frames 123

France/Spain/USA

Feature Film

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Writers: Peter Buchman, Ernesto Che Guevara

Cinematographer: Steven Soderbergh (as Peter Andrews)

Composer: Alberto Iglesias

Cast: Benicio Del Toro, Demián Bichir, Santiago Cabrera, Vladimir Cruz, Alfredo De Quesada, Jsu García, Kahlil Méndez, Elvira Mínguez, Andrés Manuel Munar, Julia Ormond, Catalina Sandino Moreno

Soderbergh’s admirably restrained and authentic feeling yet frustratingly unenlightening biopic of the larger-than-life Argentinian revolutionary, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, focuses on the guerrilla campaign that led to the Cuban revolution of 1959, depicting the man as the principled yet ruthless soldier that we all know and love/hate, without seemingly even attempting to reveal the man beneath the beret. Iain.Stott

Posted in Feature Film, France, Spain, USA | No comments

Thursday, 30 July 2009

Of Time and the City (2008)

Posted on 04:57 by uthpa

Feature Documentary

Writer/Director/Narrator: Terence Davies

Cinematographer: Tim Pollard

Davies’s expertly crafted cinepoem – an ode to the Liverpool of the great film-maker’s youth, as well as a mediation on the effects of time and progress, and a soul-baringly beautiful piece of self portraiture (bitchy, effervescent, elegiac, insightful, nostalgic) – shows the exalted Liverpudlian at both his best and his worst: delightful. Iain.Stott

Posted in Feature Documentary, TSPDT 21st Century, UK | No comments

There Will Be Blood (2007)

Posted on 04:13 by uthpa

USA

Feature Film

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Writers: Paul Thomas Anderson, Upton Sinclair

Cinematographer: Robert Elswit

Composer: Jonny Greenwood

Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Kevin J O'Connor, Ciaran Hinds, Dillon Freasier, Russell Harvard

Anderson’s brash and dazzling yet rather cold adaptation of Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel, Oil! – a tale of greed, corruption, oil, and religion in early 20th century America – almost fatally focuses almost entirely on Day-Lewis’s psychopathic oilman with very little humanity creeping in to proceedings, O'Connor’s beautifully understated and unfortunately rather brief turn being a notable exception, but there’s still much to admire: Elswit’s refined photography, Greenwood’s truly stunning score, and some good if occasionally overwrought performances combine to form a convincing and powerful if disappointingly inhuman film. Iain.Stott

Posted in Feature Film, TSPDT 21st Century, TSPDT Top 1000, USA | No comments

Tuesday, 28 July 2009

The Young Ladies of Wilko (1979)

Posted on 04:47 by uthpa

Poland/France

Feature Film

Original Title: Panny z Wilka

Director: Andrzej Wajda

Writers: Zbigniew Kaminski, Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz

Cinematographer: Edward Klosinski

Cast: Daniel Olbrychski, Anna Seniuk, Maja Komorowska, Stanislawa Celinska, Krystyna Zachwatowicz, Christine Pascal, Zbigniew Zapasiewicz, Zofia Jaroszewska

Wajda’s quiet, gentle, elegiac tale - in which a doleful gent, following the death of a close friend (lover?), retreats to his aunt and uncle’s house in the country to recuperate, unearthing memories, both pleasant and painful, of the lazy summers of his youth, many of which involving the eponymous neighbours - is a subtle, moving, and subtextful account of the mourning for things past, present, and could have been. Iain.Stott

Posted in Feature Film, France, Poland | No comments

Monday, 27 July 2009

Silent Light (2007)

Posted on 12:30 by uthpa

Mexico/France/Germany/The Netherlands

Feature Film

Original Title: Stellet licht

Writer/Director: Carlos Reygadas

Cinematographer: Alexis Zabe

Cast: Cornelio Wall, Maria Pankratz, Miriam Toews, Peter Wall

Reygadas’s third film, following the curious misstep of Battle in Heaven (2005) and the acclaimed Japón (2002), is a film of rare power; ostensibly about the effects of an extra-marital affair amongst Mexico’s German speaking Mennonite community, the exquisite camerawork, elegant pacing, beguiling, naturalistic soundtrack, contentious ending, and grand sense of landscape, would suggest that this masterful film’s real subject is somewhat more transcendental. Iain.Stott

