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Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky’s 2000 film moves slowly around a small town where a very strange circus has arrived. Its eerie power has only grown in a time of rising fascism

Hungarian auteur Béla Tarr and his co-director and editor Ágnes Hranitzky now have their 2000 film rereleased, 24 years on as part of a career retrospective; it is an eerie monochrome vision of power, group hysteria, cosmological breakdown and the end of the world. When I first saw this film I responded to what might be called its spiritual aspect, its mystery, its unknowability, and of course its distinctive style: the extended dream-tempo takes, the murmuringly restrained dialogue achieved through overdubbing and the long trudging walks through an unforgiving landscape. There is a quite extraordinary closeup sequence in which two men simply walk together down a city street in wordless silence, for minute after minute, their faces juxtaposed in semi-profile. That...

The Hungarian film director is known for his existentially daunting black and white films. He explains why he left his home country to run his own film school, and why he loves Chekhov, Hitchcock – and Gus Van Sant

For years, Béla Tarr’s daunting films were unavailable in the UK and he was the much-discussed fugitive genius of high European cinema, the Col Kurtz of the movies, hidden deep in the jungle of ideas.

But in the 80s and 90s the work of the Hungarian auteur began to be shown in Britain and connoisseur audiences were stunned or puzzled or electrified by his extremely long movies. Often adapted from the equally revered and difficult novels of Hungarian modernist László Krasznahorkai, these films were edited and latterly co-directed by his wife Ágnes Hranitzky and featured the music of Mihály Vig.

If Béla Tarr’s mammoth 1994 opus Sátántangó allegorized the fall of communism on Hungary in its depiction of widespread social anomie and grotesque jockeying for power, 2000’s Werckmeister Harmonies (the first of three features on which he receives a co-director credit with wife Ágnes Hranitzky) might be taken as an extreme literalization of Francis Fukuyama’s notion that the end of the Soviet Union represented the so-called “end of history.”

But where Fukuyama’s words summarized a new world order of Westernized democracy and internationally inter-reliant capitalism, Werckmeister Harmonies runs with the idea to apocalyptic ends. Set in a small Hungarian town, the film presents a haunting monochrome world where the overcast gray sky represents the closest thing to full daylight as one can get. Otherwise, everything seems to exist in an inky void of starless night, dotted only by the faint glow of fading streetlights.

Populating this fading world...

For the past three years, the American Cinematheque has presented “Bleak Week,” an annual festival devoted to the greatest films ever made about the darkest side of humanity. This year, the festival will not only be unspooling in Los Angeles June 1 – 7 — with special guests including Al Pacino, Lynne Ramsay, Charlie Kaufman, and Karyn Kusama — but will travel to New York for the first time with a week of screenings at the historic Paris Theater starting June 9.

“We are honored to co-present ‘Bleak Week: New York’ in partnership with one of the most beautiful movie palaces in the world,” Cinematheque artistic director Grant Moninger told IndieWire. “This year, over 10,000 people will attend ‘Bleak Week: Year 3’ in Los Angeles, proving that audiences are hungry for such powerful and confrontational cinema. Many people thought they were alone in their desire to explore films with uncomfortable truths, but the truth is that they are part of a large community,...

Werckmeister Harmonies released in the Criterion Collection on April 16th.

Béla Tarr is an auteur with a reputation befitting the Criterion Collection. The Hungarian filmmaker utilizes beautiful visuals — typically in black and white — and unsettling realism to explore the unpleasant truths of existence. It’s fitting that his first feature to receive a proper physical release in the Criterion Collection is 2000’s whimsical mystery The Werckmeister Harmonies. Even better, we get two for the price of one with the inclusion of his debut feature, Family Nest, included in the special features.

Werckmeister Harmonies Plot

A peculiar circus, consisting of a massive and mysterious whale, sets up shop in the center of a small town. As curious spectators flock to the unconventional attraction, a primal violence bubbles to the surface of the sleepy village.

