The Wild Boys is a supremely assured piece of craftsmanship, evincing an active creative engagement and ample imagination in every minute of its nearly two hour runtime.
I do not build out from an idea because I feel that is too restricting. In a sense, the final film is what I have learned. The final film has to be a dramatic narrative, which among other things expresses what I have learned about the place. It is not until the last stages of the editing process that the story is even found.
Liu measures time through familial ritual, and her project is aligned with the work of Ozu and Akerman, tracking the process by which the passing hours accumulate into the passing of one generation into the next and onward into the flow of history.
In the films of Corneliu Porumboiu, seemingly insignificant details, questions, and disagreements ripple outward, like pebbles tossed into a still pond, until they become deep inquiries into history, language, and ethics.
There comes a point where the jokes fly so fast that what they are spoofing ceases to matter and they achieve a state of absurdity for absurdity’s sake to which most recent comedies have only aspired.
Once There Was Brasilia is a sci-fi epic about assassins from space and the impeachment of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, achieved on a shoestring budget.
A Few Great Pumpkins
The Invitation, The Ghost Train, The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, A Scary Time, Messiah of Evil, Panna a netvor
A casual approach to queer sexuality, a presiding interest in the displaced self, a protean yet unshowy approach to film style: such qualities preclude the sort of press-release-ready bromides that accompany more commercially successful filmmakers of his generation.
I think that on the surface, the story follows the small mysteries of everyday life. But it doesn’t stop there; it goes beyond that and expands to deal with some bigger mysteries about the world we live in.
Just like the world we live in, where the inequalities between rich and poor and male and female only grow crueler and less escapable, the rage that undergirds Burning is instantly familiar.
As she relates the basic historical facts behind the international seed preservation project, the camera leads us through verdant Syrian fields, capturing the beauty of stalks swept by the wind. Again and again, Manna will mix sensuous imagery with more prosaic words.
The crowning achievement of this drama is the game and invigorating performance of Regina Williams, from her flinty exasperation to her no-guff candor to her sly, self-protective sarcasm. Hers is a performance suffused with compassion yet devoid of cheap and easy sentiment.
Coming at a time dominated by talk of the bifurcation of the country, Monrovia, Indiana is an excavation of life in the other America. Its place within the career of Frederick Wiseman also works into this dichotomy . . .
The film is a brilliant instance of genre being deployed as a code that can transcend time and space: by referencing the recognizable features of classical film noir, the movie links two contexts that seem at first to be irreconcilable.
By calling attention to what images are projected and received, Ruth Beckermann reveals the process by which narratives can be made and unmade.