NEGATIVE SPACE

Die Award-Season wird offiziell mit dem Telluride-Festival eingeläutet. Venedig ist immer noch das zweitwichtigste Filmfestival der Welt. Und Toronto bleibt die elementare Nachspiel-Plattform des Kalenderjahres für englischsprachige Filmkritiker, die sich keinen Trip nach Europa leisten konnten. Das bedeutet jede Menge Meinungen, die ich hier im Blog nach ganz subjektivem Gusto traditionell bündeln werde. Und zwar nach absteigender persönlicher Wichtigkeit, durch das Sterne-System geordnet: von ★★★★★ (Must-See) bis ★ (zur Kenntnis genommen, mein Interesse könnte aber nicht geringer sein).

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Most-Wanted 2013:

01. Under the Skin - Jonathan Glazer
02. Gravity - Alfonso Cuarón
03. Tom at the Farm - Xavier Dolan
04. Moebius - Kim Ki-duk
05. Stray Dogs - Tai Ming-liang
06. Miss Violence - Alexandros Avranas
07. Redemption - Miguel Gomes
08. Joe - David Gordon Green
09. The Sacrament - Ti West
10. Twelve Years a Slave - Steve McQueen

Kommentar: Mal schauen, ob Toronto am Ranking noch etwas ändern oder ergänzen kann. Wirklich sehr ansprechendes Venedig-Programm! Miyazakis "The Wind Rises" lief für mich außer Konkurrenz, da ich den seit seiner Japan-Premiere auf dem Schirm hatte.

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★★★★½

"Under the Skin" (Jonathan Glazer) - Venedig -

"Trance-inducing, beguiling, beautiful, the most fully-achieved film in competition. Johansson is extraordinary." (Oliver Lyttelton, Playlist) "UNDER THE SKIN is the riskiest, most sensual, most purely image-fuelled film in Venice comp." (Guy Lodge, InContention) "Totally and utterly baffled by this movie, and that's never a bad thing." (David Jenkins, Little White Lies) "UNDER THE SKIN is the best film at Venezia so far: a brilliant, bewitching ice-bath of a movie. But probably too divisive to win?" (Xan Brooks, Guardian) "UNDER THE SKIN is a mysterious marvel. Very funny at points. Although mostly creepy as hell." (Dave Calhoun, TimeOut London) "A bewitching, eerily erotic tour de force of sensory filmmaking. Best I've seen in Venezia competition." (Justin Chang, Variety) "Glazer’s astonishing film takes you to a place where the everyday becomes suddenly strange, and fear and seduction become one and the same. You stare at the screen, at once entranced and terrified, and step forward into the slick." (Robbie Collin, Daily Telegraph) "UNDER THE SKIN is not so much a film of fireworks, more a gradual inhuman accommodation of feeling and landscape." (Nick James, Sight & Sound) "Johansson is extraordinary here. She appears to be all eyes, not just undressing her male victims with her gaze but virtually peeling their skin away. She's spooky and erotic, a girl who fell to Earth and decided that she might like to stay." (Stephanie Zacharek, Village Voice)

★★★★

"Gravity" (Alfonso Cuarón) - Venedig -

"Somewhere, one imagines, the spirits of Stanley Kubrick and Max Ophuls are looking down in admiration." (Justin Chang, Variety) "I can think of no film quite like it." (Guy Lodge, InContention) "GRAVITY is great: Cuaron casts Clooney & Bullock against stunning canvas of 3D debris & roaring sound design." (Xan Brooks, Guardian) "Thrilling, and as close to feeling like you're in space as most of us will ever be." (Todd McCarthy, THR) "A genuinely tense and exciting lost-in-space thriller." (Mark Adams, Screen Daily) "One of the year's best." (David Jenkins, Little White Lies) "Alfonso Cuarón, whom I now count as one of our greatest living directors, hurled a massive bolt at me this morning with GRAVITY." (Stephanie Zacharek, Village Voice)

"Tom at the Farm" (Xavier Dolan) - Venedig -

"Xavier Dolan has been hammering the Hitchcock & Chabrol. A slippery one, but mostly in a good way. Strangely similar to STRANGER BY THE LAKE." (David Jenkins, Little White Lies) "Agreeably retro, darkly comic psych-thriller romance. A nice surprise. For my money TOM AT THE FARM is better than STRANGER BY THE LAKE, but it's close!" (Neil Young, THR) "Xavier Dolan's TOM AT THE FARM is a twisted treat and a Venezia highlight so far." (Justin Chang, Variety) "Xavier Dolan's kinky queer noir is his most accomplished, enjoyable and commercially viable work to date." (Guy Lodge, InContention) "An all-in wrestling match between self-indulgence and oddball delight, with plenty of fuel for both fans and detractors." (Lee Marshall, Screen Daily)

"Moebius" (Kim Ki-duk) - Venedig -

"Wow, Kim Ki-duk's MOEBIUS is some movie!" (Stephanie Zacharek, Village Voice) "Never thought I'd write this: Kim Ki-duk's MOEBIUS is very funny, not as usual, and even more wince-inducing than usual." (Nick James, Sight & Sound) "Prankster-provocateur Kim Ki-duk's latest film is repulsively funny." (Robbie Collin, Daily Telegraph) "A gloriously off-the-charts study in perversity featuring castration, rape and incest." (Leslie Felperin, Variety) "Kim Ki-duk's castration nightmare MOEBIUS makes ANTICHRIST look positively Capra-esque. Ghastly, hilarious, spellbinding stuff." (Justin Chang, Variety)

