Trailer for The Raid (2011) by Gareth Evans

This looks spectacular. Action film made in Indonesia, which makes it an art house flick. Well, I know what I’m going to see at the movies this weekend. 

Shut Up and Play the Hits (2012) by Will Lovelace, Dylan Southern

As a documentary piece, I actually didn’t think it was particularly insightful. There are a few good non-gig scenes —  whenever the filmmakers managed to steal those extremely rare moments when James Murphy was not being self-conscious and in control of his environment.

That said, I loved all the onstage and backstage footage taken from the Madison Square Garden gig, and seeing it on the giant screen of the O2 Greenwich really made me feel like I was right there… What an insane farewell party that must have been.

[Seen on 27 April 2012 @ Sundance London, O2 Greenwich]

Amour (Michael Haneke, 2012) trailer

Nobody Walks (2012) by Ry Russo-Young 

Peter Debruge for Variety:

Ry Russo-Young’s “Nobody Walks” captures the fallout of an open-minded Los Angeles family shaken up by the arrival of a sexy outsider, only this time, it’s the outsider whose perspective takes precedence. A fine cast and co-writer Lena Dunham’s wit give such navel gazing a palatable, commercially viable shape, with Olivia Thirlby playing a New Yorker invited to stay with friends of friends in L.A.’s Silver Lake neighborhood while she puts the finishing touches on a film project. There’s something about her that men find irresistible, and the resulting tension soon disrupts the delicate ecosystem.

Whereas Russo-Young’s two earlier features, “Orphans” and “You Won’t Miss Me,” felt like filmmaking-as-therapy, “Nobody Walks” puts more distance between the director and her protagonist. As Martine, a fetching demi-hipster with big eyes and a Jean Seberg bob, Thirlby arrives in L.A. at the complete mercy of hosts Julie (Rosemarie DeWitt) and her sound-designer husband Peter (John Krasinski): Martine doesn’t drive (hence the title); she bunks in the couple’s pool house and depends on Peter to mix her short film as a freebie between studio gigs. What she hadn’t expected was to become Peter’s newfound infatuation.

Unlike other films of this sort, even though Martine is sexually liberated enough to enjoy a convenient no-strings shag, she’s never seen asking for the inappropriate advances made toward her. With this inadvertently seductive stranger under their roof, DeWitt and Krasinski are terrific as partners put to the test. A perceptive therapist with two children from her previous marriage, Julie quickly picks up on Peter’s crush, trusting he’ll be mature enough to resist. “The Office’s” Krasinski is such an appealing actor that his likability serves to complicate Peter’s behavior in interesting ways: Can a creep really be so charming? And does his infidelity justify Julie stepping out with one of her patients (Justin Kirk, amusing as a horny, insecure showbiz hack)?

Though it appears to take a rather casual view of sex, the film manages to present an extremely moralistic scenario without judgment. With no real plot to speak of — at least, to the extent that the only goal being pursued is Martine’s attempt to finish her movie — “Nobody Walks” is free to study the shifting chemistry between characters and the impact their choices have on those around them.

With such a limited scope, the story could easily have been improvised on camera over a long weekend at a friend’s Hollywood home with no budget or production values, but Russo-Young has graduated beyond her scrappy mumblecore-based roots. Instead, “Nobody Walks” looks and sounds great, beautifully lit and lensed by Christopher Blauvelt, assisted by a hip/hypnotic score from Fall on Your Sword (a band co-founded by former LCD Soundsystem guitarist Phil Mossman) and professionally cut together by accomplished doc editor John Walter. In other words, “Nobody Walks” feels like a real movie.

Most importantly, it results from a proper script, developed with Dunham (“Tiny Furniture”) at the Sundance Institute. The resulting feature not only understands the importance of subtext, trusting its cast to convey certain ideas through expressions rather than dialogue, but also incorporates a welcome amount of humor, which softens the discomfort of watching behavior that might otherwise seem degrading. Though the laughs are a welcome addition, one of the film’s limitations is that it fails to deliver the sort of squirm-inducing moments that make equivalent indies feel so unnervingly honest. Keeping awkward moments in check and restoring everything to the status quo at the end, “Nobody Walks” plays it safe when it could have made our skin crawl — perhaps that is what’s lost when mumblecore learns to articulate itself.

