Screen Machine

To-do: Week starting Thursday 17th February: Certified Copy, Rabbit Hole, Inside Job, Uncle Boonmee, Cassavetes, La Dolce Vita, Linda Lin Dai

Week starting Thursday 17th February

Opening this week: Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy. Kiarostami’s first film made outside Iran, the film concerns two people (Juliette Binoche and William Shimell) spending a day together in Tuscany. While love has brought them together the exact nature of their relationship becomes more and more difficult to concern. The film has generated some disagreement between us at Screen Machine. In his review, Conall cited Kiarostami’s problematic move towards a cinema of precision and directorial control while Lauren praised the films incongruity and methodical fragmentation in our 2010 roundup.

Also opening is Rabbit Hole from director John Cameron Mitchell (Shortbus). The film concerns the particular grieving methods of a young couple who have lost their son. Sounds like a “quality” film.

Finally Inside Job, the Oscar-nominated documentary about the global financial crisis directed by Charles Ferguson. The director hired Matt Damon – the symbol of left-wing virtue – to narrate the film. Could be interesting.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s masterful Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is a cinematic poem concerning a man who in his last days finds himself surrounded by his loved ones including his dead wife and his lost son who has taken the form of a ghost monkey. The film was listed in our round up of 2010 at number 3. At ACMI February 22 – March 14.

Melbourne Cinematheque presents a John Cassavetes double bill at ACMI on Wednesday February 23:

A Woman Under the Influence (1974), directed by Cassavetes, is about a woman committed to an institution by her husband after displaying erratic behaviour.

Crime in the Streets (1956) is directed by Don Siegel but stars Cassavetes as an alienated youth determined to commit murder.

Rooftop Cinema is screening Federico Fellini’s masterpiece La Dolce Vita (1960), the film that Pasolini once described as “too important to be discussed as one would normally discuss a film”. February 22.

ACMI is screening a season of films focusing on Linda Lin Dai, the queen of ’50s and ’60s Hong Kong cinema, working as a star actress in the Shaw Brothers Studio stable. Season runs February 17-28.