Reviews

Billed as "The untold true story behind the meeting between the King of Rock 'n Roll and President Nixon", directed by Liza Johnson, this is a wild comedic fantasy built around a brief encounter between Elvis Pressley and President Richard Nixon at the White House in 1974. The introductory credit sequence in dazzling colors and cartoon flavors serves notice that we are in for a wild ride with no holds barred. Unfortunately what the picture offers is a Frankenstein like edition of Elvis (Michael Shannon) in a long tedious buildup to the final confrontation in the Oval Office with an uncannily accurate Nixon, played with zest and four letter zeal by Kevin Spacey in a remarkable comedic turn. The final sequence in the president's office is hilarious enough to make the boring buildup worth sitting through but one wishes the first two thirds of the picture would have been highly compressed -- to maybe twenty minutes. As is, what we get is a view of a super patriotic Pressley which presents him as a very right wing anti-counter culture icon (altho in real life he was a symbol of the counter culture) who despises the Beatles and wants to save the youth of America from drugs, wanton sex and subversive politics by becoming an undercover agent for the government and infiltrating "anti-American organizations". To this end he needs a badge naming him as an official Undercover Government agent, which only the president can issue. His obsession with obtaining such a badge is the central conceit of the film and is a poor excuse for a premise around which to build an entire movie. However, as said before, the tedious introduction (which takes up most of the film) during which Elvis is desperately trying to set up a meeting with the president, and during which we see that Nixon is not interested in meeting a Rock musician and keeps turning such a proposal down, is just barely worth sitting through to get to the riotously funny conclusion in the Oval office when his assistants finally convince the president to agree to a five minute meeting with Elvis -- but just five minutes, no more -- because it will enhance his fading public image -- and on condition that Elvis takes a picture with Nixon autographed for his daughter who is a big Elvis fan. When Nixon finally meets Elvis he finds to his surprise that they have much in common and the five minutes is extended indefinitely, during which time Elvis massages the president's ego and takes off his shirt to perform a karate exhibition as many other bizarre revelations take place. Actor Michael Shannon captured much of the mannerisms and speech patterns of Pressley in a very subtle manner but his look is simply too old and too hard -- Frankenstein in long hair and black bell bottoms! Most of the dialogue of the film as written is just dull and pedestrian until we get into the Oval Office when it suddenly sparkles. Spacey's Nixon is a total riot and more convincing than the Tricky Dick rendition by Anthony Hopkins in the Oliver Stone presidential biopic. Overall I would have to say that this picture is one long bore with a final scene that is comedic genius, especially on the part of Kevin Spacey. Viewed at the Westwood Landmark in L.A. On April 23, 2016 at a special advance screening in the presence of Producer Jerry Schilling who was a lifelong friend of Elvis who avowed that much of the Elvis antics portrayed in the film were "in character" even if they didn't actually happen. Asked if Elvis would approve of this film he expressed honest reservations.

Manneken Pis, Flemish, 1995. Director Frank van Passel, starring Frank Vercruyssen. Viewed at Rouen Nordic Film Festival, 2007. During the 1990s the Flemish language cinema in Belgium experienced what might be called a minor Golden Age when one gem after another was produced featuring a bevy of excellent local actors. Largely overlooked outside of Belgium itself. One outstanding Flemish drama of the nineties is "Mannekin Pis", directed by Frank van Passel in 1995. This one was not completely overlooked, winning the Prix de la Semaine de la Critique at Cannes in '95 and also selected as the best Belgian film of the year in 1996. "Manneken Pis", (little boy urinating), is a famous landmark in Brussels but the film does not take place there. The reference is to the key incident in the film when the hero, as a young boy, asked his parents to stop at a railroad crossing so that he could relieve himself by the side of the road. An onrushing train killed the entire family and the boy, Harry, woke up in an orphanage the next morning, having lost all his hair. This traumatic experience has left Harry, now a young man with a shiny bald pate, unable to express his feelings. He falls in love with a warm hearted pixie-like tramway conductress, Jeanne (Antje de Boeck), who happens to live in the same tenement building as he does. Their difficult relationship is overseen by the salty old widow, Denise (Ann Petersen), who is the concierge of the abode and watches over Jeanne like a mother hen. After many false starts, just when it looks like Harry will finally break out of his trance and will be able to reciprocate the love offered him, Jeanne who has a weak heart, dies in his arms. An extremely touching love story, again superbly carried off by all performers, also featuring Frank Vercruyssen as Harry in a truly memorable character creation by an actor one wants to see more of. Ps: This review dedicated to the victims of Islam in Brussels.

BERLIN REVIEWS BY DELEON: BERLIN 66, Feb. 2016

PHOTO: Hail Caesar Photo call, L-R: Swinton. Clooney, Alden Eirenreich, Josh Brolin, and Tatum Channing

Berlin 66 opened rousingly on Thursday, February 11 with multiple screenings of the new Coen Bros. Hollywood send-up "Hail Caesar" and a turn away overflow press conference crowd for the Jury led by Meryl Streep which was an event in itself. Day one, one might say, was all about Streep, the Coen Brothers and actor George Clooney in his best jesting form and looking great in a slick black leather jacket at the Hail Caesar press conference table.

