You can always spot the moment when these great festivals lose their steam. The hustle bustle roles on to greener pastures as the business side of things comes to an end. Those who keep track of such things note that at Venice this tends to happen a little earlier than elsewhere.

This festival is the oldest in the world, it's credited for having shown its pretenders exactly how it's done, and yet Venice has slipped from the rankings in recent times, and this is largely down to the time of year it takes place. It might seem, at times, that the Academy Awards are a 365 day affair. Indeed, L.A.'s most coveted envelopes are usually still waiting to be licked when news of "the next Little Miss Sunshine" is heard from Sundance. However, by the time the movie world descends on the Lido, things are genuinely about to heat up. 

Toronto, Telluride and, most recently, New York have become robust contenders for awards season's hottest titles but it's been Venice's genteel principles which have held it back. Putting last year's opener- and subsequent Oscar smash- Gravity to one side, the commercialism of other top brass festivals is really yet to take off. It's a problem for the old dame, no doubt about it, and yet for punters and critics at least, it remains this festival's greatest charm. The commercial side simply pales in comparison to what goes on in other parts of the world and the short ques and manageable program are testament to that. It's because of all this that Venice stands apart but,as evidence suggests, it's the exact same reason why it's losing its draw.

Keaton and Norton in Birdman

Even without a cathartic standout moment this year, the standard has been strong. Birdman slayed critics for all the right reasons and, despite leaving empty handed here on Saturday night, will surely glide into awards season feeling battle hardened and tall. 99 homes showed us that Ramin Bahrani still has a few more gears to climb; Hungry Hearts subverted our indie expectations and, somewhat controversially, went home with both of the acting gongs. The Italians examined politics, the mafia and mamas, as they tend to do, and The Look of Silence (winner of the Grand Jury prize) confirmed that director/monk Joshua Oppenheimer is taking documentary making into pastures unknown. Some of these will surely kit out their mantelpieces in the coming months and yet the festival's big winner- and for what it's worth, the best that this writer has seen- will probably not get a look in in at all.

To say that Roy Andersson's A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence was the most uplifting picture in competition says a lot about what we've seen this past week. It's a masterpiece of absurdist comedy which packs plenty of laughs to go with its human tenderness and monstrous hammer blow at the end. A fine winner if ever there was one, but the organizers must still be stewing over the titles which didn't show. Eyelashes are alleged to have been fluttered in the direction of David Fincher (Gone Girl) and Paul Thomas Anderson in the last few months. PTA picked up best director here two years ago for The Master so it must have been a prickly one to swallow for the selection committee to see Inherent Vice join Fincher and co at New York's ever growing Autumn contender.

Andersson picks up the Golden Lion (Reuters: Tony Gentile)

With the bloated whale that is Toronto, alongside Telluride and now New York, the early Autumn market has become increasingly competitive in recent years and if it is to keep its status, this godfather (apologies) of the festival circuit will surely need to up its game. This means a greater emphasis on commerce; on markets; and perhaps a bigger scale too. This would surely mean a move to a new home away from the decadence of the Lido's Palazzo Del Cinema and Excelsior hotel. Necessary, for sure, but no doubt a terrible shame.

These surroundings, all things considered, remain heavy with class. Compared to the dog-eat-dog queue system and cavernous screening rooms in Cannes, the theaters here are simply stunning; the press rooms and conference halls too. Movie stars glide off shiny Vapparettos as clammy journalists with little to no Italian (guilty) shuffle awkwardly next to pristine suited men. They say the city's sinking but if it's bourgeois spectacle you're after, this grand event still stands on its own. Cannes strives on commercialism and controversy just as much as its caliber; Berlin prides itself on a more populist setup and scale; but this place has managed to hold onto something which the cream of movieland seems to have forgotten: Its principles.

Morning press screening at the Salle Grande

The city holds a place in the cinematic pantheon for a number of reasons. Indeed, many film makers have found strange things in its endless narrow alleyways and chalky blue canals- Dirk Bogarde flaking on the beach in Visconti's Death in Venice; Donald Sutherland losing his marbles in Roeg's Don't Look Now or, for readers of a certain age, a particularly spooky level of Tomb Raider 2. The beauty of such Unesco quilted surroundings almost borders on the tedious at times. Stanley Kubrick once wrote that making a film can be like trying to write War and Peace in a bumper car in an amusement park. You feel that even the most bog-standard photographer would capture something splendid under similar circumstances here. 

