Seen a few movies at GIFF the past week.
The best one yet was Nuri Bilge Ceylan's About Dry Grasses. It's incredible how intruiging it can be to listen to characters talk for more than three hours, but this absolutely captivated me the entire run time. Great acting and fantastic script. Doesn't quite hit the highs of Winter Sleep but it's not far from it. 9/10
Roter Himmel by Christian Petzold was a big positive surprise. Haven't really been sold on the stuff I've seen by him before, but this was engrossing from start to finish. There was a few times I really wanted characters to confront each other, but in the end I think the movie was stronger for not doing so. The last act is really quite teriffic. 8/10
May December was probably the biggest dissapointment yet. There are moments of greatness in there, but I think it sort of never goes anywhere, at least not where such a story could go. At the same time, Moore and Portman as well as Charles Melton are all great in their parts. Especially towards the end it touches on something more, but doesn't quite reach there. It feels like it could have been a great film, but this was not it. 6/10
Then we have movies like Handling the undead (6/10), Robot Dreams (7/10), Evil Does Not Exist (Not Hamaguchi's best, but still a very well made and enjoyable film, 8/10) and The Peasants (Beautifully made, but at the same time if you're gonna paint close to the real deal, why not just use the actual thing? 6/10). Unfortunately, I missed The Zone of Interest but that's coming to the cinema soon anyway.