Posted in Feature Film, France, Germany, Mexico, The Netherlands, TSPDT 21st Century | No comments

The Heiress (1949)

Posted on 12:05 by uthpa

USA

Feature Film

Director: William Wyler

Writers: Augustus Goetz, Ruth Goetz, Henry James

Cinematographer: Leo Tover

Composer: Aaron Copland

Cast: Olivia de Havilland, Montgomery Clift, Ralph Richardson, Miriam Hopkins, Betty Linley

Adapted by husband and wife team Augustus and Ruth Goetz from their own 1947 play, which itself was based on Henry James’s short story Washington Square (1880), Wyler’s masterful depiction of the cynical awakening of a young ingénue, silly enough to still believe in love, is, with its precise, expressive mise en scène, consummate central performance, and unsentimental tone, perhaps Wyler’s finest work. Iain.Stott

Posted in Feature Film, TSPDT Top 1000, USA | No comments

The Dream Life of Angels (1998)

Posted on 00:36 by uthpa

France

Feature Film

Original Title: La vie rêvée des anges

Director: Erick Zonca

Writers: Roger Bohbot, Pierre Chosson, Erick Zonca

Cinematographers: Agnès Godard, Dominique Le Rigoleur

Composer: Yann Tiersen

Cast: Élodie Bouchez, Natacha Régnier, Grégoire Colin, Patrick Mercado, Jo Prestia

Zonca’s acclaimed feature debut - a delicate exploration of a tentatively formed friendship between two dispossessed, disparate young women, living in a drab, grey Lille, depicting their romantic and financial woes as they attempt to find their place in the world - is a simple, moving work, boasting two excellent performances and a beautifully delicate touch. Iain.Stott

Posted in Feature Film, France | No comments

Sunday, 26 July 2009

L'Argent (1983)

Posted on 23:37 by uthpa

France/Switzerland

Feature Film

Original Title: L'argent

Director: Robert Bresson

Writers: Robert Bresson, Leo Tolstoy

Cinematographers: Pasqualino De Santis, Emmanuel Machuel

Cast: Christian Patey, Vincent Risterucci, Caroline Lang, Sylvie Van den Elsen, Béatrice Tabourin, Didier Baussy, Marc Ernest Fourneau, Bruno Lapeyre

Bresson’s final film – based on a Tolstoy short story, depicting the social inequalities rife in society and the evils of the pursuit, coveting, and protection of money, in which a forged bank note passes from hand to hand, passing down through the class ranks, having an increasingly pronounced effect – is far from his best work, lacking the evocative imagery that has tended to dilute his more maddening affectations in the past, but is, never the less, a powerful one. Iain.Stott

Posted in Feature Film, France, Switzerland, TSPDT Top 1000 | No comments

Uzak (2002)

Posted on 08:18 by uthpa

Essential Viewing

Turkey

Feature Film

Writer/Director/Cinematographer: Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Cast: Muzaffer Özdemir, Emin Toprak

There are allusions to Tarkovsky throughout Ceylan’s Cannes favourite – a beautifully moving and subtly witty exploration of the disparate ways in which we manage to build barriers between ourselves and those around us – but its tone and content are perhaps closer in spirit to the bitter-sweet delights of Ozu and Tsai, taking, as it does, such an unjaundiced look at the beguiling nuances of human behaviour. Iain.Stott

Posted in Feature Film, TSPDT 21st Century, Turkey | No comments

Saturday, 25 July 2009

Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1996)

