Never Coming to a Cinema Near You - Arthouse Cinema 2015

Drake Doremus must be the worst working filmmaker alive

Raves abound for Petzold's Phoenix but I found his last one just OK, so I'm a bit skeptical.

I didn't like it anywhere as much as Barbara.

It's a good genre piece, with a great ending. I'm watching a lot of the old Petzold, and the thing is that he just straight up copies old films and stories and twists them into a German context. Phoenix is basically Vertigo as a rubble film. Which is cool. But aesthetically, it's nothing special.

yeah it's a pulp movie done arty.

Yup. And it's perhaps not very good art, but it's thoughtful pulp. His film Jerichow is just a remake of The Postman Rings Twice, but it's twisted into telling a story about immigration to Germany. I like that style, just doing old and wellknown stories, but using that framework to make new images of your country. Plus it never gets too pretentious, I don't think, which is always a danger with this sort of thing.

after using actors last time, Jem Cohen has a new one more in line with his previous work, which i will likely see tonight as i have little faith it will run more than a week in NY.

http://www.ifccenter.com/films/counting/

i need to get out to that quick myself!

Didn't much care for Jerichow but liked Barbara, which puts me in a good place for Phoenix.

has anyone seen Hard To Be A God?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11sMDQIgggA

i'm not sure i could bear 3 hours of that level of grotesquerie but the FT called it "maybe the greatest film since the millennium began."

I'm really looking forward to it.

And I haven't seen anything that unpleasant in the trailers.

I wrote about it here: http://centrifugue.blogspot.dk/2014/04/cphpix-day-9-hard-to-be-god-road-to.html

It's definitely bewildering and weird and filled with nastyness, but it's cool.

I need to see it again.

it's an experience.
On netflix instant if you have a 12 foot wide television

too muddy and monotonous

Frederik B - just read your review, I'm curious why you and another reviewer I'd seen refer to the black and white being part of the film's difficulty. I wouldn't think this should be an issue for critics, so are you just talking about things that put off casual filmgoers?

Yeah. Probably. Normally something like that wouldn't bother me, it's only the length, the mud, the blood and the impenetrability of the plot which caused I minor headache. And festival sleep deprivation, of course. I want to go to another film festival soon. I wish I was at Locarno. The new Zulawski is supposedly quite cool.

Hard to be a God also b/w in an unusual way, have people seen A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night? That one is b/w in the most modern way possible, almost like Sin City. I liked it. A friend dismissed it as being a 90 minute American Apparel commercial, which is pretty much what I like about it.

I love Possession but I was disappointed by pretty much every other Zulawski film I tried (still three I haven't seen though but I stopped trying).

Not bothering with Girl Walks Home At Night. Same with It Follows. I've learned to trust my "I probably won't like that much" sense more often.

Well, I haven't seen It Follows, but from what I've heard it's a straight up horror film. Girl Walks Home is only horror the same way something like Bande a Part is a crime flick. It's all about the pictures, and the sexy young people, and the dancing. It's not the best film ever, but it's cool.

it follows is a fakeout horror film. Girl Walks Home is a drama with a vampire. hard to be a god is snorting pixie stix while someone dangles chicken feet in front of your eyes.
all three aren't flawless but all three are well worth seeing.

Haven't seen them yet but Hard To Be A God and Tale Of Tales are firmly in the "Finally! Something for me!" zone. Even if they end up boring me a bit.

Hard To Be A God actually looks a bit like Zulawski's On The Silver Globe.

Sounds good with Tale of Tales! Looking forward to that one.

Hong Sang-soo wins Golden Leopard. Zulaswski Best Director. Script and Actress goes to Japanese five-hour film Happy Hour.

http://www.pardolive.ch/pardo/pardo-live/today-at-festival/2015/day-11/LOC68-Palmares/palmares-2015.html

on the Hong film (hope to see it at NYFF)

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-locarno-2015-hong-sang-soos-right-now-wrong-then

He has sorta been on a roll this decade. Though I wasn't as big a fan of Hill of Freedom as many others, and prefer him when he's at his most loose and least willfully experimental. But Our Sunhi and Nobody's Daughter Haewon were great examples of that as well.

Last three Leopard winners: Albert Serra, Lav Diaz, Hong Sang-soo. That's pretty good. Much better than any of the big three festivals, imo.

Neil Young points out on twitter, that Hong has made three films with jury-member Moon So-ri. Locarno has been accused of nepotism before as well. But they consistently award great films, so I guess I'm ok with it.

I recommend The Mend, one of the livelier films ever about adult brothers -- kinda True West in whitepeople Harlem -- men together, acting in utterly disgusting primal ways. Also a career performance by sex machine Josh Lucas!

http://www.slantmagazine.com/features/article/interview-josh-lucas

Queen of Earth was...I'm not sure what it was, but it ruffled my feathers slightly.

just saw a v funny pan on Letterboxd that put me off watching it, for now

Which one?

it was Simon Abrams'

I wish Perry was able to synthesize his influences into something that didn't feel like a collection of neat stuff. And good god, stop it with the fucking extreme close-ups. We get it, Cassavetes is your homeboy.

Alternatively: WORST GRIM AND GRITTY WHAT ABOUT BOB REBOOT EVER!

I mean, seriously, how do you fuck up a film that, on paper, could be described as "Elizabeth Moss plays Klaus Kinski in: Daughter of Repulsion and Deathtrap?"

No red flags in that review for me.

but those are not favorable comparisons he's offering.

(admittedly none of that stuff rings my bell particularly except a couple JC films, and i have to see What About Bob)

Just watched Hard To Be A God. As impressively realised as the world is (which makes it worth watching, it really is a big achievement in this aspect), I did find most of the duration quite dull but always visually interesting enough.

