I’ve linked respective titles to my reviews hosted over at Ioncinema.
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Masterpieces
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Best
Melancholia (Lars von Trier) – You don’t need controversy to make a great film, and this one is stellar. This film is not about an apocalypse, but rejecting preciousness to achieve real happiness; it was such a good idea to screen it after The Tree of Life, since this is essentially an antidote for that film’s gloss.
House of Tolerance (Bertrand Bonello) – This got me closer to tears than any other film in the festival; stunningly beautiful, more later.
Other Standouts
Martha Marcy May Marlene (Sean Durkin) – There are just so many ideas swimming around in it; it’s still shapeshifting in my head, maybe some of the cult stuff is a tad overblown, but still.
Drive (Nicholas Winding Refn) – Beautiful filmmaking da da da a bit shallow da da da doesn’t matter still amazing da da da what everyone else says da da da…
Elena (Andrey Zvyagintsev) – Why wasn’t this in Competition?! Slow-building, meandering, poignant, and a worthwhile progression of Zvyagintsev’s style, in my opinion.
The Day He Arrives (Hong Sang-soo) – One of the more emotionally resonant films I’ve seen from Hong; no structural gimmicks, just sweet coincidences. (‘Coincidences’ in film’s language not mine) ‘Logical paths created from chaos’ is kind of a pet theme of mine – it just makes most things better. Then again, that theme is present in many of Hong’s films I’ve seen, so maybe it’s just more ‘same old same old’. Whatever, it’s really good. (5 days later: Okay, I already thought this was great, but hearing that it has a Groundhog Day structure is news to me; my opinion of it will almost certainly be going up next time)
Quite Good
This is Not a Film (Jafar Panahi) – Had this continued on as a Brechtian makeshift construction of Panahi’s rejected screenplay, I think it would’ve been a masterpiece. As is, it’s still potent; had to chuckle at seeing a DVD of Rodrigo Cortés’ Buried on Panahi’s shelf. I don’t think that was staged.
Play (Ruben Östlund) – Sententious, yet pleasingly provocative & brilliantly directed film about class, manipulation, and theft; perhaps just a bit too Code Unknown.
The Prize (Paula Markovitch) – Incredibly strong debut; palpable tension watching a second grader try desperately to lead a normal life within her mom’s protective lies.
The Silver Cliff (Karim Aïnouz) – I guess it’s a Martel kind of day! Replace killing the dog in Headless Woman with getting dumped out-of-the-blue and you’ve got another bewildered woman, aimlessly trolling a life that used to be familiar; haunting, and some beautiful light texture.
The Kid With A Bike (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne) – Loved where it was going until he meets Wex; proceedings typically Dardenne; that’s never bad, but also not as exciting anymore.
Porfirio (Alejandro Landes) – Of the recent brigade of sparse, realist South American films, this one excels as a charismatic portrait of a man – and nation’s – immobility. Also, if you must have post-film didactic text, have your protagonist sing it aloud, as his film does.
Outside Satan (Bruno Dumont) – Dumont is back in the mode of his first two features; austerity is often grueling, but it does pick up significantly once its point finally emerges in the second half. Also, it includes his best sex scene by a mile; the girl came out of her mouth! (not really, but kind of, actually)
Goodbye (Mohammad Rasoulof) – Resonates quite at bit due to current events that are its raison d’être, but I was too drowsy to say if it stands on its own (‘Stands on its own’, meaning, if it is as breathtaking with the politics unknown or forgotten, as exceptional filmmaking. This is likely). Anyway, this was my first Rasoulof film; hope to see more (past and future).
This Must Be the Place (Paolo Sorrentino) – Color me surprised, but this was not only watchable, but constantly amusing, absurd, and funny; Penn is ridiculous. It made me want to watch Stop Making Sense again; the Talking Heads music video-esque bit here is as good as any individual moment in the Demme doc. (Actually, I take back that comment, as I just remembered four Stop Making Sense scenes that beat it. Still good, though) I’m still surprised that Penn didn’t annoy the living shit out of me; it might be an ‘up is down’ case.
>Hard Labor (Juliana Rojas & Marco Dutra) – I almost fell asleep in the 1st half, but then the audaciously strange 2nd half left me wide-eyed, heart racing, covered in goosebumps. I can’t say I ‘got it,’ though. Maybe it’s some kind of critique of lower class labor conditions, but that kind of goes out the window when ‘it’ appears.
