jolts (usually in the form of goose-bumps) reminding you that this is real life you’re watching. Who needs talking heads and central conflicts? Not this doc. You feel unequivocally more connected to the person next to you, and even the stranger you’ll pass by on the street the next day. And isn’t that what it’s all about?

Master craftsman Hou Hsiao-Hsien, whose last film was over seven years ago (Flight of the Red Balloon), returns to the world cinema stage with The Assassin. It’s a grand return, one that has left many cinephiles breathless, stunned, and slightly paralyzed in its wake. For the magic he managed to conjure on screen, Hou received the Best Director award at Cannes. It’s his first dabble in the wuxia genre (traditional martial art), an integral part of Chinese culture and art history, and thanks to his perfectionist dedication to the language of cinema, history will no doubt look back on his contribution as one that’s strengthened this tradition. The immediate predecessors that come to mind, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero, and House of Flying Daggers, have all been expertly cut down and defeated by the new champion of 21st century wuxia. You might have to go all the way back to the 70s, and the films of King Hu, to find a matching opponent.

Of course, I write the martial arts analogies with a cheeky smile. Hou Hsiou-Hisen’s new picture is no way competing with Ang Lee and Zhang Yimou’s films. It’s just that The Assassin is building uncharacteristic castles in a familiar sandbox, and the result is a film simultaneously beholden to a long-standing tradition and levitating in its own league. We use ‘slice of life’ to describe films in contemporary settings, dealing with contemporary problems and usually shot in that shaky cinéma vérité style, but Hou transports us to 8th century China so completely that he manages to achieve something altogether remarkable. A slice of Tang Dynasty life, shot in the equivalent of an 8th century imperial shake: the methodical to-and-fro.

With the mise-en-scène so ornately defined, and the camera swaying as if it’s a talisman suspended on an invisible string, Ping Bin Lee’s cinematography acts as sprinkled faerie dust that completes the spell. The result is total submission and immersion into the world of The Assassin. ‘Pure cinema’ is a term often overused, but here we have a film that redefines purity on screen from one everlasting moment to the next, and because of the overwhelming magnificence of image, majesty of light, and meditation of pace, the plot of the film is tough to follow on the first go-around. Made all the tougher because of Hou’s (and the four(!) other writers credited with the story) unconventional use of expository dialogue, unannounced introductions of characters and events, and lack of concern with explanation. If one imagines The Assassin as an opera, where the flow of images overwhelm the watcher just as singers’ voices do the listener, then consider the following couple of paragraphs a libretto.

The setting is 8th century China, during the decline of the Tang Dynasty, where the province of Weibo has distanced itself as the strongest threat to the Imperial Court. Tian Ji’an (Chang Chen) is the current lord of Weibo, and cousin to our assassin, Yinniang (Shu Qi). Their shared history began when Yinniang’s mother, an imperial princess, married Ji’iang’s father, in order to seal Weibo’s promise of not attacking the Court. The two children grew close and were even betrothed to one another, but when a Ming lord wanted to forge an alliance with Weibo under the condition that it be enforced by marriage, the Princess had to break her promise to Yinniang, and Tian Ji’ian was married to Lady Tian (Zhou Yun). Rebellious to the point of putting her own life in danger, Yinniang was sent away to live under the tutelage of a Master nun (Sheu Fang-Yi). The nun taught Yinniang the ways of the sword over the years, but after failing to kill a target because he was in the presence of his son, she puts the young woman’s heart to the test. Yinniang must return to Weibo, after so many years have passed, and kill Tian Ji’an.

Most of that is history, told in stoical monologues by Yinniang’s aunt, her mother’s twin sister (Mei Yong), or by Tian Ji’ian to his concubine Huji (Hsin-Ying Hsieh). The plot becomes purposefully mystified by three narrative threads that are mostly woven between frames. The first is about one of Ji’ian’s generals, Tian Xing (Lei Zhen-Yu), who arouses panic in the Weibo council and must be escorted off the premises by the Lord Provost, Ji’an’s and Yinniang’s uncle (Ni Da-Hong). The second concerns a report given to Lady Tian about Huji’s faked period blood, which in turn introduces a mysterious sorcerer (Jacques Picoux). And the third is the involvement of a nameless mirror-polisher (Satoshi Tsumabuki), who ends up playing a key role in Tian Xing’s escort. Oh, how can I forget the nameless, masked assassin who gets in Yinniang’s way?

The narrative is as cloudy as the sky that presides like a silent judge over all of these activities. Steeped in Chinese mysticism and tradition, what maneuvers emotions in The Assassin are jades, mojo’s, tales of songbirds, and unspoken acts of mercy and kindness. Dialogue isn’t used as exposition for the action we are about to see or have seen, but exposition of events long since transpired. The very first thing we see in the film is a couple of donkeys, grazing and foreshadowing the kind of attention Hou will pay nature over the next two hours. One particularly jaw-dropping take sees Yinniang meeting her Master on a mountaintop, where the movement of the clouds is as important to the scene as the blocking, dialogue, performance, and cinematography. This all-encompassing and punctilious observation is no doubt going to mystify those audience members who are so accustomed to watching a plot-driven movie. And yet, those who pay careful attention know The Assassin‘s main plot is comprehensible, albeit one fully grasped on repeat viewings.

That’s not meant to be a slight to anyone who left The Assassin slightly confused the first time out. It’s meant as a compliment to Hou and his team – from production and costume designer Wen Ying-Huang to editor Chih-Chia Huang, cinematographer Lee and all the actors (most notably Shu Qi, who embodies Yinniang so seamlessly) – for transporting us back into the past so expertly. Every piece of fabric, every lantern, and every leaf in this film feels like it belongs with purpose, carrying within it its own rich history. Hou’s takes are long, and his camera movements are never rushed, but life’s current flows through the frames of The Assassin–-in the way her uncle looks at Yinniang, behind the curtains of Huji’s quarters, in Lady Tuan’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it smile…—suffusing the picture with a mythical potency that feels remarkably present. The volatile nature of the narrative is thus a reflection of life as the ancient philosopher Lao Tzu meant it: “Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” By abiding to this philosophy so wholeheartedly, and crafting his world so meticulously, Hou has attained the rarity of a perfect film.

Once one gets past Laurie Anderson’s peculiar narration, replete with Shatner Pauses, one will find much to munch on in the experimental artist’s dreamy documentary, Heart of a Dog. The mind might even wrap itself around the notion of oneness itself. Drinking in Anderson’s process as a well of sweet, captivating connectivity can spark thoughts on what makes us who we are, the most philosophical question of all. “Where is the brilliant philosophy?” repeats one of the stroboscopic title cards, along with a line that had a profound effect on me the moment I read it: “I had promised my heart so many things I had never delivered. It lived inside me now, suspicious and small.” Relate to the power of Anderson’s poetry, and you’ll start thinking the answer to that first question is being projected right in your face.

Anderson weaves her thoughts together like a person in deep thought, and unpacking her digressions is like Christmas come early for dreamers, dog lovers, and artists. As the title implies, much of the documentary is Anderson’s expression of tender love and inquisitive curiosity about her Rat Terrier, Lolabelle. What she must be thinking about when a hawk flies down towards her. The activities she did when she became blind. It’s an inquisition of a relationship, which in turn grows tangents that connect Homeland Security motto’s with something Wittgenstein might write, the immediate post-9/11 mood in Anderson’s native New York, and her love of Francisco Goya’s ‘The Dog’ from his Black Paintings series. Towering above everything is a sense of closure (not spoiling it!), which steeps the whole project in a tall glass of melancholic tonic.

Anderson has a lot of fun with the aesthetics as well, which makes Heart of a Dog all the more attractive. Superimposing Goya’s “gold void” over a variety of personal images, for example. Or remembering a dear friend who died much too young, with animated hammers hammering in his ears after his brain had already flatlined. It begins with the artist recalling a dream she once had, and ends with a precious memory regained; everything in between is an avant-garde hybrid of style, braided in deeply personal and profoundly pensive reflections. The only obstacle for total immersion is, ironically, Anderson’s own narration. Get past that, though, and you’ll be swimming in the lakes of a riveting, multiplex mind. So refreshing.

Can we have more musicals like this, please? Rufus Norris adapts Alecky Blythe’s and Adam Cork’s stage musical, London Road, for the big screen, and the result is a jolt of much-needed electricity into a dreadfully deflated genre. It tells the true story of the “Suffolk Strangler” murders that shook a tiny community in Ipswcich. An alarming number of prostitutes started blemishing the refined reputation of this quaint little British town, until someone took it upon themselves to start killing these women. Now, murder and crime get added to prostitution and the residents decide to do something about it.

What makes this such a mirthful experience is the genius choice of turning real-life testimony from witnesses and bystanders into songs, verbatim. In doing so, every “um,” “like,” and “you know” become integral parts of the lyrics, blending tragedy and comedy into wholly unique ways. The magnificent Olivia Colman and Tom Hardy are the name-actors, but Hardy’s only in it for a minute, while Colman thankfully gets to do, and sing, much more. The real stars, however, are the interviewees and the TV anchors, whose harmonies over Adam Cork’s various pop and dance beats give London Road its verve and vitality. A musical unlike any other, you’d do well to seek this one out as soon as it plays near you.

There is a quiet and unassuming power in Igor Drljaca’s The Waiting Room, but it’s severely lacking in one crucial thing: character. The story follows Jasmin (Jasmin Geljo), a comic from Sarajevo who emigrated to Toronto at the wake of the Yugoslavian civil war. Already 20 years in Toronto, with a wife (Ma-Anne Dionisio) and ten-year old son Daniel (Filip Geljo), Jasmin struggles to find honorable work and get meaning back into his life. Going from one bad audition to another for typecast Slavic gangster roles (which paves the way for a particularly hilarious moment in one scene), Jasmin slowly begins to reminisce about a particularly haunting moment from his past, which involves his estranged daughter Sonja (Masa Lizdek).

Drljaca’s script requires more substance in order for these characters to feel more three-dimensional. There are plenty of wonderfully constructed scenes, confidently taking their time to ingrain themselves into the viewer’s mind. One particular moment involves Jasmin’s participation in an art installation, and another towards the end during a soft revelation of a major twist. But The Waiting Room has a stagnant rhythm that plagues so many indie films, which stops the viewer from emotionally investing. Beautiful shot and scored, it’s commendable for attempting something different with the theme of immigration, but threatens to dry up all of one’s patience by the end, thanks to its glacial pace and sparse characterization.

Need a refresher? If so, be sure to read our reviews for Part 1 & 2, and Part 3 & 4 first.

“Are you happy with the house? I’d like to think it was worth it.”

The words of F. Scott Fitzgerald hang over the final two chapters of David Simon’s and William F. Zorzi’s Show Me A Hero like the Sword of Damocles. Except, in this case, fear hangs over everyone equally, not just those in positions of power. Part 5 and 6 spans events from early ’91 to late ’93, and with this being the final two chapters, the narrative has naturally shifted away from the confines of the judge’s chambers and noisy council meetings, in order to focus on the tenants we familiarized ourselves with from the West side of the Parkway. Hank Spallone (Alfred Molina) is mostly mentioned by name, and seen a brief two times in the whole two hours, before the new mayor Terry Zaleski (Daniel Sauli) takes office. Not much time is spent with Zaleski, but enough to know that he’s the shiftiest Democrat presented in the entire miniseries, and the biggest nemesis to our hero, Nick (Oscar Isaac). Judge Sands (Bob Balaban) and Michael Sussman (Jon Berenthal), so instrumental in getting the housing bill passed, don’t make a single appearance, while Oscar Newman’s (Peter Riegart) greatest contribution is to hand over the housing counselling to the most important new character, Robert Mayhawk (The Wire alumnus, Clarke Peters).

Parts 5 and 6 distance themselves by some margin from the politics that dominated proceedings in the previous parts, and is mostly split between two narrative strings. The first follows Nick, desperately seeking recognition and a way back into office. The more he fails, the deeper he sinks into an egotistical vortex of self-loathing, even costing Nay’s (Carla Quevedo) job by playing political games with her bosses (only to eventually realize that the only one being played is him). At the beginning of Part 5, his friendship and alliance with Jim Surdoval (Michael Stahl-David) is severed because Jim is backing Zaleski for mayor. Vini Restiano (Winona Ryder), the friend Nick comforted in Part 2 when she got shut out of politics, makes a powerful comeback in Parts 5 and 6, only to find herself in direct opposition with Nick when he decides to run against her as City Council President. When she asks him, with tearful resentment, if he really believes in anything but himself, the gist of the message is clear; the ugly, cruel game of politics is frightfully masochistic in nature. As I mentioned in last week’s recap, the strong sense of the corrupt nature of politics being the primal theme of the show rings deafeningly true all the way to the soul-crushing conclusion. For those who have resisted the urge to Wikipedia the real Nick Wasicsko, I will refrain from spoiling, but, with Fitzgerald’s words in mind, you can probably guess what happens.

The second narrative thread is the only one with some hopefulness, though not before it gets tangled up in fear. Billie (Dominique Fishback)—who gets little sympathy from me and whose storyline remains the most ubiquitously irritating thanks to her godawful choice in partner—, Norma (LaTanya Richardson Jackson), who is still reluctant to mingle with white people, and Doreen (Natalie Paul), who has come a long way from her junkie days, all move to the new low-income townhouses. Doreen gets involved with the new local community and through that befriends Mary (Catherine Keener). That’s right, what we expected all along finally materializes at the beginning of Part 6: Mary officially switches sides when she starts to focus on those trying to do right by their neighborhoods and be upstanding citizens. Meanwhile, Carmen (Ilfenesh Hadera) remains stuck in the projects because her name is put on the waiting list for the next houses, but her story’s conclusion is appropriately cathartic all the same. Mayhawk councils a team of volunteers (Mary included) on how to approach and help the new neighbours assimilate themselves into their new surroundings, coyly saying at one point that they’ll be learning more about themselves than the new families. As expected, the predominantly white community doesn’t take kindly to the new residents at first, instilling distrust, fear, and prejudice; all the more reason why the final image is a ray of sunshine.

The tone of the show’s final hours is very much a somber one. As with the episodes that preceded, Simon, Zorzi and Paul Haggis show off their artistic range with equal touches of subtle deftness and emotional hemorrhaging. Recall—and try to do so without getting goosebumps—the final montage of Bruce Springsteen’s eternally tender “Lift Me Up.” The fate of every character reminding us that these are real people’s stories. Then consider the opening of Part 6, mid-sentence in Mayor Zaleski’s speech, “-which for Yonkers has been a long time coming.” We know what he’s talking about, and thanks to this brilliantly understated opening, we also know he doesn’t care.

No, the only one who truly cares is Nick, and there are two profound scenes in these two hours where we see what all that care gets him. The first is when he visits the lottery spin to see which lucky tenants get to live in the new houses. He sits in the back, genuinely happy for the people, but slowly realizes that no one knows who he is and that he’s got no business being there other than to satisfy his own sense of pride. The second is when he literally goes door to door of the new houses to speak with tenants directly, to see how they’re feeling, perhaps get a modicum of gratitude. He gets the door slammed in his face until one person does recognize him. Blind Norma. It’s powerful stuff and the beating heart of Show Me A Hero. A man who jeopardized his political career to get the housing bill passed, but made the mistake of expecting a handshake instead of being satisfied with the work itself.

Show Me A Hero stands next to Simon’s previous sensational miniseries, The Corner (2000) and Generation Kill (2008), and under the auspices of his crowning achievement with Zorzi, The Wire, as essential television that drills into the truth of people. People with flaws and strengths on display, equally weighed. What happens to a good man when he gets a taste of that sweet poison of power? How does one navigate the moment in a person’s career when real change becomes a probable reality? These are the heavyweight questions we’ve come to expect of creator David Simon. The kind that keeps the Sword hanging above all our heads, and that will surely keep me revisiting Show Me A Hero again and again.

9.5/10

Just tuning in? Catch up with our review for Part 1 and 2 here.

“How come the only people talking about this housing thing are white?”

By the end of Part 2, we left Mayor Nick Wasicsko (Oscar Isaac) confounded over the mess the housing crisis created. With council members Henry Spallone (Alfred Molina) and Nick Longo (Jim Bracchitta), along with two others, refusing to budge and “give in” to the supreme court’s order, Nick must either watch his city go bankrupt while the “fantastic four” assholes (an amazingly timed nickname for the four naysaying councilmen) are held in contempt and face jail time, or do whatever he can to turn whoever he can around and get the deal passed.

Part 3 of Show Me A Hero begins with Nick on the phone seeking help from fellow democrats in New York and getting shut out. It ends with the same Maalox-chugging prologue that began proceedings in Part 1. Nick goes through another mayoral election, this time losing to none other than Spallone, who, of course, used the housing crisis as a way to get voters in the booth. One of the highlights from this mid-section is in Spallone’s victory speech, when he mumbles how they’d have to abide by the supreme court’s decision if all else fails and Catherine Keener’s Mary is like, “um, what’d he just say?” It’s that David Simon blink-and-you’ll-miss-it wit on display again, this time aimed at the cruel nature of political games and the wishful thinking of drawing a line between people’s core issues and the politics that govern them. That line is never straight and rarely connects both ends.