Hey, has anyone seen Time Out of MInd starring Richard Gere and written/directed by Oren Moverman (screenwriter of I'm Not There, Rampart, The Messenger, Jesus' Son)?

It's showing at a suburban arthouse near me and I hope to catch it, especially after reading these reviews:

http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/time-out-of-mind/Film?oid=19116458

Richard Gere stars as an elderly man forced out on the streets of New York City. There isn't much more to the story than that, but for the talented writer-director Oren Moverman (The Messenger, Rampart) it's more than enough. Like no other movie I've seen, this communicates the nothingness of being homeless: the empty days, the banal conversations with fellow losers, the crushing tedium of walking the streets or riding the subway with nowhere to go. The movie was a passion project for Gere, who's had a rough time in Hollywood since aging out of the silver-haired-romance parts; he delivers a sober, subdued, resolutely unglamorous performance. Ben Vereen shines as the Gere character's cagey street buddy of necessity, and there are unobtrusive cameos from Steve Buscemi, Kyra Sedgwick, and Michael Kenneth Williams.

http://www.vulture.com/2015/09/movie-review-time-out-of-mind.html

It's on pay per view but haven't bothered b/c Gere is homeless.

CPH:DOX is showing Wang Bing's West of the Tracks during the festival, and I can't make it :( But other than that, there's the new films by Miguel Gomes - all three parts of Arabian Nights will be shown in a row on a saturday - Zhao Liang, Guerin, Loznitsa, Gitai, Castaing-Taylor, Rivers, Anderson and Wiseman. As well as old stuff by Denis, Rivette, Weerasethakul, and loads of others. I'm unsure how I'll ever fit in all the good stuff, but yeah.

Saw Field Niggas last night in Brooklyn. Remarkable hourlong doc/street portraiture shot entirely at 125th & Lex, keep an eye out. (Given a boost by the True/False fest and erstwhile ILXor Tape Store last spring; see interview below.)

http://nymediacenter.com/events/event/?id=E970FD8D-3799-449C-A91854CC81923AB4&slugid=ifp-screen-forward-presents-field-niggas

http://truefalse.org/news/stimulating-life-a-conversation-with-khalik-allah-of-field-niggas/

the times loved it; i'd really like to see it.

Ilx needs to see the new Porumboiu, I think a lot of you would love it. Exactly the film I needed from him after his last two nearly collapsed under their layers of meaning; this time it's just an exquisitely filmed yarn which refuses to give up it's idleminded yarniness. And the final sequence is sheer perfection, in such an ilx way.

I've also seen the other big Romanian film of the year Aferim! which is also very good and beautiful. A black and white western but otherwise quite typical Romanian...

v hyped for the treasure! seeing next week. interesting hearing you describe the last as collapsing; it felt so diffuse & wide-ranging as to just be like pleasant and absorbing, for me, like just kinda zen & spacious.

I did def like When Evening Falls on Bucharest, but it had so much going on, meta-layers, discussions, film style that did or didn't live up to what the director said, that it was almost too much for me. It was quite a short film for so much information. And coming after a four year wait, I would have been disappointed if that was his new style. The Second Game was just crazy, a single metaphor - rules of football = rules of society, as also seen briefly in Police, Adjective - explored through the most boring example ever... Porumboiu is probably my favorite youngish European director right now, and I love how each of his films adds so much to the discussion of his themes, but I needed a breather, I think. These last two were also bordering on self-parody, and I think that this latest proves that he was in on the joke all along. It's just a lovely film, basically.

field niggas = kind of film i would have to book online to avoid saying the title at the desk.

saw quite a few really great little movies at the london film fest this year - kothnodi, paulina, chevalier, others i cant think of right now. evolution, im not sure about. i think she ran out of ideas and padded a lot of it out TBH. but it had some lovely moments. they were just nearly all stretched to the point of boredom. and she didnt quite explore the concept enough either. bit dissapointing. johnnie to's the office, also looked stunning, started off brilliantly, but then seemed to lose it (or me at least) as i started to get very confused about WTF was going on and to whom and why i was meant to care. started to dart all over the place and end up in sort of lazy sentimentalish territory. or maybe i was just too tired.

looking forward to seeing gaspar noes love in a few weeks too.

FN is the kind of film that will likely be booked at single-screen cinemas/museums.

its only at the ICA in london. title seems like a shortcut to provocation TBH.

The Glaagow Film Theatre has a small season of new French films this month - any recommendations among these?

- All About Them (Bonnell)
- The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun (Sfar)
- Diary of a Chambermaid (Jacquot)
- Tokyo Fiancee (Liberski)
- A Perfect Man (Gozian)
- Standing Tall (Bercot)
- The Anarchists (Wajeman)
- Macadam Stories (Benchetrit)
- Microbe & Gasoline (Gondry)
- The Sweet Escape (Podalydes)
- All Cats are Grey (Dellicour)
- The Measure of a Man (Brize)
- Family for Rent (Ameris)
- Wild Life (Kahn)
- SK1 (Tellier)
- My King (Maiwenn)

I really want to see The Measure of a Man, but that's all I can say, have seen none of them.

To mark the 20th anniversary of the murder of Yitzhak Rabin, CPHDOX showed Rabin, the Last Day yesterday. Has anyone seen it? I don't really know what to say, it's a powerful story, but I'm not sure the drama-scenes doesn't take away from the power of it. Also, Benjamin Netanyahu comes off spectacularly awful in it, I have a feeling that Amos Gitai probably knew what he was doing, with that.

wild life was really good.