Death and Dailiness
The Baader Meinhof Complex Vitagraph Films Still Walking IFC Films From Germany comes a film about German terrorists. Fittingly stark and dynamic, it focuses on the Baader Meinhof group that flamed from about 1967 to 1977, and it offers its explanation of the group’s existence.
Films Worth Seeing (9/4/09)
The Baader Meinhof Complex. A dynamic and fascinating account of the German terrorists of the 1970s. We enter the graphic story with the leaders, understanding their anger with the post-Nazi moral torpor.
Odd Surprises
Lorna's Silence Sony Pictures Classics My Fuhrer: The Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler First Run Features One of the more thrilling chapters in film history is the account of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. The joint career of these Belgian brothers has been, since they became known, breathtaking. After some twenty years of documentary work for Francophone television, in the early 1990s they began to make features. The first two were not widely seen.
Films Worth Seeing
The Beaches of Agnes. A unique autobiography. Agnes Varda, pioneer of the French New Wave, looks back at her life and films now that she's eighty and makes of them a charming film in itself. Full of the joy and some of the sadness of her career. (Reviewed 7/15/09) The Beaches of Agnes. A unique autobiography. Agnes Varda, pioneer of the French New Wave, looks back at her life and films now that she's eighty and makes of them a charming film in itself. Full of the joy and some of the sadness of her career. (Reviewed 7/15/09) Lorna's Silence.
Being Human
Quiet Chaos -- IFC Films The Girl From Monaco -- Magnolia Pictures Nanni Moretti, treasured in Europe, is scarcely known in the United States. This schism usually happens with film people whose work is strapped culturally to one country, but Moretti's writing and directing and acting are not only celebrated in Italy, they have prospered elsewhere. Not here, however, though his strongest concern is human commonality. Sometimes, in a career that began in 1973, he has appeared in films directed by others. This is true of his latest, Quiet Chaos.
Being Human
QUIET CHAOS IFC FILMS THE GIRL FROM MONACO MAGNOLIA PICTURES Nanni Moretti, treasured in Europe, is scarcely known in the United States. This schism usually happens with film people whose work is strapped culturally to one country, but Moretti's writing and directing and acting are not only celebrated in Italy, they have prospered elsewhere. Not here, however, though his strongest concern is human commonality. Sometimes, in a career that began in 1973, he has appeared in films directed by others. This is true of his latest, Quiet Chaos.
Films Worth Seeing
The Girl from Monaco. The "typical" lightweight French sex comedy brought up to date with strands of drama. A lawyer, in Monaco to defend a woman accused of murder, is guarded against thuggery by a man who was once the lover of the lawyer’s amour. Light but not featherweight. (8/12/09) Quiet Chaos. Nanni Moretti, an outstanding figure in Italian film, celebrated almost everywhere but the U.S., plays a man suddenly bereaved of his wife who seeks solace in the being of his ten-year-old daughter. Moretti is an extraordinary actor who affects us deeply by what we know he is not revealing.
Selves
The Beaches of Agnes--Cinema Guild The Windmill Movie--The Film Desk Human Rights Watch International Film Festival Naturally enough, the New Wave is rolling back. The tide of new French talent that flooded world screens just before and after 1960--bringing Godard, Truffaut, Rohmer, Rivette, Resnais, and Chabrol, among others--has been ebbing for some time. Movingly aware of this, Agnes Varda, one of the earliest if not one of the most eminent members of the group, has looked back at her life in a film. The Beaches of Agnes is autobiography as festival.
Stanley Kauffmann on Films: Mystery, History
Treeless Mountain Oscilloscope Laboratories Il Divo Music Box Films CHILDREN DEEPEN ONE of the mysteries in film’s being. It is mysterious enough that, since film’s beginning, non-professional adults have given valuable film performances. Still, one can spin social and cultural explanations for this astonishment. But what about the performances by small children, children who were not child stars and who convinced millions? The list is too long to nibble at. How can we explain them? How can we understand the mystery? Some technical facts apply to children as well as adults.
From 'Album Of My Germany'
From “Album of My Germany” Our German trip was coming to an end. I reserved the last afternoon in Berlin to visit a place I wanted Laura to see. I had seen it in 1967 and had dreamed of it since. It was a Catholic church in an outlying district, Charlottenburg. Maria Regina Martyrum stands near Plotzensee, the prison where many had been executed during the Hitler years and where, in August 1944, the eight German officers found chiefly guilty in the July plot against Hitler were hanged.