Will these dignified old school aesthetics be enough to keep em coming? Or is the old dog just not cut out for such new tricks? Time, of course, will tell, but we won't be barging the life-rafts just yet.

Roy Andersson closes out (for now) his absurdist trilogy on 'what it's like to be a human being' with another masterfully crafted series of deadpan, drip-dried, comedy vignettes. Armed with a characteristic jet black wit; the odd unexpected hook to the stomach; and an impeccable eye for cinematic detail; the 71 year old director has found a warm defiant humanity amdst all that overcast Scandinavian gloom. 

We open, as they do in that part of the world, with a few short gags about death. We see a daft looking fella take in a natural history exhibit; and a canteen deciding what to do with a dead man's food; before happening upon our two downtrodden leads. Sam and Jonathon (Nils Westblom & Holger Anderson respectfully) are a pair of traveling joke shop salesmen who stumble about town, flogging their wares. They appear relatively chuffed with their current haul, all things considered, but no one else in town seems to feel the same.

This act provides a point of focus from scene to scene but Andersson's films have always been more of a variety show. We get a tremendous musical bar scene in 1943; a hands-on dance instructor groping one of her troupe;  and a cavalry filled cafe as prince Charles XII heads off to war. We might laugh at, instead of with, these miserable souls, but the real shake of watching this film is that, like it or not, you see yourself up there too. 

Anderson hones a particular brand of humour which seems both ornate and absurd. Had they been born on that particularly chilly peninsula, it's the sort of stuff you might expect the Pythons to have done. However, unlike the Python's (all due respect), Anderson happens to be a top level aestheticist too. His lovingly hand crafted sets express a mad, tragic gloom. His colour palette recalls over-boiled cabbage and his cast look like they've never seen a warm sunny day. 

It's all counterpointed beautifully to the marching tones of Glory Glory Hallelujah. It's a simple and effective underscore, which plays throughout, but Andersson uses it in a way to provide the film's last blow. Without giving too much away, the director brazenly holds a mirror up to any lingering colonialist guilt but also to those who remain blissfully ignorant to it. The image alone is an absolute jaw-dropper; but the sweep from humour to depravity is utterly profound.

The director has managed just 6 feature films in the last 45 years but he assured us this week that, thankfully, Pigeon will not be the last. With this trilogy he has shown a standard of technique and artistry which is rarely seen on screen. Funny; life affirming; tragic; sublime. In fewer words: A masterpiece. The Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion might have just turned a snotty shade of green. 

 

After one of the most bizarre career slumps in recent memory, David Gordon Green is back doing what we all knew he did best. This isn't the one-stop return to earlier glories which we hoped it might have been but it does represent another finely taken stride.

Manglehorn stars a resurgent 74 year old Al Pacino as a lonesome locksmith in love with a cat. He lives a solitary life in his rundown home; writing endless letters to an unresponsive old flame, while his wealthy son stays distant. He passes the time playing slots and eating dinner in fluorescent lit bars and sterile restaurants until a friendly bank clerk finds a way to squeeze into his life.

It's an enjoyable watch thanks to Pacino's old pro performance, and it does bare Gordon Green's quiet Texan stamp, but a vague, nagging unresolved feeling remains that we never really knew this man. When used well, ambiguity can be one of cinema's most powerful weapons, but Green's super stylized rhythyms here work more to distract then enhance and a pretentious grand reveal late on does little to excite.

Green displays some of his more recent, less palatable tastes here- heavy dreamlike editing; an overuse of monologue-but he has returned to sort of scrap yard film making which once saw him hailed as American independent cinema's next big star. With Manglehorn, alongside Joe and Prince Avalanche (prize winners over the last two years in Venice and Berlin respectfully), however, the Texan is certainly back on track.  

Manglehorn is not the George Washington successor we still find ourselves pining for today, but it does suggest that we might not have to hold our breath much longer.

Tahir Rahim stars as an Armenian man who is stricken from his family home in Mardin, Turkey at the beginning of the Armenian genocide. We follow his brutal odyssey around the globe as he attempts to re unite with his two twin daughters. It doesn't have the class of Fatih Akin's earlier efforts by any means but this is still an ambitious, wide reaching, old school, sweeping epic which keeps the director's humanist passions burning at its core. 

