idFilm

Alexey Balabanov, 1959-2013

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Pattison) — Mon, 20 May 2013 21:15:00 +0000

Balabanov's chief strength as a director might have been to pass off serious art as throwaway fluff, to make his own artistry appear spontaneous and/or accidental when in fact you got the sense when watching his work that a film set might have been the only place where he could properly function... I was in London for a long weekend, removed from my usual daily news sources, when I received a text from fellow critic Neil Young, in Cannes, telling me that Alexey Balabanov had died aged 54. My...

Festival Index: IndieLisboa'13

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Pattison) — Sun, 12 May 2013 17:04:00 +0000

Reports, reviews, pictures... Jigsaw Lounge Reports • 1 Wanderers, workers, models and monologues Leones ~ Housemaids ~ Workers ~ Models ~ Jesus, You Know • 2 Animals, absentees, actors and anecdotes Animal Love ~ Avanti Popolo ~ Greatest Hits ~ Amsterdam Stories USA • 3 Paradises lost, found, postponed Art Will Save the World ~ Gazzara ~ Pincus ~ The Unknown ~ Paradise: Love ~ Paradise: Faith ~ Paradise: Hope • 4 Não then, não then Festival round-up...

For The Big Picture: Literal and symbolic barriers in Proof of Life

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Pattison) — Thu, 09 May 2013 20:13:00 +0000

A recently-written feature for 'The Big Picture', analysing four frames in the underrated 'Proof of Life' (2000).

2005-2011 Capsule Reviews Archive

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Pattison) — Sat, 04 May 2013 23:42:00 +0000

Index of over 950 reviews/posts, most of which are a paragraph long, written elsewhere between 2005 and 2011...

April 2013 Tally

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Pattison) — Wed, 01 May 2013 15:22:00 +0000

115 films (70 shorts), 111 for the first time, 51 at the cinema... JAN | | | FEB | | | MAR | | | APR | | | MAY | | | JUN JUL | | | AUG | | | SEP | | | OCT | | | NOV | | | DEC C Cinema; S Stream; # Rewatch; >>> Review Portrait of a Miner DVD Songs of the Coalfields 8/10 Unknown 1964 UK Big Job 7/10 Unknown 1965 UK Portrait of a Miner 8/10 ...

Festival Report: Bradford International Film Festival 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Pattison) — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 17:44:00 +0000

Festival round-up plus a full index of reviews... Note: an index of full reviews can be found at the bottom of this post. Bradford is just about small enough to get lost in. With its landmarks situated in an area so concentrated you can view them all from a single vantage point, any visiting critic may enjoy the city’s annual film festival without ever needing to venture beyond that approximate triangle on which sit train station, main venue and the hotel in which festival guests are...

idFilm turns three: Yearly Top Tens 1983-2012 (+ 2013-in-progress)

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Pattison) — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 07:00:00 +0000

idFilm turns three today! To mark its anniversary, here's a top ten favourites list for each year of the last three decades. Further years will be added in due course. NB: Films with a 9+ rating are emboldened; shorts are italicised. Pictured films are decade-favourites. In the case of foreign-language films, English titles are used unless the original is in common use. Ratings: 10/9 Among best seen; 9/8 Loved it; 8/7 Really liked it; 7/6 Liked it; 6/5 Indifferent; 5/4 Disliked it; 4/3...

Scoped: La Playa D.C., Babylon, Faith Love and Whiskey, Resolution, The Rambler, Under the Weight of Clouds and Out of Frame

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Pattison) — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 23:55:00 +0000

Three award-winners, two horrors and two shorts... This is the second of two Scoped specials, on films screening at this year's Bradford International Film Festival; click here for the first. La Playa D.C. (Juan Andrés Arango, 2012 Colombia/France/Brazil) After premiering in the Un Certain Regard category at Cannes last year, La Playa D.C. won the Best Film Award at the Lima International Film Festival. The debut feature from Colombian writer-director Juan Andrés Arango, it's a...

Scoped: I Have Always Been a Dreamer, Tokyo Waka, The Love Songs of Tiedan, Tower, East Hastings Pharmacy

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Pattison) — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 16:08:00 +0000

City poems, love songs, character studies and observations... This is the first of two Scoped specials, on films screening at this year's Bradford International Film Festival; read the second part here. I Have Always Been a Dreamer (Sabine Gruffat, 2012 USA/United Arab Emirates) Sabine Gruffat's latest feature film is a quietly remarkable essay on two otherwise disparate Ds - Detroit and Dubai. This towering tale of two cities probes a transglobal economy inhabited on the one hand by...