First off, a few words about the film. Manohla Dargis, in her sparkling NY Times review hit the nail squarely on the head when she called the film an "off center comedy" ~ as off center (flip-floppily structured) as it gets with chuckles and belly laughs all the way. To put it mildly, this in not the Co' Brothers most profound film, but it is arguably their funniest ever with a string of brilliant off-beat pearls by actors all of whom shine in their contrary off- the-wall castings. Basically this is a affectionate spoof of fifties Hollywood but much more than that, loaded with absurd humor of the kind that harks back to the Marx Brothers era.

A list if the actors and their roles basically tells the story, what there is of it: Jeff Brolin, tremendous as the blustering bigger than life studio fixer draped in a double breasted suit and topped with a bulky fedora, who regularly unloads his guilt in the catholic confessional box;

Clooney as a clueless movie star who gets kidnapped by the Communists and walks around through the whole picture clad in his clanky starring role Julius Caesar paraphernalia, down to leather sandals with protruding toes artfully dumbelling it as he rarely does,

Scarlet Johansson in a grotesque sinful take on Fifties Simon-pure MGM superstar bathing beauty, Ester Williams! -- uglified (sic) under the Coen brothers baton... The one part that didn't grab me because I loved The real Ester Williams. Scarlet is actually grotesque in this section.

Channing Tatum leading a bunch of sailors in white in a sly slightly homo-erotic take on a Gene Kelly MGM dance number -- to me, the highlight of the picture with surprisingly adept tap dancing, jumping from table to table -- this section had me stomping along to the beat in my seat --

New face Alden Ehrenreich as a hilarilious acrobatic Roy Rogers ripoff whistling to his white horse then doing handstands in the saddle pursued by the bad guys -- and performing incredible rope magic, even with a strand of spaghetti in a restaurant for his girlriend --but this is only Half of cowboy star "Hobie Doyle's comedic turn -- He is next engaged to fill in for an ailing actor in a drawing room drama exchanging ten gallon cowboy headgear for a tux and Bow tie, and called upon to mouth a clip of sophisticated dialogue which is like a foreign tongue to him -- the extended scene where his English director (Ralph Fiennes) patiently re-shoots his flubbed entry scene over and over painfully correcting the perplexed actor's stumbling delivery of his single line -- (t'were as though...) -- is a real rib tickler.

Another highlight in this linkup of comical skits strung together by the ridiculous premise of Caesar discovering God on his knees at the foot of Jesus on the cross --the whole "Hail Caesar" business being a kind of takeoff on early fifties religious extravaganzas such as "The Robe" -- A satire of all-powerful Hollywood Gossip columnists who could make or break careers -- such as Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper, both played sniffingly by Tilda Swinton as twin sisters ~~ All in all a hilarious piece of extra savvy entertainment and a glorious procession of contemporary stars revealing unexpected comedic chops --

Well, okay, it did get to be a bit much by the end, but a very good time was had by me -- if not by All -- of the serious minded film critics and international press people around me.

As far as I could tell from my front and center first row seat, I was the only one in the entire audience to burst out laughing or constantly snickering throughout the proceedings. I'll just hafta see it again with a native American audience to appreciate the collective cackle noticeably absent at this ultra-sober festival

The crammed over flow press conference after the screening was almost equally comical. One Polish gal addressed a long long long question to Gorgeous George, who finally replied: "Are you flirting with me? ~ it won't work because I'm a married man now!" ~ which brought a roar of glee from the house. Most questions were, in fact, addressed to Clooney, who between sly quips that brought smiles from his colleagues at the table, finally summed it all up by saying that it was a privilege to work with such talented directors as the Coens, and above all -- FUN all the way.

MILES AHEAD --. World Premiere at Berlin 2016. Non competition special reviewed By Alex Deleon

An Incandescent reincarnation of legendary American Jazz Musician Miles Davis by Don Cheadle, directing, producing, playing trumpet, and playing Miles himself in bushy Afro hairdo in a multi-faceted one man tour de force. This very special biopic took the Paying non-professional German audience in the cavernous Friedrichstadt Palast by storm, arousing enthusiastic ten minute ovations (two of them! -- once at end of the film itself and again after the end credits finish rolling).

On stage after the screening Mr. Cheadle, a little guy (but a giant on screen, like Japanese samurai star Toshiro Mifune) was evidently taken aback by such an unexpectedly thunderous reception from a foreign audience which he acknowledged with extreme modesty. This is not exactly a full biopic in the ordinary sense of the word as it concentrates on a mere couple of days in the life of the black American jazz legend, but these are explosive enough to convey a full picture of the angry arrogant wound-up artist who lived behind the trumpet. Don Cheadle has come a light year in the movie business since his screen debut as a G.I. in the Viet Nam war film, Hamburger Hill, 1987, or Boogie Nights as a porn star opposite Burt Reynolds and Julianne Moore in 1997.

In the press conference which preceded the screening Cheadle said that this film which he worked on for six years, learning to play the trumpet in the process, is practically a lifelong dream come true. He grew up on the music of Davis and ever since entering the business has had such a project in mind. However, in the event, he states that he did not want to make a film "about Miles Davis" but rather a film in the skin of Miles Davis, as if the gangsterlike trumpet virtuoso had come back to life to present himself in his own words. Speaking in the role with a typical negro mushy mouthed style identical to the way Miles actually spoke, not cleaned up for a middle class audience and foreign to the perfect "white" elocution that is natural to the black actor in every day life, this is a film that pulls no punches and is loaded to the gills with the F-word and the MF-word, translated into German in the subtitles as the much weaker "Wikser" (habitual masturbator) -- clearly German has no real equivalent for the standard American ebonic Mutha-f****r. No matter. Powerful unexpurgated trashy dialogue all the way and a fiery angry arrogant gun toting performance by Cheadle which accomplishes the artistic task he has set out for himself in this Magnum Opus of his Hollywood career.

