SLIFF 2014: Winter Sleep

Title: Winter Sleep

Country: Turkey

Rating: 9

                In the ancient and dazzlingly scenic cave city of Cappadocia, Mr. Aydin runs a hotel, writes a smalltime column called 'Voices of the Steppe,' and serves as landlord for pretty much the entire nearby population though he is so hands-off that even he admits he wouldn't necessarily recognize their faces if he passed them on the street. A former actor, he's also intermittently researching a history of Turkish theater.

                But mostly he talks... and talks... and talks. He talks with his groundskeeper/chauffeur, his dissatisfied and much-younger wife, his bitter stifled sister, his few and far between guests (offseason is descending) and, when he can't self-servingly avoid them, his hard-pressed poverty-mired locals. One of these latter is Ismail, a hot-tempered heavy-drinking man who served time for a fight that got out of hand and has had trouble finding employment since. After failing to make rent, his TV and refrigerator are repossessed in front of his family, shaming him. The incident takes place offscreen before the movie opens. Our story begins when his son, Ilyas, throws a rock at Mr. Aydin's car.

                Over the past decade the internet has been having some really great discussions on privilege, discourse and authority; the contemporary first-world expressions of power hierarchies and class structures which are perhaps more subtle than in the past but no less pervasive and powerful. These discussions rarely ever make it to the big screen and rarer still in forms that capture the incredible complexity and breadth of perspectives that make them meaningful. But if any of those topics are of interest to you, then Winter Sleep is a movie you will want to see. And if they aren't of interest to you, then Winter Sleep is probably a film you should see.

                But I hate it when critics tell me I 'should' see a film, so instead I'll talk about why I'm glad I did see it. It woke me up a little. At times I was Mr. Aydin, or recognized him, loathed him or sympathized with him, found him impenetrable or saw right through him and through myself. Mr. Aydin is a fantastic character, and his every interaction with the people around him are mini-masterpieces of mutual, conflicting and self deceptions. It's almost worse when he hits upon truth. His erudition has brought him little personal insight and less redemption, but it has brought him eloquence and armed him to the teeth with rationalizations for his ideas and his way of life. He's not quite unaware, and certainly not blissfully unaware, of his pettiness, vanity, cowardice and mediocrity, but he has largely accepted these faults, excused them and taught himself not to dwell on them. Instead he dwells on the faults of others (when he isn't completely consumed with his incredibly niche hobbies) and seems to think that if there are things wrong with the people he is arguing with, then he himself must be right.

                This film is 196-minutes and slow. But it is by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, which for me has come to mean that it is worth the time and effort no questions asked. I won't even go into the cinematography except to say that it is every bit as good as the writing. I'd rank this ever so slightly below Ceylan's Three Monkeys, but it is surely his most penetrating and ambitious in a brilliant oeuvre that continues to mature and impress.

Film Atlas (Turkey): The Herd

Country: Turkey

Title: The Herd / Suru (1978)

The Herd begins during a dispute between two rival shepherding clans, the Veysikans and the Halillans. The origins of the vendetta are murky, but it's clear that blood has spilled. In the recent past, Sivan, eldest son of the Veysikan patriarch Hamo, brokered a truce by marrying Berivan Halillan. However, Berivan is sick, has miscarried three times and since the last loss has become mute and despondent. The Halillans want to speak to her and offer aid, but the Berivans, especially Sivan’s embittered father, don’t trust them. Hamo considers Sivan’s wife to be at best bad luck and at worst a spy. For the humiliation of loyally defending this deadweight bride, Hamo would gladly disown his son if he didn’t need his help to save the clan from ruin. Their only chance for survival is to deliver 370 sheep to Ankara by train. Guarding the four boxcars are other members of the fading family, including a mentally-handicapped epileptic and Sivan’s naive younger brother Silo. 

Silo has a sideline selling ancient artifacts to an unscrupulous fence. They pay him a pittance, which he believes a fortune. The voyage is beset by bribes, corruption, theft, illness, death, bad blood and dirty dealing. The herd diminishes. Sivan and Hamo finally split. Berivan’s condition deteriorates. As failure closes in, Sivan, his clan and his whole way of life face the cold indifference of contemporary Turkey and the painful reality of their obsolescence.

