Love stories don’t come much more loveless than they do in the culminating film in de Oliveira’s Tetralogy of Frustrated Love.
It’s with a combination of curiosity, excitement, and concern that one approaches a new project by such an obvious talent as Lois Patiño.
A sparely staged version of a play already pared down to basic theatrical elements, the film defines Manoel de Oliveira’s late period.
The film is an extremely deadpan comedy about people resistant to change beyond all rational reasoning.
Manoel de Oliveira has mostly sidestepped the perils of the productive by falling into a satisfying pattern of major and minor works.
After a few initial disappointments in Berlinale’s main competition, things gradually began to pick up.
The latest film by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne left me speechless.
Film is a phantom, but a living one.
It’s significant that Isaac is a man defined in opposition to the times in which he lives.
Chongqing Blues is an unwieldy barge of clichés, heavy-handed symbols, and clumsy, inconsistent formal choices.
Eccentricities of a Blonde-Haired Girl is one of Manoel de Oliveira’s more banal inquiries into the objectification of women in life and in art.
There’s little of substance here beyond a slightly pleasurable twinge of recognition.
Manoel de Oliveira is someone Luis Buñuel actively rebelled against: an aesthete.
A fascinating film but Manoel de Oliveira fans may be the only ones up to its challenge.
The film’s expressive comedown makes a last-minute terror alert all the more shocking.
You’ll have a hard time coming by another recent DVD release of a crucial film accompanied by an equally crucial commentary track.
You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, but you may also fall asleep.
Manoel de Oliveira suggests that there’s no place like home and certainly no better place to die.