NAJOČEKIVANIJI filmovi 2015. (NEHOROR)

            Poslednjih godina sam postao prilično smoren filmovima novije produkcije, ma kog žanra: da li starim i pretvaram se u čangrizavog starca ili su filmovi stvarno sve gori – istorija neka sudi. U svakom slučaju, znatno manje nego ranije pratim filmske sajtove i njihove gromopucatelne najave genijalnih, izuzetnih, izvanrednih, MUST SEE remek-dela – zato što se, stalno i stalno iznova, najčešće na kraju ispostavi da su u pitanju preterano hajpovane poludupaste osrednjosti.

            Uprkos tome, pregledao sam nekoliko lista najočekivanijih filmova u ovoj godini i opet podlegao starom slatkom grehu: NADI da me ovog puta neće zajebati! Ali, hej, lepo je verovati! Tim pre što ove godine nove filmove izbacuju neki od omiljenih mi reditelja: Zulawski, Villaronga, du Welz, Sion Sono, Paul Verhoeven, Gaspar Noé, Jan Svankmajer, Michael Haneke, Werner Herzog... Valjda bar oni neće da izdaju? U koga čovek da veruje danas ako ne u njih? 

            Ovo što sledi jeste moja kompilacija i izbor, uz mestimično editovanje, preuzet iz nekolicine raznolikih izvora i prilagođen onome što meni, a valjda i čitaocima ovog bloga, najviše godi. 

          Listu najočekivanijih morao sam, zbog velikog broja naslova, da podelim u dva dela. Ovog puta izlažem filmove izvan horor žanra (u rasponu od SF-a i trilera pa do arty drama i nedefinisanih ludila). Navedeni su po redosledu visine mojih očekivanja i posledične nestrpljivosti da ih overim.

George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road

Davno najavljivani i maštani pa odlagani, najzad završeni SF akcioni spektakl... Imam rezervu prema Tomu Hardiju (inače odličnom glumcu, ali ne znam baš za ovu ulogu) i prema potencijalnom prećerivanju sa CGI efektima, ali čak i s tim oprezom, ovo mora da bude ludilo barem za četvorku!

Andrzej Zulawski's Cosmos

Described as a bleak and metaphysical thriller, the film is based on a 1965 novel by Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz, the story concerning two students in a countryside town of southern Poland. As they rent a room in a small guesthouse their peace is disturbed by a series of random occurrences that suggest to their susceptible minds a pattern with sinister meanings.

Novi Zulavski! Posle decenije pauze! Mračna i bizarna dramurda prema navodno nesnimljivom romanu!

Agusti Villaronga's The King of Havana

An adaptation of the novel by Pedro Juan Gutierrez, the Cuba set thriller revolves around a teenager that escapes from a correctional facility. Release Date: With his last two films premiering at the San Sebastian Film Festival, it’s doubtful where exactly Villaronga hopes to premiere. The cast has not been announced and filming was moved from this past fall to this winter after the decision to film in the Dominican Republic instead of Havana, Cuba. We’re hoping Villaronga presents in a festival that will command international attention, either Venice, or more likely, Toronto.

Još jedan genije prvog reda koji NIKAD nije izneverio! Posle nehumane pauze od zasad poslednjeg filma (vidi rivju: BLACK BREAD) Vilja se vraća sa filmom čiji jedva skicirani zaplet ipak obećava materijal u skladu s onim u čemu je najbolji.

The World of Kanako

Brutalno crna triler-drama, od reditelja filma CONFESSIONS! Ono što najviše boli jeste da sam ovo skinuo još pre nekoliko meseci, ali engleskih titlova nema ni od korova! Niti ikakvih drugih sem korejskih, za sada. Ko iskopa nešto, neka smesta javi.

Fabrize du Welz's Alleluia

Ludački mračan i nasilan triler i bolesna ljubavna priča o paru ubica, vizuelno spektakularan kao i sve do sada od reditelja obožavanog mi VINYANa.

Lucile Hadzihalilovic's Evolution

While she’s mostly known for having co-written Gaspar Noe’s infamous 2009 film, Enter the Void, Lucile Hadzihalilovic is an accomplished director of her own right, having made the underappreciated 2004 film Innocence (Ghoul's Seal of Approval!), which is a strange, meditative, and very creepy film about a boarding school for young girls and starred Marion Cotillard. Now, she’s back over a decade later with her sophomore film, Evolution.

