Showing posts with label Katarzyna Roslaniec. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Katarzyna Roslaniec. Show all posts

Tuesday, 1 January 2013

THE 10 BEST FILMS of 2012, *PLUS* 11 ADDITIONAL TERRIFIC FILMS of 2012, INDIVIDUAL ACCOLADES of 2012 - ALL SELECTED BY GREG KLYMKIW - ALL THE BEST CINEMA HAD TO OFFER - JUST FOR YOU!

GREG KLYMKIW'S
10 BEST FILMS OF 2012
(in alphabetical order)

BABY BLUES - dir. Katarzyna Roslaniec
Nobody makes movies quite like Katarzyna Roslaniec. In Baby Blues, the spirited Polish director tackles everyday challenges young teenage girls face in the modern world. Her touch is never juvenile, clichéd, didactic, humourless, nor rife with the dour bludgeon of political correctness. Her movies rock! Big time! Baby Blues focuses on Natalia (played brilliantly by Magdalena Berus), a teenager with a baby sired by her unwitting slacker boyfriend. She is bound and determined to keep it, but on her own steam, thank you very much. Roslaniec injects the picture with a verité nuttiness, allowing her to take a whole lot of stylistic chances, yielding one indelible moment after another. One of several sublime sequences is unveiled just after Natalia experiences a harrowing encounter with judgemental health care workers. Roslaniec holds on a shot of the teen, now looking more like a little girl than a burgeoning young woman, huddled on a metro train with her sick baby clutched tightly in her arms. She holds and holds and holds on the shot and when it feels like she’s going to finally cut out, the shot holds even longer. What Roslaniec finally evokes is truthful – infused with life itself. And it is sublime.


BEYOND THE HILLS - dir. Cristian Mungiu
Beyond the Hills is a masterpiece. Cristian Mungiu (director of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days) has created a film of lasting value. In its own way the film tells an extremely vital tale in a manner that contributes both to cinema as an art and perhaps even more importantly, to humanity. It tells the story of two friends who took separate paths after their release from a Moldavian orphanage and charts their heartbreaking reunion some years later. Voichita joined a nearby monastery to become a nun under the strict patriarchy of an Orthodox priest referred to as "Papa". Alina has been living "alone" in Germany and working as a waitress (or so she claims). Her plan is to extricate Voichita from the monastery so they can rekindle their deep love and friendship together. God, or rather, religious hypocrisy and hysteria has other plans. What follows in this world of backwards, religious patriarchy is as nightmarish an exploitation of women as the forced sex trade - the creepily insidious manner in which women are forced into the sexist, misogynistic and subservient roles that are so prevalent in cultures rooted in the centuries-old Eastern Rite religious traditions. Even more horrendous are the deep-seeded attitudes these cultures have towards orphans (also rooted in sexism and misogyny). For a huge majority of Eastern Rite followers, orphans take on the sins of their mothers and as such, our two central characters were born into a world that believed them to be lesser human beings because of this. Mungiu charts the final weeks of their friendship in homage to Carl Dreyer - most notably in the religious-themed Day of Wrath and Ordet. Visually, Mungiu packs his frames in direct contrast to Dreyer's austerity, but where Mungiu and Dreyer share approaches are found in the tableau-styled takes and, of course, in the stories that are told. Dreyer might be one of the great film artists to have committed himself to the thematic concerns of women amidst religious and/or societal repression and their exploitation within these worlds. Clearly with the horrific tale of abortion, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and now Beyond the Hills, Mungiu continues in Dreyer's bold thematic and narrative tradition of telling the stories of women and their suffering in patriarchal worlds.



CITADEL - dir. Ciaran Foy A brilliant dystopian horror film about crashing, numbing, unrelenting fear brought on when the young protagonist watches - not once, but twice - as those he loves are brutalized and/or snatched away from him. His fear intensifies so unremittingly, with such grim realism, that we're placed directly in the eye of the storm that is his constant state of terror. Contributing greatly here is lead actor Aneurin Barnard as the young father, delivering a performance so haunting, it's unlikely audiences will ever shake the full impact of what he achieves. We follow his story solely from his sphere and given that the character is almost always in a state of intense apprehension, the whole affair could have been utterly unbearable. Thankfully, he breathes such humanity into the role that we not only side with him, but I frankly defy anyone to NOT see themselves (or at least aspects of who they are and what they feel) in this character so indelibly wrought. This single father, living alone with his baby in a desolate housing project, must occasionally leave his home and enter a world of emptiness, squalor, violent crime, constantly grey skies and interiors lit under harsh fluorescents. His head is down, his eyes only occasionally looking around for potential danger and/or to literally see where he is walking (or rather, scurrying to). Just as he's constantly in a state of terror - so are we. There is, you see, an infection - a pestilence of the most abominable kind and to avoid it is ultimately futile. The vermin must be met head-on. And it's going to scare the living bejesus out of you.