The Critique

A spectator examines the mysterious whale.

Also Read: Criterion Collection: The Runner Review

Werchmeister Harmonies...

Cinephiles will have plenty to celebrate this April with the next slate of additions to the Criterion Channel. The boutique distributor, which recently announced its June 2024 Blu-ray releases, has unveiled its new streaming lineup highlighted by an eclectic mix of classic films and modern arthouse hits.

Students of Hollywood history will be treated to the “Peak Noir: 1950” collection, which features 17 noir films from the landmark film year from directors including Billy Wilder, Alfred Hitchcock, and John Huston.

New Hollywood maverick William Friedkin will also be celebrated when five of his most beloved movies, including “Sorcerer” and “The Exorcist,” come to the channel in April.

Criterion will offer the streaming premiere of Wim Wenders’ 3D art documentary “Anselm,” which will be accompanied by the “Wim Wenders’ Adventures in Moviegoing” collection, which sees the director curating a selection of films from around the world that have influenced his careers.

Contemporary cinema is also well represented,...

April’s an uncommonly strong auteurist month for the Criterion Channel, who will highlight a number of directors––many of whom aren’t often grouped together. Just after we screened House of Tolerance at the Roxy Cinema, Criterion are showing it and Nocturama for a two-film Bertrand Bonello retrospective, starting just four days before The Beast opens. Larger and rarer (but just as French) is the complete Jean Eustache series Janus toured last year. Meanwhile, five William Friedkin films and work from Makoto Shinkai, Lizzie Borden, and Rosine Mbakam are given a highlight.

One of my very favorite films, Comrades: Almost a Love Story plays in a series I’ve been trying to program for years: “Hong Kong in New York,” boasting the magnificent Full Moon in New York, Farewell China, and An Autumn’s Tale. Wim Wenders gets his “Adventures in Moviegoing”; After Hours, Personal Shopper, and Werckmeister Harmonies fill...

The Criterion Collection reaches out to encompass more radical works of cinema in April 2024, led by Mathieu Kassovitz's completely unsettling La Haine (1995); the seminal Werckmeister Harmonies (2000), described by Criterion as "a hypnotic parable of societal collapse from auteur Béla Tarr and codirector-editor Ágnes Hranitzky;" the remarkable I Am Cuba (1964) from director Mikhail Kalatozov; Nancy Savoca's under-appreciated Dogfight, starring Lili Taylor and River Phoenix; and Peter Weir's dreamy and mysterious Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), available in 4K. La Haine, Werckmeister Harmonies, and I Am Cuba are also being issued in 4K, so it's a splendid time for world cinema fans to dust off their wallets and indulge. (I say that knowing that April 15 is also looming as an important date...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

While the year remains young, Criterion’s already looking to Q2 2024. April’s a notable month for its 4K haul: Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky’s Werckmeister Harmonies, having played in a dazzling restoration last year, will be the filmmakers’ first time in the collection (and come packaged with Tarr’s debut feature Family Nest). Mikhail Kalatozov’s less of a stranger, but his I Am Cuba continues the much-welcomed growth of Latin American cinema (notwithstanding its Soviet connections) on physical media.

Meanwhile, La Haine and Picnic at Hanging Rock get upgrades, and Nancy Savoca’s lesser-seen Dogfight enters on Blu-ray.

See artwork below and more details at Criterion:

The post The Criterion Collection’s April Lineup Includes Werckmeister Harmonies and I Am Cuba on 4K first appeared on The Film Stage.

We recently learned that five years after Dragged Across Concrete, S. Craig Zahler will soon announce his next feature. In the meantime, the director has unveiled his favorite music, books, and––most pertinent to this site––films he watched in the past year.

The 21-movie list includes not only his ten favorites of the year but revival screenings as well, including Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky’s Werckmeister Harmonies, Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy, Masaki Kobayashi’s Harakiri, Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible, Nagisa Ôshima’s The Pleasures of the Flesh, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria, and William Friedkin’s The Exorcist.