Posted on 10:24 by uthpa

USA

Feature Documentary

Directors: Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky

Cinematographer: Robert Richman

Composers: Metalica

Berlinger and Sinofsky’s slightly exploitative yet revealing and even-handed documentary, covering the trials of three West Memphis teenagers, accused of the brutal killings of a trio of eight-year-old boys, is a film that casts serious doubts over the courts’ rulings, but one that also paints a rather disturbing portrait of a community where gods and devils have a greater influence on the everyday lives of its inhabitants than cultural and class understanding and tolerance. Iain.Stott

Posted in Feature Documentary, USA | No comments

Red Road (2006)

Posted on 05:55 by uthpa

UK/Denmark

Feature Film

Director: Andrea Arnold

Writers: Andrea Arnold, Anders Thomas Jensen, Lone Scherfig

Cinematographer: Robbie Ryan

Cast: Kate Dickie, Tony Curran, Martin Compston, Natalie Press

Arnold’s feature debut – a devastatingly moving thriller (one sequence is guaranteed to crush even the hardest of hearts), the first part of a prospective British/Danish co-produced trilogy, involving the same group of charcters and settings – is a brilliant, downbeat, and intensely human thriller (of sorts), set in a decidedly rough area of Glasgow, in which Dickie’s cctv operator becomes dangerously involved with a man from her past, whom she spies during the course of her daily duties. Iain.Stott

Posted in Denmark, Feature Film, UK | No comments

Friday, 24 July 2009

Eureka (2000)

Posted on 11:23 by uthpa

Japan/France

Feature Film

Writer/Director: Aoyama Shinji

Cinematographer: Tamura Masaki

Composers: Aoyama Shinji, Yamada Isao

Cast: Yakusho Kōji, Miyazaki Aoi, Miyazaki Masaru, Saito Yoichiro, Kokushō Sayuri, Mitsuishi Ken

Aoyama’s elegiac, sepia-toned, three-and-a-half hour examination of grief and post-traumatic stress in a small Japanese town – depicting the curious behaviour of the three survivors of a bus-jacking that ended bloodily, two years previously – is a beautiful, moving, and uncompromising film, which certainly won’t suit all tastes, but those willing to commit their time and attention to its sensual rhythms will be richly rewarded. Iain.Stott

Posted in Feature Film, France, Japan, TSPDT 21st Century | No comments

In Bruges (2008)

Posted on 00:43 by uthpa

UK/USA

Feature Film

Writer/Director: Martin McDonagh

Cinematographer: Eigil Bryld

Composer: Carter Burwell

Cast: Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes, Clémence Poésy, Jérémie Renier, Thekla Reuten

An oft hilarious trip to picturesque Bruges in the company of two disparate hitmen, hiding out after an assignment gone terribly wrong, playwright McDonagh’s film debut is a black comedy of a rare breed; not only does it manage to be very, very funny, but its use of violence is never disrespectful or flippant, and its characters are drawn with a great deal of humanity. Iain.Stott

Posted in Feature Film, UK, USA | No comments

Thursday, 23 July 2009

The Landlord (2009)

Posted on 10:52 by uthpa

USA

Feature Film

Writer/Director: Emil Hyde

Cinematographer: Phil O'Neil

Composer: Karen Sandvoss

Cast: Derek Dziak, Rom Barkhordar, Michelle Courvais, Erin Myers, Lori Myers, Gloria Coco, Rob McLean, Kurt Ehrmann

Hyde’s ultra-low budget debut - a cheap and cheerful horror/comedy in which the landlord of a flat, occupied by a demon and a god, leases it to unwitting members of the populace despite knowing that he will soon have to clean up the ensuing bloody mess - is a film of considerable charm and wit, and one that even manages to make positives of its numerous budgetary short-falls (the rather naff CGI, which seems to have escaped from the 1980s, is actually camply effective), but the film’s one real genuine piece of excellence is the very funny performance from the Peter Kay look-alike, Dziak, in the eponymous central role. Iain.Stott

Posted in Feature Film, USA | No comments

The Wrestler (2008)

Posted on 08:21 by uthpa

France/USA

Feature Film

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Writer: Robert Siegel

Cinematographer: Maryse Alberti

Composer: Clint Mansell

Cast: Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood, Todd Barry, Ernest Miller, Dylan Summers, Tommy Farra

