Search results for: Catherine Breillat

#36. Francois Ozon’s Just 17 Gist: For his fourteenth feature, Ozon has chosen to film from a closed set with a media blackout pertaining to...

Herzog likewise reduces cinema to its most basic expressive formula: using the medium of the camera to transform the literal, untouched reality before us into something estranging and miraculous. ‘Cave’ accomplishes what all great art strives to do: wrench us from out of the entrenched armor of our mundane solipsisms and give us a glimpse of the eternal. The mutated albino alligator writhing aimlessly in a vast, expensive simulation, its natural impulses irrelevant and forgotten, is the perfect symbol for contemporary humanity. Herzog ominously warns us all: “The site is expanding.”

Representing a monumental leap in poise and craft, it is also Bonello's most subtle work in terms of provocation and shocking or subversive imagery. I met up with Mr. Bonello after his film's North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival last September, when we discussed his place in the New Extremity Movement, the mixed reception that his film has had with North American critics, and the research that went into the project, among other things.

Writer-director Belvaux’s multi-pronged kidnap drama lets plot get in the way of a good story.

#10. Of Gods and Men - Xavier Beauvois (February 25th) Select sequences are almost worthy of comparison to Bresson, including head monk Lambert Wilson's conflicted hike into nature, or the monks' final, close-up filled suppertime farewell. The film needed a more ruthless editor, however -- many scenes come across as mundane and unnecessary. Could easily be an hour shorter, and better for it.