Writer-director Yilmaz Guney spent a great deal of his career in jail for his Marxist sympathies (clearly on display in The Herd) and then later for murder, but that didn’t stop him from creating his most powerful masterpieces: The Way / Yol (which brought him international fame), Hope / Umut (a similar portrait of despair) and The Herd / Suru. He directed by proxy through collaborators Serif Goren and Zeki Okten. Like most of his films, The Herd is about an average worker desperately struggling against the shackles of poverty, ignorance and corruption.  

It is too simple to read The Herd as simply anti-capitalist or anti-modernization; Sivan is as frustrated by his own rural clan’s pride and superstition as he is by the city denizens’ greed and injustice. For his clan, and many others living in the undeveloped outskirts, there has simply been no preparation, no period of transition, before being forced to abandon their livelihood and their values or die. Though in reality Sivan never has a chance (and that’s part of the point), Guney’s realistic, sympathetic, even compassionate portrayal keeps us on the brink of hope. And their are touching moments, too. The way Sivan and Berivan stand by each other in mutual, though fragile and inarticulate, love, despite every internal and external obstacle, lends the film its sole glimmer of faith in humanity.

My Favorites:

The Way / Yol

Three Monkeys

The Herd / Suru

The Edge of Heaven
Winter Sleep

Head-On

Climates

The Hope / Umut

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

Destiny (2005)

Dry Summer

Honey

My Only Sunshine

Major Directors:

Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Zeki Demirkubuz, Reha Erdem, Yılmaz Güney, Yavuz Turgul

SLIFF 2009 Coverage Part 4

Title: Hooked

Director: Adrian Sitaru

Country: Romania

Score: 8.0

Review:

A married woman and her mathematics professor boyfriend head off for a romantic picnic, but appear more eager to go at each other’s throats than lips, and one quickly gets the impression that their affair is in the final stages. The mood is made even fouler after they run into and knock unconscious a streetside prostitute. She wakes up while they are in the middle of dumping her body, and they awkwardly invite her to join their picnic to try and cover up their irresponsible cruelty. Tension fluctuates as she chats with the two lovers and picks apart their private affairs with a mixture of ingenuous friendliness and manipulative determination. Her motive is never quite clear, but none of the possibilities are reassuring.

The Romanian New Wave has been one of the international highlights of the last five years, and “Hooked” is no exception. The “Knife in the Water”-esque plot allows for the formation of a highly unsettling triangle, where candid conversations reveal a surface of commonplaces over a layer of tangled emotions over a layer of psychological confusion over layers still deeper. The innovative style uses exclusively first-person perspective, with the editing shifting rapidly and yet fairly smoothly amongst the gazes of the three characters. The screenplay is excellent overall, though the ending has a somewhat gimmicky implication. The acting makes the contrivances natural enough to take seriously and brings out the interplay of clashing personality types. The title is perfect.

Title: 35 Shots of Rum

Director: Claire Denis

Country: France

Score: 4.5

Review:

Centered on a train conductor and his daughter, this unassuming drama about friends and family exudes a warm, elegiac glow. The father attends the retirement party of a friend. The daughter debates whether she wants to be the reason a restless neighbor settles down and stays. A concert is planned, but car trouble and rain redirect the ensemble to a homely eating establishment for a night of drinking, slow-dancing and finding inner peace.

While a tribute to Ozu’s “Late Spring,” “35 Shots of Rum” is undeniably a work of Denis’s own. Critics have unanimously raved about this film, which will likely top a lot of best-of-the-year lists. Perhaps reading all the uncritical, factory-cut praise has made me feel the need to play devil’s advocate. While I’ve liked Denis’s work in the past, I see no evidence of artistic growth in this overly tame and mind-numbingly boring slice-of-life. Yes, it manages to recall real life with its meandering nonstory, lack of action, gentle rhythms, likable people and all that, but does it have anything to say? It tries so hard to be a quiet, intimate experience that it just made me sleepily note that I’d rather be having a quiet, intimate experience at home than watching one. The camerawork is lazy, the acting so understated that it can’t really be criticized or even much discussed and the pacing is a mess of sluggish debris. Critics will acclaim it, thinking that the masses really need to see this type of film, but audiences will stay well away. I, for one, can’t fault them this time.

