Film: Abel
Country of Production: Mexico
Directed by Diego Luna and executive produced by Gael Garcia Bernal and John Malkovich, Abel is a darkly funny and poignant fable about a child who thinks he is an adult.
Christopher Ruiz-Esparza (a mere 9 years of age at the time of filming) stars as Abel, a young boy whose confounding behaviour and refusal to speak has landed him in a mental health facility. His single mother is convinced that a reunion between Abel and his younger brother and older sister would be the answer to repairing his condition, so she arranges for Abel’s doctor to release the boy for a single week. Abel starts speaking the day after returning home but the joy of the mother quickly turns into confusion as the child starts speaking and behaving as a fully-grown adult - her missing partner. Not wishing to worsen his condition the mother and the siblings go along with Abel’s unorthodox, strange behaviour. But then his father decides to show up…
Disturbing, surreal and darkly funny, Abel follows in a great tradition of fabular filmmaking associated with the likes of Guillermo del Toro and deals with an important issue in Mexico - parental absenteeism - increasingly common as many Mexican men abandon their families to find work in the United States.
Film: Il Posto
Country of Production: Italy
Ermanno Olmi’s semi auto-biographical Il Posto, aka The Sound Of Trumpets, is a satirical take on the daily grind of working life. A young suburban boy, Domenico, has big dreams of working in a big city corporation and after a gruelling entry process he lands a job as an errand boy. Here Domenico meets Antonietta and the pair embark on a relationship as he begins to climb to the corporate ladder.
Film: On Tour
Country of Production: France
Joachim, a former Parisian television producer had left everything behind - his children, friends, enemies, lovers and regrets - to start a new life in America. He comes back with a team of New Burlesque strip-tease performers whom Joachim has fed fantasies of a tour of France, of Paris! Travelling from port to port, the curvaceous showgirls invent an extravagant fantasy world of warmth and hedonism, despite the constant round of impersonal hotels with their endless elevator music and the lack of money. The show gets an enthusiastic response from men and women alike. But their dream of a tour culminating in a last grand show in Paris goes up in smoke when Joachim is betrayed by an old friend and loses the theatre where they were due to perform. A quick return journey to the capital violently reopens old wounds...
On Tour stars a sassy cast of celebrated New Burlesque performers, including Dirty Martini (Shortbus), Mimi Le Meaux and Kitten on the Keys.
Film: The Tunnel
Country of Production: Germany
Roland Suso Richter's multi-award winning drama The Tunnel has been described as the most exciting German film since Das Boot. Based on a fascinating true story that takes place in the divided Berlin in 1961, the film stars Heino Ferch (Downfall) and Sebastian Koch (Black Book, The Lives Of Others).
During the 28 years that the Berlin Wall stood, countless tunnels were planned as escape passageways from East to West. The Tunnel recounts the harrowing tale of the development of the most famous one. East German swimming champion Harry Melchior (Ferch) flees to the West to escape the communist regime just before the borders are sealed, but his sister is not so lucky and he is determined to free her. Joined by others also desperate to free their loved ones, they have an audacious plan; to tunnel beneath the wall and the ‘death strip’ patrolled by border guards. But not everyone can be trusted and they are soon digging for their lives in a nerve-racking race against time.
The Tunnel is a riveting and harrowing tale about the courage and tenacity of a group of heroes driven by the love of their families and the need for freedom that grips to the very end.
Film: Confessions
Country of Production: Japan
Following the critical acclaim of his previous features, Kamikaze Girls and Memories Of Matsuko, Tetsuya Nakashima returns with Confessions, a notably darker but equally absorbing and typically idiosyncratic work, this time adapted from the award winning debut novel by Kanae Minato. Written and directed by Nakashima, Confessions was selected as Japan’s official entry in the Best Foreign Film category of the 83rd Annual Academy Awards and was the winner of the awards for Best Film, Best Screenplay and Best Director (Tetsuya Nakashima) at the 34th Japanese Academy Awards earlier this year. Reigning in his impulse to create surreal candy-coloured worlds full of chaos and confusion, with Confessions Nakashima opts instead for an intense drama throbbing with dark emotions and powered by a savage central performance.
Takako Matsu (K-20: Legend Of The Mask) stars as Yuko Moriguchi, a middle-school teacher whose 4-year-old daughter is found dead. Shattered, she finally returns to her classroom only to become convinced that two of her students were responsible for her daughter's murder. No-one believes her, and she may very well be wrong, but she decides, nevertheless, that it's time to take her revenge. What happens next is all-out psychological warfare waged against her students in an attempt to force them into confessing what she knows in her heart to be true: they are guilty and must be punished.
Brilliantly building the psychological tension from the film’s very start before pulling out all the stops for a devastating and explosive finale, Nakashima has produced what is arguably his most mature and impressive work to date. A superb script, excellent performances from a fine cast and a perfectly pitched soundtrack (that includes tracks by Radiohead, acclaimed Japanese experimental rock band, Boris, and Mercury Prize winners, The XX) make Confessions one of the most original and impressive films of the year.
Film: Lucky Star: The Complete Series - Anime Legends
Country of Production: Japan
Complete collection of the anime series about a group of Japanese school girls going about their day to day lives, while having some silly antics along the way. The heroine is a bright and athletic girl called Konata, who is too interested in video games and cartoons to really excel. Her friends are Miyuki, a kind but geeky girl with an amazing knowledge of all subjects, Kagami, the shy and serious one, and Tsukasa, her sweet but slightly vacant twin sister. The girls while away their school days, pondering over questions like what a chocolate cornet is, and how to eat it.
Film: Assault On the Pacific - Kamikaze
Country of Production: Japan
Japanese World War II drama about a squadron of Kamikaze pilots fighting in the Pacific. The film follows the training and final moments in the lives of the young pilots as they bid farewell to their families and girlfriends and embark on their suicidal missions against the US Navy over the Pacific Ocean.
Film: The Grim Reaper
Country of Production: Italy
Bernardo Bertolucci’s directorial debut, The Grim Reaper, aka La Commare Secca, is based on a book by Pasolini and tells the story of a prostitute who is brutally murdered in a park near the Tiber River in Rome. The police track down all visitors to the park that night with hope of catching the killer, with the story told in flashbacks as each suspect gives their account.
Film: Mamma Roma
Country of Production: Italy
Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Mamma Roma stars the Academy award-winning Anna Magnani (The Rose Tattoo) who plays the lead role of a prostitute who attempts to better her life for her son Ettore (Ettore Garofolo – Ro.Go.Pa.G.). But her efforts may be too late as Ettore is drawn to the street life and ironically falls for a young whore.
Confessions and Abel for me are 'must haves'
ReplyDeleteBut where's Enter The Void?