A couple of characters go through major transformations in Parts 3 and 4. Starting with Nick, naturally, who manages to make the crucial vote pass in council before losing the mayoral election, and moves into a beautiful house with Nay (Carla Quevedo) whom he finally marries. He spirals out of politics for the time being. He visits his father’s grave, and says,—echoing Vini Restiano (Winona Ryder) from Part 2—“As miserable as it is when you’re in the middle of things, at least you’re in the middle of things!” One gets the strong sense that the corrupt nature of the political game, and its consequences on the person trying to do an effective job, is the primal theme hiding behind the housing crisis in Show Me A Hero. A point subtly elucidated when someone quotes the show’s title to Jim (Michael Stahl-David), who seems convinced the line comes from Fitzgerald the politician of this-or-the-other district, and not, the Fitzgerald. These people can’t think past their own congressional bubble, and it doesn’t take a Ph.D. in Political Science to figure out what Simon and William F. Zorzi think about that.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the parkway, Doreen’s (Natalie Paul) character arc bends the furthest. Now a single mother, she goes from a decrepit welfare hotel in upstate New York, back to the projects, writes an emotional letter to her son at the end of Part 3, and becomes a full-time junkie in Part 4. Her father, noticing the latter, leaves her be and tells her to reach out whenever she needs to. Could this be Simon and Zorzi telling us, in ever-so-subtle ways, what part of the problem is? In any case, Doreen’s turn to drugs (considering her surrounding) isn’t as suspect as her father’s lack of care, but neither is as surprising as the slew of bad decisions made by a new character. Billie (Dominique Fishback) is a teenager who decides she doesn’t want to go school or work anymore because she doesn’t feel like it. She refuses to listen to her poor mother, and instead, meets a punk at a party, and gets pregnant. That she’s supposedly in love with this idiot comes second to her pretty horrendous life decisions, all the more confirmed when he gets caught and locked up in Rikers. If there are any redeeming qualities to Billie, I’m not seeing them yet, so here’s hoping for some life-changing decisions in the next two parts.

At least Mary continues to grow in redeeming qualities. After Nick’s futile phone conversations at the beginning of Part 3, we see her getting interviewed—hello, Catherine Keener’s highlight reel—over her thoughts on the housing. Her worries are legitimate and not covering up any interior racism, but over the course of the next two hours we begin to see her slowly lose faith in Spallone, and starting to second-guess her protests over housing units that are happening whether she likes it or not. Moreover, she begins to see that not everyone from the other side of town has much of a different lifestyle. In tandem, a conversation with Norma (LaTanya Richardson Jackson) reveals that some black people are just as hesitant to live with middle-class whites as the other way around; preferring, as she says, to “be with her own.” It’s a sentiment that’s all-too-easy to understand, with no room for naïve beliefs like, ‘why can’t we all just get along?’ It’s Simon, Zorzi, and Paul Haggis reminding us again of how complex society is: people fear change and intrusion in their comfort zones, regardless of any big-picture good intentions. The conclusion to Part 4, after Bruce Springsteen obliges with another suitable episode-closer in the form of “Secret Garden,” shows us just how ugly this fear can become.

With Parts 3 and 4, Show Me A Hero continues its strong bid as some of the best television of 2015. If there were any doubts around Isaac’s performance after the first two hours, they’re surely put to bed with these parts: the man is a shoe-in for Emmy and Golden Globe nominations and a strong candidate for wins. My only hope is that Keener and Molina (who is full of frame-worthy facial expressions and GIF-tastic gestures) get recognized too. What I chew on after these two parts is how seamlessly deeper Simon, Zorzi and Haggis go into the political belly of the beast, without grandstanding in the name of democracy. It’s a given that everyone’s got the right to a decent home, and that the people of Yonkers are turning more and more ugly with their racism, but there’s a plethora of problems on the other side of the parkway and it’s good they aren’t going ignored or justified. Oscar Newman (Peter Riegart) gets his 15 minutes in these two hours, bringing forward a crucial question on how different structures of these housing units could lead to crime and disenfranchisement. And, as fun as it is to watch Jon Bernthal huff, puff and roll his eyes, one wonders if Sussman is helping or hindering the cause. In any case, a healthy dose of debate has been injected to both sides of the argument in Parts 3 and 4, while the flawless narrative progression and supremely immersive characterizations continue.

The stage is set for Part 5 and 6 to conclude the proceedings with a bang, but it wouldn’t be a David Simon show without a few whimpers on the way. I expect nothing less, and won’t be surprised if we get more.

Rating: 9/10

“Hey, this mayor thing…when’s the fun part start?”

In the opening moments of the new HBO miniseries, Show Me A Hero, so much is said without a single word spoken. A man parks in front of a cemetery, panting and hyperventilating before chugging two-thirds of a Maalox (antacid to treat dyspepsia), and ignoring his beeping pager. He leaves the car, pukes out the Maalox, and—in a brilliantly framed shot—walks into the distance while his pager flashes “911.” He sits by a gravestone marked “Wasicsko,” stressed, paranoid, and clearly at the end of his rope. Politics aside, these opening moments ensure one thing: writers David Simon and William F. Zorzi (ex-Baltimore Sun journalists and masterminds behind the greatest TV show of the century thus far, The Wire), director Paul Haggis (Crash, Third Person), and star Oscar Isaac (sizzling like a comet towards the A-list after his unforgettable turn in Inside Llewyn Davis) are going to make Show Me A Hero one of the most talked-about television events of the year through sheer artistic integrity.

That it has a timely political subject at its epicenter guarantees discussion and makes it all the more enticing. It’s the late 1980s, and we’re in Yonkers, New York. Now, depending on how much pre-hand knowledge one starts with—specifically concerning the public housing crisis that forms the molten-hot fulcrum of this story—one will either be affirmed or informed for the first couple of hours. Thanks to Simon and Zorzi’s experience in encyclopedic storytelling structure, the groundwork is laid out and easy enough to follow as long as you pay close attention. Yonkers is divided by the Saw Mill River Parkway; on the East side live the affluent, middle-to-upper class of predominantly white citizens, while the West side is made up of the housing projects populated by the predominantly non-white and poor. After federal judge Leonard Sand (Bob Balaban) issues an order to the City of Yonkers to install 200 units of low-income housing on the East side of the parkway, the middle-class community raise hell for the City’s incumbent mayor Angelo Martinelli (Jim Belushi) and his councilmen and women, among them 27-year-old Democrat Nick Wasicsko (Isaac), Republican Henry Spallone (Alfred Molina), and Council president Vinni Restiano (Winona Ryder). Hell is raised, not because of outward racism or prejudice, as one of the citizens tries to articulate, but because the property of their own houses for which they’ve worked hard to obtain and maintain will fall, while people who don’t make the kind of money they do get a federal free-pass to live in the same neighborhoods.

The first two hours of the show introduce us to the principal characters from both sides of the Parkway, and the personal and political struggles they carry. Martinelli is facing an election year and has grown increasingly unpopular with voters because he refused to appeal Sand’s housing mandate, while Wasicsko becomes convinced he’s got a shot to become the country’s youngest mayor, because he has, crucially, voted for the appeal. Meanwhile, his private life is imbued with an adorable romantic subplot as he courts and wins over a councilman’s new secretary, Nay Noe (Carla Quevedo). In Sand’s chambers, the NAACP are represented by a passionate and cynical Michael Sussman (Jon Bernthal) who pleads with the judge to make good on his promise and force the housing on the city, even if he doesn’t have the council’s approval. While housing expert Oscar Newman (Peter Riegart), who has canvassed the layout of Yonkers, believes the 200 units can and should be spread out over eight or more sites, in order to avoid further contempt and division within the community.

As the political soup brews on both local and federal levels, we get glimpses into some of the lives on the west side of the Parkway. There’s 47-year-old Norma (LaTanya Richardson Jackson) whose eyesight is deteriorating by the minute due to diabetes. We follow Carmen (Ilfenesh Hadera) and her three children as they struggle in New York and are forced to move back to the Dominican Republic. And we’re introduced to Doreen (Natalie Paul) who lives in the suburbs but visits the projects where she meets, falls in love, and moves in with a well-meaning, asthmatic, drug-dealer Skip (J. Mallory McCree). Keeping with the non-political level, in Part II we become acquainted with a couple of East Yonkers citizens, Mary (Catherine Keener) and Buddy Dorman (Brian Altman). When Nick becomes mayor-elect, and the housing appeal is denied, it forces Nick and his council to comply with Sand’s mandate or face hefty fines and contempt of court, while Mary joins the growing ranks of the angry rabble who refuse to give in to the idea of low-income housing in their community.

This first third of Show Me A Hero beckons you to immediately re-watch both parts depending on how well versed you are in political jargon, just to make sure all the appeals, elections, NAACP grievances, and court decisions make sense. Then again, people tuning into a new HBO miniseries from David Simon and William Zarzi should expect nothing less then to have their attentive faculties massaged to full capacity. All credit goes to Simon and Zarzi’s expert writing, which displays an incredible economy in character and story development. In two hours, we get the sense of an entire community and all its various shades, from slums to council meetings. Haggis’ direction, and some masterful editing from Jo Francis and Kate Sanford, delicately weave together all the pieces of the puzzle, allowing the virtuoso performances to shine through and keep eyes glued to the screen. Literally all of the players, spearheaded by Isaac all the way down to the secretary who comically refuses Wasicsko access to the copy machine, excel in their roles. As outlined in the opening minutes, Show Me A Hero is an intricate, controlled, and smoothly seismic piece of television. And we’re just talking about the first two hours here.

This kind of subject matter and story doesn’t just invite political discussion, it incites it. Based on Lisa Belkin’s nonfiction book of the same name, Show Me A Hero (the title, FYI, is taken from the F. Scott Fitzgerald quote, “Show me a hero, and I’ll write you a tragedy,” so wherever this is heading, it won’t be pretty) makes little qualms about which side its own. Molina’s Spallone chews on his toothpick with the menace of a Bond villain, the angry white mob of East Yonkers spew anti-Semitic slurs about Sand and Sussman, and the tenderization of the West-side characters is more mechanical than braising. Norma’s eyesight, for example, gets stretched to the point of heavy-handed manipulation: she can’t see the button she marked on her intercom to buzz herself in, and instead of trying any other apartment, she frets and tugs at our heart strings. On the other hand, there is a sense of level-headed balance. Spallone’s “I watched the Bronx die” argument has its roots in historical accuracy (depending on who you talk to), and the first proper sequence we see on the West side involves a drug-deal; the foremost concern for the East side of Yonkers. While most of the white citizens’ objections drown in a cacophonous sea of introverted racism, one can’t help but sympathize with someone like Mary Dorman (played with surgical subtlety by Keener), who is genuinely worried about how her way of life will be impacted by this change. The show makes a point to separate her from the rest of the bigots, and Part II’s conclusion—an unlikely phone conversation—foreshadows the kind of evolution both Mary and Nick are about to go through.

That it’s a liberal-minded show is obvious, and the creators have every right to slant whichever way they feel is just. Many critics, who are much more in-tune with American politics than I am, have already noted the relevance of its themes and subjects on today’s geopolitical landscape in the U.S., with on-going racism and corrupt political systems dominating news headlines. Depending on where one’s personal standing is on the issue of low-income housing, Show Me A Hero is either going to enrage or enlighten, but there are a couple of key things to keep in mind, regardless. Firstly, all of this actually happened, and history blinds personal opinion, or at least, it should. Secondly, knowing that this show comes from the creators of The Wire should silence the skeptics and remind them that all sides of the issue will be handled accordingly. Thirdly, the core issue of disolving segregation is one that everyone should be able to firmly stand behind, regardless of their political leanings. And finally, especially for those neutral on politics, this is television operating at its artistic zenith. Simon and Zarzi make a city’s housing crisis more compelling than one could possibly imagine, punctuating their story with wit (the lookout’s “5-0 on you, Skip” is classic Wire humor) and artistic intelligence (the minute-long background phone ring that concludes Part I is nothing if not genius).

While I’m never one for transparent political endorsement, regardless of whether it’s left or right-leaning, Show Me A Hero has more than enough in its history, characterizations, and bravura storytelling to make me wish that it’s next Sunday already.

RATING: 8.5/10

Even in this day and digital age of YouTube and GoPro, it’s still a small miracle to successfully actualize a fully fledged feature film. And it’s triple impressive when a single person takes on the bulk of the workload behind the camera. Shane Carruth is a perfect example of this trendy precedent. His achievement with Primer (2004), and the even more critically-acclaimed follow-up Upstream Color (2013), inspired a small army of young indie filmmakers to embrace a DIY approach and take the reigns on all the most crucial filmmaking elements—directing, writing, producing, shooting, and editing—all by themselves. Perry Blackshear is one such soldier. He’s done it all and more for his feature debut, tackling the sound design as well (an element almost as vital as directing in this particular case). The result is the mysteriously moody, and fantastically-titled, They Look Like People. But, when a finished film meanders with its story and characters as much as this one does, it becomes little more than an exercise in style.

The story follows Wyatt (MacLeod Andrews), a shaggy drifter who just came out of a long relationship and randomly bumps into childhood friend Christian (Evan Dumouchel). He, too, is feeling the effects of a broken relationship, still holding on to his ex-girlfriend’s things in his tiny New York apartment. The two instantly rekindle their boys-will-be-boys dynamic, but it’s not long before Wyatt’s current state of mind is exposed as downright certifiable: he gets mysterious calls in the middle of the night, and voices speak to him of monsters who look just like people infecting human minds and preparing to wage war. Wyatt is convinced this must be true because it coincides with the supremely creepy flashbacks he has of his ex-girlfriend (presumably), and various other oddities he finds in Christian’s house, not least of which is a “rape-y” basement (as one girl in the film calls it) that becomes Wyatt’s workshop in preparing for battle.

As a project resting almost entirely on the shoulders of its writer-director, They Look Like People is an accomplished little psychological thriller that, more than anything else, shows a megaton of promise for Blackshear. There is a very keen sense of cinematic mood-setting and an intricately layered use of sound (the buzzing of flies, the creaking of floorboards, etc.) that form a tangible atmosphere enticing enough to raise the hairs on the back of most horror fans’ necks. And, major credit must go to the director for never over-indulging with the scares, keeping the really meaty stuff firmly lodged in the audience member’s imagination, and creating an emotionally stirring climax that could’ve devolved into something much tackier were it in another genre director’s hands.

Once we delve into the story and the characters, however, a number of issues arise. We never find out much about either Wyatt or Christian to truly feel their suffering, the editing feels purposefully rushed, which at times works to great comedic effect (“you got a second?” cut to: back-shaving), but mostly creates a disingenuously choppy storyline, and the pacing stretches one’s attention spans to its nadir. There’s a moment in a whisper room that’s a great example of how a scene can detach from a film’s plot and float in the film’s atmosphere, signifying nothing and serving only to show an audience what a whisper room is. With that in mind, They Look Like People is tough to recommend as a viewing experience, but as an experiment in cinematic mood placement it fires on all cylinders. Most importantly, it should serve to propel its clearly talented writer-director-producer-DP-editor-sound designer onto much bigger and better things.

It’s unlikely that there’ll be a more fitting title to any movie released this year than Damián Szifron’s Wild Tales. Ever since it competed for the Palme D’Or at Cannes last year, this Argentinian anthology of six short, absurd stories has injected a healthy dose of entertainment into practically anyone who had the chance to see it throughout its festival run last year. Since then, it’s become the most watched film in Argentinian theatres ever, and gave many an Oscar pundit good reason to believe that it would win Best Foreign Language Film (it didn’t, but the thought still counts). And if that wasn’t enough to make the question “What are you waiting for already!?’ ring even harder in the heads of all who still haven’t seen it, the film ranked at an impressive #4 in our Best 20 Films Of 2015 So Far. Just like the film itself, the message is loud, clear, and appropriately unsubtle: Wild Tales is an unforgettable ride.

Things literally take-off with a prologue-to-end-all-prologues: two flight passengers, Salgado (Darío Grandinetti, from Pedro Almodovar‘s Talk To Her) and Isabel (María Marull), are seated in the same row and begin your everyday quasi-flirtatious airplane chit chat. We find out that Salgado is a classical music critic, and Isabel is a model whose ex-boyfriend, Gabriel Pasternak, wanted to become a classical musician until his hopes were ruined by one particularly scathing review from none other than Salgado himself. Coincidence? You’d think so, until things begin to escalate quickly and hilariously. It’s worth noting that this prologue contains a freeze frame that will likely remain at the very top of my favorite single frames in 2015.

The overarching theme of violent vengeance is the clearest connection each story has, since none of the characters appear to be connected in any way. The stories to follow involve, in chronological order: a douchebag lone shark (César Bordón) who visits a late-night diner where the only waitress (Julieta Zylberberg) recognizes him as the man who ruined her father’s life, a surreal case of road rage where one flip of the finger and a verbal insult leads to outrageousness, a Falling Down-kind of day for demolitions expert Simon Fischer (Ricardo Darín, Argentina’s most recognizable actor) who gets trapped in the seventh circle of bureaucratic hell, an attempt to cover up a hit-and-run accident that shifts into a screwy example of avarice, and, finally, a wedding ceremony in which the bride, Romina (Érica Rivas), suspects her groom, Ariel (Diego Gentile), cheated on her with one of the guests. Absurdity ensues, everywhere. The escalation of each scenario is so intrinsically fun to watch that going any further into the plot details would feel unjust to those who’ve yet had the pleasure of watching these Wild Tales.