DJANGO UNCHAINED - dir. Quentin Tarantino
I hated Reservoir Dogs - nasty, overwrought posturing that both bored and sickened me. I enjoyed Pulp Fiction a tiny bit more. Well, to be truthful, I loved the Bruce Willis story, but pretty much everything else bored the crap out of me. And then it happened. I was about to flush this overrated poseur down the toilet until I allowed myself to see Jackie Brown. From there, it was onwards and upwards and while I still (after repeated attempts) hate his first two films, Tarantino's become one of my favourite contemporary directors. Django Unchained follows in the footsteps of his previous work which, frankly, gets better and better. Managing to be both horrific and, I kid you not, fun, Django Unchained is one of the most raw, original and subversive films I've EVER had the pleasure to enjoy. In a nutshell, it's Richard Fleischer's Mandingo with the same manner of pure, joyous, unadulterated vengeance that coursed through the veins of Inglourious Basterds as directed by Sergio Corbucci pumped on crystal meth. Set two years before the American Civil War, Tarantino introduces us to the biggest, baddest 70s-style SuperSpade Blaxploitation Hero in Spaghetti Western duds we're ever likely to see. Jamie Foxx as Django is teamed up with bounty hunter Christoph Waltz to kill nasty-ass racist white folk throughout the deep south and rescue his wife from the clutches of Leonardo DiCaprio, the most insane plantation owner this side of James Mason and Perry King in the aforementioned Mandingo. Guns blaze, blood splashes in our faces and after close to three hours, we leave the cinema with the same buoyancy that infused us after seeing 2011's great Friedkin picture Killer Joe. The film is as all-out exploitative as it's one of the most provocative cinematic condemnations of slavery etched on celluloid. Does Tarantino get to have his cake and eat it too? Damn straight, and so do we.


END OF WATCH - dir. David Ayer
My Dad was a cop for ten years. Most cop pictures left him cold save for their occasional entertainment value, but a handful of pictures stand out as movies he loved on several levels. Richard Fleischer's adaptation of Joseph Wambaugh's The New Centurions was one that Dad always felt came closest to recreating "the life" of cops while William Friedkin's The French Connection captured the dull, dirty, mundane aspects of police work and finally, Don Siegel's Dirty Harry came closest to showing the frustrations inherent in the job and how sometimes, a good cop just had to say, "Fuck the system," and do what needed to be done. I think Dad would have liked End of Watch a lot. Hanging by the slenderest of plot threads, this gorgeously, blisteringly and bravely photographed policier is a mostly episodic nosedive into every harrowing moment street cops encounter and provides us with an always jolting ride through the dangers our boys in blue face everyday. Focusing upon the close friendship of two cops (beautifully played by Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña), we experience their lives on and off the beat and most importantly, the thematic and dramatic importance of family in all its forms - blood, community and crime. The partners go about their day-to-day exploits until they happen upon a group of deadly local dealers who are tied to vicious drug cartels. The two cops begin investigating until they get so close to the source of criminal power that the cartel orders hits on them. It's a testament to writer-director David Ayer that he captures the camaraderie of partners by leaping beyond the by-the-numbers mismatched-partners-who-learn-to-love-and-respect-each-other cliches. From the start, we know the partners in End of Watch are made for each other. If anything, their love deepens and becomes even more demonstrative as the danger and violence in the film intensifies. So many films in recent years (including those Ayer has written and/or directed) have focused up the "dirty" cops. Reversing this trend with End of Watch is not only welcome but necessary to bolster those in the force who genuinely embrace the protection of the citizenry. To be a good cop in a world where crime is escalating and when administrative shackles are getting tighter and where cops are even forced into plying their trade in ways they know are unfair to those they're supposed to protect is as narratively and politically satisfying as it is savvy. End of Watch is the best cop picture in years!


FAT KID RULES THE WORLD - dir. Matthew Lillard
On every level, Lillard's lovely film from the fine screenplay by Michael M.B. Galvin and Peter Speakman, indelibly captures both the bittersweet and dark humour associated with what it's like to be a fat kid. Most importantly, it tells an inspiring and genuinely realistic story of how a fat kid not only gains the acceptance of peers, but to respect the inner qualities beneath the mounds of lard and flesh. That the film also touches upon themes of friendship, loyalty and the importance of family is a mega-bonus. That the film offers punk rock as a creative outlet for the main character to develop a greater sense of self-worth is several extra scoops of hot fudge marshmallow sauce on the cinematic ice cream sundae that is Fat Kid Rules The World.


