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Cinema Scope Table of Contents 96

Interviews Workingman’s Death: Radu Jude on Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World by Jordan Cronk Outside In: Eduardo Williams on The Human Surge 3 by Blake Williams The Phantom of the Opera: Atom Egoyan on Seven Veils by Adam Nayman Afterlife: Kleber Mendonça Filho on Pictures of Ghosts by Tom…
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A Public Conversation with Hong Sangsoo on The Novelist’s Film

By Mark Peranson Gartenbaukino, Vienna, Austria, November 1, 2022 Mark Peranson (MP): You are not really a filmmaker who likes to interpret your films, but talks about them more in terms of process, about how the films are made. The Novelist’s Film (2022) is your 27th film. Your 28th film, Walk Up (2022), is showing…
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Cinema Scope Issue 95 | Table of Contents

Interviews and Features Back to Zero: The Experimental Cinema of Jean Eustache by Michael Sicinski Life Belongs to Us: The Eternal Return of Jacques Becker and Claude Sautet by Christoph Huber Master at Work: Paul Schrader on Master Gardener by Will Sloan Pictures of Flowers: On Recent Small-Gauge Filmmaking in and Around Spain by Phil…
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Cinema Scope Magazine for international film reviews, interviews and criticism

Cinema Scope Issue 94 | Table of Contents

Matt Johnson and Matt Miller on BlackBerry, Sentimental Education: Christian Petzold on Afire, The Nameless World: Bas Devos on Here - and more
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Cinema Scope Issue 93 | Table of Contents

Alice Diop on St Omer, Tod Field on Tár, Antoine Bourges on Concrete Valley and more features, reviews and free articles. Subscribe or buy an issue and help us reach 100.
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Issue 71: Table of Contents

Interviews and Features Electroshock Therapy: Matthew Rankin on The Tesla World Light by Jason Anderson Quiet Savagery: A Tale of Two Tourneurs by Christoph Huber All You Can Eat: The Heroism of Howard Hughes by Adam Nayman Censoring Shakespeare: Ing K’s Shakespeare Must Die by Nathan Letoré Would You Like to See a Magic Trick?: Basma Alsharif’s Ouroboros…
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Unexpected Textures: A Conversation Between Nicolás Pereda and Kazik Radwanski

From Cinema Scope #52 (Fall 2012) With Summer of Goliath (2010), Mexican-Canadian filmmaker Nicolás Pereda finally began to attract well-deserved attention for his unique mode of hybridic fiction/documentary, an increasingly intricate formal gamesmanship that has been primarily based upon his collaborations with actors Gabino Rodríguez and Teresa Sánchez, playing son and mother. From Pereda’s first…
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TIFF 2013 | Enough Said (Nicole Holofcener, US)—Special Presentations

By Adam Nayman First things first: in his final screen performance, James Gandolfini is pretty good. For all the years that he played Tony Soprano, Gandolfini’s secret weapon was an unlikely sexiness—a quality steadily buried under layers of bad behaviour and cellulite, but still visible to the character’s lovers and the show’s audience alike. Gandolfini’s…
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TIFF 2013 | The Last of the Unjust (Claude Lanzmann, France/Austria)—TIFF Docs

From Cinema Scope #55, Summer 2013 By Christoph Huber Claude Lanzmann’s last reworking of leftover materials from the rich archive accumulated for his groundbreaking epic Shoah (1985), The Last of the Unjust breaks with the rigorous approach its director previously employed to find a just way to talk about the Nazis’ mass murder of the…
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TIFF Day the Last: Listomania

As we await the editing and uploading of the roundtable, here are our Toronto-present writers’ selections of their favourite films they’ve seen during TIFF (in a cinema, in Toronto, during the Toronto International Film Festival). To wit, not the best films of the festival, as who could possibly be equipped to make that assertion, what…
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TIFF Day 10: Pieta x 13

Phil Coldiron I was planning on starting this little capsule by noting how I had never seen anything by Kim Ki-duk prior to this viewing. Turns out, I still haven’t; and given that, this obviously isn’t a review, or even really about Pieta at all. If you’re wondering, based on the thirty-some minutes that I…
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TIFF Day 9: Day Off