The story charts a classic hero's quest. We meet Nazaret Manoogian as he is lifted from his home and separated from his loving wife and daughters. Nazaret must first survive gruelling labour and death squads in the Mesopotanian dessert before tragedy, and luck, intervene. Our hero finds work in a soap factory nearby as the situation gradually begins to settle down but when news of his daughters finally does arrive, he sets on a rather epic search to find them.



Heroes on such quests often harbor an ability which separates him from the rest, but Nazaret's, at first glance, doesn't seem like much of an ability at all. At one point early on, in the Mesopotamian dessert, he and a group of Armenian men are captured by a Turkish death squad and most of the group are slaughtered. Nazaret gets off with just a bad neck wound but it is enough to rob him of his voice. In other circumstances this would be a hindrance and, of course, it often holds him back, but Akin twists it the other way, turning our hero into a sort of silent witness to this tragically untold story. We watch an empire crumble into a thousand warring voices, but it is the man who cannot speak who guides us.

Many critics, it would seem, have been disappointed by the film's obvious efforts for wider appeal. Nazaret and the other Armenians speak English despite the fact that in the film, as far as I can tell, three other languages are spoken. The violence is shocking but it is painted in broad bloody strokes and, it must be said, this is not the only instance of an uncharacteristic heavy hand.

Simon Arkabian- one of the films leads, of Armenian descent- stated that this is not just the first film which  tackles the subject to have a potential for wide appeal; it is the first film to tackle the genocide full stop. It's difficult to say whether we are given a true sense of what went on but it is still an old-school gripping watch. We can only hope The Cut will not be the defining film on this atrocity, but if it can pry open that floodgate, even the tiniest bit, then it is surely worthwhile. We assume better is still to come from Fatih Akin, but his latest still demands a watch.

Three days into this year's Venice film festival and things are finally starting to clear. The San Polo alleyways seem that bit less narrow; the fruit and veg guys that bit easier to find. Over in the Salle Darsena, however, we found Documentary film maker Joshua Oppenheimer clearing up some smoke of a much darker kind.

Oppenheimer pillaged film festivals and newspaper copy the world over last year with The Act of Killing, his horrifying expose of Indonesia's U.S. supported slaughter of roughly one million supposed communists. Using his status as an American film maker, he convinced the aging death squad killers to get in front of the camera and re-enact the atrocities. The results were harrowing; unique; sensational. His follow up was shot a few years before that film's release, and it serves as the correct accompaniment to it.

The Look of Silence follows a local spectacles salesman called Adi. We learn that Adi lost his brother to the old regime but, having been born after the slaughter, he has been somewhat blinded to the horrors. Adi's brother's murder, we learn, was infamous amongst the militia men for the sheer scale of its brutality and so it was only a matter of time before it came on Oppenheimer's radar. When he eventually learned of this horrendous event, the director decided to track Adi down, reveal it to him, and then document the brave man's efforts to confront the men involved. 

Headstrong, dignified Adi only seeks some modicum of emotional resolution, so he calls upon those responsible armed with just his optical prescription test. The murderers themselves wish to see things clearer, not knowing that this unassuming optician seeks the same thing too; a central metaphor so neat it's almost difficult to believe.

Praise for this film will not be difficult to find so I will finish on a far less fashionable point. It can be difficult to get a real idea of the level of exploitation a documentary film has reached. How those involved put themselves in such positions of risk when the film maker, it would seem, has so little to lose? Adi was present in the press conference, looking shell-shocked but dignified, fielding questions on his family and loss in the most decadent room imaginable. The man has had to uproot his family and leave his country as Oppenheimer sits next to him, practically beaming, happily referencing his recent brush with the academy awards. 

His films, of course, will do an enormous amount of good, but there was just something there which did not sit right. The final question came when a reporter asked what his next project would be. The director stayed silent until the moderator repeated it: Oppenheimer then grinned from ear to ear "I heard, I bowed". Very few films will ever achieve what these remarkable documentaries have done, but perhaps we should look a little closer, that glistening transparency might just be murkier than we think.

Lets take a moment and think back to Venice 2003 and we find a young director from Mexico with his first feature in the English language. It's a gloomy examination of human suffering titled 21 Grams. Skip forward to today and we're back on the Lido. In the time which passed, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu has become one of the most respected directors in world cinema and, up until this week, his films have followed 21 Grams' same gloomy line. However, if the director’s career to this point has played to the bleak tones of a sinking Titanic quintet, his latest outing walks to the brash beat of free flowing jazz.

