Twitch. Recently.

Twitch is always essential reading, but in just the past few days, they've had one helluva run. Besides the trailers and the posters and such that you'll always find there before anywhere else, a remarkable string of reviews warrants sampling in a separate entry.

"It is incomprehensible that [Edgar] Reitz's work has been ignored in this country for over 20 years. If the 52+ hour saga proved daunting to critics, it will not seem long enough to viewers watching it at home," writes Jon Pais, reviewing Heimat: Eine deutsche Chronik. "Now that the trilogy is at last being released on DVD in the UK, France, Belgium, Germany and the US, film lovers will be able to judge for themselves whether critics have been fair in burying in silence a filmmaker as worthy of our esteem as are Wenders, Fassbinder and Herzog."

Todd, in the meantime, perhaps in preparation for his trip to Moscow, has really been cutting loose. For example: "It is apparently a rather good year for Russian war films. While the stellar 9th Company stands as a timely answer to Platoon, Bastards turned heads with its story of criminal youth forcibly conscripted for suicide missions, and now Transit has arrived with its sprawling tale of life on a remote air base."

Related: "With our own Afghan conflict stretching on interminably with no appreciable gains made, seemingly daily reports of new clashes with Taliban forces that just refuse to fade away, and no end in sight, big budget Russian blockbuster 9th Company is a remarkably timely piece of film." And: "Much like Refn's Pusher films or Kitano's Sonatine, Bimmer is a crime film far more concerned with the criminals and criminal culture than it is with the crimes themselves."

More from Todd:

• This: Coisa Ruim: "Beautifully shot and augmented with a minimalist score that evokes the work of Daniel Lanois, the film is a subtle, slow burning tale of a haunting in rural Portugal."

• And this: "Hardly known outside of his own region [Lorenzo] Bianchini is beginning to turn heads with a pair of ultra low budget features now being made available on English subtitled DVD by Centro Espressioni Cinematographiche, a new imprint established by folk associated with the Udine Far East Film Festival specifically to make Bianchini’s films available."

• And this on Duck Season: "[W]hile it could stand to have a little more zip the characters ring remarkably true."

• And a recommendation for Small Gauge Trauma.

Posted by dwhudson at August 21, 2006 12:00 PM