I have little problem with the technical quality of the film, it looks fine and Sandra Hüller is acting on a high level. It is the concept of the film that made this a drag.
It details a few chapters in the life of Charlotte, a skilled teacher and as far as I can tell a decent mother, that has a bit of a flaw: A series of ill-advised adventures with her patients. In three parts the film examines how…
An Eastern European 3+ hour film featuring people around a dinner table discussing morality and religion. I would love to have been in the room when the idea was first pitched.
There is something strange about this film. The complete lack of action is a feature, yet I could not stop watching. I lost the thread of the conversation a few times, but kept getting sucked back in. Everything is filmed in long, static shots (the director making sure the…
Netflix just dropped 20+ old Swedish film ranging from 1913 to the 1990's. Which seems a bit random even for Netflix. So naturally I had to check it out.
Den Starkaste is a 1929 silent film (the version on Netflix has no soundtrack) recently restored. Storywise it is nothing too spectacular: A poor guy falls in love with a girl and has to prove himself to the father, a ship captain. Another suitor is not happy with these developments. But…
This feels like the the film Melville has been working towards his whole career. It has all the trademarks from his gangster films but applied to a group of French resistance fighters. Beautiful images and sound, and while there is action, that is not what Melville usually focuses on. Once again he humanizes the whole thing by focusing on what happens between the action: the waiting, the doubt, characters barely in control as they are swept up by events. The…
Absolutely adored this. A dark comedy set during the final spasms of the Ceausescu regime. Everything falling apart, some people simply not caring anymore, others trying to keep up the facade and some still clinging to the world they know.
It has the wild black humour of Kusturica's Yugoslavia films, but it is older, and perhaps more clever. Certainly it was a big influence on films like Underground and Black Cat, White Cat.
This is certainly the best Belgian film I have ever seen, and I'm sure it's up there even when considering those I haven't seen.
This is the exact point where Flemish cinema became mature. Before this it was mostly comedies and heimat-films, at least that is what it feels like. To underscore this film takes a different approach it opens with lead Max putting a gun in his mouth. After that he decides to go on a bender in Brussels.…
The technical side actually gets in the way of the film. If you discount the one shot gimmick, you are left with a pretty bare bones story: soldier going from A to B with the predictable dramatic points all hit nicely in order. Technically it is a marvel. Tight choreography that must have been a bitch to all get right, but without an impactful story it veers awfully close to a tech demo.
Maybe cinema viewing is a must for this one, but I was expecting a lot more from this film.
I must have seen this film a year or two after it released, when it aired on public television. I liked it then, and once in a while it popped into my head again, that film with the German family on the run. Figuring it was one of those non-US films that gets a year or two before it disappears I never made a serious effort finding out the title because chances of finding it anywhere were very small. When…
Only a 33 second clip of the 14 minute release survived depicting Napoleon crossing the Alps after the famous painting. It is quite an elaborate scene, with snow and many extra's which makes me wonder what the rest must have looked like
It feels like cheating saying that I 'watched' this film, but I thought I'd give others looking for it a heads up as it is part of the Oxford History of World Cinema.
The first Danish success abroad, a shot for shot remake of a Danish film that was a hit in Denmark earlier that year.
A young Danish girl is lured to London under false pretences and ends up in a brothel, when she smuggles a letter home her family starts a rescue effort.
Pretty standard technically for a European film around that time, with the exception of three scenes shown side by side at the start. Thematically it is maybe a bit darker than other films of the era, it never got past the US censors, but of course rather tame by today's standards.