Birdman stars Michael Keaton as Rikkan Thomson; a goofy and deranged version of Keaton himself. Rikkan is a franchise actor of a certain age who hopes to reclaim artistic clout by writing, starring and directing in a Broadway play. We find him pouring his heart, soul and wallet into the production but of course, it’s driving him mad. The trope might sound a touch cliche, but what separates Birdman’s story arc from others which have come before is that our hero is haunted by the superhero role he's trying to leave behind. Voices are heard; powers envisioned; and everyone around him helps to twist the psychological knife.

Ed Norton lays waste to all sorts of scenery as one of those talented thesp-with-integrity types. Emma Stone does the rehab daughter; Zach Galifianakis does the long suffering agent; Andrea Riseborough does the want-away lover; each playing their respective parts in Keaton’s mental demise. 

An wild marvel of raw technical achievement; the film plays out entirely within the confines of the play’s production and, roughly, within the confines of the theatre itself. The setting is uncomfortably tight and claustrophobic, and it’s in these confines that master cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki plays his greatest trick card. 

There are some flashy Saul Bass looking credits at the beginning and a brief dream sequence late on but, apart from that, this 119m film is presented as one single flowing take. There’s a bit of scene stitching afoot- some good, some bad- but for a full-on jarring single-shot experience, Birdman emphatically pulls it off. Cameras float through windows in an otherworldly fashion, the story arc loosely jumping and skipping through time.

Add to all that the surrealist lighting; the flawless choreography; and the rattle of Antonio Sanchez' jazz drum score and you have a film not just of visual sophistication, but a remarkably singular experience too. 

In 2003 this fine director gave us a film with its eyes pointed down. 

He has returned this week with a boot through the saloon door. Big swingin' dick and all.

Alice Rohrwacher's second feature film is a semi biographical account of growing up in rural Tuscany told mainly through the eyes of a family's eldest child. It's simple in its set up; dreamlike in delivery; and transcendental in its beauty.

We meet Gelsomina. A 12 year old girl just getting to grips with life as she helps around on the family farm. The film focuses on, although not exclusively, her relationship with her father, her mother and her eldest sister. She has no brothers and so her hermetic father Wolfgang is determined to see her take over the family's lot. He's a bit of a brute but seems decent deep down. They take in a young German lad called Martin with some sort of juvenile record. Martin and Gelsomina can't speak a word to each other but there's no doubting young love's on the cards. One day out swimming the girls happen upon a Felliniesque looking TV shoot with Monica Bellucci as its Dolce Vita. The station are shooting an advert for an upcoming competition of local wonders and since Gelsomina has a particular knack for keeping bees, she decides to throw in. 

Director Alice Rohrwacher grew up in rural Tuscany to a beekeeping father so we can presume the film to be biographical, to some extent at least. Whatever the case though that familiarity shows. She paints such a perfect portrait of rural Europe in the early 90's that you genuinely believe you are looking at a family which is vividly real. Rohrwacher draws marvelous performances from both of her young leads, who bring shyness, natural humour and charm in spades. Their pastel leggings and baggy jumpers feel heavy with authenticity too and Hélène Louvart's 16mm photography is near flawless in its execution. Indeed, as anyone who grew up in the 90's can attest, not a single frame would look out of place in any scrapbook of that time. 

As the minutes float by, you get a real sense that the director has put her heart and soul up there on screen. The picture seems to ache with the pains of being that age. Gelsomina feels ready to shift more into adulthood but her father struggles to accept that she's no longer a child. The imagery flourishes with innocence and youth- the magic of a beam of light, the weight of a pile of spilled honey- but also writhes with growing pains too. Gelsomina and her closest sister often bond over their favourite song, but when it comes on the radio- with Martin in the room- she lashes out at her in shame. The young girl is devastated; a sting of rejection we all shudder to know.

The titular Wonders of this stunning film are of the competition Gelsomina enters but, of course, this is a film seeped in the wonders of growing up too. The girls look at Monica Belushi's TV presenter as if she were some rare bird of paradise, like nothing they've ever seen. A TV shoot in a cave might have been picked from one of Werner Herzog's more vibrant dreams. With all the struggles that come with film festivals- the cost, the lackluster films, the sardine tin squeeze- these occasions can be jading to even the most wide eyed and earnest of viewers. You can find yourself drained at times but then, right when you least expect it, something comes along and gets right underneath your skin; blows away the cobwebs; and, if it's really really good, gives a moment of clarity to all that overwhelming chaos of life. 

