All articles by Dan Fainaru – Page 31
-
Reviews
Conversation With My Gardener (Dialogue Avec Mon Jardinier)
Dir. Jean Becker. France, 2007. 109mins.A pleasant talkathon featuring a successful painter relocating to the country estate of his late parents and the gardener he hires, Conversation With My Gardener is the kind of film that veteran director Jean Becker should be capable of directing with one hand tied behind ...
-
Reviews
Jellyfish (Meduzot)
Dir. Etgar Keret, Shira Geffen. Is-Fr. 2007. 78mins.While it makes for a bleak portrait of dysfunctional families and wretched personal lives, Jellyfish is a surprisingly accessible and easy to watch feature that deservedly won the Critic’s Week prize at Cannes.A promising debut by a tandem whose work has successfully adorned ...
-
Reviews
Days Of Darkness
Dir. Denys Arcand.Can-Fr. 2007. 115mins.Also called at various stages Age Of Ignorance, Denys Arcand's new movie could also be called The Decline Of The Canadian Empire or alternately The Decline Of The Canadian Male.And Michael Moore should be made to sit through it for as many times as it will ...
-
Reviews
California Dreamin' (Nesfarsit)
Dir. Cristian Nemescu. Romania, 2007. 155 min. Awarded the Un Certain Regard prize more for its intentions than the actual outcome, this unfinished picture by talented young Romanian director Nemescu, as shown in Cannes, is the rough cut of a film that might have looked entirely different once completed. ...
-
Reviews
The Pope's Toilet (El Bano del Papa)
Dir/scr: Enrique Fernandez, Cesar Charlone. Urug/Bra. 2007. 97 mins.Taking place in a poverty-stricken area between Brazil and Uruguay and shot on location with documentary-style grittiness, it is the kind of stuff that festivals concerned with social issues and the Third World should have a look at and Latin American minorities ...
-
Reviews
Counterparts (Gegenueber)
Dir: Jan Bonny. Ger. 2007. 96 mins. A study in midlife crisis verging on pathologic hysteria, Jan Bonny's debut may be of some interest to sympathetic psychoanalysts dealing in Freudian hang-ups but won't go far with audiences at large, who are bound to lose their patience with the two leading ...
-
Reviews
A Lost Man (Un Homme Perdu)
Dir: Danielle Arbid. Fr. 2007. 97 mins. Somewhere, buried deep down this pseudo-road movie that moves round in circles, there is a burning issue begging to be explored. All the more pity that Danielle Arbid never actually comes to grips with it, though it is pretty obvious the relations between ...
-
Reviews
Tehilim
Dir: Raphael Nadjari. Fr / Is. 2007. 96 mins. Raphael Nadjari is back, digging again at the 'dialectical dimensions of Judaism' (as he calls it), a labour of love that he has persistently pursued in all his films to date. A quiet, subdued and remarkably controlled drama, fiercely introverted and ...
-
Reviews
The Band's Visit (Bikur Hatizmoreth)
Dir/scr: Eran Kolirin. Is/Fr. 2007. 85 mins.This melancholy deadpan comedy accepted in three out of Cannes' four official sections and finally running in Un Certain Regard, is a kind of prestidigitator's tightrope act, almost crashing down several times before triumphantly reaching its goal in one piece.Though nothing much is happening ...
-
Reviews
Breath (Soom)
Dir/scr: Kim Ki-Duk. Kor. 2007. 84 mins. Removing any pretence of reality for yet another of his existentialist essays on human nature, Kim Ki-Duk's bare-boned new film pairs a married woman with a man on death row, for an impossible love affair. But as this is, after all, Kim Ki-Duk ...
-
Reviews
Flight Of The Red Balloon (Le Voyage Du Ballon Rouge)
Ostensibly an homage to the fifty years old classic The Red Balloon, this is the kind of tribute that only Hou Hsiao Hsien would devise for his first fully French-speaking and produced picture. Albert Lamorisse's lyrical, dialogue-less half hour survey of Paris in the fifties, in which the director followed ...
-
Reviews
4 Months, 3 Weeks And 2 Days (4 Luni, 3 Saptamini Si 2 Zile)
Dir: Cristian Mungiu. Rom. 2007. 113 minsA deceptively simple tale carrying a tremendous wallop, Cristian Mungiu's third feature 4 Months, 3 Weeks And 2 Days leads the new Romanian cinema into this year's Cannes competition with flying colours. The market may not be bowled over at first sight - after ...
-
Reviews
My Father, My Lord (Hofshat Kaits)
Dir. David Volach. Is. 2006. 72mins. Even the top drama award at Tribeca can't make My Father, My Lord, David Volach's debut feature, into a crowd pleaser - but then again, it was never meant to. An intimate chamber piece, requiring its audience to interpret the apparently banal images into ...
-
News
Israeli fund support for Eyal Sivan documentary sparks row
A storm has erupted in Israel after an important fund announced its intention to back a documentary by Eyal Sivan, a fierce opponent of the country's policies.The Paris-based Israeli film-maker's documentary Jaffa is to receive support from the Cinema Project, a division of Tel Aviv's Joshua Rabinovitch Cultural Fund.But the ...
-
Reviews
Destiny (Kader)
Dir/scr: Zeki Demirkubuz. Turk. 2006. 104mins. International film festivals should have another look at Zeki Demirkubuz' latest offering Destiny, which has been on the circuit since last year. Flawed it may be, but it has enough merit to deserve a niche of its own, certainly compared to some of the ...
-
Reviews
Adam And The Devil (Adem'in Trenleri)
Dir. Baris Pirhasan. Turk, 2007. 103mins. Cute, corny, folksy, but also heart-warming and crowd pleasing, Baris Pirhasan's feature Adam And The Devil deserves to do well, not only as an entertaining festival vignette but also as a pleasant nostalgic breath of home for Turkish audiences abroad. The story of a ...
-
Reviews
Men In The Nude (Ferfiakt)
Dir/scr: Karoly Esztergalyos. Hung. 2006. 94mins. A gay affair between an aging writer and a streetwise hustler who exploits him, Men In The Nude is a midlife crisis drama that seems tailored for the gay market but is not quite certain how comfortably it will fit in this niche. Old-fashioned ...
-
Reviews
Iska's Journey (Iszka Utazasa)
Dir/scr: Csaba Bollok. Hung. 2007. 94mins.Built around the innocently luminous face of Maria Varga, Csaba Bollok's drama Iska's Journey often has the weight of a painful, heartbreaking documentary. While some of the last act scripting tends to mar the earlier authenticity, it is still powerful enough to justify its Berlin ...
-
Reviews
Happy New Life (Boldog Uj Elet)
Dir/scr: Arpad Bogdan. Hung. 2007. 81mins There is nothing happy, little new and almost no life in Arpad Bogdan's debut feature Happy New Life. A moody piece shot mostly in saturated colours, with sporadic flashbacks in lighter tones, it showcases a distinct visual talent, a strong tendency for use of ...
-
Reviews
Goodbye, Southern City (Proschai, Yuzhnyi Gorod)
Dir: Oleg Safaraliyev. Azer-Russ. 2007. 90mins. Enjoying plenty of local colour but little else, Goodbye, Southern City, a modest Azeri film noir shot entirely in Baku, will be limited to those interested in the region or expatriates. For others it will look like a sincere, heartfelt but misguided elegy of ...