Here are two things I know to be true: there aren’t enough documentaries about books; when one can be found, it’s almost always disappointing. Well, sigh. D.W. Young’s film, about New York’s rare book dealer and collector scene, promises to be a quaint, easy-going glance in at the lives of those who have made collecting […]
Hyenas (Djibril Diop Mambéty, 1992) The Long Farewell (Kira Muratova, 1971) I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone / Stray Dogs / Journey to the West (Tsai Ming-liang, 2007/2013/2014) The Love Eterne (Li Han-hsiang, 1963) Places in Cities (Angela Schanelec, 1998) Café Lumière / Flight of the Red Balloon (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2003/2007) Let the Fire Burn (Jason Osder, 2013) Losing Ground (Kathleen Collins, […]
MUBI: —Marseille: A confession: I don’t find the films of Angela Schanelec cold. On occasion I find them alienating, or primarily works to comprehend rather than feel, because they attain near-Straub/Huillet levels of rigour and precision in matters profilmic and narrative, actorly and sonic. But why then did I cry so persistently during the Joni […]
The More the Merrier (George Stevens, 1943) My Neighbours the Yamadas (Isao Takahata, 1999) All is Forgiven (Mia Hansen-Løve, 2007) The Hole (Tsai Ming-liang, 1998) Centre Stage (Stanley Kwan, 1992) Toute une nuit (Chantal Akerman, 1982) Like Grains of Sand (Ryosuke Hashiguchi, 1995) Ornamental Hairpin (Hiroshi Shimizu,1941)
MUBI: —Let the Sunshine In: I have watched this movie (minor Denis, I’m told) a silly number of times. On each new occasion it grows: it becomes more accommodating, funnier, sadder. Binoche’s Isabelle, an artist, suffering through interminable dates with a panoply of men who are either wrong from the start or time their arrivals […]
Comrades: Almost a Love Story (Peter Chan, 1996) Tea and Sympathy (Vincente Minnelli, 1956) The Masseurs and a Woman (Hiroshi Shimizu, 1938) Le Plaisir (Max Ophuls, 1952) Love Letter (Kinuyo Tanaka, 1953) A Borrowed Life (Wu Nien-jen, 1994) A Confucian Confusion (Edward Yang, 1994) Night Moves (Kelly Reichardt, 2013) Passing Fancy (Yasujiro Ozu, 1933) Onibaba (Kaneto Shindo, 1964)
MUBI: —Sisters: There’s a lot of egregious shit written about Brian De Palma ‘elevating’ the genres he works in, rather than him being, as is truthful, an adept operator within said genres, while doing his usual routine of aping conceits from Hitchcock films—here, a heady mixture of Psycho, Rear Window, and Rope—through his own experience. […]
Millennium Actress (Satoshi Kon, 2001) Olivia (Jacqueline Audry, 1951) The Dreamed Path (Angela Schanelec, 2016) Stranger by the Lake (Alain Guiraudie, 2013) Teorema (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1968) Army of Shadows (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1969) Sense and Sensibility (Ang Lee, 1995) The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1939) Song of the Exile (Ann Hui, 1990)
MUBI: —Lourdes: As mentioned when I recommended Amour Fou last month, I don’t like Lourdes particularly: but it’s still worth it for the shy restraint of Sylvie Testud’s performance. —Wild Goose Lake: The improbably sexy Hu Ge is going to star in Wong Kar-wai’s next film, Blossoms, and owing to a bit of business he does here bandaging up a wound, […]
For every year I’ve attended the two major festivals nearest me (Edinburgh’s and Glasgow’s), there has been a film lying in wait. At EIFF 2017 I saw Terrence Malick’s Song to Song twice in quick succession; at GFF 2018 it was Un Beau Soleil Intérieur, by Claire Denis, that did it for me—now one of my […]