The story Cheadle chooses to tell focuses on the period in Miles's life when, already a living legend but having been out of action for five years addicted to cocaine as well as booze, he is about to stage a comeback to perform once again live on stage. An extreme sleaseball of a Rolling Stone reporter (Ewan McGregor) comes knocking at his door demanding an interview, and will not take No for an answer even if this puts his own life at stake. Obviously at this point in his fame and notoriety any live interview with Miles Davis would make the career of any obtrusive little known jerk of a journalist. The Rolling Stoner works his way into Miles' marginally "good graces" by supplying him with oodles of Coke and becomes his companion in a wild run around town to recover a private tape of Davis's latest music from a bunch of sleazy music producers who have commandeered it. The background music is largely from the best selling Davis album "Sketches of Spain" and we see Cheadle actually blowing trumpet in flashbacks. Along The way we learn that Miles did not like the term Jazz for his music -- "I make "Social Music" he says pointedly in the picture -- and we also see that he can play the piano and is very familiar with modern classic composers such as Stravinsky and Eric Satie. No musical slouch, Mr. Miles Davis! But when confronting the A-holes who have stolen his music he waves a menacing gun at them and we have little doubt that he will use it if necessary. In this compact segment from a desperately lived life Cheadle even finds time for a little romance in the person of a beautiful black actress with the tongue twister name, Emayatzy Corninealdi, who accompanied Don to Berlin.

Over All the film is very violent with a few tender moments between Cheadle and Corinealdi, and a jittery hand held camera may throw some viewers off in spots but reflect the hectic pace of the chase. Pic ends up with Cheadle/Davis back on stage blowing his axe in patented inimitable Milesian style. Miles Davis died in 1991 at age 65 universally recognized as one of the most influential and innovative American musicians of the XXth century, jazz or-nojazz. Unquestionable Oscars in 2017 when the pic will become eligible for consideration.

"The Belly Dancer", Original Hebrew title, LIRKOD.

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Director and producer, Marek Rosenbaum, Israel, 2006 (in Hebrew, Runtime 95 minutes), stars Meital Dohan and Alon Aboutboul.

Viewed at CINERAMA theater, Seattle, March 17, (Saint Patrick's Day) 2007 at opening of The 12th Jewish film festival of Seattle. This small gem from Israel was an eye-opening discovery at the Seattle Jewish Film Festival. A partially tongue-in-cheek Jewish gangster film, with a very cute young gun moll (Metal Dohan) who is a passionate devotee of Turkish belly dancing, and is the femme fatale of the title, around whom this surprise-a- minute comedic thriller revolves. Except for the fact that the main guys were all talking Hebrew this could, for all intents and purposes, have been a French "polar" (with echos of Godard) or even, a recent American job. This film takes you on a ride with so many unexpected twists and turns that you'll come out saying "This TOO is Israel???"

--"Belly Dancer" looks to me like a sharp new turn for Israeli film - one that may signal the kind of New Direction caused by "Diva" in French film at the beginning of the eighties. Hope it gets around, because "Dancer" is really a winner and introduces a whole new mini-pantheon of Israeli movie actors. Star Meital Dohan (b. 1979) is a leading actress, singer, and all around entertainer active in Israel since 1998.

Viewed at Rouen Nordic Film Festival 2007. The undisputed highlight of an otherwise routine week in Rouen was that "Basic Instinct" man, Paul Verhoeven's new Dutch film, "Zwartboek" or (the little) Black Book. After a 20 year Hollywood career during which the Dutch director came up with such megahits as "Robocop" and "Basic Instinct" Black Book marks his return to his native turf and native language. The story, co-written by Verhoeven, centers on a very attractive Jewish woman who is the sole survivor of a group of Jews attempting to escape from occupied Holland towards the end of the war in a boat. Posing as a gentile blonde under a non-Jewish name (her false papers furnished by the Underground) she becomes the mistress of a highly placed Gestapo officer and is given a job in Gestapo Headquarters from where she is able to pass critical information on to the resistance. However, one thing leads to another in this highly charged complex plot where everybody is double-crossing everybody else in a typically Verhoevenesque drama of interlocking paranoia. Eventually Miss De Vries's cover is blown and another ultimately sleazy Gestaponik succeeds in making it look like she is actually collaborating with the Krauts. In the end as the Americans arrive and the country is liberated she is being chased by both sides -- especially because she has come into possession of a little black book which gives facts, figures, and names of key people involved in the fake smuggling of Jews with big-big dividends. In a role which reads something like The Perils of Pauline in WW II our heroine (Carice van Houten) at one point has to gobble a whole chocolate bar to counteract a nearly fatal dose of insulin injected into her arm by a false Dutch "hero" of The Resistance.

The plot is so complicated that it may take two viewings to sort it all out, but one thing which is perfectly clear -- (to invoke the words of an infamous ex-president) -- perfectly clear it is, that Carice van Houten, the heroine of the story, is, with this film, well on the way to installing herself as the next great international female Superstar. (Remember, you read it here first!) Ms. Van Houten, who is probably pushing thirty, has been around for a while and is currently the most popular actress in Holland -- which isn't saying much in terms of international recognition, but Little Black Book is on marquees almost everywhere so it seems to be only a matter of time before she is discovered by the outside world. Van Houten has a screen presence far more gripping than Sharon Stone, who became an overnight star as the heroine of Verhoeven's "Basic Instinct" circa 1991 and is a far better actress.