When it comes to new releases, amongst the favorites of the Bone Tomahawk director were Sean Durkin’s The Iron Claw, Skinamarink, Godzilla Minus One, the Indian action-thriller Jawan, films by Martin Scorsese and Jonathan Glazer, and the latest in the Saw franchise.

Check out the list below.

Godzilla Minus One...

Werckmeister Harmonies.Werckmeister Harmonies (2000) begins at closing time. Dousing the embers in his wood-burning stove, a weary bartender shouts at the gathered drunks to get out. Not yet, they say, there’s still one last thing left to do. And right on time arrives János (Lars Rudolph), a bug-eyed young man full of uncomplicated yet not entirely naïve wonder about the universe. He picks one drunk to be the sun, another the Earth, and a third to be the moon, and has them act out a swirling, swaying dance, the sun shining, the Earth revolving until, quite suddenly, János calls them to a stop: a lunar eclipse, wonder of wonders, has settled onto the Earth, blocking out the light of the sun, and calling the entire room to a hush. But then, says János, the moon passes, the sun returns, and all of them have “escaped the weight of darkness,...

It’s been a good time to be a Béla Tarr fan. While the Hungarian master hasn’t made a full-fledged new feature since 2011’s The Turin Horse, we’ve seen recent restorations of Damnation, Sátántangó, and Twilight, for which he consulted on. Now, his mesmerizing turn-of-the-century masterpiece Werckmeister Harmonies, co-directed with Ágnes Hranitzky, has received a 4K restoration. Following a TIFF premiere last fall, Janus Films will release it in theaters starting later this month and the new trailer has landed.

Here’s the synopsis: “One of the major achievements of twenty-first-century cinema thus far, Béla Tarr’s mesmeric parable of societal collapse is an enigma of transcendent visual, philosophical, and mystical resonance. Adapted from a novel by the celebrated writer and frequent Tarr collaborator László Krasznahorkai, Werckmeister Harmonies unfolds in an unknown era in an unnamed village, where, one day, a mysterious circus—complete with an enormous stuffed whale and a shadowy,...

A trailer has arrived for the 4K restoration of Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky’s 2000 film Werckmeister Harmonies from Janus Films. Based on the 1989 novel The Melancholy of Resistance by Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai, the film will be re-released in New York later this month with more cities to follow. An official synopsis reads: One of the major achievements of twenty-first-century cinema thus far, Béla Tarr’s mesmeric parable of societal collapse is an enigma of transcendent visual, philosophical, and mystical resonance. Adapted from a novel by the celebrated writer and frequent Tarr collaborator László Krasznahorkai, Werckmeister Harmonies unfolds in an unknown […]

The post Trailer Watch: 4K Restoration of Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky’s Werckmeister Harmonies first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

A trailer has arrived for the 4K restoration of Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky’s 2000 film Werckmeister Harmonies from Janus Films. Based on the 1989 novel The Melancholy of Resistance by Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai, the film will be re-released in New York later this month with more cities to follow. An official synopsis reads: One of the major achievements of twenty-first-century cinema thus far, Béla Tarr’s mesmeric parable of societal collapse is an enigma of transcendent visual, philosophical, and mystical resonance. Adapted from a novel by the celebrated writer and frequent Tarr collaborator László Krasznahorkai, Werckmeister Harmonies unfolds in an unknown […]

The post Trailer Watch: 4K Restoration of Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky’s Werckmeister Harmonies first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Toronto events around the festival will include musical performances and free screenings.

The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has revealed details of this year’s Festival Street events and Cinematheque programme.

Back for its seventh year, Festival Street will unfold Sept 8-11 on Toronto’s King Street West and Sept 8-18 in David Pecaut Square.

Events will include musical performances by Buffy Sainte-Marie and others inspired by films in the festival and a live art walk created by StreetARToronto.

