Sean Glass

Fedorchenko and DP Mikhail Krichman do not opt for the kind of shallow depth of field that fancy film school grads and horror movies love so much, but rather one that is much more expressive and pointed. They pull focus to not only shift our attention, but also dictate the shifting of our emotional weight. There is a fog over the entire film. It is created first with the narration of Aist. Then the settings, which are beautiful, but grey, and in the context rather depressing.

Robinson in Ruins is the third in a trilogy of landscape essays from Patrick Keiller, the previous two being London (1994) and Robinson in Space (1997). They all feature a first person camera and narration with a false history, and stories about a fictional character named Robinson. Keiller had no intention of creating a series, but just kept wanting to repeat the experience.

Rettenberger is our first bank robber and marathon running champion in cinema. Director Benjamin Heisenberg does not do much with the comparison though, apart from some long set pieces where he…runs. He runs away from banks that he’s robbed. He runs from cops chasing after him. He runs to escape prison. He runs marathons as well.

The strongest arc of the film is given to Paul’s wife, played by Mirela Oprisor (Mimi Branescu’s real life wife). For the first half of the film, she is portrayed as pretty boring and almost drab in the way she’s settled into life as a mom, however, once Paul tells her about his girlfriend, she proceeds to light up and dominate the screen for the rest of the film. Muntean maintains balance between the characters here so well. The big knock on her would be that she took any kind of sexiness or excitement out of their relationship, and Paul craved it. Once she hears this news though, she’s very empowered and damn sexy.

Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff, directed by Craig McCall, is a tour of the work, more than the life, of Cinematographer Jack Cardiff. It is definitely better suited for Turner Classic Movies than a theatrical or even DVD release. Perhaps the best part of Cameraman is that it gets to highlight so many films of such quality, giving much credit to how brilliant and prolific Jack Cardiff actually was.