If "Black Book", which is currently on wide release in the States, doesn't do it for her all Verhoeven needs to do to launch another (more high-powered) Sharon Stone, is to come out with "Basic Instinct III" with Van Houten in the lead and La Stone will be a forgotten melody. Carice van Houten has it all; charisma, good looks both enigmatic and down-to-earth, sex appeal to burn -- AND she can act! This may be ridiculously early to talk about Oscar 2008, but in my book she's already there.

PS: Alas, Van Houten was never discovered by Hollywood -- their loss!

LAITAKAUPUNGIN VALOT by Aki Kaurismaki, "Lights in the Dusk", 2006. Viewed at the 2007 Rouen Nordic Film Festival where, if Chantal Ackerman's spare study of nothingness was "experimental" the word which applies to Aki Kaurismaki's "Lights in the Dark" (Finnish title) (LAITAKAUPUNGIN VALOT) is "Minimalist" -- to the MAX!

Kaurismaki has always been known for showing no more than what is absolutely necessary to make a story point in his spare but compassionate studies of Finnish losers in Helsinki, but in this film he distills it down to the very nittiest-of-grit. "Lights in the Dudk" (or Shadows in the Slums) tells the story of the misadventures of a handsome but feckless security guard and his ill-fated romance with the beautiful moll of a sinister local gangster. The story line is so compressed it's almost hard to follow what exactly is going on, however, when our hero dies at the end clutching the hand of the exotic femme fatale who brought about his demise, we realize that we have actually been through a lot more than the 78 minutes which just went by on screen. This is the kind of picture where, if you blink, you've missed a whole important plot point, but it's also an exceptional treat for those who have followed Aki's career over the years -- like a special desert at the end of a long feast. Another teasingly minimalist touch is the appearance of Kaurismaki's usual leading lady, Katti Outinen, in a 30 second cameo as -- what else? -- a supermarket checkout cashier. Don't blink or you'll miss her too. This latest offering from Kaurismaki may not be for every taste, but it is certainly something special and would be a perfect swan song were the taciturn Finn to step out of the picture tomorrow.

"They Were Promised the Sea", (original French title, "Pour Une Nouvelle Seville"), color, RT. 74 minutes: Canada~Morocco co-production. Reviewed by Alex DeLeon, Casablanca

Director: Kathy Wazana. Stunningly shot in locations such as former Jewish Berber villages, They Were Promised the Sea is a lyrical meditation on loss and longing, on hope and the possibilities of coexistence.

Despite the misleading titles in both French and English this is a penerating documentary about the lost Jews of Morocco, lost on two accounts: Lost to Morocco when they left en masse for Israel under Mosad sponsored "Operation Yachin" in the early sixties, believing they were under threat, and then, Lost IN Israel, the "Promised Land" whose promise turned out to be a big disappointment when they were treated there as second class citizens by the Ashkenazic Jews of eastern Europe who had established the State of Israel in 1947.

Anyone following the fortunes and misfortunes of Israel over the decades would be aware of the so-called Moroccan problem surrounding the fact that a sizable portion of the country's population are Sefardic Arabic speaking Jews from Morocco who have only grudgingly been accepted by the majority Ashkenazic Jews from Eastern Europe who run the country. Ms. Wazana who is herself of Moroccan Jewish ancestry, but born and raised in Canada, spent four years tracing her roots and interviewing Moroccan Jews in Israel and in Morocco where there is still a remnant who never left. Prior to the establishment of the State of Israel Morocco had the largest Jewish population in the Arab World, firmly established and dating back to pre-Islamic times. Many of them were very much integrated with the original Berber population, and to this day, even in Israel, still speak Tamazight and other Berber dialects. Wazana visits one such former Jewish town in the midst of the Berber desert which is now a ghost town of bare stucco walls in a beautiful mountain setting. An interview with an elderly Berber gentleman indicates that the Jews were fully accepted and he wishes they would return. And this is exactly what this film is about.

Wazana makes the point (through interviews) that the supposed threat to Jews which caused a panic and mass exodus of Jews from their long established homeland in Morocco, did not actually correspond to the reality on the ground and was basically Israeli propaganda used to gather in a needed work force to build the nation. Their relations with their moslem neighbors , except for a few isolated incidents, was basically friendly and fully integrated. While the Jews in other Arab Countries such as Egypt and Iraq may have had good reason to fear anti-Jewish violence this was apparently not the case in Morocco, the Arab country with by far the largest Jewish community, 250,000 in 1940. Moreover the basic Arab culture of the Moroccan Jews in Israel caused them to be viewed as outsiders. They were in fact settled at first in the worst border regions of the country far from the "better life" they were promised to lure them to Israel, and have had difficulties ever since as far as achieving equal status with the Ashkenazic upper class.

The bulk of the film follows a prominent Israeli woman activist of Moroccan origin, Shira Ohayan, on an extended visit to Morocco to trace her roots. In Tetouan up north, a Spanish speaking area, she finds somebody who does fondly remember the family of her mother who used to live there. In Casablanca she visits the Jewish museum and has a heart to heart talk in French with the curator who is a distinguished leader in the remaining Casablanca Jewish community. At one point, to demonstrate their inherent Arabness she challenges him to speak in Arabic, which he does, but she apologizes that she only knows Egyptian Arabic, not the local dialect! The curator takes objection to some anti-Israeli remarks she makes and finally she says: "Je ne suis pas chez moi nul part!" -- I don't feel At Home anywhere --- Which basically sums up the identity dilemma of the Berber speaking Moroccan Jews of Israel -- and would have made a much more appropriate title for the film to start with.

