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. 

Close Up

Oh the mountain of must-see-movies and my humble attempts to scale it...

Progress will be compiled at the end of each month and the films are listed in order of preference.

Close Up

Abbas Kiarostami (1991)

Kiarostami shoots the real life trial of a man accused of fraud for impersonating a famous Iranian director. The family he dupes expect larceny as his motive but the man assures us his reasons are artistic. Kiarostami plays with the form of film like no one has perhaps before or since as he has the people involved re-enact the events discussed in court; Reality seems to overlap with fiction and we sink deep into the pure wonder of the form; Simply astonishing.

Dogville

Lars Von Trier (2003)

On a black stage with minimal props and lighting the godfather of Dogma 96’ plays out his most audacious effort. On the run from the mob in the 1920s, Nicole Kidman happens upon an old mining town and is accepted into the bosom of their simple community before good old human nature rears its ugly head. The set up may seem gimmicky at first but with nothing to distract us from the greed, lust and prejudice of the townspeople, their (our?) age old vices are left naked and festering. It’s more tongue in cheek than Haneke but with no less disdain for the human race.

Vertigo

Alfred Hitchcock (1958)

James Stewart tracks a woman through the streets of San Francisco as his mind spirals down into this darkening mystery. Colour, music, fear and anxiety are harnessed to perfection. The film topped Sight and Sounds all-time list and it’s difficult to argue with that.

Days of being Wild

Wong Kar Wai (1990)

Featuring one of the best looking casts of all time, Kar Wai’s 2^nd feature- and his first to fully realize his trademark feel- is a hot, humid film of lust in the wee hours of the morning; all fluorescent lighting, electric fans and shadows cast from window blinds; wonderfully lush film making full of wild flashes of life.

Code Unknown

Michael Haneke (2000)

Plotlines, tension and social classes overlap in the French capitol as Haneke gives his grim assessment of big city living. A stone cold sober look at the gaping distances which exist between us.

Nashville

Robert Altman (1975)

Altman’s enormous ensemble cast seem about as stable as a motorway pile-up with the director’s endearing love affair with country music the only glue holding it all together. Yet still he leaves room to breathe. Every character feels detailed and nuanced and the music is delivered with pride and sincerity in this panoramic snapshot of Nashville’s mid 70s music scene. Paul Thomas Anderson’s early career looks covered in his shadows.

The Beat That My Heart Skipped

Jacques Audiard (2005)

Audiard moves a Harvey Keitel film from 1978 to present day Paris with ease. Romain Duris’ livewire performance as the piano loving thug seems liable to burst off the screen

Taste of Cherry

Abbas Kiarostami (1997)

A man who plans to take his own life encounters a young soldier, a man of faith and an elderly professor as he drives around looking for someone to bury him at dawn. Largely a straight up fiction when compared to his earlier work but this Palme Dor winning film is by no means less beautiful. Like with Kar Wai, the speckles and burns on the celluloid will make you yearn for the pre digital age.

Sans Soleil

Chris Marker (1983)

Taking it’s dreamy narrative from the fictional letters of Sandor Krasna, Chris Marker gives us a hypnotic postcard of early 80s Tokyo and an immersive look at the flickering nature of memory.

Buffalo 66

Vincent Gallo (1998)

Gallo does just about everything in front and behind the camera for this semi-autobiographical film. Its innovations sometimes feel a little forced but the performances- especially those of Huston and Gazzara as Gallo’s parents- are strong and the ending is crisp and satisfying.

Magnificent Obsession

Douglas Sirk (1954)

A year before they combined on the wonderful All That Heaven Allows, Sirk, Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson made this slightly puzzling film. It’s beautiful widescreen Hollywood no doubt but unlike Heaven Allows, the message feels both naive and awfully dated.