TIFF15 REVIEW: The Sky Trembles and the Earth Is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers [2016]

“It made him think that Satan was nearby” Writer/director Ben Rivers‘ The Sky Trembles and the Earth Is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers is a lot more than merely a movie. It is quite literally a work of art—and to say that doesn’t presuppose other movies aren’t. This film is the culmination of multiple installations, adaptations, and meta-narratives: a document of the full project that places its theme inside one of the most recognizable short stories of the twentieth century to play on the illusion of cinema.…

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REVIEW: Трудно быть богом [Hard to Be a God] [2014]

“Don’t drink. I only sniff now.” There’s a plot inside Aleksey German‘s final film Трудно быть богом [Hard to Be a God]—an audacious sci-fi epic slinging mud and feces in our faces while everyone onscreen sniffs them like drugs until we’re involuntarily following suit. No really, there is. Well, maybe a lingering vestige of what Arkadiy and Boris Strugatskiy‘s original novel contained that the 74-year old auteur (who’d wanted to adapt it since the 60s before finally completing it after a decade-long production process ultimately ending in his death from…

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