What makes Szifron’s film feel so fresh and deliciously Schadenfreudian in nature is the sense of humour instilled in every tale. Szifron’s screenplay isn’t exactly filled with quotable dialogue, and there’s not much emotional or psychological depth to any of the stories, but the structure of the storytelling, the incredibly smooth changes of tone, and the fantastically erratic situations and reactions are enough to make this an instant recommendation to anyone looking for a good time. The film is filled with laugh-out-loud spontaneity that’s often much too easy to spot in most popular comedies these days. One of my favorite examples is in the road rage story, when we see Diego (Leonardo Sbaraglia) driving to the love theme of Flashdance, and the music stops long enough for the crucial first moment with Mario (Walter Donado) to play out unhindered. Once Diego passes Mario on the road, giving him the one-finger salute and insulting him, he mutters to himself and Flashdance comes back in full force. It’s tough to explain in words just how well that switch with the music works. Then there’s the hit-and-run story, my favorite of all tales mostly because of how inconspicuously the tone changes from uber-serious to caustically satirical, expertly acted by Oscar Martínez in a scene when his Mauricio realizes that he’s getting swindled through his own scheme. Watch how Ariel reacts when Romina delivers the greatest monologue in the film on the rooftop in the final story, or how Lucien Belmond’s song “Ariel Libre” marks Simon Ficher’s boiling point as calm, collected, and demented.

Wild Tales is a movie for anyone who’s felt the pressures of their environment closing in on them, and who always wanted to do something about it. In other words, it’s a movie for everyone; a point that makes the film universally cathartic in many ways, adding so much to the immense enjoyment of watching it. Its anthological nature and skin-deep themes can make it an easy target for some to brush it aside as a glib experiment in shock value storytelling with no resonance, but it would take a special kind of expert to locate a single boring moment. Even though certain tales are clearly weaker than others (there’s a reason the restaurant tale is the first out of the gates after the opening credits), thanks to Szifron’s original screenplay, his genius use of music, and his actors’ determined performances (an outstanding mix of veterans and international no-names), Wild Tales works on enough levels to remain one of the most rewarding and raucously entertaining releases of the year.

Wild Tales is out on DVD and Blu-Ray this week from Sony Pictures Classics. You can read our interview with director Damian Szifron here.

The auteur label is becoming more and more of a taboo, since it implies a belittling attitude towards the hundreds of people working on a given film. In this way, Swedish maestro Roy Andersson is something of a relic; while his movies must be meticulously crafted by hundreds of participants, it’s his inimitable vision that perseveres. He’s got his authorship stamped all over his films, with such surgical precision that you can tell an Andersson film from miles away. It takes the man about 7 years to release a new movie, which has become yet another trait that adds to his auteur status. To call the director anything else feels discrediting. This year, he caps off his trilogy “about being human” with a mouth-watering, mouthful of a title; A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting On Existence.

The film made Way Too Indie’s Top 15 Most Anticipated TIFF Films, and that was before news came that Andersson walked away with top honors from this year’s Venice Film Festival. As promised on paper, the film is a celebration for cinephiles, and follows in the footsteps of its predecessors; 2000’s Songs From The Second Floor and 2007’s You, The Living. Fans of either of those will fall for A Pigeon the instant it begins. A man walks around a museum, looking at reminders of our futile existence, and reflects on a stuffed pigeon sitting on a branch. Andersson’s impregnable camera lingers on the slightly bamboozled bird until we get three short vignettes thematically connected as “three meetings with death,” each more ridiculous than the last but all equally acidic in their comical disposition.

Along the way, we are introduced to various characters who will cross paths or reappear again in the background. Thanks to Andersson’s definitive choice of having an immobile camera angled with exactness, each scene a single unit with no intercuts, one gets time to scan the screen from top to bottom and left to right, noticing a baby in the corner, or a tearful dance instructor behind the window panes. In this way, Andersson’s cinema is very much made with the spectator in mind; the framework becomes all the richer for it, because there’s a familiarity with the interiors of a café or certain characters, which fill one with unexpected nostalgia. How do you capture nostalgia on film? Roy Andersson knows.

Not all the vignettes work in flawless unity as they do in the previous two installments. But, the ones that don’t interlock seamlessly are the shorter, seemingly more random, ones. Two scenes, running close to 15 minutes (if not longer) in length, are instant classics; a travel back in time to a heavily featured café where a patroness sings a song about paying for shots, and a serendipitous moment when two centuries collide in another café, in the middle of nowhere. These scenes are technical marvels, while simultaneously promoting Andersson’s themes on the human condition, mainly on the subject of war, women’s place in a “man’s world,” and the impact of history on the present.

An assortment of people talking on the telephone and saying how happy they are to hear the person on the other end of the line is doing fine, is one of the comedic underscores and gets a new shade of meaning upon each repeat (whether it’s a woman scrubbing the floors, or another woman in the middle of electro-shocking a monkey). In fact, in its succinct running time of just over 100 minutes, Andersson manages to cram in a wealth of contemplative themes; people’s fear of loneliness, Darwinian principles of survival, society’s dependence on money, and implications behind various commodities, whether they are clown masks or human beings.

A Pigeon is anchored by two of the most often seen characters; a couple of entrepreneurs who walk around trying to “help people have fun” by selling masks and fake vampire fangs. One of them is going through an existential crisis, and at one point listens to the same song on loop, declaring “It’s so beautiful, but so horribly sad too.” That’s as good a description as any of the existence presented in Andersson’s world of beige, powder-white figures. Much like the melancholic 16th century painting “The Hunters In The Snow,” by Pieter Bruegel The Elder, that inspired the film’s title. An acerbic punch to the gut, a comedy of human errors, and a treasure chest for the philosophically inclined; A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting On Existence is the work of an auteur on top of his game.

Originally published on September 23, 2014 as part of our TIFF coverage

What an odd piece of work is Double Happiness! It’s a documentary about a small enclave in China that’s artificially designed and planned to replicate a small village-town in Austria called Hallstatt. We’re talking down to the shapes of the windows and the curves of the gables. It’s such a surreal stranger than fiction story, and that strangeness even carries over to the stylistic and abstract way Ella Raidel chooses to present it. Eschewing the use of traditional talking heads, the handful of interviewees are mostly there to share in the perplexity of the project, or justify its existence as the art of imitation. What makes Double Happiness so peculiar, though, is how it rebounds and evolves in its perspectives. Urban planners talking about how impressed they are with Hallstatt as a creation of something so beautiful on such a small scale eventually evolves into a philosophical quandary on the concept as applied to huge urban cities, and the consequences that would have on national identity and civilization. These things are merely mentioned, however, and left for the viewers to think about and explore.

As the documentary rolls on it becomes increasingly more bizarre, with Chinese ladies singing lullabies about the moon and monologues dedicated to explaining the duality of a traditional deity, and its relationship to modern culture. What saves the somewhat disheveled structure and random shifts in tone is how absolutely stunning the images are, often made more appealing by shallow depth of field. Whether the camera is pointing at the real picturesque Hallstatt, its replica in China, or a montage of splendorous nighttime shots in the concrete jungle of Shenzhen, with its frightfully Blade Runner-esque aesthetic, it’s impossible to look away. Even the mise-en-scène of the interior shots permeates with the hard work and creative thought put into them. Thanks to this wondrous cinematography work by Martin Putz and Raidel, and the overall refreshingly unique visual approach that doesn’t shy away from using silence to its advantage, Double Happiness overcomes its messy flow, and propensity for going on major tangents, and comes highly recommended.

The last day of a festival is always bitter, rarely sweet. No matter how exhausted your bones are, or how badly your spine begs for a chiropractor, if the festival was a success you could do it all again for another two weeks. It’s with this dread, and a double shot of espresso to keep the focus, that I entered my last screening; Olivier Assayas’ Clouds Of Sils Maria. The final film shown in competition with a superstar cast of Juliette Binoche, Kristen Stewart, and Chloe Moretz; three women representing three different generations in a story about coming to terms with the past, age, and the consequences of time. Sounds kind of lovely, doesn’t it? Not sure what happened then, because Assayas found a way to drop the ball on this one and produced a lazy, uninspired, and forlorn piece of work.

Maria Enders (Binoche) is a famous stage and film actress who is offered a role for a play she has a deep and personal connection to. The play is about a young seductress called Sigrid who manipulates the older Hanna into a lesbian relationship only to leave her brokenhearted and forgotten by the end. 20 years ago, Maria played Sigrid and immersed herself into the role so much that it mirrored her own personality. Now, after the death of the playwright who wrote the piece, Maria reluctantly accepts the much weaker role of Hanna, but has trouble coming to terms with the way the character is written as it fills her with past memories and present insecurities about her own relevance. With the help of her assistant Valentine (Stewart), she begins to rehearse the role and has slight trepidation and pretentious misgivings with the idea of working with Jo-Anne (Moretz), the 19-year-old Hollywood superstar who has a Lindsay Lohan temperament.

There is so much there to grab on to, it’s a shame Assays butterfingers practically every element of the story. The main conflict, Maria’s relationship with the role, is written with such melodrama that it forces a rather minor performance by one of cinema’s all time greats, Binoche. Her work in English has always been slightly inferior to her French roles, but it just never seems like she gets under the skin of her character and leaves a trail of overacted scenes. Stewart has never been better, and yet she’s still stuck in a stifled shell; even when she’s at her most animated. While Moretz brings in the laughs and proves to be the aspirin for the headache induced by the scenes she’s not in. She, too, has never been better but unfortunately we get much more stifled Stewart than catty Moretz.

The biggest obstacles, however, lie in the execution of the story not the actors who do their very best with what they have. Assayas is squarely to blame for the poorly written dialogue which sounds like it was copy-pasted from some Bold and the Beautiful episode and for montage sequences which make absolutely no contextual sense, only serving to push us away and check our watches. The name of the play is tied into the phenomenon evoked by clouds and wind in the mountains of Sils Maria, where Maria rehearses her part. While the imagery is captivating, and the idea even more so, the meaning behind it is lost in a haze of poorly edited and awkwardly placed images desperate to attach themselves symbolically to characters who are too poorly written to be attached to anything. Not even with the help of 3D glasses would you find three dimensions anywhere in this film.

So, my Cannes festival ends on something of a sour note screening-wise (though, a soon-to-be-published article will show you the high it actually ended on) because Olivier Assayas, usually so on point, missed all his targets with Clouds Of Sils Maria. Fans of Stewart will declare her Best Supporting Actress material mostly because this is her greatest role yet, Moretz surprises in a funny parody of Hollywood celebrities, and Binoche makes you miss Julianne Moore’s batshit crazy and entertaining woman with similar issues in David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars. Watch this only if you’re a diehard fan of someone involved, or if you’re interested in seeing what a comic book movie directed by Assayas would look like (a highlight among the weariness.) Otherwise, this thematically redundant and soapy opera full of flat notes is not worth your time.

Originally published on May 24th, 2014 during the Cannes Film Festival.

Dog lovers, get ready. Prepare to replace Old Yeller, Cujo, White Dog or whichever other preferred dog film you have on the top of your list, because a new canine feature is coming to a theatre near you, and it’s fantastic. Kornél Mundruczó’s White God is a mixed breed of genres, much like the heroic pooch at the centre of its story, combining the exhilaration one gets from adventure, melodrama, horror, and revenge exploitation into two hours of hair-raising entertainment. And if that wasn’t enough, the film manages to be a morality tale on the current state of sociopolitical affairs in Hungary, and a coming-of-age story about one girl’s concept of love. It packs a gamut of ideas and concepts, some of which are stronger than others, and triumphantly succeeds in being a ultra-gratifying cinematic experience.

The opening shots kick things off with a bang. Thirteen year old Lily (Zsófia Psotta) is riding her bike around a contemporary Budapest in the middle of an afternoon, the deserted environment sending off major post-apocalyptic vibes; abandoned cars in the middle of the streets, and not a soul in sight. And then: the dogs. Introduced by sonorous trumpets on the score, a pack of two hundred or so dogs stampede towards Lily: relentless, unstoppable, unleashed. Taking no notice of the girl, they knock her down and continue their pursuit. Cut to titles. Now, that’s what I call an opening. After the titles, we jump back to the beginning: Lily will have to stay with her father (Hungarian thesp Sándor Zsótér) while her mother is away for three months. The trouble is, she refuses to be separated from Hagen, a very affectionate and lovable dog she found on the street. When the dad’s nosy neighbour reports Hagen, falsely claiming that he bit her, the dog-catchers come a-knocking, insisting that a fine be paid. Apparently, a Hungarian law requires owners of mixed-breed dogs to pay an extra fine due to the animals’ unpredictable and threatening nature, especially those from the street. When the father refuses to pay the fine, he forcibly separates Lily from Hagen, and abandons the pooch on the street. Thus, White God begins.

The narrative becomes a forked path: we follow Hagen as he fends for himself, running away from the persistent dog-catchers, and into the mischievous hands of a dogfight trainer who programs the pup into a menacing fighting beast. The second path follows Lily, as she desperately searches for Hagen and starts to cope with the idea that she might never see him again. That’s as far as I’ll go with the plot. Suffice it to say that the twists and turns to follow keep the heart racing in overdrive, and one critical juncture redefines the entire film to such a high degree, it practically begs the audience to rawr in approval, punch the air, and celebrate the major turn of events.

In the recent interview I had with Mr. Mundruczo (read it here), he was very candid about the fact that White God presents a new kind of cinematic language for him. While this may not be felt by audiences unfamiliar with his earlier work White God is undoubtedly his most internationally acclaimed film to date), there is an undeniable sense that the man is as well-versed in cinema as language, constructing scenes that have tremendous power. When Lily tells Hagen to stay put during her music class, for example, the camera switches to Hagen’s POV a handful of times, instilling a sense of momentum and suspense into an otherwise basic scene of a master telling her pet to behave. Then, of course, there’s the genius casting of Hagen. The stars aligned for Mundruczó and his animal trainer, Teresa Miller, because the two dogs they found to portray Hagen (Bodie and Luke) give an uncanny performance. That’s right: performance. Scenes of Hagen trying to cross the street in the middle of heavy traffic, the brutality of his training, that heart-stopping finale, among others, should sweep audiences off their feet regardless of whether they’re dog lovers or not, because the personality and emotion evoked by the dog(s) throughout the entire picture is unbelievable.

There’s that question, of course, of whether White God will only truly work for people who have a natural affinity towards dogs. It’s a valid question that only time will answer correctly, but it certainly feels wrong to classify it as “just another film about dogs.” While Lily’s narrative isn’t as compelling as Hagen’s, there is an indelible sense of the allegory Mundruczó is weaving. Marcell Rév’s cinematography meanders between light blue shades and stark darkness to effectively evoke a broken Budapest. The writing, while unvarnished in spots, succinctly squeezes out all the prejudices and malevolent characteristics from the everyday of adult human routine. How Mundruczó upends this to his advantage, turning the story into a symbolic call-to-arms, needs to be seen. White God is absolutely an insta-classic dog film, but it’s also superbly crafted genre cinema, and a canine fairytale that’s sure to sweep audiences off their feet.

Kornél Mundruczó is a Hungarian art-house director who’s been under-the-radar since the beginning of the century, and who finally hit his international stride with White God. A canine story unlike any you’ve ever seen, the film entered Cannes’ Un Certain Regard slot last year, winning top honors in its category, including a Palme Dog for Bodie and Luke, the two dogs who both portray the story’s four-legged protagonist Hagen. It’s a morality tale about a little girl, Lily (played by newcomer Zsofia Psotta), who is forced to abandon Hagen due to Hungarian regulations affecting mixed breed dogs. The film splits into two narratives, one following the adventures of Hagen as he goes from one cruel owner to the next, and the other following Lily and her quest to reunite with her pet.

I had the opportunity to speak with Mr. Mundruczó over the phone recently, and get a better understanding of what inspired his story, why he chose to mix various genres and twists, and what some of his biggest artistic influences were. Hope you enjoy!

How did you come up with the concept of White God, and what made you choose dogs to tell your story?

I was doing a lot of research for a new film which reflects my concept of reality as an Eastern European and Hungarian, and then one day I went to a dog pound. I was really shocked and touched by what I found there. It’s such a shame, and I’m part of the system of why [the dogs] are so defenseless without even realizing it, so at that moment I decided that I really wanted to create a movie out of it and tell a story of a dog from Budapest. At first the concept was just one dog, and then it became 250. [Laughs]

You’ve mentioned in other interviews how White God marks a turn into “adult” filmmaking for you; what makes this movie more adult as opposed to your previous, “teenage,” films?

Actually my reality is completely changed, and I said I must a find a new cinematic language of that kind of new reality because Budapest, Hungary actually, is not timeless and melancholic anymore, it’s much more wide and extreme. So it was highly important for me to try to find a new language for that, and [at the same time] reflect on the post-Soviet ruins surrounding my whole society. Society is really loaded by lots of fear, and fear is the best decision maker.

Following up on that, can you talk a little bit about the socio-political aspects, and what message you’d like the audience to leave with?

Yeah. Actually, in my eyes after the economic crisis comes the moral crisis, so I tried to create a moral drama, a fairytale. Of course it’s very political in a way because I criticize my society, and myself as a citizen. But it’s really important to understand that those [negative] elements are created by the majority always, and the scale of the little girl and the dog symbolize minorities, in my eyes. So, by reflecting the anger of my society, [White God] is actually my most Hungarian movie. Then it became my most international one, which surprised me and made me proud at the same time.

You’ve mentioned the girl and dog, so let’s talk about the cast a little. I’ve read how Teresa Miller (animal trainer) showed you a picture of a Ridgeback, and you said that it wasn’t Hagen. What specific look did you have in mind for him?

