From Cinema Scope #67 (Summer 2016) A Battle of Humour: Maren Ade on Toni Erdmann By Mark Peranson Of all the notable omissions in the Cannes awards this year, zilch for Maren’s Ade’s third feature Toni Erdmann stands out as the most egregious in the 15 years I’ve been attending the festival. To nobody’s surprise,…

By Mark Peranson Cinema Scope: Everyone Else premiered in Berlin in 2009, and now seven years later your third film is finally receiving its debut in Cannes. What took so long? Maren Ade: Directly after Everyone Else, I started working as a producer. I have a company called Komplitzen Film with Janine Jackowski and Jonas…

By Kent Jones I have rarely been more surprised by a movie than I was by Maren Ade’s Everyone Else (2009). Most films that good come with some kind of buzz, and this one was undoubtedly no exception, but the buzz from Berlin had not reached me. I had never seen The Forest for the…

And so goes the decade, and perhaps all of humanity as we know it—it was fun while it lasted. As a supplement to the Top Ten lists published here, which semi-scientifically summarize the privately expressed preferences of our regular contributors, I decided to do something a little different to glance back at the past ten years. By the time of publication you can find numerous examples of excellent writing on all of the films in our decade-end list, both in previous issues of Cinema Scope and also in other publications, in print and online, on the occasion of revisiting the past ten bountiful years in cinema.

way through uncertain, liminal spaces. At the same time, the documentary marks a sharp turn in Speth’s filmmaking approach, something all the more notable given the remarkable consistency of her first four films.

By Giovanni Marchini Camia Published in Cinema Scope #78 (Spring 2019) It’s outrageous that it should have taken until 2019 for Angela Schanelec to make it into the Berlinale Competition—and ironic, given that it was a review of her film Passing Summer (2001), published in Die Zeit, that originated the term “Berliner Schule.” That film…

It’s outrageous that it should have taken this long for Angela Schanelec to make it into the Competition of the Berlinale—and ironic, given that it was a review of her film Passing Summer (2001), published in Die Zeit, that originated the term “Berliner Schule.”

By Michael Sicinski Published in Cinema Scope 75 (Summer 2018)   I. In the opening minutes of Ulrich Köhler’s new film In My Room, things don’t seem right. In fact, it’s all a bit glitchy, and the unsuspecting viewer might very well wonder whether the DCP is malfunctioning. The scene appears to be the aftermath…

Once more by popular demand (and against my better wishes), the Cinema Scope writers and editors have spoken, and, as predicted—no fix was in, I swear—here we go on record with the year’s top ten, a.k.a. Toni and the Gang.

By Mark Peranson We interrupt our regularly scheduled depressed editor’s note to instead speak from a place of anger-tinged despondency. Usually at this late point in the editorial schedule I’m wracking my brain to think of something interesting to say, and would likely complain about the lack of interest in the unprecedented reviews of 190+…

All TIFF 2014 TIFF 2015 TIFF 2016 TIFF 2017 TIFF 2018 TIFF 2019 TIFF 2020 TIFF 2021 TIFF 2021 | The Other Tom (Rodrigo Plá, Laura Santullo, Mexico/USA) By Angelo Muredda Single mom Elena (Julia Chavez) tries to do right by her scampish ten-year-old son Tom (Israel Rodríguez Bertorelli) despite the interventions of the byzantine…

This the full table of contents from Cinema Scope Magazine #67. We post selected articles from each issue on the site which you can read for free using the links below. This is only possible with support from our subscribers, so please consider a subscription to the magazine, or  the instant digital download version.  FEATURES *El Filibustero: Lav Diaz’s A Lullaby to the Sorrowful…

By Max Nelson Miguel Gomes is in a tricky position: three features into his filmmaking career, he’s already developed a remarkably consistent and well-rounded personal style, stretched it to the breaking point, and then whittled it back down. Tabu, Gomes’ 2012 breakout, felt like a triumphant fusion of elements from his previous two features, borrowing…

By Adam Nayman You can probably trace the idea—or at least the exact etymology—of the so-called “Greek Weird Wave” back to a 2011 Guardian article by Steve Rose. In it, the author sagely mused that “the world’s most messed-up country is making the world’s most messed-up cinema.” Of course, the movies that prompted Rose’s declaration—Yorgos…

This is the complete list of articles from Cinema Scope issue 50. * Articles available online Features and Interviews *Film Criticism After Film Criticism: The J. Hoberman Affair by Mark Peranson *The Animal Equation by Denis Côté small roads, 103 minutes, 47 shots, 2011 by James Benning *Epinephrine, Man: The Cranked-Up Films of Neveldine/Taylor by…

By Blake Williams “The everyday is platitude (what lags and falls back, the residual life with which our trash cans and cemeteries are filled: scrap and refuse); but this banality is also what is most important. It brings us back to existence in its very spontaneity and as it is lived—in the moment when, lived,…

By Mark Peranson “Messieurs, nous ferons mieux la prochaine fois.”—Fagon, Le mort de Louis XIV The already established conventional wisdom is that 2016 saw a strong Cannes Competition ruined by a set of awful awards from a dunderheaded jury of circus clowns led by third-time’s-a-charm George Miller—and while I certainly agree with the latter contention,…