Linklater brings his ‘hangout’ cinema vibe to the French New Wave era, centering on Godard’s attempt to direct his first feature, in this breezy, blissful ‘comedy’ (for cinephiles at least) that is nostalgia-laden and wonderfully cast.
Peckinpah’s masterful final word on the Western, this elegiac piece, about a reluctant lawman hired to kill an outlaw who is a longtime friend, is a cat-and-mouse chase of an existential order, drawn out expertly as a cinema of delay and detour, as inertia begets inertia.
Messy, chaotic and overlong but perverse, thought-provoking and utterly ingenious, the Romanian provoc-auteur channels A.I. in his filmmaking with a humongous smirk on his face, as his meta-film implosively deconstructs ‘Dracula’.
Ceylan’s meta-filmic sophomore feature feels like a Kiarostami-esque attempt at self-reflexivity, while occasionally drifting into dreamy, subliminal scenes, as a filmmaker broaches the idea of getting his parents to act in his next project.
A father, with son in tow, follows a group of ravers to find his missing daughter in the dusty desert of North Africa, in Laxe’s stunning, foreboding road movie about faith and despair, marked by thumping beats, shuffling bodies, and bellowing trucks.
Varda’s first feature in colour, one that screams vibrant, cheery optimism from the get-go, becomes an ironic, if unsettling, take on happiness, set against gender inequality, as a husband in a truly happy marriage begins an extramarital affair.
‘Exploring’ features the filmographies of filmmakers that I’ve largely completed and celebrates them on the week of their birthdays.
Winner of Best Director at the Berlinale, this assured work about growing up in a Chinese village in 1991 as the winds of modernity begin to change lives, reminds one of a cross between Zhang Yimou’s early rural dramas and Yang’s Yi Yi.
Arguably Kaurismaki’s bleakest film, this portrait of a woman trapped in work and domestic monotony spirals into quiet doom and gloom as she contemplates a drastic action.
Park channels detestation, deception and anxiety into this slick and entertaining, if somewhat protracted, black comedy about a family man who loses his cushy job and thus must devise a nefarious plan to eliminate his competition to get the new job he so desires.
