Hard-working German actor Jürgen Vogel plays the serial rapist Theo in Matthias Glasner’s almost unbearably grim The Free Will (Der Freie Wille). When we meet Theo, he’s heavy-set and angry, working at the cafeteria of a seaside youth hostel. Within minutes of the film’s beginning, he spots a potential victim, knocks her off a bicycle [...]
Posts Tagged ‘suicide’
Taxidermia
Yet another Tribeca dud, Taxidermia is one of the most unpleasant movies I’ve ever sat through. György Pálfi (Hukkle) directed this Hungarian Grand Guignol grotesquery that riffs on exactly three ideas: pig fucking, speed eating, and self-taxidermy. Based on short stories by Lajos Parti Nagy, the movie presents the fable-like history of a freakish family. [...]
Day Night Day Night
A harrowing movie about a female suicide bomber headed for Times Square. Unlike Hany Abu-Assad’s Paradise Now, which followed two Palestinian “suiciders” into Israel, Day Night Day Night refuses to give any kind of context. The nationality, ethnicity, religion, political and private motivations of the girl with the detonating knapsack (Luisa Williams) are never revealed; [...]
Mouchette
A new disc from the Criterion Collection can feel a little bit like trying a new vegetarian dish. Sometimes it’s juicy and delicious, sometimes you feel like you ought to like it just because it’s oh-so-healthy (and then you’re glad you did), and sometimes it’s broccoli rabe.
Robert Bresson’s final black-and-white film, an adaptation of a [...]
