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2011-02-12T07:51:00.000-08:00

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The Illusionist

2010-08-19T07:46:00.000-07:00

Sylvain Chomet, the acclaimed director of the Oscar nominated The Triplets of Belleville is back with his second feature The Illusionist. In keeping with his previous effort this is another gloriously animated piece that harks back to the golden age of such Disney films as 101 Dalmations and The Aristocats.

The films plot is plucked straight from an unused Jacques Tati script. Set in the 1950’s the story follows Tatischeff (named after the famous French comedian/director) an aging magician on a journey to out run the emergence of career hindering rock bands and the rise of television. Whilst visiting a small Scottish Island for a performance his path crosses with a young girl called Alice with all her childish wonder still intact her amazement at his perceived magical abilities leads her to follow him to Edinburgh. A relationship, almost a kin to father and daughter begins to blossom but how long can Tatischeff afford to maintain this magical facade before having to teach Alice the heart breaking lesson we all must learn as we grow up, that there is no such thing as magic.

Whilst Chomet’s Tatischeff bears a remarkable likeness to Jacques Tait, the films story is a million miles away from the silent comedy of such films as Playtime and Traffic. In fact the reason this script was left unmade was due to Tati’s belief that it was too personal and not in keeping with the humorous image he had manufactured with great success.

Indeed The Illusionist is an incredibly moving story, that although full of comedic asides the great director would of been proud to call his own, is a film with a rich vein of emotion flowing through it.

A special mention must also be made toward Chomet’s wonderful handcrafted style. Whilst our cinemas are currently full of CGI animation and 3D features, Chomet is still a keen believer that 2D animation remains the only format that can truly capture the human element of a character. The film also works as something of a love letter to the great city of Edinburgh. Chomet moved his studios to the city after being blown over by the Cities magical feel whilst premiering his last piece at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. Having lived in Edinburgh myself I can second this view and say with great pleasure that he has not only captured that special feeling the place has but enhanced it.

The Illusionist is not just one of the best animated features of recent times, but one of the greatest films I have had the pleasure to see.

Patrick Gamble

Trailer:

Black Swawn Trailer

2010-08-19T07:39:00.000-07:00

Normally new trailers just end up in our trailer page, however so high is our excitement about Darren Aronofskys latest film we thought it should take it's place here.

Following The Wrestler with a film about rival ballett dancers was always going to be seen as an odd next step, however rumour has it that this is no chick flick, and infact more of a pschological thriller. With Vincent Cassell staring alongside Natalie Portman Black Swan looks set to shine as this year Venice film festival opener

Scott Pilgrim Vs The World

2010-08-19T07:01:00.000-07:00

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World is undoubtedly one of the most original and unique films you are likely to see this year. Far from the first comic book adaptation, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World is one of the first films to capture that artistic style in a truly memorable way.

3 years on from his last film Hot Fuzz, director Edgar Wright returns with a film based on Bryan Lee O'Malley’s comic book Scott Pilgrim Volume 1: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life. Right from the opening Universal Pictures titles, the video-game iconography and slick editing point to a film that Edgar Wright describes as “a film … infused with the mass media that this generation has grown up with”. Michael Cera (Superbad, Juno) stars as Scott Pilgrim, a 23 year-old bass player in the rock band Sex Bob-omb. From out of nowhere he meets Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and instantly his life is transformed. However this may not all be to Pilgrim’s liking, who in the midst of his attempted seduction, suddenly finds himself dropped into various duels with Flowers’ 7 evil exes. Sound difficult? It may well be as Pilgrim soon discovers these are duels to the death. If he really wants to win her heart, this will be the toughest quest of his life.

Anyone who has ever spent any time playing computer games will enjoy the choreography of Pilgrim’s pursuit. Throughout all this, one overpowering feature of this film is how unbelievably funny it is. Within the setting of increasingly crazy and exaggerated events, the snappy and witty dialogue keeps the film rattling along at a pace in keeping with its swift editing. Backed by a superb cast, Edgar Wright does a magnificent job at infusing comedy, romance, action and fantasy into proceedings. Quite frankly, anyone who leaves the cinema in anything other than a very good mood after watching this highly entertaining film probably doesn’t have a soul.

Richard Williams

Director: Edgar Wright
Starring: Michael Cera, Kieran Culkin, Anna Kendrick, Chris Evans, Jason Schwartzman

Trailer:

10 Greatest South Park Episodes by Matthew Kleebauer

2010-08-19T06:51:00.000-07:00

Let’s face it, The Simpsons is shit now and has been for the best part of a decade, while South Park continues to get better and better. It’s officially the funniest show on TV, and with the 14th season just kicking off with the Tiger Woods themed premiere “Sexual Healing” is there ever going to be a better time to review the 10 greatest episodes? The answer to that is yes, obviously, when the show eventually finishes, but I’m at work and I’m bored so there you go.

1. The Death Camp Of Tolerance

This one was a no-brainer really. Lemmiwinks, The Frog King, The Sparrow Prince and Catatafish. Enough said. Every frame of this masterpiece of an episode encapsulates just what it is that makes this show so unique and special in the hearts of its fans. After being given back his old job teaching the fourth grade, Mr Garrison realises that if the school were to dismiss him for being a homosexual he could sue them for millions. To achieve this aim he brings his boyfriend Mr Slave to work with him, and subjects the children to a series of sexually explicit acts, in the hope that they will tell their parents and he will be fired, but in typical South Park fashion when the kids do go home and complain they are admonished for being bigots and sent to tolerance camp. I doubt there’s another show in existence that could juxtapose jokes about the horrors of political correctness, the holocaust and S&M with a genuinely heart-warming story about a gerbil trying to escape a gay man’s ass. There are South Park episodes you love because they make you think, other because they make you cry, and some because they are completely, 100%, Norman Bates dressing up as his own mother insane. Try and guess which category this one falls under?

Funniest moment. Cartman: (whispering to Craig) Yo, I think that Mr. Slave guy's a... Pakistani.

2. Make Love, Not Warcraft

I have to admit, I had no idea what World Of Warcraft was when I first saw this episode. How quickly that changed. A parody of online role-playing games (and those who play them), this episode was made in collaboration with WOW creators Blizzard entertainment, and used state-of-the-art machinima to give a bona fide twist to Stan, Kyle, Kenny and Cartman’s online escapades. This narrowly beat out two similarly themed episodes, season 8’s Good Times With Weapons, a caricature of Japanese animation (“Protect my balls!”), where the boys obsession with martial arts weaponry is given a distinctly eastern twist, and The Return of the Fellowship of the Ring to The Two Towers in season 6, where the boys fall madly in love with The Lord of the Rings. In shows like these, Trey Parker and Matt Stone somehow are able to channel the eight-year-old in them, and us at the same time, with frightening authenticity. It’s getting harder and harder nowadays, but I can still remember a time when life was so simple it was defined by whatever my particular fascination was at that time. This is just 22 minutes of kids being kids, and that’s why it’s so wonderful. Obsessive, psychotic, egomaniacal and dangerously unhealthy kids, but kids all the same.

Funniest moment. Blizzard executive: How do you kill...that which has no life?

3. The Biggest Douche In The Universe

Ladies and gentlemen…John Edward. A lot of what is so great about what Parker and Stone do on South Park, is that like Bill Hicks before them, they always seem to fall on the right side of the line concerning the issues that matter. Now I’m sure there are dark corners of American TV that infuriate them just as much or even more so than John Edwards and the other assorted “psychic mediums” that clog up the airways. However, the reason they chose to attack him with such intensity in this episode (when Stan visits him at his house books on display include “Make Women Believe You’re Psychic! Then Have Sex With Them!” and “How To 69 With Yourself”) has nothing to do with the mediocre programmes he has produced, but the thousands of bereaved individuals he has shamelessly exploited to further his own reputation (this is a man who suggested in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 that he host a show where he attempts to talk to the victims). Basically, Cartman still has Kenny’s soul still trapped inside him (don’t ask) and at Chef’s suggestion they visit the set of Edwards’ show Crossing Over in the hope that he might help them explain this bizarre paranormal phenomenon. Disappointed with his hopelessly vague statements (“The things did include stuff!”) Chef takes Cartman to Scotland so his mother can perform an exorcism. However, one of Edwards’ comments inadvertently affects Kyle so profoundly he decides to enrol at Jewleeard (“a school for young Jews”). Edward’s refusal to explain to Kyle that his “gift” is merely a trick leads to Stan waging a one-man-war on the charlatan to save the soul of his friend. The episodes climax, where Stan and Edwards face off in a psychic showdown features one of the most Hicksian lines in the whole South Park oeuvre. Stan explains to Edwards just why he is the biggest douche in the universe, because “the big questions in life are tough - Why are we here, where are we from, where are we going? But if people believe in asshole douchey liars like you, we're never going to find the real answers to those questions. You aren't just lying, you are slowing down the progress of all mankind. You douche.” Powerful stuff. Plus you get all those great Rob Schneider trailers as well. An undisputed classic.

Funniest moment. Voiceover guy: From the creators of Der, and Tum Ta Tittaly Tum Ta Too, Rob Schneider is Da Derp Dee Derp Da Teetley Derpee Derpee Dumb. Rated PG-13.

and

Doctor: (About to operate on Cartman) Get me 50cc's of Ketamine, stat! And we should probably get something for the kid, too

4. The Losing Edge

When asking someone who there favourite Simpsons character is, I always feel it necessary to add the obvious disclaimer, “Apart from Homer of course”. I used to feel the same way about South Park and Cartman, a Machiavellian genius so unique that he goes on the very short list of greatest comedy characters of all time, alongside such luminaries as Hank Kingsley, Beavis and William Fontaine De La Tour Dauterive. Later seasons have seen him eclipsed though, by the sheer force of nature that is Randy Marsh, and if any one particular episode was responsible for his elevation to cult status it has to be The Losing Edge. Ostensibly a story about the boys and their attempts to get out of having to play baseball all summer, by the end of the first act it has become clear that this is merely a flimsy premise to get Randy to drink and fight with his shirt off in public places. The boys’ journey to the championship game is eclipsed by Randy’s own battle with the insane mascot Bat Dad, and as we reach a climax that includes the greatest Rocky parody of all time, it becomes abundantly clear that, to paraphrase Joe Esposito’s You’re The Best (the theme from The Karate Kid which is used several times in this episode), nothing is ever gonna keep Randy Marsh down.

Funniest moment. Randy: This is for what? Arresting me for what? I'm not allowed to stand up for myself? I thought this was America! Huh? Isn't this America? I'm sorry! I thought this was America!

5. Fat Butt and Pancake Head

I could wax lyrical about the unmitigated genius of this episode, how Jennifer Lopez’s infamous diva behaviour is ridiculed to reveal just how mean-spirited she actually is (a trick that would be used again on Paris Hilton amongst others), or how the world is better place thanks to phrases like “Ben Affleck spooge” and “taco-flavoured kisses”, but I can sum up why I love this episode much more easily than most. Two words. Mitch Connor. Greatest South Park ending ever.

Funniest moment. Cartman: The cyanide pill I took should be taking effect very soon. Hmmm, looks like the sun is going down. I wonder, will I dream?

6. Scott Tenorman Must Die

Scott Tenorman must die is the 9/11 of South Park episodes, because after this episode broadcast in July of 2001 nothing was ever the same again. Before these twenty-two demented minutes of television aired, Cartman was just some evil fat kid with an unnatural proclivity towards racism, greed, and other forms of anti-social behaviour. Afterwards, it was obvious that Parker and Stone viewed him as the devil incarnate, as the sheer force of will he expends trying to gain revenge on Scott Tenorman is frightening to behold. This was the first ever South Park to forgo the traditional A-B, two plot structure, as the whole narrative is based around Cartman’s attempts to get back his $10 (Scott Tenorman sold Cartman his pubes), plus the additional $6.12 that was tricked out of him. The other three boys, and the rest of the town, are placed in the background as Cartman travels to Fort Collins to attend the imaginary Pube Fair, trains a pony to bite off Scott’s penis, enlists the help of Radiohead (Scott’s favourite band) via a phoney fan letter (“Didn’t you hear the letter? This poor kid has cancer! In his ass!”) and then finally stages a Chilli Con Carnival all in an attempt to get his money back. Said Carnival is merely a ruse for his most diabolical scheme of all, feeding Scott a chilli made up of the ground-up flesh of his recently deceased parents. As the horrors of his plan continue to unfold (“After a night with the hacksaw, I was all ready”) the audience’s reaction is mirrored by Stan and Kyle, one of sheer bewilderment at the insanity on display (“Dude, I think it might be best for us to never piss Cartman off again.”). And did I mention that it’s also a loose adaptation of Titus Andronicus; by far Shakespeare’s most bloody play? Genius.

Funniest moment: Cartman: Excuse me sir, could you please point me in the direction of the pube fair?

7. The Return of Chef

For choosing to tackle Scientology head-on, Trapped In The Closet will go down as one of the most controversial South Park episodes of all time. Once the dust had settled though, the sad news for fans of the show was the exit of one of the longest-running, and most beloved characters, Isaac Hayes’ Chef. Hayes, a Scientologist himself, was apparently so distraught at the mockery inflicted upon his “religion” he decided to quit. To this day rumours continue to circulate concerning what exactly happened between Hayes, Stone and Parker. Trapped In The Closet aired in March 2006, and Hayes had suffered a severe stroke merely two months earlier. Many believe he was in no fit state to view the show, and that his hastily arranged exit was organised by his agent, Christina Kimball, herself also a Scientologist. Either way, as the tenth season began, the creators had to come to terms with a huge, Chef-sized hole in the show, and a way of explaining his departure to the audience. In typically inspired fashion they came up with “The Return Of Chef”, where Chef leaves town for three months to join the mysterious “Super Adventure Club”, only to return a rampant paedophile. Splicing together audio clips from previous episodes ingeniously produced Chef’s dialogue, and so his jerky stop-start delivery makes his behaviour appear all the more bizarre. The boys try to rescue him from his evil captors (The SAC have been brainwashing him) but tragedy ensues, and Chef is killed. The episode ends with his memorial service, one of the most genuinely moving moments in the shows history, as it becomes blatantly obvious that we aren’t paying tribute to Chef, but Hayes himself, and Parker and Stone are still clearly coming to terms with their own hurt feeling concerning what happened (Sample line “A lot of us don't agree with the choices Chef has made in the past few days. Some of us feel hurt and confused that he seemed to turn his back on us. But we can't let the events of the last week take away the memories of how much Chef made us smile.”) As the episode reaches its tearful conclusion, any lingering grudges against Hayes have long since vanished. As Kyle himself puts it with the eloquence only an 8 year old could summon, “We shouldn’t be mad at Chef for leaving us. We should be mad at that fruity little club for scrambling his brains.”

Funniest moment. Chef: I'm gonna make love up your butt!

8. The Passion of the Jew

As I mentioned earlier, Scott Tenorman Must Die was a crucial episode in the evolution of the show, as it marks the point Cartman went from being a selfish asshole to arguably the most evil kid in the whole world. In spite of his sins against Scott and his family, I always considered Cartman to still have some good in him. However, The Passion of the Jew obliterated any hopes I had for his redemption as he embarks on his most diabolical plans yet, his “final solution”. Many South Park episodes end up suffering as a result of the controversy they create. Trapped in the Closet in particular contains many wonderful moments, but by the time I actually got around to seeing it, it felt bogged down by expectation. Similarly, Hell On Earth 2006 was already so notorious in England as a result of the inclusion of a Steve Irwin joke so soon after his death, that in the end it couldn’t help but disappoint a little. Fortunately, The Passion of the Jew is not similarly afflicted. A bile-soaked bomb aimed squarely at Mel Gibson’s head, this is for everyone who felt nauseated by the blatant anti-Semitism and blood-and-guts sermonising of The Passion of the Christ. That something so impassioned, so righteous, and so indignant could be as hysterically funny as this is a testament to Parker and Stone.

Funniest moment. Cartman: Ah hello everyone. Achtung. My name is Eric Cartman and I'm the President of the Mel Gibson Fan Club. Ah thank you, thank you. I'm happy to see that all of you were affected by The Passion like I was. Now, we all know why we're here, and I believe we all what needs to be done. But, I think it's best we don't talk out loud about it until we have most of them on the trains heading to the camps.

9. Trapper Keeper

Trapper Keeper, one of the earliest episodes to make this list, does so for several reasons. Firstly, it contains some of the finest movie homages in the history of the show. From staples of sci-fi cinema like Robocop, 2001: A Space Oddyssey and The Terminator films up to far more obscure choices like the extended sequence at the end which borrows whole-sale from Japanese magna Akira, this episode is loaded with pop-culture references. Secondly, it was one of the first occasions that Cartman’s inexplicable obsession with Dawson’s Creek materialised (“check out my sweet Dawson's Creek Trapper Keeper Ultrakeeper Futura 2000!”), one of the most endearing and child-like aspects of his character. Thirdly, it aired only eight days after the 2000 US Presidential election, and showed the whole world just how much of an advantage South Park had over their competitors in regards to social commentary by virtue of being able to produce a show so quickly. Kyle’s little brother Ike starts Kindergarten and is involved in a bitter and protracted fight to be elected class president, made all the more difficult by two children in the class who can determine the result, Flora (Florida) and the absent kid (Absentee ballots). Soon enough Rosie O’Donnell, Jessie Jackson, and half the mainstream media has descended on this small mountian town to offer their opinions on how to resolve it, but yet again it is left to a child to highlight the absurdity of the situation (“I don’t wanna play anymore cos this game is stupid”) And finally, amidst all the political references and cultural allusions, it’s really hard not to love an episode where a robot called VSM471 travels back in time under the alias Bill Cosby to try and stop Cartman’s school folder from taking over the world. Trapper Keeper reinforces the notion that even the most “issue-driven” episodes still retain the gleeful sense of abandon and anarchic energy that made us all love the show so much in the first place.

Funniest moment: Cartman/Trapper Keeper: What are you doing, Kyle? I’m afraid I can’t let you do that Kyle.

10. Terrance and Phillip in Not Without My Anus

The first episode of the second season, Not Without My Anus represents a turning point in the evolution of the show, and particularly how it was received by its fans. Season One had ended with the issue of who Cartman’s father was still undecided, and so fans had patiently waited to find out the answer. The fact that the premiere of the new season was scheduled for April 1st apparently didn’t alert many of them to be on their guard though, because when they tuned in expecting to have the identity of Cartman’s father revealed (for those who still don’t know it was his hermaphrodite of a mother) they were instead treated to an entire show about Terrance and Phillip, the two Canadian comedians who thus far had been relegated to a few brief appearances in the first series. After Terrance has been successfully acquitted for murder (Phillip serves as his lawyer), they search for treasure on the subway, travel home to eat Kraft Dinner and dress up as pirates. This all happens in the first three minutes. The episode goes on in a similarly outlandish fashion; Terrance and Phillip travel to Tehran to rescue his kidnapped daughter Sally, Sally’s mother Celine Dion embarks on a misguided love affair with their friend Ugly Bob (he looks like “someone tried to put out a forest fire with a screwdriver.”), their nemesis Scott strikes a deal with Saddam Hussein who ends up invading Canada, and finally our two heroes save the day at the Ottawa RoughRiders versus Vancouver RoughRiders football game by distributing gas masks among the crowd and having them fart in unison, overpowering Saddam and his amassed troops (“They’re using chemical warfare! How could they?”) Parker and Stone have given us hours of entertainment, and a cast of surreal characters and creatures unrivalled throughout all TV (Leopold “Butters” Stotch, Token Black, Jakovasaurs, Goobacks, Gelgameks, and Joozians) but Terrance and Phillip just may be their most inspired creation. They would go on to have several more episodes dedicated to them, as well as featuring prominently in the South Park movie, but for sheer lunacy you can’t beat Not Without My Anus.