Dripping with blood, sweat, and pathos, Rourke’s turn is an impressively brutal one, playing a physically and emotionally ravaged, ageing wrestler, struggling to face up to life outside of the ring; but there’s much more to Aronofsky’s tremendously moving film than just its terrific central performance, not the least of which being Tomei’s brave turn as a stripper, approaching a similar stage of her own career – devastating. Iain.Stott

Posted in Feature Film, France, TSPDT 21st Century, USA | No comments

Mum & Dad (2008)

Posted on 04:16 by uthpa

Feature Film

Writer/Director: Steven Sheil

Cinematographer: Jonathan Bloom

Cast: Perry Benson, Dido Miles, Olga Fedori, Ainsley Howard, Toby Alexander

Sheil’s low-budget feature debut - a gooey mix of political allegory, social satire, torture porn, family sitcom, and Polesploitation, depicting the sado-sexual home life of the eponymous parents of a group of abused, kidnapped airport workers - is a blackly comic yet often unpleasant and troubling film, boasting some committed performances and convincing effects work. Iain.Stott

Posted in Feature Film, UK | No comments

Wednesday, 22 July 2009

Time Out (2001)

Posted on 05:27 by uthpa

France

Feature Film

Original Title: L'emploi du temps

Director: Laurent Cantet

Writers: Robin Campillo, Laurent Cantet

Cinematographer: Pierre Milon

Composer: Jocelyn Pook

Cast: Aurélien Recoing, Karin Viard, Serge Livrozet, Jean-Pierre Mangeot, Monique Mangeot, Nicolas Kalsch

Cantet’s unnerving, affecting (and allegorical?) exploration of midlife crisis and capitalist disaffection – in which a man, recently made redundant, keeps up the pretence of working, going to increasingly desperate lengths in order to maintain his subterfuge – is a film of great power, boasting an outstanding central performance and enough ideas to fill a dozen films. Iain.Stott

Posted in Feature Film, France, TSPDT 21st Century | No comments

Tuesday, 21 July 2009

The Goat Horn (1972)

Posted on 03:35 by uthpa

Bulgaria

Feature Film

Original Title: Козият рог

Director: Metodi Andonov

Writer: Nikolai Haitov

Cinematography: Dimo Kolarov

Composer: Mariya Neykova

Cast: Katya Paskaleva, Anton Gorchev, Milen Penev, Todor Kolev, Kliment Denchev, Stefan Mavrodiyev, Nevena Andonova, Marin Yanev, Krasimira Petrova

Andonov’s viscerally charged film - an almost dialogue free snapshot of 17th century Bulgarian country life - in which a goat herder brings up his daughter to have a heart of stone in order to help him gain vengeance upon those that raped and killed his wife, is a distinctive work of considerable power, but one that pales in comparison to Bergman’s The Virgin Spring (1960) and the best of Kurosawa’s period work - affecting, never the less. Iain.Stott

Posted in Bulgaria, Feature Film | No comments

After Death (1915)

Posted on 03:09 by uthpa

Russia

Short Feature Film

Original Title: Posle smerti

Director: Evgeni Bauer

Writers: Evgeni Bauer, Ivan Turgenev

Cast: Vitold Polonsky, Vera Karalli, Olga Rakhmanova, M. Chalatova, T. Gedevanova

Though it’s perhaps a tad melodramatic for modern tastes, and its central plot point of a young woman committing suicide over unrequited love - rather hokey (it might have worked better with hormonal adolescents- à la Romeo and Juliet - rather than the adults that we have here), Bauer’s distinctive film is, never the less, a thoroughly well made work, filled with cinematic techniques that must have seemed truly dazzling on its original release. Iain.Stott

Posted in Russia, Short Feature Film | No comments

Monday, 20 July 2009

A Zed & Two Noughts (1985)