The story revolves around 11-year-old Nicolas, who lives with his mother in a seaside housing estate. The only place that ever sees any activity is the hospital. It is there that all the boys from the village are forced to undergo strange medical trials that attempt to disrupt the phases of evolution. Hadzihalilovic cites The Island of Dr. Moreau as inspiration.

Fehér Isten (WHITE GOD)

Thirteen-year-old Lili fights to protect her dog Hagen. She is devastated when her father eventually sets Hagen free on the streets. Still innocently believing love can conquer any difficulty, Lili sets out to find her dog and save him. A thrillingly strange update of the “Lassie Come Home” formula in which one lost mutt’s incredible journey to sanctuary evolves into a full-scale man-vs.-beast revolution. Appealingly naive adventure narrative, until the story’s mythic proportions, not to mention its visceral violence, reveal themselves.

Sion Sono's Tokyo Tribe

Novi Sonov film već sam skinuo, izašli su i titlovi, ali... Radi o nasilnoj, drečavoj, hiperstilizovanoj adaptaciji mange o sukobu bandi u bliskobudućoj distopiji i kvari ga jedino izobilje japanskog HIPITI-HOPA kojim se drogira reperska krimogena gamad što napučuje film! Počeo sam da gledam - i ugasio posle 20-ak minuta. Ne mogu, jbg. Uz svu moju ljubav prema Sonu, moja mržnja prema hip-hopu je mnogo veća! Nemam ja želudac za ovo.

Paul Verhoeven's Elle

An adaptation of the novel Oh… by Betty Blue author Philippe Djian, which is to be headlined by none other than Isabelle Huppert. When Michelle, the CEO of a gaming software company, is attacked in her home by an unknown assailant, she refuses to let it alter her precisely ordered life. She manages crises involving her 75-year-old sex kitten mother, her imprisoned mass murderer father, her spoiled and immature son, her ex-husband and her lover, all with the same icy equanimity. This is the approach she brings to the situation when it appears that her assailant is not finished with her. As the mysterious stalker hovers in the shadows of her life, taunting her, Michelle cooly stalks him back. What emerges between Michelle and her stalker is a kind of game, a game that soon spirals out of control.

Kao da ovaj zaplet već nije spektakularno zamaman, režira ga jedan od najvećih živih reditelja.

High-Rise

Ben Wheatley (Sightseers, A Field in England and Kill List) has adapted J.G. Ballard’s seminal High-Rise, with a cast that includes Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Miller, Elisabeth Moss and Reece Shearsmith. A young doctor enraptured by the exclusive world created in a state of the art high rise building in Thatcher’s Britain, and his subsequent discovery that beneath the surface, nothing is quite what it seems.

Gaspar Noé's Love

Set in Paris and starring a cast of unknowns, Noe has set out to tell a very erotic love story from a very sexual point of view. Described as a melodrama that celebrates sex in a joyous way, about boy and a girl and another girl.

Jan Svankmajer's The Insects

Svankmajer is loosely basing his latest on a 1922 play from the Capek Brothers, From the Life of Insects, combined with Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. Six amateur thespians meet in a pub to rehearse the Čapeks’ play, while their personal stories interweave with those of the characters they are about to play. The play is intended as a backdrop in which insects behave like humans and humans like insects.

Michael Haneke's Flashmob

Filming last summer was delayed due to Haneke waiting for a particular and as yet unnamed actress for a story that tracks a group of people who come together via the Internet to stage a flashmob.

Kebab Royal

Directors: Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth

Ovo je novi film reditelja filma koji sam nedavno ovde hvalio: LA CINQUIEME SAISON (2012).

 Kebab Royal, descried as “a hair-raising quintessence of European fairy tales around the last king of the Belgians lost in the Balkans.”

Release Date: Filming is slated to begin this spring, so we’re unsure if this will be ready in time for a 2015 release, but there remains a slight possibility of it being so, particularly since two parts of their trilogy premiered in Venice.

Werner Herzog's Queen of the Desert

Starring a heady, glitzy cast made up of Nicole Kidman, James Franco, and Robert Pattinson, the film is a chronicle of Gertrude Bell’s life, a traveler, writer, archaeologist, explorer, cartographer, and political attaché for the British Empire at the dawn of the twentieth century.

Mountains May Depart

Director: Jia Zhangke

Ovo je novi film reditelja filma koji sam nedavno ovde hvalio: A Touch of Sin.

