Owner: Cinematic Sojourns URL:http://codeknown.blogspot.com/ Join Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2007 07:25:05 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: A collection of personal reviews, essays and articles on cinema of all sorts and varieties. Site statistics:Click here
Ta'm e guilass (1997) - Abbas Kiarostami 2007-03-16 23:44:00 The Palme D'or-winning Taste Of Cherry, from acclaimed Iranian director Abbas
Kiarostami, stars Homayon Ershadi as a man on a mission. Our protagonist, Mr Badii, spends practically the entire film in his Land Rover, driving back and forth from a spot up on the mountainside surrounding Teheran - atthis spot is a tree, and next to it the hole he has dug into whcih he is going to fall asleep. All he wants is for someone to come to the hole the next morning to call his name three times, if he does not answer then that person is to fill in the hole with earth. Kiarostami's film is not concerned with why he is going to commit suicide, nor is it particularly concerned with whether he can actually go through with it - what this film spends 95 minutes exploring is the debate as to whether he should or not. Slowly, but surely, in this jeep between this Iranian and his passengers, a subtle lust for life emerges - the yearning to taste cherries once again. Taste of Cherry is first and foremost a
I will be posting even less frequently 2007-03-13 23:46:00 I dont post very often here as it is, but with a new woman in my life who doesn't [yet] share my cinephilia I will have even less time to write about what i'm watching.So if i dont post for a long time, it's not cos something bad has happened to me.
Les Biches (1968) - Claude Chabrol 2007-03-07 11:56:00 Chabrol's The Does follows the story of two women and the man who comes between them. Frédérique (Chabrol regular, Stéphane Audran) is a well-to-do Parisian who one day comes across this actractive woman drawing deer on the pavement (Jacqueline Sassard), a woman who only gives the name Why when questioned. The two quickly start up a relationship, barely days later moving into Frédérique's St Tropez home where her two acquaintances, Fernand Robèque and Jacques Riais, have alread settled into their comfortable riviera lifestyle. The relationship is complicated when firstly, Why falls in love with an attractive poker player (Paul Thomas played by Jean-Louis Trintignant) who she meets at a party, then furthermore when Frédérique steals him away to Paris for a few days. The film's dramatic focus in the final reel is on Why, her jealousy, hatred, sense of betrayal and the vengeance she decides to enact.It becomes abundantly clear aearly on in the film that Chabrol is a master of c Read more:Claude
Jubilee (1977) - Derek Jarman 2007-03-05 13:20:00 Jubilee was only Jarman's second feature length release, having already made a cult name for himself in the London community through short 8mm films. Already, off the success of Sebastiane, Jarman is carving out his uniquely british vision of society, culture and punk rhetoric. A far more linear story than The Last Of England, but similar in many visual and thematic ways, Jubilee follows Queen Elizabeth I on a voyage of discovery. The Queen, accompanied by John Dee, calls upon an angel (played by Adam Ant) to provide her with knowledge. This knowledge he provides her by way of a vision of England's future - a future unmistakebly 1970s, although it bares uncanny resemblances to Kubrick's Clockwork Orange dystopia.In this future we see a group of punk artistes, visionaries or misguided souls - that is for the audience to make up their minds, but undeniably extraordinary. We watch Amyl Nitrate, Chaos, Crabs, Sphinx et al as they record music, discuss life and politics, and generally ca Read more:Derek
Meres Tou 36 (1972) - Theo Angelopoulos 2007-02-23 14:06:00 Theo Angelopoulos is widely regarded as one of Greece's greatest cinematic exports, ever the darling of film critics and the festival circuit he has directed a great many classics of European cinema although this has not made him the most widely-seen of filmmakers. One reason is that he personally feels film is for cinema, that films should be seen on the big screen or not at all so the dvd releases of his best films have been hampered initially by his unwillingness to embrace the medium, then simply the matter of getting hold of good quality prints that can be restored and transfered to disc. So far New Star DVD, a Greek company, have released several of his films including The Travelling Players (a copy of which i own) which is now out of print, and some of his better known films like Landscape In The Mist and Ulysses' Gaze; their most recent release - and it should be mentioned here that Angelopoulos personally oversees all transfers of his films at New Star - is his acclaimed pol
