Reviews by Michael Pattison

Order by: Date, A–Z

• 
  A.C.A.B. All Cats Are Brilliant (2012)

  Review preview for A.C.A.B. All Cats Are Brilliant

  As a snapshot of life at 30 in contemporary Athens, All Cats Are Brilliant (Sygharitiria Stous Esiodoxous?) is sensitive and sincere.

  A young activist struggles to get by and to find her place in a troubled Greece.
• 
  Avanti Popolo (2012)

  Review preview for Avanti Popolo

  As a kind of call to arms against nostalgia on the one hand but forgetfulness on the other, Uruguayan-born Michael Wahrmann charts ambitious terrain.

  A son tries to reconnect with his father in a film that explores the nature of film.
• 
  Amsterdam Stories USA (2012)

  Review preview for Amsterdam Stories USA

  There’s something quietly enthralling about this ambitious road movie.

  A journey through US towns called Amsterdam in search of the real America.
• 
  Animal Love (1996)

  Review preview for Animal Love

  Ulrich Seidl’s unique, stylised documentary depicts in trademark, single-take set-ups a number of Viennese residents and their relationships to their beloved pets.

  A documentary about people who turn to animals for companionship.
• 
  An Anthropological Television Myth (2012)

  Review preview for An Anthropological Television Myth

  Has montage been this aggressive and politicised in recent years? It’s difficult to recall a comparator.

  Collage of fragments culled from an independent Sicilian TV station's output in the mid-90s.
• 
  Art Will Save The World (2011)

  Review preview for Art Will Save The World

  The title of Niall McGann’s documentary is a joke, elevating the work to a level of self-importance that the mischief therein consistently and amusingly undercuts.

  A look at the work, life and legacy of Luke Haines.
• 
  Avalon (2011)

  Review preview for Avalon

  Aspiring to character-study status, the film evades at almost every turn the more compelling moments of its bare-bones plot. It’s a shame.

  When a nightclub owner accidentally kills a labourer, he finds himself with a dangerous debt.
• 
  Babylon (2012)

  Review preview for Babylon

  As a testimonial on the daily grind and ongoing uncertainty experienced by refugees at a particular historical moment, this epic documentary captures and presents events in a suitably gruelling manner.

  Chronicle of a temporary refugee camp in Tunisia.
• 
  Bastards (2013)

  Review preview for Bastards

  Perkin documents with delicacy and humour Rabha and others’ legal fights.

  The battles of single mums trying to legitimise their children in Morocco.
• 
  Bravehearts (2012)

  Review preview for Bravehearts

  Though Moe elegantly and tactfully remains focused upon her protagonists after the Breivik attacks, the specific trauma of the latter inevitably overwhelms proceedings.

  A documentary following the lives and thinking of four politically active young Norwegians before and after the massacre on Utøya Island.
• 
  Call Girl (2012)

  Review preview for Call Girl

  Feature debutant Mikael Marcimain matches the script’s fine balance between dramatic clarity and the more ambiguous intrigues of a conspiracy thriller with some pinpoint direction.

  Two young teenage girls are caught up in a sex scandal that goes to the heart of the Swedish government. Based on a true story.
• 
  Cargo 200 (2007)

  Review preview for Cargo 200

  Poluyan’s character is one of cinema’s most repulsive creations.

  One fearful night at a remote farmhouse echoes the breakdown of post-Soviet Russia.
• 
  Dark Matter (2013)

  Review preview for Dark Matter

  The emphasis here is on the immediate and indirect ecological effects, which the film renders in aesthetic terms without ever becoming a compelling interrogation in itself.

  A visit to the ruined environment of a military testing site.
• 
  The Deflowering Of Eva Van End (2012)

  Review preview for The Deflowering Of Eva Van End

  Dealing in broad stereotypes, the film wears thinner as it progresses.

  The arrival of a handsome exchange student causes a troubled family to come apart at the seams.
• 
  Dreaming Of A Family (2013)

  Review preview for Dreaming Of A Family

  Jargil’s film is a clear account of two adults learning to confront their own guilt.

  Documentary about a recovering alcoholic dad who is trying to be reconciled with his family.
• 
  A Dream's Merchant (2012)

  Review preview for A Dream's Merchant

  Long and demanding, intimate and heartfelt.

  This true-life 'Motorcycle Diary' recounts the epic trek of genial, thirtyish photographer Mihai Barbu as he rumbles to the Mongolian capital Ulan Bator - and back.
• 
  East Hastings Pharmacy (2012)

  Review preview for East Hastings Pharmacy

  With its considered compositions and emphasis upon real-life re-enactment, East Hastings Pharmacy has a vague resemblance to Soderbergh’s Bubble.

