By Alex Deleon
I just thought it was mostly boring with a tacked on violent ending to relieve the preceding two hours of tedium. With crashingly Uninteresting characters all around in an achingly Uninteresting picture.
But maybe I was being too critical because I was basing my lack of interest on my direct experience with Koreans having spent a good portion of seven years in Seoul where the picture was filmed.
Among far far far far far Better foreign language p...
By Alex Deleon. <filmfestivals.com>
1. SYSTEM CRASHER, director, Nora Fingscheidt, (Germany)
Starring ten year old Helena Zengel, as an uncontrollable child
My own Best actress of the year as well. An amazing new talent.
2. JOKER, directed by Todd Phillips and starring Joaquin Phoenix in an astounding interpretation of the troubled clown who would later be...
By Alex Delonian, Yerevan
A major Armenian film centering on the work of one of. the major Armenian painters of the XX <x-apple-data-detectors://2> . Century, Martiros Sarian (1880-1972) is now in preparation.
Veteran director David Safarian, 68, states that his purpose is to make the name of an artist who is well know in Armenia and Russia, but barely known beyond his home territory, better known to the world at large. An artist whose wo...
by Filmfestivals.com Veteran festival Correspondent, Alex Deleon
The highly Entertaining autobiography of a film critic. Few people are as outspoken (in print or in real life) as the author, Alex Deleon. This is reflected in the book at hand, which constitutes Alex Deleon's adventures as a film critic on the film festival circuit. It is far from politically correct and avoids the usual film critic's jargon meandering in plain talk between societal criticism and sophisticated...
by Alex Deleon
This is a big year for Georgia with the twentieth edition of the Tbilisi International Film Festival set to launch a weeklong run on December 1.
As usual a selection of classic and new Georgian cinema will be shown as well as a country focus on British filmmakers in addition to works from the rest of the world in this anniversary edition
England being the Country in Focus this year the opening film will be a restored copy of the rarely seen partially-silent partiall...
JOKER's Triumph at Venice 76
By Alex Deleon
Joaquin Phoenix in his Joker Outfit -- and can he shake a leg!
There have been some pretty strong Jokers in the past, notably Jack Nicholson for Tim Burton in 1989 and Aussie actor Heath Ledger nearly 20 years later in 2008's "The Dark Knight" by Christopher Nolan but all Joker predecessors pale by comparison to J.Ps current interpretation which makes the Joker far more than a two dimensional Comic book clown and tu...
By Alex Deleon .
With 2,946 user reviews already published within days of the release of Joker, almost all 10 star raves calling it a Masterpiece, best film ever made, a great comic book film, and highly influenced by Scorcese, I feel compelled to respond to this avalanche of hyperbolic enthusiasm with a followup to my own earlier review. That relatively sober review was one of the first published immediately after the world premiere of Joker in Venice a little over ...
The Day The Earth Stood Still
1951, Directed by Robert Wise
Twentieth Century Fox, 92 minutes
by Alex Deleon
<<A savior from outer space lands and tells the people of Earth that they must learn to live peacefully or be destroyed as a danger to other planets>>
"TDTESS", a black and white film from 1951, is still the best alien visitation SciFi film ever ...
By Alex Deleon
Catherine Deneuve and curvaceous Binoche opened the show
Scarlett and Brad, pretty faces on Day No. two
The Carabinieri were there to keep the peace (and check all bags)
...
By Alex on the Lido
J’ACCUSE (AN OFFICER AND A SPY) by Roman Polanski press conference and photocall, Polanski not attending.
Photos Credit Mostra
...
"French actors Catherine Deneuve (l) and French Juliette Binoche and a glittering array of A-listers swept up the red carpet as the Venice film festival opened in a flurry of celebrity Wednesday.
The festival, which has become the launchpad for the Oscar race, has a host of Hollywood heavyweights in a line-up including Brad Pitt, Johnny Dope, Kristen Stewart, Meryl Strope and Scarlett Johansson.
But as stars arrived for the gala launch, the world's oldest film festival was already emb...
By Alex Deleon: viewed on the very last day of the 2019 Golden Apricot Film Festival
Hunters with shotguns in a mezcal desert.
No main title for about fifteen minutes.
Trudging man with backpack and cane is looking fot a certain village at the bottom of a deep ravine in this rocky mountainous country. The village of Ata ... referred to as a godforsaken place.
Finally, the main title appears about fifteen minutes into the film, them a long dark ta...
By Alex Deleon
In 1958 director Wojciech Has was only 32. years of age and Pożegnania (Farewells) was only his second feature after Pętla (The Noose) . Yet the film displays amazing maturity in the handling of the actors and everything else. If Has can be seen as the Orson Welles of Polish cinema then Wajda is more like a Cecil B. Mille if a comparison is to be made between masters.