Posted on 03:53 by uthpa

UK/Netherlands

Feature Film

Writer/Director: Peter Greenaway

Cinematographer: Sacha Vierny

Composer: Michael Nyman

Cast: Andréa Ferréol, Brian Deacon, Eric Deacon, Frances Barber, Joss Ackland, Jim Davidson, Agnès Brulet, David Attenborough

Iconoclastic film-maker Greenaway’s most enjoyable and accomplished work - a blackly comic, beautifully revolting, and revoltingly beautiful film set in an unnamed zoo in an unnamed city, peopled with eccentrics and oddballs, exploring themes of death & decay and parity & balance, beautifully photographed by veteran French cinematographer Vierny, with an insistently addictive score from Nyman - is a wondrous, sensual, and challenging minor masterpiece. Iain.Stott

Posted in Feature Film, The Netherlands, UK | No comments

Sunday, 19 July 2009

A One and a Two... (2000)

Posted on 04:00 by uthpa

Taiwan/Japan/USA

Feature Film

Original Title: 一一

Writer/Director: Edward Yang

Cinematographer: Yang Wei-han

Composer: Peng Kai-Li

Cast: Wu Nianzhen, Issey Ogata, Elaine Jin, Kelly Lee, Jonathan Chang, Chen Hsi-Sheng, Ko Su-Yun, Hsiao Shu-shen, Lin Adriene, Yu Pang Chang

Yang’s exquisite, sprawling family drama – exploring the ups and downs of an extended Taipei family, comparing and contrasting teenaged and middle-aged heartbreak, spiritual & financial & moral crises, and the universality of human emotion and feeling – is an elegiac yet warm and funny minor masterpiece, and a fitting end to the great Taiwanese film-maker’s career. Iain.Stott

Posted in Feature Film, Japan, Taiwan, TSPDT 21st Century, TSPDT Top 1000, USA | No comments

Saturday, 18 July 2009

To Our Loves (1983)

Posted on 02:08 by uthpa

France

Feature Film

Original Title: À nos amours

Director: Maurice Pialat

Writers: Arlette Langmann, Maurice Pialat

Cinematographer: Jacques Loiseleux

Cast: Sandrine Bonnaire, Maurice Pialat, Christophe Odent, Dominique Besnehard, Cyril Collard, Jacques Fieschi, Valérie Schlumberger, Evelyne Ker, Pierre Novion, Tsilka Theodorou, Cyr Boitard

Pialat’s strangely inconsistent effort - depicting, over an undefined and hard to determine time period, a number of episodes in the life of a sexually precocious young woman, contrasting her sensual private life with that of her often violent home life - is a film that benefits greatly from the excellent and restrained performances of Bonnaire and Pialat, but that is almost ruined by Besnehard and Ker’s frequently overwrought turns. Iain.Stott

Posted in Feature Film, France | No comments

Friday, 17 July 2009

A Christmas Tale (2008)

Posted on 04:21 by uthpa

France

Feature Film

Original Title: Un conte de Noël

Director: Arnaud Desplechin

Writers: Emmanuel Bourdieu, Arnaud Desplechin

Cinematographer: Eric Gautier

Composer: Grégoire Hetzel

Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Jean-Paul Roussillon, Anne Consigny, Mathieu Amalric, Melvil Poupaud, Hippolyte Girardot, Emmanuelle Devos, Chiara Mastroianni, Laurent Capelluto, Emile Berling

Excellent performances abound from the wonderfully assembled cast in Desplechin’s entertaining family comedy/drama, in which members of the brilliant but dysfunctional Vuillards gather together for Christmas, for the first time in six years, as Deneuve’s matriarch’s health begins to fail, but the playful director’s frequent stylistic flourishes range from occasionally enchanting to often merely distracting. Iain.Stott

Posted in Feature Film, France, TSPDT 21st Century | No comments

Thursday, 16 July 2009

Milk (2008)