  An introduction to the various people who visit a methadone clinic over the course of a day.
• 
  Emptying The Skies (2013)

  Review preview for Emptying The Skies

  The broader perspective demonstrates the moral and legal disadvantage at which the volunteers are fundamentally placed.

  Documentary about songbird poaching.
• 
  Everybody's Gone (2012)

  Review preview for Everybody's Gone

  The film feels longer than its two-hour duration precisely because its tone seems so unsustainably whimsical.

  Magical perspectives on life in a small Georgian town, as seen through the eyes of a small boy.
• 
  Fair Wind - Notes Of A Traveller (2013)

  Review preview for Fair Wind - Notes Of A Traveller

  Weigel’s imagery has an appreciably rugged edge – colourfully vivid on the one hand but ethereally retro on the other.

  Falling in love with the world at first sight.
• 
  Faith, Love And Whiskey (2012)

  Review preview for Faith, Love And Whiskey

  At a lean 75 minutes, the film does well to paint that age-old dilemma between the romances of impulse and the disappointments of real life.

  Young Neli abandons a secure future in with a wealthy, straight-laced fiancé for one last fling with her passionate but boozily self destructive ex-boyfriend.
• 
  Fata Morgana (2013)

  Review preview for Fata Morgana

  This invigorating tone poem is far more difficult to describe than it is to sit through.

  Musings on the meanings of life, death and the world.
• 
  The Forgotten Space (2010)

  Review preview for The Forgotten Space

  Tthere are about six or seven fascinating shorts competing for attention here, and Burch and Sekula’s respective backgrounds pull the film one way and then the other, never quite settling into a structurally or aesthetically consistent framework.

  Film essay documenting fishermen's working conditions and sea trade.
• 
  Gazzara (2012)

  Review preview for Gazzara

  The actor appears in Rezwin’s film to be as shy as he is sensitive.

  Conversations with the actor just before his death.
• 
  Gone Wild (2012)

  Review preview for Gone Wild

  Though his parallels are subtly evoked by a voice-over that is barely a whisper, Curean’s “non-interventionist” approach risks accusations of complicity in the casual animal cruelty he documents.

  In a landscape now largely abandoned by humans, wild horses face gradual extinction.
• 
  Greatest Hits (2012)

  Review preview for Greatest Hits

  In the film’s second half, soundmen are visible setting up for scenes as the actors play out semi-improvised scenarios that carry a weight that is by turns funny and intense.

  The logic of filmmaking itself begins to unravel as we explore the relationship between a frustrated son and his absent father.
• 
  Historic Centre (2012)

  Review preview for Historic Centre

  Though each filmmaker provides typical servings of his own respective style in responding to the brief at hand, this portmanteau piece is predictably uneven.

  Four stories about life in Guimarães, Portugal.
• 
  Housemaids (2012)

  Review preview for Housemaids

  Gabriel Mascaro tasked seven children across five different Brazilian cities with filming their live-in housekeepers for a week, and consequently edited their footage into a slim but coherent volume.

  Seven Brazilian children film the activities of their live-in housekeepers.
• 
  Les Invisibles (2012)

  Review preview for Les Invisibles

  One acquires a keen sense of the positive consciousness that might emerge through a struggle for organisation, acceptance and liberation.

  Exploring the lives of 11 gay, lesbian and bisexual men and women over the age of 70.
• 
  I Have Always Been A Dreamer (2012)

  Review preview for I Have Always Been A Dreamer

  A quietly remarkable film that benefits from well-selected interviews with historians, businesspeople, artists and scholars.

  A documentary travelogue and portrait of two cities in contrasting states: Dubai and Detroit.
• 
  Jesus, You Know (2003)

  Review preview for Jesus, You Know

  Seidl seems interested in these people precisely because they’re all too easily judged by others, even though their needs and desires are relatably ordinary.

  The inhabitants of six different churches seek Heavenly help to solve their Earthly problems.
• 
  Joy (2012)

  Review preview for Joy

  The film shows how easily an individual can be domestically, emotionally, politically and legally marginalised.

  A woman takes home a baby from hospital, devotedly caring for it. But she is not its mother - she is a kidnapper.
• 
  The Last Time I Saw Macao (2012)

  Review preview for The Last Time I Saw Macao

  João Rui Guerra da Mata and João Pedro Rodriguez’s film is a seamless and absorbing blend of essay film and hardboiled thriller.

  This stunning amalgam of film noir and Chris Marker cine-essay poetically explores the psychic pull of the titular former Portuguese colony.
• 
  Lions (2012)

  Review preview for Lions

  Jazmin López’s debut feature is in narrative terms a bit too foggy to sustain one’s emotional engagement.