Title: Three Monkeys

Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Country: Turkey

Score: 9.5

Review:

An accident on a lonely rain-swept road triggers a series of dangerous transactions in “Three Monkeys” by Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan. The driver, a politician with an uphill election campaign in the works, asks his chauffeur to take the manslaughter rap in exchange for a lump sum of cash. While his dad waits out his sentence the chauffeur’s son asks his mother to get an early installment, leading to painful confrontations and revelations for the entire family.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan (“Distant,” “Climates”) has had an extraordinary career already and if this isn’t his best film yet, which I think it is, “Three Monkeys” is at least his most entertaining. Considering that all his work is drenched in downbeat pessimism and immaculate imagery, it was hardly a leap for him to make an outright film noir (albeit a family drama noir), but what’s more surprising is his heretofore unexpressed knack for comic timing and surreal horror. He captures storm-strewn skyscapes, crumbling concrete and ill-treated flesh silhouetted in Hou Hsiao-Hsien lighting with rapturous shallow-focus, green-tinted cinematography without ever wasting a shot.

Review of Tarkan Versus the Vikings

Not long ago, my experience with “The Turkish Star Wars” (1982) turned me on to the wonderful world of Turkish 70’s cinema, a golden age of outrageous no-holds action and adventure films. With modest budgets, by American standards, and freedom from censorship, copyrights, good taste and artistic ambitions, Turkey put out a wealth of cheap entertainment aimed at the young male audience. Masked heroes, lone killers, swashbuckling pirates and intrepid treasure hunters ruled the day.

“Tarkan Versus the Vikings” (1971) is an archetypical example of those carefree days. The movie is based on a popular Turkish comic book series about Tarkan, an adventuring swordsman who was raised by wolves. In this installment (5th of 7), often considered the best of the batch, Tarkan visits Princess Yonca (Attila’s daughter) at the encampment of the Huns. Soon after, the settlement is invaded by Vikings led by the evil Tora. Tarkan is knocked unconscious and nearly killed while his beloved wolf, Kurt (which he claims is “my everything” and “more than kin” whatever that means), is killed.

Kurt’s pup, also named Kurt, nurses Tarkan back to health. Meanwhile, Tora betrays the Viking chieftain, but is in turn betrayed by Lotus, his sexy “Chinese” ally. Lotus, with Yonca secretly in tow, crosses paths with Tarkan who is now on a mission of revenge and rescue. Tora sends an army after Lotus, but must also deal with Ursula, the daughter of the former chieftain and the angry leader of an all-female Viking faction. And so on and so forth.

[Image: (villains from left to right)
1. A guy clearly wearing a fake bald-cap
2. Tora complete with giant mustache, winged hat and mittens
3. Lotus, a treacherous Chinese woman
4. The obligatory eye-patch-wearing right-hand man]

The plot is packed with memorable scenes and really quite well structured, but it’s too complicated to really discuss in detail here. I can guarantee rollicking battles, not-too-shocking betrayals and the indispensable histrionics where everyone looks about ready to fire lightning out of their faces. Everything is deliciously overwrought and a bit arbitrary in a way that is at once incompetent and daring compared to today’s comic book adaptations. I mean, why is that Viking chopping a little girl in half during the battle. Was the child participating in the fight? Was there no one else more strategically of value? Did he bring the child himself to kill in a demonstration of his intimidating blood-lust?

[Image: This seems gratuitously mean even for a Viking.]

The action and adventure (not to mention the violence) has a tremendous amount of enthusiasm and vigor. Even pacifists will doubtlessly find themselves caught up in the low-budget mayhem of “one-shot, one-stunt” filmmaking that features more gratuitous brawling, clashing and chopping than you can throw a tomahawk at. Though there are plenty of deaths involving pathetic minor henchmen getting shot by silent blow-darts and weakly falling to the floor (BORING!), director Mehmet Aslan adds thrills to his kills whenever possible. Hanging over a snakepit by your hair not frightening enough? How about getting menaced by a giant octopus!

