Thursday, November 3, 2011

15 Films, 7 Days and 1 Boy

1. Mysteries of Lisbon dir: Raoul Ruiz
2. Le Havre dir: Aki Kaurismaeki
3. Mystery Fantastic Film!
4. Take Shelter dir: Jeff Nichols
5. Las Acacias dir: Pablo Giorgelli & Blue dir: Stephen Kang
6. Policeman dir: Nadav Lapid
7. Tyrannosaur dir: Paddy Considine
8. Persona dir: Ingmar Bergman
9. I Wish dir: Hirokazu Kore-eda
10. Good Bye dir: Mohammad Rasoulof
11. Another Earth dir: Mike Cahill
12. The Kid with a Bike dir: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
13. Even the Rain dir: Iciar Bollain
14. Elena dir: Andrei Zvyagintsev
15. The Yelllow Sea dir: Hong-jin Na

Notes: While I'm not going to be able to catch 25 films this time around I'm still insanely excited about this year's festival. Particularly given that I've received a late breaking reprieve from some work I was expecting to have to do which has allowed me to expand from 7 films to 15, and include the much anticipated Mysteries of Lisbon.

Aside from what promises to be 4 and 1/2 hours of twisty, fluidly directed period drama I'm also looking forward to Kore-eda's latest (I'm a pretty rabid fan of the Japanese master of low key, gentle character studies) even if its premise seems to be less ambitious than usual. Andrei Zvyagintsev has had my attention too, ever since I saw his gorgeously lensed, genuinely haunting The Return and by all accounts this one could be even better. Ingmar Bergman completes the top tier of my most anticipated films - I've never seen anything by him before (I know!) so seeing one projected in all its glory seems to be the right way to investigate.

My prospective list this time around is probably less adventurous then last time as I'd heard of, and had been anticipating, most of these films for quite a while now - although Policeman was a late breaking addition based on some emerging buzz out of NYFF. Still, the only thing that's causing me any trepidation this time around is the secret screening but that's mixed with equal parts excitement at seeing a real mystery film (ie one where you have no idea what the thing is until it begins to unspool rather than one where you find out a couple of days before). To some extent this is a bit of a shame - it's not good to feel safe with every film you walk into and Caterpillar turned out to be a really nice, albeit bracing, surprise last year.

No comments:

Post a Comment