Kenneth Lonergan's Margaret (2011)
I have long been a fan of Paquin and here Lonergan gives her the space to show off her deep layers of talent. The sprawling film is difficult and flawed but also infinitely more rewarding than most of the work currently coming out of the States. It feels most akin to a French art film, something Desplechin or Assayas would attempt.
Here Kiarostami, one of the cinema's warmest practitioners, the lovely wise soul of Iranian cinema, is working in the middle of the Japanese metropolis. Far removed are we (and he) from the wide open expanses of his classic earlier work.
Visually it is absolutely rapturous cinema, using modern black-and-white like the killer poetic weapon it can be when in the right hands (think Wenders' work with Muller or Dead man, again Muller). And Gomes' style, in addition to his visual approach, is as free-wheeling and exciting as Godard can be in his most effective moments.
Assayas impresses so much that I am forced to reconsider his other work and perhaps consider him as a much greater filmmaker than I once thought. Binoche and Stewart are perfectly cast and turn in as great of performances as at any point in their careers.
It washes over you, drowns you until you feel overwhelmed by its intelligence, superior knowledge, its grappling with something you might not even be advanced enough yet to recognize. But it is the small ideas that jut out (Plato's "Beauty is the splendor of truth") and the arresting images of the human body, dogs, water, and cinema spooling in back of a scene that penetrate deeply.
Hong's latest outing once again treads familiar territory - a doppelganger narrative, a filmmaker as main character and plenty of scenes of eating and drinking. This installment especially benefits from Hong's ability to capture so many of those awkward but charged emotions we have all experienced during the early stages of courting.
I know nothing of Filho's work, not even if the filmmaker is male or female (although the unusually sensitive treatment of the central female character leads me to think it is the latter). Filho is a graceful filmmaker, reminding me of Moretti in the artful, light way he glides through scenes.
Like his great previous film, Jarmusch seems to be in an internal dialogue with the past and with art. Whereas the excellent Lovers was with one of his favorite passions, music. This time around Jarmusch seems to be most concerned with another of his primary artistic passions, poetry.
I often felt her work was admirably minimal without the heft or depth of a Bresson or Ozu. But her latest feels different to me, saying a tremendous amount without saying much at all. Reichardt uses one of cinema's greatest weapons, silence, to get underneath her themes and wonderfully rich characters and stories.
The mastery on display is pitched at such a high level from second one to minute 123 that you almost take it for granted. But this is no ordinary work. It is a film that aspires to be great, is great, and gives hope to all filmmakers coming in Gray's wake.
Manoel de Oliveira's The Strange Case of Angelika (2010)
Raul Ruiz's Mysteries of Lisbon (2010)
Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life (2011)
Celine Sciamma's Tomboy (2011)
Abdellatif Kechiche's Blue Is The Warmest Color (2013)
Bruno Dumont's Li'l Quinquin (2014)
Frederick Wiseman's In Jackson Heights (2015)
Bi Gan's Kaili Blues (2015)
Hou Hsiao-hsien's The Assassin (2015)
Todd Haynes' Carol (2015)
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