Altogether, around 150 at-home screenings were made available to the press. We had five days to watch them. I was able to watch 22 of them. This is Part One.
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A long read on the 70th annual Berlin International Film Festival.
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Are superhero movies a real risk to cinema, or have movies changed in such a way that cinema is no longer found in cinemas?
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QUEEN & SLIM attempts to look at all sides of identity, fate and myth-making within a broken system, and its the rare film that feels both important and super cool.
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They say the sea is a cruel mistress. In THE LIGHTHOUSE, the second feature film from Robert Eggers, we learn just how cruel life can be when you're stuck on an island with little else but booze, folk tales, superstition and Wiillem Dafoe to keep you company. It's a dark and unrelenting ride, but one that haunts the mind and offers plenty to admire.
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Robert Pattinson has supposedly called the movie a "slapstick western," but I have a hunch he may have intended something closer to a "western farce." These terms tend to get mixed up because they often coexist. It's common for a farce to contain some slapstick elements as a way of reinforcing the chaotic and unpredictable nature of the genre (or the spirit of the story being told), but Damsel isn't much of a slapstick anything. It's not a Three Stooges western. It is quite silly, clever and violent at times, but at its heart it is a tragedy -- one that is both funny and sad, sometimes within the same scene. And I think that's a big reason why it makes for a very successful farce.
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Perhaps it's a good sign as to just how much I liked his latest, the recovery tale called Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot, but I'm now eager to catch up with Restless and Land of Trees (as with Finding Forrester, I still have a hard time finding interest to see Promised Land).
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Anderson has created his own Roald Dahl-type fable this time. Or, to be more precise, his own The Little Prince. While the Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's classic is about a pilot who crash lands in the desert and meets a little boy from another planet, Isle of Dogs is about a boy who crash lands on an island and meets five dogs who agree to help him find his beloved Spots. In case the hat tip wasn't implicit, the dogs call the mysterious fallen boy, the "Little Pilot."
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Is it possible for an Alien movie to still offer surprises? If you've been following the trajectory of these movies for the past few decades, you'd be forgiven for considering the series exhausted. And while I'm willing to admit that lowered expectations may influence my appraisal, it doesn't diminish the fact that Alien: Covenant is by far the best of the last thirty years. But not only that, it's a terrifically twisted horror movie that stands rather well on its own.
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What Ben Wheatley's Free Fire does have is a gleeful bloodlust and rambunctious charm that carries it surprisingly far.
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