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Reviews
Promises Written in Water (2010)
Fantastic!
I truly loved this film. It's a gorgeously shot, minimalist, sensitive and tender chamber-piece. Gallo is a master of improvisation and in total control of every gesture, expression and body movement. His female co- lead, Delfine Bafort, is a revelation. The DP, Masanobu Takayanagi, deserves a great deal of acknowledgement. Elsewhere, the film's judicious and meaningful use of silence is worth noting.
What I think will be referred to as "the Collette scene" (the film's first dialogue sequence) alone I would happily re-watch a dozen times over. Let's hope this film is around long enough for those of us who continue to recognize and appreciate those impossibly rare examples of pure cinema.
Ssa-i-bo-geu-ji-man-gwen-chan-a (2006)
comparative equation for this film - very minor spoiler
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest + Katsuhito Ishii's Cha No Aji aka A Taste of Tea (highly recommended, BTW) + Tetsuo: The Iron Man = Saibogujiman.
(And a memorable, long and very wide shot that is straight out of Haneke.) In other words super-idiosyncratic but very cute (romantic) comedy meets Japanese-style violence in a mental institution.
Yes, very much NOT in keeping with the style of the revenge trilogy or whatever its called but I thought everyone complains about lack of originality in filmmakers.
And yes, mental disorders are not showed in a "politically-correct" way - but it's not mean-spirited like so many American comedies can be: The world of this film is over-the-top and goofy to begin with that you can't take any single depiction seriously.
McLibel (2005)
Let's try to use our brains, people.
To the previous poster, justsomeregularguy, who equivocates the producers of this film to multinational corporations, please explain to me how this documentary has made tens of billions of dollars per annum, like a multinational worth their salt does. Your whole argument, and your anger over a certain type of filmmaker or person fails with a fallacy of that caliber. Read Adorno's The Culture Industry and get over it.
I am SO sick and tired of people accusing any and all director or filmmaker of cashing-in by copying or riding on coattails of others just because they see the flood of remakes/ripoffs/plaigarisms bouncing between Hollywood, Bollywood and Asia (aka The 2006 Oscar winner) and apply that in all cases: Another baseless equivocation! Quite simply, a film like this will hardly make ANY money off direct sales. Most documentaries make their money back due to library acquisitions and television broadcast rights. I really have to question the mind that thinks that a documentary like this is made motivated by greed. Films like the Corporation and Super Size Me are exceptions, and frankly the whole "documentaries are the new blockbuster" paradigm is also way past its sell-by date, and to buy into that is to accept what amounted to hype in the first place. For every Incovenient Truth there are thousands of conventional narrative films. We notice those docs because of their exceptional nature in the film marketplace. Again, McLibel is not exactly Spider-man 3. Let's please keep things in perspective. If anything, you give this film you seem to be angry at way too much credit. You also indirectly insult filmgoers by assuming we're all suckers and wouldn't be able to see past a rip-off and you attempt to privilege yourself as if you know better, by proxy. If anything, it's whatever amount of attention the Palme D'Or has brought to Ken Loach's work that might get some more people to see this. Finally, films of the same subject and type have been made in close proximity to each other; it's called a zeitgeist, and more than one person can tap into it at the same time. The Illusionist/The Prestige for example. Superficially: Costume dramas with magic. On any other, non-reflexive level: Totally different narratives.
Xiang ji mao yi yang fei (2002)
Seek this film out
I saw it during the Toronto International Film Festival. While the ending was a little ambiguous, something the director himself pointed out in a needlessly self-flagellating air, this film nevertheless is as clever and as witty as anything by Fassbinder, whom the director quoted after the film (in regards to their similar work aesthetic: Theatre one year, cinema the next).
One is even tempted to label the film with pretentious descriptions such as "Seventh Generation" to mark its originality. Caveat emptor, though: The examination of the influence of a particularly American form of mass media in China is merely one aspect of the film, and as such doesn't go for the docudrama format as characterized by such films as The Insider, and to a lesser degree, Quiz Show. The focus from one narrative mode to another is handled admirably, especially from someone with a theatrical background. In fact, the film is filled with visual puns that never overstay their welcome and a remarkable photographic eye for a director who has up until now worked a theatrical muse.