But tomorrow, this guy gets his:
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TIFF Day 7: Augustine | The Bright Day | Camion | The Color of the Chameleon | Do Not Disturb | Dreams for Sale | Hannah Arendt | John Dies at the End | A Liar’s Autobiography | 7 Boxes

Augustine (Alice Winocour, France)—Discovery By Adam Nayman Less Prestige-ious than David Cronenberg’s recent period-piece account of psychoanalytic one-upsmanship, the pre-Freudian drama Augustine actually gets down and dirty with its (diagnosed) hysterical female patient: a 19-year-old maid whose spectacular seizure suffered while ladling out supper to her employers gets her packed off to a sanatorium. Once…
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TIFF Day 6: Camp 14: Total Control Zone | Cloud Atlas | Everyday | In Another Country | Key of Life | The Lesser Blessed | London – The Modern Babylon | Silver Linings Playbook | When I Saw You | Writers

Camp 14: Total Control Zone (Marc Wiese, Germany)—TIFF Docs By Adam Cook Camp 14 is not the most enjoyable film: it’s not easy to watch, it’s slow, and the subject matter is difficult territory, but it’s territory explored with commendable moral intelligence by director Marc Wiese. The main subject of the film is Shin Dong-huyk,…
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TIFF Day 5: Antiviral | The Capsule/Walker | The Deflowering of Eva van End | Gone Fishing | The Impossible | Passion | The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology | Tout ce que tu possèdes | What Richard Did

Antiviral (Brandon Cronenberg, Canada)—Special Presentation By John Semley Maybe the most frustrating thing about the debut by David Cronenberg’s twenty-aught son is that calling it “Cronenbergian” doesn’t really work: it’s less a value judgment on its glaring paternal influences than a statement of fact. To be sure, Brandon Cronenberg has inherited more than a genetic…
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TIFF Day 4: The Act of Killing | Dans la maison | La magasin des suicides | On the Road | Painless | Quelques heures de printemps | The Sapphires | Thermae Romae | Trois mondes | Watchtower

The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn, Anonymous, Denmark/Norway/UK)—TIFF Docs By Adam Nayman Like most other documentaries about certifiably insane people, The Act of Killing raises questions about the exploitation of its subjects. A related question: is it possible to exploit men who freely—and in some cases gleefully—admit to the torture, rape and murder…
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TIFF Day 3: Far from Afghanistan | Anna Karenina | Argo | Blancanieves | Clip | Hyde Park on Hudson | Juvenile Offender | The Land of Hope | Lunarcy! | Out in the Dark | Smashed

The Discomforts of Home: Far from Afghanistan (John Gianvito, Travis Wilkerson, Jon Jost, Minda Martin, Soon-Mi Yoo, USA)—Wavelengths By Aaron Cutler and Mariana Shellard When Chris Marker gathered his Nouvelle Vague and Left Bank colleagues to make the omnibus film Loin du Viêtnam in 1967, nearly half a million American troops were stationed in Vietnam…
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TIFF Day 2: Short Cuts Canada | The Crimes of Mike Recket | Dangerous Liaisons | Dredd 3D | Eat Sleep Die | End of Watch | Frances Ha | The Hunt | Krivina | Road North | Spring Breakers | Stories We Tell

Short Cuts Canada By Hugh Gibson This year’s Short Cuts Canada section is cast into new light due to two recent developments.  First, with the elimination of Canada First (and before it, Perspectives Canada, the so-called “ghettos” for national cinema), it becomes the festival’s sole Canadian-specific program.  Second, with the sudden announcement that the Worldwide…
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TIFF Day 1: La cinquième saison | I Declare War | The Iceman | Jayne Mansfield’s Car | Looper | More Than Honey | Mushrooming | Paradise: Love | Shanghai | Three Sisters

