★★★★☆ Alexander Fehling and Bérénice Bejo play a couple trying to make their own personal European Union work against the stunning backdrop of the Italian Dolomites in German director Jan Zabeil’s new thriller Three Peaks.Aaron (Fehling) and Lea (Bejo) are an attractive young couple. We first spy them in gorgeous Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Starring Harry Dean Stanton, John Carroll Lynch’s Lucky is an ornery meditation on old age and extinction in New Mexico. Screening at this year’s Locarno International Film Festival, it doesn’t exactly rage against the dying of the light but certainly cusses and blows smoke in its face.Harry Dean Stanton Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Premiering at this year’s 70th Locarno International Film Festival, Icelandic director Hlynur Pálmason’s debut film Winter Brothers is a bold, chilly, dark work with occasional glints of humour, like the sparks that fly of the picks of the workers in the opening scenes.Shapes move in the darkness, the noise Continue Reading
★★☆☆☆ Jan Speckenbach’s second film Freedom feels as trapped by its portentous one-word title – there’s a quote about the River Lethe at the beginning as well – as its protagonist Nora (Johanna Wokalek) is trapped by the paradox of feeling compelled to be free.We first see Nora wandering about Continue Reading
★★★☆☆ Set in 1974, Lionel Baier’s Longwave (2013) centres on global broadcasters the Swiss Radio Service. Its French office feels the need for a hit, and that’s when its general manager decides to send a troupe to Portugal for a special reportage to investigate Switzerland’s aid to poor and developing Continue Reading
★★★★☆ Swiss-French documentary filmmaker Jean-Stéphane Bron tackles his most political subject to date in latest effort and Locarno submission The Blocher Experience (2013), a character study of Swiss politician and mogul Christoph Blocher. Blocher is a member of that rather large group of right-wing, populist/capitalist European politicians that have proven Continue Reading