Posted on 00:43 by uthpa

USA

Feature Film

Director: Gus Van Sant

Writer: Dustin Lance Black

Cinematographer: Harris Savides

Composer: Danny Elfman

Cast: Sean Penn, Emile Hirsch, Josh Brolin, Diego Luna, James Franco, Alison Pill

Despite Elfman’s occasionally gooily swooning score and the unavoidable genre frailties inherent to the biopic (how many interesting charcters are introduced only to be barely seen again?), Van Sant’s portrait of the (political) life and (physical) death of gay activist Harvey Milk, is, thanks mainly to some fine performances, a thoroughly engrossing and informative yet human work. Iain.Stott

Posted in Feature Film, TSPDT 21st Century, USA | No comments

Wednesday, 15 July 2009

Police (1985)

Posted on 09:00 by uthpa

France

Feature Film

Director: Maurice Pialat

Writers: Catherine Breillat, Sylvie Danton, Jacques Fieschi

Cinematographer: Luciano Tovoli

Cast: Gérard Depardieu, Sophie Marceau, Richard Anconina, Pascale Rocard, Sandrine Bonnaire, Frank Karaoui, Jonathan Leïna, Jacques Mathou, Bernard Fuzellier, Bentahar Meaachou

Pialat’s curious film - a Paris-set tale of cops, lawyers, drug dealers, and prostitutes, exploring the odd ways in which their lives collide and intersect - begins as brilliant, authentic-feeling police procedural before gently morphing into a seductive (almost) love story between Depardieu’s macho detective and Marceau’s distractingly beautiful, duplicitous enigma. Iain.Stott

Posted in Feature Film, France | No comments

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)

Posted on 02:55 by uthpa

Essential Viewing

USA

Feature Film

Director: Rouben Mamoulian

Writers: Percy Heath, Samuel Hoffenstein, Robert Louis Stevenson

Cinematographer: Karl Struss

Cast: Fredric March, Miriam Hopkins, Rose Hobart, Holmes Herbert, Halliwell Hobbes, Edgar Norton, Tempe Pigott

Mamoulian’s wonderful film - the screen’s greatest adaptation of Stevenson’s much filmed novel, combining unparalleled visual poetry, ageless special effects, and some accomplished performances (Hopkins’s portrayal of the sexy and strong yet vulnerable Ivy Pierson is particularly eye-catching) - is a cut above the Universal monster movies of the time, and something of a genre masterpiece. Iain.Stott

Posted in Feature Film, USA | No comments

Monday, 13 July 2009

The Man Who Cried (2000)

Posted on 05:22 by uthpa

UK/France

Feature Film

Writer/Director: Sally Potter

Cinematography: Sacha Vierny

Composer: Osvaldo Golijov

Cast: Christina Ricci, Johnny Depp, Cate Blanchett, John Turturro, Oleg Yankovskiy, Harry Dean Stanton, Miriam Karlin, Claudia Lander-Duke

Ricci’s beautifully subtle and nuanced performance is the high spot of Potter’s simultaneously unnerving and intoxicating, dream-like period film, which follows a young girl’s music filled journey from the Russian countryside of 1927 to the America of the early ‘40s via pre-war England and war torn Paris, taking in such delights as anti-Semitism, fascism, and gypophobia. Iain.Stott

Posted in Feature Film, France, UK | No comments

Sunday, 12 July 2009

The One-Line Review Presents “The 50 Greatest Films”

Posted on 23:45 by uthpa

The ballots are in and the votes counted….

The One-Line Review Presents

Posted in | No comments

Shoot on Sight (2007)

Posted on 12:57 by uthpa

Best Avoided

UK/USA

Feature Film

Director: Jag Mundhra

Writers: Carl Austin, Jag Mundhra, Pervaiz Alam

Cinematographer: Madhu Ambat

Composer: John Altman

Cast: Naseeruddin Shah, Greta Scacchi, Brian Cox, Ralph Ineson, Stephen Greif, Om Puri, Mikaal Zulfiqar, Gulshan Grover, Laila Rouass, India Wadsworth, Arrun Harker

