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The Playlist
The obsessives' guide to contemporary cinema via film discussion, news, reviews, features, nostalgia, movie music, soundtracks, DVDs and more.Interviews
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Greta Gerwig Talks 'Frances Ha' & Working With Noah Baumbach -
Joel Edgerton On 'Wish You Were Here,' 'Jane' Drama & More -
James Gray On 'The Immigrant,' 'The Gray Man,' 'The Lost City Of Z' And More -
Brit Marling Talks 'The East' & Espionage Thrillers -
Nicolas Winding Refn Discusses 'Only God Forgives -
Justin Lin Talks 'Fast Furious 6' & The Influence Of Altman -
Interview: Noah Baumbach Talks 'Frances Ha' -
Ben Wheatley Talks 'Sightseers,' Violence & More -
Mark Romanek On 'One Hour Photo' & Leaving 'Cinderella'
The Playlist
Berlin Review: The Trials Of 'Camille Claudel 1915' Make For Trying Watching, Even With Juliette Binoche In Peerless Form
- By Jessica Kiang
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- February 16, 2013 12:02 PM
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- 1 Comment
Director Bruno Dumont ("The Life of Jesus," "Outside Satan") has made a name for himself with challenging, sometimes controversial films that often feature non-professional actors and considered, not to say glacial, pacing interrupted with scenes of violence. But with "Camille Claudel 1915" he abandons some aspects of that approach while ever more fully indulging others. So for the first time he has a name star in Juliette Binoche, who turns in a reliably committed and remarkably naked performance as the titular Claudel, but here Dumont slows the pace of the action to almost nil, and punctuates it only with long talky tracts until the film becomes either a masterpiece of the "slow and boring" school of cinema, or an occasionally excruciating form of Chinese water torture, depending on your point of view.
Berlin Review: Animated 'The Croods' Sacrifices Story & Character On Altar Of Impressive 3D Visuals
- By Jessica Kiang
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- February 15, 2013 2:00 PM
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- 11 Comments
We suspect our reaction may be out of step with the general consensus of press at our Berlin Film Festival screening of the "The Croods" today, if the guffaws and applause were anything to go by, but really that had us kind of baffled. The DreamWorks film, from writer/directors Chris Sanders ("How to Train Your Dragon," "Lilo & Stitch") and Kirk Di Micco ("Space Chimps"), features a starry voice cast in Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds, Catherine Keener, Cloris Leachman and Clark Duke, and an appropriately high concept: the Croods are a family of cavemen who have to evolve suddenly when faced with cataclysmic natural disasters and the arrival of a young Homo Sapiens with the ability to make fire.
Berlin Review: Ken Loach's 'The Spirit Of 45' An Effective But Conservatively Presented Doc About Radical Social Change
- By Jessica Kiang
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- February 14, 2013 10:02 AM
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- 0 Comments
British filmmaker Ken Loach has never been one to hide his politics. In fact the throughline to his long, exemplary career, whether on TV or in theaters, whether documentary or narrative, whether small-scale domestic drama (“Sweet Sixteen,” “Kes,” “Ladybird, Ladybird”) or sweeping historical epic (“The Wind that Shakes the Barley,” “Land and Freedom”), has always been one of social awareness and overtly left-wing sensibilities. His characters are often working class people chafing against the injustice and disenfranchisement of their societal roles in the face of powerful contemporary or historical forces. And nowhere is this more in evidence than in his latest film, documentary “The Spirit of ‘45,” which details the rise and fall of the British welfare state: the post-war socialist program of social reform and nationalization of industry, and the subsequent partial or total dismantling of these moves under Thatcher.
Berlin Review: 'Interior. Leather Bar' Is A Surprisingly Successful James Franco Experiment On Male Sexuality & Filmic Process
- By Jessica Kiang
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- February 12, 2013 3:43 PM
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- 2 Comments
So let's clear up a few misconceptions about this film -- and of course there are misconceptions, it's a James Franco project. In fact it's the third title to boast his involvement at this Berlin Film Festival (after "Lovelace" and "Maladies"), but here he is pulling double duty as co-director with Travis Matthews, and performer, as himself (kinda). Firstly, "Interior. Leather Bar" is not a recreation/reimagining of the "censored," never-shown 40 minutes from William Friedkin's "Cruising," nor even footage inspired by that missing footage. Instead it's a semi-scripted, hour-long documentary about the production of that reimagined footage, in which much less of the actual recreated footage appears than the stories around its making, the concept behind it and the utterly self-conscious, self-referential approach. Hope you're still with us?
Berlin Review: Wonderful 'Gloria' An Inspired Feat Of Writing, Direction & Performance
- By Jessica Kiang
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- February 11, 2013 11:57 AM
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- 0 Comments
Produced by rising Chilean force-to-be-reckoned-with Pablo Larraín ("Post Mortem," "No"), Sebastián Lelio's fourth feature, "Gloria," has proven one of our most pleasant Berlin Film Festival surprises. While films focusing on female protagonists have not been in short supply during this and previous Berlinales, many of them featuring strong central performances and a realist style, Santiago-set "Gloria" is marked out by two key differences that set it apart from, and above, many surface-similar films.
