Exberliner Nov: Skyfall, Pieta, One World Festival.

       On his 50th anniversary James Bond returns in Skyfall and, with the help of some new faces, breaths fresh life into the franchise.
       We find MI6 on shaky ground and having taken a bullet on duty in Istanbul, Bond (Daniel Craig on his 3rd outing) is far from full strength. What’s more a mysterious cyber terrorist by the name of Silva (Javier Bardem) is threatening to release the identities of a large number of undercover operatives working in the field. Bond must battle his ailing body but also obsoletion as he faces this new-age foe.
       In Silva we are treated to the best Bond villain in years, with Javier Bardem taking the current Bad-Guy trend of chaotic mega-anarchists and adding a sort of camp twist. Alongside Bardem the great Ralph Fiennes and relative newcomer Ben Whishaw (as Q) add plenty of class to the supporting roles but it's on the other side of the camera that the greatest progress has happened. Surely the most accomplished director to have taken on the job, Sam Mendes takes a shot at The Blockbuster and nails it. Borrowing Brad Bird's earnest humour and Christopher Nolan's keen eye for architecture he manages to deliver a Bond which feels both singular and timeless. It's all there; the Walter PPK; the DB9; The car chase through exploding fruit stalls; his strokes may seem broad but Mendes lashes them on with such a degree of skill it's hard to complain, and why would you, it's just too fun.
       The film can prove a tad overbearing at times as it basks in Britain's post Olympics euphoria and at 145 mins it's probably a touch too long, but by sniggering at recent over-complications and relishing in the old clichés, Sam Mendes has made a Bond which will delight the diehards and excite the rest of us in equal measures. 

Kim Ki-duk's Pieta

       Pieta is a visceral and captivating work which boasts plenty of depravity but also great warmth. Kang Do is a merciless loan shark whose method of balancing the books is to mutilate his borrowers and pick up the insurance cheques. It proves a solitary life for Kang Do but that all changes when Mi-Son, a woman claiming to be his mother, appears on the scene. Mi-Son exposes Kang Do to tenderness for perhaps the first time and, suddenly concerned with her protection, the young man gains a new purpose in life.

One World Festival: Jenny Perlin's The Perlin Papers

       This month the One World film festival returns to Berlin for its 9th instalment on these shores, screening 11 documentaries in Kino Arsenal and the new premises of the Czech centre. With human rights as its modus operandi the program will cover a wide range of subjects; from the reliable documentary cannon fodder of religion, sex and politics (Would You Have Sex With An Arab, 22 Nov, 19:30, Arsenal) to the somewhat more niche issue of ageing crypt squatters in the suburbs of Prague (Love on the Grave, 27 Nov 19:00, Czech centre). Chris Belloni’s Documentary Gay And Muslim explores, as the title might suggest, the lives of homosexual men living in Morocco’s strictly Muslim society; The obvious difficulties but also the strange paradoxes given the sheltered, male world of their upbringing (Nov 25, 20:00, Arsenal). Across 8 short films, Jenny Perlin’s The Perlin Papers blends video art, dialogue and imagery in an interesting meditation on the stacks of decaying files which once fuelled McCarthy’s communist witch hunts in the states (28 Nov, Arsenal). In globalisation doc Bitter Seeds, Micha X. Peleds attempts to contemplate the staggering suicide rates of India’s cotton farmers by focusing on the microcosm of a small farming town (26 Nov, 19:00, Arsenal). All films either English language or English subs.