TIFF’s new open air cinema, Olg Cinema Park in David Pecaut Square, will screen films showcasing stars from the festival’s current official selections,...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options–not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and an archive of past round-ups here.

Goodbye First Love (Mia Hansen-Løve)

One of the best coming-of-age films of the decade, what begins as a fairly standard, but intimately captured story of young passion quickly blossoms to one of the most mature takes on such an event thanks to Mia Hansen-Løve’s remarkably natural style and a script that’s conscious of time and its effects on love. Praise must also go to Lola Creton and Sebastian Urzendowsky for seemingly organic chemistry from such material. – Jordan R.

Where to Stream: Mubi (free for 30 days)

The Man From London (Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky)

Upon the release of The Man from London, one might...

Looking back on this still-young century makes clear that 2007 was a major time for cinematic happenings — and, on the basis of this retrospective, one we’re not quite through with ten years on. One’s mind might quickly flash to a few big titles that will be represented, but it is the plurality of both festival and theatrical premieres that truly surprises: late works from old masters, debuts from filmmakers who’ve since become some of our most-respected artists, and mid-career turning points that didn’t necessarily announce themselves as such at the time. Join us as an assembled team, many of whom were coming of age that year, takes on their favorites.

Upon the release of The Man from London, one might have been hard-pressed to consider Béla Tarr and his co-director Ágnes Hranitzky genre filmmakers beyond the broad designation of “European art house cinema.” While still fitting snugly...

Last year, the BBC polled a bunch of critics to determine the 100 greatest American films of all time and only six films released after 2000 placed at all. This year, the BBC decided to determine the “new classics,” films from the past 16 years that will likely stand the test of time, so they polled critics from around the globe for their picks of the 100 greatest films of the 21st Century so far. David Lynch’s “Mulholland Dr.” tops the list, Wong Kar-Wai’s “In The Mood For Love” places second, and Paul Thomas Anderson and the Coen Brothers both have 2 films in the top 25. See the full results below.

Read More: The Best Movies of the 21st Century, According to IndieWire’s Film Critics

Though the list itself is fascinating, what’s also compelling are the statistics about the actual list. According to the the BBC, they polled 177 film critics from every continent except Antarctica.

In response to the outcome of a 2015 poll of the 100 Greatest American Films of All Time, BBC Culture recently threw critics a different question. Finding that last year’s results included only six films made since 2000, editors at the arts pages of the venerable broadcaster commissioned a new poll to determine the 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century. The results are expansive — and intriguing. To get to the consensus favorite, critics reached all the way back to 2001 and David Lynch’s sexy/creepy surrealist noir Mulholland Drive. That film was also on Sight & Sound‘s venerable once-a-decade ranking of the Top 100 Films of All Time which last was conducted in 2012. The three other movies on that list to hail from the new millennium also made the cut (see rundown below).

The British media today is roundly praising the choice of Mulholland, and the list itself whose aim, BBC Culture says,...

Ryan Lambie Aug 23, 2016

A critics' survey puts Mullholland Drive at the top of the list of the best films since 2000. Did yours make the cut?

Movie critics love Linklater, Studio Ghibli, the Coens and the surrealist stylings of David Lynch. At least, that's if a newly-published list of the 100 greatest films of the 21st century is anything to go by.

BBC Culture commissioned the poll, which took in responses from 177 film critics from all over the world. As a result, the top 100 includes an eclectic mix of the mainstream to independent movies, from dramas to sci-fi and off-beat comedies. Feew would be surprised to see things like Paolo Sorrentino's handsome Italian confection The Great Beauty propping up the lower end of the list, or that such acclaimed directors as Wes Anderson or the aforementioned Coens feature heavily.

What is pleasing to see, though, is how much good genre stuff has made the cut,...

Although we’re only about 16% into the 21st century thus far, the thousands of films that have been released have provided a worthy selection to reflect on the cinematic offerings as they stand. We’ve chimed in with our favorite animations, comedies, sci-fi films, and have more to come, and now a new critics’ poll that we’ve taken part in has tallied up the 21st century’s 100 greatest films overall.