Funniest moment. Scott: All of these things link Terrance to the murder: hair fibres, blood samples, nail clippings, a piece of his shirt, a watch with his initials on it, a day planner with the murder scheduled, a haiku called "Time to Kill Dr. Jeffrey O'Dwyer": "Dr. O'Dwyer, time to have your head smashed in with my new hammer." Terrance, you may be a famous surgeon, but you're not God. J'accuse Terrance.

and

Terrance: Hey Phillip, isn't that the smelly gentleman we've seen in pictures all over town?

Phillip: Yes it is, Terrance. According to that newsy, he's some kind of Turkish dictator!

Matthew Kleebauer

The Expendables

2010-08-19T06:26:00.000-07:00

The Expendables, is described by many as the action movie to end all action movies. Marketing itself like some kind of Milk tray selection box aimed directly at men. With a cast including some real heavyweights both cinematically and literally joining an aging Stallone as his merry band of mercenaries we’re presented with an all or nothing mission to save a stereotypical South American Island from a formulaic dictator.

And that’s about it as far as the plot is concerned, there are a couple of attempts to throw in a little romance and back story but it amounts to no more than another excuse for the film’s stars to flex their substantial muscles. However anyone going into this movie expecting anything other than just pure testosterone smeared onto a cinema screen was obviously born well after the 1980’s and grew up without the alpha male heroes or Rocky, He-Man and Rambo.

Overflowing with his usual penchant for guns, tattoos and an abundance of misplaced one liners Stallones key selling point for this action-by-numbers mess is its ensemble cast, a blockbuster line up including brief cameos from big hitters Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger. However take away the big names and your left with not much more than the sort of bargain bin straight to DVD film you'd expect to find in some no-name service station starring Steven Seagal or Jean-Claude Van Damme.

Indeed it's a shame when so many promising ingredients are added to the pot that a combination of overblown sound effects, fast paced editing, and bo-tox educed mumbling makes it difficult to follow what plot there is, but this is just nit picking, The expendables does what it sets out to do, and was never going to be the sort of film that you'd need to read a review off to get a grasp of what it’s all about.

Stallone has yet again brought the action genre kicking and screaming into the 21st century with a death per second count that make Rambo 4 look like Shrek. Indeed what the Expendables lacks in story, script and acting in makes up for in abundance with violence and masculinity that will no doubt leave some exhilarated, but the rest of us not only immune to the barrage of bullets and punches but feeling something much more powerful, disappointment.

Now in his mid sixties you’d surely think The Expendables is Slys last roll of the dice regarding the genre, however there are rumours of a sequel, so perhaps like his character in The Expendables, (and come to think about it, most of his movies) he’s just a man who won’t quit.

Patrick-James Gamble

Director: Sylvester StalloneStarring: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren,

Trailer:

Inception

2010-08-07T05:45:00.000-07:00

One of possibly many more Inception reviews and articles. This one is from guest contributor Richard WIlliams

Your dreams will never be the same again. At least not now that director Christopher Nolan has unleashed his new film Inception into the collective unconscious. Following on from the 2008 award winning film The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan immerses his audience into worlds that are as spellbinding as they are unbelievable. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Dom Cobb, a man who is quite possibly the ultimate sci-fi thief. Cobb has the capacity to navigate people’s minds as they dream and steal anything he wants. Yet with this comes colossal consequences, and we soon discover that it is not simply the art of stealing which drives his seemingly never ending quests into the subconscious.

Exiled from the USA, Cobb is presented with an opportunity to make amends using the very talents that initially placed him in trouble. Stealing thoughts is one thing, planting an idea is an entirely different matter. Yet whilst everyone declares its impossibility, Cobb is a lone voice; Inception is possible. It is here that Inception picks up the pace to a level where time and space is often twisted beyond all recognition.

Underscoring all of Nolan’s characteristic plot twists and visual distortions, there is a cast that between them have racked up 14 Oscar Nominations. Not only are we presented with a brilliant sequence of events, it is all executed magnificently by sterling acting performances, not least from DiCaprio, as well as Joseph Gordon-Lewitt, Tom Hardy and Cillian Murphy.

Having demonstrated what was capable with the IMAX format with the release of The Dark Knight, it seems a shame that despite being screened at the IMAX, Inception contains no scenes filmed in that format. It would seem a harsh criticism of the film, and yet having set the benchmark so high with his previous work, Nolan misses an opportunity to push those boundaries even further. For a film that blurs the lines between reality and the imagination so much, it seems odd that certain visual aspects do not convey the awe that perhaps they should. But rest assured, with Inception you have a film that you will want to see over and over again. Just make sure you know what’s real.

Richard WilliamsDirector: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Cillian Murphy
Certificate: NR
Release Date: July 16,2010

Trailer:

1 minute movie reviews: July

2010-08-07T05:25:00.000-07:00

As well as the usual reviews we post from the various screenings we’re lucky enough to go to, from time to time we still like to part with our hard earned wages and enjoy the movies we weren’t fortunate to see for free. Here are some brief reviews of some of the delights July had to offer. Including White Material, L’affaire Farewell, Tetro, Heartbreaker and Toy Story 3.

White Material

Director: Claire Denis

Starring: Isabelle Huppert, Christopher Lambert, Isaach De Bankolé

This first time collaboration of two off French cinemas most influential women is everything you’d expect from a film directed by Claire Denis and starring Isabel Huppert. Edgy, affecting and gripping from the get go, this tale of one woman’s fight to keep her plantation amidst inner turmoil in an unnamed African country is powerful stuff. Denis has yet again produced another fine piece of work to help firmly cement her name amongst the list of today’s greatest directors. Her ability to consume you in an atmosphere of fear that sticks with you long after the film finishes, is what makes White Material in a way more horrifying than any of the recent ‘gorno’ movies that continue to do the rounds.

L’affaire Farewell

Director: Christian Carion

Starring: Emir Kusturica, Guillaume Canet, Willem Dafoe

This cold war thriller by director Christian Carion (Joyeaux Noel) is based around what has been described by many as the most important piece of espionage ever undertaken by the US government, singlehandedly exposing the Soviet Union and ending the cold war. Staring two of Europe’s current ‘hot’ directors Emir Kusturica (Underground) and Guilliame Canet (Tell No One) we have a film which is driven by two great performances. Subject matter as serious as this can sometimes be hard to make entertaining, yet the rapport between the two leads turns this from a classic spy story into a gripping character study which leaves you less worried about the troubles lurking under the iron curtain and more on the well being of our two heroes, risking everything they have in the slim chance that their actions can make a difference. Certainly a film that offers a lot more than you may be expected

Heartbreaker

Director: Pascal Chaumeil

Starring: Romain Duris, Vanessa Paradis

With the recent World Cup, cinemas all over the country have taken the opportunity to release a barrage of movies directly aimed at women and those uninterested in sporting pursuits. We’ve had romantic comedy after romantic comedy oozing their way out of Hollywood and into our theatres. As to be expected many of these have been nothing but over the top emotionally driven drivel. Yet somehow Heartbreaker manages to hold its own and not sur-come to the usual pitfalls of the genre. Perhaps it’s down to the ‘A’ star acting talent provided by Roman Duris (Beat that my heart skipped) and Vanessa Paradis ( Girl on the bridge) or maybe just the fact that some things look and sound better in French.

Tetro

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Starring: Vincent Gallo, Alden Ehrenreich, Maribel Verdú

Coppola and Gallo have of late both been described as two incredible talents slipping away into a sea of mediocrity, or worse self indulgence. However Tetro, Coppola’s first script since The Conversation is a simple tale of family feuds and sibling rivalry that brings these two art house heavyweights back to a level where we can comfortably sit back and enjoy their artistic styling’s run riot over solid foundations. Set in Argentina the film also manages to combine that South American passion which can help make the most basic family dramas come to life with some serious stylish American indie trickery. By no means at the same level as Buffalo 66, or Apocalypse Now, but certainly a step closer to how things were, and should be.

Toy Story 3

Director: Lee Unkrich

Starring: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack

What more can you say other than this is simply just another case of Pixar showing they can do no wrong. With this financially uncertain climate, and constant threat of ‘Terror’ we apparently live amongst it’s nice to sit back and watch a film like Toy Story 3 and forget about your troubles, resting in the knowledge that there are still things you can rely on.

Patrick Gamble

Trailers:

Breaking Bad

2010-08-07T04:40:00.000-07:00

From the premiere of The Sopranos in 1999 up until the climax of The Wire in 2008, HBO ruled the American airwaves with a seemingly never-ending stream of hit shows. However since these, the two most critically-acclaimed shows in TV history, have ceased to exist, a young upstart named AMC has stolen some of its thunder, and the attention of the mainstream press to boot.

You may have heard of Mad Men, AMC’s multi-award winning pride and joy, but less well known, though equally deserving of your time is Breaking Bad, their other major series. A prodigious scientist, working as a chemistry teacher in an Albuquerque high school, is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Conscious of how his astronomical medical bills will cripple his family, and desperate to leave something behind for

his pregnant wife and physically disabled son he decides to start selling crystal meth with a former student. Welcome to the world of Walter White and the Emmy-winning Breaking Bad, one of the more fascinating American TV series to emerge in recent years. After a gripping first season was brought to a premature end by the 2007/2008 Writer’s Guild of America strike, season two picks up where it left off in breathtaking fashion. Like those famous HBO shows, Breaking Bad is defined by tremendous acting, quality scripts, and beautiful direction far superior to 99% of all films currently being made. Bryan Cranston, better known as the Dad from Malcolm in the Middle, is a revelation as the aforementioned Walter White, and the series truly belongs to him. Walter begins the show as a meek and mild-mannered intellectual, but his diagnosis turns him into a seething mass of hostility, impatience, and misplaced pride, and these characteristics will become more and more pronounced as the series progresses and he delves deeper and deeper into a world for which he was never made. His achievement in bringing Walt to life is astonishing, and one of many reasons why Breaking Bad is one of the most innovative and imaginative shows in TV history, and is the perfect prescription for anyone still suffering from a post Sopranos depression.

Matthew Kleebauer

New Trailers

2010-08-06T09:38:00.000-07:00

We now have brand new teasers up on our trailer page for some of our most anticipated future releases. Included is the Guillermo Del Toro produced horror Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, which if The Orphanage was anything to go by should have us all hiding behind the seat in front.

Also up are new features from controversial director Gasper Noe (Irreversible) and South Koreas answer to Steven Spielberg, Joon-ho Bong, Mother and Enter the Void.

Still available are future releases from Studio Ghibli (The Borrowers), Sofia Coppola (Somewhere) and Disneys exciting looking, Daft Punk scored sequel to Tron, as well as The Town, The Illusionist and many more.

Diary of a Country Priest

2010-08-06T09:06:00.000-07:00

‘Diary of a Country Priest’ is the first Bresson film to employ the strict formal and aesthetic considerations which would come to dominate his film making for the remainder of his life. Consequently ‘Diary of a Country Priest’ represents an ideal starting point for a Bresson novice as it is here that we are able to see Bresson at his most expansive, it is here that we as an audience are most able to follow the subsequent process of his film making by witnessing it’s first manifestation. Bresson’s films are almost impossible to talk about without discussing this process because the link between the formal aesthetic of his films and their meaning is utterly insoluble.

There are very few directors whose aesthetic style, underpinned by sincere belief in the power of cinema, has the force to alter the manner in which you see the world.

It reminds you what cinema is capable of. After watching a Bresson film the world is framed differently, angles of sight seem directed to the small, to the half closed things constituting the environment. Objects and facial expressions begin to resonate in their stillness. Bresson gives us a cinema that reshapes our interiority through an insistence on an absenting surface. This insistence paradoxically erases the division between inner and outer by illustrating their knotted infinity sign. In the denial of the overt signs of inner life through his use of models (non professional actors trained into non-reacting by Bresson) he magnifies that inner life as it mounts up and breaks through the dam his cinematography erects.
Bresson’s films are religious in the least coarse expression of that term. One is tempted to describe them as ‘spiritual’ if that word had not become so degraded.

In ‘Diary of a Country Priest’ the aforementioned priest is assigned into a small village. His manner and lack of worldliness fail to endear him to the people there. He is not respected, his simplicity shames them and he is frequently abused. He is told to keep things in order during the day because they are sure to come apart during the night. A priest in a neighbouring parish questions his masculinity. The unfortunate priest becomes involved in a scandal when, having counselled a countess (in his sole moment of triumph) she dies the next morning. There is a parallel perhaps to Dostoyevsky’s ‘the idiot’ running throughout the film. The film though is less a sum of its events or movement than a psychological exploration of asceticism and doubt.

The faith of the priest ends in beautiful affirmation which, in this remarkable film, is also an affirmation of individual ‘faith’ or rather faith as the primary category of human experience. The film ends with a signature Bresson move into the transcendent but fittingly, unlike Joan of Arc or Pickpocket, this move is not dependent on an image but instead relayed in the most abstract, least physical, terms possible: through the last words of a dying man written down by their witness and sent into the ether.

Thomas Kendall

Director: Robert Bresson

Starring: Claude Laydu, Jean Riveyre, Adrien Borel, Rachel Bérendt

Pandora and the Flying Dutchman

2010-07-29T10:37:00.000-07:00

It is one of the greater tragedies of British cinema history that the name Jack Cardiff is not better known. Cardiff was recognised throughout the industry as one of the world’s greatest cinematographers before he passed away in April last year, and will soon be the subject of a retrospective at the BFI which will include a newly restored version of the stunning Pandora and the Flying Dutchman. Martin Scorsese, who was heavily involved in producing this new 35mm print, sums it up best when he says “watching this film is like entering a strange and wonderful dream”. Hitchcock’s Vertigo excluded, this is possibly the most perfect blend of classical filmmaking and surrealism ever produced.

Ava Gardner stars as Pandora, the most glamorous woman by far in a small sleepy Spanish town who has her pick of potential suitors, but no one can satisfy her until she falls for a mysterious sailor played by James Mason, the actual Flying Dutchman condemned to sail the seas alone until he finds a woman who would be willing to die for him. Anyone familiar with the work Cardiff did with Michael Powell (The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus) will know what to expect here: stunning Technicolour camerawork, sweeping widescreen vistas and gorgeous locations, all of which add up to create an ethereal quality that permeates every frame of this masterpiece. Though some of the melodramatic acting and clunky excessive narration may have aged badly Cardiff’s gorgeous images will live on forever, and there is no better way to experience this magnificent film than on the biggest screen possible.

Matthew Kleebauer

Director: Albert Lewin
Starring: James Mason, Ava Gardner
Certificate: PG
Runtime: 126 minutes
Release date: 14 May 2010
IMDB

Trailer:

MacGruber

2010-07-29T02:35:00.000-07:00

Though it may barely register on these shores, Saturday Night Live is an American institution that has spawned some of the most popular comedians in the world. SNL alumni include Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Billy Crystal, Mike Myers, Will Ferrell, Bill Murray and many more. Skits on the show have been expanded into hit movies like Wayne’s World and The Blues Brothers, and so while the word MacGruber may not mean much to us, the release of this latest spin-off will be a big hit on the other side of the Atlantic, and deserves to be one here too.

Taccone takes his cues from the bloated Stallone/Schwarzenegger/Segal action epics of the 1980s and as a result the film flows from one ludicrous set piece to another but never loses its way. Val Kilmer and Powers Boothe are both superb as super villain Dieter Von Cunth and MacGruber’s mentor Colonel James Faith respectively, and with more than 6(!) current professional wrestlers making up the cast this is probably one for Ingmar Bergman fans to avoid. MacGruber is trashy, tasteless, but thoroughly entertaining. Those seeking a respite from the World Cup should check it out.

Matthew Kleebauer
Director: Jorma Taccone
Starring: Kristen Wiig, Will Forte, Val Kilmer, Ryan Phillippe, Powers Boothe, Maya Rudolph
Certificate: 15
Runtime: 98 minutes
Release date: 18th June 2010
IMDB

Trailer:
Taking a 90 second recurring segment from a comedy show and turning it into a 90-minute film sounds like a bad idea, so all credit must go to director and co-writer Jorma Taccone for being able to make something so slight this enjoyable. For the uninitiated MacGruber is a bombs disposal expert who in true MacGyver fashion can take seemingly any object (and I mean anything) and jury-rig some fantastic device to save the day. Distraught over the death of his fiancé, the film begins with him seeking solace in a South American monastery but the theft of a nuclear warhead forces this mulleted-action hero back into the arena.

No One Knows About Persian Cats

2010-07-28T09:39:00.000-07:00

The term ‘indie rock’ has, as with all these tags associated with modern music genres, lost its meaning somewhat in today’s profit driven music industry. With large music companies desperately snapping up every remotely talented, young rebellious musicians, to whom they can market at today’s culturally enriched youth it’s sometimes hard to see which groups are truly ‘independent’ and which have been manufactured to appear that way.

In Bahman Ghobadi’s (A Time for Drunken Horses) sixth full length feature, ‘No one knows about Persian cats’ we get a true glimpse of what ‘independent music’ really is. Focussing on two young Iranian musicians, Negar and Ashkan, both fresh from serving prison sentences for illegal musical activates, we follow the pair as they search for band members to play at a London concert ... and the visas that allows them to leave Iran to do so.

In continuous attempts to avoid the local authorities, we see a side of Iran that has never before been captured in any art house films or serious documentaries. Instead of war zones and gritty street markets we get a glimpse of the life of young Iranians, playing secret shows in cellars, bars and any hiding place they can find in what is a humorous yet emotional tribute to the underground Iranian music scene.

It’s easy to see how this semi-documentary film could be seen as a pro- democracy piece, as behind its glossy image does lie an important message. Yet despite the censorship enforced on these young artists, they remain respectful of their cultural heritage, and find themselves occupying some vague middle-ground between the repression of the east and supposed freedom of the west .

Full of energetic live performances and comedic asides ...Persian Cats is a vibrant and engaging portrait of a repressed generation bursting with creativity. Reiterating the power of music as a universal language and the resilience of art to not only survive despite such adversity but truly triumph within it.

