f i l m j o u r n e y . o r g

PARADISE: LOVE (Ulrich Seidl)
By Robert Koehler
As the first part of a trilogy with the umbrella title of Paradise about three middle-aged sisters on some kind of vacation, Paradise: Love is Ulrich Seidl at his most unexpectedly emotional. A study of one of the sisters, Anna Maria (Maria Hofstatter), being seduced by the idea and then [...]

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MEKONG HOTEL (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
By Robert Koehler
A sketch for the larger “Mekong Project,” which will include at least one other film, Apichatpong’s work dances between time zones, physical spaces, bodies and finally, the Mekong itself, a wide swathe of drifting water whose flow forms a steady, epochal background for several, lightly handled dialogues. Some of these [...]

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RUST & BONE (Jacques Audiard)
By Robert Koehler
A straight, flat and blunt object, Jacques Audiard’s new movie sits there, like a dumb thing. It is literally what it is, and no more; that is, everything Audiard presents on screen is the sum total, with no subtext, no metaphor, no underbelly. Here it is: Bullhead star Matthias [...]

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AFTER THE BATTLE (Yousry Nasrallah)
By Robert Koehler
It didn’t take long to find the first work in the competition that doesn’t belong there. Nasrallah is a veteran Egyptian director who makes socially minded films with blunt directness. Subtlety isn’t where he ventures, and After the Battle hammers its messages home. Since those messages are about Egypt’s [...]

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MOONRISE KINGDOM (Wes Anderson)
By Robert Koehler
“Why,” asked a skeptical-sounding Chinese TV journalist with an assertive microphone of those exiting the Wednesday afternoon press screening of Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, “is Moonrise Kingdom the opening film of Cannes?” To which one could only respond, “Why not?” I thought back on my impassioned support for the decision [...]

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By Robert Koehler
While writing about various aspects of the 64th edition of the Locarno film festival for MUBI, I also didn’t want to leave aside a bonus for readers of Film Journey. So, in an impulsive act that strikes in the small hours of the night when a visit to as large a festival as [...]

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By Robert Koehler
Barely a month after the Society of French Directors (SRF), which runs Cannes’ Directors Fortnight (aka Quinzaine des Réalisateurs), unceremoniously dropped Frederic Boyer as artistic director, film critic and festival director Edoard Waintrop has been named to replace Boyer. A fixture in the French cinema culture as longtime critic for Liberation (and currently [...]

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Drive and The Tiniest Place
By Robert Koehler
A running conversation at film festivals in the US and abroad (mostly abroad): The urgency of film criticism to advocate for certain cinema, and ignore the other cinemas. The best reason? Life is too short to deal very much or very long with crap, and is much better spent [...]

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By Robert Koehler
The Society of French Directors (SRF), which governs the Quinzaine des Realisiteurs, or Directors Fortnight, has dismissed Quinzaine director Frederic Boyer after his second and stormy year. The 2011 edition was roundly criticized and even lambasted (see Jacques Telemacque’s widely discussed Le Monde attack that ran during the festival), and suffered particularly in [...]

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By Robert Koehler
Well, some of those well-sourced rumors proved to be on the mark, others less so. As predicted, Terrence Malick’s

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