His first film outside of China, Mountains May Depart, jumps through place and time from contemporary China to a futuristic Australia. Starring wife and muse Zhao Tao, it begins in the 1990s, the movie follows Tao and Dong, a young couple in love. Tao later leaves Dao to marry a wealthy mine owner. On his deathbed Dong meets Tao again; she is divorced and her son is exiled in Australia. The story jumps to Tao’s son in Australia in the year 2025. The only word of Chinese he still remembers is his mother’s name.

The Tribe

Intense, unsettling, unique film from Ukraine about a deaf teenager who struggles to fit into the boarding school system.

Zvuči kao tugaljiva soc drama ali zapravo ga opisuju kao spektakularno potresan i revolucionaran film.

Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight

Tarantinov violentni western.

Alejandro Amenabar's Regression

About a father accused of a crime that he doesn't have any memory of. Stars Emma Watson, with Ethan Hawke and David Thewlis.

Schneider Vs. Bax

Director: Alex van Warmerdam

Nisam bio tako snažno impresioniran njegovim prethodnim filmom, Borgman, ali svakako sam dovoljno zaintrigiran.

A hitman is assigned the simple task of killing a solitary writer before the night is through. Of course, things don’t go as planned.

Gyorgy Palfi's Free Fall

Od reditelja TAXIDERMIJE.

A woman falls out of the window of an apartment house. On her way back, she witnesses seven stories, one on each floor.

Gyorgy Palfi's The Voice

His latest project, The Voice, recently won the title ‘best work in progress’ at the Les Arc Fest, something he’s been financing since before Free Fall. An English language feature, the movie follows a thirtysomething Hungarian journalist on the trail of his father, who disappeared in the ’70s after being involved in a secret military research project for the U.S. government, with the director comparing the title to Man on Wire.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: The Green Legend

Yuen Woo-Ping directs the sequel and brings Michelle Yeoh and Donnie Yen.

Tom Tykwer's A Hologram for the King

Starring Tom Hanks and Tom Skerritt. The comedy-drama tells the story of an American businessman who makes a last-ditch attempt to stave off bankruptcy and finally accomplish something big. He wants to present his project to the king, who, unfortunately, does not grace him with his presence. In the blistering heat, the manager and his IT team continue waiting for days, weeks and even months.

EX_MACHINA

From Alex Garland (writer of 28 Days Later and Dredd) comes this hard sci-fi story about a young programmer who must evaluate a life-like female AI.

Mr. Holms

Bill Condon once again teams up with his Gods and Monsters star Ian McKellen as an aged Sherlock Holmes who is troubled by his one unsolved case.

In the Heart of the Sea

Ron Howard's Moby Dick.

Green Room

By Jeremy Sauliner (Blue Ruin). Stars Patrick Stewart and is about a young punk band that witnesses some horrible act of violence and comes under attack from a group of skinheads

In A Valley of Violence

By Ti West, a violent western revenge movie cast including Karen Gillan, Ethan Hawke, Taissa Farmiga and John Travolta.

Slow West

A western starring Michael Fassbender, Kodi Smit-McPhee and Ben Medelsohn.

Cary Fukunaga's Beasts of No Nation

Starring Idris Elba, about a child soldier fighting in a Civil War in an unnamed African Country.

Tema manje-više, ali reditelj prve sezone serije TRUE DETECTIVE dovoljan je razlog da se ovo obavezno overi!

Louder Than Bombs

Director: Joachim Trier

The film tells the story of a famous war photographer (Isabelle Huppert) who is killed in a car accident, leaving behind her husband (Gabriel Byrne) and two sons, one a teenager. Three years after her death, the eldest son (Jesse Eisenberg) comes home for an exhibition of her photography, and that is when they discover an unsettling secret from her past.

The Lobster

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos

Novi film reditelja OČNJAKA (Dogtooth).

His English language debut, The Lobster, is described as a love story set in a dystopian near future where single people are arrested and transferred to a creepy hotel, they are obliged to find a matching mate in 45 days. If they fail, they are transformed into an animal and released into the woods.

Cast: Lea Seydoux, Rachel Weisz, Colin Farrell, John C. Reilly, Ben Whishaw

Let the Bodies Sunbathe!

Directors: Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani

Reditelji giallo-fetiš "filmova" Amer (2009) i The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears (2013) bacaju se u krimi-eurotreš teritoriju.