Patrick Gamble

Director: Bahman Ghobadi
Starring: Negar Shaghaghi, Ashkan Koshanejad, Hamed Behdad
Country: Iran
Runtime: 106mins

IMDB

Trailer:

In The Pit

2010-07-28T04:43:00.000-07:00

The construction of the upper-deck of a highway may not sound like the most thrilling subject matter for a documentary, but Juan Carlos Rulfo's fascinating In the Pit takes this addition to the enormous Periferico highway as its subject matter, and is all the better for doing so. Made over a three-year period it follows the lives of a small group of workers engaged in this most precarious of professions, and fully explores the multitude of ironies and injustices that allow men to risk their lives every day but not to earn enough money to drive a car and subsequently never be able to drive across the bridge they helped build.

Rulfo never openly condemns the powers-that-be in Mexico City, but rather lets his intriguing subjects speak for themselves. His passive, non-judgemental style is reminiscent of Werner Herzog, and he has a cast of fascinating characters to back him up; from ‘El Grande’ who bitterly laments his former life of cocaine and prostitutes to the more philosophical and softly-spoken crane operator Chavelo who takes everything in his stride. In the Pit is a stunning portrayal of ordinary men living and working in extraordinary circumsatnces, and as it reaches its ecstatic conclusion and Rulfo’s camera soars above the entire 10.5 mile freeway in a breathtaking six–minute aerial shot, your thoughts will return to the traffic guard who recites the Mexican legend claiming that whenever a bridge is built, the devil asks for one soul in order to ensure its durability, and you will wonder if it may be true after all.

Director: Juan Carlos Rulfo

Certificate: 15

Runtime: 85 minutes (approx.)

Special Features: ‘Making of’ documentary

Release date: 21 June 2010

DVD RRP: £15.99

Matthew Kleebauer

The Blind Side

2010-03-08T16:24:00.000-08:00

“The ideal left tackle is big... He is wide in the butt and massive in the thighs. He has long arms, giant hands, and feet as quick as a hiccup. This is a rare and expensive combination.”

Leigh Anne Tuohy

With all the glitz and glam of the Oscars rapped up for another year it's time for us Brits to finally get a look at one of the two best picture nominated films that so far haven't made their way East. The Blind Side, the true story of the NFL rag to riches tale that is Michael Oher's career, is a film that normally would be resigned to the few multiplexes which have one too many screens to fill with additional Avatar screenings. You see for all the things we have in common with our cross-Atlantic friends, sports is not one of them. Without the bait of the best picture and actress nominations would this American Football biopic be good enough to lure UK audiences?

I'm personally a sucker for sports movies, however good or bad the narrative is I'm always drwan to them. Having played team sports for many years the slightest moment of comradeship on screen is normally enough to get my adrenaline pumping more than any Cameron action flick, and emotionally move me to the same level that any Tarkovsky film ever has. No truer was this than the masterfully made 2004 film 'Friday Night Lights', also starring musician Tim McGraw, the true story of a highschool football teams journey to the state championships. Needless to say I was expecting much the same from The Blind Side.

The Story of Michael Ohre, now a Offensive tackle for the Baltimore Ravens, starts with a young man growing up virtually abandoned in the poverty stricken projects of Memphis. That was though until he crossed paths with Leigh Tuohy (Sandra Bullock) a successful mother of two who for want of a better expression, lives on the right side of the tracks. She takes in the young man, offering him a roof over his head and as time goes by a lot more, including an opportunity to finally put his god given abilities, and size to good use on the field by playing football for the local christian school. Family and Football were the two things Michael Oher had never experienced, but ultimately they would be the two things that would change his life forever, leading to a sports scholarship and as we now know a successful career with one of the heavyweights of American Football.

Setting a film around a true story can always be tricky. People expect to see the truth, yet still demand to be entertained. However as we all know, the truth can sometimes not be quite as entertaining for an audience as it was for those who lived it. Commendably The Blind Side does stay fairly true to it's source material (Although Oher is said to be a little disheartened at how he has been portrayed as somewhat 'simple') , however this firm stance results in 'The Blind Side' lacking any real bite, that non US sports fans will be hoping for amongst the wash of Americanisms and football slang. Bullocks performance may well be worth of an Academy award, as her depiction of the classic deep south wasp is impeccable, but unfortunately it's not enough to save a film that lacks the kind of punch you'd expect from a best picture nominee. Instead it uses trademark cinematic tricks to tug at your heart strings. Occasionally the film achieves this with fair accuracy, especially in the scene when young Oher is presented with his first ever bed. However when these emotionally tipped bullets miss, you'll feel like a quarterback wishing for Michael Oher's defensive tackle to protect you from yet another barrage of clichéd, wretch educing moments that'll have you reaching for the bucket rather than the tissues. A great character piece but as a heart-warming movie attempting to expose the racial, social and economic problems that are rife within Americas society, especially the wealth gap between the poverty stricken and the very rich it misses the ten yard mark by quite some distance.

Patrick Gamble

Top 50 European Directors Currently Working: The Top Ten!

2010-03-06T15:47:00.001-08:00

So after much careful deliberation, we here at LastSite have compiled a list of the greatest European directors currently working within the field. Each has been rated and the results are a comprehensive top 50. Directors are scored by their average IMDB score (all their film scores divided by total films), the amount of awards they have won and been nominated for and finally three categories judged by LastSite (Style, Originality, and Filmography, that being the strengh of their entire body of work) Obviously they'll be some disagreement so feel free to comment. Hopefully similar lists will be compiled for the rest of the world.

All profiles taken from either IMDB, The Auteurs or Wikipedia.

*Awards and nominations compiled from the following awarding bodies: Cannes, Sundance, Berlin Film Festival, Venice Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Academy Awards, BAFTAs, Golden Globes and European film institute awards.

Read the rest of the list here: 50-41, 40-31, 30-21, 20-11

Or just read the below list:

50 Mia Hansen-Love

49 Chris Kraus

48 Guillame Canet

47 Andrea Arnold

46 Christophe Honore

45 Tomas Alfredson

44 Arnauld Desplechin

43 Pedro Costa

42 Oliver Hirschbiegel

41 Francois Ozon

40 Terence Davies

39 Luc Besson

38 Christian Mungiu

37 Lukas Moodysson

36 Paolo Sorrentino

35 Christian Carion

34 Phillipe Garrel

33 Nikita Mikhalakov

32 Andrei Zvyaginstev

31 Agnes Varda

30 Shane Meadows

29 Kira Muratova

28 Julio Medem

27 Tom Tykwer

26 Giuseppe Tornatore

25 Claire Denis

24 Michel Gondry

23 Bernardo Bertolucci

22 Fatih Akin

21 Danny Boyle

20 Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne

19 Nanni Moretti

18 Mike Leigh

17 Nuri Bilge Ceylan

16 Jacques Audiard

15 Claude Chabrol

14 Ridley Scott

13 Christopher Nolan

12 Bela Tarr

11 Jean-Pierre Jeunet

10. Emir Kusturica (Serbia, 1954)

IMDB Profile: A Serbian film director. Born in 1954 in Sarajevo. Graduated film directing at the prestigious Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU) in Prague in 1978. During the studies, awarded several times for his short movies including Guernica (1978) which took first prize at Student's Film Festival in Karlovy Vary. After graduation, he directs several TV movies in hometown, Sarajevo. In collaboration with the screenwriter Abdulah Sidran in 1981. he made the successful feature debut _Sjecas li se, Dolly Bell (1981)_ which won best first film Golden Lion in Venice Film Festival. Their subsequent work, human political drama Otac na sluzbenom putu (1985) unanimously won top prize at 1985. Cannes Film Festival as well as FIPRESCI prize and was nominated for Best Foreign Language Oscar. In 1989. he won Best Director award at Cannes for Dom za vesanje (1988), movie about the life of gypsy family in Yugoslavia scripted by Gordan Mihic. Was professor of film directing in USA. His first English language movie, Arizona Dream (1993) starring Johnny Depp, Jerry Lewis and Faye Dunaway and scripted by his USA student, David Atkins was awarded Silver Bear at 1993 Berlin Film Festival. Underground (1995), bitter surrealistic comedy about Balkan, scripted by Dusan Kovacevic, took him second Golden Palm at Cannes Film Festival in 1995.

In 1993, he challenged Vojislav Seselj, leader of Serbia's ultranationalist movement, to a duel. He suggested that it should be in the heart of Belgrade, at high noon (!), with any weapon Mr. Seselj chooses. Vojislav Seselj refused this offer saying that he "didn't want to be accused of a murder of an artist".
During the 1995 Belgrade International Film Festival Kusturica knocked down Nebojsa Pajkic, the leader of the New Serbian Right movement. Symbolically enough, Mrs. Pajkic tried to protect her husband by hitting Kusturica with a small bag, a present from Radovan Karadzic, the leader of Bosnian Serbs.
According to Swedish paper Dagens Nyheter 28 January, 2001, Emir Kusturica and Zabranjeno Pusenje recently had a gig in Moscow.
Since 1986 he has played bass guitar in "Zabranjeno Pusenje" (meaning Smoking Forbidden, or no smoking) a rock band from his hometown Sarajevo. In 1992 the lead singer of the band, Nele Karajlic, moved to Belgrade. In 1997 Kusturica and Karajlic started a new "faction" of the band called "The No Smoking Orchestra". The rest of the original band members stayed in Sarajevo and continued their own faction of the band. Super 8 Stories (2001) is a documentary about "No Smoking".
One of only five directors whose two movies won Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival, other four being Francis Ford Coppola (The Conversation (1974) and Apocalypse Now (1979) ), Shohei Imamura (Narayama-bushi kô (1983) and Unagi (1997) ), Bille August (Pelle erobreren (1987) and Den goda viljan (1992) ) and Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne (Rosetta (1999) and L'enfant (2005) ).

Filmography (By IMDB Votes):

(8.09) - Dom za vesanje (1988)

(8.00) - Underground (1995)

(8.00) - Crna macka, beli macor (1998)

(7.69) - Zivot je cudo (2004)

(7.68) - Otac na sluzbenom putu (1985)

(7.67) - Sjecas li se Dolly Bell (1981)

(7.58) - All the Invisible Children (2005)

(7.44) - "Zivot je cudo" (2006)

(7.30) - Arizona Dream (1993)

(6.80) - Zavet (2007)

(6.79) - Super 8 Stories (2001)

(6.46) - Nevjeste dolaze (1978) (TV)

(6.44) - Guernica (1978)

(6.39) - Bife 'Titanik' (1979) (TV)

(6.32) - Maradona by Kusturica (2008)

Trade Mark: Uses comedy to convey important political issues

Last Site Favorite Film: Underground

Upcoming: Cool Water (2011)

Average IMDB Rating: 7.24

Awards: 11

Nominations: 7

Style (LastSite Rating out of 20) 16

Originality (LastSite Rating out of 20) 16

Filmography (LastSite Rating out of 20): 16

Total: 73.24

9. Aleksandr Sokurov (Russia, 1951)

Auteurs Profile:

Alexander Nikolayevich Sokurov (Russian: Алекса́ндр Никола́евич Соку́ров) (b. June 14, 1951, Podorwikha, Irkutsk Oblast) is a Russian filmmaker from St Petersburg who has been hailed as successor to renowned director Andrei Tarkovsky.

Sokurov was born in Siberia in the officer’s family on June 14, 1951. He graduated from the History Department of the Nizhny Novgorod University in 1974 and entered one of the VGIK studios the following year. There he made friends with Tarkovsky and was deeply influenced by his Mirror.
Most of Sokurov’s early features were banned by Soviet authorities. During his early period, he produced numerous documentaries, including an interview with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and a reportage about Grigori Kozintsev’s flat in St Petersburg.
Mother and Son (1996) was his first internationally acclaimed feature film. It was mirrored by Father and Son (2003) which baffled the critics with its implicit homoeroticism (though Sokurov himself has criticized this particular interpretation. In the Wellspring DVD release, critic Armond White cited Sokurov’s defense of the film against charges that it is “homoerotic.” White explicated Sokurov’s artistic and spiritual style, noting “To accept Sokurov’s images without fear or limitation—to think love not smut—points lust in the direction of progress.”[citation needed]. Sokurov has also filmed the first three installments of a planned tetralogy on prominent 20th-century rulers: Moloch (1999) about Hitler, Taurus (2000) about Lenin, and The Sun (2004) about Emperor Hirohito.
Sokurov is a Cannes Film Festival regular, four of his movies having debuted there one by one. Although he has been somewhat reluctant to cast accomplished actors in his features,[citation needed] the Russian Film Academy awarded several Nika Awards to him. His most commercially and critically successful effort to date has been a semi-documentary Russian Ark (2002), acclaimed primarily for its visually hypnotic images and single, unedited, shot.

Filmography (By IMDB Votes):

(7.63) - Dukhovnye golosa. Iz dnevnikov voyny. Povestvovanie v pyati chastyakh (1995)

(7.60) - Dni zatmeniya (1988)

(7.54) - Altovaya sonata. Dmitriy Shostakovich (1981)

(7.46) - Mariya (1988)

(7.46) - Moskovskaya elegiya (1987)

(7.39) - Mat i syn (1997)

(7.38) - Odinokiy golos cheloveka (1987)

(7.38) - Solntse (2005)

(7.37) - Elegiya dorogi (2001)

(7.20) - Russkiy kovcheg (2002)

(7.18) - Krug vtoroy (1990)

(7.15) - Vostochnaya elegiya (1996)

(6.98) - Spasi i sokhrani (1989)

(6.94) - Telets (2001)

(6.91) - Aleksandra (2007)

(6.90) - Tikhiye stranitsy (1994)

(6.87) - Robert. Schastlivanya zhizn (1996)

(6.77) - Sonata dlya Gitlera (1989)

(6.75) - Skorbnoye beschuvstviye (1987)

(6.72) - Molokh (1999)

(6.52) - Otets i syn (2003)

(6.48) - Uzel (1999)
(6.44) - Dolce... (2000)

Trade Mark: Since the fall of the Soviet regimes that refrained him from making the films he wanted he has expanded into the digital world to show life under communist rule

Last Site Favorite Film: Russian Ark

Upcoming: Faust (2010)

Average IMDB Rating: 7.09

Awards: 4

Nominations: 11

Style (LastSite Rating out of 20) 16

Originality (LastSite Rating out of 20) 17

Filmography (LastSite Rating out of 20): 19

Total: 74.09

8. Ken Loach (UK, 1936)

Auteurs Profile:

Unlike virtually all his contemporaries, Ken Loach has never succumbed to the siren call of Hollywood, and it’s virtually impossible to imagine his particular brand of British socialist realism translating well to that context. After studying law at St. Peter’s College, Oxford, he branched out into the theater, performing with a touring repertory company. This led to television, where in alliance with producer ‘Tony Garnett’ he produced a series of docudramas, most notably the devastating “Cathy Come Home” episode of “The Wednesday Play” (1964), whose impact was so massive that it led directly to a change in the homeless laws. He made his feature debut Poor Cow (1967) the following year, and with “Kes”, he produced what is now acclaimed as one of the finest films ever made in Britain. However, the following two decades saw his career in the doldrums with his films poorly distributed (despite the obvious quality of work such as The Gamekeeper (1968) (TV) and Looks and Smiles (1981)) and his TV work in some cases never broadcast (most notoriously, his documentaries on the 1984 miners’ strike). But he made a spectacular comeback in the 1990s, with a series of award-winning films firmly establishing him in the pantheon of great European directors – his films have always been more popular in mainland Europe than in his native country or the US (where Riff-Raff (1991) was shown with subtitles because of the wide range of dialects) Hidden Agenda (1990) won the Special Jury Prize at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival; Riff-Raff (1991) won the Felix award for Best European Film of 1992; Raining Stones (1993) won the Cannes Special Jury Prize for 1993, and ‘Land and Freedom’ won the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize and the Ecumenical Jury Prize at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival -and was a substantial box-office hit in Spain where it sparked intense debate about its subject matter. This needless to say, was one of the reasons that Loach made the film!

Filmography (By IMDB Votes):

(8.13) - "The Wednesday Play: Cathy Come Home (#1.71)" (1966)

(7.81) - Family Life (1971)

(7.68) - Ladybird Ladybird (1994)

(7.60) - The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006)

(7.59) - Kes (1970)

(7.58) - McLibel (2005)

(7.50) - Sweet Sixteen (2002/I)

(7.50) - McLibel (1998)

(7.49) - Raining Stones (1993)

(7.49) - Land and Freedom (1995)

(7.40) - My Name Is Joe (1998)

(7.30) - Looking for Eric (2009)

(7.20) - Ae Fond Kiss... (2004)

(7.20) - Riff-Raff (1991)

(7.10) - Bread and Roses (2000)

(7.10) - It's a Free World... (2007)

(7.04) - Looks and Smiles (1981)

(7.00) - Hidden Agenda (1990)

(7.00) - 11'09''01 - September 11 (2002)

(6.91) - The Navigators (2001)

(6.91) - Tickets (2005)

(6.89) - Fatherland (1986)

(6.84) - Poor Cow (1967)

(6.81) - Carla's Song (1996)

(6.81) - Chacun son cinéma ou Ce petit coup au coeur quand la lumière s'éteint et que le film commence (2007)(6.63) - Black Jack (1979)

Trade Mark: Gritty and British

Last Site Favorite Film: Looking for Eric

Upcoming: Route Irish

Average IMDB Rating: 7.24

Awards: 14

Nominations: 17

Style (LastSite Rating out of 20) 12

Originality (LastSite Rating out of 20) 13

Filmography (LastSite Rating out of 20): 12

Total: 75.24

7. Roman Polanski (France, 1933)

Auteurs Profile:

The son of a Polish Jew and a Russian immigrant, Polanski was born in Paris on August 18, 1933. When he was three, his family moved to the Polish town of Krakow, an unfortunate decision given that the Germans invaded the city in 1940. Things went from bad to worse with the formation of Krakow’s Jewish ghetto, and Polanski’s family was the target of further persecution when his parents were deported to a concentration camp. Just before he was to be taken away, however, Polanski’s father helped his son escape, and the boy managed to survive with help from kindly Catholic families, although he was at times forced to fend for himself. (At one point, the Germans decided to use Polanski for idle target practice.) It was during this period that Polanski became a devoted cinephile, seeking refuge in movie houses whenever possible. Shortly after sustaining serious injuries in an explosion, Polanski learned of his mother’s death at Auschwitz. His father survived the camps, and moved back to Krakow with his son. Following his father’s remarriage, the adolescent Polanski left home. Following a near-fatal incident at the age of 16, which involved Polanski nearly becoming the next victim of a man who had just killed three people, his father enrolled him in a technical school. He left in 1950 to attend film school, concurrently becoming an actor with the Krakow Theater and made his onscreen acting debut in Andrzej Wajda’s 1954 Pokolenie/A Generation.

