In Contention

Tag: Gomorrah

  • OFF THE CARPET: Make way for the little guys…or not

    Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting MarriedIt may be Labor Day, but the work at hand is breathing down our necks. So it is that we come to the first weekly Oscar column of the new awards season.

    Though to be frank with you, I’m beginning to wonder whether we’ll be able to keep the conversation going, much less interesting on a weekly basis as we push through the last four months of the year. I knew going in to this year that it was going to be a somewhat low-key season, and my own worst fears have been founded in a number of pre-Toronto screenings of films that will be discussed in a week’s time, films leaving me cold, irritated or otherwise just unconvinced.

    I don’t sense a lull on the level of 2005 by any means, but I do get the feeling that after two solid years of cinematic goodness, 2008 could just be one of those “rebuilding” years, to steal a sports term and painfully attempt its application here. It’s interesting (and telling) that my two favorite films of the year are a stoner comedy and a superhero adaptation respectively (though the latter obviously has a legion of fans banking on major awards success…more on that later).

    The most intriguing component for me is the playground that Toronto will provide for a bevy of independent and genuinely smaller product. The heavy-hitters (or, at the very least, the presumed heavy-hitters) are incomplete and not prepared for fall fest unveiling (aside from “Frost/Nixon,” which has already been seen and seems to be riding a wave of confidence at Universal).

    But efforts like Mike Leigh’s “Happy-Go-Lucky,” Jonathan Demme’s “Rachel Getting Married,” Vicente Amorim’s “Good,” Guillermo Arriaga’s “The Burning Plain,” Rian Johnson’s “The Brothers Bloom,” Richard Eyre’s “The Other Man,” etc. — true indies with a fighting chance to turn some heads — won’t have to suffer in the shadows of big studio films angling for the press of an Oscar season starting gun.

    Meanwhile, Cannes entries such as Fernando Meirelles’s “Blindness,” Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York,” Matteo Garrone’s “Gomorrah” and Steven Soderbergh’s “Che” get an uninhibited second chance in front of festival audiences. Ditto Clint Eastwood’s “Changeling,” in the case of the New York fest.

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  • Countdown to Venice: the future of festivals?

    So the Venice Film Festival kicks off tonight with its glossiest title, the out-of-competition “Burn After Reading.” Reviews ought to start trickling in tonight, though it’s worth bearing in mind that festival fever can often give the premature illusion of critical consensus.

    Screen International has a very handy rundown of the festival lineup – both in and out of competition – which paints a much clearer picture of the more international entries than anything else I’ve read so far.

    Less-covered competition films that particularly caught my eye include “Inju: The Beast in the Shadow,” a Franco-Japanese thriller starring the excellent Benoit Magimel, marking a return to fiction film for Oscar nominee Barbet Schroeder, “Jerichow,” a German riff on “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” and, by far the least heralded of the US entries, “Vegas: Based on a True Story,” a portrait of down-and-outs in the titular city from Iranian director Amir Naderi.

    (Not to mention an out-of-competition contingent that includes new works from such weighty auteurs as Claire Denis, Agnes Varda and Abbas Kiarostami, whose “Shirin,” starring Juliette Binoche, I’ve already mentioned is my most anticipated film of the fest.)

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  • Foreign film race begins… get ready to groan

    Variety carries details of the first official entry that I’ve heard of in the Best Foreign Language Film derby – Denmark has put forward “Worlds Apart,” from director Niels Arden Oplev. The country has a pretty good track record in this category, having won back-to-back in the 80’s with “Babette’s Feast” and “Pelle the Conqueror,” while Susanne Bier’s popular “After the Wedding” nabbed a nomination two years ago.

    “Worlds Apart,” which has already secured US distribution, is a small-scale pic focusing on a teenage Jehovah’s Witness forced to make a difficult choice when she falls in love with a non-believer. It all sounds terribly earnest, but that’s right up the Academy’s alley when it comes to this category. Reviewing the film at the Berlin festival back in February, Variety called it a “provocative, well-turned drama,” and speculated that a US remake could be on the cards.

    Apparently, the Academy has invited 96 countries to enter the race this year, with the submission deadline looming large on October 1. They should be looking to regain some credibility in this category after the embarrassing fiasco of last year’s race, which saw a banner year for world cinema reduced to the most tepid slate of foreign-language nominees in recent memory, as landmark pictures like “4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days,” “Lust, Caution” and “Persepolis” were, one by one, either snubbed or disqualified.