My favorite kill is the film’s final one. While duking it out in the long-anticipated vengeance battle, Tarkan throws Taro from a rooftop into the water below. How does it end? Scroll to the final screenshot for a hint.

The violence is mostly all in good fun, more like an old “Sinbad” movie than today’s uncomfortably visceral gore and savored cruelty. Aslan likes his black and white unmarred by grey; the villains tend to be so deliciously evil as to be downright lovable. Who doesn’t love it when someone lets fly their hawk to gouge out they eye of a failed henchman? In most of the swordplay it is laughably obvious that the only body part in any danger of being skewered is the armpit and although you might find more women, children and elderly at the end of the blades (which are likely to be conspicuously more bloody as well) than in your average American PG film, no harm is meant.

[Image (lower): Taro pets his hawk in preparation of feeding it quavering victim meat.]

However, your typical Bible belter would probably not be pleased by the number of breasts on display and it should be noted that the film is not aimed at children despite the silliness. Aslan doesn’t shy away from the more lascivious half of the Viking’s “rape and pillage” campaign nor does he shy away from the obvious box-office potential of stocking the cast with Amazonian-like warriors and belly-dancing seductresses. Progressive this movie is not, but at least equality can be given lip-service when it comes to storming the ramparts with bravery and gusto.

Does Aslan go too far by having the Vikings inexplicably torture their captured women by bouncing them on trampolines? Yes, but… well actually I don’t have any way of defending that. So, on to the screen captures:

Like “One Million Years B.C.” (1966) one can’t help but be won over by the campy, shameless costume design. I can understand why the women wear animal furs to keep warm, but why do they dye them pink, red and purple? And wouldn’t the miniskirt cuts and revealing cleavage defeat the protective and insulating qualities? The boots, to my untrained eye, look like they’d be useless for hiking or fighting and only practical in the off chance of a go-go dancing skirmish.

[Image: Ursula, leader of the Viking rebellion]

[Image: Yonca, daughter of Attila]

[Image: Lotus (Seher Seniz looking a little like Edwige Fenech and equally as Chinese) is only as Oriental as satin gowns, 60’s eye-makeup, dark hair and lots of imagination can make her.]

For the men, every strapping young lad gets to vicariously experience their ultimate dream: wearing a cape, eye-patch and winged helm in an awe-inspiring display of masculine glory. Ultimately, the belle of the ball is neither man nor woman, for no costume could possibly rival the enormous octopus outfit. Though under-inflated and over-used (the effects team was zealously proud), he dominates every scene with tentacle thrashing might.

As is probably obvious, this film’s greatest advantage is its low (but not absent) budget. While there was clearly enough money to hire a huge cast, outfit them in outrageous costumes and then film them swatting at each other with wooden weapons, there was thankfully not enough to bestow any dignity or artistry upon the proceedings. The result is extremely watchable since the minimal production values never lead to drabness or narrative lulls. You won’t find much technical know-how or deep meanings but there is a crude sense of framing and an admirable lunge at fight choreography.

The music consists almost exclusively of three tracks. Two of them are stolen from other movies (the third one might be as well) and all of them surge with grandiosity, ensuring that every battle gets boss battle treatment.

Propelled by enthusiasm, indulgence and ingenuity (one of the “special effects” involves turning the camera sideways to show Kurt climbing out of a deep pit) “Tartan Versus the Vikings” makes for an excellent roll in the Elysian fields of adolescent male fantasy and Euro-trash kitsch. Mondo Macabre, a dedicated distributor that is one of my fast-rising favorites, has released the film as a double-feature (with the far inferior “The Deathless Devil”) so there is no reason to miss out!

[Image: Little Jimmy falls in the well. Lassie goes running for help (the coward) while Kurt dives in, ties a harness around the boy and scales the wall!]