Good
The Skin I Live In (Pedro Almodóvar) – Auto-pilot Pedro that had all of the ideas I thought it would from reading its short synopsis: good ones, but no risks.
My Little Princess (Eva Ionesco) – Eva Ionesco should have played the mother’s role, and that’s the only time Ionesco is preferred to Huppert, ever. It’s Ionesco’s autobiography of her childhood, posing in her mother’s erotic photos; lush and conventional, with some sharp dialogue.
Heat Wave (Jean-Jacques Jauffret) – Well, the subtitles cut out at about 70% of the way through and never came back on; However, if anyone can tell me what the mother’s diagnosis is, I think I could form a reaction. What I do know, though, is that it is a perfectly 50-50 genetic hybrid between the Dardenne’s concerns and Amores Perros, as raised by Adrienn Pal.
Mushrooms (Vimukthi Jayasundara) – Jayasundara evokes Antonioni and Jia’s alien urban landscapes with beautiful photography and eerie moods, mixed in with bizarre forest mystics pulled from Weerasethakul. I’ll need another look to sort through extreme narrative ellipses that led to a detached viewing experience, but in general I was hypnotized.
Dreileben: Beats Being Dead (Christian Petzold) – All of these were mostly enjoyable, but feel like three minor films tied together schematically. This one felt like a TV movie, but I thought the same about Jerichow. It’s the one where I most actively cared about what was happening.
The Island (Kamen Kalev) – one of the worst films I’ve seen this year…until the awesome final 45 minutes that came completely out of nowhere. Imagine you’re watching something rancid… say you’re an hour into Who Can Kill A Child?, when all-of-a-sudden, an hour in, it turns into the first half of Network. I’d written off Kalev for good, and now feel a need to see it again, in case the first half miraculously works somehow. It seems like part of the movie may be intentionally self-destructive ala Adaptation, only it idiotically put the bad part at the beginning.
Dreileben: One Minute of Darkness (Christoph Hochhäusler) – Half of this was very good, but it was intercut with a side plot that I couldn’t engage with, and had a kind of horror element that felt forced.
Sleeping Beauty (Julia Leigh) – What the hell is this movie about? I don’t know, but I sure enjoyed watching it not tell me; many scenes are quite haunting.
Poliss (Maïwenn) – Extremely well-made police drama, riveting for the entire length, though it seemed more like a TV pilot than a focused film; the love scenes drag a bit.
Habemus Papam (Nanni Moretti) – Great when realist comedy shows Vatican as the absurd ritual that it is, but not-so-great when it’s just plain silly. Stirring ending.
Miss Bala (Gerardo Naranjo) – Shifts from a ho-hum drug trade drama into a stylish, unconventional drug trade drama, yet still remains a drug trade drama.
Sauna On Moon (Zou Peng) – Yesterday was ‘Jia’ day, after Jayasundara evoked Still Life, Peng makes sexed-up Platform/The World amalgam that only works in spurts; but when it does, it dazzles (much like Jia).
Corpo Celeste (Alice Rohrwacher) – Nice enough little realist coming-of-age-and-religion movie; kinda slight, though; it frequently reminded me of Martel’s Holy Girl.
Dreileben: Don’t Follow Me (Dominik Graf) – Probably the most detached of the trilogy from the escapee plot, and had the most auteurist sensibility, but I couldn’t care less about the central dramatic element.
The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick) – An approximate quote from the film: “if you are too good, you won’t succeed.” That about sums it up. Precious and universal to the point of saying nil, it’s basically National Geographic with scrapings of a plot. Ellipses give needed abstraction, but not nearly enough. Obviously, Tree of Life will be proclaimed by many to be this generation’s 2001; the difference: Kubrick choked me up with a robot, where Malick left me cold with a human family. Worth noting that this is the first of Malick’s films that I don’t think is great.
Michael (Markus Schleinzer) – I’m not sure it does much with its premise beyond building up layers of irony, but it’s entirely watchable, which itself is a tad unsettling.
‘Okay’
Breathing (Karl Markovics) – The protagonist of this movie kind of looks like me; I’m struggling to say anything else. In…and out…
Tatsumi (Eric Khoo) – I’ve no interest or knowledge in gekiga, manga, anime, etc. This seemed to be a decent enough treatment of the material, but it’s formally tired, and never impressive.
Iris in Bloom (Valérie Mréjen & Bertrand Schefer) – Generic French, intellectual coming-of-ager, in which a teen and an older photographer muse about love & art. It’s ‘not for me.’
