Search results for: Terrence Malick

Continuing with their policy of spreading the joy in all categories, the Gotham independent film award nominations has Sean Durkin’s “Martha Marcy May Marlene” and Alexander Payne’s “The Descendants” leading the pack with three noms each, but mysteriously it is Durkin's gem that is pushed aside in a Best Feature category that includes Fox Searchlight's The Descendants and Tree of Life, the other best indie film of the year in Jeff Nichols's Take Shelter, and a pair of films that many of us associate to 2010 in Meek's Cutoff and Beginners.

Anybody wanting any lessons on how to be socially conscious without being too obviously tendentious in portraying a regional struggle in film ought to take notes, because in his full-length debut, The Colors of the Mountain, Colombian filmmaker Carlos César Arbeláez manages just that—an accomplishment made only the more astonishing by the fact that in the film Arbeláez also engages another, equally perilous narrative archetype: the loss of innocence in the face of trauma.

#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.

#10. I Saw The Devil - Kim Jee-woon (March 4th) Byung-hun Lee and Min-sik Choi going head to head in a revenge drunk, ultra violent game of cat and mouse, crafted by the headstrong stylings of Kim Jee-woon? Sign me up.

#10. The Dish and the Spoon - Alison Bagnall (2011 SXSW) An out of step pas de deux, The Dish and The Spoon deftly explores where you go when you reach the end. A cuckolded wife, a mysterious waif and the Delaware seashore offer a story that charms in its rueful sadness. Though you know their relationship won’t last, you can’t help wishing it would.