GOON - dir. Michael Dowse

TIED WITH


KRIVINA - dir. Igor Drljaca

Okay, I'm cheating a bit here. Sue me, motherfucker. This, however, has been a tremendous year for Canadian Cinema and both of these films rock big time. In a sense, I want to pair these works together as they represent what English Canada is best at. There are no two films made in this country that are as different as these two and yet, they share Canada's potential to create cinema that knocks the ball out of the park in ways that truly defines what's so distinctive about our film culture - what makes it worth preserving and fighting for. In the case of Goon, we have it in us to make a commercially minded picture that is also indigenous to the Canadian experience, just as Krivina takes us into that completely other territory of cinema as poetry, but in so doing, just as brilliantly and successfully reflects Canadian Culture. English Canada is NOT the United States, Mr. Harper. We are truly a nation unto itself and it's so important that we never forget that our feature film culture reflects WHO WE ARE as a nation - and Goon and Krivina do this is spades. Not a single shot is fired in Canadian director Igor Drljaca's stunning feature debut Krivina, but the horror of war - its legacy of pain, its futility and its evil hang like a cloud over every frame of this powerful cinematic evocation of memory and loss. The film's hypnotic rhythm plunges us into the inner landscape of lives irrevocably touched by man's inhumanity to man - a diaspora of suffering that shall never escape the fog of war. Krivina is an astounding film - a personal vision that genuinely affects our sense of self to seek out our own worth, our own place in the world. Like Olexander Dovzhenko, Sergei Paradjanov and, to a certain extent, Tarkovsky, Drljaca achieves what I believe to be the fullest extent of what cinema can offer - the ability to touch the souls of its characters and, in so doing, touching the souls of those lucky enough to experience the magic that can only, I think, be fully wrought by the art of the motion picture. Goon, on the other end of the spectrum presents the Great Canadian Hockey Movie to follow in the footsteps of Canuck "Lumber-in-the-Teeth" Classics as Face Off, Paperback Hero and, of course, the most Canadian Movie Never Made By A Canadian, George Roy Hill's classic Slap Shot. Etching the tender tale of the kindly, but brick-shit-house-for-brains bouncer recruited to a cellar-dweller hockey team in Halifax as an enforcer, Dowse captures the sweaty, blood-spurting, bone-crunching and tooth-spitting circus of minor league hockey with utter perfection. The camaraderie, the endless bus trips, the squalid motels, the brain-dead fans, the piss-and-vinegar coaches, the craggy play-by-play sportscasters, the bars reeking of beer and vomit and, of course, Pogo Sticks - it's all here and then some. Goon delivers laughs, fisticuffs, mayhem and yes, even a dash of romance in a tidy package of good, old-fashioned underdog styling. Oh Canada! Art and commerce is what we're all about.


THE MASTER - dir. Paul Thomas Anderson
I can’t ever recall the same electricity in any screening of any movie in the 25-or-so years I’ve been attending the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). Hundreds of scribes packed the hugest auditorium of TIFF’s Bell Lightbox complex. The pre-screening buzz in the cinema resembled the low, but crazily intense sounds coming from a hive of happily prodigious bees. The lights went down and the house went completely and utterly silent. Then it began. Paul Thomas Anderson’s insanely provocative exploration of post-war America reels you in. You feel a bit like ‘Bruce’ the shark in Spielberg’s Jaws, chomping on a sharp hook that Robert Shaw’s mad-eyed Quint keeps hitting, taunting, tugging, twisting and pulling. You try to escape, you fight madly not to succumb, but succumb you do. Inspired by the crazy founder of Scientology L. Ron Hubbard, Anderson weaves a hypnotic tale of a young veteran and his mentorship under a charismatic cult leader. If you are lucky enough to see the film as it’s meant to be seen in 70mm, you get the added bonus of diving into Anderson’s masterly use of the medium. It is an epic scope, but an intimate epic with Anderson’s eye examining the rich landscapes of the human face. And what faces! Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams and Laura Dern suck you deep into their eyes and, ultimately, their very souls. When I left the cinema, I couldn’t explain to myself what I had just seen and why it so powerfully knocked me on my ass. What I can say is that I can count on one hand the number of films that were not only hypnotic, but in fact, seemed to place me in a literal state of hypnosis. The Master is one of these films. I saw it a second time – riveted, yet wondering if I still loved it. I queried George Toles, my old friend, mentor and screenwriter of Guy Maddin’s masterworks, about his experience, explaining, of course, my recent dilemma. His response was this: ‘The movie neither asks for my love, nor wants my love, but I give it my love anyway.’ A third viewing corroborated this for me.


