Film, Tony McKibbin

Post Tenebras Lux

A probing, ambitious and frequently exasperating work from Mexican visionary Carlos Reygadas

The marvellous Mexican director Carlos Reygadas (Japon, Battle in Heaven, Silent Light) is a filmmaker given to making films that jar. Whether it is a suicidal solitary having sex with a woman in her mid-seventies or the aloof sex club where the central…

Babeldom

A rich documentary meditating on the future of urban life from filmmaker Paul Bush

A science fiction film using buildings of today, or a documentary about tomorrow? Paul Bush’s Babeldom might be the first film to use the laws of thermodynamics as a denouement, as the film wonders quite literally what our world is coming to. With the…

Nostalgia for the Light

Docu-drama focusing on the astrologers and Pinochet refugees occupying the Atacama desert

Still best known for the monumental 70s work The Battle of Chile, Patricio Guzman returns to the subject of his masterpiece. As the earlier film concentrated on the government of Allende and the Pinochet coup, so here Guzman goes to the Atacama desert…

Life Just Is

British debut film from Alex Barrett about a group of London graduates

Focusing on a group of graduates living in London, Alex Barrett’s feature debut gets caught between placing itself within the context of bigger questions of the meaning of life with the smaller demands of looking for a job after graduating. Barrett is…

Demain?

Elegiac story of the passionate life of Uruguayan poet Delmira Agustini

Based not so much on the life of Uruguayan poet Delmira Agustini so much as the moments where she faces crises of indecision, Christine Laurent’s fine film focuses almost exclusively on the emotions. Delmira (Laure de Clermont-Tonerre) is a woman who…

Sleepless Night

Accomplished South Korean drama about a young, married couple

A minor but nuanced account of a couple moving forward in their lives. Two years into their marriage, struggling to get by financially, with the wife a yoga/pilates teacher and the husband working long hours in a factory and expected to do overtime for…

Differently, Molussia

Stories of the paradoxical and obscure, inspired by extracts from an unpublished Gunther Anders book

Differently, Molussia is a 16mm film made up of nine short segments that with each screening are shown in a different order. There are only three prints available: one subtitled in English, one subtitled in French and one in the original German: the…

Seminal Souls - Antonioni and Bergman in the 21st century

A look at the significance of Michelangelo Antonioni and Ingmar Bergman

Dying within twenty four hours of each other, the demise of two great filmmakers in 2007 was clearly a loss, but though Ingmar Bergman came out of retirement to make Saraband in 2002, and Antonioni made one feature, Beyond the Clouds (and a later short…

Bombay Beach

Half real, half dream-like American documentary from director Alma Har'el

(Cert tbc) 80min There was a time when documentary at least generally gave the impression of being a medium distinct from fiction, where various movements (Direct Cinema, cinema verité) put their faith in the relative objectivity of the image, as…

The music and film collaborations of Tindersticks and Claire Denis

The creative partnership between the French director and the UK band

Just as there are actors directors consistently work with, and where the French have a term called the acteur/actrice fétiche to define this affiliation, equally there are plenty filmmakers whose relationship with their composers seem equally…

Cutter's Way - Re-release of 1981 film starring Jeff Bridges

Study in decorum and ethos is a lost classic and 70s swan song

In an early scene in 1981’s Cutter’s Way, the bronzed Richard Bone (Jeff Bridges) gets out of bed and we see the ripple of a six-pack as his stomach hits the light. Shortly afterwards we see his old friend, Alex Cutter (John Heard), a Vietnam veteran…

Film Socialisme

Jean-Luc Godard tells story of Europe in decline

(PG) 101min Jean-Luc Godard’s Film Socialisme is about as difficult a film as you’ll see this or any other year, but if some will conclude the film is unwatchable, it might be useful to say why that is so, why it may even be partly intentional on…

The Tree

Psychological drama starring Charlotte Gainsbourg is a fine study of loss

(12A) 100min It seems trees are the new black: Terrence Malick wins the Palme d’Or with The Tree of Life, Win Win shows the central character’s life on track as he finally takes down the tree outside his garden, and La Quattro Volte gives a tree a…

Flesh Of The Orchid (La Chair De L’Orchidee)

(18) 120min (Bluebell) Charlotte Rampling rarely takes an easy role and this 1975 adaptation of a James Hadley Chase novel is no exception. She is Claire, a runaway heiress and it’s the asylum she is running away from. Taking up with big and bulky…

Tropic of Cancer

(18) 87min (Olive Films) Available on DVD for the first time, this is the 1970 adaptation of Henry Miller’s novel set at the end of the 1960s rather than the 1930s when the book was originally published. It nevertheless captures the irreverence of…

The Viva Cuba Collection

(12) 680min (Network) Back in the 1960s there was mighty Cuban filmmaking wave. Filmmakers Tomás Guttiérez Alea and Humberto Solás became internationally significant filmmakers whilst reflecting the social values espoused by Castro’s government.

Room In Rome (Habitacion En Roma)

Julio Medem continues exploration of sexuality, but delivers emptiest film yet

(18) 103min (Optimum) Two women, one gay, Alba (Elena Anaya), the other the heterosexual Natasha (Natasha Yarovenko) have an overnight fling in a Rome hotel room, talk about their pasts and prepare for their future. Director Julio Medem continues…

Lovely Rita

Jessica Hausner’s 2001 account of small town family life

(15) 80min (Artificial Eye) Obviously less polished than her later work (Hotel, Lourdes), Jessica Hausner’s 2001 account of a teenager’s stultifying small town family life in Austria is easily reflected in the flat images, in the overly even and…

The Hunter

(15) 92min After making a documentary about wild and crazy man of US cinema Abel Ferrara in 2003, Iranian filmmaker Rafi Pitts went on to make the spare and contained drama It’s Winter, a fable-like account of someone who goes off to find work and…

Hotel

Austrian drama brings out cold emptiness of a spiritless world

(15) 74 min (Artificial Eye) Jessica Hausner shows the same eerie sense of place as she would show in her recent Lourdes, a gaze that makes simple details stand out in all their bland terror. As Irene (Franziska Weisz) takes a job as a desk clerk in…

An exploration of Hong Sang-soo's films ahead of Edinburgh Filmhouse season

Tony McKibbin examines the relationship dynamic in Korean filmmaker's celebrated films

Hong Sangsoo films often focus on characters so in crisis that they cannot help but generate crises in the very situations they find themselves in. They are not only crisis-ridden; they create a mise-en-scene of misery out of their own inability to…

Take One Action film festival showcases best in political cinema

Budrus, Nero’s Guests and Sweet Crude among highlights of 2010

Take One Action! should have enough films in their 2010 programme to get the most politically slothful citizen socially activated. The film Budrus focuses on small actions leading to big results, with villagers in the little titular town taking things…

Take One Action Film Festival 2010

Sweet Crude, Climate Refugees and Budrus among highlights

Now in its third year, the Take One Action! Film Festival offers a rare opportunity to watch activist documentaries and politically-orientated films at the cinema. This excellent festival concentrates on the agenda-setting and eco-documentary sub-genres…

Julia Bacha's Budrus screens at Take One Action Film Festival

Middle East documentary

Name Julia Bacha Born Rio de Janeiro, 1980. Background Bacha studied Middle Eastern history and politics at Columbia University. She worked as co-writer and editor on the 2004 multi award-winning documentary about Al Jazeera, Control Room…

Enter The Void

(18) 142min Argentine/French filmmaker Gaspar Noé (I Stand Alone, Irreversible) has proven both his amazing vision and his impoverished sensibility with his past forays into feature filmmaking. His latest is a metaphysical movie offered from the…