BFI Flipsides: John Krish and B. S. Johnson

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Pattison) — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 11:44:00 +0000

Two new BFI Flipsides, both released on Monday 15 April, celebrate two unsung British talents working within and against the social currents of their time. In the 35-minute interview included on the BFI Flipside release of Captured (1959), John Krish remarks how “lovely” it is that his short film The Finishing Line (1977, included as an extra) was banned for twenty-one years. This comment, alongside anecdotes about repeated conservatism and “endemic betrayal” within the film industry, gives...

Beaches of madness: Spring Breakers

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Pattison) — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 19:51:00 +0000

It takes both chutzpah and skill to draw in arthouse and multiplex audiences alike and then challenge them to different ends. 'Spring Breakers', Harmony Korine's mainstream breakthrough, does its best... This is 40. Harmony Korine, best known for scripting the Larry Clark-directed Kids (1995) in his early 20s, hits middle-age with Spring Breakers, a saturated daydream about four college airheads who raid a fast-food joint and escape from the anonymous boredom of their Kentucky dorms in...

The birth of a nation: Your Children and You

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Pattison) — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 13:05:00 +0000

The BFI's latest DVD release, out on Monday 15 April, brings together Government-sponsored films made between 1946 and 1985, on parenting, teaching and caring for children. A multitude of dualities cohabit the films included in Your Children and You, the latest two-disc entry in the BFI's ongoing COI Collection, which compiles works commissioned and exhibited by the Central Office of Information - the UK government's publicity arm between 1946 and 2012. These efforts, put out in response...

Days of beckoning: 20 must-sees at Bradford International Film Festival 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Pattison) — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 19:02:00 +0000

Whether you're visiting for one day or eleven, this year's Bradford International Film Festival presents daily quandaries as to what to catch. Here's one possible personal journey through its programme... Please note: make sure you don't miss idFilm's upcoming coverage of Bradford International Film Festival by subcribing to daily e-mails (when applicable) at the right of this page. Earlier this week I overviewed the dizzyingly varied programme of this year's Bradford International Film...

The banality of good: Perlasca The Courage of a Just Man

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Pattison) — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 18:47:00 +0000

Released on DVD on Monday 8 April, 'Perlasca: The Courage of a Just Man' (2002) recounts the story of "the Italian Schindler" in a digestible and concise manner. Perlasca: The Courage of a Just Man (Perlasca: un eroe italiano, 2002) recounts a comparatively little-known episode that occurred in Budapest between December 1944 and January 1945, in which Italian delegate Giorgio Perlasca helped protect and rescue over 5,000 Jews from being shipped to Nazi concentration camps. The...

March 2013 Tally

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Pattison) — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 11:00:00 +0000

88 films (45 shorts), 86 for the first time, 22 at the cinema... JAN | | | FEB | | | MAR | | | APR | | | MAY | | | JUN JUL | | | AUG | | | SEP | | | OCT | | | NOV | | | DEC C Cinema; S Stream; BR Blu-Ray; # Rewatch; >>> Review Possession 7/10 Andrzej Zulawski 1981 France / West Germany C Stoker 6/10 Chan-wook Park 2013 USA / UK C Squadron 992 6/10 Harry Watt 1940 UK DVD La Cause Commune 6/10 Alberto Cavalcanti 1940 UK DVD French Communiqué 7/10...

Back to form, for better or worse: Trance

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Pattison) — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 18:50:00 +0000

'Trance', in cinemas now, is Danny Boyle's first film since directing last year's Olympics opening ceremony, and is about as good or as bad as can be expected from the filmmaker... There is a masterpiece waiting to be made about the obscene fetishisation and criminalisation of artworks in a for-profit economy, but for better or worse, Trance is not it. Nor, to be sure, does it wish to be. Zeitgeist-chief Danny Boyle's latest film boasts fancy colours and a clever plot, and goes to curious...

In dreams and imagination: Lynch and Surrealism

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Pattison) — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 20:48:00 +0000

A peer-reviewed article on Surrealist values in David Lynch's 'Mulholland Dr.' (2001) and 'Inland Empire', published in Issue 66 of 'Senses of Cinema'. In dreams and imagination: Surrealist values in Mulholland Dr. and Inland Empire See also: David Lynch.