I needed a family dog, that was my vision. A family dog who can become wild, so we needed a type of Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hide kind of identity. And, yeah, once we found Bodie and Luke they, together, created a great Hagen. And I got so much more from them than I expected which really surprised me, [this concept of] controlling an animals’ emotions. It really wasn’t expected because everyone told me ” oh, they can’t follow direction, let’s use CGI and create their emotions through a generated image.” And I said “no, no!” I mean, that’s really far from my conception and my philosophy in equality between humans and animals.

They do an amazing job. Tell me a little bit about Zsofia Psotta, she makes her screen debut here as Lily. How did you find her? She has a very arresting screen presence.

Absolutely. It was a very simple process, we went to high schools and asked girls who we could imagine in the movie, and she was just a girlfriend from one of the girls who wanted to be in the movie. And I said “OK, and your friend too?” and she said “no, no!” and that was Zsofie [Laughs]. Then I tried to make a video with her, and she was amazing. When I saw that video I immediately decided: that’s her. She’s got an innocence, but at the same time she’s a rebel, and she’s a girl of course which in Eastern Europe has different [implications]; it’s more revolutionary if you have a female character with such a rebellious attitude.
And I had to push Zsofie because in the beginning she said she didn’t want to play in any movie. I went to her mother with flowers and cakes [Laughs] and asked her to please help me, and then Zsofia decided to be part of it. To work with her was simple and amazing, she always did the right thing without asking, and she had the [exact] emotions I wanted her to follow. It was just easy.

Let’s get back to the dogs; I’m so curious about the unpredictable nature of working with animals. How did they influence your initial vision and screenplay? Did you have to change things during the shoot because of the dogs?

I wrote the script first and then met the two main players with Teresa Miller, and then the crowd of dogs, and we started to work together to see what the dogs can do and what they cannot do. Just before starting the shoot, I had to [update] the script, to make [certain scenes] softer in order to get what I want from them. And during the shooting also, we used a special method where we would shoot for one week, then stop for week rehearsal or training time, and after we continue. So, in some weeks we had small updates, and always changing the script as well in order to exclude what they can’t do. So, it’s strange, but we wrote the film together.

It certainly feels that way, it’s very organic.

Because they have lots of freedom! I can’t say it’s a nature film, but the logistics of shooting was closer to a nature film than a fiction one.

Was there a particular shot that was very tough to pull off?

It was several shots, especially the big action scene and whenever we had traffic, humans, and dogs together – that was really, really, difficult. But, as for myself the director, the most difficult was the dog fight because they were always happy! Always playful, always playing, and after the editing room, I was just thinking “how can I do a brutal fight scene with these guys?!” [Laughs] We shot extra close ups, and things like that.

I was also thinking about how to make [these violent] scenes without any animal harm. It was a bit uncomfortable but it was also a really creative [process], so we did a kind of ‘awaiting of [violence]’ which I think is threatening for the audience as well.

There is a very striking twist in tone and genre that opens up the final act of the film; can you talk a little bit about how you approached that?

As I said, as a filmmaker I wanted to find a new cinematic language for that new reality surrounding me. And I thought I couldn’t use two genres but I knew I wanted to use realism — because the dog pound, putting dogs down by lethal injections etc., it’s all reality, but I wanted to give some hope and continue the story as a revolution. Then it became a fairytale, and of course there’s a lot of twists and turns, and I believe it’s easier to [classify] it now as a few genre movies in one. I don’t know what [other genre movies] say about contemporary life, but in this one you can start to list things together, and you’ll see that that’s how we are living.

One would think Sam Fuller’s White Dog is a major influence on your film, but was it? Were there others?

It was not really! I heard about it almost after shooting. I was almost ready with my movie, and I watched it and said, “wow I should’ve seen this one earlier!” I was very proud about the connections and similar topic; [White Dog] is a very strong movie. But as for influences, I saw lots of Kurosawa movies for the fight scenes, and those ‘post-apocalyptic’ end of ’80s/beginning of ’90s Hollywood stuff like Terminator, Blade Runner or even Jurassic Park. And, of course, some Robert Bresson, for example Au Hazard Balthazar. I saw several connections there, and it was good training for understanding Hagen as well. So, those movies strongly influenced me.

Now that you’ve successfully directed over 200 dogs without CGI, do you feel like you can literally direct anything and anyone for your next project?

Well, I mean, I’m not planning to direct snakes or spiders [Laughs], but, yeah, I believe in the uniqueness of images as part of the audience myself, and I always try to have new visions and experiences. Of course, I want to continue in that way, and of course it’s interesting for the audience, [this idea of] something new. It’s the way of auteur cinema, and I really believe in auteur cinema.

How did the movie play with audiences in Hungary?

It was very well. It was the most fragile territory for this movie of course, because it’s really mirroring our society, but the audience was really warm with their reaction. At first there was a bit of a political fight about the movie, but the audience kept coming and watching which gave us lots of hope.

Excellent. And do you have particular expectations or hopes about Western audience reaction?

Hmm, no! [Laughs]. It’s interesting actually because of the cultures and [moral] codes. Of course, watching this movie in Mexico is different than watching it in Germany, so from which perspective you watch this movie is a huge question. And, how do you follow it, do you feel yourself part of the majority or part of he minority? But, both is fine with me.

And just one last question: do you have any plans for your next project?

It’s very blurry right now. Some kind of door opened with White God, [with] this cinematic language I found there. I would like to continue in this way.

White God opens on Friday. Keep an eye out for our review in the next few days.

Lisandro Alonso’s Jauja, world premiering in Un Certain Regarde, is from another planet. Much like Ceylan’s Winter Sleep this is what a real experience feels like in the movie theater. Unfortunately, I was unable to get too acquainted with Lisandor’s previous films before the festival began and only managed to catch his 2004 film Los Muertos, about a man released from prison and his journey back home to his daughter. It’s a captivating, at times tedious, affair. Man’s displacement in nature and within family feels like one of Alonso’s major themes. Snail-like camera movement, lengthy takes, and no musical accompaniment, his preferred tools. 10 years later, and after a couple of more films I will most definitely be seeing soon, he has a made a film that is in a different league, using everything seen in Los Muertos (right down to the subject of a father searching for his daughter) to infinitely higher degrees. It’s unbelievably not competing for the Palme D’Or and I’m not sure how that happened, but I’ve got an inkling that it will wind up as the granddaddy of the UCR; with more experience and wisdom captured in a few frames than entire films in the section.

The film opens with a caption about what ‘Jauja’ is exactly; a mythical, earthly paradise, which man has sought for centuries and never found. The time and setting of the desolation that surrounds the 4:3 frame is never revealed, though it looks to be the period of the conquistadors when European forces were conquering aboriginal peoples. Danish Captain Dinesen (Viggo Mortensen) has joined camps with a Spanish infantry and brought his daughter Inga (Ghita Norby) along. The first section of the film establishes the relationships between Dinesen, the Spanish lieutenant Pittaluga, Inga, and Inga’s Spanish soldier-lover Corto. Word has reached their camp that captain Zuluaga, renowned for his bravery and experience in the desert, has disappeared under mysterious circumstances. When Inga steals off one night with Corto, Dinesen wakes up in a panic and – not heeding the advice of the seedy Pittaluga – rides off into the desert to search for his daughter.

The film truly takes off once Mortensen’s captain begins his search. The establishing scenes contain more dialogue than the entire length of Los Muertos and while the words spoken lay the foundations of the themes (mysticism, perversion, loss of self) it is the framing and depth of field in this beginning sequence that is instantly captivating. Characters on the left side of the screen in the forefront are contrasted with an action occurring in the distant background on the right, with the vacuum in the middle providing the groundwork for the thematic use of space in the mid-section. Once Dinesen begins his search, the desert that ‘devours everything’ becomes the film’s antagonist as it eats up time itself. Detailing how it does this would classify as a spoiler, but suffice it to say that Dinesen’s search for his daughter and the desire to go back home, as he feels more and more alienated in the foreignness that surrounds him, transcends expectations and delves into a philosophical discourse devotees of existentialism will adore.

It’s quite difficult to find the right words to describe the sensations and deep impact Jauja leaves you with. Directors that immediately come to mind in terms of aesthetic and thematic influence are Andrei Tarkovsky, David Lynch, and Carlos Reygadas though my unfamiliarity with such directors as Alejandro Jodoworski and Manoel de Oliveira feels like a deficiency here. This is the kind of philosophical, deeply visual filmmaking which many will be able to appreciate, and my respect for Viggo Mortensen (who is a magnanimous minimalist here) has sky rocketed. He is the biggest star Alonso has worked with, and if nothing else, his name alone should guarantee a lot of buzz. Of course, Alonso’s mastery alone should be enough because he has created something spectacular here. As I conclude these thoughts, my mind is flipping through the poetic excursion it just had the privilege of experiencing; scenes allowed to sink in so that the vastness of the volcanic nature swallows all attention, or the peculiarity of the aspect ratio which brings to mind Cormac McCarthy’s lack of quotations; an artistic expression which empowers the themes and mysticism of the film. Rating this film feels almost ridiculous as it’s one of those picture that transcends all kind of formality. Is there an infinite out of 10? Like Winter Sleep, principle prevents me from giving it a perfect 10, and besides, more viewings feel essential to get a full grasp. Can’t wait to go back to Jauja.

This review was originally published as part of our Cannes 2014 coverage. Jauja is out in limited theatrical release today, March 20.

Britni West takes the tried-and-true path with her directorial debut Tired Moonlight and films what she knows. Freewheeling the camera with DP Adam Ginsberg around her hometown of Kalispell, Montana, West collates a variety of poems from local dreamers and romantics into a cinematic (and brazenly American) quilt. The trouble is, it itches. Not that it doesn’t look great, which it absolutely does thanks to the felt aesthetic of Super 16 mm film; the kind you want to put your fingers through. The remoteness of middle America captured here is everything. And while the scenery shoots itself, West takes the extra step of complementing it with a score befitting cobwebbed elevators of some haunted castle, making the atmosphere dominantly present. The Herzogian mountain peaks in the opening are a perfect example.

The unscratchable itch is caused by how much engagement relies on the appreciation of the poetry, and the random back-and-forths between characters we never really spend quality time with. That’s where the film loses me. We see children, teenage mothers, Russian emigrants, and lonely people desperate to connect, but they’re silhouettes. Interactions, and the few grasps at narrative continuity, feel vapid. It’s a film disheveled at its core because it’s trying to be a poem, like a lost ship anchored to nothing, but its mumblecore roots and free-verse nature will definitely click for some. For me, Tired Moonlight is a satiating slice of American pie, one where the crust ends up tasting better than the filling.

The third and final installment of Hal Hartley’s Henry Fool saga sees Ned Rifle (Liam Aiken), son of Henry (Thomas Jay Ryan) and Fay Grim (Parker Posey), on a quest to find and kill his father for ruining his mother’s life. Returning to this desert-dry whimsical world of misfits, along with Ryan, Posey, and Aiken, is James Urbaniak as garbage-man-turned-poet-laureate Simon Grim, who steals every scene he’s in with his succinct and deadliest deadpan delivery of Hartley’s epigrammatic dialogue. Ned Rifle picks up four years after the events of Fay Grim, during which Ned has found God while living with a devoutly Christian family, Fay has been incarcerated for life without parole, and Henry has, well, revealing where he’s been surely counts as a spoiler, but thirsty fans of the trilogy will feel quenched. The newcomer to the familiar ensemble is Parks and Recreation‘s Aubrey Plaza. She not only radiates intelligence without speaking a word and then blasts everyone away with it when she does, but, by the film’s halfway mark, twists that same world around her little finger with her feral screen presence. A package of talent that Hartley earnestly exploits. She plays Susan, a woman who is stalking Simon for her own reasons (which, naturally, revolve around Henry).

The greatest compliment one can give Ned Rifle is that even those who’ve never seen Henry Fool or Fay Grim will be stimulated enough to sympathize and laugh with—and sometimes at—Hartley’s egomaniacal troupe of characters. “Don’t be taken,” says a doctor at one point, “he’s a great tragic actor.” A sentiment that applies to practically everyone in the entire film except Ned, who instills a sense of righteousness (even if it so easily invites mockery) much needed to complete the saga. That said, one gets the sense that Ned Rifle‘s hurried conclusion will leave those who haven’t seen the previous two films slightly gutted. Nothing but a minor quibble, however, given everything that came before. With its droll highbrow vocabulary, cozy half-serious tone, and finger-snapping running time, Ned Rifle invites people to seek out all things related to the impressionable degenerate that is Henry Fool, and triumphantly concludes a fun-loving trilogy.

For directors fortunate enough to have a say on how to approach their projects, there is a fundamental choice to be made. Fencing your creative spirit within a set of rules (i.e. three-act structures, inciting incidents, dramatic climaxes, and so forth) or unleashing your creative impulses to flourish in absolute free-range fashion. There’s no doubt that Italian-born Roberto Minervini chooses the latter, unstructured, approach. Perhaps it’s no coincidence, then, that Minervini was drawn to 14-year-old Sara, the “protagonist” of Stop the Pounding Heart, since she too is torn between the dichotomy of compromise and liberation. Living on a Texan goat farm, unplugged from the rapid technological advancements of bigger cities, home-schooled by intensely devout Christian parents, and sharing her childhood with 11 other siblings; Sara is bridled by a paradox of being a good Christian girl while simultaneously trying to keep balance on the hormonal precipice of womanhood.

This is a film made up of moments, not scenes. All it takes is a few quiet minutes on the Carlson farm to appreciate how utterly unfabricated and semi-documented Stop the Pounding Heart is. While the crux of the matter is Sara’s coy and flirty interactions with Colby (Colby Trichell), a boy her age from a nearby farm, whose life revolves around bull riding, the unshakable sense of something deeper persists throughout. The communities on these farms—whether their daily routines center around milking goats or practice-shooting rifles (often both)—are so ensconced in America’s Bible Belt, the smell of leather is almost palpable. There’s a key scene, and a key phrase, that reveals just how tightly bound these good-natured people are to the words of the Holy Scripture. Boys and men, Colby among them, sit and meditatively absorb the words of a local cowboy preacher, who tells them “You don’t want to be a slave to sin. You want to be a slave to God’s law.” Not being a slave to anything or anyone doesn’t seem to be an option for these people, and Sara’s internal struggle with this very notion of obligatory subservience is what gives the film’s heart its thunderous pounding.

It’s only natural for Stop the Pounding Heart to leave many viewers slightly frustrated by its anti-narrative and anti-action approach. Minervini takes the observatory method, allowing the rhythm of life to shape his story, and audiences should be aware that if they don’t want their one hour and forty minutes to be wasted, they better be prepared to engage. The director eschews formal shot compositions and slick camera movements for an intimate, hand-held, technique of following subjects around as if the camera itself was born in this setting. It allows cinematographer Diego Romero to use natural light introspectively and almost as a character-builder, exampled by a moment when Sara, on a swing, contemplates her first fleshed out conversation with Colby. It’s the innocence of youth in emotional turmoil made luminous in the most ordinary of ways.

The film’s blurring of the line between feature film and documentary (it has won awards in both categories, interestingly enough) is key to how much of an unassuming coming of age story it essentially is. And not without its own invitation for controversy. An occasion sees Sara and her sisters talking about the future, and becomes very telling when one sister jokingly says how she wishes to ride off into the sunset before confirming that, of course, she wants to get married to a guy with a ranch. Similarly, moments featuring Sara and her mom hold, in my opinion, the heaviest thematic weight. “The bible tells us that man was not created for woman, but woman was created for man.” Combine the implication behind that with the mother’s guidance on how much strength it takes to submit, and this religious notion that a girl belongs to her father before belonging to an eventual husband, and Stop the Pounding Heart evolves into a genuinely thoughtful piece of work.

Here’s a film that doesn’t rely on conventional elements to keep its subjects and messages above water. By zeroing in on a girl whose very spirit feels as fenced in as the goats she takes care of, and who can relate to a life of obedience and predetermined paths, Minervini’s own inclination for unstructured storytelling over rule-bound construction shines through, the two becoming a perfect union of style and subject. Not recommended for the passive movie-goer looking to escape life with an entertaining couple of hours, Stop the Pounding Heart slices into life itself, leaving the engaged viewer with a surprising amount of food for thought about the human side of an American lifestyle too easily stereotyped.

Movies are a lot like cults. Think about it; strangers gather in a dark room to silently absorb a story directed, and often written as well, by one person (the leader) and told with the help of cast and crew (the cult members.) While not based on membership, the audience leaves the theater either as supporters or critics. This analogy may work better with some movies over others (the Transformers franchise is more like a corporation than a cult), but it certainly works with Riley Stearns’ fantastic indie genre gem Faults, and not just because the film’s primary subject is saving an innocent girl from an enigmatic cult. It’s an original feature debut, a compelling chamber piece boasting fantastic performances, and so soaked in charisma that it’s almost impossible not to be enchanted from hilarious start to insatiable finish.

Ansel Roth (Leland Orser) is a washed-up mind control expert who is touring with his new book, and stealing restaurant vouchers from garbage bags in the process. The book is not as successful as its predecessor, and his agent Terry cuts him off, demanding full payment for the money Ansel owes him within the week. Ansel’s seminars fail to spark enthusiasm from the half-empty conference rooms, apart from a man who blames him for his sister’s death, and an elderly couple who seek his help regarding their daughter. After refusing them at first, Ansel is compelled to help when he realizes that he has no other way to pay Terry. Claire (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) has left her home to join a cult that goes by the name of Faults and Ansel promises that he’ll do his best to “de-program” her, and bring her back home. Over the next five days, Ansel’s session with Claire results in dire psychological consequences.