That same year, Polanski was one of six applicants accepted into the rigorous director’s course at Lodz’s prestigious State Film School. Polanski’s second student film, Dwaj Ludzie z Szafa/Two Men and a Wardrobe, proved to be one of his most famous, winning him five international awards. This and subsequent shorts such as Le Gros et le Maigre/The Fat and the Lean (made in 1961 after his graduation) all featured the black humor that would characterize his later features. Polanski made his feature film debut in 1962 with Noz w Wodzie/Knife in the Water; as with most of his subsequent features, he also worked on the screenplay, in this case collaborating with Jerzy Skolimowski and Jakub Goldberg. A suspenseful, symbolic psychological drama set aboard a sailboat, the film told the story of a husband’s misbegotten attempts to impress his wife and a potential rival, a young hitchhiker they bring aboard on a whim. It is considered the first Polish film not to deal with World War II, and was applauded for its visual precision.It was also the only full-length feature the director made in Poland.
Polanski moved to England to make his next two films, the first of which, Repulsion, became a cornerstone of contemporary psychological thrillers and, despite poor box-office returns, is said to be the director’s favorite film. Polanski made his Hollywood debut in 1968 with the horror classic Rosemary’s Baby. As with his earlier works, the film was more concerned with psychological terror than cheap shocks, creating a sense of foreboding terror that many directors have since tried to emulate with limited success. Polanski’s next film, Macbeth, was a faithful but controversial adaptation of Shakespeare. Made shortly after his wife Sharon Tate was brutally murdered by the Manson Family, its graphic violence was said to reflect the director’s grief and outrage. Polanski then shifted gears, making a sex comedy (What?)in Italy before returning to Hollywood to direct one of his finest efforts, Chinatown (1974), a film that revitalized the nearly dead film noir movement and earned Polanski an Oscar nomination and a British Academy Award. He followed up this success in 1976 with the suspenseful and surrealistic Le Locataire/The Tenant; a sinister, paranoid tale of madness, manipulation, and vengeance.
The next year, the director made the news for a disastrous reason: While in Hollywood working on a project, he was charged of having sex with a 13-year-old girl. Barred from working in Hollywood, Polanski fled the country and resettled in Paris and did not make another film until 1979. An adaptation of a Thomas Hardy novel, the three-hour long Tess, starring 17-year-old Nastassja Kinski, was the most expensive film made in France at the time. But despite its cost, it proved to be a success, netting Polanski an Oscar nomination and a César award for Best Direction. Polanski’s next film, Pirates (1986), was an all-out spoof, which was not a success. Frantic, his 1988 thriller with Harrison Ford, failed to garner either critical or commercial favor, and his next effort, the perversely erotic thriller Bitter Moon (1992) received notice mainly because it starred a then-unknown Hugh Grant. Polanski found greater critical success in 1994 with Death and the Maiden, his adaptation of Ariel Dorfman’s play, starring Ben Kingsley and Sigourney Weaver. Two years later, he branched out with the experimental Gli Angeli, and, in 1999, returned to mystery-thriller territory with The Ninth Gate, starring his third wife Emmanuelle Seigner. His next film, based upon the memoirs of Wladyslaw Szpilman and admittedly inspired by his own shattering childhood experiences, Polanski’s The Pianist told the heart-wrenching tale of a brilliant pianist who eludes his Nazi captors by hiding out in the ruins of Warzaw. The film began collecting accolades from its premiere at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival, where it received the top prize, the Palme d’Or, to the Academy Awards, where it snagged seven nominations including Best Picture and Best Director. Although the latter prize went unclaimed, as Polanski was still a fugitive from Los Angeles County and therefore unable to enter the country. Over the years, Polanski also continued to nurture an interest in the theater. In 1981, he directed and starred in the Warsaw production of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, which he re-staged successfully in Paris in 1982. In 1988, he played the leading role in Stephen Berkoff’s adaptation of Kafka’s Metamorphosis (again on the Paris stage). He’s also contributed some occasional film acting, playing opposite Gerard Depardieu in Giuseppe Tornatore’s Una Pura Formalità/A Pure Formality in 1994, as well as appearing in his own films.

Filmography (By IMDB Votes):

(8.50) - Chinatown (1974)

(8.50) - The Pianist (2002)

(8.15) - The Ghost Writer (2010)

(8.10) - Rosemary's Baby (1968)

(7.90) - Repulsion (1965)

(7.80) - Le locataire (1976)

(7.59) - Nóz w wodzie (1962)

(7.49) - The Tragedy of Macbeth (1971)

(7.20) - Death and the Maiden (1994)

(7.20) - Tess (1979)

(7.20) - Cul-de-sac (1966)

(7.18) - Gdy spadaja anioly (1959)

(7.10) - Dance of the Vampires (1967)

(7.09) - Rower (1955)

(7.00) - Oliver Twist (2005)

(7.00) - Dwaj ludzie z szafa (1958)

(6.90) - Bitter Moon (1992)

(6.81) - Chacun son cinéma ou Ce petit coup au coeur quand la lumière s'éteint et que le film commence (2007)(6.73) - Lampa (1959)

(6.70) - Frantic (1988)

(6.64) - Le gros et le maigre (1961)

(6.60) - The Ninth Gate (1999)

(6.20) - Ssaki (1962)

(6.19) - Usmiech zebiczny (1957)

(6.01) - Morderstwo (1957)

(5.92) - Pirates (1986)

(5.85) - Che? (1972)

(5.84) - Rozbijemy zabawe (1957)
(5.80) - Les plus belles escroqueries du monde (1964)

Trade Mark: Likes to arrange shots from the protagonist's perspective and slowly pan around the room to points of interest as the character notices them.

Last Site Favorite Film: Chinatown

Upcoming: None known as yet

Average IMDB Rating: 7.01

Awards: 12

Nominations: 13

Style (LastSite Rating out of 20) 14

Originality (LastSite Rating out of 20) 14

Filmography (LastSite Rating out of 20): 16

Total: 76.01

6. Lars Von Trier (Denmark, 1956)

Auteurs Profile:

With a back-story (almost) as singular as his films, Danish director Lars von Trier was one of the most exceptional filmmakers to burst onto the international film scene in the 1990s. Unapologetically confident in his artistry and an unabashed provocateur, von Trier could kick up a fuss about his behavior, but his stylistic brio, extreme narratives, and ability with actors prevented such films as Zentropa (1991), The Kingdom (1994), Breaking the Waves (1996), and Dancer in the Dark (2000) from being eclipsed by their creator. Even as he openly sought a larger audience by making films in English, von Trier’s success helped resurrect Scandinavian cinema’s international prominence; his intense fear of flying ensured he’d never “go Hollywood.”

Raised by his radical, nudist Communist parents in an unconventional environment where, as von Trier once put it, everything was permitted except “feelings, religion and enjoyment,” von Trier blossomed into a neurotic, left-wing, movie-loving youth. Given a Super-8 camera at age 11, von Trier spent his teens making movies and entered Copenhagen’s film school in the early ‘80s. After winning prizes at the Munich Film Festival in 1981 and 1982 for his student films, and adding the aristocratic “von” to his name, the 1983 graduate managed to put together his low-budget debut feature, The Element of Crime (1984). A highly stylized neo-noir cop thriller set in a sepia-toned, water-logged future, The Element of Crime attracted favorable notice at the Cannes Film Festival, winning a prize for technical achievement. Von Trier continued his feature trilogy about Europe with the reflexive thriller Epidemic (1987). Starring the director as a director trying to raise money to make the movie-within-a-movie about a horrific virus unleashed on contemporary Germany, Epidemic was a controlled stab at postmodernism that underlined von Trier’s restless creativity even though it was not as well regarded.
After a version of Medea (1988) for Danish television – presaging his 1990s focus on borderline women – von Trier completed his European trio with Europa (1991). A darkly comic drama set in post-WWII Germany, Europa dazzled viewers with its ambitious use of superimposition, rear projection, and dramatic shifts between black-and-white and color, definitively establishing von Trier’s mastery of ominous atmospherics. Retitled Zentropa for its American release, Europa earned von Trier his first substantial international recognition as well as film festival notoriety. Disappointed by Europa’s third place Special Jury Prize at Cannes, von Trier accepted his award with thanks to “the midget,” jury chair Roman Polanski.
Despite an array of publicized psychological problems, including crippling bouts of agoraphobia, von Trier continued to experiment and stretch his cinematic vision, announcing plans to make a film called Dimension, to be shot in three-minute increments over 30 years. While the results of that project remain to be seen, what von Trier made in the ensuing eight years vaulted him from cult status to bona fide directorial stardom.
Turning his terror of hospitals into superb entertainment, von Trier mounted the chilling miniseries The Kingdom (1994) for Danish TV. Shot on location in a Copenhagen hospital in 16 mm with available light, The Kingdom was an inspired blend of Twin Peaks freakiness with ER procedural kineticism in its story of a haunted hospital. A TV and film festival hit, The Kingdom also became a precursor to the new aesthetic and spiritual concerns of von Trier’s subsequent 1990s feature films. Embroiled in personal turmoil mid-decade, including his mother’s 1995 deathbed revelation of his actual biological father (who wanted nothing to do with von Trier after an initial meeting), von Trier definitively rebelled against his past. Along with converting to Catholicism, von Trier broke from the perfectionist style of his Europe trilogy, aiming to achieve the “honesty” he admired in Danish iconoclast Carl Theodore Dreyer’s work with his own self-imposed artistic “chastity.” Co-authoring the Dogme 95 manifesto with fellow Dane Thomas Vinterberg, von Trier declared that Dogme-ites should reject artifice by only telling contemporary stories and only shooting films on location, in natural light, with a handheld camera, and with location sound.
Though von Trier’s next movie wasn’t pure Dogme, it did reveal his altered perspective. Drawing on the tradition of florid melodrama that von Trier adored and his family had despised, as well as his newfound spirituality, Breaking the Waves (1996) became an international sensation. Broken up by vividly colored chapter “headings” created in collaboration with painter Pers Kirkeby, Breaking the Waves’ disturbing story of female sacrifice and sexual martyrdom was lent dizzying immediacy by cinematographer Robby Müller’s bravura, desaturated handheld camera work and film newcomer Emily Watson’s intense performance as the simple-minded, devoted Bess. Praised for its fearless visuals, naked spirituality, and audacious emotionalism, and damned by some for its exploitative view of women, Breaking the Waves became an art house hit and earned von Trier another dissatisfying Cannes prize (the second place Grand Jury citation) and Watson an Oscar nomination for Best Actress.
Before his own entry in the Dogme canon, von Trier returned to his terrifying hospital for the miniseries sequel to The Kingdom. As popular as its predecessor, The Kingdom II (1997) was more outrageously (and comically) horrifying, reaching a grotesque peak with Udo Keir’s performance as an enormous mutant spawn. Though von Trier intended to complete the yarn with The Kingdom III, lead actor Ernst-Hugo Jaregard’s death in 1998 put the project in limbo. ABC, though, announced an American TV remake of The Kingdom to be written by Stephen King.
Following Dogme 95’s first international recognition with Vinterberg’s The Celebration (1997), von Trier’s own Dogme work The Idiots (1998) caused yet another stir. Though the roughly shot digital video depiction of a commune who “spaz” to disrupt bourgeois complacency and their effect on one female member raised eyebrows over its treatment of the mentally challenged, The Idiots also drew attention when von Trier refused to cut the orgy sequence’s hardcore nudity, superimposing black bars over the offending body parts instead. Von Trier became really angry, however, when the producers artificially corrected the lighting for the video release in 1999. Whatever its weaknesses, The Idiots helped to strengthen the Dogme 95 movement, which continued to expand with such films as Mifune (1999), Julien Donkey-Boy (1999), and Italian for Beginners (2001).
After executive-producing the popular Danish TV romance Morten Korch (1999), von Trier completed his “Golden Hearts” film trilogy about disturbed near-saintly women with perhaps his most divisive work to date, Dancer in the Dark (2000). Combining melodrama with the musical, another of his favorite genres, and shot in washed-out handheld video, save for the deliriously colorful, kaleidoscopic musical interludes, Dancer in the Dark upended musical conventions while inflicting an almost unbearable amount of suffering on doomed heroine Selma. Debuting at Cannes on the heels of well-publicized on-set strife between von Trier and star Bjork, Dancer in the Dark provoked as many boos as cheers on the way to winning the Best Actress prize and von Trier’s longed-for Palme D’Or. While some critics slammed Dancer for its depiction of America (where plane-phobe von Trier has never been), its aesthetic ugliness, and emotional battery, others praised its daring style and visceral impact. Bjork’s appearance at the Oscars in a swan dress to perform Dancer’s nominated song “I’ve Seen It All” occasioned a similar love-it-or-hate-it response.
Taking the uproar in stride as always, von Trier began shooting his next film, Dogville, in 2002. Eschewing digital video for HDTV and casting Nicole Kidman in the lead, von Trier all but guaranteed that Dogville would be another noteworthy endeavor.

Filmography (By IMDB Votes):

(8.27) - "Riget II" (1997)

(7.90) - Dogville (2003)

(7.80) - Breaking the Waves (1996)

(7.80) - Dancer in the Dark (2000)

(7.59) - Europa (1991)

(7.49) - Manderlay (2005)

(7.38) - De fem benspænd (2003)

(7.14) - Medea (1988)

(6.80) - Antichrist (2009)

(6.78) - Chacun son cinéma ou Ce petit coup au coeur quand la lumière s'éteint et que le film commence (2007)(6.70) - Idioterne (1998)

(6.69) - Direktøren for det hele (2006)

(6.69) - Forbrydelsens element (1984)

(6.00) - Epidemic (1987)

(5.44) - Dogville: The Pilot (2003) (V)

(5.29) - Nocturne (1980/I)

(5.06) - Befrielsesbilleder (1982)

(4.76) - D-dag (2000) (TV)

(4.43) - D-dag - Den færdige film (2001) (TV)

(4.41) - Menthe - la bienheureuse (1979)

(4.18) - Orchidégartneren (1977)

(4.15) - D-dag - Lise (2000) (TV)
(4.12) - Den sidste detalje (1981)

Trade Mark: Likes to cause controversy. Hypnosis figures significantly in many of his films. Fequently casts Udo Kier. Fequently casts Jean-Marc Barr,

Last Site Favorite Film: Dancer In The Dark

Upcoming: Melancholia (2010), The Erotic Man (Unknown), Washington (Unknown)

Average IMDB Rating: 6.21

Awards: 10

Nominations: 14

Style (LastSite Rating out of 20) 18

Originality (LastSite Rating out of 20) 17

Filmography (LastSite Rating out of 20): 12

Total: 77.21

5. Wim Wenders (Germany, 1945)

Auteurs Profile:

Born in Dusseldorf just after the end of World War II, German film director Wim Wenders grew up with an insatiable appetite for American movies. Not all that interested in big-budget products, he, instead, developed a fascination with B-movies, notably melodramas and Westerns. After studying Medicine and Philosophy in his native country, Wenders took up art in Paris (a mecca for viewing American films), and then returned to his homeland to attend Munich’s Academy of Film and Television. Like many of his French movie-fan brethren, Wenders began his career writing film criticism before directing a few short subjects of his own, and, in 1970, he and several other young filmmakers formed a production-distribution firm, Filmverlag Der Autoren. Summer in the City (1970) was Wenders’ first feature film, but it was his 1973 adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter that first brought him attention outside of Germany. The film included many accomplishments, most notably coaxing a superb performance from Senta Berger as Hester Prynne, and managing to make the landscapes of Spain resemble 17th century New England.

At this point, Wenders began his road movie cycle, inspired by such American pictures as Easy Rider (1970) and Two-Lane Blacktop (1971). Three films in this genre followed in quick succession: Alice in the Cities (1974), The Wrong Move (1975), and Kings of the Road (1976). For his first English-language picture, The American Friend (1977), Wenders cast three of his American movie idols: actor Dennis Hopper (director/star of Easy Rider) and “cult” directors Nicholas Ray (Rebel Without a Cause) and Samuel Fuller (The Steel Helmet). Wenders would later co-direct Lightning Over Water (1980) with Ray.
Wenders’ American-financed films Hammett (1980) and Paris, Texas (1983) were remarkable in their evocation of time and place, and the director could certainly have continued quite satisfactorily in Hollywood. However, he seemed to prefer activity in Europe, even though he was always one step ahead of his creditors — especially when running his own studio, Gray City. Wenders’ return to German filmmaking was rewarded in 1987 with the release of Der Himmel Über Berlin, or Wings of Desire. The story of an angel who wants to become human after finding earthly love met with an enthusiastic international response, culminating in a slew of honors for Wenders (including a 1987 Cannes Best Director award, a 1988 European Film Academy award for Best Director, and a host of awards from the New York Film Critics Circle) and an eventual 1998 American remake, City of Angels.
In the 1990s, Wenders’ love of on-the-road location filming was again manifested in such films as Until the End of the World (1991) (filmed on four continents and designed to be “the ultimate road movie”), and Faraway, So Close (1993), a marathon experience (which originally ran 164 minutes) wherein an angel wanders about to observe the changing scene in a newly unified Germany. In 1995, Wenders made a road movie of a different sort with Par-Dela les Nuages/Beyond the Clouds, which he co-directed with legendary Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni. Set in various European countries, the film explored the vagaries of love and lust through the experiences of several principle characters. Receiving decidedly mixed reviews, it differed strongly from Wenders’ next effort, Die Gebrüder Sklandanowsky/A Trick of the Light, a 1996 historical tribute to some of the more neglected developers of moving picture technology. Wenders returned to the States the following year with The End of Violence, a film that explored the effects of violence on the intertwining of people’s lives. Featuring Bill Pullman, Andie McDowell, and Gabriel Byrne, it was not a great commercial or critical success, but Wenders did win acclaim the following year for The Buena Vista Social Club. A documentary about Cuban music, the film was the result of a successful collaboration between Wenders and musician Ry Cooder, who had previously supplied the score for the director’s Paris, Texas.

