[Filmin] A "brief encounter" film that talks about personal relationships. Small film with good B/W cinematography. Indoor shooting. Storm outside. Unbalanced script and almost amateur performances. It promises more than it gives.
[Filmin] The eighties produces creatures like this one. An audiovisual proposal that refers to popular cinema with a sense of humor. Homage or appropriation of the icons of an era? The look is creative, the background is less deep than it is intended. Or perhaps it's not. The worst thing about making a kitsch product is adorning it with "cultural" elements. Troma understood better what to do.
[Filmin] A documentary for fans of the character. Charles Aznavour described through the images recorded by himself. There is a lot of music and many trips. There is a lot of self-satisfying image. Despite a good editing job, the feeling is that we haven't met the person, only the artist.
[Filmin] A tribute from the son to his father, a film director, and from the grandson to his grandfather, a poet. Thoughts of the man and the artist about cinema and spirituality. "A poet, if he really is, cannot be a believer." Tarkovsky in his own words. Maybe we don't find anything new. But at least it is an exciting vision of a cinema that is no longer made.
[Filmin] Exercise of self-fiction. The film does not achieve all its objectives, in part due to a structure that claims to be complex but it is finally random: the tribute to cinema, the sentimental story, the politics ... come together in a kind of audiovisual collage that dies for your own lack of definition.
[Filmin] The director recovers images of her childhood recorded mainly by her father to find meaning in her loneliness. The absent father (we don't see film, because he is always behind the camera). Interesting work of thinking about how the image can offer a vision of apparent happiness, but it hides a much more complex second reading, if we focus in a gesture, a look...
[Filmin] A documentary that is not a documentary, or maybe yes. An exquisite editing work. An intelligent use of sound. A reality with a fictional narrative built on archival images. Or not. A singular and original film.
[Filmin] Documentary film about the reconstruction of a popular market in Barcelona. It wants to think about the traditional neighborhoods and the threat of predatory tourism. But it is too reminiscent of the excellent "En construcción" (José Luis Guerín, 2001), without being so smart. This is a repetitive and sometimes boring exercise.
[Filmin] The Mumblecore movement arrives in Spain a little late. The director acknowledges the inspiration for "Hannah takes the stairs" (Joe Swanberg, 2007). Improvisation is a bit false, naturalness is unnatural, the director's own interventions do not make much sense. Haneke, Varda. Film masters references that doesn't help it to be more personal.
[Filmin] Rural thriller shot in Galicia. Black and white photography is great, and it causes tension and suspense. The director doesn't give much information about the crime. He is more interested in the consequences. However, it would need more narrative depth to be more than just a technical tour de force.
[Filmin] When introducing her characters, the director says she wanted to "examine the digital generation's view on relationships." The problem is that the result is as frustrating as the relationship between the characters. In the end it all comes down to lack of communication. The worst is that, in the end, the audience have clearer than the protagonists themselves what this empty journey has consisted of.
[Filmin] Fable that shows a kind face of Brussels and its night owl characters. Bas Devos' personal style, with its silences and slow tempo, is undoubtedly "sui generis". Personally, I'm not a big fan of his style, but at least he has his own language. This immigrant woman lost at night is the ghost of the title, a character who wanders through a city that still maintains a certain beauty.
[Filmin] Outstanding mise en escène. Every image in this movie is exciting. A tale of mourning and death. But also on Earth, where the ancestors are buried. "The dead bury their dead." Beautiful, poetic, moving ... From a small country, Lesotho, a great filmmaker comes to us.
[Filmin] "The family you have on your mind is not really your family. It is your perception of them." Ivana director, actress, character ... The naturalness of the presence of friends and family in front of the camera is surprising. It is an irregular story, chaotic at certain times. The central part is boring. It's funny the political-geographical vision of Serbia and Romania. Rest in peace, Anca Pop.
[Filmin] The director seems like a gifted disciple of Guy Maddin, indeed. At times it is close to the Monthy Python (The Dominion School of Nationhood). You can enjoy the creativity, but it works better as a copy than an original interpretation of the apparently absurd history of Canada.
