MOVIE REVIEW
Home (2008)
Soda Pictures
Some of you may feel that you live in a noisy neighborhood, but the family at the center of "Home" has really got problems. Its charmingly chaotic abode is located in the French countryside with no other buildings in sight. But sadly, it is also positioned slap bang on the side of a freeway which cuts an asphalt scar through the endless expanse of verdant field. This does not prove too much of an issue at first as the road is disused, work on it being inexplicably abandoned some 10 years before.
The brood – mother, father, two daughters and a son – has spilled out beyond the boundaries of its four walls onto the deserted highway, littering it with domestic debris including toys, white goods and even a satellite dish. This liberal-minded clan is very close. The members hold family meetings in the bathroom while their teenage daughter takes her ablutions. On hot summer evenings – which are plentiful – they sit together on a sofa in the garden watching television like an alfresco Simpsons.
Continue reading “Down That Long, Loathsome Highway” »
MOVIE REVIEW
Echoes of Home (2007)
Polyfilm Verleih
Folk music has a difficult time of it in this modern world. There’s the need to preserve the old sounds and traditions, but also the need to make them relevant to people now. Without contemporary interest, the music is reduced to museum status and the performers to archivists, but when the music is moved forward into a modern style, it becomes something new and more uncategorizable.
“Echoes of Home” is about three Swiss musicians who are caught between these two conflicting needs. The traditional music of Switzerland is yodelling – the perfect way to ensure sounds and messages are carried across the enormous mountain ranges, and up and down the valley. But this specific need of theirs speaks to something wider within their culture. As demonstrated by the eager mature students featured in an evening class, yodelling seems to be an excellent way for the proper, polite Swiss to really let rip.
Continue reading “Yelp It From the Rooftops” »
MOVIE REVIEW
North Face (2008)
Majestic Filmverleih
"North Face" can pass as a horror film. It takes place over a short mountain climbing expedition, which doesn't much sound like fun. There is something tall you can fall off of. There is no easy way to get up without nearly slipping and falling to your death. There are things like rocks and avalanches which can drop on you. Your ropes can cut your hands, your gloves can get lost so you get frostbite, you rest where you can without hot food or a place to lie down and you can't fall asleep so you don't freeze. Some vacation! So the drama of "North Face" is there just in the premise. But the 1936 setting means the climbers are working in the same type of clothes we all have laying around at home – one of them wears a flatcap, for pity's sake – and there is no high-tech solution to their basic problems.
Continue reading “An Alpine Triumph of the Will” »