Is the Norwegian film establishment playing it too safe? Either way Kerren Lumer-Klabbers’s A Stone Slowly Falls – the only Norwegian film in Karlovy Vary – is a pleasing, self-contained episode, visually arresting, narratively simple but complete.
Venice 2019: Defined by its plurality – of perspectives, of themes, of ages – Barn moves out of step, like a knight on a chess board.
Karlovy Vary 2019: Fact-finding filmmakers everywhere are revealing what you’re really up to, and it is their dubious claim to being fiction (or fabrication) free that makes them so dangerous.
Lars Klevberg’s debut feature does not succeed fully as a horror film but is highly impressive in its mise-en-scène and sophisticated, subdued and moody aesthetics.
Éric Rohmer’s films are known for their talkative characters, but in L’ami de mon amie (1987) it is evident that the movie’s visuals are as important in telling the story.
A final look at M. Night Shyamalan’s Split, this time its formal approach with a special emphasis on his inventive use of point-of-view shots, stealthy camera movements, overhead and underhead shots, and many other subtleties.
A Shyamalan enthusiast is struggling mightily to come to terms with the conundrum of The Happening, a split identity film that swings wildly between excellence, rampant quirkiness and unchecked hysteria.
Tom Volf’s film Maria by Callas is by no means the first documentary about Maria Callas, by many considered to be the twentieth century’s greatest opera singer. Why, then, make yet another film?
A guide to the many powerful suicide scenes, including the brilliant, icily electrifying opening where normality turns into nightmare. Plus motifs, visual ideas and references to earlier Shyamalan works.
The hero of this brilliant, darkly poetic musical is fantastically arrogant, loutish, self-centred, self-pitying and pathetic, played by Steve Martin as totally captive of his dreams and desires.
This Disney production is remarkably dark and sophisticated, made during a brief period of a more adult approach to their live action family films. 11-year-old Fairuza Balk is absolutely enchanting as the resourceful heroine.
«Her life as a mother dictated what spaces she would film in. Her feminist I takes place in the film, in the frame, behind and within the camera. Her installations are inhabitable, a shed of cinema to walk through and be within.»
Say what you want about M. Night Shyamalan’s foray into disaster movie terrain, but its last 25 minutes are excellent, carefully walked through in this screenshot-based analysis.