Restless (Gus Van Sant) – A death trilogy add-on, as made for to appeal strictly to teens; sweet-natured, but ultimately inoffensive and minor.
Once Upon A Time In Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan) – I’ve only seen this and Three Monkeys, so I’m by no means familiar with Ceylan. I see his appeal, but I haven’t been able to enjoy him yet. If/when I do, I have a feeling I’ll come back to Anatolia and see it as something truly special. Everything looks amazing, and the rigorous way that every scene is drawn out (especially the night search) is exciting in theory. However, it was a bad film to see at 10pm of a five-film day; I think the narrative and drama are neglected, and it felt pretentious at the time. There is no reason why this couldn’t have been a gripping film and a beautiful, contemplative one. The story is quite solid, just hidden in murk. [Update Sept. 2011: nevermind everything I said. I saw this again while actually being awake and it is a near-masterpiece]
Oslo, August 31st (Joachim Trier) – Less stylized than Reprise, but also extracts the non-depressive bits; I don’t care about depressed druggies relapsing.
Sleeping Sickness (Ulrich Köhler) – Resists any (needed) dramatic element for elliptical themes that intrigue only sporadically; basically, it’s Claire Denis sans a soul.
Unforgivable (André Téchiné) – Overlong; one trifle after another, and pretty much all of its charms are in the middle third; the outcome for the little dog: unforgivable.
Guilty of Romance (Sion Sono) – Sono says his film reflects the way he sees women, with “fascination and fear.” He forgot to add “sluts” & “garbage.” He sure can make a movie, though. If he ever makes something not trying to provoke the ire of an entire gender (or two), I might love it.
The Slut (Hagar Ben Asher) – Acted and shot well enough, but it goes exactly where you’d expect it to, & takes 0 risks getting there (aside from nudity).
The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius) – People seemed to love this somehow; it’s a pretty by-numbers treatment of the idea; watch Singin’ in the Rain instead. My rating (4.3) maybe should to be a tad lower, but I’ve got to give a shout-out to the aspect ratio.
The Fairy (Fiona Gordon, Dominique Abel, & Bruno Romy) – Funny only when it’s not trying to be (almost never), but it’s much more often chuckleless inventive; These guys don’t need to make more films…they’re all the same schtick.
The Giants (Bouli Lanners) – They awarded this the Directors’ Fortnight top prize for (quoting from memory) “exposing the evils that face the world today.” ‘Evil’ being weed, an abusive, retarded older brother, & Down syndrome.
Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen) – Art history 101 that’s explicitly exploring the familiar idea that we can only love an unfamiliar past; the acting is repellent.
Beloved (Christophe Honoré) – So the Closing film is just as good as the Opening one; this has one of most absurd threesomes ever, even considering pornos.
Difficult to Defend
Volcano (Rúnar Rúnarsson)
We Need to Talk About Kevin (Lynne Ramsay) – This is just an arthouse Problem Child; hopefully it will get parents to talk to their kids about the danger of having stupid parents.
Code Blue (Urszula Antoniak) – If you live alone, like minimal interior design, and have no friends, you must also be socially retarded and sexually perverted.
The Silence of Joan (Philippe Ramos) – Given how often this story has been done in cinema, why was this made? Oh, so Amalric can cameo as a priest.
Magic Trip (Alex Gibney & Alison Ellwood)
Plain Jane Bad
The Other Side of Sleep (Rebecca Daly) – Pseudo-contemplative, utterly disposable hackery that stole two hours from my side of sleep.
On the Plank (Leïla Kilani) – How a movie about girls swindling iPhones could be this impossible to understand makes me think it may be avant-garde gold. While watching it though, I contemplated the missed opportunity in making Arirang the closing night film instead of Beloved. Too bad.
Footnote (Joseph Cedar) – Oh for god’s sake. I’ll avoid the obvious titular joke and just mention that I really hate Jean-Pierre Jeunet.
Pater (Alain Cavalier) – Esoteric beyond repair; Cavalier’s narcissism is mediocre.
Awful
The Hunter (Bakur Bakuradze) – This movie can go ahead and die. Tedious, austere, and shapeless – all for the sake of being an ‘art’ film.
The Source (Radu Miheileanu) – Life is filled with simple pleasures, and one of them is knowing that I will never have to see this movie ever again.
Arirang (Kim Ki-duk)– Maybe this can be defended in some esoteric Buddhist way or something, but this is a DVD extra feature I would turn off after 5 minutes.