Critics have called this a cine-symposium, and rightly so as Puiu’s latest is an ultra-dense and ultra-slow exercise that sees five individuals debate over their stubborn—and at times arrogant—views on religion, morality and mortality in thought-provoking but dullish fashion.
It runs a little out of steam by the end, but Kiarostami’s breakthrough experiment with the digital video camera is a revelation as the private, unfiltered conversations in a car become wrestling bouts against patriarchy, served with ten ‘dings’ of the bell.
Oliver Stone is back in business in this brutal crime drama about drug cartels that is also flashy and entertaining.
Too overly-plotted, Petzold’s attempt at revising Casablanca for the modern age—and in his own oblique style and sensibility—doesn’t come out as deeply compelling as his best works.
Not as incisive and critical as the first film, Stone’s sequel, set in the context of the global financial crisis, is still decent enough to warrant a casual viewing.
When it is not weird and dark, its gaudiness might annoy, but there is a method to the madness as Coppola pulls every trick in the cinematographic and editing handbook to deliver a studio movie that no one would probably dare try to make in this vein again.
While it isn’t as narratively bold and exciting as some of Studio Ghibli’s best works, there is still an emotional story about family and complicated pasts lying within.
It’s so simple—two men go on an impromptu camping trip—yet Reichardt’s cinema of healing is deeply insightful about the ephemeral nature of life and friendship.
Under Cocteau’s inventive sleight-of-hand, this early postwar work may be the most magical and poetic adaptation of the beloved fairy tale ever filmed.