The BBC has polled 177 critics from around the world, resulting in a variety of selections, led by David Lynch‘s Mulholland Drive. Also in the top 10 was Wong Kar-wai‘s In the Mood For Love and Terrence Malick‘s The Tree of Life, which made my personal ballot (seen at the bottom of the page).

In terms of the years with the most selections, 2012 and 2013 each had 9, while Wes Anderson, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Christopher Nolan, the Coens, Michael Haneke, and...

Béla Tarr © Zero Fiction FilmThe Hungarian auteur Béla Tarr bid a farewell to the active filmmaking at the age of 55 with the 146-minute long reckoning The Turin Horse (2011), consisting of 30 takes. His filmography counts nine features that elevated him into the pantheon of world cinema, earning Tarr epithets as legend, master, cult or visionary, among others. Tarr started shooting films as an amateur at the age of 16, and at 22 he got a shot to make a feature-length film, Family Nest (1979), at Béla Balázs Studio. The early stage of the filmmaker's career marked by Family Nest, The Outsider (1981) and The Prefab People (1982) is defined by social themes and documentary style akin to cinéma vérité. However, the core of his work features his singular aesthetics and bleak visions of the post-communist landscape, notably in Damnation (1988), the cinephiliac 432-minute long treat Sátántangó (1994), and Werckmeister Harmonies (2000). His distinctive style stems from black and white,...

Not yet thirty, the Hungarian director Béla Tarr was already making a name for himself both at home and abroad. During the late 1970s and early 1980s his early features earned prizes at film festivals west of the Iron Curtain; in Hungary, however, he remained a marginal figure as the regime did not take kindly to his films’ openly dissenting spirit. This rendered it increasingly difficult for him to make films in his native country and following the independently funded Damnation, he moved to West Berlin, only returning after the dissolution of the Eastern bloc. Upon his return, Tarr got to work on a project that had been gestating for a decade: the 432-minute Satantango, which was released in 1994 and became a cult sensation among cinephiles. The resulting recognition, together with the enthusiastic endorsement of his work by prominent peers such as Susan Sontag and Gus van Sant, turned the forever uncompromising,...

Special Mention: Werckmeister Harmonies

Directed by Bela Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky

Written by László Krasznahorkai and Bela Tarr

2000, Hungary / Italy / Germany

Genre: Emotional Horror

Bela Tarr is a filmmaker whose work is a highly acquired taste, but as a metaphysical horror story, Werckmeister Harmonies is an utter masterpiece that should appeal to most cinephiles. The film title refers to the 17th-century German organist-composer Andreas Werckmeister, esteemed for his influential structure and harmony of music. Harmonies is strung together like a magnificent symphony working on the viewer’s emotions over long stretches of time even when the viewer is unaware of what’s going on. Attempting to make sense of Tarr’s movies in strict narrative terms is not the best way to go about watching his films; but regardless if you come away understanding Harmonies or not, you won’t soon forget the film. Harmonies is a technical triumph, shot...

Above: The music video for "Suit & Tie".

Justin Timberlake's "Suit & Tie" video—which premiered online way back in February—is part retro menswear fantasy, part razzle-dazzle tech demo. Directed by David Fincher and photographed by Matthew Libatique, "Suit & Tie" was the first widely-seen work to have been shot on Red's Epic Monochrome, a sensor that only images in black & white.

The Monochrome isn't the first dedicated black & white sensor. Sweden's Ikonoskop introduced one—called, no joke, the A-Cam dll Panchromatic Carl Th. Dreyer Edition—last year. The Monochrome does, however, have the distinction of being 5K—about as high-end as you can get. It represents the cutting edge of anachronism.