Its premiere at SXSW earlier in the year started off the buzz (with our very own Dustin loving it to bits,) but Faults massively blinked on my radar when it was announced for Montreal’s genre festival Fantasia simply because I’ve become a bona fide Winstead fan, after her stunning performance in 2012’s Smashed. The streak continues here; she peels off Claire’s layers with agility and complete composure to reveal a fascinating and devilishly twisted character. But the pedestal has room for one more name: Mr. Leland Orser. As soon as you see him in the brilliant opening diner sequence, you’ll most likely go “oh yeah, that guy!” because he’s one of those actors you’re bound to have spotted somewhere. Examples include Liam Neeson’s buddy Sam from the Taken movies, the traumatized man who was forced to kill the prostitute in Seven, and countless TV appearances. Not that I’ve seen everything he’s been in, but dollars to doughnuts he’s never been as good as Ansel Roth, a role that proves how underrated and underused Orser has been all these years. It’s likely to remain one of the strongest male performances of the year.

As with any successful cult, its members are only as good as its leader (or so I’ve heard anyway), and the two leads wouldn’t have been able to pull off such startlingly good performances without Riley Stearns’ script and direction. The pitch black humor keeps the pacing of Faults at intoxicating levels; slow-burning yet never dull, with every scene crucial to the development of character, plot, and theme, more often than not all three at once. So controlled is the direction and so intelligent the screenplay, that it’s almost hard to believe this is Stearns’ first crack at features.

I’ve been joking around with the idea of cults in this review because Faults‘ shifty tone welcomes a lighter approach to the subject compared to, say, Martha Marcy May Marlene. If there’s something for critics to latch onto it could be that, but not me. Genre filmmaking is an end in itself, never pretentious, and always more about the journey than the destination. The simmering tension, controlled by Stearns at meticulous temperature levels, comes to such an entertaining climactic boil that it will have me cheering and supporting Faults, its leader and all of its members, for a long time to come. For lovers of intelligent suspense and sickly dark humor, Faults is home.

(Originally published on July 25, 2014 as part of our Fantasia festival coverage)

Abrehmadinne Sissako’s Timbuktu entered as one of the exclusive (and meager) 18 films in the festival’s main competition slot with a muted response from the press. While most sites were buzzing about the possibility of a Paul Thomas Anderson, Terrence Malick, David Cronenberg or Mike Leigh, hardly anyone mentioned Sissako. Surely this has something to do with the lack of attention the whole African continent gets when it comes to movies (and, I fear, other art as well) so even if Timbuktu was a bad film, which it isn’t, the fact that it will be getting attention from the world’s biggest media outlets is its own reward. Whether it will get any traction after Cannes, however, is a different matter because for that the movie’s interior qualities need to support the weightiness of its outer shell. Sadly, they don’t.

The film is a fragmented look at life under jihadist rule in Timbuktu, a city in Mali bordering the Saharan Desert. Some of the reoccurring characters include a herdsman and his small family living on the outskirts of the city walls, a mean-spirited fisherman, and a Jihadi soldier who provides much of the film’s comedy (surely a risky move by Sissako.) The thin narrative threads are woven around these people, whose lives intersect in one way or another, as the rule of law from the very strict Jihad perspective is enforced (music is placed on the same sinful level as cigarettes, and if you’re heard playing it you get a public lashing, the count of which is determined by Jihadi council) while religion commands absolutely everything. Without giving too much away, some of the conflicts that arise include the herdsman confronting the fisherman over an accident involving a cow, the Jihadi soldier teaching a young recruit how to act with conviction in front of the camera, and various instances of locals standing up to their oppressors, usually left to suffer the consequences.

Sissako’s previous film, Bamako, was also set in Mali but in a much more intimate setting of a backyard. This time around, what’s patently clear is the leap taken toward something more cinematic than his previous effort, with artful cinematography and an emotive score especially more prominent. Yet even with Bamako’s lack of conventional feature film ingredients, it’s a more compelling story than Timbuktu. The latter spreads its wings by using humor (a scene featuring an impassioned discussion about war is revealed to be a fanatical debate on football) and takes advantage of the barren setting to create some momentous visuals, yet still remains a film so heavily steeped in politics and religion that it only works as a piece of historical source material, and not the kind of artistic expression most of us look for in movies. Moments of creativity or traditional storytelling feel either out of place, or hit the nail on the head with the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

As important as it is in a political, moral, and historical sense, Timbuktu ultimately fails to be a stirring piece of art. The acting and the screenplay almost feel like alien concepts, as both seem too heavily reliant on the film’s message. If we were to judge films on their political importance, and the ethical dilemmas proposed by their hefty messages, Timbuktu would most likely be a big contender for the Palme D’Or. As an example of cinematic storytelling, it’s a reminder that Sissako’s talents rest with more intimate, and less self-absorbed, material. Regardless of this, Timbuktu has some inspired visuals, and more than a handful of moments when the vulnerability of human life is captured with deft precision, as it clings to the rough edges of a complex religious system, and slowly tears your heart out.

Our review for Timbuktu was originally published on May 14, 2014 during the Cannes Film Festival.

This past week has seen the wider release of the hyper-anticipated Inherent Vice by Paul Thomas Anderson. And it has rightfully boggled the minds of many critics, currently standing at a seemingly despairing 68% on the Rotten Tomato aggregator. Our own Ananda concludes, in her review, that Anderson perhaps “erred on the side of density for what will most likely be considered a stoner film, and it’s not likely to earn respect as his best film by any means, but there’s always pleasure in watching an auteur work.” Having seen it myself recently, calling it an auteur stoner film is pretty spot on as Anderson completely nails the atmosphere and clouded psychology behind a stoner’s mind at work.

Vice got me thinking, naturally, about other classic stoner films that came before it. We’ve had enough years (the exploitation film Reefer Madness from the 1930s is as good a starting point as any), all throughout the hippie boom in the ’70s that Inherent Vice theorizes on, that the “stoner movie” could be legitimately considered a sub genre. Of course, it’s not for everyone. Those who have never experienced the paranoia, the munchies, the comfort of a couch, and the incoherent ramblings of the person next to you while they keep Bogarting the joint, (not necessarily in that order), will hardly find any amusement in watching people under the heavy, hilarious influence of marijuana. But this article isn’t for those people.

This article is for those of you who’re known to toke once in a while. Those of you who, after a long hard day’s work, come back home and relax by burning one down and watching whatever you have in front of you (even if it’s just the nutritional facts on your cereal box). It’s 2015, and modern culture has come a long way in accepting pot as a harmless, recreational drug that causes less disease and fewer dire consequences than tobacco and alcohol. But don’t mistake this article as an endorsement to find the closest dealer next to you and start puffing away: this is merely a celebration of some of the zaniest, most entertaining, and highly re-watchable (get it?) stoner movies that have come before Anderson’s Inherent Vice. Also, note that we’re not trying to compare any of the below films to Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest work. In fact, there is just one film on the list that is comparable in cinematic artistry, while the rest are best viewed with the brain switched off and blazed up.

Without further ado, here are 11 Classic Stoner Movies in chronological order. Enjoy!

Cheech and Chong’s Up In Smoke (1978)

If you need a good starting point on learning about the counter-culture that the art of weed-smoking is an integral part of, there’s no better starter than Cheech and Chong’s Up In Smoke from the late ’70s. Sure, Reefer Madness gained cult status after being unearthed in the late ’60s, but ask any pothead what their favorite comedy is and there’s no doubt they’d list Up in Smoke somewhere near the top. The irreplaceable comedy duo Tommy Chong and Cheech Marin were doing stand up and comedy records for 10 years before releasing the first, and best, of their successful stoner comedies. Cheech’s freakout after smoking dog shit and taking acid is probably the greatest drug-filled paranoia reaction ever put on screen.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)

Cameron Crowe’s writing debut, Amy Heckerling’s directorial debut, and career jump-starter for Sean Penn, Nicholas Cage, Eric Stoltz, and Forrest Whitaker, Fast Times at Ridgemont High is mostly remembered as the film that got a lot of famous people going. But the film is much more than this, obviously, because it’s a bonafide high-school classic first, and a stoner classic second. The latter is mostly personified by Penn’s easygoing surfer dude Jeff Spicoli whose “been stoned since third grade.” His interactions with professor Mr. Hand (Ray Walston) are some of the funniest pot-related moments ever filmed, moments anyone who’s been in public high school can relate to.

Dazed and Confused (1993)

Wait, is it Fast Times or Dazed and Confused? You’ll have stoners arguing over which one is the certified stoner high school classic in various smoke-filled basements, until everyone agrees that there’s room for both and reward their thoughtfulness with a communal joint. Richard Linklater’s early film is much-removed from his most recent Boyhood scope, but his effortless ways of capturing time in a bottle and teen spirit in a bong are more than present in this rock and roll fused classic. Matthew McConaughey, Milla Jovovich, and Rory Cochrane are legendary teens of the 70s, in a film so classic even boutique label Criterion couldn’t ignore it.

The Stoned Age (1994)

Ah, but then there’s the hidden classic that’s always had the misfortune of being overshadowed by Linklater’s much-discussed and set-in-film-stone stoner extravaganza. James Melkonian’s The Stoned Age takes a single idea – two long-haired rock-and-rollers looking for chicks – and stretches it for an entire film. Full of kooky misadventures, hilarious one-liners, and two central performances from Bradford Tatum and Michael Kopelow that could rival any Penn’s and McConaughey’s, The Stoned Age is a true stoner’s classic, in as far as its mostly remembered by stoners.

Friday (1995)

Back to classics everyone’s heard of, the ’90s continued to churn out stoner movies faster than you can order pizza while supremely baked. F. Gary Gray’s Friday became such an instant comedy hit that it spawned unplanned sequels Next Friday and Friday After Next. But what the sequels don’t have is most of what makes the original a certified smoker’s classic: Chris Tucker’s hilarious, unemployable, Smokey. As his name suggests, the man’s reason to wake up is to smoke up, and his exchanges with Ice Cube’s Craig and the various characters the two encounter (including one super funny Bernie Mac) is legit hall-of-fame stoner gold.

Half Baked (1998)

1998 saw two stoner classics, worlds apart from each other in approach, that together define the entire decade as far as stoner comedy is concerned. Fans of The Chappelle Show surely remember this one, as Dave Chapelle co-writes (with fellow Chappelle Show writer Neal Brennan) and stars as Thurgood Jenkins, a man forced into selling marijuana only to become really, really, good at it. If you’ve never seen this, you’ve probably never sniffed a joint, and you’ve missed out on everything that makes Chappelle such a riot. Also has what’s perhaps the greatest stoner cameo ever, by none other than the Snoop Doggy Dogfather of pot playing an annoying and weaselly “scavenger smoker”.

The Big Lebowski (1998)

The second classic from the same year has risen above its cult-status into a bonafide comedy classic, seeped in enough cinematic artistry that I don’t doubt P.T. Anderson loved watching as a way to prepare his own stoner film. The Coen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski, with essential and absolutely uproarious turns from Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, John Turturro, Steve Buscemi (and, literally, every single other actor involved), is one of the greatest comedies ever made for my money. A case of mistaken identity leads to a tailspin of crimes and misdemeanors as The Dude (Bridges, as if you didn’t already know) tries to get his precious rug back. It ties the room together!

Kung Pow: Enter The Fist (2002)

Who says every stoner film has to involve people getting stoned? While most do, as our list clearly states, there are countless dumbed down comedies that are best enjoyed under the influence of the prescribed medicine from your local Doctor Greenthumb. Steve Oedekerk’s Kung Pow! Enter The Fist from 2002 is a martial arts parody on the surface, but have a toke or three and the movie transforms into one of the greatest comedies ever directed (a sentiment that lasts as long your stash does). It’s all in the dubbing.

Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle (2004)

Starting off the millennium with more contemporary comedies, the best kinds are the ones that kept all the charm and wit from their predecessors. One of the best of this kind is Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle. John Cho and Kal Penn are like the modern-day versions of Cheech and Chong, as they get thoroughly blazed and go on an adventure to find the nearest White Castle. Sure, it’s the biggest movie product placement this side of a Michael Bay film, but with hilarious cameos from Neil Patrick Harris, Christopher Meloni, and others, not to mention the hilarious dynamic between Cho and Penn, White Castle is a stone-cold classic. Sequel Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay is surprisingly decent, but definitely not as good as the original.

Smiley Face (2007)

A stoner gem too easily forgotten and dismissed, is this a Gregg Araki movie, his follow-up to one of the best reviewed films of his career, Mysterious Skin. Unfortunately for Araki, Smiley Face wasn’t as warmly received, but fortunately for stoners, Smiley Face is filled with spot-on moments of what exactly it feels like to be completely smoked out of your head. Not to mention that it has one of the best comedic performances Anna Farris ever gave (and she’s pretty much always hilarious). Jane unwittingly eats hash-cupcakes after already smoking too much for her own mental good, and tries to run down a to-do list on a regular day in the life of a pothead. This is no White Bird in a Blizzard, but it’s also undeservedly sidelined on lists like this. Similar to The Stoned Age, Smiley Face is overshadowed by other stoner comedies but remains brilliant and hilarious in its own way.

Pineapple Express (2008)

The list ends as it should, with the current go-to people behind today’s most successful stoner comedies. Seth Rogen and James Franco have done a lot of damage, most of all last year with the highly controversial The Interview, but their comedic efforts collided with global acceptance in 2008’s The Pineapple Express. Rogen’s everyman loves to get high after his brain-numbingly boring office job, but things take a wild turn after he unexpectedly teams up with his pot dealer, Saul (Franco, as hilarious as ever). It’s got Franco’s foot through a windshield during a hot pursuit as one of its many, many, highlights, and one of Danny McBride’s greatest creations in competing pot-dealer Red. Pineapple Express is stoner action comedy at its very best.

Think we missed some major pot movies? What are some of your favorites? Tell us in the comments below and have a great day, man!

It feels like a lifetime since last year’s Cannes festival, but the memory will hardly ever fade. Among the photogenic scenery, beautiful venues, and a bountiful intake of mind-probing motion pictures, I had the pleasure of being one among a handful of journalist participating in a roundtable interview with Leviathan director Andrey Zvyagintsev. My lengthy capsule review of the film will have hopefully revealed, even without a rating, just how much in awe I was after seeing the film. Indeed, it ended up topping my own personal Top 10, and was among our collective 13 Best Foreign Films of 2014.

Right now, in the midst of awards season, Leviathan is doing very well. Getting a limited theatrical release on New Years Eve, and expanding in the weeks to come, this modern Russian masterpiece has deservedly been wowing critics. In a singularly surprising and sober move, Russia has entered the film into the Best Foreign Language race, despite the film’s courageous surgical analysis of the rampant political corruption in the country. And it’s been paying off. It received a Golden Globe nomination and the Academy has it on their January shortlist, with an Oscar nom all but locked. If it were up to me, the film would pick up every award it has coming its way.

Until we find out what it may win or be nominated for, however, read on for the roundtable discussion with director Andrey Zvyagintsev from last year’s Cannes film festival. Bear in mind that this is one of the very first international interviews conducted for the film, it was done through a translator, and due to a time limit each journalist (there was about 7 of us) got to ask only one question. As such, the interview below isn’t presented in the usual Q&A format, but rather Zvyagintsev’s thoughts on the various topics covered in the questions. Also, he doesn’t shy away from a few key spoilers so take this as a warning that if you want absolutely nothing spoiled for the film, you’d best read it after you’ve seen it.

On the origin of the story in the film, how it ties in with The Book of Job, and the film’s early development.
I was told the story in the US from 2004, about this guy called Marvin John Heemeyer, who was this average guy who had a small job who lost his job and went nuts broke some official buildings and show some rebellion, his name was Killdozer, you can find it on the net if you like.

This is really the beginning of my film that’s how we started working on the scenario. I was told this story in 2008, so for 6 years I worked on that and finally got this result.

And I really had this desire of showing on the big screen that story that happened in the US, and show it on the big screen in my own words, you can say, in an artistic way.

And I didn’t want to make a documentary film about what happened, so I really had to talk about this thing but I needed to find some parallel to the subject. That’s how I found the story of Job, I wanted to tell a story of a man who loses everything he has; one by one, little by little, up to the point when he loses his health and his life.

For the room in order to build this topic, I needed some sort of mattress, to create some sort of collision and make this story eternal. And that’s why I called it Leviathan.

Some friends of mine, who teach philosophy, (they are married actually), they told me about Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes. Originally, the idea came from the ancient story, but when they told me about Hobbes I thought “OK, everything matches. I really have to talk about this story; this story of a powerful state.”

And just one more thing, one small detail. Once the location was confirmed, we found the house, we found the place, some local guy came to us and said, “you know, there’s a place 8 kilometres from here where you can actually see whales”, and that was like the epiphany, I knew it was a sign coming from above that we had to work here.”

Why he chose this particular project after his smaller, and more intimate, previous film Elena.
I had in my hands, or let’s say it was on my producer’s table, five screenplays. One of them was Leviathan, which actually arrived a little later. We had all kinds of projects, one of which was this huge big budget war film that happens in Kiev, and there was a Polish king in it, and I had a lot of choice.

There was one project about Ancient Greece. Which was also a huge project, for which we would have to rebuild the port of Athens.

So your question you should ask to the producer because he’s the one who really chose the Leviathan project. I was ready to work on anything.