The flirtation scenes between Janczar and Wachowiak in the early part of the film are exquisite -...
by Alex Deleon-Pewny
Jan Nowicki, a major Polish actor of stage and screen since 1966,
was the trophy guest star of the 2019 Yerevan film festival. Mr. Nowicki was here to introduce his most famous film, The Hourglass Sanatorium (Sanatorium pod klepsydrą) 1973, a vast symbolic epic directed by Wojciech Has. On this occasion Nowicki was presented with a special career award. Nowicki, wearing a fireman's helmet for large portions of this film, is one of the ...
By Alex Deleon
PHOTON
Photon is an extremely demanding (Intellectually) new Polish film about astrophysics, quantum theory, the evolution of molecular biology, the development of the brain, and finally a long term forecast of the future of mankind which reaches into the stages of large scale intersolar and intergalactic energy harvesting as propounded by physicist and futurologist Michio Kaku. I enjoyed it thoroughly because these are all fields in which I have a depth backgtou...
By Alex Deleon, www.filmfestivals.com
Jan Nowicki in "Sanatorium pod Klepsydrą"
...
Armenian French actor/Director Serge Avedikian introducing new french documentary on French artists of Armenian background
Finally a good day -- three very good films so far and another, a Secret screening coming up. The one that just finished was a tremendous French documentary about Armenian artists, film , dance, and musicians, born and raised in France but searching for their Armenian identify and heritage through art. Long interview with Serge Avedikian and both of his sons...
By Alex Deleon-Farba for filmfestivals.com
The Yerevan Film Festival, officially known as the Golden Apricot Film Festival (GAIFF) is now a bustling teenager and will open its sixteenth edition on Sunday, July 7, at the venerable Kino Moskva (Moscow Cinema) on Charles Aznavour Square in the heart of the Armenian capitol.
The international full-length feature lineup consist...
Alex Deleon has a great news to share: the birth of his latest book, a fest traveller's odyssey...
"Witty, bold and ferocious, extremely well documented ...take a walk on the wild side of festivals...and enjoy the experience and the learning from Alex Deleon: a man with many hats and a festival head. !"
Bruno Chatelin Filmfestivals.com
Contact Publisher, Sam Sloan by email. samsloan@gmail.com book reference: The ISBN number is 4-87187-051-0 ...
Festival director Christine Marouda discusses the opening film Andhadhun with director Sriram Baghavan and actress TABU, the star of the picture.
Los Angeles Indian Film Festival, IFFLA, 2019: From a Big Bang to a Pitiful Whimper
By Alex Deleon
The 17th annual Indian film festival of Los Angeles began an abbreviated four day run on Thursday, April 11 and closed shop on the following Sunday. In previous years at the Arclight Multiplex in Hollywood the festival ran six days a...
"Taken for a ride" --
... is the perfect summing up of this celluloid debacle which some of the unenlightened masses will probably enjoy. Read the Comic Book and forget the picture.
However, I saw an amazingly good tongue in cheek Indian thriller last night, entitled "Blindly" -- about a blind piano virtuoso who isn't really blind and stumbles into a series of killings he pretends not to see, with a most gorgeous older actress with the intriguing name of TAB...
Viewed at the 17th Annual Los Angeles Indian Film Festival April 13, 2019 by Alex. Deleon
"Namdev Bhau In Search of Silence" is an ambitious second film by the talented young Indian filmmaker Dar Gai (Daria Gaikalova) who is of Ukrainian origin but is now a permanent resident of India.
Her first film "Three and a Half" (2018) was a striking debut feature in three long single takes that was seen at many festivals and showed tremendous promise f...
The Noir City Festival has now come of age and the 21st edition which opened at the venerable Hollywood landmark Egyptian Theatre on Friday, March 29, 2019, will this year display twenty uncut gems on ten consecutive nights running in strict chronological order from"Trapped" 1949 to "Cry Tough" 1959. In essence a cannily selected survey of the Hollywood decade of the fifties from an underbelly angle such as only the Film Noir ...
Hend Rostom and Youssef Chahine as Qenawi in "Cairo Station"
Youssef Chahine (1926-2008) was the leading Egyptian film director all through the second half of Twentieth Century active in the industry from 1950 until his death. He was the only Egyptian filmmaker to achieve international recognition with films at Cannes, Berlin, Venice, and Moscow and received a lifetime achievement award at Cannes in 1997. He wrote most of his own scripts and was a competent actor appearin...