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  • NYFF reveals full line-up

    Mickey Rourke in The WrestlerThe full schedule of the 46th annual New York Film Festival was released today.  indieWIRE has the scoop.

    The big showcase I’m looking forward to is, of course, Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler” (which I touched on yesterday).  But also landing in the Big Apple will be Clint Eastwood’s “Changeling,” Mike Leigh’s “Happy-Go-Lucky” and Steven Soderbergh’s “Che.”

    Time will tell if the latter remains distribution-less after a North American bow.  Something tells me, given Soderbergh’s tenacity, that it will.

    I’m also interested in Matteo Garrone’s “Gomorrah” (with an “h” this time), which was a considerable favorite at this year’s Cannes fest, as well as Wong Kar-Wai’s “Ashes of Time Redux.”  Despite a personal distaste for the Chinese helmer, this project has a special something keeping my interest piqued.  Ari Folman’s Canne fave “Waltz with Bashir” will also make the trip.

    And then there is Steve McQueen’s “Hunger,” a meditation on the IRA hunger strike that made Bobby Sands a national hero in Northern Ireland.  I spent a weekend in Belfast while I was overseas this summer and remember coming across a giant wall mural of Sands, part of a guided tour with one of his former compatriots who also participated in the protest.

    I’ve been hearing fantastic things about Michael Fassbender’s performance in the film.  He dropped an amount of weight that supposedly makes Christian Bale look obese in “The Machinist.”  It might be one of the lowest flying turns on the awards radar so far, and if IFC Films can spin a valiant campaign around the actor, watch out.

    Check out the full roster of NYFF titles here.  The festival begins September 26 and runs through October 12.

  • Sight & Sound weighs in on Cannes

    OK, so Cannes is old news, but for me it’s never really over until Sight & Sound prints its annual Cannes review – for my money, the British magazine offers the most expansive and thoughtful coverage of the festival around. It’s not available online, but it’s worth grabbing a copy if you can. Meanwhile, I’ve picked out a few highlights from editor Nick James’ commentary on the key festival films.

    Interestingly, James agrees by and large with the jury’s selections. He names “The Class” as his favourite film of the festival, declaring it “so electrifying, satisfying and inspiring that it’s hard to believe it isn’t the work of professional fiction weavers at the top of their trade.” He also joins the chorus of approval for “Gomorra:” “So compelling is the detail that there’s no need for thriller conventions … Garrone’s direction makes incredible use of desolate locations and the acting is impeccable.” I must admit I am getting more excited about this film with every notice I read.

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  • No surprises as Cannes jury surprises

    Well, I missed that one badly. As is so often the case, the Cannes jury threw a curveball, handing their top prize to a late-breaking film that had generated very few column inches. Admittedly, I should have paid more attention to “The Class,” French auteur Laurent Cantet’s school-based docudrama.

    I was a huge fan of Cantet’s 2001 film “Time Out,” an ingeniously constructed character study, and while his 2005 follow-up “Heading South” was a major disappointment, Cantet’s name on the competition list should have rung more bells – not least when the very warm reviews started rolling in yesterday. Variety called it “one of the most substantive and purely entertaining movies in competition at Cannes this year.”

    Congratulations to Cantet then, and to France, scoring their first home victory at Cannes since “Under Satan’s Sun” triumphed in 1987. The other awards threw up fewer surprises, with Benicio Del Toro taking Best Actor as I, and many others, predicted. Meanwhile, “Three Monkeys” and the Italian one-two punch of “Gomorra” and “Il Divo” all took home major silverware, if not necessarily in the categories that I anticipated.

    I must admit to being shocked that the widely beloved “Waltz With Bashir” went home empty-handed; an omission for which Sean Penn and fellow juror Natalie Portman seemed almost apologetic. No matter: Ari Folman’s animated war documentary leaves the festival with a dedicated following, and I’m certainly putting it on my Best Animated Feature shortlist.

    The full list of competition winners follows:

    Palme d’Or: “The Class”

    Grand Jury Prize: “Gomorra”

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  • Cannes: uneducated guesses

    Well, it’s almost over. The competition films have all been screened, picked over and digested by the world’s critics, and now all that’s left to do is that finicky business of handing out some prizes. Sean Penn and his formidable jury (Marjane Satrapi, Alfonso Cuaron and Natalie Portman are just some of those involved) will be deliberating over a crop of films that has generally been deemed a solid selection, with few outright “Brown Bunny”-style disasters.