The packed out Salle Debussy relegated me to a seat on the balcony's extreme left, a tower of speakers blocking off 10% of the left of screen, but it didn't matter. I will be astonished to see a better film at this year's Cannes film festival or beyond that even for 2014. With weighted austere fare like Mr. Turner and Winter Sleep in the mix, prizes might prove hard to come by, but with Jane Campion heading the jury, Ms Rohrwacher might just be in luck. 

Whatever the case, as thing's stand we'll be routing for her this evening. Truly life affirming stuff.

As the Cannes film festival begins to wind down we happen upon- reportedly- Ken Loach's final narrative feature. Jimmy's Hall is a quaint sort of outing- and the acting at times can let it down- but as an impassioned, well researched and idealistic study, it’s up there with the director's best.

The plot follows the true life story of Jimmy Gralton, a socialist from Leitrim who moved to the States after the civil war only to return ten years later to his local town. At the bequest of his neighbours he decides to rebuild the village’s community centre; the Pearce & Connolly Hall. Jimmy reinstates painting, literature and singing classes along with nights of Jazz music (god forbid!) with the records he brought home. The hall seems to light the whole town up but, of course, falls foul of the local establishment. The priest (Jim Norton in full bishop Brennan mode) is first to denounce him as a communist before the blueshirts follow suit.

Loach hones in on a very delicate moment in Irish politics here, a crossroads of sorts between the war of Independence’s conclusion and the beginning of the troubles in the North. Similar to the post war years in Britain; a subject which has always been close to the director’s heart, his argument is of a missed opportunity for a socialist Ireland. The detail in clothing and the Offaly landscape are all presented beautifully through Robbie Ryan’s gorgeous photography but a sense of realism is hard to get a hold of and, regrettably, that's due to the surprisingly poor cast. It’s not a criticism you would normally level at Loach, the director often works wonders with nonprofessional actors, but here it really can’t be denied. The lines come out a bit too clunky, the speeches a touch too brash. This isn’t to say the film doesn’t work as such- it's still a fine, thoughtful, impassioned piece of work- but the flaws are still apparent.

A sure sense of pride was still on offer for any Irish attendees in the packed out Salle Lumiere. Dotted cheers could be heard for the Irish Film Board logo, as were belly laughs for some of the more colloquial lines, but all in all the response was warm. The film was met with a rousing applause and a good round of clapping-along could be heard as the credits' music rolled.

The director has been here a record 13 times before and if rumours are to be true this could very well be his last. He hasn't exactly ended on a classic per se but Jimmy’s Hall is still a pleasant end to the affair.

The carpets roll up tonight in Potsdamer Platz after what has been an exhausting but rewarding festival. Previews began on January 8^th and since then this knackered writer has seen 66 films from this enormous program. Some good, some bad and some butt ugly. These were the best bits.

Best press Conference: Nymphomaniac: Part I (Uncut)

Few can elicit such press salivation as Lars Von Trier. The grade-A messer was dubbed Persona Non Grata at Cannes for slightly sympathising with Adolf Hitler in the Meloncholia press junket. He hasn’t given one since but showed up in Berlin in a t-shirt emblazoned with the French festival's logo. Still he did not sit for the conference but a fellow headline grabber did. Shia LaBeouf stole the show from the great Dane by sitting in silence, chewing gum in a baseball hat, till the first banal question came his way. His response was to quote Eric Cantona’s Sardines/trawler quip and leave the room.

The director stayed silent but the Von Trier circus was most certainly in town.

Best Line:

“It’s just posh cunts telling thick cunts to kill poor cunts”

-          A Belfast republican gives his glowing review of the British armed forces in surprise favourite 71’.

Top 5 films:

5. The Little House

Yoji Yamada

A wonderfully traditional portrait of romance in wartime Japan delivered with the assured delicate touch of its old pro director. It was the last competition film to screen and we welcomed it with open arms.

4. 71’

Yann Demange

From the eyes of a young British soldier, 71’ not only captured the incredible complexity of what was going on in Belfast in the lead up to Bloody Sunday, but also managed to do so without taking sides. We entered the screening with extreme prejudice but soon gave in. A remarkable achievement from first time director Yann Demange and, let’s hope, a springboard lead role for the inexplicably overlooked Jack O’Connell.

