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| Oldboy |
A cinder-block shaped Josh Brolin grunts and groans his way
through this fine remake of Park Chan-wook’s Korean-Wave favourite. He plays
Joe, a despicable drunk ad-man who is framed for his wife’s murder and left in
single room confinement for twenty years before being mysteriously released.
Lee took a mighty risk taking on such a beloved cult hit but fans can breathe a
collective sigh of relief. He keeps it visceral and strange while, quite
remarkably, upping Park’s wicked videogame violence. He even gives a short
cameo to a certain squid- and a slightly bigger one for a certain hammer…
 |
| The Counselor |
Like a
penalty skied over in the Champions League final, the shear catastrophic
calibre of this film is a sight to behold. Michael Fassbender stars as a legal aid to the criminal elite who finds himself in hot water when a sewage truck full of Heroine goes missing on the U.S.-Mexico border. Fassbender is just one of many
glittering names responsible but, regretfully, much of the blame must rest on the weighted
debut screenplay of Pulitzer Prize winner Cormac McCarthy- or perhaps whomever
let him loose... Oh, and Cameron Diaz has sex with a Ferrari.
 |
| Carrie |
Chloë Grace Moretz takes on the infamous roll of a
teenage social outcast with supernatural powers for the third adaptation of
Steven King’s debut novel. Ms. Moretz leads a strong female cast with Judy
Greer as her supportive teacher and Julianne Moore playing mother dearest as
director Kimberly Pierce takes aim at a younger demographic. The results are
decent despite lacking the strangeness of Brian De Palma’s classic but- in
light of recent events- seeing kids get mowed down in a U.S. school gymnasium
just doesn't sit right.
Back to showcase their picks from the international film
community’s elite festival circuit is Berlin’s increasingly sleek looking Around
the World in 14 Films and following on from a rather high calibre
year, the self-proclaimed festival of festivals has found a
selection worthy of such a title with 4 continents and 15 countries represented
over this terrific program. It all kicks off in Kino Babylon with A
Separation director Asgahr Farhadi’s The Past. Tahar Rahim
and Bérénice Bejo both star as Farhadi swaps Tehran with Paris for another
familial drama. Legendary space cadet Alejandro Jodorowski will be in
attendance as the festival screens his understandably surreal autobiographical
film The Dance of Reality. Jem Cohen mixes a visual poem on Vienna
with a charming peripheral love story in his quietly beautiful Museum
Hours. Out east, Jia Zhangke expresses the bitterness and disillusionment
in Chinese society with his violently subversive A Touch of Sin while
Hirokazu Kore-Eda continues to find great young performers with his latest
effort Like Father, Like Son. Both picked up gongs at Cannes last
May. Screening in Thalia Potsdam, Inside Llewyn Davis- the Coen’s
wonderfully lonesome take on the pre-Dylan folk scene in New York- offers the
festival’s biggest hitter but if there’s one film to seek out, it comes from a
little further north as Toronto born Sarah Polley examines our relationship
with fatherhood and memory in her soaring documentary heartwrencher Stories
We Tell.