Walrus Rating: 7.5

Iceberg Arena: Rip-Off Wars

In the history of science fiction films there have been three epoch-marking movies that changed the landscape of film and altered pop culture history: “Metropolis” (1927), “2001” (1968) and “Star Wars” (1977). Star Wars in particular became the most lucrative film franchise of all time, earning more than $4 billion on toy-and-tie-in rights that George Lucas got for a mere $15,000 as part of the original studio deal. For better or worse (Peter Biskind’s book “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls” makes an excellent argument for ‘worse’), Star Wars changed the face of cinema forever, leading producers down the path of special effects, huge budgets and franchise tie-ins. This article is not about any of that.

Despite the inexhaustible cultural fallout from the Star Wars phenomenon, the Film Walrus is concerned today with only one particular aspect: foreign knock-offs. In the wake of the blockbuster film, studios around the world leapt at the chance to skim money off the success vat and most didn’t have things like copyright laws, ethics or talent to get in the way.

Japan and Brazil both released films called “Planet Wars” in 1977 capitalizing on the craze and correctly noting that planets are more likely to go to war than stars (which, incidentally, don’t support life). The Brazilian film had the advantage (?) of starring the Trapalhoes, a Brazilian equivalent of the three stooges.

Italy, always willing to take American ideas to maximum extremes (see giallos, spaghetti westerns and any Italian movie about zombies, sharks or cannibals), weighed in with “Cosmo: War of the Planets” and “Star Crash.” Meanwhile Turkey made one of the most notorious disasters ever committed to film: “The Man Who Saved the Earth” better known as “Turkish Star Wars.”

This Iceberg Arena will pit the two most famous rip-offs, “Star Crash” (1978) and “Turkish Star Wars” (1982) against each other in the ultimate battle of poorly understood science, terrible camerawork and shameless bootlegging.

“Star Crash” was directed by Italian schlock specialist Luigi Cozzi, hoping to parasitically feed off the fraction of filmgoers that don’t read theater marquises very carefully. The universe is under threat from a giant spacefaring lava-lamp and initially this is of little concern to intergalactic smugglers Akton (who sports a frizzy man-perm) and Stella Star (one-time bond girl and popular C-list actress Caroline Munro). Captured by Galactic Police Chief Thor and his Texan robot Elle, the duo is put in charge of finding jedi prince Simon (played by a pre-“Night Rider” David Hasselhoff), and stopping the evil Count Zarth Arn.

“Star Crash” has just about everything bad a B-movie junky could want: stop-motion robo-skeletons, a mountainous robot warrior, sexy Amazonian aliens, cardboard backdrops with Styrofoam props, an evil spaceship shaped like a taloned fist, sloppy laser fights and Hasselhoff. Caroline Munro changes in and out of various impractical space bikinis even when imprisoned (while undergoing hard labor her uniform also stipulates high-heels) and when floating through the raw vacuum of space. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there’s something very wrong about Munro’s half-naked character jumping through an open window on her ship and gliding through a gaping portal on the enemy’s main deck to engage in a laser battle. Oh, I know what it is: wouldn’t all the captured robo-skeletons escape?

Some of the best lines:

“And you must be extremely careful when the sun sets; the temperature drops thousands of degrees!” This really makes me wonder what temperature scale they were using. Unless, of course, absolute zero has gone down in the distant future.

“You are the nicest human being I have known. Now maybe is a good time to use your ancient system of prayer…and hope it works for robots too.” Maybe if you’re praying specifically to the robot god, but he only understands binary.

“Hurry, time will only stay halted for three minutes!” So if time is frozen… how do you know when three minutes have past?

But for all the bad in “Star Crash,” it still makes a hell of a lot more sense (and has a comparatively astronomical budget) than “Turkish Star Wars.” Turkey had recently experienced a political coup and in the period of the early 1980’s Yesilcam, Turkey’s Hollywood, was forbidden from making films that could in anyway be considered oppositional to the regime. This left only one solution: make utter nonsense.

An incomprehensible introduction informs us that humanity in the “galaxy age” is faced with the ultimate deadly threat. An evil wizard from a powerful empire is trying to destroy all planets. But don’t worry, “a coating which was formed from compressed human brain molecules was protecting the Earth.” The masked wizard could penetrate the shield if he had a human brain, but he is brainless (so we are informed). This introduction is accompanied by clips stolen directly from “Star Wars” but re-edited, with some shots repeating four or five times.