On the representation of Russia and particularly why Putin’s portrait was so evident in the film.
This is actually the real office of the Mayor, Oleny Gorsk, so the portrait was really in the room. That’s the portrait of Putin when he’s much younger, 2003. It had to be there, because in any mayor’s office you have the portrait of the president. It’s a reality. In any office, of any big representative of power, you have representation of this power. Removing this portrait would be awkward. It belongs there.

I didn’t try to do anything with this portrait, it was just there in this room and I left it there.

[At this point one of the journalists kept insisting that he shot the film with clear intentions to represent Russia and Putin in a certain light]
They represent power, they keep saying that in the film. They have this little sign on the jacket “United Russia” which makes them loyal to the power. They have to represent it.
I can assure you if Putin saw the film, it wouldn’t be awkward for him.

Why he chose to work with composer Philip Glass again…
We worked with Philip on Elena, I used his 3rd symphony. And we were talking about the rights to his music, which is when I realized I ‘d love to work with him for my next movie. I’m really happy to know him because I think he’s a genius and very modern.

I wanted to work with him, but I didn’t say “OK, my next project I’m working with him for sure”, if I have a film that goes with his music, and once the project of this film was clear I knew I wanted to work with him. I contacted his agent, but he didn’t have time to create music, even though he had wanted to create the music for Elena.

So, I decided to go on the web and listen to every music I can find, and finally I got on to this “Acktachen” and I decided that was it.

Whether vodka was allowed on set…
[laughs, and then in English:] Good question!

I realized that those scenes where actors are drunk would be the hardest. I thought to myself “how do I do that and stay close to reality?” So I suggested to the actors: if you feel like you can control the situation and do your work, you can try [and drink real vodka]. And if something doesn’t go well, we will re-shoot.

So they were basically all a little drunk in those scenes, except one person: The mayor [played by Roman Madyanov] Absolutely clean. Only talent.

The current political status in Russia and whether the film was meant to be political in nature…
I would say that I worked on the film for 6 years. To me the film is about Man vs. State. It’s not about any political system; it could be any country, since the story I was told happened in 2008. It was man facing state. I don’t want to be appreciated as “for” or “against” any system; I like to think that this is an artistic approach to reality which could happen anywhere.

I really hope my film is perceived as more of an artistic film than a political one.

Today it’s very critical, but everyone knows about it, everyone watches TV, the news. There was a break between Europe and Russia and that’s why there are films like Maidan, or Red Army. It’s reality, it appears in films. It’s not easy for Russia because its also a moment when you have to build a future.

If Europe continues with the sanctions, Russia will just shut itself and really be a closed country and all these feelings within Russia against Europe will grow. It would be very sad to come back to those years of the Cold War when, really, we were separated from the rest of the world.

His next project will be…
I really don’t know. The producer has about 3 or 4 scripts on the table, and he’s thinking. He’s the one who decides.

The Dardenne brothers, Jean-Pierre and Luc, are worshiped filmmakers in the art-house community. They have been impressing audiences since 1996’s The Promise and are among the distinguished few who have two Palme D’Ors to their name (for 1999’s Rosetta and 2005’s The Child). This year, the question is: can they be the first to get three? If the press screening reaction I was a part of this morning is any indication, the answer is louder than Obama’s “yes we can!”. Two Days, One Night premiered this morning and while every previous screening I’ve seen this early ended with a few appreciative claps from the groggy journalists, this one practically received a standing ovation. After their previous effort, 2011’s The Kid With A Bike, didn’t move audiences as much they’re usually capable of doing this one feels like a return to form for the Dardennes. Marion Cotillard gives a sensational performance, and is now the frontrunner for Best Actress. The simplicity of the story is matched only by the weight of the everyday struggle, something the Dardennes are masters of, and in this particular case a growing will power becomes truly inspirational. Though I’ve never personally counted myself among the Dardenne worshippers, I cannot deny the inner satisfaction and victorious sensation Two Days, One Night fills you with.

Cinema verite style is never so deftly handled as it is in the hands of the Dardenne brothers. Quiet conversations and seemingly mundane moments are given precedence over action, movements are followed and observed by a caring camera in a role of close companion, and the conflict rooted into the story is taken from the ordinary. Every major Dardenne film has the connecting thread of emptiness (be it the loss of a child, absence of a parent, etc.) that is in desperate need of filling. In the case of Two Days, One Night, it’s the absence of a job as Sandra (Cotillard) finds herself fighting for hers under pretty unusual circumstances. After a bout with depression, Sandra returned to work to find out about a vote that got her fired. The employees of her company were asked to choose between receiving bonuses (up to 1,000 extra Euros) or keeping Sandra on, because cut backs had to be made otherwise. Juliette, one of Sandra’s supporters convinces their boss to allow for another secret ballot to be held on Monday morning, to get the employees voting again without the influence of a heartless foreman. Sandra’s mission, urged on by her supporting husband Manu (Fabrizio Rongione), is to reach out to people over the weekend and try to convince them to vote for her so she can keep her job.

It’s the perfect Dardenne premise, because the fear of losing a job is one of the major universal subjects of our current state of affairs, and it’s action-less enough for that verite style to do its magic and pull you into Sandra’s casual, disheveled lifestyle. Cotillard is perfectly sympathetic, wearing her tail between her legs tightly enough to win over any cranky audience, her crying fits doing exactly what they’re constructed to; gain support on and off-screen. This touches upon one of my major issues with the film. Notwithstanding its inspirational and authoritative character, the film plays cleverly with some of Sandra’s idiosyncrasies and some of her colleagues’ reactions to her plight (Timur comes to mind) to a point of obvious fabrication. When some of the scenes become too designed to be real, it effectively pops the organic bubble and makes you realize; “oh wait, this is a movie.”

There is something a little rotten in the idea of this film winning the Palme; it would be a celebration of the everyday struggle by people who are privileged enough to never experience it (or at least, never again.) With two previous Palmes to their name, I’d say give it to someone who’s never won. It’s not like the competition is lacking in possibilities. However, Marion Cotillard seamlessly integrates herself into the Dardenne narrative and makes us forget how much of a superstar she is. For that, she should win her first Cannes Best Actress award.

Originally published on May 20th, 2014 during the Cannes Film Festival

Leading up to its Cannes premiere, the buzz around Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s new film has been positively energetic. And it all led to prediction lists putting it at the very top as most likely Palme D’Or winner come next weekend. Of course, Ceylan is no stranger to the festival; his 2008 Three Monkeys won him the Best Director Award, and Once Upon A Time In Anatolia, his previous film before this one, won the Grand Jury Prize (highest alternative to the Palme) in 2011. Today, Ceylan’s love affair with the prestige of Cannes continued with Winter Sleep and, judging by the boisterous standing ovation the director and his cast received after his three hour and fifteen minute epic finished, the talk of a Palme D’Or will grow ever louder. With good reason too, because the film is a cat’s whisker away from being a masterpiece.

A wealthy man made a decision to lead a simpler life after 25 years of theater acting, and retreated into the confines of his hotel, located on the cliffy outskirts of Anatolia. This is where we meet Aydin (Haluk Bilginer), who spends most of his time running his various properties and dealing with his tenants through his right-hand man Hidayet (Ayberk Pekcan), working up the motivation to write his book on the history of Turkish theater, and contributing think-pieces on various Turkish subjects to an unpopular newspaper. His young wife Nihal (Melissa Sozen) and his sister Necla (Demet Akbag) have their own quarters in the hotel, the former trying to do some charity work and the latter getting over her recent divorce. As winter begins to clasp the land in its snowy palm, these ordinary people get into some epic conversations amongst themselves, their tenants, and their friends. Nobody watches TV.

Rereading that paragraph, it feels somewhat nonsensical to describe the narrative for a film like this. Of course, every review should have a description of the plot so the paragraph serves its purpose here, but if you’ve seen any Ceylan movie you know very well that standard words do little justice to the kind of innate magnetic power his films are able to produce. Methods include conversations that last real time, carefully detailed artistic direction, and (in this case) a cinematography so pallid and desolate it will freeze your bones. There is still a point in naming all of the actors, in a hopeful effort that the names – though completely unknown to western tastes – will stick in the mind of readers. It’s Bilginer’s show, who plays his complicated and inexcusably human character with perfectly balanced grace and arrogance; you’re often left torn on whether to completely side with his views or hate his guts. Nevertheless, every other actor, especially the two women who play such major roles in Aydin’s life, makes a memorable impact. This review carefully tiptoes around a crucial subplot concerning one of Aydin’s tenants because it needs to be experienced with utter lack of previous knowledge, but the actors involved there are equally excellent.

Experience. That word gets thrown around so much nowadays in reviews that it all but lost its meaning. Gravity is not a movie, it’s an EXPERIENCE. Enemy is more like an experience than actual movie. And so on. The true meaning of experience considers that personal factor, makes you feel involved, and soaks you into the world of the film. The two examples given are recent obvious ones, but neither was a real experience for me because something or other didn’t allow me to let go completely, and trust the filmmaker completely. With its slow-burning pace, crucially subtle camera movement, and – the natural highlight – utterly captivating exchanges between every person, revealing the fragile cracks of a pathetically self-obsessed nature, Winter Sleep is a genuine experience. Even referring to the people in this film as ‘characters’ feels like an offense.

What Bela Tarr did with images, Nuri Bilge Ceylan accomplishes with dialogue; one hundred percent inclusive assimilation. You literally get lost inside this world that seems to balance on the periphery of humanity itself. But, believe it or not, that’s just the surface. If you put your trust in Ceylan and his troupe of brilliant actors, every action will reveal deeper meanings, every frame will contain significant details, and you will leave the theater completely nourished. A 10 would be a bit much for a score after a first viewing, and there is a voice over toward the end that almost pulls you away and makes you realize you’re in a movie theater, but I’ll be stunned if another Cannes film impresses me as much as this one has. Not to add more fuel to a prematurely lit fire, but at the very least I can hope that Jane Campion and her jury get as wonderfully lost inside this movie as I have.

Originally published on May 16, 2014 during the Cannes Film Festival

With filming wrapped all the way back in 2013, it almost feels like Liv Ullmann’s grand return behind the camera has come a year too late. While this can mess with people’s anxieties and expectations; the most important thing is that Ullmann is back, directing an adaptation of masterpiece Swedish play Miss Julie by August Strindberg, a playwright regarded as something of a demigod in Scandinavian culture. Ullmann’s choice of setting the story in Ireland gave her the opportunity to cast Jessica Chastain, Colin Farrell, and Samantha Morton in the three roles. This is at once a blessing and a curse; shaky accents and stringent Anglophone translation (by Ullmann herself) make for a tiring watch, at times, but it also gives three familiar actors a chance to give it their 110%. Besides, Miss Julie has been adapted so many times; it’s nice to have it set in the beautiful Irish hillsides for a change.

The story goes as follows; on the eve of Midsummer’s Night, in a famous Baron’s castle, three people contend with escalating passions, desires, and prejudices on subjects of love, lust, and class. There’s the “kitchen wench” and handmaiden Cathleen (Morton), the educated, treacherous valet John (Farrell), and the center of attention whether off-screen or on, the Baron’s daughter Julie (Chastain). The Baron is never seen, but his presence is felt in almost every scene. Julie is presented as a lonely woman, trapped within the confines of her enormous and mostly empty castle, while the relationship between John and Cathleen is purposefully muddled between flirtatious colleagues and engaged lovers. The two servants are the first to meet, and it’s not long before the gossip starts about what the latest scandalous, improper thing Miss Julie has done. Speaking of the devil draws her out of the shadows, and it’s not long before Cathleen is dismissed.

Much of the time is spent listening to the voluptuous, impassioned, monologues between Farrell’s John and Chastain’s Julie. Make no mistake about it; Miss Julie is theatricality wiping the sweat off of the highest brow. If some viewers aren’t prone to fulfillment by way of violent performances, their time would be best spent elsewhere. That’s not to say that Ullmann’s direction doesn’t seep through the emotional cracks of the volcanic exchanges. Barring some fly-on-the-wall angles, elegant exterior shots by the brook or Julie’s garden, and a couple of truly fantastic reflections of Julie against the window superimposed with the only escape out of the castle; Ullmann decides to keep her camera firmly pointed at the actors, in medium shot, reminiscent of her old mentor and friend Ingmar Bergman. Appropriately framed, as if posing for a Venetian portrait, the actors are photographed in resplendent play of light and shadow by DP Mikhail Krichman.

Then there’s Ullmann’s choice of music, utilizing Schubert (his popular “Andate Con Moto” made cinematically infamous in Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon) and Bach to exceptionally powerful effects. The music reflects the character’s moods, at times revealing feelings they aren’t aware of, or are trying to hide. It’s stunning. But, Miss Julie never lets you forget that it’s an actor’s showpiece; Strindberg was infamous for his naturalistic style and free-spirited dialogue, which carved multiple dimensions into his characters. Ullmann’s translation feels clunky at times, and some of the delivery (especially from Farrell and Morton) feels too affected to resonate as anything genuine, but only to a small degree. Chastain on the other hand, whose accent does slightly waver but never to egregious levels, truly gives it her all here. She tears the roof off as Julie, going through a whole array of emotions and ranges to near exhausting altitudes. And yet, whether it’s instinct, Ullmann’s inspiration, or a bit of both, she pulls back in the right moments and grounds Julie, making her relatable and never larger-than-life.

This movie may not be the critical darling one would expect from an austere adaptation of Strindberg, by Liv Ullmann, starring Jessica Chastain. People looking for some easy entertainment won’t be praising it any time soon. Despite all of this, if the viewer properly prepares for a bit of a mental and emotional workout, there is much to be gained from the pain here. Three actors at the very top of their games, even with two of them being shaky at times, and a director who is clearly passionate and deeply respectful towards the material. Miss Julie is high-octane, visceral, cinema, raising intensity not with a kiss or a gunshot, but with vile, inebriated, human emotions.

Originally published on 9/22/14.

Theo Love has directed and edited an intense and surprisingly affective investigational documentary. And the only reason I say “surprising,” is because one wouldn’t think a subject like this would turn out so gripping just by reading it on paper. 10 churches are burnt in the so-called buckle of the Bible Belt in Texas. Does that, then, mean this type of documentary can only be engaging for religious people or Texans? While it may seem that way, Little Hope Was Arson rises above these understandable misgivings. This is where the premise on paper turns into an instructive slice of Americana in front of the lens, and where the potential in director (and, this can’t be stressed enough, editor) Theo Love crackles brightest through the flames.

This true life event takes place in East Texas, where there are as many churches as there are Starbucks stores in New York City. Down there, the pastime of choice is a devout relationship with God, and a zealous belief that everything happens as God wills it. A church, then, is much more than just a roof and four walls. It’s a sacred ground of worship, where communities come together on a daily basis, and join hands in united faith. Whether one believes in this on a personal level is irrelevant to the appreciation of Theo Love’s documentary; these people believe in it. More than believe, they stake their entire livelihoods around it, and Love’s interview subjects convey this message like second nature. All one needs to understand in order to connect is that these people, all trying to do good and live honest lives, have faith. It’s an important aspect to stress, because all emotional investment in Little Hope Was Arson is built upon this foundation. When 10 churches are burned within a 40 mile radius of each other, in a case of serial arson, the impact on the community, and the repercussions thereof, is weighty enough to make this documentary, at 74 minutes, one of the most efficient documentaries of the year. From the ashes of a small town crime, rises a subject of universal proportions.

A big part of the reason behind that are the interview subjects. As authentic as grilled grits, the people that populate this documentary—from various reverends and Baptists, to dispatchers, ATF team leaders, family members, and perpetrators—serve to paint an unscripted and unfiltered portrait of rural, unrefined, southern America. And the inexplicable charm of watching truth in demeanor, glance, and speech pattern is omnipresent. Of these, the standouts are Christy McAlister, a dispatcher who gets involved with the investigation in ways she never imagined, her father, Jason Bourque’s mother, and the ATF team lead on the case. Of course, these are the people that touched me the most through their authenticity. Love gives enough attention to a wide array of characters, and all end up resonating in one way or another.

The reason Little Hope Was Arson resonates to such a degree is only partly due to the story’s natural elements of shaken faith and rattled community members. Conversely, it all comes down to Theo Love. The way he structures the documentary into three distinct parts of a procedural—before, during, and after—and the editing prowess on display in certain scenes augment the documentary from a basic level to one of greatness. Building deductive lines of reasoning with an interplay of talking head interviews, balancing on morality’s dividing lines of right and wrong, and even musical choices (like the use of Merchant Orchestra’s “Virgin”), all show Love’s capabilities as a director and editor. His most triumphant moment comes as the documentary shifts into its third act, and the faces of those closest affected are spliced together in silence over an ominous instrumental. It’s at once a cinematic hammering, hitting the heads of the nails on all the heavy crosses this incident carved, and an exclamation point on Theo Love’s luminous prospects.

Now playing on VOD and select cities across the country (for full list, visit the film’s official website).

The famous real estate idiom about the three most important factors in determining the value of a property, aptly applies to Josephine Decker’s experimental feature debut: “location, location, location.” Take “feature” with a pinch of salt, however, because Butter on the Latch is twice removed from any other feature you’ll see all year (except, maybe, Decker’s second narrative film released this year, Thou Wast Mild and Lovely, which we’ve recently reviewed here). Decker’s background in performance art is felt throughout Butter; to the point that the two central characters’ movements feel as choreographed as their dialogue is improvised. But it’s not the movements or the narrative that keep the viewer engaged through-out this performance piece; it’s the woods where it’s shot, specifically a forest in Mendocino County, California, that seems to be the point of inspiration for everything else.