Filmography (By IMDB Votes):

(8.00) - Der Himmel über Berlin (1987)

(7.95) - Im Lauf der Zeit (1976)

(7.90) - Paris, Texas (1984)

(7.77) - Alice in den Städten (1974)

(7.23) - The Soul of a Man (2003)

(7.20) - Buena Vista Social Club (1999)

(7.19) - Der amerikanische Freund (1977)

(7.18) - Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet (2002)

(7.17) - Der Stand der Dinge (1982)

(7.16) - Tokyo-Ga (1985)

(7.07) - Falsche Bewegung (1975)

(7.04) - Red Hot and Blue (1990) (TV)

(6.99) - Lisbon Story (1994)

(6.99) - Lumière et compagnie (1995)

(6.92) - Invisibles (2007)

(6.90) - In weiter Ferne, so nah! (1993)

(6.80) - Chacun son cinéma ou Ce petit coup au coeur quand la lumière s'éteint et que le film commence (2007)

(6.70) - Lightning Over Water (1980)
(6.70) - Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter (1972)

(6.70) - Don't Come Knocking (2005)

(6.60) - Bis ans Ende der Welt (1991)

(6.54) - Die Gebrüder Skladanowsky (1995)

(6.50) - Land of Plenty (2004)

(6.41) - Hammett (1982)

(6.40) - Al di là delle nuvole (1995)

(6.40) - 8 (2008)

(6.24) - Summer in the City (1970)

(6.11) - Der scharlachrote Buchstabe (1973)

(6.10) - Chambre 666 (1982) (TV)

(5.87) - Aufzeichnungen zu Kleidern und Städten (1989)

(5.85) - Palermo Shooting (2008)

(5.52) - The End of Violence (1997)

(5.52) - Viel passiert - Der BAP-Film (2002)
(5.50) - The Million Dollar Hotel (2000)

Trade Mark: He worked with all of his wives on at least one movie:

Last Site Favorite Film: Wings of Desire

Upcoming: Pina (2010), Miso Soup (2010)

Average IMDB Rating: 6.79

Awards: 12

Nominations: 14

Style (LastSite Rating out of 20) 15

Originality (LastSite Rating out of 20) 16

Filmography (LastSite Rating out of 20): 17

Total: 80.79

4. Werner Herzog (Germany, 1942)

Auteurs Profile:

One of the most influential filmmakers in New German Cinema and one of the most extreme personalities in film, Werner Herzog quickly gained recognition not only for creating some of the most fantastic narratives in the Film history, but for pushing himself and his crew to absurd and unprecedented lengths, again and again, in order to achieve the effects he demanded. Born Werner Stipetic in Munich on September 5, 1942, Herzog came of age in Sachrang, Bavaria, amid extreme poverty and destitution. After Herzog turned seventeen, a German film producer optioned one of his screenplays, then promptly destroyed the contract when he discovered the author’s age. Circa 1962, 20-year-old Herzog enrolled in the University of Munich as a history and literature student, and produced his first motion picture, the twelve minute Herakles, his second short Game in the Sand, and his third, the pacifist tract The Unprecedented Defense of Fortress Deutschkreuz.In 1963, he established his own production banner, Werner Herzog Filmproduktion, to give him complete autonomy over all of his projects.

He won a scholarship to the University of Pittsburgh in 1965 or ’66, and immigrated to the States, where he held down a job at a television station, purportedly shot films for NASA. He returned to Deutschland in 1967, where he won the top prize at the Oberhausen Film Festival for his short Last Words, then migrated to the Greek islands to shoot his premier feature, Signs of Life (1968), a story about a stricken German infantryman (Peter Brogle) who lapses into unbridled insanity. The film drew well-rounded critical praise, won the German National Film award for a debut feature and ran at the New York Film Festival.The director followed Signs of Life with two shorts in 1969, Precautions Against Fanatics and The Flying Doctors of East Africa, and a 1970 documentary about the disabled,Handicapped Future. His second feature film, the 1970 Even Dwarfs Started Small, depicts the daily activities of a bunch of dwarfs and midgets in a German penal community. Horrified, the German authorities banned it, but critics everywhere raved over its disturbing allegorical portrait of life.Herzog issued his third feature, the critical darling and arthouse mainstay Fata Morgana, in 1971. After completing the documentary Land of Silence and Darkness that same year, Herzog embarked on the first of a series of collaborations with the maniacally intense actor Klaus Kinski, Aguirre the Wrath of God (1972). This story of insane Spanish conquistador Don Lope de Aguirre, (Kinski) and his ill-fated quest to locate El Dorado, the Incan city of gold, forced Herzog and the crew to venture deep into the heart of the Peruvian jungles, where they battled now-legendary conditions to obtain the images. Critics and the public instantly heralded the film as a masterwork. Later, Herzog emerged with The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser (1975) and the uber-cerebral drama Heart of Glass.
After a 1975 documentary, the 47-minute The Great Ecstasy of the Sculptor Steiner, Herzog produced his 1977 Stroszek, a tale of three German social outcasts who immigrate to Wisconsin. In the late seventies, Herzog masterfully re-filmed F.W. Murnau’s 1922 Nosferatu (1978) with Kinski as his vampiric lead; he followed it up with yet another Kinski collaboration, a big screen adaptation of Georg Buchner’s stage work Woyzeck,which drew additional critical praise. He followed it up with another a TV drama work God’s Angry Man (1980). Between 1980 and 1982, Herzog managed to top the insanity of that film shoot with the most difficult production in movie history. With Fitzcarraldo, he sought to tell the story of Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, a 19th century eccentric opera lover, determined to bring the music of Enrico Caruso to the Peruvian indians by actually pulling a steamship over the top of a mountain. During the production, a plane crashed and killed several locals, lead Jason Robards acquired amoebic dysentery and had to be replaced with Kinski, the central steamers became mired in the mud and could not be moved until rainy season, a tribal war nearly erupted, and the steamer that the film crew attempted to drag over the top of the mountain became stuck midway. Famed documentarists Maureen Gosling and Les Blank foresaw the calamities prior to the shoot, and filmed the ordeal in their haunting documentary Burden of Dreams (1982), a work that was itself lauded as a masterpiece.
In 1984, Herzog filmed two acclaimed shorts: The Green Glow of the Mountains and The Ballad of the Little Soldier. Herzog shot his feature Where the Green Ants Dream (1985) in Australia; it concerns a mining corporation’s ill-advised attempts to extract much-needed materials from sacred Aboriginal ground. Later on, Herzog embarked on his final collaboration with Kinski, the adventure drama Cobra Verde. In the 1990s and 2000s, Herzog largely drifted into hardcore documentary work. His documentaries from this period include: Lessons of Darkness (1992), Bells from the Deep: Faith and Superstition in Russia (1993), The Transformation of the World into Music (1994), Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997), Wings of Hope (2000), Wheel of Time (2003), Incident at Loch Ness (2004), The White Diamond (2004) and Grizzly Man (2005) – comprised of footage shot by ill-fated “Grizzly Bear expert” Timothy Treadwell just before his death in a bear attack – elicited particularly strong acclaim. 2001’s Invincible dramatizes the story of a Jewish man who rose to power with the Nazis, only to renounce his party affiliations and swear allegiance to his people as Hitler crested the height of fame and authority. The director’s 2006 Rescue Dawn culled inspiration from his 1997 Dieter Needs to Fly, with a fictional recreation of the true events captured in that documentary. In addition to his directing and screenwriting work, Herzog has acted in a number of films, most memorably in Les Blank’s documentary Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe and in Paul Cox’s 1983 picture Man of Flowers, Herzog plays the central character’s stern, disciplinarian father during a wordless flashback.

Filmography (By IMDB Votes):

(8.17) - Lektionen in Finsternis (1992)

(8.09) - Stroszek (1977)

(8.08) - Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997)

(8.00) - Fitzcarraldo (1982)

(8.00) - Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (1972)

(7.99) - Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle (1974)

(7.90) - Grizzly Man (2005)

(7.84) - Land des Schweigens und der Dunkelheit (1971)

(7.83) - La Soufrière - Warten auf eine unausweichliche Katastrophe (1977)

(7.79) - Encounters at the End of the World (2007)

(7.79) - Mein liebster Feind - Klaus Kinski (1999)

(7.75) - Die große Ekstase des Bildschnitzers Steiner (1974)

(7.60) - My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2009)

(7.58) - Glocken aus der Tiefe - Glaube und Aberglaube in Rußland (1995)

(7.57) - Gasherbrum - Der leuchtende Berg (1985) (TV)

(7.52) - Julianes Sturz in den Dschungel (2000) (TV)

(7.51) - Wodaabe - Die Hirten der Sonne. Nomaden am Südrand der Sahara (1989) (TV)

(7.50) - Rescue Dawn (2006)

(7.49) - The White Diamond (2004)

(7.40) - Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979)

(7.38) - Lebenszeichen (1968)

(7.35) - Ballade vom kleinen Soldaten (1984) (TV)

(7.27) - Echos aus einem düsteren Reich (1990)

(7.20) - Glaube und Währung - Dr. Gene Scott, Fernsehprediger (1980) (TV)

(7.20) - Wheel of Time (2003)

(7.20) - Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet (2002)

(7.20) - Woyzeck (1979)

(7.14) - Huie's Predigt (1980) (TV)

(7.13) - Mit mir will keiner spielen (1976)

(7.10) - Cobra Verde (1987)

(7.10) - Auch Zwerge haben klein angefangen (1970)

(7.10) - The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans (2009)

(7.09) - Behinderte Zukunft? (1971) (TV)

(7.01) - Fata Morgana (1971)

(7.01) - Herz aus Glas (1976)

(6.96) - Tod für fünf Stimmen (1995) (TV)

(6.92) - Wo die grünen Ameisen träumen (1984)

(6.83) - Die fliegenden Ärzte von Ostafrika (1969) (TV)

(6.67) - Portrait Werner Herzog (1986)

(6.61) - Invincible (2001)

(6.58) - Pilgrimage (2001)

(6.50) - Letzte Worte (1968)

(6.34) - The Wild Blue Yonder (2005)

(6.30) - Cerro Torre: Schrei aus Stein (1991)

(6.24) - How much Wood would a Woodchuck chuck... - Beobachtungen zu einer neuen Sprache (1976) (TV)

(6.19) - Die beispiellose Verteidigung der Festung Deutschkreuz (1967)

(6.10) - Massnahmen gegen Fanatiker (1969)
(5.83) - Herakles (1962)

Trade Mark:

His films contain animals doing unusual things. His films contain long, extended landscape shots. Frequently worked with Klaus Kinski. Screeching cellos and violins in musical scores

Last Site Favorite Film: Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes

Upcoming: Piano Tuner

Average IMDB Rating: 7.23

Awards: 9

Nominations: 13

Style (LastSite Rating out of 20) 15

Originality (LastSite Rating out of 20) 19

Filmography (LastSite Rating out of 20): 18

Total: 81.23

3. Pedro Almodovar (Spain, 1949)

Auteurs Profile:

Splashing his colorful films across the dour post-Franco Spanish landscape with the irreverent glee of a prostitute arriving late to church after a long night, Pedro Almodóvar has been called the most influential Spanish filmmaker since Luis Buñuel. Beginning in the 1980s, Almodóvar started serving up provocative, candy-colored visions fraught with postmodernist insight into everything from sex and violence to religion and the dangers of good gazpacho. Sometimes shocking, sometimes controversial, Almodóvar’s films have always managed to present a new and intriguing view of his native country, shaping the attitudes of both his compatriots and a larger international audience.

Born September 25, 1951, in Calzada de Calatrava, an impoverished hamlet of La Mancha, Almodóvar was raised in a traditional Spanish household. He studied with Salesian monks, sang in the choir, and generally felt like a misfit; he was later to remark that, for him, growing up in such an environment was tantamount to being an astronaut in King Arthur’s court. At the age of 12, on seeing Richard Brooks’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Almodóvar decided to give purpose to his alienation, marking himself down for “a life of sin and degeneracy.” As a teenager, Almodóvar was influenced by the films of such directors as Billy Wilder, Douglas Sirk, Alfred Hitchcock, Luis Buñuel, Blake Edwards, and neorealists Marco Ferreri and Fernando Fernán-Gómez; deciding to pursue a career as a filmmaker, he got out of La Mancha and headed to Madrid in 1969. Working at a phone company by day, he wrote short stories, mock newsreels, and spoof commercials at night, as he also made Super-8 shorts and one Super-8 feature.

One of Almodóvar’s stories, a dirty photo-novel he was commissioned to write for a fanzine in 1978, became his first feature film, the 1980 Pepi, Luci, Bom…. An outrageous sexual satire, the film delivered a happy slap to the face of Spanish society, which at the time still wallowed in Franco-style social intolerance. The film’s campy, pop-art-colored hedonism and sexual vulgarity were mirrored two years later in Almodóvar’s second effort, Labyrinth of Passion. Many Spanish critics, who had a bias toward the more “quality” films of the Spanish cinema establishment, reacted negatively to Almodóvar’s work, labeling him too modern and superficial.

The director reacted to such criticisms with Dark Habits (1983) and What Have I Done to Deserve This?! (1984). Although both films were comedies, they delved into more serious, complex subjects. Dark Habits presented a criticism of the Catholic Church through the story of a woman forced to hide out with a group of outrageous nuns, while What Have I Done to Deserve This?! was the tale of a housewife struggling to cope with the travails of everyday life. This latter theme of the downtrodden housewife would arise repeatedly in the director’s work, as would other issues of female independence and solidarity. Almodóvar’s subsequent films deepened his exploration of sexual desire and the sometimes brutal laws governing it. Matador (1986) offered up desire as a bridge between sexual attraction and death, presenting the viewer with a cornucopia of sexual options, including fetishism, gay and straight voyeurism, necrophilia, and female penetration. This variety was further explored in the aptly named Law of Desire (1987), which offered up similarly overt sexuality, as well as Antonio Banderas in his first starring role. Banderas also starred in Almodóvar’s subsequent feature, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), which took a sharp and unfailingly amusing look at female sexuality and desire, and further established Almodóvar as a “women’s director.” It also earned its director international acclaim and 7.8 million dollars domestically, remaining the highest-grossing film in Spanish history for a decade.

Following the success of Women, Almodóvar took a turn toward controversy with his next film. Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1989) was the subject of heated stateside debate, thanks to its premise of a famous actress (Almodóvar muse Victoria Abril) falling in love with the man who kidnaps her and holds her hostage. Decried by feminists and women’s advocacy groups, the film also received a negative reception among certain Spanish critics, who declared that Almodóvar had lost his sense of direction. Similar criticism was leveled at his two subsequent films, the family melodrama High Heels (1991) and Kika (1993). Like Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, Kika incurred a certain amount of controversy in the States, thanks to a rape scene that was perceived as both misogynistic and exploitative.

The director changed gears with his next effort, 1995’s The Flower of My Secret. Starring Almodóvar regular Marisa Paredes as a pulp romance writer, the film was a psychological drama hailed by many as his most mature film to date. It also heralded a change in Almodóvar’s portrayal of his male characters; rather than fashion the kind of clueless male protagonist often featured in his earlier films, Almodóvar created a more positive image of a “new man.” Similar male characterization followed in his next film, Live Flesh (1997). Loosely based on a Ruth Rendell novel of the same name, the film explored love, loss, and suffering with a sober restraint only briefly glimpsed in the director’s earlier work.

Almodóvar then continued to work in more serious dramatic confines, directing All About My Mother in 1999. The story of a woman’s search for her dead son’s father, it revisited Almodóvar’s familiar themes of the inherent force of sisterhood and the power of family, no matter how unconventional that family may be. Dedicated to Bette Davis, Romy Schneider, and Gena Rowlands, the film premiered to great acclaim at the 1999 Cannes Festival, where it won Almodóvar a Best Director prize. He enjoyed further success at the 2000 Golden Globes and Academy Awards ceremonies, both of which saw All About My Mother garner honors for Best Foreign Language Film.

Two years later, Almodóvar hit another career high with Talk to Her, a melodrama as notable for its complex sexual politics as it was for its stylistic flourishes. The film, which revolved around two comatose women and the men who love them, was hailed by critics and embraced by arthouse audiences. However, certain plot points also revived charges of misogyny that had been leveled at the director for some of his earlier films (specifically Kika and Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!). Despite such controversy, Almodóvar won numerous honors across the world for his film, including a French César for Best Film and an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

Filmography (By IMDB Votes):

(8.00) - Hable con ella (2002)

(7.80) - Todo sobre mi madre (1999)

(7.70) - Volver (2006/I)

(7.59) - Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios (1988)

(7.50) - La mala educación (2004)

(7.49) - Carne trémula (1997)

(7.29) - Los abrazos rotos (2009)

(7.18) - ¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto!! (1984)

(7.18) - La ley del deseo (1987)

(7.09) - Tacones lejanos (1991)

(7.08) - Matador (1986)

(6.99) - La flor de mi secreto (1995)

(6.89) - ¡Átame! (1990)

(6.81) - La concejala antropófaga (2009)

(6.48) - Laberinto de pasiones (1982)

(6.39) - Entre tinieblas (1983)

(6.39) - Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón (1980)

(6.20) - Kika (1993)

(6.17) - Tráiler para amantes de lo prohibido (1985) (TV)
(5.60) - Salomé (1978)

Trade Mark: Often uses symbolism and metaphorical techniques to portray circular storylines.

His films often portrays strong female characters and transsexuals. Uses only his last name for his "Film By" credit ("Un film de Almodóvar").

Last Site Favorite Film: Bad Education

Upcoming: Three films in development (La Piel Que Habito, El Eternauta, Decidme Como Es Un Arbol)

Average IMDB Rating: 6.99

Awards: 16

Nominations: 16

Style (LastSite Rating out of 20) 17

Originality (LastSite Rating out of 20) 12

Filmography (LastSite Rating out of 20): 17

Total: 84.99

2. Jean-Luc Godard (France, 1930)

Auteurs Profile:

The lynchpin of the French New Wave, Jean-Luc Godard was arguably the most influential filmmaker of the postwar era. Beginning with his groundbreaking 1959 feature debut A Bout de Souffle, Godard revolutionized the motion picture form, freeing the medium from the shackles of its long-accepted cinematic language by rewriting the rules of narrative, continuity, sound, and camera work. Later in his career, he also challenged the common means of feature production, distribution, and exhibition, all in an effort to subvert the conventions of the Hollywood formula to create a new kind of film.