PARADISE: LOVE - dir. Ulrich Seidl
In a perverse way (and perverse is what the great Austrian filmmaker Seidl is all about), his new film actually makes for an excellent companion piece to Django Unchained. Seidl, the "bad-boy" of Austrian cinema is back with this searingly funny, powerful and harrowing drama against the backdrop of Kenya's sex tourism industry. He deftly plumbs the extremities of human behaviour in order to reveal humanity in all its disparate forms and with the weight and resonance of its tragic beauty. Teresa (Margarethe Tiesel) a blonde blob adorned in a sun hat flip-flops onto the sunny airport tarmac of a Kenyan resort, surrounded by her equally porcine 40-50-something Austrian maidens. Seidl's camera greedily drinks in globs of fleshy pink corpulence jiggling like mounds of jello, streaked with road maps of stretch marks boring through virtual mountain ranges of cellulite and grotesque cauliflower-like skin tags gripping desperately to spongy thighs like bats in a cave. Happily ensconced in the paradise of the resort, our jolly Teresa ogles the rich, lithe, cocoa bodies of her male hosts, salivating with the same delightful desire she might express when gazing upon a platter of rich Viennese pastries, imagining the joy of stuffing them all down her expansive, greedy gullet. Teresa parades along the Kenyan beaches in outfits that accentuate her strudel and schnitzel induced corpulence, her fat face emblazoned with lustful wonder that ultimately betrays her slatternly desires. Surrounded by eager, young and almost criminally gorgeous Kenyan men who vie for her attention in the hope she'll buy a lot more than the trinkets they have on offer. With their smooth gentle voices, glisteningly ripped bodies and irrepressibly insistent promises of the love they will provide, it's not hard to believe that Teresa and her ilk might actually believe it is LOVE they are paying for, not sex. When Seidl's camera focuses upon the beautiful young men, their eyes betray desperation and terror. With Paradise: Love, Seidl unflinchingly charts a woman's descent into satisfying her most basic sexual needs by exploiting those who are so poor they will do whatever they have to do in order to survive.


STORIES WE TELL - dir. Sarah Polley
Nature, nurture and the manner in which their influence upon our lives inspires common threads in the telling of tales that are in turn relayed, processed and synthesized by what we think we see and what we want to see are the ingredients which make up Sarah Polley’s latest work as a director. It is first and foremost a story of family – not just a family, or for that matter any family, but rather a mad, warm, brilliant passionate family who expose their lives in the kind of raw no-guts-no-glory manner that only film can allow. Most importantly, the lives exposed are as individual as they are universal and ultimately it’s a film about all of us. It is a documentary with a compelling narrative arc, yet one that is as mysterious and provocative and profoundly moving, as you’re likely to see. At the heart of the film is a courageous, vibrant woman no longer with us. Polley guides us through this woman’s influence upon all those she touched. Throughout much of the film, one is reminded of Clarence Oddbody’s great line in Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life: “Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?” I try to imagine the lives of everyone Polley introduces us to and how if, like in the Capra film, this vibrant, almost saint-like woman had not been born. Most of those we meet in the film wouldn’t have been born either and the rest would have lived lives with a considerable loss of riches. And I also think deeply on the fact that this woman was born and how we see her effect upon all those whose lives she touched. Then, most importantly, I think about Clarence Oddbody’s line with respect to the child that might not have been born to this glorious woman – a child who might have been aborted. I think about how this child has touched all the lives of those in the documentary. The possibility that this child might have never been born is, within the context of the story relayed, so utterly palpable that I can’t imagine audiences not breaking down and weeping with both sadness and joy. It's a masterpiece.
And now, taking a cue from Mr. Roger Ebert who so simply and easily came up with a way of doing honour to films "that were as good, in one way or another" as those included in his 10 Best List, I'm going to modify my usual list of "runners-up" - a term I hate because it doesn't adequately reflect my feelings.

The 10 Best list selections are, for me (and more often than not), based on aesthetic consideration as well as gut impulse - visceral, personal, emotional responses to the work - often over repeated viewings when possible. (Plus the fact that the world demands 10 and I can only, within that context, only modestly declare a tie or two and only do so when it makes sense as I did above with Goon and Krivina.)

Mr. Ebert notes that the juries at "many film festivals . . . come up with a cockamamie category named the Grand Jury Prizes" which is essentially a way of making appropriate nods in the direction of movies that are equally worthy of accolades. Ebert chose to provide a list of such prizes for his lists this year.