Their next film seems to be a change of pace. Based on a 1971 novel by famed French crime novelist Jean-Patrick Manchette, Let the Bodies Sunbathe! (aka Corpses in the Sun) seems to center around the eccentric hostess of an isolated locale who comes in contact with stolen gold in a van as well as policemen on the trail of the perpetrators that attempted to steal it.

Release Date: While Amer premiered at Fantastisk Film Festival Lund in Sweden, Tears went to Locarno. Funding for this feature was announced in September with no word on production, though we assume it’s this winter or spring, which may mean the film is ready as a top premiere for Locarno or Toronto.

Babi Yar

Director: Sergei Loznitsa

Ukrainian documentarian Sergei Loznitsa made waves with his 2010 feature debut My Joy, followed by 2012’s In the Fog, both which played in the competition at Cannes. He returned last year out of competition with documentary Maidan, as well as a segment in the anthology film The Bridges of Sarajevo. An arrestingly bleak filmmaker, his films elude wider appeal with their immersive and unrelenting deliberations of abusive powers and war torn wastelands. Announced back in 2013, we’re hoping to see Loznitsa unveil his third feature, Babi Yar, which documents the eponymously referenced massacre from 1941 of 33,000+ Jews shot and killed over two days in September and thrown into a ravine. Recent interviews with Loznitsa have seen the director describe the project as depicting how “slowly and gradually, people plunge into hell.”

The Assassin

Director: Hou Hsiao-Hsien

Martial arts epic, The Assassin. A project long in gestation, with initial scenes filming as way back as 2010. Based on a short story, about a female assassin during the Tang Dynasty (618-907 A.D.) who begins to question her loyalties when she falls in love with one of her targets.

The Childhood of a Leader

Director: Brady Corbet

Set in 1919, this story tells the tale of a ‘would-be-fascist,’ and the screenplay is inspired by a wide range of authorial pillars, from John Fowls to Jean-Paul Sarte with a bit of Volker Schlondorff’s 1966 classic Young Torless (which also served as a point of comparison for Haneke’s The White Ribbon). The film has been described as partially about a family that relocates to France for the Paris Peace Conference and about the events leading up to the Treaty of Versailles. Early descriptions of the film also point to elements of horror.

Cast: Robert Pattinson, Berenice Bejo, Stacy Martin, Tim Roth

Interesting Ethology

Director: Vasiliy Sigarev

Still struggling to break free from the confines of the festival circuit, up and coming Russian director Vasiliy Sigarev has premiered his first two films to critical acclaim. His 2009 debut Wolfy (solidna trojka po mojoj tarifi – prim. Ghoul) played at Karlovy Vary and his excellent 2012 sophomore film, Living premiered at Rotterdam. Also a noted writer, Sigarev’s first two films are pronounced slices of miserablism, which may explain the lack of international distribution, which is unfortunate. His latest, Interesting Ethology, is apparently a comedy.

Le tout Nouveau Testament

Director: Jaco Van Dormael

The Brand New Testament professes to tell the story of God and his exacerbated relationship with his daughter — apparently they both live in Belgium. Van Dormael has cast the delightfully strange Belgian talents Benoit Poelvoorde (ČOVEK UJEO PSA!) and Yolande Moreau, along with French icon Catherine Deneuve.

Malgré la nuit

Director: Philippe Grandrieux

Od reditelja sumornog mračnjaštva (Somber, A New Life, Un Lac, White Epilepsy) 

Details pertaining to the plot remain murky, but we’re expecting another sensory overload existing for those that prefer the difficult climes of experimental, boundary pushing cinema.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Journey to the Shore

Kiyoshi Kurosawa: Cure (1997), Pulse (2001), Charisma (1999).

His 2015 release, Journey to the Shore (formerly titled La femme de la plaque) is an adaptation of a Kazumi Yumoto novel and toplines a pair of Japanese stars Tadanobu Asano and Eri Fukatsu, the latter playing a woman whose husband returns home after mysteriously disappearing for three years. The pair embark on a trip to visit all the people who helped him during his voyage.

Song Of The Sea
Irish animator Tomm Moore's debut feature - The Secret Of Kells - received an Oscar nomination and much (well deserved) love around the world and his sophomore effort is even better. Song of the Sea is a gorgeously realized modern fairy tale, a story rich in detail that brings Irish folklore to life in delightful fashion with a heartfelt story and visuals you simply won't be able to tear your eyes off of.

