Has there been a foreign-language film more praised by American critics and industry groups than Laszlo Nemes‘ Son of Saul? 11 critics groups have honored this narrowly focused but hugely unsettling Holocaust flick as 2016’s finest foreign language entry, and general expectations are that more honors are likely. It has a 93% and 89% rating … Read more
With the 66th Cannes Film Festival jury being chaired, as previously announced, by director, producer and swaggering industry heavyweight Steven Spielberg, the following were announced last night as jury members: Nicole Kidman, French actor Daniel Auteuil, director Ang Lee, Indian actress Vidya Balan (who?), director Lynne Ramsay (“Hey, Lynne, you’ve just quit Jane Got A … Read more
Cristian Mungiu‘s Beyond The Hills has been playing in three theatres since Friday. Presumably a few HE readers have seen it by now; it would be nice to run some reactions. It’s got a very respectable 83% Rotten Tomato rating. I’ve been praising it up and down since catching it 10 months ago in Cannes. … Read more
How many world-class male directors (domestic or foreign) are known for appearing to understand and get under the skins of strong female characters, and have shown more than once how masterful they are at telling women-friendly dramas? I’ve noted before that this description fits Beyond The Hills director Cristian Mungiu…but who else? With this grim … Read more
I haven’t seen many March films, but the good ones seem few and far between. By my yardstick the two best will emerge at the end of the month. Wayne Blair‘s The Sapphires (Weinstein Co., 3.22) is a partial knockout, but entirely worth seeing for Chris Dowd‘s landmark performance as a road manager who’s also … Read more
It’s fine to riff about the Academy’s foreign language committee shortlist but the race is over. The 2012 Foreign Language Feature Oscar is going to go to Michael Haneke‘s Amour. Locked, forget about it. (Right?) The only thing that pops out is the wholly unwarranted exclusion of Christian Petzold‘s Barbara, which I saw and greatly … Read more
I tapped out a beginning of a Hitchcock review late last night and then crashed. The plan this morning was to jump right back in, bang out a thousand words or so and move on. Instead I got caught up in a swirl of research and links and photo searches (and maybe denial on some … Read more
The Academy has announced a list of 71 movies submitted for possible consideration as a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nominee. The following are my guesstimates for the 2012 films most likely to appear on the Academy’s shortlist with my personal favorites boldfaced: (1) Amour, d: Michael Haneke (Austria); (2) Children of Sarajevo, d: Aida … Read more
Expertly constructed wham-bammers (i.e., “what you see is what you get”) sell tickets and give less sensitive audience members a good time, but they don’t linger. The ones that do always deliver the undercurrent stuff, “the things that are not said.” Michelangelo Antonioni‘s L’eclisse and L’Avventura deliver this in spades; ditto Florian von Henckel Donnersmarck‘s … Read more
Scratch the three big New York Film Festival debuts — Ang Lee‘s Life of Pi, David Chase‘s Not Fade Away and Robert Zemeckis‘s Flight — and a lot of what’s left are films that first screened at last May’s Cannes Film Festival and/or will show at the Toronto Film Festival. Among the Cannes hand-me-downs are … Read more
Michael Haneke‘s Amour, a highly admirable, very well realized drama that led me to wonder which form of suicide I should choose when I get older, has won the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or. Congrats to Haneke and Sony Pictures Classics, which will distribute Amour in the States. The Grand Prix was won by Matteo … Read more
Cristian Mungiu‘s Beyond The Hills screened at the Salle Debussy twice this evening, at 7 and 10 pm. I caught the 7pm with a capacity crowd. It’s an intensely austere, moralistic, monastic and harsh-atmosphere thing with repressed Sapphic undertones and all kinds of authoritarian foulness and constipation. The slowly building film observes the tyranny of … Read more