3. Nymphomaniac

Lars Von Trier

If Lars Von Trier was put on this earth for the sole purpose of annoying everybody, this could very well be his magnum opus. The feeling of anticipation at the packed house press screening is something only Von Trier could muster. He shows us we’re nothing more than a bunch of degenerates, and we love it.

2. Jack

Edward Berger

There is more than a hint of the Dardenne brothers to Edward Berger’s Jack, but the German director has taken their story out of the council estates and plopped it smack in the narcissistic middle class. The results were fresh and defiantly powerful.

1. The Kidnapping of Michel Houllebecq

Guillaume Nicloux

Michel Houllebecq played himself with nihilistic swagger for this fly on the wall Stockholm syndrome gem. Guillaume Nicloux's film was like a bucket of paint stripper to all the festival's showbiz and nonsense.

It was also very very funny. Simply unmissable. 

 

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.

Much lauded as a taste-maker in Toronto and Sundance, our continent’s annual red carpet Gala offers its own people’s choice award for the 17^th time. Touching down in Berlin this December the European film awards will dish out its publicly voted gong to one of eleven thoroughbred crowd pleasers. Not forgetting Amour ransacked the place last year without a mention in this category so best to forget your Ulrich Seidls for now and cast a vote for one of these gentler efforts. With 11 countries represented, nominees range from Amour’s fellow Oscar nominee Kon Tiki to everyone’s favourite South African legend Searching for Sugar man. Joe Wright’s glittery Anna Karenina and the Ewan McGregor tsunami vehicle The Impossible add a little showbiz to the pack but perhaps we should all keep a finger or two crossed for a local effort as Tom Schilling’s crisp Berlin odyssey Oh Boy steps up to the plate.

Runner Runner

Likable Justin Timberlake plays an unlikable Princeton student paying his way through school by playing the numbers on an online poker site. He loses it all in one sitting but is convinced he’s been duped so he tracks down the sites sleazy mastermind (Ben Affleck). Furman’s film is slick but charmless and seems to buckle under the weight of its two stars. Nominations and facial hair had Affleck looking like a Hollywood heavyweight eight months ago but we seem, once again, to be veering off course. The Bat-Signal beckons.  Sighs all round. 

Resting on the banks of the Spree in the Deutsche Historische Museum lies Berlin's Zeughaus Kino, a beautiful film house and without doubt one of the city's best kept secrets. Comfortable seating, pleasant clientèle and tall handsome windows which overlook the river. The ticket prices are perhaps the city's most reasonable but- for better or worse- It's 165 seats remain sparsely occupied. The cinema boasts some great programming too and last month it played host to Berlin's DokuArts festival, a remarkable documentary festival which focused solely on films about the Arts. Rodney Ascher's juicy Shining conspiracy caper Room 237 was the festival's poster boy (you can read what I said about it here) but DokuArts also offered two of the most profoundly moving studies this writer has seen.

Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction

Sophie Huber (2012)

Sometimes in film making, as in life, it’s better to take a step back. Breath. See the tapestry as a whole. Harry Dean Stanton has been a cinematic enigma his entire career and so for her study of the man, its little surprise film maker Sophie Huber decided to do just that. Shot in the noir-y settings you might hope for- a night drive though LA, Stanton’s local boozer, in black and white at home- her enchanting meditation on the legendary character actor never feels the need to wade in deep. Stanton reflects on an astonishing life: His friendship with James Dean and later with Brando; living with Jack Nicholson; jogging with Dylan. On film he sings with his pal Kristofferson. He drinks a coffee with long time collaborator David Lynch and gives him an interview. He muses on life and the cosmos. It’s a film which accepts that some surfaces are not made to be broken. So when a window is left ajar and we chance a peak inside it hits us even harder. And these moments only come when the actor sings. Revealed in tender close-up, that wonderful weathered façade flickers with longing, regret and who knows what else. Film has always been fascinated with the meandering mind. It's ability to capture it is one of the main things which sets it aside from other art forms. In Stanton we've cherished perhaps America’s best meanderer. Huber seems to know this. Her beautiful documentary does too.

