FANTASIA20 REVIEW: Freies Land [Free Country] [2020]

My dream killed them. From post-Francoist State Spain to post-reunified Germany, director Christian Alvart moves Alberto Rodríguez and Rafael Cobos‘ Goya Award-winning thriller Marshland to a newly democratized remote village outside of Berlin via Freies Land [Free Country]. Considering detectives Patrick Stein (Trystan Pütter) and Markus Bach (Felix Kramer) are thrust together despite building their careers in the West and East respectively, Alvart and co-writer Siegfried Kamml have ample room with which to retool things through a prism of their own nation’s potential for dark political secrets and guilt-ridden pasts.…

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REVIEW: Personal Shopper [2016]

“I just need to see it to the end, that’s all” At the heart of Olivier Assayas‘ Personal Shopper is an idea of fear. This isn’t surprising considering it’s a genre ghost story, but its target is. Lead character Maureen Cartwright (Kristen Stewart) isn’t afraid of ghosts, spirits, or the supernatural because she’s a medium like her recently deceased twin brother Lewis. And even though she doesn’t quite believe their abilities prove what he did—the afterlife’s existence—she trusts and respects him enough to make good on the oath they struck…

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TIFF13 REVIEW: Oktober November [October November] [2014]

“Would you have believed it?” The image of a drowning fish—gasping and jumping atop a rock too far from salvation—is what has stuck with me most after watching writer/director Götz Spielmann’s new dramatic study of two sisters worlds apart in life and the dying father binding them together. Each character is like that fish, struggling to stay relevant within disparate identities none can truly admit are bringing happiness. They seek solace in that which they cannot have, going through the motions of existences teetering towards futility. The sisters’ transgressions begin…

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REVIEW: Carlos [2010]

“Sudden bloody terror” Kudos to Dan Franck and Olivier Assayas—who also directed—for doing the research and having the skill necessary to pull off an epic such as Carlos. Originally created as a three-part, five and a half hour miniseries for Canal Plus in Europe, the work became a sensation, debuting at Cannes and eventually being scooped up for American distribution in its entirety and as a two and a half hour theatrical version. While I can admit the complete piece drags at times in the beginning and especially at the…

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