Lars von Trier Wants Serious Look at Nymphomaniac

Dangerous Liaisons Between Hamas and Shin Bet

This amazing German documentary (2014) is based on the autobiography of Mosab Hassan Yousef, Son of Hamas, and is directed by Israeli Nadav Schirman.  Son of Hamas leader/founder Sheikh  Hassan Yousef, Palestinian protagonist Mosab was a spy for Shin Bet (Israel's internal secret service) for 10 years. Green is the color of Islam, and thus code name Green Prince.  Why would Mosab be motivated to spy for the Israelis ?  Revenge typical, with expectation of killing the Handler.  Sometimes, it doesn't work out that way.  Shin Bet handler Gonen ben Yitzhak is also interviewed.  Original footage from the Second Intifada is interspersed among testimonials.

Mosab and Gonen developed a strong boundary-breaching loyalty for each other, between source and handler. Raped as a young boy,  Mosab was jailed by the Israelis, so he had a chance to witness Hamas torture and kill fellow Hamas members who were suspected of recruiting.  These killings were so repugnant that he made the decision to spy for Israel.  Mosab's transformation makes a strong case for Stockholm Syndrome. Israeli politicians had no awareness of Mosab's role as spy.  Mosab did several stints in jail, so he could pass muster with fellow Hamas members and also to be safe from assassination.  As a spy, Mosab spent much of his life processing lies.

Archival footage of Mosab shows disfigured jaw from prison fight, the current Mosab had cosmetic jaw surgery in US.

Noujaim's Square Focuses on Unheralded Activists in Tahrir Square

The Square is a 2013 Egyptian-American documentary film by Jehane Noujaim, which depicts the ongoing Egyptian Crisis until 2013, starting with the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 at Tahrir Square through Sisi's (Field Marshal Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi) ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood. 

The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 86th Academy Awards.  If you are looking for Gigi Ibrahim, forget it.  This film is about average people.

Tangerine

Tangerine is a 2015 American comedy-drama film directed by Sean S. Baker and written by Baker and Chris Bergoch, starring Kitana Kiki Rodriguez (Sin-Dee-Rella), Mya Taylor (Alexandra), and James Ransone (Chester). The story follows a transgender sex worker who discovers her boyfriend and pimp has been cheating on her. Both transgender hookers work the blocks around Santa Monica and Highland.  Ultimately, it's the warmth and absence of judgement or condescension toward its marginalized characters that make the film such a vibrant and uplifting snapshot.  The film was shot with three iPhone 5s smartphones using anamorphic clip-on adapters, on a microbudget.  These nonintrusive cameras play a significant role in the shoot.

Mark Duplass approached Sean S. Baker for a new project. Baker was inspired by films he saw at the New Zealand Film Festival. The film was executive-produced by the Duplass Brothers, and produced by Through Films, Darren Dean, and Shih-Ching Tsou.

Transgender sex worker Sin-Dee Rella, who has just finished a 28-day prison sentence, meets her friend Alexandra, another trans sex worker, at a donut shop in Hollywood on Christmas Eve.  Both are black.  Alexandra accidentally reveals that Sin-Dee's boyfriend and pimp Chester has been cheating on her with a cisgender woman. Sin-Dee storms out to search the neighborhood for Chester and the woman.

A parallel narrative track follows Armenian cab driver Raznik (Karren Karagulian) as he picks up random fares,when not sampling the trannies.  He is clearly partial to that something extra that the street sisters offer.  He slips away from Christmas dinner, but is tailed by harridan mother-in-law who converges at Donut Time hangout, soon followed by his wife and child.  This farcical ending is slapstick, where all is revealed.  Note the donut store server is producer Shih-Ching Tsou. 

Angela Watercutter reveals:

Producer/director/actor/writer Mark Duplass had made Baker a standing offer to make a micro-budget film under the Duplass Brothers Productions; as Baker remembers, “I said to him, ‘I want to make a film that takes place on the corner of Santa Monica and Highland [in LA] and I don’t know exactly what I want do to yet, but it’s about two people coming together at Donut Time.'”
The resulting film, Tangerine, hitting theaters Friday, was made with $100,000 from Duplass and plenty of ingenuity. The film got heavy buzz out of Sundance for being shot on the iPhone 5, but that’s just the start of the DIY tricks Baker used. His two main actresses—Mya Taylor and Kitana Kiki Rodriguez, the two who come together at Donut Time—Baker found just by hanging out at the aforementioned intersection and he used their real-life stories to inform his script. He also found some of his cast on Vine and Instagram, and even located part of the movie’s electrifying score through SoundCloud. He may have been forced to use the minimal tools available to him, but they ended up being invaluable.