Last year, the Academy Award for Best Picture went to a black & white film—The Artist. Additionally, at least five major 2012 arthouse releases were in black & white: Hong Sang-soo's The Day He Arrives, Guy Maddin’s Keyhole, Béla Tarr's The Turin Horse,...

The hardest part about choosing my favourite horror films of all time, is deciding what stays and what goes. I started with a list that featured over 200 titles, and I think it took me more time to pick and choose between them, than it did to actually sit down and write each capsule review. In order to hold on to my sanity, I decided to not include short films, documentaries, television mini-series and animated films. I also had to draw the line at some point in deciding if certain movies should be considered horror or not. In such cases where I was split down the middle in deciding, I let IMDb be the judge for me. And in some cases, I’ve included these titles as special mentions. Long story short, I can’t include every movie I like, and I have to draw the line somewhere. With that said,...

25: The Dark Knight Rises

Directed by Christopher Nolan

Screenplay by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan

2012, USA

The Dark Knight Rises feels as if it was made up of two equal halves, with the most critical moment of the film breaking the movie in half, almost literally. While the second half may have been a let down, the first half is incredibly ambitious to say the least. The opening sequence, a gravity-defying skyjacking, is a tour de force – wildly choreographed, vivid, visceral, and chock full of suspense. That aerial extraction alone is worth the price of admission. Production-wise, effects-wise, Nolan’s movie (with sequences shot with Imax cameras) is staggering. There was an opportunity here for Nolan to stretch the boundaries of what is possible in the genre, alas, the final act becomes a little too conventional – complete with a doomsday device and a ticking-clock countdown. But for every quibble,...

Not too long ago I asked the Sound On Sight staff to choose their ten favourite films of all time. The result led to mixed reactions (both by staff and readers), and some angry feedback. But how could any of us select only ten films from the thousands we’ve seen and walk away happy with the results. The fact is, of all the films which received a vote, it was those more widely available who made the cut. In other words, films such as The Godfather and Pulp Fiction stood a greater chance of receiving more ballots than say, obscure foreign gems.

My biggest disappointment with the picks, although only ten films were spotlighted, was the lack of votes for films directed by women. Could it be that none of us here at Sound On Sight valued great directors such as Claire Denis, Agnès Varda, Chantal Akerman or Lina Wertmüller?...

Operating somewhere between Bergman and Tarkovsky, Béla Tarr has been a wholly original inspiration for remodernist filmmakers for his spiritually exploratory form of cinema that revels in extremely long takes and the dire desolation of humanity itself (see his 7.5 hour epic Sátántangó). With his longtime editor, Ágnes Hranitzky, Tarr co-directed what may turn out to be his final feature, the brutal, coldly intense paragon of philosophic, but to-the-point filmmaking, The Turin Horse. Pushing his craft to the bleakest edge of mankind, Tarr masterfully paints the maddening monotony and utter futility of waking up day after day in austere black in white. This is dark stuff, people. Real dark. And sadly, Tarr is said to be leaving cinema (directing) on this high, bleak note.

The film begins with a spoken word preface that tells the tale of Friedrich Nietzsche, in 1889 in Turin, Italy, observing a cab driver whipping his stubborn horse.

2012 promises to be a fantastic year in cinema. Not too long ago, we posted a list of thirty of our most anticipated films of 2012, and so I decided I would keep track of my favourite films released each month. Here are my five favourite films released in February.

1- The Turin Horse

Directed by Bela Tarr

Bela Tarr is known as the Hungarian master of minimalist cinema and one of the greatest moviemakers of all time. At age 56, he sadly announced his retirement and The Turin Horse to be his final film. What better way to retire than with a starkly beautiful and exceedingly demanding meditation on the human condition. Here Tarr co-directs with his wife, Ágnes Hranitzky, and shares writing credit with novelist László Krasznahorkai, with whom he adapted one of his classic works, 1994′s Sátántangó, among others. The Turin Horse is an dubious story of Nietzsche, when in...