A Story of Children and Film

Mark Cousins (2013)

A perfect companion to Cousins’ near- definitive 15 hour love poem to the movies- The Story of Film an Odyssey- A Story of Children and Film explores, in a similar fashion, what makes kids so damn cinematic. Cousins shoots a home video of his niece and nephew with a marble run and then picks apart what we see. Kids do certain things when they have that sort of cold attention on them- first uncertainty, then playfulness. Showing-off. Wrecking the place. Cousins clocks these traits and then taps that archive of a brain to show them in the movies. With references ranging from more well-known stuff like Kes and ET to leftfield choices from Iranian house arrestee Jafar Pahani and Hirokazu Kore-eda in Japan, the director delivers- in his melodic Belfast lilt- another articulate and heart wrenching visual essay. Only the coldest of hearts need not apply.

Oz The Great and Powerful

I wonder how that wizard ever ended up in Oz. Said no one ever. None the less, Sam Raimi decided it was something to look into so here we have Oz the Great and Powerful; a decent if somewhat unnecessary prequel to the 1939 classic.

We begin in black and white 4:3 ratio Kansas with the titular wizard (played by the ever present James Franco) doing his thing on the fairground circuit. Oz dreams of greatness but his silver tongue and his wild ambitions seem to only be getting him into hot water. An air ballooned getaway from one such incident sends Oz into the path of an oncoming tornado which transports him to the Land of Oz and blows the film into lush wide-screen colour. From here he encounters two witches (played by Mila Kunis and Rachel Weiss) who inform him of his prophesised arrival. The tale goes that a great Wizard will fall from the sky and slay the evil witch so Oz enlists a monkey sidekick (head-meltingly voiced by Zach Braff) and an exquisitely animated porcelain girl (Joey King) and heads out to do just that.

It’s tough to shake that whiff of insignificance but some of Oz still works. Aside from a rather tame Wicked Witch there are still glimpses of Raimi’s horror chops- Bruce Campbell even pops up for a brief cameo- but perhaps the best part is Franco’s dozy performance which provides a nice reminder of how affable he can be when he isn't trying so bloody hard.

Oslo, August 31st 

Having taken leave of rehabilitation for a job interview, Anders (Anders Danielson Lie) embarks on a 24 hour odyssey of old friends, parties, rejection and regret through the streets of the Norwegian capitol, gradually observing the extent with which the city has left him behind. Shot in the crisp Scandinavian autumn light and anchored by Danielson’s wonderfully reserved and sombre performance, Oslo triumphs as a young man’s efforts to confront the affliction his friends and family seem so hopeless to acknowledge.

G.I. JOE: Retaliation

While on a mission to confiscate some nukes from the usual bunch of pesky Arabs, an elite group of U.S. commandos called The JOEs are forced to go rogue when a man disguised as their president (Jonathon Pryce) turns the U.S. military against them and obliterates most of their team. It seems even bigger things are afoot too as the Cobra commander- the JOE’s arch nemesis- escapes from his underground prison and begins to hatch his evil plans. The JOEs must regroup and reload before the Cobra has the chance to unleash the mysterious Project Zeus and rule the world etc.

Expectations were never going to be too high for this one. The Rock stars as someone called Roadblock and there’s a serious amount of “AMERICA, FUCK YEAH” going around… and yet… it’s not so bad. Director Jon M. Chu, the man apparently behind the Step Up sequels, whips up some solid high-stakes action sequences; The RZA shows up briefly to do his quaint Shao Lin thing and Jonathon Pryce gives a seductively slimy turn as a villainous U.S. prez who even squeezes in a decent Bono gag.

All that said, we shouldn’t be getting too far ahead of ourselves- after all, it’s still the sequel to a film based on some fairly unremarkable toys - but maybe don’t go running for the hills just yet. 

Sehsüchte Festival

Now in its 42^nd year, the biggest film festival for the students- and by the students- in Europe returns to Potsdam’s Konrad Wolf University for its annual festivities, screening hundreds of films from around the globe on both the University campus and the grounds of Potsdam’s world famous Babelsberg studios. In Berlin film Captain Oscar, two friends make a deal to share a bed but then must cope with their ever increasing affections. Also screening will be Through the lens of inkedKenny in which A Montreal photographer seeks to capture the city’s gay bear community. Outside of the festival’s sizeable core program there will be plenty of room for copious networking as well as some tasty sounding retrospectives. The Retro/Futuro section will be examining the evolution of narrative forms and technical innovations in the past and present including a special screening of the silent expressionist classic The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari with live accompaniment from electronica band ALP. The Schreibsüchte contest to find the best script will see participants pitching their story to a live audience and jury of experts as well as having their dialogue read out by a group of voice actors. While the Current and Controversial section will be focusing on defining excess, both social and financial, in the cinematic world.