Idi i smotri (1985) - Elem Klimov 2007-02-13 14:58:00 Come And See is without doubt, one of the great anti-war films. Initially i thought it might be similar to Tarkovsky's Ivan's Childhood but from the opening scene with the two boys digging on the beach for guns as a plane drones overhead, it becomes abundantly clear this is a different beast entirely.Aleksei Kravchenko is an endearing in the lead role early in the film as his anguish, insanity and total mental shattering is gutwrenching come the conclusion. Just aboy who finds himself fighting alongside his countrymen in a war he probably doesn't fully understand, with no training and never having any objectives spelled out to him you have to wonder what hope he has realistically. The introduction therefore of Glasha (Olga Mironova) is, i think meant to represent some kind of hope as he finally meets someone of a similar age with whom he thinks he can find some sense in the chaos of warfare. Any hope is quickly disbanded when the bombs [and paratroopers] drop into thier forest and t
The Last Of England (1988) - Derek Jarman 2007-02-08 12:35:00 Not having any idea of what Derek
Jarman's films are like before diving headfirst into this particular title is as much of a hindrance as an advantage. With no preconceptions (except those garnered from the reviews on IMDB) i didn't know what to expect, having never really seen a truly abstract film save perhaps Un Chien Andalou, but a total absence of a story is all this film has in common with Bunuel's surreal short.From the outset it becomes abundantly clear that this is Jarman's personal film, an exposé if you will of his bitterness towards late '80s UK culture and society. As we see him working at his Bankside studio there's something tense in the scene, but it's not clear exactly what or why. But before the audience has time to work out where this film is or who the man at the desk is (and where he is) the didactic assault on the senses - aural, visual, emotional, political begins in earnest. A snapped shot of a person holding a flare, a man injecting heroin, masked men w Read more:England
Le Plaisir (1952) - Max Ophüls 2007-02-08 10:54:00 This cinematic triptych, made in France by a German who spent the majority of his career in the USA, displays all the director's narrative and visual style with the minimum of ease and time. Based on the writings of Guy de Maupassant, Pleasure is subdivided into three shrot stories all concerning pleasue - namely Le Masque, La Maison Tellier and Le Modèle. The first taking up approximately 15 minutes of runtime, the second nearly an hour and the third the last 15 minutes or so. In fact, when the film was first devised there was no intention of making Le Modèle but the final story was changed when Édouard Harispuru stepped in as a change of producer. Speaking reasonable French the dialogue surprisingly accurate, though this is because of how Ophüls wrote the script - first he would dictate the dialogue in German to Jean Valère who would write it in her French before Jacques Natanson went through it with a fine-tooth comb to make it as good a screenplay as possible.Le Masque (pictu
L'Avventura (1960) - Michelangelo Antonioni 2007-02-02 20:22:00 In this wonderful 60s film from Italian filmmaker Michelangelo
Antonioni, a girl going missing on an island sparks a journey, across Italy in one sense physical, and in a far more meaningful sense - emotional that will leave its protagonists changed forever. Much has been written about the film already - including an excellent critique in Senses Of Cinema and an interesting review on Roger Ebert's site, so really i feel very much like i'm going over old ground here. The title's ambiguity, translating both as The Adventure and The Fling is symptomatic really of the whole film's approach to narrative. There's barely a single shot in the film that's not executed to convey a variety of meanings and nuances - from the ever diminishing size of the key players in relation to their surroundings, to the use of deep focus photography to physically display the emtional distance between those characters. The lead couple - Claudio and Sandro believe, for a while that they have found love in e