Andrew Martin: Movies & TV Stack Exchange 

Question to Director: I’ve wondered about this ever since I saw the movie, and I’ve read a few different theories online, but why did you decide to call the movie “Tangerine”?

Answer: We had a bunch of titles and that was one that everybody kept coming back to. It resonated with everybody, and everyone has their own interpretation. It doesn’t really stem from the dominant hue of the film, but there’s something about the title that reminds me of Christmas. I think I used to get tangerines in my stocking on Christmas, so there was a personal link for me. There are hints throughout the film, like the air freshener in the cab. It’s funny, filmmakers are the only artists who feel obligated to title their works of art. Musicians and poets and novelists don’t have to, but we’re the only ones who feel obligated, like we have to, and I want to get away from that. I’m fine with a title that’s open to interpretation.

Godard's Les Carabiniers Dated Look at Glamour of War

Les Carabiniers (1963) (the Riflemen) tells the story of two poor men called to serve in battle, lured by promises of the world’s riches. With grandiose names beyond the realm of identification, Ulysses (Marino Mase) and Michelangelo (Albert Juross), pasteboard buffoons devoid of psychological density, receive letters from the king of their fictional country that allow them to have complete freedom from consequence while fighting in the war, in return for anything they desire—swimming pools, Maseratis, women—at the enemy’s expense.  Viewer cannot identify opposing sides in battle.

Their wives, Venus and Cleopatra (Catherine Ribeiro and Genevieve Galea) encourage them to fight when they hear about the riches. They leave and cross the battlefields and villages, destroying and pillaging as they wish. The pair’s exploits are recounted through postcards sent to their wives, telling tales of the horrors of battle. The previously idealistic idea that the men have of war disintegrates, as they are still poor and now wounded. They return home with a suitcase full of postcards of the splendors of the world that they have fought for, and are told by army officials that they must wait until the war ends to receive their pay.  One day, the sky explodes with sparks, and the couples race into town, believing that the war has ended. Ulysses and Michelangelo are informed by their superiors that their king has lost the war, and that all of the war criminals must be punished. The two men are then shot for their crimes.

The renowned author and critic Susan Sontag referenced the film in her 1977 collection of essays On Photography. With respect to the "two sluggish lumpen-peasants" returning home bearing postcards of the treasures of the world instead of tangible treasure, Sontag noted that "Godard's gag vividly parodies the equivocal magic of the photographic image."

Godard's goal was to make a film that a child could understand, thus observations by Matthew Blevins (TIFF Review):

The longer I live, the more I tend towards simplicity. I use the most hackneyed metaphors. Basically, that is what is eternal, the stars are like eyes, for instance, or death like the sun.”

– Jorge Luis Borges

By opening his 5th film with a quote by Jorge Luis Borges, Jean Luc Godard establishes that Les carabiniers lives in a fabled reality and will use the warm metaphors built by the shared human experience as a universal shorthand, suggesting that the characters and events in the film are merely farcical archetypes that divulge universal truths about the absurdities of war. These are not the beguiled soldiers from any specific war from any specific nation, they are representative of the misguided and exploited peoples that have carried out actions for reasons they don’t quite fully understand in every conflict throughout history. They have been duped into action by the lies of recruiters that have promised them the riches of the world and volunteer to go to war to satisfy their bored opportunistic girlfriends and to mold themselves into men of action and heroism, something rare in a backwater land of outdoor bathtubs and wandering ducks.

See Robert Stam in Reflexivity in Film & Literature.

Celia Maysles Meets Resistance from Uncle Al while Making film about her Father

Al & David Maysles

Albert and David Maysles were the kings of documentary film making, culminating in the classic Gimme Shelter, where a death was captured at Altamont, where the Rolling Stones put on a free concert in 1969.  I love Al's voiceover that is available on DVD.  His brother David died in 1987, when his daughter Celia was 7 yrs old.  She made a valiant effort in 2007 to document her father's life.  Much of the film witnesses a teary-eyed Celia negotiating with her crotchety uncle Al for archival footage of her father.  Penetrating the dysfunctional Maysles maze is not for the faint-hearted.

Waititi's Hunt for the Wilderpeople triumphant with 13-year-old Dennison

Kiwi director Taika Waititi has a winner here with Julian Dennison as misfit adolescent Ricky Baker, released from Child Welfare to join dysfunctional family of Hec Faulkner (Sam Neill) and Bella Faulkner (Rima Te Wiata).  Collision of cultures in NZ is total entertainment.

Taika Waititi