I love how Debruge ends his review: “Nobody Walks” plays it safe when it could have made our skin crawl — perhaps that is what’s lost when mumblecore learns to articulate itself. So true: Russo-Young plays it safe indeed with this very carefully crafted (and a bit too self-conscious) little film. Almost every element of the film is extremely slick: the casting, the soundtrack, the sound mix, the set design.

Nobody Walks is a perfect example in the indie genre that I would normally find irritating and un-original. And yet, it worked for me, and it’s mainly because of just a few little details that I think Russo-Young totally nailed: 

1/ Casting Olivia Thirlby as Martine was a stroke of genius. If your film relies almost entirely on how naturally irresistible your lead actress has to be, you’d better get it 100% right, otherwise the whole thing falls flat. Not easy casting. Thirbly treads on a very fine line between acting like a selfish home-wrecker slut and yet projecting a genuine aura of talent, drive, sexual freedom and natural grace. She’s a revelation. 

2/ The pretext of the story is that Martine comes to stay at Peter’s house in LA to work with him on the sound of her art film. He’s a sound mixer and he’s agreed to mix her film for free. Two details that totally impressed me:

- the scene when Peter takes Martine on a sound discovery journey around the house is absolutely brilliant and very sexy (it shows the level of attention Russo-Young wanted to put on Peter’s passion and credibility as a sound designer; at the same time, it’s clearly a cheap trick Peter uses to impress/seduce Martine); 

- the art film itself is not just a background prop — it showcases Peter and Martine as professionals and it’s the reason why they fall for each other. The piece is very good, and of course, it’s all about the sound. I would actually love to be able to find it online and post it here. 

3/ India Ennenga plays the young daughter in the household. She’s 16, she’s discovering boys and she writes poetry. She wins a prize at her school for a poem she’s submitted. The poem is really good and is rather key to India’s storyline. Again, something the filmmakers put real effort into instead of just making it a story prop. I’d go further and say the poem acts as a very clever plot twist.

N.B: Lena Dunham co-wrote Nobody Walks, and I bet the poem is her doing — teenage poetry is something she did in Tiny Furniture too.

[Seen on 27 April 2012 @ Sundance London, O2 Greenwich]

Jemima Kirke in Tiny Furniture

I’ve been replaying Kirke’s scenes (she plays Charlotte) over and over. I think I’m in love.

“This girl has been my best friend since I’m one…since I’m, less, zero.”

“You have to come with me… You have to come with me now. And we have to talk.”

Jemima Kirke

This girl. She’s quite something in Tiny Furniture — I believe the character she plays in the film is quite true to her real persona (the accent is definitely hers in real life). 

Jemima is sort of a reluctant actress (her presence in Tiny Furniture and Girls is mainly due to the fact that she’s Lena Dunham’s long-time friend), and her main thing is painting, I think. 

Atmen (Breathing) (2011) by Karl Markovics

Peter Bradshaw for the Guardian:

Roman Kogler, played by Thomas Schubert, is a teenage boy who grew up in an orphanage and is now a convicted criminal, imprisoned in a very grim juvenile-detention centre. He is pursuing parole applications, which depend very much on his being able to hold down a job, for which he would be allowed out daily. Finally, Roman gets work as a municipal mortuary attendant, in which – to his suppressed horror and disgust – he has to handle corpses. His co-workers are bored bullies, very like his prison warders. Yet Roman must endure this job if he is to get parole, and must each day take the subway train before dawn into Vienna, and alight just where a horribly ironic holiday ad says: “Dive into adventure”.One day, a chance discovery triggers a crisis of self-examination in Roman, and also brings in its train a real insight. We are shown that Roman’s job, so far from being the lowest of the low, is in some ways privileged. He must attend people at the moment of gravest crisis and greatest, most naked humanity. Roman and his deadpan colleagues enact secret rituals and observances. There is a poignant fascination in their having to dress the body of a naked old woman in her bedroom, while her traumatised daughter-in-law waits outside, tearfully unable to face the reality of death.The “breathing” of the title becomes a cleverly recurrent motif, and Markovics’s script circles around the themes of death and life in thoughtful and elegant ways: it is a well-carpentered screenplay which bears every sign of having been a labour of love, worked on fruitfully over many years.

