EIFF 2013: ‘The Last Time I Saw Macao’
★★★☆☆ The critical success last year of Miguel Gomes’ Tabu (2012) and fresh appreciation for the works of Pedro Costa and Raoul Ruiz has...
★★★★☆ Inspired by Robert Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar, veteran Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski’s latest is a darkly comic and moving fable about a wayward donkey living through fate’s tender mercies. EO is at once a cinematic curiosity, a compelling drama and a harrowing portrait of cruel whimsy.
★★★★☆ American director Darren Aronofsky has made a career out of exploring individuals who are physically and psychologically self-destructing in the throes of obsession. It could be the relationship between the diameter and circumference of a circle; building a boat to avoid a genocidal flood; ballet or wrestling; drugs or food.
★★★★★ Documentary filmmaker Alice Diop’s (We, La Permanence) first narrative feature Saint Omer is a major achievement and an investigation into motherhood, judgment and the other. Kayije Kagame plays Rama, a university professor and writer who is working on a new book.
★★☆☆☆ After his girlfriend is killed in a brutal attack, former boxer and paramedic Jan (Milan Ondrík) falls into profound despair. Exploring themes of guilt, masculinity and justice, boxing-inflect crime film from Slovakian director Peter Bebjak shows much promise, but fails to coalesce into a coherent vision.
★★★☆☆ Bulgarian documentarian Andrey Paounov turns his hand to fiction in this adaptation of Yordan Radichkov’s 1974 play. January is an intriguing, eerie, ponderous narrative set entirely within the confines of a forest cabin. Religious allegories, monochrome photography and folk horror trappings ensue.
★★☆☆☆ Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans had all the ingredients to ascend as cinema’s new darling. Yet, as this semi-autobiographical film plods on, there is an unshakeable sense that in reaching for the stars, The Fabelmans instead lands somewhere more mediocre and disappointing.
★★★☆☆ The critical success last year of Miguel Gomes’ Tabu (2012) and fresh appreciation for the works of Pedro Costa and Raoul Ruiz has...
★★★★☆ An exotic thriller ensnared within a Lynchian nightmare of confused identities, Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy’s follow-up to Helen (2008), Mister John (2013),...
★★☆☆☆ Screening in Europe for the first time at this year’s Edinburgh Film Festival, Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s What Maisie Knew (2012) is...
★★★☆☆ Chronicling the daily rigmarole within a German crematorium, Thomas Heise’s Consequence (Gegenwart, 2012) is a muted observation of a process many of us...
★★★★★ An often overwhelming oceanic opus, Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel’s Leviathan (2012) is a sublimely sensory experience like no other. One of the...
★★★☆☆ The Bulgarian capital of Sofia has an estimated population of just over two million – yet has only thirteen operational ambulances. At a...
★★★★☆ Stephen Hawking’s first wife, Jane, once explained that as the years passed and her husband made new discoveries, their relationship evolved two faces....
★★★★☆ From director James Wan (Saw, Insidious) comes The Conjuring (2013), a 1970s-inflected haunted house movie that throws every trick in the book at...
★★★☆☆ After focusing predominantly on short film projects, director PJ Raval returns with only his second feature, Before You Know It (2013), a thoughtful...
★★★★☆ Like the revered work of the artist himself, Renoir (2012) – director Giles Bourdos’ biopic of the French impressionist, starring Michel Bouquet, Vincent...
★★☆☆☆ Banned from Sydney’s Mardi Gras Film Festival due to its graphic real sex and ardently defended by friend-of-director James Franco, Travis Mathews’ I...
★★★★☆ Winner of the Crystal Bear at the 2012 Berlinale and Best Screenplay at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, Reis Çelik’s Night of Silence...
★★★★☆ “When you’re in the middle of a story, it isn’t a story at all”. This is the line that introduces Canadian Sarah Polley’s...
★★★☆☆ Examining the powerful bond shared between a father and daughter, Fredrik Edfeldt’s Sanctuary (Faro, 2013) is a nostalgic, innocent and handsomely presented drama...