What I've decided to do is include the following category where I'll provide eleven more films in alphabetical order as "11 More Terrific Pictures (2012)" which you're welcome to view as an additional category of just mush up the above list with this one and call it a "Top 21 of 2012". Seems fair. To me. So, without further ado, here they are.
10 More Terrific Pictures From 2012
(in alphabetical order)

AMERICAN MARY - dir. Jen Soska, Sylvia Soska (Soska Twins)
Body modification. Sexually Psychotic Surgeons. Revenge.
Horrifying. Original. And oh, so très, très cool.


BIG BOYS GONE BANANAS - dir. Fredrik Gertten
70s paranoid thriller meets chilling contemporary documentary.
Filmmaker sued by multi-national. It's David meets Goliath.


BULLHEAD - dir. Michael R. Roskam
This unique and harrowing crime melodrama etches a world of double-crosses, filthy brute force and intimidation of the worst kind by transplanting the gangsters of Goodfellas into the roles of two-fisted laconic farmers, veterinarians and feed suppliers - in Belgium, no less.


CAPITAL - dir. Costa Gavras
High Finance. Corporate Chicanery. The Banking Crisis.
Hot clothes. Hot locales. Hot women. Hot cars. Hot.
Director of Z, State of Siege, Missing, The Confession
DO THE MATH!!!


CLOUDBURST - dir. Thom Fitzgerald
Love on the run, k.d. lang, pickup trucks, roadside cafes,
Olympia Dukakis, Brenda Fricker and a Nova Scotia
that's never looked more heart-achingly beautiful.


DAMSELS IN DISTRESS - dir. Whit Stillman
Crazy, funny, literate dialogue. Hot, smart babes. Doofus guys.
Suicide prevention. Donuts. Inventing a new dance craze.
Greta Gerwig. Greta Gerwig. Greta Gerwig.


DRAGAN WENDE WEST BERLIN
dir. Lena Müller, Dragan von Petrovic, Vuk Maksimovic

In the words of Dragan Wende,
brothel doorman, pimp and dealer in the all-new, reunified Berlin:
"I said to the guy:
'Pay 99 euros and fuck all day!'
'If you have no teeth, just lick her pussy.'"


JOHN CARTER - dir. Andrew Stanton
Hunk hero. Major league babe. Great villains.
The SPIRIT of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Eye-popping special effects.
Cool aliens. Cool sets. Cool spaceships.
Monsters. Yes, monsters. Cool monsters, at that.
Slaves-in-an-arena-fighting-aforementioned-monsters.
Rip-snorting battle sequence.
Have I mentioned the babe, yet?


LAWLESS - dir. John Hillcoat
Bootleggers. Ultra-violence. Foulest Villain in Years.
Nick Cave Script. Nick Cave Music. Nick Cave.
Mega-Hunks. Mega-Babes. Mega-Bloodshed.
Cool Costumes. Manly Haircuts. Moonshine.


THE PUNK SYNDROME - dir. Jukka Kärkkäinen, J-P Passi
Pertti Kurikka’s Name Day, one of the greatest punk bands of all time.
A hard-core, kick-ass, take-no-fucking-prisoners mean-machine.
No musical punches pulled. The music slams you in the face.
Until it is pulp. Like coarsely-ground hamburger meat.
They crap on hypocrisy, corruption, mindless bureaucracy.
And pedicures. Yes, pedicures! You see, they are from Finland.


PUSHWAGNER - dir. Even Benestad, August B. Hanssen
Pushwagner rocks! It rocks hard!
Hariton Pushwagner - Artist Extraordinaire. And WHAT an artist!
Norway's ONLY septuagenarian bad boy beat-punk maniac artist.
His art is life. His life is art. All Hail Hariton Pushwagner!
All the fucking time! What an artist! WHAT a movie!


RHINO SEASON - dir. Bahman Ghobadi
A husband. A wife. An evil Totalitarian regime. Poetry leads to prison.
30 years for the man. 10 years for the woman.
Upon her release the wife learns her husband is dead. Life goes on.
20 years later, the husband is released from prison. He is not dead.
He must find her. He must. A love story as old as time itself.
Love is what drives this film and by extension, the human race.
Love must be protected and sanctified at all costs.
When that ceases, so do we.