Godard was born in Paris on December 3, 1930, the second of four children. After receiving his primary education in Nyon, Switzerland – during World War II, he became a naturalized Swiss citizen – he studied ethnology at the Sorbonne, but spent the vast majority of his days at the Cine-Club du Quartier Latin, where he first met fellow film fanatics Francois Truffaut and Jacques Rivette. In May 1950, the three men united to publish La Gazette du Cinema, a monthly film journal which ran through November of the same year; here Godard printed his first critical pieces, which appeared both under his own name and under the pseudonym Hans Lucas. With Rivette’s 1950 short feature Quadrille, Godard made his acting debut, also appearing in Eric Rohmer’s Presentation ou Charlotte et son Steack the following year.
In January 1952, Godard began writing for Cahiers du Cinema, the massively influential film magazine which also grew to include staffers Truffaut, Rivette, Rohmer, and Claude Chabrol, among others. However, Godard’s first tenure at Cahiers proved to be brief: In the autumn of 1952, he left France to return to Switzerland, where he worked on the construction of the Grande-Dixence Dam. With his earnings, Godard was able to finance his first film, the short subject Operation Beton. While in Geneva in 1955, he helmed his sophomore effort, the ten-minute Une Femme Coquette, subsequently appearing in Rivette’s Le Coup de Berger. Upon returning to France in the summer of 1956, Godard resumed his work at Cahiers after a four-year break from writing. There he rose to the top ranks of French film criticism while honing his increasingly fresh and freewheeling directorial style over the course of the short comedies Tous les Garcons s’appellent Patrick (1957), Charlotte et son Jules, and Une Histoire d’Eau (both 1958), the latter co-directed by Truffaut.
In 1959, Godard embarked on his feature debut, A Bout de Souffle (Breathless). Released at roughly the same time as Truffaut’s Les Quatre Cents Coups and Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima Mon Amour, the picture helped establish the emergence of what was dubbed the French New Wave, a revolutionary movement in film heralded primarily by Cahiers alumni. A Bout de Souffle quickly earned global acclaim as the definitive document of its era. Based on a rough story outline contributed by Truffaut, it was shot without a script, its inspiration the American gangster movies which its director loved so passionately. Crafted with a rough-and-tumble, home-movie-like quality, it dodged all accepted notions of narrative and visual storytelling, adopting a freeform hipness unlike anything before it and sparking a revolution in low-budget, on-the-fly independent filmmaking. Seemingly overnight, Godard was revered as the most important cinematic talent of his generation.
Quickly, however, Godard’s refusal to be pigeonholed became apparent, and despite a few works of lesser quality, his work over the course of the upcoming decade was a remarkable period of innovation, experimentation, and sustained genius. In 1960, he resurfaced with his second feature, an oddball political thriller titled Le Petit Soldat. The first of many films to star his then-wife Anna Karina, it became the subject of controversy over its characters’ connection to the Algerian crisis and was banned in France for three years. Shooting for the first time in color and in CinemaScope, he next filmed 1961’s comic tale Une Femme Est une Femme, followed a year later by the episodic essay on prostitution Vivre Se Vie. Again, both starred Karina, prompting criticism – similar to the charges of indulgence leveled at Michelangelo Antonioni over his frequent use of actress Monica Vitti – that Godard was using her as a non-actress, a mere screen presence utilized and manipulated in ways that she herself did not fully comprehend.
The first of Godard’s films to receive a critical thrashing was 1963’s war drama Les Carabiniers, but Le Mepris, a study of the nature of cinema itself, starring Brigitte Bardot, returned him to reviewers’ good graces. An astonishingly prolific and brilliant period followed, led off by 1964’s Bande a Part and Une Femme Mariee. Pierrot le Fou and Alphaville, une Etrange Aventure de Lemmy Caution, a singular science fiction effort, appeared in 1965, and a year later no less than three new features – Masculin Feminin, Made in USA, and Deux ou Trois Choses Que Je Sais d’Elle – bowed. Godard repeated the trifecta in 1967 with La Chinoise, ou Plutot a la Chinoise, Loin du Viet-Nam, and finally the apocalyptic Weekend, his most formally radical film since A Bout de Souffle.
Beginning in 1968, Godard’s so-called “radical” period emerged and took form during an era when the political leanings below the surface of many of his earlier works began to position themselves as the director’s dominant focus. Through Anne Wiazemsky, his second wife, Godard was initiated into Paris’ Maoist underground. Ultimately, his entire worldview shifted from that of the obsessive cinephile to a radical outlook which even prompted him to reject his own film oeuvre as “bourgeois.” The global tumult that defined 1968 further informed his consciousness as he mounted Le Gai Savior, a series of political dialogues punctuated by telling images and symbols. Next was Un Film Comme les Autres, a collection of images juxtaposed with the various conversations between workers and students. One Plus One – a documentary portrait of the Rolling Stones also known as Sympathy for the Devil – followed. The final project of 1968, One American Movie (a planned cinéma vérité collaboration with D.A. Pennebaker and Richard Leacock), went unrealized.
In the summer of 1968, Godard also co-founded (with Jean-Pierre Gorin, Gerard Martin, Armand Marco, Nathalie Billard, and Jean-Henri Roger) Dziga Vertov Group, a collective designed to make “political films politically” and in the process revolutionize the motion picture language. The films created by the group were produced and written based upon concepts of class struggle and dialectical materialism, all in an attempt to revive a kind of proletarian culture. Once a die-hard auteurist, here Godard began working closely with other Dziga Vertov members, in particular Gorin, shooting in 16 mm on extremely low budgets and forgoing the usual channels of distribution and exhibition. As a result, the collective’s work – 1969’s British Sounds (See You at Mao), Vent d’Est, and Amore e Rabbia, and 1970’s Vladimir et Rosa and the uncompleted Jusqu’a la Victoire – went unseen by virtually anyone outside of student and activist circles, existing outside of common theatrical situations and never even appearing in the U.S.
In 1972, Tout Va Bien marked the ending of the Dziga Vertov Group; an attempt to deliver the collective’s messages to a more mainstream audience, it actively sought distribution on commercial circuits and was even bankrolled with American financing. After completing 1972’s Letter to Jane, Godard relocated from Paris to Grenoble, planning to remodel a video studio and establish alternative methods of production and distribution (primarily by passing out videotapes to networks of friends and associates). There he met Anne-Marie Mieville, forging a long-lasting partnership which began with 1974’s Ici et Ailleurs and continued with 1975’s Numero Deux and the following year’s Comment ça va? In 1976, Godard and Mieville moved to the small Swiss community of Rolle and immersed themselves in video and television work. After a decade, Godard began moving away from radical politics, returning to more personal material, exploring issues of subjectivity and individuality.
Among their first projects in Switzerland was Six Fois Deux (Sur et Sous la Communication), a series of a half-dozen two-part programs commissioned for Swiss television. Another TV series, France Tour/Detour Deux Enfants, followed over the course of 1977 and 1978 before Godard and Mieville returned to France to begin work on 1979’s Sauve Qui Peut (La Vie). In 1980, Godard traveled to California to work with Francis Ford Coppola on a biography of mobster Bugsy Siegel which failed to progress beyond the planning stages. Upon returning to Paris, he began work on his “trilogy of the sublime,” a collection of films – 1982’s Passion, 1983’s Prenom: Carmen, and 1983’s highly controversial Hail Mary (which Pope John Paul II denounced as "blasphemous") – all fascinated with notions of beauty, feminine allure, and nature.
After 1985’s neo-noir feature Detective, Godard and Mieville produced 1986’s Soft and Hard (A Soft Conversation Between Two Friends on a Hard Subject) for England’s Channel Four. A series of projects, including 1986’s TV film Grandeur et Decadence d’un Petit Commerce de Cinema, and 1987’s Soigne ta Droite and King Lear, appeared in quick succession, but Godard did not again resurface until 1990’s Nouvelle Vague. Over the course of the decade he mounted Histoire(s) du Cinema, a ten-part video study of France’s film legacy; most of Godard’s 1990s work was auxiliary to the series, including 1991’s Allemagne Annee 90 Neuf Zero and 1994’s JLG/JLG – Autoportrait de December. Forever Mozart, an episodic film about the attempts of a French theater troop to put on a play in Sarajevo, followed in 1996. The following year, Godard completed the third and fourth installments of his Histoire(s) du Cinema series with 3A: La Monnaie De L’Absolu; 4A: Le controle De L’Univers; he also starred in Nous Sommes Tous Encore Ici, an episodic comedy-drama directed by Mieville.

Filmography (By IMDB Votes):

(8.00) - À bout de souffle (1960)

(7.99) - Bande à part (1964)

(7.88) - Vivre sa vie: Film en douze tableaux (1962)

(7.78) - Masculin féminin: 15 faits précis (1966)
(7.69) - Le mépris (1963)

(7.59) - Pierrot le fou (1965)

(7.59) - Une femme est une femme (1961)

(7.57) - Histoire(s) du cinéma: Fatale beauté (1997) (V)

(7.55) - Moments choisis des histoire(s) du cinéma (2004)

(7.46) - Je vous salue, Sarajevo (1993) (V)

(7.42) - Histoire(s) du cinéma: Une histoire seule (1989) (V)

(7.41) - De l'origine du XXIe siècle (2000)

(7.38) - Histoire(s) du cinéma: Toutes les histoires (1988) (V)

(7.33) - Histoire(s) du cinéma - 2A: Seul le cinéma (1997) (V)

(7.32) - Histoire(s) du cinéma: La monnaie de l'absolu (1998) (V)

(7.25) - Histoire(s) du cinéma: Une vague nouvelle (1998) (V)

(7.21) - Histoire(s) du cinéma: Les signes parmi nous (1998) (V)

(7.19) - Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (1965)

(7.19) - Week End (1967)

(7.18) - Le petit soldat (1963)

(7.17) - La chinoise (1967)

(7.14) - Sauve qui peut (la vie) (1980)

(7.13) - Ici et ailleurs (1976)

(7.13) - Une femme mariée: Suite de fragments d'un film tourné en 1964 (1964)

(7.09) - JLG/JLG - autoportrait de décembre (1995)

(7.06) - Charlotte et Véronique, ou Tous les garçons s'appellent Patrick (1959)

(7.01) - Histoire(s) du cinéma: Le contrôle de l'univers (1998) (V)

(6.99) - 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle (1967)

(6.95) - Ro.Go.Pa.G. (1963)

(6.89) - The Old Place (1998)

(6.88) - Les carabiniers (1963)

(6.87) - Loin du Vietnam (1967)

(6.87) - Une catastrophe (2008)

(6.86) - Nouvelle vague (1990)

(6.83) - Allemagne 90 neuf zéro (1991)

(6.79) - Notre musique (2004)

(6.77) - Une histoire d'eau (1961)

(6.76) - Paris vu par... (1965)

(6.69) - Tout va bien (1972)

(6.68) - Charlotte et son Jules (1960)

(6.65) - Deux fois cinquante ans de cinéma français (1995)

(6.62) - Liberté et patrie (2002) (V)

(6.62) - Lettre à Freddy Buache (1982)

(6.61) - Contre l'oubli (1991)

(6.59) - "Les Français vus par" (1988)

(6.51) - Le gai savoir (1969)

(6.51) - Numéro deux (1975)

(6.50) - Made in U.S.A. (1966)

(6.50) - Prénom Carmen (1983)

(6.50) - Meetin' WA (1986)

(6.50) - 'Je vous salue, Marie' (1985)

(6.50) - Ten Minutes Older: The Cello (2002)

(6.46) - Soft and Hard (1986)

(6.41) - Passion (1982)

(6.36) - Les sept péchés capitaux (1962)

(6.33) - For Ever Mozart (1996)

(6.32) - Hélas pour moi (1993)

(6.31) - Sympathy for the Devil (1968)

(6.22) - Le vent d'est (1970)

(6.21) - Éloge de l'amour (2001)

(6.21) - "Série noire: Grandeur et décadence d'un petit commerce de cinéma (#1.21)" (1986)

(6.13) - Lotte in Italia (1971)

(6.13) - Détective (1985)

(6.12) - British Sounds (1970)

(6.08) - Comment ça va? (1978)

(6.05) - Letter to Jane: An Investigation About a Still (1972)

(6.02) - Soigne ta droite (1987)

(5.85) - Amore e rabbia (1969)

(5.80) - Un film comme les autres (1968)

(5.66) - Les plus belles escroqueries du monde (1964)

(5.63) - Aria (1987)

(5.62) - One P.M. (1972)

(5.56) - Pravda (1970)

(5.51) - Vladimir et Rosa (1970)

(5.47) - Le plus vieux métier du monde (1967)

(5.42) - King Lear (1987)

Trade Mark: Frequently casts Anna Karina. Shot-reverse-shot of characters looking at faces on a sheet/poster (Anna Karina looking at the faces on dollar bills in Bande à part (1964), Jean-Paul Belmondo looking at a poster of Humphrey Bogart in À bout de souffle (1960)).

Last Site Favorite Film: Breathless

Upcoming: Socialisme

Average IMDB Rating: 6.72

Awards: 11

Nominations: 20

Style (LastSite Rating out of 20) 17

Originality (LastSite Rating out of 20) 17

Filmography (LastSite Rating out of 20): 14

Total: 85.72

1. Michael Haneke (Germany, 1942)

Auteurs Profile:

Cheerfully wishing his audience a “disturbing evening” at a London retrospective of his films, director Michael Haneke insists that he is an optimist at heart, despite all of the relentlessly bleak carnage and deeply disturbing imagery so vividly painted and seared into the mind of anyone who has had the uncomfortable experience of viewing his work.

Practically born into show business, to an actress mother and director father, in Munich in March 1942, Haneke spent his early years in a working class suburb of Vienna before an early attempt at fame as an actor and pianist. Failing to achieve early success, Haneke attended the University of Vienna to study philosophy and psychology, and became a film critic and stage director before making his eventual debut as a television director with After Liverpool in 1973. Setting in motion a television career specializing in literary adaptations and small screen films, Haneke would work successfully in that medium until his feature debut with The Seventh Continent in 1989.
Laced with the theme of muted emotions resulting in stark violence that would become his calling card, The Seventh Continent’s bleak and austere portrayal of a family deadened and ultimately destroyed by modern convenience served as a deeply disturbing cautionary tale, made all the more effective by the final revelation that it was based in reality. The first of an agonizing trilogy on the same theme, including Benny’s Video (1992) and 71 Fragments of a Chronology Chance (1994), it offered a telling contrast to the Hollywood-manufactured attempts at shock in the form of slimy aliens and supernatural chills. These films were horrific and they were all too real in their implications and actions, the distortion of reality so common among typical horror films was abandoned in Haneke’s works in favor of the infinitely more terrifying affects of urban alienation.
Haneke took the modern obsession with cinematic violence to a level rarely attempted in 1997, with the tale of a happy family relentlessly tortured in Funny Games. Violence is not fun in Haneke’s world and this is where his optimism comes into play. Though shocking and repulsive on a number of levels, Haneke’s goal to shatter the numbness instilled by countless depictions of inconsequential violence in modern media is something the director views as positive and uplifting, even if the means to that end induce shock and anger. Haneke took home the Grand Prize at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival for The Piano Teacher, a compelling tale of sexual repression that also won that film’s stars, Benoit Magimel and Isabelle Huppert, the Best Actor and Actress awards at the festival.

Filmography (by IMDB Votes):

(8.09) - Das weisse Band - Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte (2009)

(7.87) - Der siebente Kontinent (1989)

(7.70) - Funny Games (1997)

(7.30) - Caché (2005)

(7.30) - La pianiste (2001)

(7.29) - Benny's Video (1992)

(7.18) - 71 Fragmente einer Chronologie des Zufalls (1994)

(7.07) - Die Rebellion (1993) (TV)

(6.99) - Code inconnu: Récit incomplet de divers voyages (2000)

(6.99) - Lumière et compagnie (1995)

(6.78) - Das Schloß (1997)

(6.40) - Le temps du loup (2003)
(6.30) - Funny Games U.S. (2007)

Trade Mark:Short outbursts of violence. Use of extremely long static takes. Uses no film score
Last Site Favorite Film: Hidden (Cache)
Upcoming: No info known of late

Average IMDB Rating: 7.17
Awards: 13
Nominations: 9
Style (LastSite Rating out of 20) 20
Originality (LastSite Rating out of 20): 19
Filmography (LastSite Rating out of 20): 19

Total: 87.17

IMDB AVERAGE

1. Christopher Nolan 7.93

2. Christian Mungiu 7.59

3. Nikita Mikhalkov 7.54

4. Philippe Garrel 7.49

5. Jean-Pierre Jeunet 7.47

6. Jacques Audiard 7.45

7. Guiseppe Tornatore 7.41

8. Bela Tarr 7.37

9. Pedro Costa 7.37

10. Fatih Akin 7.36

11. Paolo Sorrentino 7.36

12. Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardanne 7.28

13. Ken Loach 7.24

14. Emir Kusturica 7.24

15. Werner Herzog 7.23

16. Nuri Ceylan 7.23

17. Mike Leigh 7.22

18. Julio Medem 7.19

19. Michael Haneke 7.17

20. Michel Gondry 7.16

Top 50 European Directors Currently Working: 20-11

2010-03-05T18:48:00.000-08:00

All profiles taken from either IMDB, The Auteurs or Wikipedia.

50-41 can be read here

40-31 can be read here

30-21 can be read here

20. Jean Pierre & Luc Dardenne (Belgium, 1951 & 1954)

Auteurs Profile:

After studying drama in the arts institute, Jean Pierre Dardenne and his brother Luc made some videos about the rough life in blue-collar small towns in the Wallonie. After their meeting with filmmaker Armad Gatti and cinematographer Ned Burgess, they decided to enter in the movie business.

In 1978 they shot their first documentary, Le chant du rossignol, about the resistance against the Nazis during the second world war in Belgium. In 1986 they shot their first fiction movie, Falsch, about a Jewish family massacred by the Nazis. After their second movie, Je pense a vous, they released La Promesse, a movie about inmigration in Belgium. The film was a success worldwide winning awards in many festivals.

In 1999 they had another hit with Rosetta, that won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Festival. The movie tells the story of a blue collar worker with an alcoholic mother who tries to have a better life in a small belgium city.

In 2002, they came back to Cannes with their last movie, Le Fils, that won the ecumenical jury prize and the award for best actor for Olivier Gourmet.

Filmography (By IMDB Votes):

(7.68) - La promesse (1996)

(7.40) - L'enfant (2005)

(7.39) - Le fils (2002)

(7.19) - Le silence de Lorna (2008)

(7.19) - Rosetta (1999)

(6.80) - Chacun son cinéma ou Ce petit coup au coeur quand la lumière s'éteint et que le film commence (2007)

Trade Mark: Believe that the truth is always less interesting than fiction

Last Site Favorite Film: The Son

Upcoming: None known as yet

Average IMDB Rating: 7.28

Awards: 7

Nominations: 6

Style (LastSite Rating out of 20) 16

Originality (LastSite Rating out of 20) 14

Filmography (LastSite Rating out of 20): 16

Total: 66.28

19. Nanni Moretti (Italy, 1973)

Auteurs Profile:

Giovanni (Nanni) Moretti was born in 1953 in Bolzano. Both his parents are teachers and researchers. His first passions, cinema, water-polo and political commitment mark his works and his biography. After having graduated, Moretti tries to find work as assistant-director before shooting his first Super-8 shorts. He is also an actor for the Taviani Brothers (Padre padrone). His first feature-length film Io sono un autarchico brings him success both with the critics and the public. His second (Ecce Bombo) is selected by Cannes Film Festival. The success of the film makes Moretti one of the main European new authors.

Sogni d’oro wins the Jury Prize in Venice, and after Bianca (1983), La messa è finita wins the Silver Bear at the 1985 Berlinale.
In 1987, toghether with his long-time friend Angela barbagallo, Moretti establishes his production and distribution company, Sacher Film. They will then purchase and run a theater in Rom, called Nuovo Sacher.

Some dialogs and characters of Palombella rossa (1989, Venice Critics’ Week) are known to a whole generation of Italian filmgoers. The film, with Moretti once more as his fictionary “double” Michele Apicella, is a bitter reflection about Italian politics and about a generation, in a year of major changes in Europe.

At the beginning of the 90s, Sacher Film produces Daniele Lucchetti’s Il Portaborse, in which Moretti plays a corrupted and unscrupulous cabinet member. Italian television refuses to co-finance the project.

