This film was added to our list last year when its director Andrzej Wajda passed away and eulogies of him appeared in a bunch of places. He is considered one of Poland’s premier directors and this is apparently one of the more notable of his works though he has directed many films across a long and fruitful career.
Lead actress Charlotte Rampling has had an illustrious career but I doubt most audience members would know her. My wife managed to recognize her from Swimming Pool, a film we watched more than 10 years ago but I couldn’t place her. Just odd how memory works sometimes. Here she appears in a small, unassuming British film that appeared at the top of some of the year’s best lists a year ago.
We’ve watched a fair few of director Alfonson Cuarón, most obviously Gravity and Children of Men. We’ve even watched his Mexican work, such as Y Tu Mamá También. I don’t believe I’ve ever disliked one of his films. This one is the very first film that he made in the US and was a box office failure. For this reason, I expect that very few people have actually watched it.
I don’t believe I’ve ever watched an Ethiopian film before so it’s good at least to try something new. Though it prominently features Angelina Jolie’s name, her role is that of executive producer only which I take to mean that she helped to fund and perhaps the market the film. Most of the cast and crew including the director Zeresenay Berhane Mehari seems to be Ethiopian.
I can’t recall the last time I went to the cinema for a horror film and this certainly counts as a film that would never be on my usual radar. It got my attention due to the superlative reviews it received on Broken Forum and of course it helps that it has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 99%.
Yes, this is intriguingly enough a French film by director Paul Verhoeven, the same director who is best known for Robocop, Basic Instinct and Showgirls. Verhoeven apparently first tried to make this film in the US but could not find a well known American actress willing to accept this risqué role. He then decided that an American film would be too conventional a thriller anyway and so made it in France, going to the extent of learning French to do so. Impressive dedication for a man in his mid-70s!
Updates on this blog have been a bit slow lately both due to me being sick and my Internet being down for a few days. I thought I’d get back into the groove with a lighter watch, a documentary about renowned food critic Jonathan Gold and the food scene in Los Angeles.