La cinquième saison (Peter Brosens, Jessica Woodworth, Belgium/Netherlands/France)—Wavelengths By Mark Peranson Once upon a blue moon there comes along a very special film so wrong-headed, so deeply, deeply ridiculous, but made with the utmost confidence, that a wide swath of critics, programmers, and spectators mistake its balls-out look-at-me! posturing for high-minded, state-of-the-earth profundity. Oftentimes this…
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TIFF Preview -1: Blackbird | Born to Hate… Destined to Love | Dead Europe | Fill the Void | Janeane from Des Moines | Laurence Anyways | Lines of Wellington | La Sirga | Sightseers | Thérèse Desqueyroux

 Blackbird (Jason Buxton, Canada)—Discovery By Kiva Reardon The first film from Canadian director Jason Buxton is not without flaws, but it is these very problems which make it all the richer and beguiling, as it’s difficult to tell whether they are inadvertent or exacting and calculated. Set in the fictional rural town of Eastport—a perfect…
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TIFF Preview -2: Après mai | Like Someone in Love | At Any Price | Berberian Sound Studio | Boy Eating the Bird’s Food | The Girl from the South | In the Fog | Jump | Lore | Me and You | Outrage Beyond | Reality | Student

Cinema Scope 52 Preview Après mai (Olivier Assayas, France)—Masters By Andrew Tracy As one is virtually a companion piece to the other, it is only natural to begin discussion of Après mai (Something in the Air) with Olivier Assayas’ 2002 memoir A Post-May Adolescence, just published in an elegant English translation by the Austrian Filmmuseum…
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TIFF Preview -3: autrement, la Molussie | Post Tenebras Lux | The Central Park Five | The Gatekeepers | A Hijacking | iLL Manors | Imagine | Kinshasa Kids | Mekong Hotel | Miss Lovely | Penance | To the Wonder

Cinema Scope 52 Preview Burru’s Abominable Dialectic: Nicolas Rey’s autrement, la Molussie (France)—Wavelengths By Michael Sicinski In composing this essay on Nicolas Rey’s latest film, I have opted to follow a principle similar to the one that gives his film its overall shape. The essay consists of six semi-autonomous sections, which I have assigned an…
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TIFF Preview -4: Rebelle | Room 237 | As If We Were Catching a Cobra | Beyond the Hills | Dust | It Was the Son | Jackie | Motorway | The Paperboy | The Perks of Being a Wallflower | Shores of Hope | The War of the Volcanoes

Cinema Scope 52 Preview Rebelle (Kim Nguyen, Canada)—Special Presentation By Kiva Reardon The year in cinema has been stamped with a modicum of magical realism. First up at Sundance was Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild, a film routinely described as “lyrical” and “heartwarming.” Now there is Montréal director Kim Nguyen’s Rebelle, arriving at…
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TIFF Preview -5: The Master | Denis Côté on Bestiaire | Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang | Gangs of Wasseypur | Just the Wind | Perret in France and Algeria | Pusher | The Reluctant Fundamentalist | Rust and Bone

Cinema Scope 52 Preview The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)—Special Presentation By Gabe Klinger The evolution in Paul Thomas Anderson’s oeuvre towards impeccably researched, stunningly visualized mythological explorations of the American character in There Will Be Blood (2007) and The Master represents a sterling 180-degree turn. Staying within a certain autobiographical comfort zone in his…
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TIFF Preview -7: Museum Hours | Amour

Cinema Scope 52 Preview Wandering in Vienna: Jem Cohen and the Adventure of Museum Hours (Austria/USA)—Contemporary World Cinema By Robert Koehler “Kunsthistorisches. It’s the big old one.” This is how Vienna’s massive, venerable, lovely and, indeed, elderly central art museum is termed in Jem Cohen’s Museum Hours, and it neatly sums up the film’s warm,…
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TIFF Preview -9: The End of Time | Tabu

Cinema Scope 52 Preview Lost in the Moment: Peter Mettler on The End of Time (Canada/Switzerland)—Masters By Jason Anderson After travelling through such far-flung sites as Detroit, Hawaii, India, and the geek-tacular labyrinth that is CERN’s Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Peter Mettler’s latest documentary finally leaves the material world altogether, arriving at a ripping…
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Cinema Scope Top Ten of 2011