The reference to Seville in Andalusian Spain will be lost on the general viewer as a reference to the moorish conquest of Spain when many prominent Jews such as the philosopher Maimonedes took up residence there, and the business about "Promising them the sea" is way off base -- The were promised Land -- not sea. A straight forward title like "The Lost Moroccan Jews" would be much more apt and likely to attract the wider audience this remarkable study of confused cultural identity deserves to have. It has relevance not only for Morocco and Israel and for Jews and Arabs, but for everybody, especially now in the age of mass Islamic migrations caused by the upheavals in the Middle East. These people will have similar identity problems in the host countries of Europe. Kathy Wazana's timely film could open many eyes on both sides of the cultural divide if it ever reaches them. Ms. Wazana has been barnstorming All over Morocco with her film and I was luckily advised by Radio journalist Mouna Belgrini of a one night stand at the venerable ABC Cinema in downtown Casablanca on the last Monday of the year. It turned out to be one of the most fascinating documentaries I have seen all year long and a capstone to my current Morocco experience which started a month ago with the Fifteenth Marrakesh film festival.

MY NIKOFOR, Poland, 2004.

Director Krzysztof Krauze, starring Krystyna Feldman image1.jpeg

Viewed at the 2004 Valladolid Film Festival, this film recounts the last eight years of the strange life of Nikifor Krynicki, famous Polish unschooled vagabond "naive artist".

The festival's Best Actress award went to veteran Polish actress Krystyna Feldman for her amazing portrayal, at her current age of 85, of an illiterate, homeless old man, Nikofor, who was also a naive self-taught painter of genius in XXth century Poland. Since the death of Kieslowski nearly a decade ago Polish films have been painfully absent from the major festival scene, however, this film entitled "My Nikofor" by Krzystof Krause may signal the beginning of a new Polish wave which has been building for some time, but is still waiting for a push in the right direction. This bio-pic of the homeless artist who died in 1968 and whose genius was only recognized at the very end of his strange undocumented life (he didn't even have a birth certificate and nobody knew his real name for sure) is clearly a labor of love set in the wintry mountains of Krynica Spa in South Poland, where the artist lived most of his life, and filmed, according to director Krauze, whenever possible from the angle of a Nikofor painting. Having a woman play the role of this man was an unusual directorial decision, to say the least, but totally validated by actress Feldman's uncannily accurate performance - - a tour de force that turned out to be the capstone of her long career. To get into the role, dressed for the part, the actress actually went begging for food at the Krynica museum and people complained to the police about this "stinking old man"!

Krystyna Feldman was a busy actress in Polish films and TV series for six decades and kept working right up to the end of her long life. She passed away in 2007 at the age of 90.

Ozu's Record of a Tenement Gentleman, 1947. B/w, 72 minutes. Original title "Nagaya Shinshiroku ~ (長屋紳士録 ).

Viewed at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival of 2003. One of the best films seen here that year was a little known Japanese film, in the Ozu retrospective sidebar entitled, "RECORD OF A TENEMENT DWELLER" made just after the war in 1947. This was Ozu's return to filmmaking for Shochiku after four years of military service in China. The film is the story of a simple unmarried woman who is forced, much against her will, to take in a small boy, apparently abandoned in the postwar shattered Tokyo hustle and bustle. After much hostility toward the child, she finally realizes how much he has filled the void in her life and that she in fact loves him -- but only does this realization hit her when the father reappears to repossess his lost child. A simple story so directly told that it sneaks up on you like a time-bomb and makes you realize that your heart was crying -- but only ten minutes after the film is over! An early masterpiece from the master of Zen and the Art of telling stories on film, and an incredibly subtle, yet bombshell, performance by the main actress Chôko Iida, in my book, a retroactive Best Actress Oscar for the year that was. Iida was extremely active in Japanese silent pictures from 1923 on and had already appeared in supporting roles in three prewar Ozu films; "An Inn in Tokyo", (1935) the first version of "Floating Weeds" (1934), and "Dekigoro" (A Passing Fancy, 1933), but this performance when she was already pushing fifty was her acting apotheosis. Unfortunately Ozu's uniquely stylized films were not discovered in the west until after his death in 1963 and are only now becoming recognized little by little in astute cinema circles as the quiet unhurried masterpieces which they are.

Image poster The Danish Girl -- features Versatile British actor Eddie Redmayne's followup to last years Best Actor Oscar as wheelchair bound Cambridge genius Stephen Hawking -- could a second consecutive Oscar be in the offing?

A competition entry at Venice 2015 "The Danish Girl" was co-directed by 46 year old Englishman Tom Hooper (The King's Speech, 2010) and Swedish veteran Lasse Hallström, 69 (My Life as a Dog) -- British actor Eddie Redmayne's follow-up to his 2014 Best Actor Oscar as crippled British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking in "The Theory of Everything" was a hot ticket on the Lido this year. This time around Eddie portrays a man who became a woman in the first sex change operation of the twentieth century. Redmayne (33) plays a boy who literally becomes a girl! ~~ to wit, a well known Danish artist of the era, male, who underwent genital surgery in the early 1900s to become a woman -- preceding the American transsexual celebrity of Christine Jorgenson by half a century. Given the sexual confusion now rampant in the so- called "advanced" Western Democracies this one is destined to become a gay cult classic if nothing else ...