Spalovac mrtvol (1968) - Juraj Herz 2007-01-29 13:52:00 Juraj Herz started his career in filmmaking as a pupeteer and animator, much like his well-loved countryman Jan Svankmajer but whereas Jan spent most of his career in stop-motion animation, Herz chose early to delve into making films with real people. Perhaps a mistake in hindsight, as a lot of his films have now been lost - and the ones that survive are screened rarely, but if he has achived nothing else he has at least produced the unmitigated surreal masterpiece that is The Cremator.The Cremator of the title (Kopfrkingl played by Rudolf Hrusínský) works, surprisingly enough in a crematorium. Day in ay out he burns dead bodies, returning the flesh to dust and, in his opinion - returning the soul to the ether, cleansing it of the decadence inherent in flesh. Kopfrkingl lives and works in 1930s Czechoslovakia, he has an intelligent if slightly effeminate son and a daughter with a talent for music; his doting wife (played by Vlasta Chramostová) remains quiet yet respectful. Some Nazi
Santa Sangre (1989) - Alejandro Jodorowsky 2007-01-25 19:39:00 This film has been my introduction to the cinema of Chilean-born director, Alejandro
Jodorowski - and what a cinema it is! A cornucopia of the fantastically surreal, horrific halucinations and littered with moments of touching poignancy - indeed, something for every fan of film.Fenix (played by the director's son) is in some kind of hospital. In flashback we are shown how, being brought up in a travelling circus, he was traumatised by the sight of his womanising father (caught in flagrante) chopping off his mother's arms before committing suicide slitting his own throat. After a night out on the town with a collection of other disabled patients Fenix escapes the hospital to reform a travelling troupe with his deformed mother. Gathering together the old crew the show takes off but, as a deaf mute from his past seeks him out having escaped her whore captor, Fenix finds himself murdering the women around him on behalf of his mother. With the entrance of the mute in the film's climax a Read more:Santa
, Sangre
Amator (1979) - Krzysztof Kieslowski 2007-01-18 11:39:00 Camera Buff is in many ways one of Kieslowski's most insular films in the way it portrays a Polish worker with Polish issues living and filming in Poland, none of which non-Polish viewers could seriously hope to associate with. However, Kieslowski is a master, and this film is a masterpiece, a uniquely fascinating exposition of the tribulations of artistry - to rank alongside Rivette's La Belle Noiseuse and Jarman's Caravaggio.Filip Mosz (Jerzy Stuhr) is a quiet, content man living a lovely family life with his wife (Malgorzata Zabkowska), working a decent-if-menial job buying for a local factory... until that is his daughter is born. With the arrival of his daughter friends of the fmaily buy Mr Mosz a Russian film camera, with which he can film his daughter growing up. But in the small Polish community word spreads quickly - before long he is being funded by his employers to film a documentary of the factory's jubilee celebrations, although it soon becomes clear that no everyone i
Bez Konca (1985) - Krzysztof Kieslowski 2007-01-17 12:19:00 Kieslowski, probably Poland's most important filmmaker alongside Andrzej Wajda, started his career fresh out of film school making shot documentaries and industrial information films. From the early criticial (at leats in the film school he graduated from) success of Urzad (1966) through to the late 70s Krxystof had een content making these films for money (so in the future he could risk investment in unprofitable but more artistic feature films). However, in the late 70s/early 80s, around the time Talking Heads and Camera Buff were released grander artistic ambitions started displaying themselves in the Pole's work. Thus, in 1985 Kieslowski took one further step away from his early documentary style into the realm of metaphysical cinema with the critically acclaimed No End.Filmed by his long time collaborator (and fellow film school graduate) Jacek Petrycki with haunting music from the great Zbigniew Preisner, No End is a family drama wrapped in political tension wrapped in melanch
The Dreamers (2003) - Bernardo Bertolucci 2007-01-12 11:00:00 One of Bertolucci's most well-known, and most controversial films was Ultimo tango a Parigi starring Maria Schneider and Marlon Brando in a tense erotic drama set in Paris. With The Dreamers