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  • Which film will take the Palme d’Or?

    Wells is already speculating and Foote is ready to move on, but let’s think it out here. In a festival that has been a bit underwhelming to most, both artistically for the critics and fiscally for the buyers, someone’s still gotta win best in show.

    Matteo Garrone’s “Gomorra” and Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “Three Monkeys” might be the safe guesses, as both were quite well-received. But the Palme has made a habit of being elusive to the films one would expect to claim it.

    Clint Eastwood’s “Changeling” enjoyed a pleasant love-fest for a time, before the director was roughed up by a colleague and then hit a wall of sorts with The New York Times.

    Then there are the fringe possibilities of Steven Soderbergh’s “Che” — mixed on receipt, but that hasn’t stopped efforts in the past — and “Synecdoche, New York” from Charlie Kaufman, which has the benefit of being the last film out of the gate.

    What’s it going to be?

    If I had to bet, I’d say “Three Monkeys.” If I ventured a guess in the midst of rampant unpredictability (which is Cannes in a nutshell), I’d say “Synecdoche, New York.”

    We’ll see how it pans out over the weekend.

  • The story so far

    The Times of London has a very handy roundup of the highlights of the Cannes Film Festival thus far, echoing the widespread acclaim for such titles as “Gomorra,” “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” “Waltz With Bashir,” and the long-awaited new film from Terence Davies, “Of Time and the City” – which, while out of competition, has probably been the festival’s most universally adored film so far. They also share my suspicion that Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “Three Monkeys” may nab the Palme d’Or over the more extravagantly hyped contenders.

  • Cannes update: Italy’s ‘Gomorra’ wows ’em

    (EDITOR’S NOTE: New Cannes poll in the sidebar as of this morning, FYI.)

    We’re at the halfway point now, and this year’s Cannes Festival seems to have been a pretty staid affair so far. With the dust settled, “Blindness” appears to have been labelled an honourable disappointment. Meanwhile, some of the big arthouse names in the competition are widely agreed to be treading water.

    Walter Salles’ “Linha de Passe” appears to be worthwhile, but hasn’t generated the critical heat of “Central Station” or “The Motorcycle Diaries.” “Lorna’s Silence,” the latest from Belgium’s hitherto unimpeachable Dardenne brothers, here aiming for a record third Palme d’Or, has garnered respectable notices (and an outright pan from Jeff Wells), but doesn’t seem to be up to the standard of “Rosetta” or “The Son.”

    There have been some international successes. “Three Monkeys,” the latest from Turkey’s great Nuri Bilge Ceylan, has gathered predictably excellent reviews, of which The Hollywood Reporter’s take (a “brilliant, gorgeously visual film”) is typical. If I were to bet on a Palme d’Or winner (always a silly thing to do), this would be it – though I fear this will have as much trouble crossing over to the US and UK markets as Ceylan’s previous work.

    One of the real breakout films of the festival so far, however, appears to be Italian director Matteo Garrone’s “Gomorra,” an intricate documentary-style look at the Camorra crime empire of Naples, based on a bestselling expose by Roberto Saviano. Amid generally enthusiastic reviews, The Hollywood Reporter states:

    Powerful, stripped to its very essence and featuring a spectacular cast (of mostly non-professionals), Matteo Garrone’s sixth feature film “Gomorra” goes beyond Tarantino’s gratuitous violence and even Scorsese’s Hollywood sensibility in depicting the everyday reality of organized crime’s foot soldiers.

    In his always-worthwhile Cannes roundup, The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw concurs:

    The competition films have been more than a little upstaged by Matteo Garrone’s Gomorra, a gut-wrenchingly brutal film about notorious Naples gangsters, the Camorra. The title’s twist implies the whole area is sunk in a kind of self-created hell, almost literally, since the mobsters are responsible for unsafe nuclear dumping. Perhaps it tells us nothing we don’t already know about gangsters, but there’s no denying the film’s power.

    I confess I am not very familiar with Garrone’s work, but I, for one, am intrigued by this. It will be interesting to see how this one plays out. From the sounds of things, if the film finds the right buyer, there could be “City of God”-style crossover potential here. Or nothing. You never can tell at Cannes.