The Plot centers in the disturbed marriage of Danish artist Gerda Wegener and her sexually confused husband Einar. In a painting of hers for which she has Einar posing in drag she portrays Him as a woman which arouses his suppressed feminine feelings to the point where he starts to cross dress and see himself as a woman -- a good looking one at that. The transformation is so intense that he renames himself Lili Elbe, from where the next inevitable step is sex change surgery -- putting his male life on the line as such an operation was seen as quite dangerous at the time.

Both Redmayne and his wife in the film, new face Alicia Vikander, 26, from Sweden, are superb. Classy pastel shaded photography provides perfect support for the period feeling. Exquisite sets and decor. The central subject aside from the obvious gender transformation is the search for self and marital fidelity in the face of an impossible marital situation. Vikander as a truly devoted wife stands by him and supports him all during his painful reassessment of self and final decision to go through with a dangerous operation to resolve his/her identity dilemma. Great psychodrama, great everything ~~ a strong candidate for the Golden Lion here and other awards everywhere. Not to be missed if and when it comes your way

LE CAPITAL, (French) director Costa-Gavras, starring Gad Elmaleh, with Gabriel Byrne. Viewed at the 2013 Los Angeles Film Festival. Costa-Gavras' "Le Capital" is extremely glossy (in the good sense of the word) and an extremely penetrating high-end study of the workings of international Banking Conglomerates, in short, another typical Costa-Gavras exposé of the evils around us that run our lives without our realizing it.

At the beginning of the film the powerful head of a gigantic French investment bank, Le Phenix, collapses on a golf course and is diagnosed with terminal cancer "of the balls" (says the subtitle) --i.e., the testicles. With the implication that financial power mongers have to trade in sexual potency for financial power we have the first hint of the implicit satire to come.

The moribund CEO, passing over old cronies and more obvious candidates for the post he is about to vacate, hand picks a company nobody, a young scholarly banker, Marc Tourneuil, to the position of president thinking he will be easily manipulated during a temporary transition period.

Marc, played forcefully by handsome Moroccan born actor Gad Elmaleh, (Casablanca, 1971) turns out to be nobody's patsy, starts firing people right and left, and is soon running the bank for his own personal gain with the old timers plotting fecklessly against him. He gets involved in a multinational hostile takeover scheme masterminded remotely over office television by a sinister smooth talking Englishman (Gabriel Byrne). On the way in a complex effort to destroy him he is set up with a slinky black supermodel (apparently modeled on obstreperous English supermodel Naomi Campbell) who gives him a hard time in London and Tokyo before he finally has to rape her in a stretch limo in New York to gratify his methodically frustrated lust.

At the very end he finesses all the insiders trying to double cross him by threatening to expose the whole deal which will send them all to jail for insider trading. The deal in question has forced the collapse of Phenix and the creation of a new successor entity. At the foundation board meeting where Tourneuil is of course named the new CEO he announces that as their own "Robin du Bois" (Robin Hood) he will continue to rob the poor so that they can get even richer. Wild cheering goes up all around the table as actor Elmaleh turns to the camera and tells us in the audience directly that this will keep going on as long as we let it go on. Perhaps not the most subtle way to end this awesome tale of financial exploitation and greed at the highest levels, but maybe subtlety is not enough to wake us up.

The real meat of the film is the brilliant way in which Gavras presents the life styles of the super-greedy rich both in the work place and in their social life. For one party scene he apparently rented the entire sculpture foyer of the Louvre, as realistically lavish a party as has ever been seen on screen. All the other scenes follow suite in this typically excellent Costa Gavras mise-en-scene, a visual pleasure all the way and a heady thriller to boot.

"Le Capital" was not a big hit in France when released in November and was met with mixed reviews on IMDb and elsewhere, but since Americans do not have the same expectations as the French "Le capital" may enjoy a better reception here than it had on home ground. Gad Elamleh, for example, is far better known in France as a stand up comedian than a movie actor and his interpretation of banker Marc Tourneuil has been called unrealistic, but to an American audience that has never seen him before he will come across as quite convincing -- a handsome cad you end up rooting for because the other people he is up against are so much more evil and disgusting than he is. If anybody out there thinks that Costa Gavras has "lost it" at age eighty (as some have said) I would say they have another thought coming. In any case, having Consantine Costa Gavras visit the City of Angels to present his latest film was a singular feather in the hat of Film Independent.

"Le Capital" will go on general release in this country in October and then we shall see what people here have to say.

Half Moon: (original Kurdish title, Niwe Mang): director, Bahman Ghobadi. Viewed at San Sebastian film festival, 2006.

Thursday, day number eight of the festival, was packed from stem to stern with significant film viewings, three major press conferences, and meetings with colleagues, leaving little time to write about these events in any detail. The day started with the press screening in the main hall of the Kursaal Center of Bahman Ghobadi's new Iranian-Kurdish offering, "Half Moon" (Niwemang). Ghobadi is a favored son here in Donostia where his last film "Turtles Can Fly" copped a unanimous decision for the Best Film Golden Concha two years ago.