★★★½

"Stray Dogs" (Tai Ming-liang) - Venedig -

"Knockout. Best in comp by long, long way. If it doesn't win the lion, then best actor surely?" (David Jenkins, Little White Lies) "Not saying STRAY DOGS is a testing watch, but it has an unbroken 11-min shot of a man sitting on a mattress, eating a raw cabbage and crying." (Robbie Collin, Daily Telegraph) "Severely demanding, but casually dwarfs everything else at Venezia, and probably everything else from 2013." (Neil Young, THR)

"Miss Violence" (Alexandros Avranas) - Venedig -

"A story of horrific domestic abuse set in an impressively controlled narrative frame, MISS VIOLENCE is one of those films you wish you could erase from your mental hard disk after the screening." (Lee Marshall, Screen Daily) "Airless but accomplished sophomore feature is another one of the new Greek cinema's nightmare narratives." (Guy Lodge, InContention)

"Redemption" (Miguel Gomes) - Venedig -

"Wow. 23 perfect minutes. Effortlessly moving and droll. Dedicated to Marker & Ruiz, and worthy of them." (David Jenkins, Little White Lies) "Dazzled by the German section of Miguel Gomes' REDEMPTION at Venezia - didn't expect him to prove a virtuoso of the trippy avant-garde." (Neil Young, THR) "Miguel Gomes' mordant archive and text short REDEMPTION is 4 imaginary memories from 4 Europeans of note. Want to see it again." (Nick James, Sight & Sound)

"Joe" (David Gordon Green) - Venedig -

"Where PRINCE AVELANCHE extolled the virtues of booze, this paints it as root of all evil - a soulful southern/western." (David Jenkins, Little White Lies) "A culmination of David Gordon Green's career to date - rich, sturdy, unexpectedly funny. Cage the best he's been in... a decade?" (Oliver Lyttelton, Playlist) "UNDERTOW redux? If only. Yet another helping of reheated Malick/Cormac southern gumbo. Say it ain't so!" (Neil Young, THR) "Tye Sheridan sure has bad taste in father figures. More Southern rites of passage, more grimy than misty, women again the losers." (Guy Lodge, InContention) "Nicolas Cage reinvents himself again as a fine actor. A wonderful piece of Southern noir." (John Bleasdale, Cine Vue) "Nicolas Cage gives one of his most incisively nuanced performances in years in another distinctive film from David Gordon Green." (David Rooney, THR) "It is a powerful, stark and rather beautiful film." (Mark Adams, Screen Daily) "David Gordon Green's patiently observed, often unsettlingly violent drama can't but help but feel overly familiar." (Justin Chang, Variety)

★★

The Sacrament" (Ti West) - Venedig -

"Jonestowny horror nicely nightmarish in spells, but there's not quite enough kick in the Kool-Aid." (Neil Young, THR) "Really strong build up, little-to-no payoff. As a result, mostly comes off as an extended V/H/S segment." (Oliver Lyttelton, Playlist)

"Twelve Years a Slave" (Steve McQueen) - Telluride -

"12 YEARS is easily Steve McQueen’s finest film. A perfect blending of art & narrative. Brutal but compassionate. A great American epic." (Jeffrey Wells, HI) "This epic account of an unbreakable soul makes even Scarlett O’Hara’s struggles seem petty by comparison." (Peter Debruge, Variety) "Another powerful collaboration for McQueen and Fassbender. They make magic together." (Sasha Stone, AwardsDaily) "12 YEARS A SLAVE is a startlingly realized period drama, maybe the best movie about slavery ever. So help me, Ejiofer deserves that Oscar." (Eric Kohn, indieWIRE)

★½

"Night Moves" (Kelly Reichardt) - Venedig -

"I've not been at the front of the cheerleading group for Kelly Reichardt but I really like the brilliantly brooding NIGHT MOVES. By the way, the first hour of Reichardt's NIGHT MOVES is quite like THE GUNS OF NAVARONE." (Nick James, Sight & Sound) "Action and reaction, split elegantly and evenly across two acts; no need for third. Would be great at 80 mins. Fanning good." (Guy Lodge, InContention) "Kelly Reichardt's Night Moves is excellent; a sleek, unsettling eco-terrorist thriller. D Fanning and J Eisenberg very good." (Damon Wise, Empire) "Self-consciously sombre eco-terrorism anti-thriller of low-key, just-so, steady-boil moodiness." (Neil Young, THR)

★

"Labor Day" (Jason Reitman) - Telluride -

"LABOR DAY is that rare thing these days, a well wrought drama, a love story and a tear jerker. Sniffles in the house. Winslet in Oscar race." (Anne Thompson, indieWIRE) "LABOR DAY just killed. So sweet. So sad. Great. Reitman's best." (Sasha Stone, AwardsDaily) "Effective coming of age tearjerker w/MUD-like expressionistic crime plot, tonal shift for Reitman big." (Eric Kohn, indieWIRE)