mskirollos

If there's a writer-director who I'd be willing to watch his intellectual *** on screen for over 2 hours, it'd be Charlie Kaufman (writer of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation). Like philosophical novels, I'm thinking of Ending Things takes the form of film as a vehicle for a philosophical discourse on loneliness, hopelessness, and the passage of time.

Based on the novel by the same, the film starts with a young woman who is heading with her new boyfriend to meet his parents in a secluded house under heavy snow, and from the outset, we get hints that things are not quite how they seem.

Kaufman does very well to create an unsettling, nightmarish mood that provides a perfect backdrop for the intellectual dialogue, helped by the brilliant cinematography and the muted tones.

Admittedly, the film can feel a bit too long and slightly overdone at times particularly with the heavy subject matter, but the clever intellectual dialogue, the continuous references to other works of art, and the clues that are regularly dropped to paint a clearer picture of what's going on help the film from drowning under its own weight.

From the opening sequence, the vertical frame compositions in 4:3 aspect ratio brought to my mind a personal film favourite from the last decade, Ida (Pawel Pawlikowski, 2013), and was interested to discover that Kaufman collaborated here with the same cinematographer, Lukasz Zal. The aspect ratio helped add to the intense sense of claustrophobia that gets more powerful as the film goes on. Kaufman's film with its mood and heavy subject matter might not have a mass appeal, but it is among the best this year, and perhaps in recent years.

Following the huge success and critical acclaim of his film "La Grande Bellezza – The Great Beauty" in 2013, a winner of Oscars' Best Foreign Film for 2013 among numerous other awards, a modern favorite of mine and what I think was the best film of its year, the Italian director Paolo Sorrentino's following film is "La Giovinezza - Youth", a film in English, with an English-speaking cast, for which he did the writing. After reviving the Felliniesque spirit in The Great Beauty and the modern, powerful tour-de-force cinematic ride that it was, it was inevitable that the following work, after losing the element of novelty, will never reach the same heights especially with the high expectations placed, unless the writer/director opted for a different style, which he did not. Youth was a continuation of the same theme.

The story follows two old friends, an orchestra conductor and a film director, played by the greats Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel in very fine performances, on long vacation in a luxury hotel at the Alps. They reflect on their lives, as well as their children's and the peculiar hotel guests', contemplating in a poetic way what makes life worth living.

As expected, collaboration with the cinematographer Luca Bigazzi yielded another feast for the eyes. The great cinematography, along with the impeccable acting, is probably what propels the film forward and makes it worth the admission fee. Writing, however, was the main low point of the film, with the bland, monotonic, over- baked dialogue that helped give the story an overall feeling of hollowness and pretentiousness. It is not Sorrentino's first attempt at writing and directing English films, but it can still be argued that a significant difference in the level of writing between the last two films suggest that the outcome might have been better if the film were in Italian.

Comparison with Sorrentino's previous film, however, is inevitable and the parallels are too many. In the previous film we had the ageing protagonist reflecting on the meaning of life and the modern decadence while wandering the streets of Rome and in between raucous parties with his rich, idle companions. Here the streets and rooftops of Rome are replaced by the Alps. A long polemic monologue ruthlessly slating a friend is replaced by one given by Rachel Weisz's character and another given by Jane Fonda's in an impressive cameo. Instead of the Catholic nun, we get a Buddhist monk, where the predictable storyline meant that the acquainted viewer would know before the end of the film whether we will be able to see him levitate or not.

Generally speaking, the film felt less surreal and magical even though it tried so hard at profundity and abstraction, the flat dialogue at most times was not helped by the persistence of the mountainous background, but the film definitely had its moments, the Maradona interludes an example, and the visual mastery and brilliant acting make the film worth watching. This was hardly surprising after The Great Beauty, but I sincerely hope Sorrentino bounces back in his next feature.

A compelling and well-constructed anti-war film, that feels ahead of its time specially with the sociopolitical situation in the middle east. It was Israel's Academy Award entry for best foreign film in 1986, and was described by Ariel Sharon, the Minister of Industry and Commerce back then as "a self-destructive portrait of inept Jews".

The narrative traces the surreal journey of two Egyptian soldiers crossing the Sinai desert to reach the Egyptian lines beyond Suez Canal, following the defeat of the Egyptian forces in the Six-Day war in 1967 and the subsequent chaotic retreat.

Being born and raised in Egypt, the obvious issue I found with the film from the outset was the Arabic accent/dialect used by the Egyptian soldiers' characters, and their expressions of fear and surprise, and while this might not make a great difference for the foreign viewer, the second drawback with the dialogues of the two soldiers, which felt too bland and obvious and quite theatrical at times, was sometimes a letdown, specially with the well-written situations where a good dialogue would have been a big addition.

But apart from that, good cinematography that fully utilised the desert background, and interesting sequences specially towards the end, of the encounter between Egyptian soldiers and their Israeli counterparts, made it a worthwhile experience. The powerful humane message of the film and the interesting setting definitely make the film worth checking out for foreign film fans.