AND NOW, INDIVIDUAL KLYMKIW ACCOLADES FOR CINEMA IN 2012

BEST ACTION FILM:
LAWLESS - dir. John Hillcoat


BEST COMEDY:
GOON - dir. Michael Dowse


BEST HORROR FILM:
AMERICAN MARY - dir. Jen Soska, Sylvia Soska (Soska Twins)


BEST SCIENCE FICTION FILM:
BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW - dir. Panos Cosmatos


BEST DOCUMENTARY:
STORIES WE TELL - dir. Sarah Polley


BEST ENSEMBLE CAST:
THE MASTER


BEST ACTOR:
Aneurin Barnard - CITADEL


BEST ACTRESS:
Magdalena Berus - BABY BLUES


BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:
Leonardo DiCaprio - DJANGO UNCHAINED


BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS:
Tristan Risk - AMERICAN MARY


BEST DIRECTOR:
Paul Thomas Anderson - THE MASTER


BEST SCREENWRITING:
Quentin Tarantino - DJANGO UNCHAINED


-TIED WITH-

Paul Thomas Anderson - THE MASTER


BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY:
Roman Vasyanov - END OF WATCH


BEST EDITING:
Mike Munn - STORIES WE TELL


-TIED WITH-

Reginald Harkema - GOON


BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN/ART DIRECTION:
Tony Devenyi, Courtney Stockstad - AMERICAN MARY


BEST COSTUME DESIGN:
Jayne Mabbot - AMERICAN MARY


BEST SOUND:
Brad Hillman, Maureen Murphy, Eric J. Paul, Brody Ratsoy,
Stefan Udell - BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW




BEST MUSIC:
"Pertti Kurikka's Name Day" "Pertti Kurikan Nimipäivät":
Pertti Kurikka, Kari Aalto, Sami Helle, Toni Välitalo
THE PUNK SYNDROME



BEST VISUAL EFFECTS:
JOHN CARTER


JUST FOR FUN, I 'VE AMALGAMATED THE TOP 10 WITH THE TERRIFIC 10
AND CREATED AN ALPHABETICAL KLYMKIW TOP 20 Films of 2012

BABY BLUES - dir. Katarzyna Roslaniec
BEYOND THE HILLS - dir. Cristian Mungiu
BIG BOYS GONE BANANAS - dir. Fredrik Gertten
CAPITAL - dir. Costa Gavras
CITADEL - dir. Ciaran Foy
CLOUDBURST - dir. Thom Fitzgerald
DAMSELS IN DISTRESS - dir. Whit Stillman
DJANGO UNCHAINED - dir. Quentin Tarantino
DRAGAN WENDE WEST BERLIN - dir. Lena Müller, Dragan von Petrovic, Vuk Maksimovic
END OF WATCH - dir. David Ayer
FAT KID RULES THE WORLD - dir. Matthew Lillard
GOON - dir. Michael Dowse (Tie w/Krivina)
JOHN CARTER - dir. Andrew Stanton
KRIVINA - dir. Igor Drljaca (Tie w/Goon)
LAWLESS - dir. John Hillcoat
THE MASTER - dir. Paul Thomas Anderson
PARADISE: LOVE - dir. Ulrich Seidl
THE PUNK SYNDROME - dir. Jukka Kärkkäinen, J-P Passi
PUSHWAGNER - dir. Even Benestad, August B. Hanssen
RHINO SEASON - dir. Bahman Ghobadi
STORIES WE TELL - dir. Sarah Polley

Wednesday, 12 September 2012

BABY BLUES - TIFF 2012 - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Nobody makes movies quite like Kasia Roslaniec. With her first feature Mall Girls and now her new picture, the extraordinary Baby Blues, she tackles very serious and important issues with respect to the challenges young teenage girls face in the modern world. Her movies rock! Big time!


Baby Blues (2012) ****
dir.
Kasia
Roslaniec

Starring:
Magdalena Berus,
Nikodem Rozbicki


TIFF 2012 - Contemporary World Cinema
Review By Greg Klymkiw

Nobody makes movies quite like Kasia Roslaniec. With her first feature Mall Girls and now her new picture, the extraordinary Baby Blues, she tackles very serious and important issues with respect to the challenges young teenage girls face in the modern world and yet, her touch is never didactic, humourless, rife with a bludgeon of dour political correctness, nor hampered with the ultra-conservative by-the-numbers after-school-special-styled dreariness so prevalent in similarly-themed works from North America (and especially, God Help Our Nation's Cinema, Canada).

Her movies rock! Big time!

Baby Blues tackles the subject of teen pregnancy. Sounds dull, right? Sounds like you've seen it all before and then some, right? Sounds like something you'd not go out of your way to see, right? Well, it's none of those things and to skip it, you'd be skipping one of the most original, heartfelt, humanist and rooted-in-realism pictures to ever deal with this subject matter.

The movie crackles with life, but it's also deliriously romantic, moving and exactly the sort of picture that needs to be seen by tween, teen and adult women. Maybe more importantly, guys need to see it, too. Guys of all ages. We're so inundated with false portraits of female sexuality generated by most male filmmakers, but sadly, by women also, that Baby Blues is pure magic - a movie with no false notes and yet imbued with the highest degree of entertainment value.