Bertolucci returns again to the French capital and again to sexual escapism, only this time with a younger cast setting the film in the middle of the 1968 student riots - one of Paris's most explosive periods of the 20th century.Michael Pitt (who would go on to play the lead in Gus Van Sant's Last Days) leads here as a young American cinema buff, studying French in Paris for a year. In the midst of the closure of the Parisian cinematheque, Matthew (Pitt) meets brother and sister Isabelle and Theo (Louis Garrel and Eva Green respectively) forming a close-nit film-loving based menage á trois, a threesome that would like to think of themselves as the trio in Godard's Bande à part. Their walls adorned with nouvelle vague posters, playing improvisation games in which they take turns to guess whic Read more:Bernardo
The Reckless Moment (1949) - Max Ophüls 2007-01-11 17:33:00 This film, based on a short story by Elisabeth Holding depicting American values and patriotism could have been a very different product indeed. Columbia wanted to make the picture with Walter Wanger emerging early as a producer, next came the casting of James Mason and Joan Bennett (cast against type in this film), but as to who would direct the film - this was a question ultimately of money: the studio wanted a European director with Renoir being recomended by both Wanger and Mason but he was asking $50,000; Max Ophüls came relatively cheap then at the $25,000 he cost the studio.The new young writing team of Mel Dinelli and Robert Kent adapted the screenplay into a fantastic story of "maternal overdrive". Bea (Geraldine Brooks) dates an art dealer against her mother's (Joan Bennett) wishes leading to a falling out; the 'reckless moment' of the title comes during one of these resulting arguments when Bea strikes Ted (Shepperd Strudwick) over the head leading him to stumble and fal Read more:Moment
Three Colours: Blue (1993) - Krzysztof Kieslowski 2007-01-05 00:28:00 The first installment of Kieslowski's Trois Coleurs trilogy opens with a fatal car crash, and from there the drama rarely lets up. Julie (Binoche) surviving the car crash clams up completely. She ignores the advances of others shutting herself away into her own little world, shunning almost evry chance of attention or affection. She sells off all the property she owned with her now-deceased husband. But somewhere, somehow, love starts to creep back into her life - in between going to a peep show and discovering her husband had a mistress she finds something that allows some form of intimacy once again: music. Before he died her husband had been composing a unique piece to be played by 12 European symphonic orchestras simultaneously and it is this work, this pièce de résistance that provides some glimmer of hope in the bleakness of Julie's melancholic existence. Oh, she also gets a cat in to kill a family of mice too.That's the story, but where to start with this films almost unriv Read more:Three
, Colours
Querelle (1982) - Rainer Werner Fassbinder 2007-01-04 20:01:00 The last film Rainer Werner Fassbinder directed before his tragic death from drugs - a film drenched in self-loathing, and homoeroticism.The titular Querelle is a sailor who comes ashore in Brest, France to find his brother living a hedonistic lifestyle as the lover of the local bbrothel's madam. Through the film, through murder and capitulation Querelle questions himself constantly, searching for love and an identity. Tensest of all perhaps is his battle with his own homosexuality and the allure/power he has over other men as a result of his cherubic features.The scorching oranges and reds of the photography imbue the film from start to finish with a raw, pasisonate erotic fervour matched only by the theatrical melodramatics of the cast given their bizarre rules, all taking place on some very shoddy sets. The aesthetic intensity of the film also carries over into the reflective pseudo-philosphical narration that lends the film a poetically lyrical feel, and a flowing structure that o
The Merchant Of Four Seasons (1972) - Rainer Werner Fassbinder 2007-01-04 13:17:00 A director full of contradictions and tensions, and a film to match.Hans leads a troubled life, stuck in a job that he dislikes, scorned upon by his family, confined to a loveless marriage. His wife prostitutes herself off to a guy on the street. In order to improve things Hans enlists some help, twist would have it that the "help" is the guy who recently slept with his wife. His wife, being the deviant cow she is soon sees to his career in pear-peddling before Hans's mate from the Foreign Legion, Harry, moves in. From there on things dont improve much for poor old Hans (though he does have a hot sister if you ask me - played by Hanna Schygulla).The women in this film aren't nice, but dont mistake it for mysoginism - because it is far from it. Fassbinder paints a complex frescoe of humanity, one steeped in the complexities and jostling tensions of reality, one where there are no easy motivations or solutions, where everything remains a mystery. The bit i like the most however about F
