The Cliff Edge

BERLIN: Beautiful ‘Honey’ wins the Golden Bear

Tulin Ozen and Boras Altas as mother and son in a moving tale

For once, my reviews were in sync with a festival jury. With Werner Herzog in charge, the competition jury at the Berlin International Film Festival gave its top Golden Bear prize to Turkish film “Honey” (Bal), which I reviewed favorably in The Hollywood Reporter. Feo Aladag’s German drama “When We Leave” (Die Fremde) was named Best European Film in the Panorama sidebar and you can see my review below. Read about all the Berlin Festival winners in The Hollywood Reporter.

By Ray Bennett

BERLIN – The third entry in Turkish filmmaker Semih Kaplanoglu’s trilogy about a young poet named Yusuf, “Honey” (“Bal”), sees him as a 6-year-old, learning the harsh realities of nature as his beekeeper father disappears in the forest.

Measured and contemplative with a remarkable performance by Boras Altas, then 7, and superlative cinematography by Baris Ozbicer, the film will follow its predecessors in winning great appreciation at film festivals. It may also attract art houses with audiences interested in things bucolic and spiritual.

Altas with Erdal Besikcioglu as his forest-wise beekeeper father

Read my full review in The Hollywood Reporter

Master class in acting from Plummer and Mirren

Christopher Plummer as Tolstoy and Helen Mirren as his wife Sofya

I hadn’t seen “The Last Station” when I wrote this preview for the December 2009 edition of Cue Entertainment. On theatrical release in the UK now, it’s a very entertaining and moving drama with fine acting from a large cast topped by Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren. They had my votes in the Bafta Film Awards but they were inexplicably spurned in the nominations. They both have Academy Award nominations, however, and while they are far from favorites, it would be wonderful to see Plummer especially rewarded for a masterful performance among the many he has delivered.

By Ray Bennett

In 1910, the great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy was one of the most famous people on earth, attracting the world’s press and having every word and gesture recorded by acolytes. He couldn’t even die in peace, as Michael Hoffman shows in his film “The Last Station” due from Optimum Releasing on Feb. 19.

Based on a 1990 novel by Jay Parini, the film details the fight that took place over ownership of the copyright to Tolstoy’s works between his wife, Countess Sofya, and Vladimir Chertkov, leader of a utopian organisation and commune that the writer founded.

Oscar-winner Helen Mirren (“The Queen”) stars as the imperial Sofya with Christopher Plummer as the long-bearded author and Paul Giamatti as the determined Chertkov. James McAvoy also stars as a young secretary who comes to work for Tolstoy and is caught between the two warring factions even as he discovers love for the first time with a young woman in the commune played by Kerry Condon.

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James Purefoy stakes a claim for action stardom

James Purefoy as Solomon Kane in first of planned three swashbuckling action films

This preview appeared in the December 2009 edition of Cue Entertainment

By Ray Bennett

British filmmaker Michael J. Bassett likes rain, mud and gore. Making his third feature film, the sword and sorcery epic “Solomon Kane” due for release by Entertainment on Feb. 19, he tested his star James Purefoy to the limits shooting in deep winter in the Czech Republic.

“Mike would throw these rain machines at us. I’d look up and there’d be another rain machine! One day it got so cold there was frozen rain on top of everyone’s umbrellas. And my clothes froze on me – they had to chuck hot water on me constantly so I could keep moving!” Purefoy told Empire Magazine.

Judging from reaction to clips from the film at this year’s Comic Con convention in California, all that punishment paid off. “If James isn’t a superstar after this, I’ll eat my hat,” says Bassett.

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London Critics’ Circle awards pick some real winners

Best young performer Katie Jarvis in best British film ‘Fish Tank’

By Ray Bennett

My votes had little bearing on the outcome at the London Critics’ Circle Film Awards for movies released in 2009 but there’s no argument that several winners deserved their prizes, especially “Fish Tank,” which claimed honors as best British film plus Andrea Arnold as best British director, Michael Fassbender as best British supporting actor and Katie Jarvis, as best young performer for her outstanding job as an angry and confused teenager.

Arnold and Fassbender had my vote but I picked Jane Campion’s beautiful “Bright Star” as best British film and wanted to draw attention to young performer Bill Milner as Ian Dury’s son in “Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll.” I thought Katie Jarvis deserved the best British actress award. The film is out on DVD now and due on Blu-ray on March 22 from Artificial Eye.

Others in which the majority of the Critics’ Circle agreed with me were “Moon” director Duncan Jones as breakthrough British filmmaker and Kathryn Bigelow as best director for “The Hurt Locker.”

