Critic's Notebook

The Camera Doesn't Lie

Polymath Pictures

MOVIE REVIEW
All the Colours of the World Are Between Black and White (2023)

By SARAH MANVEL

Is it so much to want some peace, both in one's home and in one’s self? It is a horrible thing to hear of someone being lynched, which recently happened to a friend of writer-director Babatunde Apalowo. The friend’s crime? Being gay. In Nigeria homosexuality is still not accepted and it takes great courage to admit to it, even to yourself. “All the Colours of the World Are Between Black and White” is about two men (and one woman) with different levels of courage. It's a superb story of self-knowledge and self-acceptance set in a place where to do either is very difficult.

Midwife Crisis

Geko Films

MOVIE REVIEW
Midwives (2023)

By SARAH MANVEL

There are real childbirth scenes throughout “Midwives,” which is a testament to the skill of the director, Léa Fehner, in creating an environment where these parents felt comfortable enough to allow these intimate moments to be filmed. But this is the only comfortable thing about this movie, a cri-de-coeur about the state of French healthcare system which is obviously what brought it to the Berlinale. It’s similar to the recent “The Divide,” except that was about a hospital as a metaphor for the nation, while this movie is only focused on the maternity ward.

On the Horns of a Dilemma

Adenium Productions

MOVIE REVIEW
The Burdened (2023)

By SARAH MANVEL

This is the first Yemeni movie to play at the Berlinale in the festival’s 73-year history, so for that alone “The Burdened” must be recommended. Further to that director Amr Gamal, who cowrote the script with Mazen Refaat, is clever indeed, for the topic of this movie is a hot-button issue all over the world: abortion. The reasons for which the married couple desperately need not to have another child are both incredibly specific and completely universal; and the empathy for their situation is striking. It’s only to be recommended.

Bending the Law

Loris T. Zambelli

MOVIE REVIEW
The Last Night of Amore (2023)

By SARAH MANVEL

Honestly, it should be in the police manual: If it's the last day before your retirement, absolutely do not under any circumstances agree to one last job. And if on the last day before your retirement you agree to one last job, absolutely do not under any circumstances take your single-parent partner along with you. And if on the last day before your retirement you agree to one last job and take your single-parent partner along with you, absolutely do not under any circumstances agree to any, and that means any, change of plan. Of course if the characters had learned any of this, there would be no movie.

Know When to Hold 'Em

Universal Pictures Content Group

MOVIE REVIEW
The Adults (2023)

By SARAH MANVEL

This is a minor movie, your enjoyment of which will mostly depend on your tolerance for watching a group of adult siblings squabble like little kids, but if that is your thing you'll have a wonderful time.

The Emperor's New Foes

Filmgalerie 451

MOVIE REVIEW
Seneca – On the Creation of Earthquakes (2023)

By SARAH MANVEL

When did John Malkovich become this generation's Orson Welles? By this I do not mean as a director. I mean as an actor, able to single-handedly enable the financing and carry the weirdest projects with ease just by showing up? If anyone is in doubt of this, I invite you to enjoy a viewing of “Seneca – On the Creation of Earthquakes,” a ridiculous Eurotrashfire of a movie which could not possibly have existed without him. Why did we stop making movies like this? They are so beautiful and so over the top you feel smarter just for thinking about them.

Cold Case

Bunya Productions

MOVIE REVIEW
Limbo (2023)

By SARAH MANVEL

The town of Limbo is built in the opal mines which dot the Queensland landscape. Literally inside the mines; the town church was hewn out of the rock, as is the eerie motel where Travis (an unrecognizable Simon Baker) pitches up. On arrival the first thing he does is shoot up; he's that kind of a cop. His addiction is controlled, but he's annoyed to be on a fool's errand, a cold case of the disappearance of an Aboriginal girl named Charlotte 20 years ago. But his presence in Limbo won't pass unremarked.

Celebrations of Life

Limerencia

MOVIE REVIEW
Tótem (2023)

By SARAH MANVEL

There's a birthday to celebrate, so sisters Nuria (Monserrat Marañon) and Ale (Marisol Gasé) have a big day of preparations ahead. The party is in their large family home in Mexico City, with Nuria's little daughter, Esther (Saori Gurza), and their niece Sol (Naíma Sentíes, who radiates a knowingness unusual in a little kid) underfoot. Their father, Roberto (Alberto Amador), who speaks with a voicebox, is still seeing his therapy patients in his studio as usual, which hardly helps. Sol's mother, Lucía (Iazua Larios), has had to go to work but she’ll be back for the party, which is for Sol's dad, the sisters’ sweet artist brother, Tona (Mateo García Elizondo). He is barely in his 30s, and lives in a slightly separate, quieter part of the house, but no one will allow Sol back in there to see him. He needs to rest before the big occasion. After all, this is his last birthday.

Siren Song

Nabis Filmgroup, Nevada Cine

MOVIE REVIEW
The Klezmer Project (2023)

By SARAH MANVEL

What happens when a self-described “mediocre cameraman” falls in love with a klezmer clarinetist he meets at a wedding in Buenos Aires? They get funding from Austrian television to make a documentary about klezmer music in Eastern Europe, of course. This unusual Argentinian documentary melds three intertwined strands – Yiddish folk tales, the lives of and the romance between the directors and the search for Jewish music in the parts of the world where the Jews were most thoroughly exterminated – into a story of how music and language are used as the building blocks for personal identity, and what personal identity means in a globalized world. It’s not an entire success, largely for reasons which should have been obvious to codirectors Leandro Koch and Paloma Schachmann before they started, but it’s such an unusual story the weaknesses are easily forgiven.

Darkened Door

"Suzume" Film Partners/Crunchyroll

MOVIE REVIEW
Suzume (2023)

By SARAH MANVEL

American cinema currently churns out an endless parade of superhero movies to counteract how powerless most Americans now feel, but Japanese art is the best in the world at metaphors for trauma. “Godzilla” and its uncontrollable rampages through Tokyo and other cities was an obvious stand-in for nuclear destruction, and its many imitators were able to exist because the need was still there. “Suzume” is more specifically about a more recent disaster, that of the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in 2011, but its combination of the supernatural and modern everyday life builds to create a tearjerker of surprising emotional power.