Mr Hulot's Holiday (1953) - Jacques Tati 2007-01-04 13:14:00 Shot in his own purebrand style of visual comedy, Tati's quirky little film follows Mr Hulot on a beachside holiday, complete with noisy car and cane. He uspets the hotel residents with his music, he scares the tourists off the beach after an unfortunate incident involvinga wooden boat, and nearly destroys the town in the film's explosive finalé.Charming and witty without becoming pretentious or flamboyent. Tati's modest sense of understated comedy hits the right note every time amongst it's real characters, gorgeous photography from the Jean Mousselle/Jacques
Mercanton partnership and sublime musical accompaniments courtesy of Alain Romans.Big thumbs up from me 7/10 Read more:Holiday
Audition (1963) - Milos Forman 2007-01-04 13:03:00 Firstly, this isn't exactly one film; it's two short films that were wedged together because someone figured they shared a few things in common.The first film, If There Was No Music shows some young men messing about on motorbikes to impress some hot young Czech women. The it cuts to two rival orchestras/bands practising playing Czech music, inlcuding that of Janacek. The film, shot in faux documentary style using mainly close medium shots and extreme close-ups works well at illiciting some affinity towards the characters and their different approaches to their chosen profession. With light whimsical touches and an underlying current of irony the film gets across the main point - that is, the passion music excites in participants and audiences alike.In the second short - Audition
, Miroslav Ondricek's photography really comes to the fore, as does the editing; whereas it was Ivan Passer's (director of "Intimate Lighting") writing contributions that solidify the first film. In this w
Sorstalanság (2005) - Lajos Koltai 2007-03-27 12:55:00 Fateless, the directoral debut from Hungarian cinematographer Lajos Koltai stars Marcell Nagy as György, a Jewish teenager from Budapest who bares witness to the full horrors of the holocaust, first hand. Initially shielded from the truth by his family (who likely aren't fully aware of what's going on themselves) when his father is sent away to a labour camp, György soon follows along with other Jewish children (all of whom have passes). He is first sent to Auschwitz where he survives merely by lieing about his age; from there he is sent on to several labour camps including Buchenwald where his spirit is broken as he finds himself alienated by Yiddish-speaking Jews and Gypsies. His soul is broken, body shattered and yet with the liberation of the camps (featuring an appearance by Daniel Craig as an American GI) the boy, who has long-since grown into a man, manages not only to find hope in the future but a wistful longing for the time when he was in the camps.Technically-speaking th
F***ing Åmål (1998) - Lucas Moodysson 2007-04-16 11:30:00 Varför är jag så dum? Varför älskar jag Elin? Jag hatar henne men jag älskar henne på samma gång. Jag älskar henne så att hjärtat nästan går sönder. Men det finns ingen som gjort mig så illa som hon. Hon spottar och trampar på mig och ändå älskar jag henne.Show Me Love (the film's international title) s one of those films that wants to be about an awful lot, but ultimately covers very little in any real depth. The focus of the film is two girls - Elin and Agnes - who fall in and out of love with each other in the nondescript town of Åmål, a town where where nothing interesting happens, that is so far from the major cities that by the time a rend [like rave culture] reaches it it has already become unfashionable. From this frustration that these two girls feel towards their surroundings the film moves through passages on conformity, confusion and escapism before finally circling in on itself finishing on love. The one standout feature of the film is the acting - bo Read more:Lucas