Always close to the political situation in his country, Moretti shoots La Cosa (The Thing), a documentary about the end of the Italian Comunist Party which becomes the Democratic Party of the Left in 1989.

Moretti 7th film Caro Diario is a huge public success and is awarded in the major international film festivals.

In 1995 Moretti and other filmmakers produce the short L’unico paese al mondo in order to awaken audiences’ conscience about the possible consequences of Berlusconi’s election. That same year, Moreti produces La seconda volta cortometraggio che si propone di far riflettere sulla situazione che si verrebbe a creare nel caso l’Italia decidesse di mandare al governo Silvio Berlusconi; lo stesso anno produce Mimmo Calopresti’s La seconda volta in which he also plays together with Valeria Bruni Tedeschi.

In 1998 Nanni dedicates his Aprile to his son Pietro. In 2001, his austere and dramatic La stanza del figlio is awarded the Palme d’Or in Cannes.

Il caimano (2006), in which the filmmaker plays himself the part of Silvio Berlusconi is an enormous success which sparks off great polemics in Italy and abroad.

After 3 years dedicated to the direction of Torino Film Festival, Moretti is now preparing a new film…

Filmography (By IMDB Votes):

(7.39) - La stanza del figlio (2001)

(7.20) - Ecce bombo (1978)

(7.18) - Caro diario (1993)

(7.05) - Bianca (1984)

(7.04) - Palombella rossa (1989)

(7.01) - La messa è finita (1985)

(6.81) - The Last Customer (2003)

(6.78) - Aprile (1998)

(6.78) - Chacun son cinéma ou Ce petit coup au coeur quand la lumière s'éteint et que le film commence (2007)

(6.78) - Il caimano (2006)

(6.75) - Io sono un autarchico (1976)

(6.62) - Sogni d'oro (1981)

(6.12) - Il giorno della prima di Close Up (1996)

(6.03) - La cosa (1990)

Trade Mark: Has become one of the most radical opponents to Silvio Berlusconi's government and policy in Italy. Many people believe his movie Il caimano (2006), which is inspired by Berlusconi's figure, influenced the 2006 Italian general election.

Last Site Favorite Film: The Sons Room

Upcoming: We Have a Pope (2010)

Average IMDB Rating: 6.82

Awards: 9

Nominations: 9

Style (LastSite Rating out of 20) 14

Originality (LastSite Rating out of 20) 15

Filmography (LastSite Rating out of 20): 13

Total: 66.82

18. Mike Leigh (UK, 1943)

Auteurs Profile:

One of contemporary Britain’s most renowned directors, Mike Leigh is known for his depictions of the dramas inherent in the everyday lives of regular people. Often compared to compatriot Ken Loach for his emphasis on “slice-of-life” realism (a comparison Leigh has deemed inaccurate, as his films, unlike Loach’s, have no absolute political agenda), Leigh makes films remarkable for their level-headed, unsensational portrayals of topics that would become four-hankie “message” melodramas in the hands of most Hollywood directors.
Born February 20, 1943, in Salford, Manchester, Leigh originally wanted to go into acting. While training at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, however, he found himself drawn toward directing and writing, and he eventually transferred to the London Film School. He began his career on the stage, with two of his most important works, The Box Play and Bleak Moments, brought to life through collaborative experimentation during rehearsals. The latter play, a drama about a woman looking for satisfaction in life, later comprised Leigh’s 1972 feature-film directorial debut. The film earned wide acclaim, but was virtually ignored by the public. Returning to the stage, Leigh occasionally ventured into the television arena with a number of made-for-TV films. Two of these, Meantime (1981) and Four Days in July (1984), gained limited theatrical release, while Nuts in May (1976) and Who’s Who (1978) were given video distribution.

Leigh had his first real success as a film director with High Hopes in 1989. The recipient of the Venice Film Festival’s FIPRESCI Prize, it was a bitingly satirical portrait of life in post-Thatcher England. Although the film received wide acclaim, it failed to find equally far-reaching theatrical release, a fate that also befell Leigh’s subsequent effort, Life Is Sweet (1991). A blithely funny comedy that explored the dramas inherent in the apparent superficiality of everyday life, it featured excellent performances by its leads, including an award-winning turn by Jane Horrocks as a bulimic, woefully insecure young woman. Leigh’s true international breakthrough came in 1993 with Naked. A disturbing, relentlessly bleak account of the misanthropic wanderings of a philosophy-spewing drifter, the film earned both raves from critics and rants from various feminist groups, who found it to be deeply misogynistic, due to the violence carried out against some of its female characters. Naked was rewarded lavishly at the Cannes Festival, where Thewlis won Best Actor for his terrifying performance and Leigh was honored with the festival’s Best Director prize.

Even more acclaimed was Leigh’s subsequent film, Secrets & Lies (1996). A family drama, it revolved around the relationship between a young woman and her biological mother who gave her up for adoption at birth, and the complications that ensue when the mother’s family learn of their reunion. For their excellent, largely improvised performances, Blethyn and Jean-Baptiste were nominated for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress Oscars, respectively, and Blethyn received a Best Actress Golden Globe. Blethyn also won the Best Actress prize at Cannes, where the film won the Palme d’Or. Secrets & Lies also earned a slew of additional honors, including a Best Film BAFTA Award. Leigh’s follow-up, Career Girls (1997), was a decidedly more low-key affair. A look at the friendship between two thirty-something women and their disparate personalities, it received a fairly strong critical reception but failed to resound with much of the public. Leigh was back in 1999 with Topsy-Turvy, a biographical comedy about famed 19th-century opera composers Gilbert and Sullivan. The film represented a drastic departure for Leigh, although it did feature collaborations with some of his regular actors, including Jim Broadbent (who won the Venice Film Festival’s Volpi Cup for his portrayal of Gilbert), Timothy Spall, and Lesley Manville.

Filmography (By IMDB Votes):

(8.16) - A Sense of History (1992) (TV)

(7.94) - "Play for Today: Nuts in May (#6.12)" (1976)

(7.90) - Secrets & Lies (1996)

(7.90) - Naked (1993)

(7.80) - Vera Drake (2004)

(7.66) - "Play for Today: Abigail's Party (#8.3)" (1977)

(7.50) - All or Nothing (2002/I)

(7.43) - "BBC2 Playhouse: Grown-Ups (#7.5)" (1980)

(7.39) - High Hopes (1988)

(7.36) - Cinema16: British Short Films (2003) (V)

(7.30) - "Play for Today: Home Sweet Home (#12.19)" (1982)

(7.30) - Life Is Sweet (1990)

(7.20) - Topsy-Turvy (1999)

(7.19) - "Play for Today: Hard Labour (#3.20)" (1973)

(7.10) - Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)

(7.07) - Four Days in July (1985) (TV)

(7.02) - "Play for Today: The Kiss of Death (#7.9)" (1977)

(7.00) - Career Girls (1997)

(6.97) - "Play for Today: Who's Who (#9.15)" (1979)

(6.94) - Bleak Moments (1971)

(6.92) - Meantime (1984) (TV)

(6.87) - The Short & Curlies (1987) (TV)

(4.22) - Two Mikes Don't Make a Wright (1992)

Trade Mark: Films act as a mirror to British culture

Last Site Favorite Film: Secrets & Lies

Upcoming: Another Year (2010)

Average IMDB Rating: 7.22

Awards: 8

Nominations: 18

Style (LastSite Rating out of 20) 12

Originality (LastSite Rating out of 20) 11

Filmography (LastSite Rating out of 20): 12

Total: 68.22

17. Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Turkey 1959)

Auteurs Profile:

Nuri Bilge Ceylan (born 26 January 1959 in Istanbul) is a Turkish photographer and film director. He is married to the filmmaker, photographer, and actress Ebru Ceylan, his co-star in İklimler.

Ceylan learned photography at age 15, and developed an interest in film at 22. After graduating from Boğaziçi University with a BSc degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering, he went on with his studies on cinema for two years at Mimar Sinan University.

Ceylan’s first short film Koza (Cocoon) was screened in the Cannes Film Festival in 1995. He received many awards with his debut feature Kasaba (Small Town). His third feature Uzak (Distant) received many awards including the Grand Jury Prize and the Best Actor Prize at Cannes, and was praised internationally. His 2006 film Iklimler (Climates) won the FIPRESCI Movie Critics’ Award at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival and received international praise by critics and experts. The film won 5 awards at the 2006 Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival, bringing him the “Best Director” title. During the preparation of this movie, Ceylan turned his attentions to photography again. He won the best director award in the 2008 Cannes Film Festival for Üç Maymun (Three Monkeys). At the end of his speech, Ceylan stated, “I dedicate this award to my beautiful and lonely country, which I love passionately.”

Filmography (By IMDB Votes):

(7.60) - Uzak (2002)

(7.30) - Üç maymun (2008)

(7.30) - Mayis sikintisi (1999)

(7.20) - Iklimler (2006)

(7.02) - Kasaba (1997)

(6.94) - Koza (1995)

Trade Mark: He is also a photographer which shows through the cinematography in his film.He loves snow very much and he always uses it in his films.

Last Site Favorite Film: Uzak

Upcoming: None as yet

Average IMDB Rating: 7.23

Awards: 6

Nominations: 7

Style (LastSite Rating out of 20) 16

Originality (LastSite Rating out of 20) 16

Filmography (LastSite Rating out of 20): 16

Total: 68.23

16. Jacques Audiard (France, 1952)

Auteurs Profile:

Born in Paris, France, in 1952. Jacques Audiard’s family has always been involved in movie business. His father, Michel, was a popular screenwriter and director and his uncle a producer. But in his teens he refused that world and wanted to be a teacher. He studied literature and philosophy at the Sorbonne but didn’t finish his degree. By that time, his then girlfriend suggested he work as a trainee editor during his university holidays. He worked as an assistant editor on several movies like “Le locataire” (1976) directed by Roman Polanski.

He also joined a theater where he did all kinds of work. He specially enjoyed adapting works for stage. In the eighties he wrote the screenplays of some successful movies like “Mortelle Randonnee” (1983), “Reveillon Chez Bob” (1984), “Saxo” (1987), “Frequence meurtre” (1988) and “Grosse fatigue” (1994). Most of those films were thrillers directed by prestigious filmmakers like Claude Miller and Michel Blanc. He also directed some well received short movies.

Thanks to the success of those movies he was able, in 1994, to raise up the money to make his first movie “Regarde les hommes tomber” a somber road movie starred by two of the most important French actors: Mathieu Kassovitz and Jean Louis Trintignant. That movie won 3 Cesars of the French academy for best editing, best new director (Jacques Audiard) and best new actor (for Kassovitz).

Kassovitz also became the star of his second movie “Un heros tres discret” released in the Festival de Cannes in 1996 where it won the award for best screenplay. “Un heros tres discret” undermined the myth of the French resistance to the Nazis by telling the story of a young impostor who rises high in French society after World war by concocting a past for himself as a hero. It also won awards in the festivals of Stockholm and Valladolid and made his name internationally.

In 2001 he made his third movie “Sur mes levres”. The love story between two outsiders (a deaf office worker and a hoodlum) who decide to con a group of gangsters also became a success. It also won three Cesars (best actress, sound and screenplay).

His last movie, “De battre mon Coeur sest arrête” (a remake of “Fingers” a James Toback’s movie) was released in the Berlin festival of 2005.

With those movies, Audiard has become the new master of the “polar” (French thriller) and inheritor of others great French directors like Jean-Pierre Melville (1917-1973) and Henri Georges-Clouzot (1907-1977). —IMDb

Filmography (By IMDB Votes):

(8.09) - Un prophète (2009)

(7.49) - Un héros très discret (1996)

(7.40) - Sur mes lèvres (2001)

(7.30) - De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté (2005)

(6.96) - Regarde les hommes tomber (1994)

Trade Mark: Perhaps due to his screenwriter father, likes to work hard on dialogue and narrative structure. Crime movies, Takes time making films, likes to work on them for 4 years before production.

Last Site Favorite Film: Un Prophete

Upcoming: None as yet

Average IMDB Rating: 7.45

Awards: 5

Nominations: 7

Style (LastSite Rating out of 20) 17

Originality (LastSite Rating out of 20) 15

Filmography (LastSite Rating out of 20): 17

Total: 68.45

15. Claude Chabrol (France, 1930)

Auteurs Profile:

Widely credited as the founding father of the French Nouvelle Vague movement, Claude Chabrol is responsible for a body of work that is as prolific as it is boldly defined. A master of the suspense thriller, Chabrol approaches his subjects with a cold, distanced objectivity that has led at least one critic to liken him to a compassionate but unsentimental god viewing the foibles and follies of his creations. Inherent in all of Chabrol’s thrillers is the observation of the clash between bourgeois value and barely-contained, oftentimes violent passion. This clash gives the director’s work a melodramatic quality that has allowed him to drift between the realm of the art film and that of popular entertainment.

Born in Paris on June 24, 1930, Chabrol was educated at the University of Paris, where he was a pharmacology student, and at the Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques. Following some military service, he developed an interest in the cinema and worked for a brief time in the publicity department of 20th Century Fox’s French headquarters. Chabrol’s true film career began during the 1950s, when he became one of a legendary group of critics for Cahiers du cinéma. Writing alongside the likes of Eric Rohmer (with whom he wrote a groundbreaking study of Alfred Hitchcock), Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, and François Truffaut, Chabrol developed theories of authorship that are still influential today, and attempted to revolutionize the cinematic value system.

One of the founders of the Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) movement, Chabrol began his filmmaking career in 1958 as the director, writer, and producer of Le Beau Serge. Modeled after Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, the film charted the visit of an ailing city-dweller (Jean-Claude Brialy) to his hometown, where he is reunited with his childhood friend (Gérard Blain), who is now a self-pitying alcoholic. Their transference of personal guilt, and then, in the words of Chabrol scholar Charles Derry, “exchange of redemption,” gave audiences an initial taste of the deeply-psychological situations Chabrol would continue to examine with chilly objectivity throughout his career, and established him as an important new talent.

Chabrol’s next film, Les Cousins (1959), proved to be another great critical success, earning a Best Film award at the Berlin Film Festival. Reuniting Jean-Claude Brialy and Gérard Blain as two cousins who are polar opposites, the film continued to develop Chabrol’s distanced approach to his subjects, and also introduced the director’s use of the names “Charles” and “Paul,” names he would continue to use in a number of his films to represent, respectively, the more serious bourgeois man and his pleasure-seeking counterpart. The same year he made Les Cousins, Chabrol released his first color feature, À Double Tour; a crime drama centering on the effects of the murder of a woman upon a dysfunctional family, it contained a measured critique of bourgeois moral values and the social and familial causes of violence.

These films, as well as L’Oeil du malin (1962) – which revolved around another triangle formed by a bourgeois couple and an outsider – constituted what many critics refer to as the more “personal” works of Chabrol’s early period. When they failed to do well at the box office, he turned to more commercial assignments (such as Le Tigre Aime la Chair Fraiche, 1964) that tended to alienate the critics who had championed his previous efforts. The director again won critical favor in 1968 with Les Biches, a psychological drama that addressed one of the central themes of his work, that of an outsider affecting a relationship between two people. The film, which revolved around the intrusion of a man (Jean-Louis Trintignant) upon a lesbian relationship, was a critical success, and heralded a new, more mature phase of Chabrol’s career. The film also starred Stéphane Audran, an actress who was both Chabrol’s muse and, for a number of years, his wife. That same year, the director released another tale concerning a relationship fractured by external forces, La Femme Infidèle. One of Chabrol’s most celebrated – and, to a number of critics, self-assured – film, it starred Audran as Helene, a woman whose marriage to Charles (Michel Bouquet) is drastically altered when Charles kills Helene’s lover, Victor (Maurice Ronet).

Time and again, Chabrol would revisit the theme of the simmering, potentially dangerous passion that chafed against the constraints of bourgeois repression – as well as those of a disrupted relationship – and did so through triangles formed by characters called Charles, Paul, and Helene. Que La Bête Meure (1969) saw Charles hunt down the hit-and-run killer of his son, and in doing so interrupt the relationship between the killer, Paul, and his sister-in-law Helene. In Le Boucher, released the same year, Poupaul, a possibly homicidal butcher, tries to have a relationship with uptight schoolteacher Helene, who has displaced her sexual energies onto Charles, one of her young students. Further conundrums of passion are on display in Juste Avant La Nuit (1971), when Helene, the wife of the adulterous Charles, must resort to an act of violence to squelch the passion that threatens her ordered bourgeois existence.

Toward the end of the 1970s, Chabrol began making television films and international co-productions, something that marked a departure from the nature of his previous work. His team of regular collaborators, who included Audran, Jean Yanne, Michel Bouquet, composer Pierre Jansen, producer Andre Genoves, and cinematographer Jean Rabier, also changed – with Chabrol’s son, Matthieu, replacing Jansen, and new actors such as Isabelle Huppert starring in his films. Huppert essayed the title character in Violette Nozière (1978), one of Chabrol’s most acclaimed films of the 1970s. Based upon the true story of a 19-year-old girl (Huppert) who was convicted of poisoning her father and attempting to kill her mother, the film achieved the remarkable feat of lending its unlikable protagonist a degree of three-dimensional sympathy, and drew favorable comparisons to Hitchcock, whose work provided Chabrol with a constant source of inspiration.

Chabrol’s films of the 1980s and ‘90s largely suffered in comparison to his earlier work; some critics noted that they lacked the unity and quality that gave the director’s films of the 1950s and ‘60s such enduring resonance. Still, he continued to work prolifically, earning particular international acclaim for Une Affaire de Femmes in 1988. Starring Isabelle Huppert as an abortionist who ends up holding the dubious honor of being the last woman guillotined in France (by the Vichy government), the film – like Chabrol’s earlier Violotte Nozière – succeeded in painting a complex, sympathetic portrait of a fairly unlikable woman, and offered one of the most insightful and balanced looks at abortion ever recorded on celluloid.

Chabrol’s subsequent collaborations with Huppert formed his most celebrated films of the 1990s: 1991’s Madame Bovary was a great success in France, while the 1995 psychological thriller La Cérémonie earned transcontinental plaudits. Boasting a strong cast that included Huppert, Sandrine Bonnaire, Jacqueline Bisset, and Jean-Pierre Cassel, the César-nominated film provided an incisive look at class tensions, jealousy, and the politics of murder. Many critics declared that Chabrol was back at the top of his form. Although his next two major thrillers, Rien Ne Va Plus (1997) and Au Coeur du Mensonge (1999), were not as warmly received, there was no denying the director’s continued impact on both French and world cinema.

