Reviews
Lest his film be charged with trafficking in the same philistine stuff as pornography, Serra rarely, if ever, allows his erotica to be, well, erotic. Not as well versed in the art of the exaggerated orgasm as adult-film actors, his nonprofessionals are awkward and imprecise.
The crux of the story for Autumn is not her awakening to a varied feast of resources, but her ability to take control of her own self, an internalized conflict that only intensifies as she moves through Planned Parenthood.
Reichardt’s hushed visual approach animates the movie into something more contemplative than its sweet, humorous screenplay might indicate. In her films, characters tend to look at things and think. A diegetic bird squaw might fill the silence, or a plucky banjo. In those moments, the object gazed upon becomes imbued with meaning.
While the horror of The Invisible Man lies in its frank, violent metaphor for all kinds of abuse, the scenes that present the unrelenting, compulsive ways that men, even so-called nice guys, protect other men are more subtly chilling.
Bacurau utilizes its aesthetics to paint a sensuous, earthy picture of a self-sustaining mixed community that rejects capitalistic tendencies in favor of collectivism. History is prized over revitalization.
Rather than servicing the melodrama of the film, as in Black Coal’s mood-washed frames of neon red and icy blue, Diao’s flamboyant visual style here works sardonically—accentuating evil in a strange, unfamiliar way.
The basic premise trades in the kind of casual absurdism that’s by now expected of Porumboiu. More surprising is the fact that The Whistlers plays much like a standard policier—a relatively by-the-book offering from a director who has distinguished himself by a willingness to throw out the manual.
One can’t discuss Costa for long without focusing on his use of photography—it seems that with every successive film he learns something new about how digital cameras absorb light that no one else has yet figured out.
She structures her films around dramatic temporal and spatial jumps, but without the backbone of conventional pacing they seem especially jarring; it often takes a minute to realize that Schanelec has shifted gears to a different world.
While it’s tempting to view these histrionics as dramatic fabrications, almost everything that unfolds was captured on video recordings of the actual trial, and lifted from official testimony transcripts. Nonetheless, Bellocchio doesn’t resist the opportunity to ham up the fracas an extra notch or two, to discombobulating effect.
The question of who gets to participate in a society because of their values and cultural awareness is the central question of Bertrand Bonello’s Zombi Child, a film that is quite unlike his previous work.
Ladj Ly has always used his camera to make sense of the immediate and concrete reality he lived in by documenting and interrogating it tirelessly. As such, the director’s late blooming success since the film’s premiere at Cannes last May feels somehow like justice, the reward for a relentless endurance.
With its air of weariness and melancholy, its shadowy interiors and images of doleful professionals going through their motions, Clemency is a sepulchral film, but Chukwu never allows for an air of distanced or rehearsed affectation.
A Hidden Life reminds us that a courageous moral act need not be immediately efficacious to produce meaningful impact. His calm certitude, arrived at through faith, personal reflection, and individual experience, poses a challenge to all those around him, especially those who have decided for various reasons to align themselves with the forces of nationalism.