{"id":29519,"date":"2011-12-01T14:58:14","date_gmt":"2011-12-01T22:58:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/?p=29519"},"modified":"2011-12-01T14:58:40","modified_gmt":"2011-12-01T22:58:40","slug":"afi-fest-2011-day-six-wednesday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2011\/12\/afi-fest-2011-day-six-wednesday\/","title":{"rendered":"AFI Fest 2011: Day Six (Wednesday)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A<\/span>fter a day of disappointing features on Monday<\/a> and a day of mostly shorts on Tuesday<\/a> (albeit very excellent shorts), I was ready for some features to blow me away, and that’s exactly what happened on Wednesday. These were two of my most highly-anticipated films of the festival, and they both actually turned out to be even better than I was hoping. Both of these films are in my top ten for the year right now, and We Need to Talk About Kevin<\/em> is pretty much guaranteed a spot on it, sitting in the #2 slot right now. That’s what I call a good day at the festival.<\/p>\n

Attenberg<\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

My first foray into the new wave of Greek cinema emerging over the past couple of years was an unmitigated success, at least for me. I have yet to see either of Yanthos Lorgimos’s films (which I need to do, especially Dogtooth<\/em>, as it’s a frontrunner in current Greek cinema), but I pretty much loved Attenberg<\/em>, from his friend and collaborator Athina Rachel Tsangari, from start to finish. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but what I got is something very similar to a Czech New Wave film, closely focused on a single twenty-something character and her struggle to come to terms with her father’s impending death and the way that’s all tied up her late-blooming sexuality. On the surface, not a whole lot happens here, but there’s a lot underneath, and that’s what I like to see. Right now this is in my top ten for the year. We’ll see if it can hang on through the final month of big-name releases. Reaction: LOVED. Full review on Row Three<\/a>.
\n2011 Greece. Director: Athina Rachel Tsangari. Starring: Ariane Labed, Yorgos Lanthimos, Vangelis Mourikis, Evangelia Randou.<\/em><\/p>\n

We Need to Talk About Kevin<\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Now here’s one that will DEFINITELY be on my top ten list his year – I was expecting a lot from this film based on the buzz from other festivals and advance screenings, and it delivered even more than I could’ve hoped. Almost a psychological horror film, delving into the disturbed psyche of a mom whose son seems to be a child of the devil. But whether the boy really is astoundingly fiendish or whether she’s an incapable mother (or more likely, somewhere between those two extremes, as they both bring out the worst in each other) is left ambiguous, as Lynne Ramsay builds a portrait of a woman who’s lost everything and vascillates between blaming everyone else and assuming blame herself. The film is structured with a series of flashbacks and flashforwards, keeping the audience in doubt as to the exact chain of events until a chronology starts building up to a terrible end – this structure, standout performances from everyone involved, and an enormously effective soundscape combine to make this one of the most terrifying pictures about parenthood ever made. Reaction: LOVED.
\n2011 UK. Director: Lynne Ramsay. Starring: Tilda Swinton, Ezra Miller, John C. Reilly.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a day of disappointing features on Monday and a day of mostly shorts on Tuesday (albeit very excellent shorts), I was ready for some features to blow me away, and that’s exactly what happened on Wednesday. These were two of my most highly-anticipated films of the festival, and they both actually turned out to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29295,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[2312,2407,2364,2375,2383,2384,2351],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/WeNeedtoTalkAboutKevin01.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":29308,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2011\/12\/scorecard-november-2011\/","url_meta":{"origin":29519,"position":0},"title":"Scorecard: November 2011","author":"Jandy","date":"December 3, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"[At the end of every month I post a rundown of the movies I saw that month, tallying them according to how much I did or didn't like them. You can always see my recent watches here and my ongoing list of bests for the whole year here.] Even though\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/le-cercle-rouge.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":29516,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/afi-fest-2011-day-five-tuesday\/","url_meta":{"origin":29519,"position":1},"title":"AFI Fest 2011: Day Five (Tuesday)","author":"Jandy","date":"November 30, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Tuesday was almost a day full of shorts (it could've been - they ran all four shorts programs back to back in the same theatre without reticketing, a very tempting prospect), but I punctuated it with a quiet little feature from Korean director Hong Sang-soo. Unfortunately both that and some\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/TheDayHeArrives021.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":28936,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/heading-to-the-afi-film-festival-2011\/","url_meta":{"origin":29519,"position":2},"title":"Heading to the AFI Film Festival 2011","author":"Jandy","date":"November 4, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"One of my three big festivals of the year starts today (for me; the opening night premiere was J. Edgar last night, but I didn't go to that), and there are a boat-load of fantastic films at AFI Fest 2001 Presented by Audi. Thanks to Audi's sponsorship (among others), tickets\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/Melancholia04.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":29522,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2011\/12\/afi-fest-2011-day-seven-thursday\/","url_meta":{"origin":29519,"position":3},"title":"AFI Fest 2011: Day Seven (Thursday)","author":"Jandy","date":"December 2, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"And this completes the festival for another year. All told, I saw 21 features and about the same number of shorts, which is probably my highest festival total ever. A few of them will likely be on my best-of year lists, a few are hovering way down at the bottom\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/TheKidWithaBike03.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8100,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2010\/10\/afi-fest-2010-a-biased-preview\/","url_meta":{"origin":29519,"position":4},"title":"AFI Fest 2010: A Biased Preview","author":"Jandy","date":"October 25, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"*slow connection warning - many videos embedded* Festival season for 2010 is starting to wind down now, but there's at least one more big one in Los Angeles - the American Film Market and its less-industry-insidery sister the AFI Film Festival. I find myself more drawn to the mind-set of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/AFI-blackswan.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":29311,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/afi-festival-day-one-friday\/","url_meta":{"origin":29519,"position":5},"title":"AFI Festival: Day One (Friday)","author":"Jandy","date":"November 7, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"A few capsule reviews from the first day at the AFI Film Festival. Saw a couple of great things, a couple of not-great things, managed to eat dinner in the middle of it all, and made it through the midnight movie no worse for wear. So great to be festivalling\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/Extraterrestrial1.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29519"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}