Filmography (By IMDB Votes):

(7.74) - Que la bête meure (1969)

(7.64) - Une affaire de femmes (1988)

(7.57) - Le boucher (1970)

(7.48) - La cérémonie (1995)

(7.46) - La femme infidèle (1969)

(7.40) - La rupture (1970)

(7.29) - Juste avant la nuit (1971)

(7.24) - Les bonnes femmes (1960)

(7.13) - Violette Nozière (1978)

(7.04) - Les cousins (1959)

(7.03) - Les fantômes du chapelier (1982)

(6.98) - L'enfer (1994)

(6.95) - L'oeil de Vichy (1993)

(6.88) - Les biches (1968)

(6.86) - Le beau Serge (1958)

(6.85) - Les noces rouges (1973)

(6.83) - Alice ou la dernière fugue (1977)

(6.79) - La demoiselle d'honneur (2004)

(6.77) - Betty (1992)

(6.77) - Masques (1987)

(6.76) - À double tour (1959)

(6.76) - Paris vu par... (1965)

(6.73) - Une partie de plaisir (1975)

(6.69) - Rien ne va plus (1997)

(6.69) - Au coeur du mensonge (1999)

(6.69) - L'oeil du malin (1962)

(6.68) - Les innocents aux mains sales (1975)

(6.60) - Madame Bovary (1991)

(6.59) - Inspecteur Lavardin (1986)

(6.59) - Poulet au vinaigre (1985)

(6.57) - La ligne de démarcation (1966)

(6.50) - Le cri du hibou (1987)

(6.50) - L'ivresse du pouvoir (2006)

(6.50) - Merci pour le chocolat (2000)

(6.50) - Les godelureaux (1961)

(6.41) - Nada (1974)

(6.35) - Les sept péchés capitaux (1962)

(6.32) - Le cheval d'orgueil (1980)

(6.31) - La fleur du mal (2003)

(6.25) - Landru (1963)

(6.21) - La fille coupée en deux (2007)

(6.18) - M. le maudit (1982) (TV)

(6.17) - Docteur Popaul (1972)

(6.16) - La décade prodigieuse (1971)

(6.15) - Les liens de sang (1978)

(6.06) - Bellamy (2009)

(6.00) - Les magiciens (1976)

(5.96) - Le scandale (1967)

(5.75) - Marie-Chantal contre le docteur Kha (1965)

(5.70) - Le tigre aime la chair fraiche (1964)

(5.68) - La route de Corinthe (1967)

(5.66) - Les plus belles escroqueries du monde (1964)

(5.34) - Le sang des autres (1984)

(5.22) - Dr. M (1990)

(5.17) - Folies bourgeoises (1976)

(5.06) - Jours tranquilles à Clichy (1990)

Trade Mark: Credited with starting the French New Wave

Last Site Favorite Film: La Boucher

Upcoming: None known as yet

Average IMDB Rating: 6.66

Awards: 5

Nominations: 9

Style (LastSite Rating out of 20) 17

Originality (LastSite Rating out of 20) 16

Filmography (LastSite Rating out of 20): 15

Total: 68.66

14. Ridley Scott (UK, 1937)

Auteurs Profile:

One of the most promising directors of the late ‘70s, Ridley Scott displayed stylistic flair and remarkable storytelling abilities in such films as The Duellists (1977) and his landmark Alien (1979). Born in 1937, in Northumberland, England, Scott was educated at the West Hartlepool College of Art and London’s Royal College of Art. After completing his education, he became a set designer for the British Broadcasting Company in the early ’60s, eventually getting promoted to director of such popular BBC series as the long-running police adventure Z Cars. With the establishment of his own firm, Ridley Scott Associates, Scott was in on the ground floor of some of the most inventive European TV commercials of the 1970s.

The director’s transition to the big screen came with his direction of 1977’s The Duellists, a visually striking Napoleonic war film that won the Jury Prize for Best First Feature at the Cannes Film Festival. Further success followed with 1979’s Alien, which established Scott as both an important director and a shining knight for horror and sci-fi devotees. In 1982, the director found himself at the center of a storm around his production of Blade Runner. After repeated clashes with studio executives over the film’s complex content and downbeat finale, Scott added a voice-over narration and a more positive ending. The results sparked an outcry from film purists, and Blade Runner fell victim to negative reviews and poor box-office results. It wasn’t until the early ‘90s that the director’s cut was finally released, theatrically and on video cassette, and the film was recognized as a science fiction masterpiece.

In the meantime, Scott continued to direct such films as the 1986 fantasy Legend, starring Tom Cruise, and 1989’s Black Rain, which featured Michael Douglas. In 1991, he encountered critical and commercial triumph with Thelma & Louise. Starring Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon, the film was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Director for Scott. Though, his next project, 1992’s 1492: Conquest of Paradise, proved to be a complete flop, and for the next few years Scott relinquished his directorial duties in favor of producing such films as Monkey Trouble and The Browning Version (both 1994). Scott returned to the director’s chair in 1996, with White Squall, an action-adventure film set on a boat full of troubled teenage boys. Unfortunately, the film performed poorly among critics and at the box office, and Scott’s next feature, G.I. Jane (1997), suffered a similar fate. He then returned to producing, working on the 1997 TV series The Hunger. After producing the 1998 black comedy Clay Pigeons, Scott returned to directing with Gladiator (2000), a Roman epic starring Russell Crowe as its titular hero. The film was hailed by some critics who saw it as a return to grand-scale moviemaking, while others saw it as merely overblown. Regardless of the critics’ opinions, Gladiator was undoubtedly wildly popular, earning five Oscars, including Best Picture, at the 73rd Annual Academy Awards.

In 2001, Scott applied his icy-cool visual style to Hannibal, the much-anticipated sequel to 1991’s Silence of the Lambs. Although the film broke the box-office record for the largest opening weekend for an R-rated film, critics were less than pleased with Hannibal’s combination of smug, stuffy disaffection and vomit-bag-worthy gore. Scott’s skills as a director of action were better put to the test later that year with Black Hawk Down. While some critics objected to Black Hawk’s simplified portrayal of the U.S. military involvement in the region, public lined up in droves for the flag-waving Jerry Bruckheimer production, which would also garner Scott his third Best Director Oscar nomination. Recoiling from the high-profile prestige projects for a spell, Scott turned his focus to the big-screen adaptation of Matchstick Men, a dysfunctional-con-man tale. Though hardly a blockbuster, the heist comedy garnered mixed but generally positive reviews. In 2005, the director helmed the would-be epic Crusades historical film Kingdom of Heaven with a Gladiator-esque budget and all-star cast. Unfortunately, the film was a dud both with critics and audiences, so Scott returned to a more intimate kind of storytelling with the 2006 drama A Good Year. The film starred Russell Crowe as a hotshot broker who finds himself in the depths of a life-crisis when he inherits his beloved uncle’s estate and discovers that the simple lifestyle it offers may give him more satisfaction than his fast-paced, high-power job.

Filmography (By IMDB Votes):

(8.50) - Alien (1979)

(8.30) - Blade Runner (1982)

(8.30) - Gladiator (2000)

(7.90) - American Gangster (2007)

(7.70) - Black Hawk Down (2001)

(7.58) - All the Invisible Children (2005)

(7.40) - Matchstick Men (2003)

(7.40) - The Duellists (1977)

(7.32) - Cinema16: British Short Films (2003) (V)

(7.30) - Thelma & Louise (1991)

(7.20) - Body of Lies (2008)

(7.10) - Kingdom of Heaven (2005)

(6.80) - A Good Year (2006)

(6.50) - Hannibal (2001)

(6.40) - Black Rain (1989/I)

(6.40) - White Squall (1996)

(6.20) - 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992)

(6.11) - Someone to Watch Over Me (1987)

(6.10) - Legend (1985)

(5.83) - Boy and Bicycle (1965)

(5.50) - G.I. Jane (1997)

Trade Mark: [Stunning visuals] He personally sketches most of his own storyboards, left-handed, with great artistic style (The Duellists (1977), Alien (1979), Blade Runner (1982), Legend (1985), Black Rain (1989/I), Thelma & Louise (1991), 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992), Gladiator (2000), Black Hawk Down (2001), Kingdom of Heaven (2005), American Gangster (2007), Body of Lies (2008)). [Strong female characters] This includes Sigourney Weaver in Alien (1979), Geena Davis & Susan Sarandon in Thelma & Louise Alison Lohman in Matchstick Men (2003), all the female characters in A Good Year Hans Zimmer. (1991), (2006), and even the female athlete in the Superbowl ad "1984" for Apple Computers. Being the actors' director that he is, Scott favors extensive use of the two-camera 'V' set-up, thus enabling his actors to play more fluidly off one another without being constantly interrupted by calls to "Cut!". Frequently uses music by

Last Site Favorite Film: Blade Runner

Upcoming: Robin Hood (2010)

Average IMDB Rating: 7.04

Awards: 1

Nominations: 12

Style (LastSite Rating out of 20) 17

Originality (LastSite Rating out of 20) 15

Filmography (LastSite Rating out of 20): 17

Total: 69.04

13. Christopher Nolan (UK, 1970)

Auteurs Profile:

Successful producer, film director and writer Christopher Jonathan James Nolan famous by the name Christopher Nolan was born on the 30th July 1970 in London. Christopher holds dual citizenship of the United Kingdom and the United States of America as his father was from the UK and his mother hailed from the US. He married Emma Thomas in 1997 a film producer and ardent admirer of Nolan’s work. The couple is have four children residing with them in Los Angeles. His brother Jonathan Nolan is a renowned author with whom Christopher often collaborates during the production of his movies.

Nolan spent considerable time between London and Chicago during his childhood. Nolan was educated in an independent school known as Hailey Bury College, in Hertfordshire near Hertford, England. Later Christopher Nolan learned the intricacies of English literature at University College London. An early starter Christopher Nolan started shooting films with a super 8 camera borrowed from his father. As a child he made short films with Roko Belic a future producer and director based at Chicago. Nolan made many short films in the University College London film society. His First Short Film Tarantella was shown in 1989 on PBS. In 1996 during the Cambridge Film Festival Larceny the second short film by Christopher Nolan was shown.

In 1996 Nolan directed his first feature film Titled Following. The film portrays the story of a writer obsessed with following unknown people randomly. The viewer becomes a little disoriented as scenes disregard chronological order. The movie was produced within a budget of a mere $6000 and was shot on weekends. Due to its unconventional storytelling style the film received attention after premiering at the 1998 San Francisco Film Festival. As a result of that Nolan got the script from Newmarket Films for his next film Memento.

Memento is a highly praised movie and was nominated for an Academy Award and Golden Globe for best screenplay. It is story of a widower named Leonard Shelby played by Australian actor Guy Pearce. The principal character of the film is unable to form new memories because of an old head injury. Nolan’s unique technique of presentation distinguished the film from its counterparts.

The film Insomnia was directed by Christopher Nolan in 2002, an American adaptation of a Norwegian film released in 1997 by the same name. The movie’s star cast includes Al Pacino, Robin Williams and Hilary Swank. Insomnia was appreciated by the critics. Although Christopher Nolan was satisfied with his directorial abilities he always wanted to direct a blockbuster, this opportunity came in the form of Batman Begins in the year 2003.

On the 15th June 2005 Batman Begins was released and jumped to the position of 3rd biggest blockbuster of that summer. The movie was highly acclaimed in the global scenario and is often rated above its 1989 counterpart. At the 32nd annual Saturn Awards, Batman Begins emerged as a major winner bagging the awards for Best Fantasy Film, Best Writing for Nolan and Goyer and Best Actor for Christian Bale. Batman Begins was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography.

The next directorial endeavour of Christopher Nolan was The Prestige a film co-produced by his wife Emma Thomas, and co-scripted by his brother Jonathan Nolan. The movie got a positive response from critics and earned over $109 million worldwide. After the release of The Prestige, Nolan expressed his desire to direct a sequel to Batman Begins the outcome of this desire produced The Dark Knight in 2006, repeating a successful box office collection with $158 million in returns.

Christopher Nolan’s upcoming movie is an adaptation of The Prisoner a 1960s series based on the life of a British secret-agent.

Filmography (By IMDB Votes):

(8.90) - The Dark Knight (2008)

(8.60) - Memento (2000

(8.40) - The Prestige (2006)

(8.30) - Batman Begins (2005)

(7.60) - Following (1998)

(7.49) - Cinema16: British Short Films (2003) (V)

(7.20) - Insomnia (2002/I)

(6.93) - Doodlebug (1997)

Trade Mark: Begins his movies and introduces his main characters with a close up of their hands performing an action. Often works with editor Lee Smith, composer David Julyan, cinematographer Wally Pfister, production designer Nathan Crowley and wife-producer Emma Thomas. Often casts British or non-American actors in American roles.Usually starts films with a flashback or a scene from the end of the movie.

When shooting a dialogue scene, the actors are often framed in wide close-up with a shallow depth of field to blur out the background.Films conclude with the two central characters discussing the preceding events and the results which have stemmed from said events. Employs non-linear storytelling techniques, often flipping around the three acts of a movie to tell the story in an interesting fashion.

Last Site Favorite Film: The Dark Knight

Upcoming: Inception (2010)

Average IMDB Rating: 7.93

Awards: 2

Nominations: 5

Style (LastSite Rating out of 20) 18

Originality (LastSite Rating out of 20) 18

Filmography (LastSite Rating out of 20): 20

Total: 70.93

12. Bela Tarr (Hungarian, 1955)

Auteurs Profile: “Born in 1955, Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr began making amateur films at the age of 16, later working as caretaker at a national House for Culture and Recreation. His amateur work brought him to the attention of the Bela Balazs Studios (named in honor of the Hungarian cinema theorist), which helped fund Tarr’s 1979 feature debut Family Nest, a work of socialist realism clearly influenced by the work of John Cassavettes. The 1981 piece The Outsider and the following year’s The Prefab People continued in much the same vein, but with a 1982 television adaptation of Macbeth, his work began to change dramatically; comprised of only two shots, the first shot (before the main title) was five minutes long, with the second 67 minutes in length. Not only did Tarr’s visual sensibility move from raw close-ups to more abstract mediums and long shots, but also his philosophical sensibility shifted from grim realism to a more metaphysical outlook similar to that of Andrei Tarkovsky”

Filmography (by IMDB Votes):

(8.66) - Sátántangó (1994)

(8.09) - Werckmeister harmóniák (2000)

(7.59) - Kárhozat (1987)

(7.40) - Családi tüzfészek (1979)

(7.32) - Panelkapcsolat (1982)

(7.15) - Öszi almanach (1985)

(7.02) - A Londoni férfi (2007)

(6.99) - Szabadgyalog (1981)

(6.08) - Visions of Europe (2004)

Trade Mark: Black and White, long takes, with a duration of several minutes.

Screenplay and/or source novel by László Krasznahorkai.Music by Mihály Vig.

Last Site Favorite Film: Werckmeister Harmonies (2000)

Upcoming: The Turin Horse (2010)

Average IMDB Rating: 7.37

Awards*: 3

Nominations: 2

Style (LastSite Rating out of 20): 20

Originality (LastSite Rating out of 20): 19

Filmography (LastSite Rating out of 20): 20

Total: 71.37

11. Jean-Pierre Jeunet (France, 1953)

Auteurs Profile:

Several years before he helmed the fourth Alien film, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, together with fellow French cinema wunderkind/creative partner Marc Caro, made his mark on international cinema with two of the most distinctive films of the 1990s. Collaborating throughout the 1980s on ads, music videos, and such shorts as Le Manège (1980), Jeunet and Caro honed their signature visual flair and darkly comic sensibility; Jeunet’s solo effort Foutaises (1989) won a César for Best Short Film. Bringing their unique style to feature films in the 1990s, Jeunet and Caro’s debut work Delicatessen (1991) became an international art film sensation. Hailed for its grotesquely comic and oddly touching tale of post-nuclear survival amid a group of eccentrics in an ominous, almost palpably clammy yet cartoon-like “retro future” setting, Delicatessen attracted an ardent following and earned several festival prizes and two Césars. Flush from Delicatessen’s success, Jeunet and Caro finally made a feature they’d been planning for 14 years, the adult fairy tale The City of Lost Children (1995). Shot on elaborate sets with an international cast (including the voice of French star Jean-Louis Trintignant), Jeunet and Caro created an inventively detailed fantasy world to depict the story of an evil scientist’s plan to pilfer children’s dreams. Though some critics were left scratching their heads over the plot, The City of Lost Children’s rapturous visuals impressed audiences and turned it into another cult hit for Jeunet and Caro. Parting directorial ways with Caro after The City of Lost Children, Jeunet headed to Hollywood to direct Alien Resurrection (1997). Though Jeunet had always handled the actors while Caro supervised the images in their films, Caro’s credited presence as a design supervisor ensured that Jeunet’s entry in the Alien franchise bore their distinctive visual stamp as well as Jeunet’s ability to convey human pathos amidst grotesquerie. Opening to mixed reviews from critics and fans, Alien Resurrection did not quite live up to its title promise for the series.

Though his stint in Hollywood left something to be desired in a project that seemed perfectly suited to the eccentric director’s darkly skewed and complex visuals, Jeunet found himself the recipient of almost overwhelming praise with his 2001 release Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain. Released stateside as simply Amelie, the film showed Jeunet more comfortable with his distinct visual style than ever, with the darkness that had enshrouded his previous films shifting toward a brighter, more optimistic outlook. A labor of love that he had been scripting even before taking the director’s chair for Alien Resurrection, Amelie told the simple story of a remarkable woman who finds that she has a unique gift for influencing the lives of others in almost magical ways. Working his signature visual magic on Paris, Jeunet transforms the city into a deliriously beautiful, amber-tinged fantasy reality (complete with the graffiti digitally removed), complementing a fanciful quest that encompasses mysterious photo booth detritus, humorously gaslighting a cruel grocer, and a globe-trotting garden gnome. Topped off by winsome star Audrey Tautou, Amélie broke box office records in France, won several European Film awards and redeemed Jeunet as an art house darling in the U.S.

Filmography (By IMDB Votes):

(8.60) - Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain (2001)

(7.90) - Delicatessen (1991)

(7.87) - Foutaises (1989)

(7.80) - Un long dimanche de fiançailles (2004)

(7.80) - La cité des enfants perdus (1995)

(7.40) - Micmacs à tire-larigot (2009)

(6.27) - Le bunker de la dernière rafale (1981)

(6.10) - Alien: Resurrection (1997)

Trade Mark: Always casts Dominique Pinon. Likes to cast actors with unusual facial features. Often uses wide camera angles. His main characters are often orphans, or have lost one of their parents. Often casts Jean-Claude Dreyfus, Ticky Holgado and Rufus. His movies often focus on the romance between two mavericks (Amélie and Nino, Mathilde and Manech, Louison and Julie). Uses a lot of elaborate camera (crane) movements. Makes extensive use of color grading in order to give his movies the desired (often fantastic) ambiance. [closing credits] The closing credits of his movies show images of every actor from the movie.

Last Site Favorite Film: Amelie

Upcoming: None as yet

Average IMDB Rating: 7.47

Awards: 4

Nominations: 8

Style (LastSite Rating out of 20) 19

Originality (LastSite Rating out of 20) 18

Filmography (LastSite Rating out of 20): 16

Total: 72.47