The Tale Of Princess Kaguya

dir. Takahata Isao
Studio Ghibli's adapting one of Japan's oldest and best-loved fairytales. Takahata delivers a magical and quietly profound story, that highlights the innocence of childhood, the struggles of parenting and the horrifying challenges and expectations placed upon young women, particularly in Japan. Kaguya is objectified and revered for her beauty, fought over by rich suitors, and regarded as a ticket to wealth and respectability by her simple farmer parents. Yearning only for the simple pleasures of her childhood in the bamboo grove, Kaguya has no control over her fate, and as some might expect from the director of Grave of the Fireflies, things don't end happily ever after.

Tsui Hark's The Taking Of Tiger Mountain 
A wonderfully entertaining action romp that thankfully does its best to shake off the sombre tone of many recent Chinese war epics and have a bit of fun. Zhang Hanyu is an honourable, if admittedly slightly impregnable hero, but Tony Leung Ka Fai is having a blast as the evil Lord Hawk, in almost Dick Tracy-esque levels of make-up. Beautiful, imaginative photography and inventive use of 3D only add to the package here.

Blackhearts

Music documentary, charting the international impact of Norwegian black metal, as far afield as Iran and Columbia…

Industrial Soundtrack For The Urban Decay

Members of Throbbing Gristle, SPK, Cabaret Voltaire and more discuss the origins of industrial music…

Ulrich Seidl's In the Basement

 Corpulent sex slaves, tuba-playing Nazi obsessives, reborn doll fantasists — just a regular stroll through the neighborhood, then, for patented guru of the grotesque Ulrich Seidl, who makes an intriguing return to documentary filmmaking with “In the Basement.” Grabby and grubby in equal measure, this meticulously composed trawl through the contents of several middle-class Austrians’ cellars yields more than a few startling discoveries. It’s not hard to tell, though, that a mixture of fact and fabrication is at work here.

The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga

Nature and civilization square off in Jessica Oreck’s poetic meditation-cum-documentary “The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga.” Alternating between two complementary narratives (fairy-tale and cultural-anthropological) in two languages (Russian and Polish) and two formats (animation and live-action), Oreck spins a mesmerizing web that appropriates a wealth of disparate Eastern European images — of mushrooms, farmers, falling trees and war-destroyed buildings — to illustrate its lyrical discourse. Probably less accessible than Oreck’s feted entomological curio “Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo,” “Baba Yaga” ventures closer to experimental film, breaking new ground with calls to the collective unconscious that should lure adventurous arthouse auds.

Trap Street

Marking the debut of writer-director Vivian Qu, “Trap Street” is an excellent Chinese indie in which a young man working for a company making digital street maps runs into trouble after a chance meeting with a mysterious woman. A film noir of sorts, it works both as a tense suspense thriller and as a subtle commentary on the troubling development of China as a surveillance society, policed by shady organisations and abstract authorities. It’s all very Kafka-influenced, recalling “The Trial” in particular, and Qu does a great job of generating the same atmosphere of oppressive unease and paranoia, leaving the viewer without an easy resolution or comforting answers. A top notch first outing, it marks her as a director to watch.

From Caligari to Hitler: German Cinema in the Age of the Masses

Exceptionally beautiful restored film clips are the main reason to see this film. More an illustration of a prolix thesis than a groundbreaking docu, the film takes Siegfried Kracauer’s seminal 1947 study on Weimar cinema and reiterates numerous points found in the book, with little acknowledgment that scholarship, still indebted to Kracauer, has moved on.

Tomorrowland

The film Brad Bird turned down Star Wars for; a mystery thriller starring the dream team of George Clooney and Hugh Laurie…

Legend

Director: Brian Helgeland

Based on true story, resurrection of the notorious Kray Bros. Here, we have Tom Hardy playing the twin gangsters. Helgelands’ film is described as concerning identical twin gangsters Ronald and Reginald Kray terrorize London during the 1950s and 1960s. Dick Pope is the cinematographer.

Cast: Tom Hardy, Emily Browning, David Thewlis.

Nicolas Winding Refn's My Life

This documentary by Refn’s wife Liv Corfixen offers a revealing, intimate look at the filmmaker’s insecurities and vulnerabilities while shooting Only God Forgives in Bangkok. For a filmmaker I always assumed was so confident he didn’t care what anybody thinks (in a good way), it’s very humanizing. Though only an hour long, it gets in and gets out while making its point.

--- U IDUĆEM DELU: NAJOČEKIVANIJI HOROR filmovi 2015. ---