1. This Is Not a Film (Jafar Panahi, Mojtaba Mirtahmasb) 2. The Turin Horse (Béla Tarr) 3. L’Apollonide—Souvenirs de la maison close (Bertrand Bonello) 4. Dreileben (Christian Petzold, Dominik Graf, Christoph Hochhäusler) 5. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan) 6. The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick) 7. Kill List (Ben Wheatley) 8.…
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Canada’s Top Ten 2011: The Roundtable

We’ve already discussed the majority of the features on this year’s Canada’s Top Ten list in some form or another in the pages of Cinema Scope or on Cinema Scope Online, many during our TIFF coverage. But as it’s still the time of year when film culture is obsessed with lists—writing them, reading them, arguing…
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Cinema Scope TIFF 2011 Roundtable

Mark Peranson, Robert Koehler, Jason Anderson, Adam Nayman and John Semley hash out the best, worst and in-between of TIFF 2011.
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TIFF Day 7: Century of Birthing / Dark Horse / The Invader / You’re Next

Century of Birthing (Lav Diaz, The Philippines)—Visions By Christoph Huber If you want the entire experience of the 68th Venice Film Festival bottled up into one grand (almost) six-hour marathon, surely there’s no better way than Lav Diaz’s Orizzonti sidebar closer, which was—as always seems to be the case with Venice screenings of the Filiipono…
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TIFF Day 6: Goon / Killer Joe / Love and Bruises / Roman’s Circuit

Goon (Michael Dowse, Canada)—Special Presentations By John Semley A bloody ballet of hockey violence that, gracefully, never gets too balletic, Michael Dowse’s latest drops the gloves on neutered, toothless hock-u-dramas of the Score, Breakaway etc. variety. As brawler Doug “The Thug” Glatt, Seann William Scott further elbows his way out of typecast wincing douchebaggery, playing…
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TIFF Day 4: Elles / Hanaan / The Last Gladiators / Porfirio / Wuthering Heights

Elles (Malgoska Szumowska, France/Poland/Germany)—Special Presentations By Sergio Baldini In Elles, a female journalist from the woman’s magazine Elle (played by Juliette Binoche, whose presence reinforces the sub-Hanekean tenor of the film) is investigating student prostitution. She interviews two young women, one French, one Polish, living in Paris, who have turned to hooking to finance their…
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TIFF Day 3: Goodbye First Love / Habibi / Hotel Swooni / Into the Abyss / Restoration

Goodbye First Love (Mia Hansen-Løve, France/Germany)—Contemporary World Cinema By Jay Kuehner Young love, Paris 1999. Surprisingly, there is no moratorium on the subject among French directors, not even the youthful Mia Hansen-Løve, who at 30 has three films to her credit that exhibit maturity beyond her years. Loosely autobiographical, Goodbye First Love is no exception…
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TIFF Day 2: Arirang / This Is Not a Film / Almayer’s Folly / The Descendants / Generation P / The River Used to Be a Man / Shame / The Snows of Kilimanjaro / Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale

Arirang (Kim Ki Duk, South Korea)—Real to Reel This Is Not a Film (Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, Iran)—Masters By Mark Peranson An amateurishly shot “self-interrogation,” the Cannes Un Certain Regard-winning film Arirang is cannon fodder for the enemies of director Kim Ki Duk, and of those the director rightly claims there are many; there…
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TIFF Day 1: City to City: Buenos Aires / The Boy Who Was a King / Duch: Master of the Forges of Hell / Hard Core Logo II / Hors Satan / The Last Christeros / Lipstikka / A Mysterious World / Nuit #1 / The Other Side of Sleep / Restless / The Sword Identity / We Need to Talk About Kevin