Sarah (Sarah Small) lives in New York, and after waking up half-naked in some ramshackle warehouse on the lower side of Manhattan, decides to visit her old friend Isolde (Isolde Chae-Lawrence), who’s at a Balkan folk music camp in Mendocino, getting over a break-up. The two re-unite and leisurely converse over Slivovitz (a Balkan plum brandy, originating from Serbia), and make-up; Isolde recounts her adventures with a mysterious masseuse from the East Village called Victor, Sarah remembers a Bulgarian folk song she heard, about a dragon entwined in a woman’s hair and whisking her away. It’s romantic and frightening all at once, but compelling enough to start having an influence on Sarah’s dreams. The friendship is abruptly strained with tension when Sarah’s gaze falls on a banjo-playing crooner called Steph (Charlie Hewson). Sarah and Steph grow closer, Isolde’s capriciousness grows stranger, music and nature work in harmony to distort the lines of fiction and reality.

Decker’s film is one of those tough watches that will either frustrate the viewer to the point of not wishing to continue, or completely enchant them. Directed and edited by Decker, shot by Ashley Connor, and playing out as a real-life encounter of two friends called Sarah and Isolde (in its most experimental move, all dialogue is improvised, thus this ‘feature’ doesn’t have a screenplay); the essence of Butter is very much a feminine essence. Decker discovered a fascinating way to connect the dots of folklore, music, and nature, and the result is a drawing of whatever the personification of female psychology would look like. Presumably a female figure covered in a lot of hair (one of the most striking visual motifs in the film). Aesthetically, and on a purely poetic level, Butter on the Latch is as sumptuous and inviting as its wonderful title suggests.

Connor’s cinematography has been singled out as a standout, and it is. Images of caterpillars slithering toward the fringes of focus, the crackling of a fire reflecting off a sleeping face, and strolls through the woods in the middle of the night lit by flashlights, pervade the entire picture with a tenuous sense of mysticism. Decker’s editing, however, should be championed as much as Connor’s cinematography; the influence of Bergman’s Persona and Lynch’s Twin Peaks is most intensely absorbed through the way Decker vigorously cuts and splices Sarah’s dream sequences, and its inebriated final moments. And as much as Bergman and Lynch must have been artistic influences, there’s a disarming sense that the spirit of Roman Polanski’s Repulsion is never too far away.

The trouble many will find with Butter, however, is precisely its disorienting nature, which seems to refuse any sense of narrative out of some experimental, post-modern, principles rather than a storytelling necessity. It’s an alluring piece of work, to be sure, but it seems to revel in confusion rather than attempt to escape it or truly put it to any good, compelling, use. A great example, in fact, of when improvised dialogue may not have been the best artistic choice. Due to this, Butter feels like the work of a student still learning her craft and something that doesn’t quite reach the creative heights it’s stretching toward. But, for someone who’s just begun her very promising directorial career, that’s hardly a big criticism. Decker and Connor truly work wonders to visually capture the magnetism of both feminine allure and feminine malice. Visuals inspired by a psychological location of the psyche as much as the physical location of the woods.

Nighttime vultures circling around the cynical, cruel world of newsworthy accidents and tragedies are depicted with delectably compelling malice in Dan Gilroy’s directorial debut, Nightcrawler. Hitting home runs with feature debuts seems to run in the Gilroy family, with older brother Tony’s excellent Michael Clayton coming out of the woodwork in 2007. With his own debut, Dan has channeled the very best from big brother’s repertoire, and written one of the year’s standout screenplays; full of razor-sharp dialogue and nail-biting suspense. But the spoils don’t stop there, because there are two guys who help Gilroy raise Nightcrawler to deliciously deviant levels in the form of leading man Jake Gyllenhaal and Director of Photography Robert Elswitt.

Things kick off in the dead of night, where petty thief and all-around scumbag Louis Bloom (Gyllenhaal) scavenges the L.A. streets for ways to make a dime. His game is usually to steal and pawn, though he does ask for jobs and a chance to prove himself any chance he gets. One night, while jammed in traffic because of an accident on the highway, he sees freelancer Joe (Bill Paxton) taping the brutal scene, and finds out what “nightcrawlers” like him do. Armed with a police scanner, a camera or two (if there’s an assistant to film different angles), and a vehicle, these people tape crime scenes and sell the footage to whichever news station coughs up the highest pay. Louis is hooked on the spot and proceeds to get into the game himself; pawning a bike for a cheap camcorder and “hiring” bottom feeder Rick (Riz Ahmed) as his intern and GPS navigator.

Louis’ fearsome determination and resolve to be the very best nightcrawler he can be starts to pay dividends when he begins to foster a working relationship with Nina (Rene Russo), news director of a local station and as desperate for ratings as Louis is focused for success. Starting off with petty home invasions and dog attacks, and moving up to heavier crimes, Bloom realizes that he’s finally found his vocation. How far will he go to make sure his videos are the first thing people see in next morning’s breaking news? What lines will Bloom cross, dragging whoever stands in his way, in order to get the best angle? The lines dividing and connecting ethics, morals, and professional conduct don’t just get blurred; they get smeared in blood.

Jake Gyllenhaal has outdone himself here, slithering under the skin of Louis Bloom to create a compelling anti-hero for the ages. As introverted as Travis Bickle, as ambivalent as Patrick Bateman, and as greedy as Gordon Gekko, Gyllenhaal’s Bloom joins the seedy ranks of charismatic anti-heroes who inadvertently glue the viewer in; unsure whether one wants him to succeed or fail, or whether it’s hatred or admiration that draws one to this strange man. Gyllenhaal has been on a roll since 2012’s End Of Watch but Louis Bloom is, without a doubt, his greatest performance. Amusing, menacing, and wacko in more ways than one, the character is Gilroy’s spawn as much as Gyllenhaal’s. Gilroy has made his previous work (Bourne Legacy, Reel Steal and The Fall, most notably) look like child’s play compared to his Nightcrawler screenplay. A dual character study of the modern American entrepreneur and the cutthroat world of contemporary media, Nightcrawler is the apex of the year’s original screenplays; brimming with intelligence, humor, and tension.

Elevating the picture that much further is the exemplary work of master cinematographer Robert Elswitt, regular Paul Thomas Anderson collaborator. Choosing to shoot on film, the establishing shots of L.A. nights haven’t looked this attractive in ages, almost surpassing Michael Mann’s signature visuals. While the film is a little slow in its first act, and before Bloom begins to truly flower, we have Elswitt’s keen eye to nurture our senses and immerse us into the belly of this beast. The supporting cast, lead by an inspired Rene Russo unseen in this form for what feels like decades, and rounded off by the excellent Ahmed and Paxton, almost make Nightcrawler into an ensemble piece, if it wasn’t for Gyllenhaal stealing scene after scene.

Much of the film’s appeal comes from the fact that it’s so many things all at once; a showcase for Gyllenhaal’s evolutionary maturity since the early days of Donnie Darko, a reminder that Rene Russo can act circles around her peers when the material is right, and an astonishing feature debut by Dan Gilroy, who may not direct as seamlessly as he writes, but whose imperfections here are almost too minute to count. This is cryptic twilight moviemaking of the highest order, and the result is a ferocious film predestined for cult status.

Review originally published on 9/24/14

Nightcrawler trailer

“The collapse of the stellar universe will occur – like creation – in grandiose splendor” – Blaise Pascal (from Lessons Of Darkness)

Explorer, provocateur, genius, madman. Werner Herzog has been called lots of things, and whether you consider yourself a devoted fan or just a partial admirer, it’s hard to deny the towering presence of the prolific German director’s work in the boundless abyss of film culture and film history. Starting out in his early 20s, during the late 1960s, Herzog has since made close to 70 films. Mastering the short-form visual essay, long-form documentary, and feature film formats, Herzog doesn’t like to make the distinction between features and documentaries, since the point of contact between fact and fiction is ever-so-miraculously blurred in most of his pictures. Indeed, the search for universal truths surrounding the human condition is one of the director’s most prominent themes.

Herzog turns 72 years young today and, partly spurred on by the recent SHOUT! FACTORY Blu-Ray collection, we here at Way Too Indie jumped at the occasion to discuss and celebrate some of this craftsman’s greatest works. Take “greatest” with a grain of salt, of course, because time constraints and similar brutish limitations have prevented us from doing a full-on retrospective of the man’s work (indeed, some of us would argue that any Herzog film is a “must-see” Herzog film.) Ultimately, we believe that the 20 hand-picked films in this feature highlight Herzog’s most common themes, and trace, in greatest accuracy, the various shades of his esoteric, poetic, tender, and cynical imagination, which make his particular brand of cinema so compelling and substantial.

Without further ado, read on to explore four decades of that peculiar, chaotic, Werner Herzog cinematic touch.

Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970)

Herzog refers to this film as a nightmare filled with gloom and ‘profound despair.’ He believes this quality could make it endure longer than films like Aguirre, Wrath Of God, which is ‘kindergarten’ compared to Even Dwarfs Started Small he says. But, then, why do all the dwarfs look like they’re having an absolute blast? It’s one of the many questions that whirl around this surreal and docu-like early feature from the German mastermind. Filmed on the volcanic Canary Islands, with an all-dwarf cast, Even Dwarfs Started Small is centered around an institution where a group of dwarfs are rebelling and creating chaos with pigs, flower pots, a truck, and some food; cackling and chortling all the livelong day. Watching this world populated entirely by dwarfs, and seeing them interact and juxtaposed with ordinary objects and animals creates some of the most stirring visuals from the director’s career. He’s right about it being disturbing because it touches upon something within us, daring us to challenge our own notions, insecurities, and fears, Even Dwarfs is a grand entrance into the eerie wilderness of Werner Herzog’s imaginative and absurdist creativity. [Nik]

Land Of Silence and Darkness (1971)

Even with Flying Doctors Of East Africa under his belt, it’s safe to call Land Of Silence And Darkness Herzog’s first proper documentary. Flying Doctors is a 45 minute ‘report’ (Herzog’s own words,) and was incited by some friends as opposed to a burning desire to document something extraordinary in the ordinary. Land Of Silence and Darkness follows Fini Straubinger, a deaf-blind woman, as she visits various groups and people (young, old, deaf-blind by birth or with time, etc.) who live with this condition. By Herzog’s surrealist and abstract standards, the documentary is one of his most conventional creations, but I don’t imagine much would be different if Herzog made this documentary today, other than his signature, inquisitive, and poetic narration connecting the images with grand ideas. But some of the captured moments here like a man tracing a tree with his hands, a young boy learning to understand vibrations as language, a visit to the zoo, and Fini’s incredible generosity and kindness are powerful enough to evoke the viewers into making the connection themselves. How is the world perceived by the mind of people who lived most, if not all, of their lives in silence and darkness? [Nik]

Fata Morgana (1971)

Despite being shot in 1968 and 1969, Herzog didn’t release Fata Morgana until 1971. The film is one of the director’s most abstract works, a sort-of documentary (but not really) taking place in the Sahara desert. Split up into three sections (Creation, Paradise, and The Golden Age), Fata Morgana mostly comprises of stunning expressionist views of the desert. Most of these incredible, extraterrestrial looking shots appear in the Creation segment, where narrator Lotte Eisener reads from the Popol Vuh. In the next two sections the images become less abstract, but Herzog throws in plenty of surreal elements to maintain the film’s otherworldly atmosphere. Fata Morgana will make for difficult viewing to some (including myself), but its cinematography is undeniably excellent. Certainly more experimental than the Herzog people know now, Fata Morgana’s images of the brutal, unforgiving desert sync up perfectly with the filmmaker’s cynical view of nature. [C.J.]

Aguirre, Wrath Of God (1972)

Set in 1560 and following a megalomaniacal troop leader named Don Lupe de Aguirre (Klaus Kinski), and a group of Spanish explorers as they weave through the misted Peruvian rain forests in search of El Dorado, Aguirre, the Wrath of God is creepy, dreamlike, and one of Herzog’s most brilliantly realized visions. Kinski and Herzog disagreed on what Aguirre’s temperament should be, with Kinski wanting to play a rage-filled tyrant and Herzog preferring a more subdued form of oppression. To get his way, Herzog would purposefully infuriate Kinski before each take, shooting only after Kinski had exhausted his anger following his long temper tantrums. Things got so heated that Herzog allegedly threatened to shoot Kinski if he didn’t cooperate. Nevertheless, through the struggle and strife, Herzog and Kinski produced yet another cinema classic. Like Fitzcarraldo, Aguirre is as emblematic of its maker as any work of art could be, with Herzog’s thirst for grand truths and eternal mysteries woven into its every fiber. [Bernard]

The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser (1974)

Herzog continues to explore the mysterious with The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, a story so surreal and layered with sociological conundrums that it’s hard to believe it comes from real life. A boy who grew up in a dungeon, tied to the ground and completely isolated from the outside world, is released to fend for himself. After learning how to walk, write, and speak, he goes on to ladder up in society and become Kaspar Hauser, a major person of interest for the highbrow German crowd. While the film contains Herzog’s signature elusiveness with random, alluring visions, at the center is the man who portrays Kaspar. Bruno S. was a street performer who was abused as a child and grew up in various institutions; it took him some time before warming up to Herzog under the condition that his full name never be revealed. In this way, Kaspar Hauser is a perfect example of socially reclusive art mirroring isolated life. Winner of the Cannes Jury Prize, Kaspar Hauser continues Herzog’s major themes of profound despair and continual exploration of the mysteries behind the human condition, while remaining one of the director’s funniest and most entertaining films. Go figure. [Nik]

Heart Of Glass (1976)

The 70s continue with Heart of Glass, also known as “the one where he hypnotized his whole cast.” Exaggerated gestures, eyes rolling into the back of the skull, eyelids too heavy to keep up; these are some of the off-kilter effects Herzog got from his actors after he decided to put most of them under hypnosis. The result is a transfixing experience, albeit tiresome at times, and when the prophet cowherd Hias says ‘like sleep-walkers, people walk towards their doom,’ a whole new level of meaning expands. Still, with more tangents in Heart of Glass than usual, it’s easily the toughest watch from his explosive output of the 70s. The loose narrative concerns a group of villagers who are trying to move on after their foreman dies, taking the secret of the Ruby Glass, a mythical type of glass with mysterious powers, with him. It’s like Brothers Grimm meeting Franz Kafka in the middle of the woods at the stroke of midnight in terms of vibe, and thanks to some brilliant interior cinematography from Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein (same man who shot Fata Morgana and Kasper Hauser, clearly Herzog’s kindred spirit for ethereal imagery,) it has the familiar magnetic pull of a Herzog picture. Mind you, this one’s for the purest of Herzog fans as the lingering shots of bizarre behavior tend to outstay their welcome just a tad. [Nik]

Stroszek (1977)

Herzog’s second film with the irreplaceable Bruno S. was supposed to be Woyzek, but after the director figured Klaus Kinski would better fit the role of a man whose mental faculties are collapsing (because Kinski,) he wrote Stroszek specifically for Bruno. As far as narrative goes, this is the strongest one yet from the Herzog collection; Bruno Stroszek is released from prison and, together with abused prostitute Eva (Eva Mettes) and his buddy Sheitz (effortlessly endearing Clemens Sheitz, appearing in his third Herzog film,) they all go to Wisconsin, USA to make a better life for themselves. Things don’t exactly work out, and Stroszek quickly evolves into one of most intensely bleak films Herzog’s ever made. Long before the infamous dancing chicken chars a hole in your heart, the three central performances and their characters’ attempts at adapting to the foreign surroundings of impoverished America pepper the picture with an almost overpowering sense of disconnect. In typical Herzog fashion, a laugh is never too far from a tear, while the film remains a testament for Herzog’s screenwriting talents because it was written in four days and stands as one of the rare cases where story trumps image in a Herzog film. Having said that, the image of Bruno driving that truck on the mist-covered American highway is one for the ages. [Nik]

Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)

Between the stage and the screen, there have been hundreds of tellings of Bram Stoker’s classic tale of Count Dracula. F.W. Murnau’s silent version, Nosferatu (for which Herzog took the most direct inspiration), used the dark German Expressionist style to create one of the most terrifying movie monsters ever. It is easy to see why Herzog wanted to tell this story — many of his protagonists were moody loners with an air of mystery attempting some otherworldly pursuit. In Nosferatu the Vampyre, he just so happens to be an ancient bloodsucking monster. The major story doesn’t stray from the most known versions of Dracula, but this is one of the more sympathetic portrayals of the character I’ve seen, due to Herzog’s own sympathy for the character and Herzog-regular Klaus Kinski’s remarkable performance. He’s as menacing and creepy as you’d expect (he doesn’t really need the makeup to accomplish that), but there is a sadness in the Count that adds depth to a character we thought we already understood. Nosferatu the Vampyre isn’t the best adaptation of its source material (I will still stump for the 1958 Hammer Horror of Dracula) but Herzog’s curious and sympathetic eye and Kinski’s fantastic performance add enough to make this worth the retelling. [Aaron]

Woyzek (1979)

Taking advantage of his star’s exhaustion after shooting Nosferatu the Vampyre, Herzog cast Klaus Kinski in the title role and began shooting Woyzeck mere days after Nosferatu wrapped. Woyzeck might be the least popular of Herzog’s collaborations with Kinski, and it’s easy to see why. Shot over 18 days, and adapted from Georg Büchner’s unfinished play, Woyzeck follows a soldier as he succumbs to madness due to medical experiments done by a local doctor; one experiment, for instance, has the doctor forcing Woyzeck to only eat peas. The fragmented story and hasty shooting schedule reflect the messy, unsatisfying final product, but there are plenty of admirable qualities in the picture. Kinski is absolutely convincing as Woyzeck, the demented score of warped classical music goes a long way to setting the mood, and the film’s slow-motion climax is a sight to behold. And here’s an interesting piece of trivia: Herzog initially cast Bruno S. as Woyzeck, only to change his mind and replace him with Kinski. As a way to apologize for the re-casting, Herzog started writing Stroszek, which ended up getting released two years before Woyzeck. [C.J.]

