Reviews

Caustic humour and a web of catching hands try to stand our protagonist on his feet.

As much as this film is embedded in Middle Eastern, and particularly Israeli, concerns, I don't feel I brought much away from it on that front, however.

On one level, this is the strangest nature documentary you'll ever see. Foxes trot like pets behind our talismanic & troubled protagonist as he walks through panoramic grasslands towards sun-warmed mountains.

Only occasional observational flourishes separate it from a simple solid documentary – with dancing sand & shimmering ‘Laurence of Arabia’ arrivals interspersed amongst the long and ‘thoughtful’ takes.

It was interesting to hear in the commentary that the lead actor himself had been watched by four Stasi spies in his theatre company during his heyday as a stage actor - and to this day has only discovered the names of two of them - meaning some of his friends of that period could well have been inf...

Like the train that houses our narrator, this film takes a while to pick up speed, but once running free, it chatters and chunters along like a coal-fired dream.

Mutating plasticine matinee cliffhangers started to have a feeling of dead wood though - or at least, some form of woodworm eating through whatever Ark carries Miike through his own personal storms.

On the whole, this was a well-intentioned revamp/homage to a daft cartoon - but one that didn't need to be made.

[I]Doesn't always overturn as much earth as you'd like, and intermittently like watching radishes ripen, it still blows some plastic cobwebs off our easily-satiated view of food's role in our lives.[/I]

Not quite [i]A Matter of Life and Death[/i], but stands up well, and follows its own path as a wholesome-holy tale.