The Painter and The
Thief
Norwegian filmmaker
Benjamin Ree had long been fascinated by art thieves who
commit high-stakes crimes with a delicate touch when a
chance Google search in 2015 uncovered a botched heist in
Oslo. The Czech hyperrealist painter Barbora Kysilkova had
just received a distressing phone call from the owner of the
Galleri Nobel. Two of her large canvases had been stolen in
broad daylight, but the theft had been recorded by security
cameras. The perpetrators were soon tracked down and
arrested, leaving Kysilkova more confused than angry. “I
am not a known artist that is worth it to break in, break a
Posted on Wednesday, January 6th, 2021 by Hoai-Tran Bui
There’s the temptation every year to say, “This was a bad year for movies,” which is rarely ever the case. But 2020 certainly flirted with that idea, with the pandemic pushing many studio films to next year and making all other films nearly impossible to watch without a press badge at a film festival. More than anything, it was a weird year for movies, a year where entertainment became a safe haven from the horrors of reality and where we all flocked to films that either comforted us, or numbed us, or dared us to find the awful parallels in our entertainment and the real world.
Last modified on Wed 30 Dec 2020 03.21 EST
Collective
“Plays like a thriller” can be trite when describing a documentary but in the case of Collective, Alexander Nanau’s watchful, truly galling film on the corruption-addled aftermath of a 2015 club fire in Bucharest, the description holds water. The two-hour film plays like the best of journalism features, from All the President’s Men to Spotlight, as a team of sports journalists – seemingly the only ones asking the government difficult questions – burrow into layer upon jaw-dropping layer of grift in the Romanian healthcare system. Twenty-seven people died in the fire at the nightclub Colectiv, but another 37 died from treatable wounds in the following weeks, many from bacterial infections caught in the country’s bribery-laced hospitals. Nanau’s hawk-eyed camera watches from car stakeouts, press conference audiences, and meeting rooms, as journalists expose a system mottled with rot. How to uncover truth the powerf
The 10 Best International Movies of 2020
By Paste Movies | December 28, 2020 | 1:27pm
The Golden Globes’ racist disqualification of filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung’s American-made
Minari from its Best Picture categories will not be the last debacle from the embarrassing awards body one that shouldn’t be given the time of day by anyone that enjoys movies nor screen time on a major network but it does at least provide a jumping-off point to highlight the best movies of the year that were
actually produced outside the United States.
Though, of course, all genres were well-represented this year in the global film industry, documentaries from around the world should be given special consideration. After all, in a year when virtual cinemas, streamers and online festivals overran traditional theatrical moviegoing, docs saw increases in audience and distribution possibilities. You might note that our larger Best Documentaries list features more non-U.S. entries than any other
It wasn t so bad in the end, at least where cinema was concerned. Even with all those tentpole releases pushed back to next year, 2020 was so thronged with quality movie titles that narrowing down this selection of the best titles was quite a task.
With theatrical releases few and far between, we found ourselves excellently served by platforms such as Curzon, IFI@Home, and Netflix (which emerged as a feature-film market leader). When cinemas could be returned to in safety, there were still home-grown wonders and big-studio productions worth venturing out for, with the odd bloated anti-climax thrown in for good measure (Christopher Nolan s Tenet was hugely disappointing).