Soon we meet Murat and Ali, two pilots trying to destroy the death star. As they fly through space, Ali shouts that he is “dropping altitude” (relative to what?) and promptly proceeds to explode along with his friend. Except that they wake up under a pile of rocks and begin roaming an alien world (actually a popular Turkish tourist site). Ali lets loose his irresistible sex whistle, but it only attracts skeleton marauders. About an hour of insanely bad fight choreography ensues that involves trolls, ninjas, mummies and robots (obviously). Murat makes extensive use of an off-screen springboard to jump a whole lot and Ali trains by karate-chopping solid rocks.

Near the end of the film, Murat finds a giant cardboard sword with jagged lighting bolt spikes in an Islamic temple that landed on the planet as a meteorite milleniums earlier (what?). You might think he’d use the sword to kill the wizard but you’d be wrong; instead he melts it into a seething bucket and then plunges his hands into it to create cumbersome golden gauntlets. About twenty decapitations later, the evil wizard is defeated.

In the meantime you’ll get to see footage from NASA newsreels, a documentary on Egypt, a mute hippy romantic interest, hundreds of rocks that explode when kicked, a monster stabbed to death with its own severed limbs and an unexplained animated yellow spiral that appears about a dozen times. Rarely will any of it be explained by the hilariously awful subtitles.

You’ll also be treated to a gratuitously illegal soundtrack borrowing from “Star Wars,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Moonraker,” “Battlestar Galactica” and “The Black Hole.”

Some of the best lines:

“However in some cases Earth had been disintegrated into parts.” This piece of background info from the introduction only confuses me. How many cases could there be? Isn’t it important to know which case is 'reality'?

“We must cross over the space speed.” I guess that must be pretty fast. Incidently, “the speed of space” became a popular Turkish slang catchphrase for technobabble following the movie’s release.

“I am tired like a dead.” Sometime I know exactly how they feel.

“My power is invisible.” I’m pretty sure he meant “invincible” but this saves on special effects.

“I am powerful! I am invincible! In order to save the world the man from Earth should destroy me.” I’m not sure he meant that last line to slip out. Of course, if he really is invincible I guess it doesn’t matter.

Both films deserve their cult-classic status and are likely to remain at the vanguard of awful for decades to come. Though the battle between the two films is close, I have to name “Turkish Star Wars” as the marginally more comically pathetic travesty… and thus the winner of this Iceberg Arena. Watch the full film (whose copyrights lapsed in 2002) for free here.

Winner: Turkish Star Wars

Belated Top 10 of 2006

Overview:

Overall 2006 was fairly poor year for films on all fronts: Hollywood due to quality, Independents due to lack of originality and foreign films due to lack of distribution (in theaters and on DVD). Almost every critic has made a point of mentioning the dearth of truly noteworthy films this year (except for action movies), but for the ardent searchers there are plenty of gems to be found.
Of my top ten 7 were foreign films, 2 Hollywood and 1 indie. Spanish directors were responsible for 3 of the films, more than any other nationality.

Reviews:

********** Top Ten **********

1) The Prestige:
Country: USA
Genre: Mystery, Historical Fiction
Review:
Christopher Nolan’s latest film is a dark, nourish take on the Christopher Priest book. Two spiteful, obsessive magicians (Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman in top form) vie for superiority in a lifelong game of escalating treachery and violence. Their feud inhibits their relationships with the women in their lives, their careers and their happiness, culminating in two versions of a trick called “The Transported Man” that are each accomplished in surprising ways. A rare Hollywood film with a unique style, clever plot and stunning conclusion. One of only two truly worthwhile Hollywood studio films that I saw this year.

2) Pan’s Labyrinth:
Country: Spain
Genre: Fantasy, Coming-of-Age, War-time Drama
Review: (Reproduced from an earlier email)
Though it did garner more votes than any fantasy, horror or science fiction film has ever earned at Cannes, I think this is the film that actually deserved to win. Spanish director Guillermo Del Toro is one of the most talented and consistent horror directors to emerge from the 80's and his storytelling craftsmanship climaxes in this Gilliam-style dark fairy tale. A young girl living with her pregnant mother and cruel fascist father during the Spanish Civil War finds that she may have a greater destiny than she ever imagined. Mixing fantasy with the horrors of war, the film manages to create a highly original and effective tone, aided by some brilliant well-integrated special effects and sound performances. Had I seen this film at a younger age (but not too young) it would probably have been one of my all time favorites.