One of the things that makes the movie work so well is its director's exquisite, devil-may-care mise-en-scène. Roslaniec breaks every rule in the book, but does so as someone who clearly understands what the rules are or at least has that filmmaking DNA so hardwired into her very being that her instincts are spot-on. She also has a gift for how rules need to be broken in order to deliver a movie that will pulsate with life and resonate far beyond other movies that will be long forgotten.

On one hand, she injects a delightfully wonky verité nuttiness into so much of the picture and yet, none of the whirling, hand-held images have that annoyingly sloppy shaky-cam that bad filmmakers use to try and coverup the fact that they really have no talent (and that, on occasion, audiences and critics make the mistake of thinking positively towards).

Roslaniec uses this technique ONLY when it is emotionally and dramatically necessary to do so. As well, not unlike Paul Greengrass, the technique - while natural in the sense that we do not see her consciously using it - has the strong feeling that it's been planned down the last detail.

On the other hand, when Roslaniec needs (or wants) to deliver more classical approaches to her mise-en-scène it's there in spades, but never do we feel that her varied directorial techniques are a mish-mash. They are so seamless, that one almost doesn't notice them. If anything, this approach is what makes her films, and Baby Blues in particular, so dramatically compelling.

There's even a fabulous cutting style employed throughout the film where cuts to black are inserted, held on, then cut out of to picture - often within the same dramatic sequence.

She's also not afraid to let scenes play out in one shot without cuts - a technique many master filmmakers employ, but one that is seldom utilized in young filmmakers who feel the need to cut constantly - as if this annoying Attention Deficit Disorder approach will pick up the pace. Heavy cutting actually has the effect of slowing the pace down because it interferes with the natural dramatic rhythms of the scenes. Roslaniec never makes this mistake - scenes play out in ways they NEED to play out.

Given that the film is about a teenage girl who has a baby sired by her unwitting boyfriend and that she is bound and determined to keep it, there's one incredible moment of cinema that I feel is as sublime as the smile on Chaplin's face at the end of City Lights or the noble owl presiding over the animal graveyard in Rene Clement's Forbidden Games or John Merrick's responses to the pantomime performance in David Lynch's The Elephant Man.

The scene occurs between the teenage girl Natalia (Magdalena Berus) after a frantic visit to the hospital with her baby boy Antek. Natalia is huddled with her baby on a metro train as it hurtles along. Roslaniec holds on a shot of such dramatic power and beauty you can hardly believe your eyes that it's happening. She holds and holds and holds the shot and then, when you suspect she's going to cut out of it, she holds it even longer.

All I can say is this: If this scene fails to move you to tears (and perhaps sobs), I suspect you might not be human.

The movie is full of moments like this. They're not all imbued with the same emotional wallops. Some of them are very small and delicate. Often, they are found in scenes where Natalia and her well-meaning, amiably clueless dope-smoking boyfriend Kuba (Nikodem Rozbicki) are navigating the unfamiliar waters of domestic life and parenthood.

What's especially phenomenal is that Roslaniec so beautifully and truthfully captures how quickly these two people try to adapt to the responsibilities that come from being parents. What she captures is truthful - not only to young people - but frankly, just as truthful to those who are supposedly far more mature than this couple. For those who have experienced being parents and those who have not, you never feel like Roslaniec's manipulations are cloyingly by-the-book, but are, rather, infused with life itself.

Baby Blues is a movie that will resonate on so many levels for so many people. It will bring them face to face with realities they might have experienced themselves or, at the very least, realities they feel they could someday face. The movie achieves this in ways that are wholly original and a touch that veers from bold to sweetly gossamer.

I'm also thankful that Roslaniec is making the films that she is making. My own little girl has seen them and they're exactly the sort of films I know she will come back to as the years progress. They are films that will both delight and empower her as both a woman and a human being.

This is a great film. It might be unfair to greedily expect this, but filmmaker Kasia Roslaniec has plenty of greatness left in her and I, for one, will be keeping my eyes and heart open for more films from this filmmaker. I will demand and expect continued bravery and artistry of even higher levels.

In the meantime, there is Baby Blues to contend with. Missing it should be a capital offence of artistic neglect.

"Baby Blues" is playing at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2012) Wednesday September 12 Cineplex Yonge & Dundas 4 9:00 PM and Saturday September 15 Cineplex Yonge & Dundas 2 12:15 PM. For ticket information visit the TIFF website HERE.






Friday, 31 August 2012

MALL GIRLS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Polish director Katarzyna Roslaniec made this dazzling debut at TIFF 2009. She's back at TIFF 2012 with a new film, "Baby Blues". "Mall Girls" is an extremely moving portrait of young teenage women and recommended viewing before or after seeing "Baby Blues".