Les Amants réguliers (2005) - Philippe Garrel 2007-04-20 00:34:00 There is another short clip from this film on youtube HEREI'm not going to write much on this film, not much at all - i just felt i had to blog an entry on how, more than a film, Garrel's 180 minute mélange is an endurace test of the highest order. Seriously: people who make it through all three hours of this abysmal work in one sitting deserve some congratulations and - preferably - a medal.Set in 1968 Paris it's really not clear what this film is actually about, who it's about, what they do, or why. Stuff happens - albeit sporadically - but as we never really get to know any of the characters it becomes impossible to care about any of the events occuring onscreen. I'm sure there are thick layers or visual metaphor and symbolism, and undoubtedly the film is filled with references to the nouvelle vague (even if the film's style itself seemed closer to Italian neo-realism) plus messages on the nature of artists and politics but for me it remains the embodiment of the arty, preten Read more:Philippe
Baraka (1992) - Ron Fricke 2007-04-25 13:33:00 I thought i'd just posta clip or two here from a film i saw just the other day which is already one of my favourite films of alltime. A multi-faceted look at humanity in the context of its surroundings, drawing out parallels between cultures and customs from across the globe. Shot in 70mm the film defines the term "awe-inspiring":
Update 2007-05-09 19:23:00 I originally intended to write up a blog response to an Israeli article on Paradise Now, the purpose of which would have been to discuss any anti-semitism present in that movie and in other preceeding works from other nations. Time got taken up by other things with the result i never found enough time to go through the film making the sort of notes i felt i needed to do any such discussion justice.I have however been watching a few other films with one mini-project on the go - namely watching all the Spike Lee films available here in the UK.So far i've watched:Sucker Free CityShe's Gotta Have It25th HourClockersand i've got Bamboozled sat atop the dvd player waiting to be seen (actualy, i've tried to watch it once but the mood wasn't right so i'm waiting for a better moment to give it my full attention).The other films i've got on the rental list to watch are:Four Little GirlsJungle FeverSummer Of SamMalcolm XInside ManDo The Right ThingWhen The Levees BrokeHe Got GameShe Hate M Read more:Update
Comédie de l'innocence (2000) - Raoul Ruiz 2007-06-19 04:47:00 The Judgement Of Solomon: I Kings iii 16-28Then came there two women, that were harlots, unto the king, and stood before him.And the one woman said, O my lord, I and this woman dwell in one house; and I was delivered of a child with her in the house. And it came to pass the third day after that I was delivered, that this woman was delivered also: and we were together; there was no stranger with us in the house, save we two in the house. And this woman's child died in the night; because she overlaid it. And she arose at midnight, and took my son from beside me, while thine handmaid slept, and laid it in her bosom, and laid her dead child in my bosom. And when I rose in the morning to give my child suck, behold, it was dead: but when I had considered it in the morning, behold, it was not my son, which I did bear.And the other woman said, Nay; but the living is my son, and the dead is thy son.And this said, No; but the dead is thy son, and, the living is my son.Thus they spake before the Read more:Raoul
L'Amico Di Famiglia (2006) - Paolo Sorrentino 2007-07-02 03:55:00 In Family Friend, a wonderful recent Italian film Giacomo Rizzo plays Geremia De Geremei. Geremia is an old man, a tailor with a rather repulsive appearance who lives in a run-down apartment with his ageing sickly mother. He seems nice - people come to him for advice, money help and lots of people seem to like him. The poor old guy couldn't harm a fly, the moment you see him you want to put your arm round the quaint old fella and tell him everything is going to be alright (though you'd have to say it in Italian as he doesn't speak English). This impression lasts for about 15 minutes or so, maybe less, before it's revealed he's a lone shark who charges 100% interest on all monies lent. But what can and old man like this do if someone doesn't pay? Well he employs some rather burly twins to get the money, or something of equal value out of his customers. He's "a friend of the family" to everyone because no one wants to admit who he really is to others, or that they need his help. T Read more:Paolo
Day at the Races 2007-07-09 02:29:00 My day at the British Formula 1 Grand Prix at Silverstone, in pictures: Read more:Races
48 Hours in Paris 2007-08-28 11:23:00 With only one half-decent idea for what to do for my girlfriend's birthday, i made a snap decision to take her to Paris
for a couple of days last week: Read more:Hours
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