3) The Lives of Others:
Country: Germany
Genre: Historical Fiction, Drama
Review: (Reproduced from my 2006 St Louis Film Festival reviews)
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (great name) scores a resounding success with his debut film, a refreshing German historical fiction film that actually isn’t about Nazis. Gerd Wiesler is a loyal and initially despicable East-German Stasi member, an investigator and interrogator who finds himself assigned to monitoring a similarly loyal playwright and his wife. Wiesler is drawn into the lives he observes and eventually finds himself questioning his motivations and his role in the greater communist machine.
The movie remains gripping, emotionally involving and contemporarily relevant throughout, delivering a balanced Grecian final act and a last line that came close to inducing tears. The three leads, especially the underplaying Wiesler, give great performances. The film won 7 of 11 German Oscar nominations (a record) and took prizes in Bavaria and throughout other European festivals (it was also just announced that it won the Audience Award in St Louis), and given its power, craft and accessibility it is likely to be a triumph upon its Feb 2007 American release.

4) Brick:
Country: USA
Genre: Mystery, Modern Noir
Review:
Somewhat overlooked on its initial release, Brick is nevertheless my personal favorite pick from this year’s indie circuit (half of everyone else seems to be relentlessly copying Wes Anderson’s deadpan comedy to less and less effect). Deftly adapting Dashiell Hammett’s flowery, hard-boiled prose to a modern-day high-school setting, first-time director Rian Johnson scores a hit that looks and sounds ten times better than most of his contemporaries (on about 1/10th the budget).
In typical noir style, amateur detective Brenden determines to hunt down his ex-girlfriend’s killer after receiving a mysterious phone call from her the night of her death. Brenden must play the school’s internal society against itself in a battle of intrigue, deceit and triple-crosses that takes utter concentration to follow. The visual sense, original music, biting wit and machine-gun dialogue combine to make this the potential Donnie Darko underground success of the next five years.

5) The Death of Mr. Lazarescu:
Country: Romania
Genre: Realism, Social Commentary Film
Review:
Cristi Puiu achieved a surprise major international smash (from Romania, no less) with this stunning, scathing attack on the medical system. Mr. Lazarescu is a man in his sixties, who feels a pain in his chest and head and starts vomiting blood. His quest for medical aid will be an endless descent into hell (his middle name is Dante) rendered in painstaking dogma 95 realism and backed by an assurance from the director and cast that is one of the best things on the screen this year. Although Lazarescu is old, alcoholic, friendless, smelly and ill-tempered, Puiu captures the need for sensitivity and dignity owed to even the most fringe members of humanity.
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu easily placed 1st as the best film of the year in IndieWire’s 100+ statistical compilation of critics’ top 10 lists. As the first film in a series of six modeled after Eric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales, it is certainly one of the most exciting new voices on the world cinema stage. A must see for anyone in the medical profession (that means you, Dad).

6) Children of Men:
Country: USA
Genre: Science-Fiction
Review:
Slow to reach a wide release and staggered theatrically around the world and within the US (in what has to be called an imbecilic distribution pattern for such an exciting and highly-anticipated film) Children of Men is certainly worth the wait. To say that Alfonsu Cuaron has not been one of my favorite directors is more than an understatement, but my opinions are happily changed by this jaw-dropping sci-fi action film with a social conscience and an eye for detail.
In a dystopic near-future, humankind has been unable to bear children for 18 years. The movie opens with the death of the world’s youngest man, a celebrity killed for not signing an autograph. Amidst the hopeless desperation of a dying civilization the government battles with a surge of immigrants, international terrorists, religious sects and uncontrolled crime. The film bursts with dust, smoke, grit, dirty crowds, downcast weather, seething rage and festering misery. Clive Owen plays a wealthy, but selfish, career man who finds himself drawn into the war over mankind’s final hope. His nightmarish road-trip is the most viscerally intense movie experience of the year, featuring several 5 minute plus single-shot sequences that are incredible to behold. Almost everyone else in Hollywood has something to learn from this movie. If nothing else it will remain a testament to the way long-takes can make an action movie more gripping than the spastic cutting of today’s average action fodder.
Woven into the story is pointed commentary about immigration policy, racism, terrorism, Homeland Defense, the uses of torture, media saturation and much more.