Wonderful film

Payback (2012) by Jennifer Baichwal

Poor companion piece to what I sincerely hope is a much better book by Margaret Atwood. The concept of debt is such a rich subject and has such wide and tentacular scope that I’m not surprised that Baichwal failed in her attempt to tackle it. And what is it with all that boring footage of Atwood typing on her laptop, then editing her script? What a waste of precious running time.

The Queen of Versailles (2012) by Lauren Greenfield

Sundance Film Festival:

With the epic dimensions of a Shakespearean tragedy, The Queen of Versailles follows billionaires Jackie and David’s rags-to-riches story to uncover the innate virtues and flaws of the American dream. We open on the triumphant construction of the biggest house in America, a sprawling, 90,000-square-foot mansion inspired by Versailles. Since a booming time-share business built on the real-estate bubble is financing it, the economic crisis brings progress to a halt and seals the fate of its owners. We witness the impact of this turn of fortune over the next two years in a riveting film fraught with delusion, denial, and self-effacing humor.

Lauren Greenfield instinctively knows what questions to ask, when to ask them, and, more importantly, where to put her camera to mine this overflowing treasure of events. She constructs a series of glowing metaphors to concoct a fascinating character study of parents, children, pets, and household employees as their privileged existence turns upside down. The end result is a portrait of a couple who dared to dream big but lose, still maintaining their unique brand of humility. –Sundance Film Festival

Vicki Robinson for Film Comment:

Similarly, the winner of the U.S. Directing Award in documentary, Lauren Greenfield’s The Queen of Versailles, deserved some of the buzz surrounding its subjects, billionaires Jackie and David Siegel. Greenfield follows the Siegels over four years as they try to build the country’s biggest house in Orlando, and then as the financial collapse brings down their heavily leveraged time-share business. 

“The Queen of Versailles” is in fact a small-town girl named Jackie from Binghamton, New York. The former Mrs Florida who married David Siegel, billionaire owner of Westgate Resorts, led a life of extreme luxury (somewhat messed up by their eight children). Originally a witness to the building of the Siegels dream house, a Versailles-like compound slated to be the largest home in America, The Queen of Versaillesfeels much like an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous—until the economy tanks mid-filming, leaving the Siegels close to bankrupcies. The real estate and the time-share business itself turn out to be built on borrowed money and mortgaged promises.

As husband David grows morose and ornery, wife Jackie appears stronger and more constructive. But ultimately this is the story of not especially thoughtful people who got rich selling luxury and wallowed in it. It’s also hard to watch a film when you have to avert your eyes to avoid being constantly assailed by Jackie’s huge boobs. As the Siegels’ one adopted (and therefore only recently rich) daughter points out: “There’s nothing normal about this life.” The children appear only as background but seem strangely balanced. This is probably due to their two loving and capable Filipino nannies (one of whom has not seen her own child for over 10 years, which is one of the movie’s more telling moments).

Soon after the film kicked off the festival, David Siegel filed suit over its description in the program as a “rags-to-riches story.” But I found these people more than tiresome and preferred spending time with the wonderful inhabitants (aka the 99 percent) of Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s Detropia. 

It’s actually interestingly enough a rags-to-riches-to-rags story, although it’s the last bit of that tagline that David Siegel is now disputing (ironically, he’s the one who came up with it in the first place; it’s a quote take from one of his interview sessions). 

I was seriously about to check out after only 15 minutes of watching these tacky trashy people wasting their time and mine, thinking that I had better things to do than watch that nonsense.

But then the 2008 financial crash happened and that definitely saved Greenfield’s film. Well, it certainly made the Siegel saga worth watching all of a sudden.

… Now, is it bad to admit that Jacqueline kinda grew on me? I don’t know what to say but there’s something about her that I find endearing. And when she asked the car rental clerk what the name of her driver was, that was priceless. 

