Special to Tativille: The Eternal City at Forty: Fellini’s Roma (1972), by...
Woody Allen will delight his undiscriminating group of fans (but no one else) with yet another sloppy, inept comedy this year, this time located not in Paris, but in Rome—you have such exquisite taste...
View Article"After the Crash: European Film ca. 1929-1930"
What follows is a combination of my partial program notes for After the Crash: European Film ca. 1929-1930, and my further reflections on those titles about which I did not specifically write this...
View ArticleHulu Plus on Tativille: Jean Grémillon's Remorques
Begun in 1939 but not completed until well after Germany's 1940 occupation of northern and western France, Jean Grémillon's masterful Remorques (Stormy Waters, 1941, 82 mins.) may well stand as the...
View ArticleNew Film: Trouble with the Curve (2012) & The Master (2012)
Robert Lorenz's Trouble with the Curve(2012), from a Randy Brown screenplay, represents Clint Eastwood's first on-camera work since Gran Torino (2008), the multi-hyphenate's final extraordinary entry...
View ArticleWhat White Collar Is
Let us begin with what the USA Network's White Collar (2009-2012) is not: prestige, long-form television of the HBO-Showtime-AMC variety. It lacks the novelistic structure and density to make it...
View ArticlePure Spectacle, Pure Theory: Returning to Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982)
In a year that has witnessed real movement toward deceased action-hack auteur Tony Scott, an unapologetic Tativille favorite since he directed one of the finest blockbuster-mode features of the early...
View ArticleTen Years Older: Víctor Erice's Lifeline (2002)
Produced as part of the two-film Ten Minutes Older project, a set of omnibus features that premiered at the 2002 Cannes film festival, Víctor Erice's ten-minute Lifeline (Alumbramiento) represents one...
View Article35th Starz Denver Film Festival: In Another Country
In Another Country (Da-reun na-ra-e-suh, 2012), leading Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo's thirteenth feature in seventeen years and his third to screen in competition at the Cannes Film Festival (in eight...
View Article35th Starz Denver Film Festival: Alps / Caesar Must Die / Sister
Awarded the "Golden Osella" for best original screenplay at the 68th Venice International Film Festival, Yorgos Lanthimos's Alps(2011), from a Lanthimos and Efthymis Filippou scenario, figures to be...
View Article35th Starz Denver Film Festival: Focus on National Cinema: Argentina...
Our current favorite for personal discovery of the 2012 Starz Denver Film Festival, Polish cinematographer and documentarian Wojciech Staroń's Argentinian Lesson(Argentyńska lekcja, 2011), a...
View Article35th Starz Denver Film Festival: Here and There
Awarded the Grand Prix at Cannes' Semaine de la Critique parallel selection, Antonio Méndez Esparza's Here and There (Aquí y allá, 2012) sketches a few short years in the life of a rural Mexican...
View Article35th Starz Denver Film Festival Report Card
Alps(Yorgos Lanthimos, Greece, 2011, 90 min.)"A brain-twisting and ultimately profound meditation on performance and the nature of intimacy from Yorgos Lanthimos, the Greek filmmaker behind 2009’s...
View Article35th Starz Denver Film Festival: Surviving Life & Flower Buds
In a matter of speaking, Surviving Life (Přežít svůj život, 2010), Czech master animator Jan Švankmajer's feature-length collage of live-action cinema and stop-motion cutout animation, may prove among...
View Article35th Starz Denver Film Festival: Paradise: Love & Paradise: Faith
Released as the first installment in writer-director-producer Ulrich Seidl's "Paradise trilogy," a set of three features that the Austrian filmmaker first conceived as a single epic-length work,...
View Article35th Starz Denver Film Festival: Barbara
Recipient of the Silver Bear for best director at the 2012 Berlin International Film Festival, Christian Petzold's Barbara (2012), from a screenplay by Petzold and renowned experimental documentarian...
View ArticleNew Film: Tabu (2012)
Orchestrated brilliantly in a measureless variation of silky gray tones and underwritten ironically by a light twinkling of ivory, the 35mm prelude for Miguel Gomes's third feature Tabu(2012) subtly...
View ArticleNew Film: Holy Motors (2012)
A work of enterprising vision and aggressive newness that finds all narratives exhausted, Leos Carax's Holy Motors (2012) emerges as one of the year's most fully realized ruminations on the current and...
View ArticleThe Best of 2012 In Review: The Deep Blue Sea
Adapted by the director from Terence Rattigan's eponymous 1952 play, Terence Davies' The Deep Blue Sea (2011) opens in a procession of powerfully cinematic figures, from the filmmaker's Ophülsian...
View ArticleThe Best Films of 2012
The Ten Best New Films of 2012: 1. Holy Motors (Leos Carax)2. Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson)3. The Deep Blue Sea (Terence Davies, 2011)4. Barbara (Christian Petzold)5. Tabu (Miguel Gomes)6. Django...
View ArticleThe Ten Best Films of 2012
1. Holy Motors(Leos Carax)2. The Deep Blue Sea(Terence Davies, 2011)3. Barbara(Christian Petzold)4. Cosmopolis(David Cronenberg)5. Tabu (Miguel Gomes)6. Moonrise Kingdom(Wes Anderson)7. Looper(Rian...
View Article