The key sequence in the procedural courtroom drama Anatomy of a Fall is indicative of director Justine Triet’s masterful storytelling for what it doesn’t show us. The man who suffers the fatal titular fall, Samuel, made a surreptitious audio recording of a vicious argument between he and his wife, Sandra, that ultimately turns physically violent.
As the jury hears this altercation, Triet allows us to see what they can’t. She stages the heated exchange as a flashback, but only the portion where words are used as weapons. Before the first slap is doled out, Triet cuts back to the courtroom. We experience the physical violence between Samuel and Sandra as the jury does, who can only hear the wordless scuffle with no way of knowing who is doing what to whom.
Read more…
It all started with an innocent enough question from my wife. She had no way of knowing when she asked it that the answer would lead to the both of us falling down a rabbit hole of cinema. (She’s been with her movie-obsessed partner long enough, though, to know that’s always a possibility. She knew who she was marrying!)
The two of us are always on the lookout for new shows we think the other would enjoy and that we can watch and discuss as we work our way through it together. Last fall, she mentioned a title she had been seeing on HBO Max for a few months – soulless media conglomerate Warner Bros. Discovery, which now owns HBO, recently rebranded the streaming service to the obnoxiously titled Max.
“Do you know anything about this Irma Vep?”
Read more…
I feel like I should have loved Titane. Possessor was one of my top ten films of last year. Climax was a disturbing yet exhilarating experience. I might not be an A#1 fan of the body horror genre, but I can certainly respect and enjoy it. I need a little something more under the surface, however, than director Julia Ducournau has on offer with Titane, her follow-up to 2016’s Raw – a film I haven’t seen, but about which I’ve heard good things. With Titane, Ducournau has a lot to say, and that’s part of the problem. The movie never gels into a cohesive whole. It’s merely an excuse to stage half-a-dozen or so incredibly shocking and provocative body horror set pieces.
Those set pieces, tho. They’re a definite gut-punch, and I won’t be forgetting them any time soon.
Read more…
Atlantics is a ghost story that weaves themes like economic inequality and crushing poverty into its romantic drama plot. That may seem overwhelming, but it never is in the hands of writer and director Mati Diop. This is Diop’s feature film directorial debut, and the incredible atmospheric tone of her picture, mixed with the rich subject matter, make Atlantics an indelible storytelling experience. Diop now holds the distinction as the first black woman ever to direct a film included in competition at the Cannes film festival. That’s no doubt a consequence of the festival’s past organizers overlooking many other deserving filmmakers, but Diop is a hell of an artist. Her movie is a great achievement; one that earned this bit of filmmaking history.
Read more…
It would be hard to overstate the rapturous reaction I had to Portrait of a Lady on Fire. There is an overwhelming beauty to every aspect of the picture. From the cinematography, shot composition, and acting, to the delicate lyricism with which writer/director Céline Sciamma tells her story, this is an exquisite work of art.
Read more…
You don’t just watch Sátántangó, Hungarian director Béla Tarr’s 7.5-hour paean to slow cinema. It seeps into your bones. At least, it seeped into mine.
Up until now, the movie was notoriously difficult to see. A flawless new 4K scan of the film, and imminent release on Blu-ray, will change that. Prior to 2019, the only home video release of the art film was a 2006 DVD by the Chicago non-profit cinema arts organization, Facets, which (I’ve been told) wasn’t the best transfer, and has now become all but impossible to find. So, with a beautiful transfer of it readily available, I suppose the only bragging rights left among cinephiles will be seeing all seven-and-a-half hours in one sitting in a theatrical setting.
I had the opportunity to do just that at Dallas’s historic Texas Theater, and the experience was exhilarating, transcendent, anger-inducing, exhausting, and ultimately very rewarding.
Read more…
Cold War is my first experience with the work of director Paweł Pawlikowski. I need to see Ida, his film about a woman set to take her vows as a nun in early 1960s Poland, but I haven’t had time to catch up with it yet. After watching Cold War, I’ll be sure to make the time. His new picture is a painfully mournful tale of two star-crossed lovers whose own personalities and the realities of the world around them conspire to make the match an ill-advised one. Still, their passion burns bright, even when they are separated from each other for years.
Read more…