[Filmin] Searching for a mother as a need to find support to reach maturity. Ola is an abandoned teenager who cannot resist being an orphan. There is a certain tendency to melodrama, but the look is cold, fleeing from the easy emotion. The director comes from the documentary genre, which you can see in the realistic use of the camera. The film gains interest as the story progresses. Hard and painful.
[Filmin] The dream of Europe turns into a nightmare. Religious allegory is unnecessary. This Latvian butcher trapped in Brussels becomes a slave. According to its director, it is a true story. A movie that has the narrative of the best Ken Loach films. The frightening realism of an artificial Europe.
[Filmin] Matteo Garrone is a mentor, but also a clear influence on this debut. Nevia is a teenager with whom it is easy to sympathize. It is the autobiographical representation of the director. Sometimes there is a certain tendency to sentimental melodrama, but the social portrait becomes stronger and more interesting.
[Filmin] A documentary that is not really a documentary. Reality is reflected in the story and vice versa. La Mami and Priscilla become the brightest part of an unpleasant job. The conversations between the "ficheras", women who sell their company on the dance floor, show them as protective mothers. Men are accessories. "The men here are good for two things. They're good for nothing and to give money."
[Filmin] There is more expressiveness in the silences of this film than in his dialogues. It is the lack of communication in a couple. The format changes, imprisons the protagonists at the beginning, and it is opened in the last part. But the characters are still prisoners: "I decided then to be with you no matter what." And the image is cropped again.
[Filmin] The beasts of the title inhabit an isolated family whose demons are not an external but an internal threat. The director better manages tension in crescendo. But when the storm comes (physical and emotional), the result is excessive and sometimes ridiculous.
[Filmin] A hand-held camera follows the characters all the time. Too much visual chaos for a narrative that is chaotic "per se". B/W cinematography without shades. An indoor spy story that ends in a unjustified and meaningless bloodbath.
[Filmin] "I'm not the protagonist here", says Werner Herzog in one scene. But this is the documentary in which his cinema and his memories are most present. The interviewer, interviewed. An emotional tribute, but also chaotic, unbalanced, full of parentheses and shortcuts, as characterizes Herzog's documentaries. A love song for friendship and adventure.
[Filmin] Few elements to build a drama that overflows tension. It is the director's work that creates this atmosphere. In simplicity is virtue.
[Filmin] The intention is clear. Religion as an excuse for oppression. A young woman alienated in an environment that devours her. The problem is the way of talk about it, repetitive, without a clear path. And that last endless stretch.
[Filmin] Jessica Hausner embraces the fantastic genre without fear. This botanical "body snatchers" is haunting but also conveys the irony of false happiness. The camera leave behind the actors, and their dialogues remains in the background. Violence is also collateral, reflected. A remarkable style exercise.
[Filmin] First scene: Henrietta behind a large bouquet of flowers. Women as a decoration element. The ironic title refers to a passionate suicide, but the portrait of Heinrich von Kleist is devastating. "I do not serve to live", but neither does he serve to die alone. In the middle of German Romanticism, the interests of Jessica Hausner are the same. Last scene: the girl entertains the guests. Nothing changed.
[Filmin] Balance between distancing and a friendly look with these characters who are looking for a miracle to make sense of their pilgrimage. There is no religious feeling, not even in the young nun who accompanies Christine. The miracle is or is not, but as it usually happens in Jessica Hausner's cinema, the answer will not be so easy to find. Her best movie.
[Filmin] One of the funniest and also most disturbing proposals by Jessica Hausner. A young woman prepares in a kitchen one toast after another. A long take shows us this act as a repetitive representation of a banalized society, underlined by the visual texture and music on tv advertisement. What begins as a domestic act ends up becoming a disruptive loop and the smile disappears.
[Filmin] Jessica Hausner's first female portrait surrounded by an oppressive atmosphere. Searching for sexuality with a very Austrian ending. Interesting video treatment with amateur texture and "soap opera zoom-in". But the director had not yet found her own language.