Somebody asked me, how are you going to live your dash?… It’s on your tombstone: you’ve got your birth date, and you’ve got the day when you’re deceased, and you’ve got the little dash in the middle… that’s your life right there. How are you going to live your dash?

Into The Abyss: A Tale Of Death, A Tale Of Life (2011) by Werner Herzog

Toronto International Film Festival:

Crime stories can often fall into a predictable pattern of whodunit, but trust Werner Herzog to bring his own unique approach to the genre. He focuses on a triple homicide case in Conroe, Texas, that occurred ten years ago. Epitomizing the word “senseless,” the apparent motive behind the murders was to steal a car for a joyride. The convicted killers were two teenagers, Michael Perry and Jason Burkett, who had a history of substance abuse and violent bravado. They deny their guilt (each blaming the other), but the verdict was based on strong evidence that Herzog doesn’t challenge. Instead, he probes the legacy of the crime and the psyches of the people involved, unveiling layers of humanity, both cold and compassionate.Herzog, who strongly opposes capital punishment, came to this story after interviewing several people on death row. Among them was 28-year-old Perry, scheduled to die eight days after talking to Herzog. “When I talk to you, it does not necessarily mean that I have to like you,” Herzog says to Perry, “but… I think human beings should not be executed as simply as that.” Burkett, in contrast, was given a comparatively lenient sentence of life imprisonment, prompted by an emotional plea from his father (who is also incarcerated). After delving deeper, Herzog chose to concentrate on this particular case.In a departure from films like Cave of Forgotten Dreams or Grizzly Man, Herzog refrains from his distinctive and familiar voice-over commentary, but his presence is felt through his questions. In addition to interviewing Perry and Burkett, he talks to their relatives, the victims’ families, law enforcement officials and others. Exploring an American gothic landscape, he takes us from luxury homes to impoverished trailers to prison cells. Herzog’s inquiries yield surprising moments that speak to a variety of human tendencies, including regret, redemption and irrational behaviour. As he’s done so often before, Herzog turns ominous territory into an enlightening trip.

I’m not surprised Herzog thought it’d be a good idea to focus on Perry’s case; it’s such juicy material, such a “senseless” crime (including Perry himself, that’s a total of four people who ended up losing their lives over a stupid red camaro… how fucking depressing), and it’s filled with a plethora of drama-fuelled tragedy-prone characters, all dealt a pretty lousy deck of cards from the day they were born. Take Lisa Stotler for example: before her mother Sandra and her brother Adam were murdered by Perry&Burkett (oh and by the way, turns out that Adam is not really Lisa’s brother but actually her nephew: her sister was only 16 when she was pregnant with Adam so the grandparents adopted him), her father AND older brother (AND family dog) were hit by a train….Six months before her wedding. And, what else, let me think..Ah yes, she had one uncle who died of a heroin overdose, one uncle who hung himself, a step brother who shot himself because he had pancreatic cancer + her REAL (??) father died in his sleep (?!?). All of this in a six-year period… I mean, come on! 

The crime itself and all those tragic figures gravitating around it didn’t interest me that much, I have to say. I found everybody was just too wrapped up in their own insane drama to have anything really insightful to share — and let’s not talk about Perry and Burkett themselves whose every single word had to be filtered through a highly-tuned bullshit radar, so much so that I was left exhausted and frustrated at the end of each of their interviews. If anything, I thought all that was just cheap distraction from the real interesting issue at hand: being on death row.

So Herr Herzog, give me less on the red camaro crime case please and more reflection on capital punishment. Perry was interviewed eight days before his execution so whenever he and Herzog brought up the subject of his imminent death and what it meant/felt to know when and how exactly he was going to die, that’s when I paid closer attention, and I felt that there was not enough of that.

Ultimately, I found that the only two characters who could offer us clear perspective and genuine insight were the peripheral “experts” who had nothing to do with Perry and Burkett’s case, namely a priest who’s sometimes asked to be present at executions and  Fred Allen who quit his job as the captain of Huntsville’s death row after attending more than 120 executions. Both gave very moving testimonies and showed real compassion. Incidentally both experienced epiphanies that gave them a true understanding of the value of a life (any life for that matter… a squirrel was even mentioned). 

