Berlinale #5: Four bizarre films

by Elisa Giudici

L'EMPIRE © Tessalit Productions

If I think about the typical film competing at Berlin, I imagine something quite dramatic, decidedly political, and sometimes rather heavy. This edition of the Berlinale has added the adjective "bizarre" to this profile of mine. Here are four films seen in these hours that deserve this adjective.

L’EMPIRE by Bruno Dumont
Let me preface this one: Dumont and I just don't see eye to eye. He might be the only French director whose work I can't seem to appreciate, despite my overall fondness for French cinema. Given this history and a rather late screening on a very heavy day, the recipe for disaster was served. However, one positive thing about L’Empire I can say: in hindsight, it made me reassess his previous film, France, which I saw at Cannes and detested...

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Hello, Gorgeous: Best Actress of 2016

A new series by Juan Carlos Ojano

This year’s group of nominees prove to be interesting with regards to their character introductions. One of them has one of the most disturbing, NSFW introductions this category has probably ever seen. Two of these films begin with a closeup of the actresses’ faces that also serve as the very first shots of their respective films. Three of the nominees are in the first scenes of their films (or four, if you count La La Land’s long take). Four of them are introduced with the key male character related to their personal journey.

All five of them are introduced in ways that strongly relate not only to how they identify themselves, but even how the people around them and their environment see them. As a group, all of the nominees’ first moments are filled with details that serve as the character's defining characteristics, even more than any other set of nominees since this series began. Are you ready?

The year is 2016. [NSFW CONTENT WARNING: Sexual violence]...

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Venice 2023: The latest films from Luc Besson and Isabelle Huppert

by Elisa Giudici

Caleb Landry Jones in "Dogman"

We seem to have a new Joker on our hands, or at the very least, a new contender like The Whale, I'm afraid. To be fully transparent, I despised the former and adored the latter. Luc Besson's Dogman treads toward a similar future: it will deeply move some audience members and prompt visceral aversion in the others...

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Erotic Thrillers: Part 3 – Bare Witnesses

by Cláudio Alves

Making your way through the Criterion Channel's Erotic Thrillers collection, you'll start noticing a recurring concept here and there. One of the most prevalent is voyeurism (peeping toms or bystanders) twisted by the advent of violence. That very idea can lead to a consideration of the audience as another variation of the voyeur, whether in a critique or apologia. Fear and desire often mix, the horrified spectator enlivened by the hideousness they just saw even as trauma lingers in the psyche. Excited by danger and drunk on terror, they're laid bare for the camera in more ways than one.

As our cinematic odyssey reaches the end of the eighties, we encounter three tales of eroticized witnessing – Curtis Hanson's The Bedroom Window, Bill Condon's Sister, Sister, and the program's first woman-directed picture, Sollace Mitchell's Call Me…

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International Feature Race - Part 3: A Dozen Movie Stars

by Nathaniel R

Voting on the finalist list for the Oscar categories that use that system (including Best International Feature Film) concluded last week with the finalist lists to be announced on December 21st. As a final part of our general trivia overview (pt 1 stats & genres / pt 2 directors) we thought we'd look at the famous faces gracing the international contenders this year. Here are eleven of the most familiar movie stars in the mix that Academy voters (and you) might recognize from their own history of awardage not to mention previous classics. We'll take these famous actors alphabetically starting with a multilingual Spanish-German star and ending with a Chinese beauty, both of whom came to fame in the Aughts when they were fresh-faced twentysomethings...

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