I was shell-shocked by the hard to watch brutal nature of the film and it was McQueen’s manner in which he used the medium of film to near perfection with his superb play on the visual and aural cues.
So while I wasn’t totally convinced by his cinema, this changed when I finally got to see what is perhaps the most beautiful story visually captured on film this year (it was actually a 2007 film, had a week release I think at MoMA in the Fall, and gets a release at Film Forum next week) comes from Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas and his DOP Alexis Zabe.
Truth is, I consider myself a fan of Jia Zhang-ke's work despite having only seen a pair of his films from a filmography that must be at a five or six count.
Two films that made their mark on indieland in 08’are Ballast and Frozen River. I didn’t care much for the later, but on the short list of impressive directorial debuts this year, Lance Hammer’s drama reminded me how a narrative and the secrets that it holds can be dispelled like the effects of one of those cough drops.
My favorite book-to-film adaptation is this import from Italy -- a film that gets points for style, design of parallel storylines and Matteo Garrone’s ability to make the best out his locations and to visually express the notion of life as something that easily goes to waste.