Catherine [Deneuve] isn’t a flower. Even less a bouquet. Catherine is a vase, in which the audience places the bouquet.

Arnaud Desplechin's interview with Catherine Deneuve for Film Comment ›

Trailer for Cosmopolis (2012) by David Cronenberg

(via bbook)

frenchcinema:

In Competition:
“Amour” (dir. Michael Haneke)
“The Angel’s Share” (dir. Ken Loach)
“Baad EL Mawkeaa (Apres La Bataille”) (dir. Yousry Nasrallah)
“Beyond The Hills” (dir. Cristian Mungiu)
“Cosmopolis” (dir. David Cronenberg)
“Holy Motors” (dir. Leos Carax)
“The Hunt” (dir. Thomas Vinterberg)
“In Another Country” (dir. Hong Sang-Soo)
“Im Nebels (Dans La Brume)” (dir. Sergei Loznitsa)
“Killing Them Softly” (dir. Andrew Dominik)
“Lawless”  (dir. John Hillcoat)
“Like Someone In Love” (dir. Abbas Kiarostami)
“Moonrise Kingdom” (dir. Wes Anderson)
“Mud” (dir. Jeff Nichols)
“On The Road” (dir. Walter Salles)
“Paradies: Liebe” (dir. Ulrich Seidl)
“The Paperboy” (dir. Lee Daniels)
“Post Tenebras Lux” (dir. Carlos Reygadas)
“Reality” (dir. Matteo Garrone)
“Rust & Bone” (dir. Jacques Audiard)
“Taste Of Money” (dir. Im Sang-Soo)
“Vous N’Avez Encoure Rien Vu” (dir. Alain Resnais)

Opening Film:
“Moonrise Kingdom” (dir. Wes Anderson)

Closing Film:
“Therese D.” (dir. Claude Miller)

Un Certain Regard:
“Miss Lovely” (dir. Ashim Ahluwalia)
“La Playa” (dir. Juan Andres Arango)
“Les Chevaus De Dieu” (dir. Nabil Ayouch)
“Trois Mondes” (dir. Catheron Corsini)
“Antiviral” (dir. Brandon Cronenberg)
“7 Days In Havana” (dir. Benicio Del Toro, Laurent Cantet, Gaspar Noe etc)
“Le Grand Soir” (dir. Benoit Delepine & Gustave Kervern)
“Laurence Anyways” (dir. Xavier Dolan)
“Despues De Lucia” (dir. Michel Franco)
“Aimer A Perdre La Raison” (dir. Joachim Lafosse)
“Mystery” (dir. Lou Ye)
“Student” (dir. Darezhan Omirbayev)
“La Pirogue” (dir. Moussa Toure)
“Elefante Blanco” (dir. Pablo Trapero)
“Confession Of A Child Of The Century” (dir. Sylvie Verheyde)
“11.25: The Day He Chose His Own Fate” (dir. Koji Wakamatsu)
“Beasts Of The Southern Wild” (dir. Benh Zeitlin)

Out of Competition
“Une Journee Particuliere” (dir. Gilles Jacob and Samuel Faure)
“Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted” (dir. Eric Darnell, Tom McGrath)
“Dario Argento’s Dracula” (dir. Dario Argento)
“Io E Te” (dir. Bernardo Berolucci)
“Hemingway & Gellhorn” (Dir. Philip Kaufman)
“Ai To Makoto” (dir. Takashi Miike)

Special Screening:
“Der Mull Im Garten Eden” (dir. Faith Akin)
“Mekong Hotel” (dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
“Villegas” (dir. Gonzalo Tobal)
“A Musica Segundo Tom Jobim” (dir. Nelson Pereira Do Santos)
“Journal De France” (dir. Claudine Nougaret & Raymond Depardon)
“Les Invisbles” (dir. Sebastien Lifshitz)
“The Central Park Five” (dir. Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, David McMahon)
“Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir” (dir. Laurent Bouzereau)

Nice line-up. Highlighting those I find of interest.