Fitzcarraldo (1982)

Of all of Fitzcarraldo’s grand statements, perhaps the grandest is this: Werner Herzog is a crazy son-of-a-bitch, and cinema needs him. Herzog’s epic quest follows the mission of Brian Sweeny Fitzgerald (Kinski), a man determined to build an opera house in the middle of a South American jungle who enlists natives and puts them through the ringer to help him do so. Staggering in scope and packed with enough ambition for 100 films, Herzog’s film is infamous for its epically fraught production, which included Herzog’s legendary insistence on moving an over 300-ton steamship over a hill without the use of special effects and a scary incident involving the chief of the native extras offering to murder Kinski for Herzog. Yes, the film is arguably as faulty as the agonizing ordeal that led to its completion (it’s bloated and indulgent), but the insanity and shoddiness of it all makes the film completely unique, and in that sense, completely perfect. It’s fitting, then, that the only Best Director award Herzog won at Cannes was for Fitzcarraldo. Les Blank’s Burden of Dreams documents the making of Herzog’s tortured passion project, and is just as fascinating. [Bernard]

Where The Green Ants Dream (1984)

How do you follow up a movie as crazed, epic, and instantly classic as Fitzcarraldo? For Herzog, the answer was found in directing an entirely different kind of picture. Viewers who aren’t familiar with Herzog’s themes and style would be forgiven if they thought Where The Green Ants Dream feels like a movie from a completely different director than the one who demanded a steamship be dragged over a mountain. But for those familiar with Herzog’s work in the 70s, the bridge between Fitzcarraldo and Green Ants is quite visible; the relationship between nature, man, and machine being the most prominent common denominator. Set in the Australian desert, Green Ants tell the story of a group of Aboriginal people who refuse to move from their land after a mining company threatens to destroy it for uranium extraction. They befriend geologist Lance Hackett (Bruce Spence) who begins to take their mythology of green ants as creators and dreamers of the universe to heart. As far as Herzog’s filmography goes, Green Ants would fall somewhere in the mid-to-lower tier, partly because the acting doesn’t support Herzog’s grandiose ideas as well, partly because the central conflict feels too mired in its own idiosyncrasies. It was Herzog’s first English-language film, which explains some of the clunky dialogue, but Herzog devotees will be able to find more than enough to grab onto here. [Nik]

Cobra Verde (1987)

The last of Herzog and Kinski’s collaborations, Cobra Verde is also one of their best. Kinski plays the title character, a Brazilian rancher turning to crime after a drought destroys his ranch. A plantation owner, ignorant of Verde’s reputation as a bandit, hires him to work on his farm. After Verde impregnates all of the man’s daughters, the plantation owner sends Verde off to West Africa to complete the suicide mission of restarting the slave trade with an insane African king. Herzog’s ability to capture the ethereal and savage qualities of nature are stronger than ever here, combining images of serene beauty and visceral brutality, all of them memorable. But nothing makes more of an impact here than Kinski’s performance, an utterly mesmerizing and intimidating showcase. All it takes is a shot of Kinski staring down the camera to convince viewers of Verde’s intensity and rage. Cobra Verde is, to put it bluntly, Herzog at the top of his game. [C.J.>]

Lessons Of Darkness (1992)

You could be wondering why we decided to include this particular 50-minute documentary (and not, say, Bells From The Deep or Flying Doctors Of East Africa) as part of the 20 highlighted works from Werner Herzog, but if you are then it’s likely you haven’t seen Lessons Of Darkness. More visual essay than documentary, more nightmare than essay, Lessons Of Darkness plays out like an epic ballad depicting the deformed state of Earth’s scarred surface after being ravaged by the first Gulf War. Admirers of Fata Morgana will attach themselves to Lessons Of Darkness like white on rice; the eerie atmosphere, cloaked in a biblical sort of effervescence, coupled with the jaw-dropping Martian-like visuals, most resembles Herzog’s psychotropic 70s desert odyssey. Narrated by Herzog himself, split into 13 chapters with titles like “Satan’s National Park” and “Life Without The Fire,” Lessons Of Darkness contains some of the director’s darkest imagery. As bold as that statement sounds, we implore you to seek this film out (made all the more easier by being included in the Shout! Factory set) and experience it for yourself. [Nik]

Little Dieter Needs To Fly (1997)

Sometimes all you need to make a great documentary is a great subject, and in the case of Dieter Dengler, Herzog hit a gold mine. A German-born immigrant to the United States, Dengler realized his childhood dream of becoming a pilot when he joined the Air Force. While fighting in the Vietnam war, Dengler’s plane was shot down. He was captured and tortured for 6 months by Viet Cong soldiers before making a daring escape. Dengler is the classic definition of an eccentric, a vivid storyteller filled with one surprising detail after another. Amazingly, Dengler goes back to Vietnam, re-enacting his imprisonment for Herzog’s camera while calmly explaining the endless horrors he went through. And Herzog, ever the cynic, frames Dieter’s story as one of rejection rather than perseverance. According to Herzog, death didn’t want Dieter, and that kind of unique take elevates the doc beyond mere biography. Little Dieter Needs to Fly is gripping from frame one, an incredible tale of survival told elegantly through Herzog’s direction. It comes as no surprise that, one decade later, Herzog adapted Dengler’s tale of survival into the film Rescue Dawn. [C.J.>]

My Best Fiend (1999)

Klaus Kinski died of a heart attack in 1991, leaving behind a plethora of films and theater work and a temperament that made him equally hated and admired. His five leading roles with Werner Herzog are no doubt the pinnacle of the actor’s work; you can pop in any of the five films (from Aguirre to Cobra Verde) to see how the man pillaged into every role, stretching his own limits and infusing Herzog’s mythos with every breath and gesture. It’s only fitting, then, that Herzog made My Best Fiend as a way to remember a difficult professional, an eccentric performer, and – for better or for worse – a successful collaborator. Herzog traces his relationship with Kinski, as he walks and visits the homes, places, and film locations, at times reminiscing with others, like Eva Mattes and Claudia Cardinale. You’ll see the moment that made Herzog realize Kinski was perfect for Aguirre, and the actor’s outburst on the set of Fitzcarraldo, and you’ll hear how Herzog and Kinski wanted to murder each other. But you’ll also see a certain, surprising, tenderness and a strong bond between the two legends (the Telluride footage is gold) and by the time it’s over, there’ll be no separating the two. My Best Fiend is essential in understanding Herzog as much as it is in getting an idea of the complex dimensions that made Kinski such a unique personality. [Nik]

Grizzly Man (2005)

Grizzly Man begins with bear-fanatic Timothy Treadwell confiding to the camera that wild bears can bite, can kill, and can decapitate. This becomes bone chilling when it’s revealed a short while later that he ended up being killed by an attack. Before his death, Treadwell captured over 100 hours of footage while spending 13 summers with grizzly bears. Treadwell repeatedly get dangerously closer to crossing the invisible line between wild animals and man. Werner Herzog frequently reminds the viewer of the tragedy, making Treadwell’s wild antics even more polarizing. The director uses the colossal supply of footage and combines interviews with close friends to create a nature documentary like you’ve never seen before. The documentary premiered at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival where it won its first of many awards and nominations. Grizzly Man extends beyond just a nature documentary or found footage material, providing insight into the man in front of the camera as only the legendary Herzog could–void of any bias or resentment. It might be Herzog’s most accessible documentary, but don’t let that scare you; it’s also one of his best. [Dustin]

Rescue Dawn (2006)

Herzog’s highest profile Hollywood production and highest grossing film ($5.5 million domestic), Rescue Dawn is a blockbuster summer release on the surface, but much different than the standard. In a lot of ways, it is a throwback war film, with more suspense and character study than pure action. Christian Bale stars as Dieter Dengler, an American war pilot who is taken as a prisoner of war in a brutal Viet Cong camp in Laos. The tale, which also inspired Herzog’s 1997 documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly, is a harrowing account of man vs. nature and men. Unlike many Vietnam War films, Rescue Dawn doesn’t take a strong anti-war take — it showcases the horrors of war, but its ultimate point is the extraordinary strength of will men can possess in extraordinary circumstances. Rescue Dawn features a fantastic lead performance from Bale, fresh off his star-making Batman Begins, and equally good supporting performances from Jeremy Davies and Steve Zahn, in a career turn that should have made him a star. [Aaron]

Encounters At The End Of The World (2007)

Encounters at the End of the World is the quintessential Werner Herzog documentary. It takes a look at a strange, natural place (in this case, Antarctica), and ponders the existential questions involved — all with Herzog’s gleefully curious narration. At time, though, Herzog puts focus more on the people in this environment than the environment itself. If any other filmmaker were given Herzog’s access to Antarctica, no one else would have made Encounters at the End of the World. What other filmmaker would have spent so much time on people walking around with buckets on their heads (with smiley faces drawn upon them, no less)? Who in their right mind would have been able to interview a leading mind on penguins and asked them about homosexual or deviant sexual behaviors? Encounters at the End of the World doesn’t ignore the incredible views, however, making this his most beautifully shot film — cinematographer duties were held by Peter Zeitlinger, who became a close contributor to Herzog after Little Dieter Learns to Fly, and has worked with the director on nearly every film (doc and fiction) ever since. [Aaron]

The Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans (2009)

Police officers behaving badly has essentially become its own film genre, though by 2009 it hadn’t been fully formed. With recent history of police egregiously overstepping their bounds, this sort of film shouldn’t work — especially one that looks at the bad behavior through cartoonish comedy instead of harshly realistic moralizing. Somehow The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is a raucous thrill ride anchored by a supernatural performance from an embattled Nicolas Cage. As a pseudo-remake/spiritual sequel to Abel Ferrara’s landmark Bad Lieutenant, it really only keeps the central conceit of a lieutenant on the edge while changing the rest of the particulars. It moves from noted crime center early 1990s New York City to post-Katrina New Orleans and exchanges the rape of a nun to the murder of a family of illegal immigrants. Cage’s lieutenant has a manic nature, replacing Harvey Keitel’s frightening sneer. The main attraction of The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is certainly seeing Nic Cage at his most Nic Cage-iest, bad haircut and buggy eyes, but the film is much more than a freakshow performance (besides the fact that it is a pretty damn good performance). The film never really forgets the actual crime plot, which is more compelling than it needs to be, and the depressed New Orleans environment is fantastically rendered. This is a bizarre outlier in Werner Herzog’s career, though it might be his best film over the past two decades. One particular through-line here is the presentation of power and madness. Terence McDonagh may not be on the same level as an Aguirre or a Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, but Cage is a fascinating alternative to Klaus Kinski’s power-hungry protagonists. [Aaron]

Into The Abyss (2011)

The last feature Herzog directed to see release was 2011’s Into The Abyss, spawned from a series of interviews with death row inmates as a way to explore the nature of death, the worth of human life, and the ethical, moral, and philosophical implications behind capital punishment as law. It’s a subject close to Herzog’s heart, as he’s wanted to explore prison culture for decades, and once he got the opportunity to interview death row inmates he ended up doing so many that he extended the work into a television series entitled simply On Death Row. The much more Herzogian-sounding Into The Abyss focuses on a particular case involving Michael Perry (serving death row) and Jason Burkett (serving a life sentence), and extends into exploring the emptiness felt by the victim’s families. The most fascinating thing here is that Herzog makes his own personal stance on capital punishment crystal clear right from the outset, but the documentary unravels in such a way that shows you why the debate still rages on. With no grandstanding or preaching, Herzog disguises vital questions of life and death through simple and effective interviews, and shows that at almost 70 years of age, he isn’t taking his foot off the gas. [Nik]

Werner Herzog’s latest feature film, Queen Of The Desert starring Nicole Kidman and James Franco, has been temporarily stalled from appearing in this year’s festival circuit so look for it to surface at some point next year. Needless to say, it can’t come soon enough.

Do yourself a favor and grab a copy of Herzog: The Collection, before copies run out!

“Film is not analysis, it is the agitation of mind; cinema comes from the country fair and the circus, not from art and academicism.” – Werner Herzog (from Herzog on Herzog)

No matter the mixed criticism of Frank, one thing the film makes obvious is more bands should be using theremins. That’s not just a frivolous statement, it’s part of the movie’s sugarcoated message on the value of sticking out, embracing your limits, and not concerning oneself with the number of views one’s video gets on YouTube. Once the movie stops being a whimsical comedy about a troupe of misfit musicians, it starts to take itself a little too seriously and all of a sudden the xylophone stops and the brooding drama starts. This drastic tonal switch from quirky silliness to serious quirkiness ultimately drags Frank down from being a good comedy to being just a mediocre dramedy. But hey, it has Michael Fassbender playing a guy who wears a ridiculously oversized head so that alone will be enough for some viewers.

Dominic Gleeson takes on the role of Jon, an inspiring singer-songwriter who has 14 followers on Twitter and punches the clock in a dead-end office job. As fate would have it, he witnesses a man trying to drown himself who happens to be the keyboard player of an underground eccentric pop band Jon admires. When he tells the band’s manager Don (Scoot McNairy) that he too plays keyboards, he gets the gig, and without further ado finds himself traveling to a remote cabin to record an EP as the band’s new keyboard player. Headlining the band is the mysterious Frank (Fassbender) who is like a walking-talking bobble head because of the outlandish mask he refuses to take off (even while showering.) Rounding off the band members are Clara Vagner (Maggie Gyllenhaal) on the Theramin, Nana (Carla Azar) on the drums, and Baraque (François Civil) on the guitar. Once he gets to the cabin, Jon realizes that this is no mere band practice session, and decides to completely devote himself to the band; seeing it as an opportunity to better his own skills. As the Twitter followers grow, and the band spends months preparing to record, an upcoming gig at the South By Southwest festival in Austin creates an opportunity for their biggest show yet. But, with everyone’s eccentricities engaged at maximum levels, how will this band ever be able to cope with fame?

Before the third act sours up the mood, Frank is an enjoyable enough romp filled with a colorful cast of characters and a pleasant atmosphere. Although, it must be said, the insufferable score by Stephen Renicks and Gleeson’s narration evocative of an adventure in Middle Earth or a Hogwarts school excursion paint the picture in way too thick of a dainty coat. With the way the characters are written (we’ll have a French guy who only speaks in French but everyone understands him! We’ll have the bitchy one who hates conformity! Etc.) and the overemphasis on Frank’s free spirit, it all leads to an aggravating sense of self-awareness and attention seeking. The only saviors end up being Gyllenhaal’s hilarious performance (watch her deliver lines like “Your furthest corners? Someone needs to punch you in the face” with perfectly bottled angst), some of Frank’s unpredictable characteristics which include speaking perfect German to an unsuspecting family, and the genuine humor protruding through the dainty surface. And for those wondering about Fassbender’s performance: I’ll just say that he’s best when he’s got the head on and leave it that.

Also deserving of praise is James Mather’s cinematography, adding a nuance that is unexpected. Images of Frank meditating in the forest, or characters caught lamenting by the windowsill are artistically captured and do well to boost the film’s qualities. Alas, the film starts to change clothes before growing into them and while the SXSW section provides some of the biggest laughs (Frank’s most likeable song is a personal favorite of mine,) they ultimately can’t compensate for the transparently calculated conclusion and message, which brings the whole self-awareness aspect right back on centre stage. Fans of Gyllenhaal and Fassbender will still enjoy themselves with Frank, but my advice is not to take the film as seriously as it takes itself and simply enjoy sharing the company of weirdos.

In theaters August 15

The honeymoon phase is meant to be one of the happiest moments in people’s lives. Which makes it the perfect backdrop for a horror film, of course! Director Leigh Janiak has been itching to make her first feature film for quite some time and finally, together with writing partner Phil Graziadei, she’s concocted a psychological and physical nightmare that’s been terrifying audiences ever since its premiere at South By South West earlier in the year. Now, Honeymoon gets its Canadian premiere in Montreal’s genre festival Fantasia; a perfectly suitable setting.

Bea (Rose Leslie) and Paul (Harry Treadaway) are newly weds who have decided to isolate themselves from the rest of the world for their honeymoon, and spend it in Bea’s old childhood place; a cabin by the lake. You’d think just because the cabin is located in Canada everything will be nice and well-mannered, but the young couple have no idea how life-altering a few days in these woods will be. A mysterious beam of light in the middle of the night heralds a dark presence into their lives, and once Bea starts sleepwalking, it all goes pear-shaped.

Janiak doesn’t like to focus on the fact that she’s a woman directing a genuinely engrossing and well-made indie genre film, but those discussing the film online would do well to take note of that. With controlled direction, excellent performances from the two leads, and a diabolical summary of how your better half can be such a pest sometimes, Honeymoon shines a light on a new female directing talent and presents some of the most authentic frights you’ll experience all year round.

To be released September 12, 2014. Look out for our full review right before.