Tag: Midwinter

The Ice Tower
(La Tour de Glace)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 21 November 2025
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(La Tour de Glace)
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Director – Lucile Hadzihalilovic – 2025 – France, Germany, Italy – Cert. 15 – 117m

*****

Midwinter. A homeless girl stumbles onto a film set where a notoriously difficult actress is shooting an adaptation of The Snow Queen – out in UK cinemas on Friday, November 21st

Opening with microscopic images of of snowflakes and more abstract visuals of refracted light, this swiftly delivers a female voiceover (by Aurélia Petit from Saint Omer, Alice Diop, 2022; By the Grace of God, François Ozon, 2018; Happy End, Michael Haneke, 2017; Personal Shopper, Olivier Assayas, 2016; The Science of Sleep, Michel Gondry, 2006) in French with English subtitles for those of us in the UK, in which the word ‘neige’ (snow) is seemingly, endlessly repeated. Then images of a girl wandering snow covered mountainsides gives way to night time small town streets before Jeanne (newcomer Clara Pacini) is told off for arriving late at the supper table. “I was afraid you’d gone”, says one of the younger girls (Cassandre Louis Urbain).

At night, Jeanne surreptitiously reads a postcard from a friend picturing Alpenaille skating rink addressed to her at the Bon Secours (Good Rescue) Foster Home.

The little girl from earlier comes into her room complaining of a nightmare.… Read the rest

Tags abusive, actress, adaptation, August Diehl, Aurélia Petit, bauble, bedtime story, bereavement, bleeding, blue bead, break-in, Cassandre Louis Urbain, catering table, cave, Christmas tree, Clara Pacini, costumes, cut, danger, dead mother, drink, drugs, enchantment, fairytale, film set, film shoot, foster home, France, Gaspar Noé, Germany, handbag, head wound, Hitch, hitch-hike, homeless, hotel, hotel lobby, ice, ice rink, icicles, ID card, identity, imposter, Italy, kiss, labyrinth, ledge, lift, Lucile Hadzihalilovic, Marine Gesbert, Marion Cotillard, Midwinter, miniature set, mountain, mountainsides, mulled wine, necklace, nightmare, P.A., playing a role, postcard, precipice, predator, prism, projection box, rape, raven, realm, refracted light, rushes, screening room, skating rink, sleep, snow, snowflakes, stand-in, stranded, streets, succubus, supper table, sustenance, tantrum, The Ice Tower, The Snow Queen, torchlight, tower, Valentina Vezzoso, wandering, warehouse

Features Live Action Movies

The White Ribbon
(Das Weiße Band)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 13 June 2024
1 Comment on The White Ribbon
(Das Weiße Band)

Director – Michael Haneke – 2009 – Austria, Germany – Cert. 15 – 144m

*****

Reviewed for Third Way magazine to coincide with UK release date 13/11/2009.

Plays in Complicit: A Michael Haneke Retrospective, in UK cinemas from Friday, June 6th and on BFI Player from Thursday, September 11th 2025.

Haneke’s first period drama for the big screen is set in 1913-14 in a Northern German Protestant village where strange accidents befall the community. A doctor (Rainer Bock), out riding a regular route, is brought down and injured by a wire between two trees. The wife of a farm labourer is killed when factory floorboards give way beneath her. Children are abducted. A baby’s window is left open in Midwinter. A building burns. But who is – or are – responsible?

The film sets out its cast of characters in terms of the social hierarchy. The landowning classes are represented by the local Baron (Ulrich Tukur), his wife (Ursina Lardi) and their child; the professional classes by a widowed doctor, the midwife (Susanne Lothar) “who has made herself useful to him”, the Baron’s steward (Josef Bierbichler), the village Pastor (Burghart Klaussner) and the local teacher (Christian Friedel) – also as an old man the narrator (Ernst Jacobi) – who is courting the nanny of the Baron’s son; the working classes by numerous agricultural labourers who generally feature less prominently in the story.… Read the rest

Tags 1910s, 1913, 1914, abduction, accidents, agriculture, aired in public, Austria, baby. window left open, baron, black and white, bring down, building burns, Burghart Klaussner, cane, child abuse, children, chils abduction, Christian Friedel, closed door, community, Complicit: A Michael Haneke Retrospective, corporal punishment, corruption, crime, cruelty, death, declaration of war, deduction, dirty laundry, doctor, Ernst Jacobi, factory, factory floorboards, facts, fallen world, farm labourer, Germany, half-truths, hearsay, horse and cart, ineffectual, injury, insidious, Josef Bierbichler, killed, kitchen, labourers, landowning class, Leonie Benesch, malevolence, Michael Haneke, midwife, Midwinter, misinterpretation, mortality, motive, nanny, narrator, Northern Germany, organised religion, outsider, pastor, picnic, powerlessness, professional class, Protestant, punishment, pure intentions, puzzle, Rainer Bock, riddle, riding, social class, social hierarchy, steward, Susanne Lothar, teacher, town, tree, Ulrich Tukur, underpinning, Ursina Lardi, village, widowed, wife, wire, working class

Animation Features Live Action Movies

Hundreds
of Beavers

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 6 July 2024
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of Beavers
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Director – Mike Cheslik – 2022 – US – Cert. 12 – 108m

***1/2

A ruined drinks purveyor reduced to hunting beavers (played by actors in onesies) attempts to kill the amount required to buy a trader’s daughter’s hand in marriage – visually astonishing slapstick comedy is out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Tuesday, July 9th and on Blu-ray from Monday, August 5th

Opening with what is essentially a music video extolling the bibulous virtues of the booming, farm home of Jean Kayak’s Acme Applejack, this shows a simplistic caricature of a prosperous nineteenth century business when the wooden supports of one of Kayak’s gigantic barrels of beverage is nibbled by a beaver causing it to roll down a hill on which it’s situated into his house at the bottom of the hill, causing it to burn down his hillside apple orchard.

Leaving aside such questions as, why store the huge barrel on top of a hill above your house? – the answer, so it can roll down a hill, catch fire and burn down your orchard to get the plot going, proving less than satisfactory – this leaves the ruined Jean Kayak (co-writer Ryland Brickson Cole Tews) homeless in midwinter and forced to survive by hunting animals.… Read the rest

Tags animals, animation, apple orchard, applejack, barrels, beavers, black and white, business, Buster Keaton, caricature, CG, CG animation, daughter, daughter’s hand in marriage, Doug Mancheski, drink, gag, hill, homeless, hunting, isometric grid, Luis Rico, Midwinter, Mike Cheslik, music video, naturalism, naturalistic realism, nibble, nineteenth century, North American Indian, Olivia Graves, onesie, onesies, Peter Jackson, prosperity, purchase, question mark, rabbits, raccoons, romance, ruined, Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, selling, sex, silent movies, slapstick comedy, song and dance routine, Super Mario Bros, survive, trader, trapper, trick film, video effects, video games, visual gag, Wes Tank, winds, wooden supports