With horribly awkward dialogue, hackneyed plotting, a hopelessly incongruent score, a general visual blandness, and more multi-cultural clichés than one could possibly find palatable, this rather earnest thriller, inspired by the London bombings and shameful killing of Jean Charles de Menezes in July 2005, is a well-meaning but inelegant film, and one that is quite missable. Iain.Stott

Posted in Feature Film, UK, USA | No comments

The Dark Knight (2008)

Posted on 01:41 by uthpa

Not Recommended

USA/UK

Feature Film

Director: Christopher Nolan

Writers: Christopher Nolan, Jonathan Nolan, David S. Goyer

Cinematographers: Wally Pfister

Composers: James Newton Howard & Hans Zimmer

Cast: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Michael Caine, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman

Although, perhaps, a slight improvement on the rather silly Batman Begins (2005), Nolan’s painfully long, mildly diverting fantasy film, following the titular vigilante’s battles against a new psychotic menace, The Joker, is a film that suffers from cardboard characters, ostentatious direction, and a terribly bland central performance, but benefits immensely from Ledger’s very entertaining turn – never the less, the whole thing feels rather soulless. Iain.Stott

Posted in Feature Film, TSPDT 21st Century, TSPDT Top 1000, UK, USA | No comments

Saturday, 11 July 2009

The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl (1993)

Posted on 06:09 by uthpa

Germany/France/UK/Belgium

Feature Documentary

Original Title: Die Macht der Bilder: Leni Riefenstahl

Director: Ray Müller

Cinematographers: Michel Baudour, Walter A. Franke, Ulrich Jaenchen, Jürgen Martin

Composers: Ulrich Bassenge, Wolfgang Neumann

Featuring: Leni Riefenstahl

Müller’s fascinating rhetorical documentary - a thorough examination of the titular infamous film-maker's life, in which the wilful, irascible 89-year-old pleads ignorance and innocence over charges of Nazi collaboration, whilst Müller’s images often tell a different story - is an engrossing and entertaining film, but one that is unlikely to change anyone’s views of the enigmatic, larger than life figure. Iain.Stott

Posted in Belgium, Feature Documentary, France, Germany, UK | No comments

Friday, 10 July 2009

Nights of Cabiria (1957)

Posted on 07:22 by uthpa

Italy/France

Feature Film

Original Title: Le notti di Cabiria

Director: Federico Fellini

Writers: Federico Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Maria Molinari

Cinematographer: Aldo Tonti

Composer: Nino Rota

Cast: Giulietta Masina, François Périer, Franca Marzi, Dorian Gray, Aldo Silvani, Ennio Girolami, Mario Passante, Christian Tassou, Amedeo Nazzari

The delightful Masina is quite outstanding as the titular Chaplinesque prostitute whose misadventures in high and low Roman culture we follow over a series of nights, in this movingly played and beautifully shot episodic film from Fellini, which manages to both tickle the funny bone and touch the emotions, whilst also providing moments of genuine insight. Iain.Stott

Posted in Feature Film, France, Italy, TSPDT Top 1000 | No comments

Tuesday, 7 July 2009

The Visitor (2007)

Posted on 04:27 by uthpa

USA

Feature Film

Writer/Director: Tom McCarthy

Cinematographer: Oliver Bokelberg

Composer: Jan A.P. Kaczmarek

Cast: Richard Jenkins, Haaz Sleiman, Danai Gurira, Hiam Abbass

With a plot that contains more holes than Blackburn, Lancashire and character developments that wouldn’t look out of place on CBeebies or Nick Jr., McCarthy’s follow-up to the excellent The Station Agent (2003) - an exploration of a dour widower’s emotional re-awakening after he forms an unlikely friendship with an illegal immigrant from Syria - is, never the less, thanks mainly to Jenkins’s logic-defyingly authentic feeling central performance, a moving, entertaining, and almost believable experience. Iain.Stott

Posted in Feature Film, USA | No comments

Sunday, 5 July 2009

Wendy and Lucy (2008)

Posted on 00:47 by uthpa