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BERLIN: ‘Boxhagener Platz’ looks back at East Berlin in 1968

Gudrun Ritter and Samuel Schneider star in film of popular German novel

By Ray Bennett

BERLIN – Based on a popular German novel set in East Berlin in 1968, “Boxhagener Platz” is filled with gentle humor as the folks in a busy neighborhood deal with the every day realities of Soviet rule.

The film’s nostalgic atmosphere and universal family nuances should make it a success on home territory and elsewhere intrigue audiences with an historical bent, but its low-key drama is not likely to attract large-scale international attention.

Read my full review in The Hollywood Reporter

BERLIN: ‘In the Shadows’ lacks light and shade

Misel Maticevic plays a tough guy who is capable apart from getting away with anything

By Ray Bennett

BERLIN – Thomas Arsian’s “In the Shadows” aims to be a character study of a certain kind of man who will do anything to achieve independence including armed robbery and murder, but the result is ponderous and unexciting.

Misel Maticevic plays a man fresh out of jail who first seeks his share of the heist for which he was imprisoned and then a target for a high-paying robbery. Maticevic looks the part but Arsian’s screenplay and direction let him down with filmmaking that is flat-out dull. The film is not likely to make much of a mark beyond its home territory.

Read my full review in The Hollywood Reporter

BERLIN: Skarsgard shines as a ‘Somewhat Gentle Man’

Stellan Starsgard (center) plays a genial ex-con in bad company

By Ray Bennett

BERLIN – An oddball comedy with criminal undertones, Hans Petter Moland’s “A Somewhat Gentle Man” (“En Ganske Snill Mann”) follows a mild-mannered convict as he gets out of jail seeking mostly a quiet life but possibly also vengeance against the man who testified against him.

Played for laughs drawn from characters rather than funny lines, the Norwegian film is a charmer with Stellan Skarsgard for once in a role worthy of his attention. Although a little long for its own good and with a score that’s too bouncy by half, it’s the kind of film that sneaks up on you and leaves a warm smile. It should do very well in international markets and festivals will line up to offer applause.

Read my full review in The Hollywood Reporter

BERLIN: ‘Hairdresser’ goes for (extra) heavyweight laughs

Ill-Young Kim takes a fancy to larger-than-life Gabriela Maria Schmeide

By Ray Bennett

BERLIN — The difficulty with Doris Dorrie’s jolly and colorful romp “The Hairdresser” is that when the fat lady sings, it still ain’t over. She doesn’t so much sing, really, as chirp, but she keeps on chirping relentlessly until you wish she’d just eat a wafer-thin mint and explode like Monty Python’s Mr. Creosote.

But that’s just me. Several at the packed press screening found considerable mirth in the considerable girth of star Gabriela Maria Schmeide. It might be that there’s an audience waiting to applaud a woman whose complete denial of any potential health fears from being massively obese comes with a very appealing grin. Women of a certain size, and not a few men, may eat it up like a double helping of ice cream.

Read my full review in The Hollywood Reporter

BERLIN: Medicine meets magic in ‘For the Good of Others’

Eduardo Noriega and Belen Rueda in Berlin Panorama film

By Ray Bennett

BERLIN – Modern medicine and old-fashioned superstition clash in Oskar Santos’ “For the Good of Others,” a well-constructed medical drama about a doctor who discovers that he holds the power to heal in his hands. But only those with a strong ability to suspend disbelief will find it credible.

Good performances by an attractive cast led by Eduado Noriega, a slick depiction of a big-city emergency room, and a surreal element that many might enjoy should take the film successfully to Spanish-language markets and international art houses.

With a slightly different approach, the film could have been a sharp satire on the way some doctors come to believe they are God but Santos and screenwriter Daniel Sanchez Arevalo play this particular inexplicable power of healing straight down the middle.

Read my full review in The Hollywood Reporter

BERLIN: Sad tale of closed minds in ‘When We Leave’

Sibel Kekilli as a young woman at odds with her family over cultural traditions

By Ray Bennett

BERLIN – A battered wife leaves her husband and takes her son back home but their reception is not at all what she expected in Feo Aladag’s “When We Leave”, a well-crafted examination of the blindness of hidebound tradition.

Told calmly but with an escalating sense of dread, the story tackles a conflict that arises in many countries when modern thinking clashes with the strict patriarchal rules of ancient cultures. It’s a universal story that will connect with audiences familiar with the struggle of expatriate families to hold on to their sense of community while their daughters aspire to independence.

Angry but clear-eyed, the film should do well at home and find a sympathetic welcome in international markets and on the festival circuit.

Read my full review in The Hollywood Reporter