The current work, with a lengthy running time of just under two hours, again focuses on the stateless Kurdish community of Iran, and is rich in Kurdish cultural and folkloric material with the usual sparkling, natural performances he invariably draws from his predominantly Kurdish performers, and the huge panoramic landscapes of the barren mountainous Persian terrain which have come to typify his visual style.

"Half Moon" might be characterized as a road movie in which a group of traditional Kurdish musicians consisting of Maestro Mamo and his ten sons, set out in a school bus from Tehran for the border area where Iran abuts against both Turkey and Iraq, hoping to stage a musical event with traditional instruments for their Kurdish bretheren in Iraq — now a possibility thanks to the recent fall of the Saddam Hussein regime.

At the border they run into unpleasant military confrontations with near disastrous results for their treasured project. Mamo, (Ismail Ghaffari) the handsome old man who is the leader of the delegation, is so distraught that he gets into the coffin where the Kurdish instruments have been concealed and asks to be buried alive. At the touchy border crossing they are met by a beautiful mysterious young woman who offers her assistance in getting them past the ominous border guards.

"Half Moon", while dealing with the precarious position of Kurds in this strife torn part of the world, is much lighter in tone than hisu previous "Turtles Can Fly" and is almost a comedy, but with serious political overtones. The beauty at the border is played by Golshifte Farahani, currently Iran's most popular leading lady of the silver screen. With her looks and on screen charisma its not hard to see why.

PHOTO: Golshifte Farahani She reminds me of a cross between Italy's Monica Belluci and Pakistan's former president Benazir Bhutto. With Iran's growing presence on the world film scene I would be willing to bet my bottom Euro that it's only a matter of time before this striking actress is discovered by some Western director and breaks out into an international career. She was present at the press conference and speaks English, so that language would be no hindrance.

At the press conference following the screening director Ghobadi was very relaxed, often smiling, and, though speaking in Farsi through an interpreter, looked every questioner straight in the eye while his interpreter translated into Spanish. This was a tri-lingual press conference as some questions had to wind their way from English through Spanish, then into Farsi — and back again by the same route. Fun! An important question, put to Ghobadi by Steve Ashton of the Napa Valley Wine Country festival in California, was whether or not the film was censored or hampered in any way in Iran. Ghobadi replied that first of all, he received no internal support to make the film in Iran and therefore had to import equipment from Europe (this was an Iran-Iraq-Austra-France co-production) and, when finished, it was banned from screens in Iran. The DOP, incidentally, was a New Zealander, Nigel Bluck. This is the director's fourth feature since his highly acclaimed debut "A Time For Drunken Horses" in 2000. All have been shown at important festivals, Mar del Plata, Cannes, and the last two here in Donostia.

At 37 Bahman Ghobadi would appear to have a long road ahead of himself and is clearly a name to remember.

MEMORIES OF THE WIND (Rüzgâın Hatıraları) Written and directed by Öscan Alper, starring Onur Saylak and Sofya Khandamirova. image1.jpeg Film poster is a panorama of haunting faces in a haunting Turkish film

Shown in the Coup de Coeur (From the heart) sectıon out of competition, but nevertheless one of the Big films of the festival, this is an extended poetic meditation on the 1915 Genocide of the Armenians in Turkey. In a way a followup to Faith Akin's 1914 "The Cut" but even more politically daring in that it was made by a Turk resident in Turkey, rather than an oversees Turk in Germany. Significantly it is now beginning to look like mentioning the Armenian Genocide in Turkey is no longer quite the absolute government sanctioned taboo and violation of Turkish law it has been until now. The hero of Mr. Alper's film is ARAM an Armenian artist living in Istanbul in 1943 at the height of World War II. Although Turkey is nominally neutral in the war the government definitely favors Hitler. The film opens in his studio where a beautiful young woman is posing for him in the nude. When she leaves he visits the office of an Armenian friend who is the publisher of an opposition magazine. He has recently published an article discussing Turkish collusion with Nazi Germany. The publication building is raided by a government backed mob out to lynch "the Dirty Communists".

Aram barely escapes and takes refuge momentarily in a cinema where news footage is being shown of Hitlers military triumphs in Europe. His friend arrives and advises him that it is no longer safe for him to remain in Turkey with the implication that a second Armenian genocide may be in the making. The rest of the film traces Aram's escape route all the way across Turkey to the Soviet Georgian border which is closed and heavily guarded. For the bulk of the film, Aram the city intellectual, is forced to hide out in a remote log house inhabited by a Gruff Russian speaking older man, bearded Mikhail, and a pretty young Russian girl, Meryam, from Sotchi across the border, until the spring thaw when there will be a possibility of slipping over the border to safety. The relationship between the older man Mikhail and young Merjem is not completely clear but she seems to be more of an unwilling servant than a devoted spouse.

Isolated in a magnificent mountain landscape and a primitive forest, taken in as a temporary guest by this primitive living couple, Aram continues to make sketches and write poetry in his room upstairs, as he despairs more and more of ever escaping. In a series of carefully inserted flashbacks -- the memories of the titular wind - we see that his entire family was wiped out in the 1915 massacres and he alone, a youngster, perhaps a teenager at the time, escaped by walking over an endless flat plain as if in a surreal Di Chirico landscape. The bulk of the film takes place in the rugged cabin and glorious rain swept landscape with very little dialogue and slow visual revelation of the gradual attraction between the girl, Meryem, and Aram which culminates in their physical union when Mikhail, the master of the house is away on a trip for several days.