Berlin Review: James Franco-Starring 'Maladies' Maroons A Dream Indie Cast In A Wasteland Of Tiresome Self-Indulgence
- By Jessica Kiang
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- February 11, 2013 11:03 AM
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- 4 Comments
Carrying the dubious distinction of being a film that managed to try our patience after just five minutes, “Maladies” is for us best summed up in one word: wasteful. It is wasteful of the considerable talents of a fabulous cast, wasteful of a pleasingly off-kilter visual approach, and wasteful of our time. It is even wasteful of a director whose instincts, no matter how much he may want to kick against them, seem to lie more in the direction of the kind of classical, straightforward story he is at pains here to not give us.
Berlin Review: Biopic 'Lovelace' Oddly Uninterested In Linda Lovelace
- By Jessica Kiang
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- February 9, 2013 7:41 PM
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- 3 Comments
Not so much a film about Linda Lovelace as a film about a bunch of things that happen to Linda Lovelace, including a destructive marriage to seeming complete, total, bonafide scumbag sonofabitch Chuck Traynor, today saw the first international screening of Sundance pick-up “Lovelace” at the Berlin Film Festival. It’s a glossy, starry package featuring loving '70s set design, costuming and narratively crucial hairstyling (more on that later), but the main question was always around the casting of the leading lady, especially given that the last few years have seen a flurry of names come and go from both this and rival Lovelace project “Inferno” (which famously once boasted Seyfried’s “Mean Girls” co-star Lindsay Lohan).
Berlin Review: 'A Single Shot' With Sam Rockwell Unravels From A Tight Premise Into A Downbeat, Messy Misfire
- By Jessica Kiang
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- February 9, 2013 1:36 PM
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- 3 Comments
The main narrative surrounding the evolution of David M. Rosenthal’s “A Single Shot,” which premieres at the Berlin Film Festival today, has been about the longer-than-usual casting merry-go-round -- since 2009 a roster of talent as long as your arm has signed up then signed out of the film. However the fear that, as the accepted wisdom goes, there must be something fundamentally wrong with a project that takes this long to put together was somewhat mitigated by the kind of names who kept on stepping up: as worrying as it might be to lose the likes of (pre-breakout) Michael Fassbender, Alessandro Nivola, Forest Whitaker or Juliette Lewis, it doesn’t sting so hard when you get Sam Rockwell, William H. Macy, Jeffrey Wright and Jason Isaacs to show up instead -- all actors we admire.
Göteborg Interview: Director Volker Schlöndorff On ‘Calm At Sea,’ His Greatest Cinematic Failure & 'The Master'
- By Jessica Kiang
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- February 9, 2013 12:55 PM
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- 1 Comment
Presenting his new film “Calm at Sea” (reviewed here) in the Bio Roy Theater during the Göteborg International Film Festival last week, director Volker Schlöndorff said, in mock-pique, “It’s so great to be in this wonderful theatre, named after Sweden’s great filmmaker Roy Andersson. I‘m still waiting for my hometown to put up a theater in my name.” And perhaps given the level of esteem in which he is held, especially in his home country, the idea of one day catching a 2.30 showing at The Volker is not so farfetched. But of course Schlondorff’s career has hardly been plain sailing, with his towering achievement, the oddly compelling, uncanny adaptation of Günter Grass' “The Tin Drum” rather overshadowing the films that came before and after, especially having been crowned with an Oscar and the Palme d’Or.
Göteborg Interview: 'A Hijacking’ & 'The Killing' Star Søren Malling Shares His Thoughts On The American Remake & Much More
- By Jessica Kiang
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- February 5, 2013 4:58 PM
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- 0 Comments
So if asked to put an actor’s name to the Scandinavian drama tsunami of recent years, yes, most might point to Mads Mikkelsen, or maybe Stellan Skarsgård -- two Nordic actors who crop up not only in homegrown fare, but also increasingly in Hollywood productions. But one name that might not come so handily to mind, precisely because of his contrasting lack of U.S. credits, is Søren Malling’s. No matter, if you’ve been paying any sort of attention of late, you know his face. We got to meet the “A Hijacking,” the original “The Killing” and “Borgen” star at the Göteborg International Film Festival, where “A Hijacking” was close to wrapping up its stellar festival run.
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Recent Comments
"Love You More" is a great short.
Woodley is one of the best young actresses out there. Do not understand this at all! We all know the
Wow! Gus van Sant wanted it so badly that he even sent test footage and they went with her instead?
what Warren said. Also, Kanye is a douchebag...
Speak for yourself. I'm a fanboy who complained about her casting. Because she look "way
what Darj said...
I totally agree with you!! The "author" even mentioned The Hunger Games movie finally.
For me, Up and Wall-E have become rather overrated. Both fine films, but very conventional after
This "article" is ridiculous in comparing Spider-Man to those other movies, esbecially
For a guy who hates Pixar so much. You sure do write about them a lot.