7) Volver:
Country: Spain
Genre: Mystery, Historical Fiction
Review:
Cuaron’s less-eager-to-sellout contemporary, Pedro Almodovar, also weighs in with a triumphant success. Volver is a highly genuine exercise in feminist magical realism. Three generations of women struggle to make it through life despite a soap opera buffet of trials and tribulations. Almodovar isn’t mining particularly new territory, but he plots his story much tighter than in previous films and finds fresh pockets of quiet humanity without his usual barrage of sex. A career highpoint for Penelope Cruz and a landmark for female showcase casts. Almodovar’s perfectly-paced story is engaging without overwhelming the characterization, as well as managing to pack some great ending twists without violating its internal logic.

8) Lunacy:
Country: Czech Republic
Genre: Surrealism, Horror, Social Commentary Film
Review:
Although hardly a hit with critics or audiences, Jan Svankmajer’s latest provocation may be his best work in my opinion (it is, if nothing else, his most blasphemous). Very loosely adapted from short stories by Edgar Allen Poe and the Marquis de Sade, Lunacy is the sly tale of a naïve man’s encounter with a black mass and a bizarre asylum. Svankmajer throws enough heretical, shocking or openly revolting imagery on the screen to make even the tolerant viewer squeamish, but does so without sacrificing his talent or his message.
Essentially the film is about the delicate balance of freedom and security in our society and the need to avoid extremes; Svankmajer comes out beforehand, however, to explain to us the details and to remark that, really, we are just watching a trashy horror flick with no redeeming value. As the director talks, a severed tongue wiggles across the floor: a hint of what’s to come. The rest of the film is paralleled by interspersed vignettes of raw meat crawling around (in stop-motion) and making witty references to the film at large.

9) The Aura:
Country: Argentina
Genre: Modern Noir, Heist/Caper
Review: (Reproduced from my 2006 St Louis Film Festival reviews)
A calculated film noir to its core, Fabian Bielinsky weaves an engaging and intelligent thriller. The lead character, Esteban, is an epileptic taxidermist who fantasizes about robbing banks (a bit of willful eccentricity in an otherwise semi-realistic but highly accomplished style). A hunting accident serves as the entry point for Esteban to test how much of a criminal mastermind he really is.
“The Aura” was Bielinsky’s second feature, and he died while still relatively young, soon after finishing it, depriving Argentina of one of their great hopes for a second film renaissance. The film he leaves behind may not be terribly original, but it remains a lean and well-crafted success, reminiscent of early Coen brothers and Erik Skjoldbjærg’s 1997 “Insomnia.”

10) Climates:
Country: Turkey
Genre: Domestic Drama, Art-House
Review: (Reproduced from my 2006 St Louis Film Festival reviews)
Nuri Bilge Ceylan continues to develop a stellar art-house reputation with his second feature film (his first film, “Distant,” is equally mesmerizing). “Climates” covers familiar territory for auteur-based festival filmmaking, focusing on the dissolution of an upper-middle class marriage. The traces of Bergman and Antonioni are clearly present, but Ceylan paves his own way with an exacting eye for detail that makes the audience feel the location, the passage of time and most importantly, the climate (see title).
Ceylan also stars in his own film, and along with his wife and leading lady Ebru Ceylan, reveals a flawlessly understated character portrait. We never really know what the characters are thinking or feeling (they certainly don’t speak very often or very honestly), but we can see premonitions and the aftermath in their dry expressions. A neo-Bazinian director (read: fond of very long static takes) in the extreme, Ceylan manages to immerse the audience in his immaculate visceral compositions and layered ambient sound. Not for all tastes, but a director to keep an eye on.