Screengem: The red rubber ball in The Prestige

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Pattison) — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 00:23:00 +0000

A recently-written feature for 'The Big Picture', on the significance of the red rubber ball in 'The Prestige' (2006). > Screengem: The red rubber ball in The Prestige < See also: Christopher Nolan, Christian Bale, The Prestige.

Scoped: Diego Star, Karaoke Girl, 36, Everybody in Our Family and Kapitalism Our Improved Formula

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Pattison) — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 02:39:00 +0000

The year's best world-premiere so far, two Thai films, two Romanian films... This sparks a new and hopefully recurrent feature on idFilm, wherein I gather capsules on films seen through my Festival Scope account that aren't due for theatrical release and/or are not coverable in other journalistic forms regrettably dictated by the chase for web traffic and daily topicality. Diego Star (Frédérick Pelletier, 2013 Canada/Belgium) Quebecois filmmaker Frédérick Pelletier's debut feature...

Class lessons: Neighbouring Sounds and The Spirit of '45

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Pattison) — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 15:23:00 +0000

'Neighbouring Sounds', in a London cinema from tomorrow, concerns middle-class responsibilities and fears relating to its past, while in Ken Loach's 'The Spirit of '45', the aims of the working class are viewed through a particular middle-class lens... Lesson 1. Revolution starts at home An ambiguous and apparently ambitious debut fiction feature from Brazilian film critic Kleber Mendonça Filho, Neighbouring Sounds (O Som Ao Redori) details societal tensions through the microcosm of a...

Polish Cinema Classics Volume II: The Promised Land, Illumination and Escape from the Liberty Cinema

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Pattison) — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 01:59:00 +0000

Second Run's latest DVD release, available from Monday 25 March, unearths three Polish classics, varied in theme and tone but connected by intellectual questioning and political defiance. The wide-angled lenses employed throughout The Promised Land (Ziemia obiecana, 1975) concentrate our visual attention to Karol (Daniel Olbrychski), Moryc (Wojciech Pszoniak) and Max (Andrzej Seweryn), the three capitalists who arrive in Lodz at the turn of the century seeking to establish a cotton...

Long live the new text: eight responses to as many Nicolas Provost shorts

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Pattison) — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 15:09:00 +0000

On 8 March 2013, Newcastle's Star and Star Shadow Cinema screened eight shorts by Belgian artist Nicolas Provost. Found therein were images violently torn from their contexts and reappropriated, given new life and meaning, responded to here with original prose, thoughts, images, scholarly texts and extracts from an unpublished manuscript. www.nicolasprovost.com www.starandshadow.org.uk Strangers on a plane [Moving Stories, 2011] Jeffrey Beaumont, detective and/or pervert...

Farewell, my lovely: Beyond the Hills, Maniac and Side Effects

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Pattison) — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 21:00:00 +0000

The horror, the horror... 'Beyond the Hills', in cinemas and available via video-on-demand from Friday, is the year's best release so far, while 'Maniac', also in cinemas from Friday, reworks a 1980s cult classic. 'Side Effects', in cinemas now, meanwhile, contains suggestions of horror... and much more. Though no longer new, the so-called Romanian New Wave is continued here by the latest film by writer-director-producer Cristian Mungiu, whose 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days retroactively...

February 2013 Tally

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Pattison) — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 14:06:00 +0000

63 films (27 shorts), 62 for the first time, 13 at the cinema... JAN | | | FEB | | | MAR | | | APR | | | MAY | | | JUN JUL | | | AUG | | | SEP | | | OCT | | | NOV | | | DEC C Cinema; S Stream; # Rewatch; >>> Review Bullhead 5/10 >>> Michaël R. Roskam 2011 Belgium C Bullet to the Head 4/10 >>> Walter Hill 2012 USA C Wajma (An Afghan Love Story) 7/10 >>> Barmak Akram 2013 Afghanistan S 36 4/10 >>> Nawapol...

Archive Five

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Pattison) — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 02:45:00 +0000

A round-up of external links to recent reviews: a documentary, an archive film and three features. All films are reviewed for Front Row Reviews. Breath of the Gods: A Journey to the Origins of Modern Yoga (Jan Schmidt-Garre, 2013) Broken City (Allen Hughes, 2013) From the Sea to the Land Beyond (Penny Woolcock, 2012) Love (William Eubank, 2011) The Pool (Chris Smith, 2007)