This will lead to severe complications and another desperate flight, this time Aram and the girl who has had enough of this rugged life with roughhewn older Mikhail, when Turkish soldiers raid the house having been advised of the runaway Armenian's presence by a treacherous village informant. The ensuing chase will end on a small wooden boat with the new lovers trying to elude Turkish soldiers shooting at them from the shore. Did they make it? -- or were they struck down by the firing from the shore? -- Hard to say as the films goes very into very slow whiteout ... to soft plaintiff music which, sparingly used, is another poetic aspect of this long slow meditation on the Armenian genocide perpetrated in Turkey in 1915 just a hundred year ago --and its lingering effects thirty years later. Haunting from beginning to end.

The slightly mystifying title refers to the Random Words memory test the central figure has to undergo in Danish.

Subject: MARRAKESH FILM REVIEWS Ghita Norby Rocks at Eighty in KEY HOUSE MIRROR By Alex Deleon (Filmfestivals.com)

Danish film entitled, KEY HOUSE MIRROR (Nøgle Hus Spejl) viewed at Colisée cinema, Gueliz, Marrakesh, Friday night, December 11. Director Michael Noe: starring Ghita Norby and Sven Wollter.

This is an amazing small budget Danish film the sly subject of which is a love affair in an old age home starring great Danish actress Ghita Norby as a women whose husband has become a living vegetable in love with another senior who still has some lead in his pencil.

Lily, pushing eighty, takes up residence in the old age home to be with her totally incapacitated husband. However, in the home she meets a retired Swedish airlines pilot, who has shaky hands from Parkinsons disease but a sunny outgoing personality and a jaunty outlook on life. Lily falls in love with big beefy Max (Sven Wolkter) and literally seduces him. She has had no sex for years with her paralyzed husband and is sex starved as well as generally starved for intimate connectivity.

We see some remarkable Senior Citizen love making (in bedroom shadow but they are actually nude and copulating!) -- Which leads to family complications when, at the traditional Xmas family reunion, Lily reveals to her daughter (also the devoted daughter of paralyzed aged Eric, propped up on a seat but totally out of if like a zombie) -- that she has fallen in love with a man she has met at the home --and from there this tale suddenly takes off -- with a subtle slam bang. Starting out like an innocent visit to an old age home in Copenhagen but ending up as a tangled elderly love affair and heavyweight family drama when Lily is herself diagnosed as being in the early stages of Dementia and starts becoming forgetful ... however she has planned a dream-of-a-lifetime trip to Paris with beefy shaky lover Max -- buys the tickets and is determined to go through with this late in life honeymoon, no matter what -- On the sound track a extremely decelerated version of Dean Martin's "I Love Paris" is heard over and over again ... "In the morning, in the evening ---because my love is near ..." -- as if the recording itself is suffering from old age!

Danish top star actress Ghita Norby (born 1935!). Is utterly amaaaaazing in this picture -- surprisingly the best movie Of the entire week I saw here at the Marrakesh film festival -- and one of the most breathtaking female performances I have ever seen anywhere! Not to be missed if you can find it. Required viewing for people over Eighty and strongly suggested viewing for those under eighty who aspire to reach this venerable age -- not to mention film buffs of all ages who appreciate and relish sensitive savvy ingeniously realistic acting -- So real in fact, that Norby turns this seemingly simple low key tale into a breathtaking thriller -- which I don't think many actresses her age would be capable of doing. An acting Master Class and a thrill to watch.

MIELE, ("Honey") Italy, 2013

Directed by Valerian Golino: Starring Jasmine Trinca (Miele) and Carlo Cecchi (Grimaldi), Viewed at Jameson CINEFEST, Miskolc, Hungary, October 2013: The Italian film Miele had another unusual subject this week, Euthanasia, and a fascinating lead actress, I have never seen before but would like to see much more of after this. Jasmine Trinca is exceptionally beautiful, has a perfect face, globular eyes and slim body, and you simply cannot keep yours eyes off of her -- even dressed as she is in this film unglamorously in jeans, and with boyishly close cropped hair. MIELE is basically the story (third time this festival) of a relationship between a young woman and a much older man; Irene, 31, and Grimaldi (Carlo Cecchi) 74. The heroine, Irene, nick named "Miele" (honey) has an unusual job which requires her to take trips to Mexico to procure dog killer, Latuna, ostensibly a substance "to put down dogs", but actually a poison to put terminally ill patients out of their misery.

The subject is Euthanasia, and the complicated psychology of people who want to end it all. Irene is an illegal suicide assistant and gives the applicants every chance to change their minds, but in the end it is Mr. Grimaldi, a 70 year old man in perfect health but simply tired of living, who will make her change her own mind about the grisly way she has chosen to make a living -- administering illegal drugs and poisons to people who want to die. A bit thin in story line but the hypnotically beautiful lead actress turns it into a compelling sit through; Jasmine Trinca, 31, was the actress playing Irene. The pic was directed by well known Italian actress Valeria Golino, her first turn behind the cameras, a most promising debut to say the least. Trinca, a leading light in Italian films since 2000, received the Italian Golden Globe "Nastro d'argento" best actress award this year for her work in "Miele" and the film itself was screened at Cannes in "Un certain regard" where it won a commendation by the Ecumenical jury, a body whose function is to show support for Good Christian values. One can easily see why since suicide is a mortal sin in the Catholic Church. Ten stars -- Jasmine Trinca will give you a reason to live another day!