  Five young people are lost in a forest - and perhaps in time itself.
• 
  Longing For The Rain (2013)

  Review preview for Longing For The Rain

  A strangely successful hybrid between erotic ghost story and social commentary, it’s one of this year’s more compelling features.

  A lonely housewife embarks on an intense erotic relationship with a ghost.
• 
  The Love Songs Of Tiedan (2012)

  Review preview for The Love Songs Of Tiedan

  An on-paper melodrama imbued with musical energy and comical mischief by an excellent ensemble cast.

  The film recounts a romantic obsession that spans several decades. In a poor Shanxi Province village, six-year old Tiedan falls in love with May, the beautiful neighbor who practices a traditional form of singing, Er-ren-tai, and this love will never die.
• 
  Magpie (2012)

  Review preview for Magpie

  Magpie stretches a short-subject premise to narrative length that does well to tell at least four different stories in one digestible whole.

  Aided by two of their friends, a former couple steal their dead son's body and set off to drive it to Cornwall, but nothing goes to plan.
• 
  Me Too (2012)

  Review preview for Me Too

  The way in which the film drifts from otherwise throwaway comedy to poignant morality tale by way of one non-sequitur after another is effortless.

  After inadvertently committing an act of violence, a group of friends journeys to a legendary tower in the hope of travelling to a better world.
• 
  Models (1999)

  Review preview for Models

  All four actresses are excellent; forever chewing gum, Bartsch in particular is superb.

  A portrait of a quartet of aspiring Viennese models.
• 
  My Dog Killer (2013)

  Review preview for My Dog Killer

  The film doesn’t seem to have much to say about racism, and even less about its potential links to family, class and gender – all of which hang in the background, threatening to force the filmmakers to make a more serious and challenging film.

  A troubled teenager with violent friends discovers a secret about his absent mother than makes him contemplate a cruel act.
• 
  My House Without Me (2012)

  Review preview for My House Without Me

  Szymków interweaves her subjects’ testimonies to paint an image of ongoing loss.

  A documentary looking at two women permanently displaced as a result of the Second World War.
• 
  On The Edge Of The World (2013)

  Review preview for On The Edge Of The World

  Rather than matching his subjects’ plight with a routinely rugged aesthetic, Drexel demonstrates both appreciable tact and a keen eye for the unexpectedly beautiful.

  Documentary about homelessness in Paris.
• 
  Paradise: Faith (2012)

  Review preview for Paradise: Faith

  Seidl draws absurdity and hilarity from a narrative arrangement that is predictably and increasingly caustic.

  Second part of Seidl's trilogy sees a devout Catholic trying to cope with the return of her paraplegic husband.
• 
  Paradise: Hope (2013)

  Review preview for Paradise: Hope

  Seidl manages to make this ordeal excruciating to watch without ever being graphic, visually or even narratively.

  A teenager from a troubled middle class background spends the summer at fat camp and determines to seduce its director.
• 
  Paradise: Love (2012)

  Review preview for Paradise: Love

  As the film progresses, Seidl allows scenes to play out longer than expected, as they enter that uncomfortable territory (for protagonists, audiences and censor boards alike) of total unpredictability.

  A cautionary tale about European female sex tourists on the beaches of Kenya.
• 
  Paris Countdown (2013)

  Review preview for Paris Countdown

  For all its bombast – the thwacks, the thuds, the slowed-down bang of a gunshot – one never really believes these guys are in trouble.

  Two ageing nightclub owners find events slipping out of control one dangerous night.
• 
  People's Park (2012)

  Review preview for People's Park

  Sniadecki and Cohn draw us into this space at the same time as frustrating all notions of narrative, momentum or rhythm.

  A single tracking shot captures life in the People's Park in Chengdu, China.
• 
  Pincus (2012)

  Review preview for Pincus

  Pincus treads that tricky terrain of having a protagonist who is deeply sceptical of the self-serious outsiders he meets while at the same time allowing for the possibility that it is he who may be in the wrong.

  An interior decorator who cares or his ailing father falls for a karate instructor.
• 
  La Playa DC (2012)

  Review preview for La Playa DC

  A refreshingly low-key and visually distinct work.

  Tomás is trying to make his way in Bogota. Looking for his young brother Jairo, he sets out on a journey that will test his ability to deal with the fear and wounds of the past.
• 
  The Rambler (2013)

  Review preview for The Rambler

  Its intended jokes are mostly unfunny but as it develops, The Rambler contains enough hallucinatory imagery, lifted straight from low-budget sci-fi horror, to boil over with a certain nightmarish feel.

  An ex-con's impulsive cross country journey leads to the unravelling of strange mysteries.