New York. The Last Modernist: The Complete Works of Béla Tarr opens today at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and runs through Wednesday, and R Emmet Sweeney has a wide-ranging talk with the retired filmmaker. "Whether or not The Turin Horse turns out to be Béla Tarr's last film, as the gnostic, gnomic Hungarian master has claimed it will be, the sense of finality is absolute," writes the L's Mark Asch. Aaron Cutler for Moving Image Source: "Primo Levi writes in Survival in Auschwitz that the lowest point a human can reach is when he or she is forced to act without choice, performing tasks purely for his or her own survival. Freedom of choice is what separates humans from other animals. The Tarr crew (which, beginning with him and partner, Ágnes Hranitzky, has gone on to include a regular screenwriter [László Krasznahorkai], composer [Mihály Vig], and cinematographer [Fred Kelemen]) began by comparing humans to each other,...

Almost exactly 11 months ago, we got the spare teaser for Bela Tarr‘s reportedly final film, The Turin Horse. Today, the full thing has arrived and don’t expect a quick-cutting, easily marketable piece. The auteur’s restrained style still reigns supreme with this trailer, showing off some gorgeous cinematography. The Hungarian filmmaker’s approach isn’t for everyone, but his latest looks to be continuing with his meditative, stark aesthetic. Check it out below.

Synopsis:

After witnessing a carriage driver whipping his horse, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche ran to the scene, threw his arms around the horse and then collapsed; he would spend the next, final ten years of his life in almost total silence. Focusing not on Nietzsche but on the driver and his family, Béla Tarr and his longtime collaborator Ágnes Hranitzky, working from a screenplay by Tarr and novelist László Krasznhorkai, create a mesmerizing, provocative meditation...

Looking back at 2011 on what films moved and impressed us it becomes more and more clear—to me at least—that watching old films is a crucial part of making new films meaningful. Thus, our end of year poll, now an annual tradition, which calls upon our writers to pick both a new and an old film: they were challenged to choose a new film they saw in 2011—in theaters or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they also saw in 2011 to create a unique double feature. Many contributors chose their favorites of 2011, some picked out-of-the-way gems, others made some pretty strange connections—and some frankly just want to create a kerfuffle. All the contributors were asked to write a paragraph explaining their 2011 fantasy double feature. What's more, each writer was given the option to list more pairings, with or without explanation, as further imaginative...

I always hear people say they don’t make movies like they used to.Well truthfully they don’t, but they still make great movies each and every year. 2011 was another successful year and while I only listed about 50 films below, I honestly could have stretched the list to at least 75 movies I’d feel comfortable recommending. If you can get away from all the Hollywood blockbusters and make room for more obscure genre films or art-house cinema, you will discover some truly great gems.

Best Movie Poster – Cabin In The Woods

Runner-up: Meek’s Cutoff

Best Sound Design

Tinker Tailor Solider Spy

Best Sound Editing

Transformers: Dark Of The Moon

Best Editing

Zachary Stuart-Pontier – Martha Marcy May Marlene

Best Art Direction

Carlos Bodelón – The Skin I Live In

Best Score

Chemical Brothers - Hanna

Best Soundtrack

Drive – various artists

Best Canadian Film

Hobo With A Shotgun

Directed by Jason Eisener...

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

We are told, to begin with, that Frederick Nietzsche once saw a horse being beaten in Turin and threw his arms around its neck, before collapsing to the ground. This (possibly apocryphal) tale is reasonably well-known; afterwards Nietzsche barely spoke again for the remaining ten years of his life. But what, it is reasonable to ask, happened to the horse?

Béla Tarr’s deceptively simple new movie – it is widely reported to be his last – begins with this question.

In Tarr’s fictionalised version, he gives the horse to an old man who lives in a farmhouse with his daughter. There is too little evidence of vegetation to call it a ‘farm.’ They live a simple existence: collecting water from the well, feeding the horse, eating a single boiled potato each (with their hands) every day. Outside, the wind howls constantly. Every time they leave the...