Three years ago, the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2009) presented an extraordinary feature length debut by director Katarzyna Roslaniec called "Mall Girls".

Coming to TIFF 2012 is a new film from this talented director. Entitled "Baby Blues", it will be showing at TIFF 2012 Monday September 10 Cineplex Yonge & Dundas 9 6:00 PM, Wednesday September 12 Cineplex Yonge & Dundas 4 9:00 PM and Saturday September 15 Cineplex Yonge & Dundas 2 12:15 PM.

I have had a chance since I first saw "Mall Girls" to see it a couple of more times. Here's a new revised version of a piece I first wrote in 2009.

Mall Girls
Galerianki
(2009) ***1/2
Dir. Katarzyna Roslaniec
Starring: Anna Karczmarczyk,
Dagmara Krasowska, Dominika Gwit, Magdalena Ciurzynska

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The most alarming trend in Central and Eastern Europe since the fall of Communism has been the sexual exploitation of women. In spite of the promise of a new life through capitalism and the free market, pretty much all of these countries have suffered a drastic rise in poverty and homelessness.

Add to the mix an Old World patriarchy that remains entrenched in Slavic cultures, a veritable explosion of organized crime and an increasing demand for sexual services – life for many young women has become desperate, cheap and dangerous. The combination of basic needs not being met and an ever-multiplying Western-styled consumerism creeping into the consciousness of the people through advertising has meant a rise in women either choosing to be prostitutes, or worse (as so expertly detailed in investigative journalist Victor Malarek’s shocking book “The Natashas”), women are duped and/or kidnapped and subsequently forced into prostitution. One million women per year from Eastern Europe disappear and are sold into sexual slavery.

Mall Girls, a Polish film by director Katarzyna Roslaniec, is a terrific feature length debut. Focusing upon the lives of several disadvantaged 14-year-old girls, it is an exquisitely directed piece of filmmaking.

Using a swirling, occasionally jittery camera and settings that offer stunning contrasts between the colour-dappled world of the mall where the girls find true happiness and the dank hallways and scuzzy, cramped apartments in housing projects where the grime and poverty ache with despair, Roslaniec creates a visual palate that reflects the dichotomous lives of the girls. We see both the dreams (the mall, consumerism and easy money) and the realities (squalid homes where physical abuse and poverty run rampant, cramped classrooms presided over by frustrated teachers and sordid backdrops for all manner of sexual activity).

When I first saw the film, I felt quite strongly that an intermittently fine screenplay betrayed this perfection by veering into territory that seemed too expected and finally, much too convenient. Luckily, the film holds up very well on subsequent viewings in spite of this.

I still feel like the story rushes to a conclusion that strains the credibility the film garners in its first two-thirds. I wonder now, too, if this is less a script problem as perhaps one that occurred with respect to exigencies of production (perhaps on-set rewriting to compensate for lack of time to garner all the elements on the page) and/or post-production (where the result might have been a lack of footage to begin with or a second-guessing of what footage existed). Or, perhaps this is precisely the way the director wanted to make it. And there are also several elements within the screenplay that do work beautifully in tandem with other elements that work very well.

My quibbles aside, Roslaniec ends the film with such a daring and evocative final shot, that one forgives and frankly forgets the script’s eventual deficiencies in its last act. Film, after all, is a visual medium and as such, the final image speaks volumes.

The movie is dazzlingly directed and Roslaniec elicits fresh, natural and realistic performances from her young cast. All these elements combine to exquisitely capture the contrasts in these girls’ lives. Between their burgeoning sexuality and their willingness to risk it all for emotionless, loveless sex in exchange for money and other favours, the film delivers reality-based polar opposites to render a very solid narrative conflict that drives the film forward.

Mall Girls very successfully navigates the area of public school peer pressure and the various rollercoaster-like emotional rides these women are taken on, and indeed, choose to take.

This touching portrait of how womanhood in European cultures rooted in a Slavic tradition is assaulted, perverted and exploited is imbued with a very indelible reality. In a society and culture so full of promise, it bitterly offers only despair and easy ways to make poor and often tragic choices.

Countries like Poland, Russia and Ukraine have an ages-old history of a warrior mentality. It might take another thousand years to fully dissipate. Though in fairness to those traditions, one could also point to Western influences as having their own form of negative impact upon the treatment of women. To blend that with a male-centric combatants' mentality is a highly combustible mixture.

"Baby Blues", the new film from Kasia Roslaniec plays TIFF 2012. For ticket info, visit the TIFF website HERE.