Cinema Scope 48 Preview: City Sisters: Buenos Aires in the Spotlight at TIFF By Quintín One of my town’s most remarkable landmarks is a really awful globe made of concrete that sits on Main Street. It was donated by the local Rotary Club in association with some California branch of the institution. The reason for…
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TIFF Countdown -1: Low Life / 388 Arletta Avenue / Back to Stay / Elena / The Forgiveness of Blood / Good Bye / Gypsy / Leave It On the Floor / Mr. Tree / The Patron Saints / Sleeping Beauty / Smuggler / Take This Waltz / Volcano / Whores’ Glory

Cinema Scope 48 Preview: Low Life (Nicolas Klotz & Elisabeth Perceval, France)—Special Presentations By Andréa Picard “Two types of film: those that employ the resources of the theatre (actors, directors, etc…) and use the camera in order to reproduce; those that employ the resources of cinematography and use the camera to create.” —Robert Bresson, Notes…
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TIFF Countdown -2: Martha Marcy May Marlene / Afghan Luke / ALPS / The Artist / Beauty / Fable of the Fish / First Position / The Ides of March / Kill List / Le Havre / The Loneliest Planet / Page Eight / Pina / Play / A Separation / Sons of Norway / The Student / Tyrannosaur

Cinema Scope 48 Preview: Martha Marcy May Marlene (Sean Durkin, US)—Special Presentations By Andrew Tracy If “indie-ness” conveys a certain generic intimation unto itself, some of the most celebrated recent independent films have also strategically adopted broader generic tactics, usually related to violence. As sensation, whether shockingly enacted or tautly withheld, has started to become…
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TIFF Countdown -3: Crazy Horse / Among Us / Amy George / Cuchera / Cut / Footnote / Keyhole / Last Days in Jerusalem / Mushrooms / Pink Ribbons, Inc. / The Silver Cliff / A Simple Life / Think of Me / The Year of the Tiger

Cinema Scope 48 Preview: Crazy Horse (Frederick Wiseman, France/US)—Real to Reel By Mark Peranson Over the last decade, I’ve realized that Frederick Wiseman devotees are incapable of critical thinking when it comes to their master. They fail to see (or refuse to acknowledge) that in composing his career-long grand narrative analysis, Wiseman sometimes loses sight…
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TIFF Countdown -6: Miss Bala / Romeo Onze / The Cat Vanishes / Habemus Papum / i am a good person/i am a bad person / Coriolanus

Cinema Scope 48 Preview: Miss Bala (Gerardo Naranjo, Mexico) – Contemporary World Cinema By Adam Nayman The opening sequence of Miss Bala clings closely to its main character while coyly denying us a look at her face for as long as possible. This is partly because the build-up is worth it—star Stephanie Sigman is as…
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TIFF Countdown -7: A Dangerous Method / The Turin Horse / Dreileben

Cinema Scope 48 Preview: A Dangerous Method (David Cronenberg, Canada/Germany) By Richard Porton The title of Russell Jacoby’s 1983 polemic, The Repression of Psychoanalysis, suggests that the radical implications of the Freudian tradition have become muddled in an era where nothing seems more safely middle-class than a session on the couch with the shrink of…
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TIFF Countdown -8: Monsieur Lazhar / Melancholia / Michael

Cinema Scope 48 Preview: Monsieur Lazhar (Philippe Falardeau, Canada) By Jason Anderson Few lives go untouched by some form of trauma or catastrophe, yet compassion is often the last thing we spare for the people who cross our paths, especially when there’s no obvious indication they might need anything from us. This point was elegantly…
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TIFF Countdown -9: Drive / L’Apollonide / Las acacias

Cinema Scope 48 Preview: Nicolas Winding Refn and the Search for a Real Hero By Robert Koehler “Hey, do you wanna see somethin’?”—Driver in Drive In the middle of Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive, a film punctuated by extreme flourishes of violence and vengeance, there is a period of peace. It occurs when Driver (Ryan Gosling),…
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TIFF Countdown -10: Take Shelter / Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

The Toronto International Film Festival is not the epicentre of film culture, though it sure feels like it every year for two weeks in September. (If you live in Toronto, it becomes the epicentre of culture, period, for better or worse.) Usually, Cinema Scope limits its coverage of TIFF premieres to features and reviews in…
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