“The Story of a Guy Who Wants to Kill a Guy Who Wants to Die”: Claude Chabrol’s Bellamy
“The good news from Bellamy is that Depardieu gives one of his best performances in years.”
Author: Ian Johnston
Ian Johnston is a New Zealander living in Taipei, Taiwan. His work has appeared in The Film Journal.
Book review: A Short History of Cahiers du Cinéma, by Emilie Bickerton
A Short History of Cahiers du Cinéma, by Emilie Bickerton. London: Verso, 2009. Hardcover , $22.95. 156 pp. ISBN 978-1-84467-232-5. The sober, aptly descriptive title that Emilie Bickerton has given[…]
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The Children Are Watching You: Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon
“Like any old-style modernist, Haneke likes to make the audience work.”
Sleep Stalking: Jerzy Skolimowski’s Four Nights with Anna
“Just like you wanted, grandma. I’m seeing a woman.”
Liverpool Lullaby: On Terence Davies’ Of Time and the City
“Through cinema the past is regained.”
Ghosts of the Present: On Aditya Assarat’s Wonderful Town
“The film is both a bittersweetlove story and a memorial to the tsunami victims.”
Still, Life: Looking at Jia Zhang-ke’s Recent Masterpiece
“Present-day society doesn’t suit us because we’re too nostalgic.” August 8, 2007 saw a huge celebration in Beijing marking the one-year countdown to the opening of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.[…]
Butterfly Dream: Tsai Ming-liang’s I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone
“There’s no overt sexuality to Rawang’s care for Hsiao Kang. It’s a tender act of love, a selfless giving of himself to another.” With I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone[…]
Blow the Man Down: Aki Kaurismaki’s Lights in the Dusk
“The grafting on of the film’s film noir plot has a reductionist minimalism to it, as if Kaurismaki were sketching an archetype . . .” Aki Kaurismaki offers Lights in the Dusk[…]
Lost World: Michael Haneke’s Time of the Wolf Reconsidered
What we’re given is a sense that the structures of our civilisation have broken down . . .” Code Unknown (Code inconnu: Récit incomplet de divers voyages, 2000), The Piano[…]
No Exit: On Matthias Glasner’s The Free Will
“It’s a critique that is one step away from excusing Theo (the ‘woman was asking for it’ defence) …” Matthias Glasner’s The Free Will (Der freie Wille,1 2006) is a[…]
School Daze: The Curious Young Girls of Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s Innocence
“Don’t resist, my dear.” Knowing that Lucile Hadzihalilovic is the partner of Gaspar Noé — he of the 10-minute one-take rape scene in the brutalist Irréversible (2002) — might make[…]
“We’re Not Happy and We Never Will Be”: On Cronaca di un amore
Antonioni’s early masterpiece looks better than ever More and more, DVD is in the position of resuscitating and saving a director’s reputation, or at the least reminding us and keeping[…]
We’re Just Taller Children: On the Dardennes’ L’Enfant
The Belgian humanists’ most Bressonian film to date With Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s latest film, L’Enfant (The Child, 2005), we are on familiar territory: the setting of the brother-directors’ hometown[…]
Wim, We Hardly Know Ye: On Wenders’ Don’t Come Knocking
The bad news is . . . there’s not much good news If you’ve despaired at the Wim Wenders of recent years — that long line, since 1987’s Wings of[…]
How Sweet to Be a Cloud? Fancy and Fucking Collide in Tsai-Ming Liang’s Latest
Tsai pushes the art/porn envelope — or does he? With The Wayward Cloud (Tian Bian Yi Duo Yun — literally “A Cloud at the Edge of the Sky,” 2004), Tsai[…]
Train to Somewhere: Hou Hsiao-hsien Pays Sweet Homage to Ozu in Café Lumière
Hou honors the master while remaining true to his own vision
Compliments to the Chef: Three . . . Extremes: Dumplings Expertly Mixes Social Critique and Questionable Cuisine
Bring some dramamine to Fruit Chan’s best film to date
Unhappy Together: Wong Kar-Wai’s 2046
“Why can’t it be like before?”
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