From the start of Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace, there is a dooming sense that what we see won’t last. Father and daughter surviving in their makeshift camp, working hard to gather and cook food and make fires. She’s learning and he’s teaching. They keep their tools in the ground. At night, they ward off… Continue reading Leave No Trace: realist portrait, felt trauma, and alternatives
Discovery and Rohmer-alike and a setting of scenes I first discovered South Korean director Hong Sang-soo in one of my many wormhole journeys studying the latest cinema winners. As is a common practice for me, being an international awards geek, once I’ve seen a few of the big movies, I typically look for the winners… Continue reading Discovering Hong Sang-soo
Note: I detail specific scenes from the film. These are not necessarily spoilers, or even major plot point reveals. However, this post is a deeper dive. If you like watching clean slate, you might want to read this after the fact. Just saying... 🙂 Shoplifters is not director Hirokazu Kore-eda's first foray into the world of families.… Continue reading Shoplifters: family, love, and outside forces
Close-Up (Nemā-ye Nazdīk) follows an Iranian man, Hossain Sabzian, who is accused of fraud for assuming the identity of the famous Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf. He meets a woman on a bus and, after she notices him reading the script for Makhmalbaf’s The Cyclist, he says he is the director and eventually, after talking with… Continue reading Three Notes on Abbas Kiarostami’s Close-Up
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