The more “international” body of tastemaker critics have anointed Todd Haynes’ Carol, Hou Hsaio-Hsien’s The Assassin, George Miller’s Mad Max, Sean Baker’s Tangerine and Bruno Dumont’s Li’l Quinquin as the better film items for 2015 and top vote getters with the most noms for 2016 Ics Awards. Winners of the 13th Ics Awards will be announced on February 21, 2016. Here are the noms and all the categories.
Picture
• 45 Years
• Arabian Nights
• The Assassin
• Carol
• Clouds of Sils Maria
• The Duke of Burgundy
• Inside Out
• Li’l Quinquin
• Mad Max: Fury Road
• A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
• Tangerine
Director
• Sean Baker – Tangerine
• Bruno Dumont – Li’l Quinquin
• Todd Haynes – Carol
• Hou Hsaio-Hsien – The Assassin
• George Miller – Mad Max: Fury Road
Film Not In The English Language
• Amour Fou
• Arabian Nights
• The Assassin
• Hard to Be a God
• Jauja
• La Sapienza
• Li’l Quinquin
• Phoenix
• A...
Picture
• 45 Years
• Arabian Nights
• The Assassin
• Carol
• Clouds of Sils Maria
• The Duke of Burgundy
• Inside Out
• Li’l Quinquin
• Mad Max: Fury Road
• A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
• Tangerine
Director
• Sean Baker – Tangerine
• Bruno Dumont – Li’l Quinquin
• Todd Haynes – Carol
• Hou Hsaio-Hsien – The Assassin
• George Miller – Mad Max: Fury Road
Film Not In The English Language
• Amour Fou
• Arabian Nights
• The Assassin
• Hard to Be a God
• Jauja
• La Sapienza
• Li’l Quinquin
• Phoenix
• A...
- 2/8/2016
- by Eric Lavallee
- IONCINEMA.com
★★★★☆ Aleksei German's epic Dark Ages sci-fi Hard to Be a God (2013) took over a decade to make its way onto DVD and Blu-ray this week. Shot on-and-off for more than six years, the revered filmmaker regretfully passed away before the lengthy edit could be completed, but thanks to his wife and co-writer, Svetlana Karmalita, and son Aleksei German Jr, audiences now have the opportunity to wallow in his final picture in all its repugnant glory. For Hard to Be a God is a three-hour wade through shit, mud and blood - in the best possible way. Plot is of secondary importance to German, and the majority of its transmission to the viewer comes in croaking introduction laid over monochrome images of a medieval township.
Snow gently drifts down as a static and beautifully composed establishing shot sets the scene, but it this is the last moment of such serenity. Marauding...
Snow gently drifts down as a static and beautifully composed establishing shot sets the scene, but it this is the last moment of such serenity. Marauding...
- 9/13/2015
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
As far as the immersive powers of cinematic spectacle go, it’s doubtful any will come close to rivaling the achievements of Russian auteur Aleksei German, a figure many have hailed as the post important director in his country following Tarkovsky. And yet, he is still largely unknown, at least in comparison to the worldly renown of his comparable peers. Over his five decades as a filmmaker, German only produced five films, a perfectionist whose later works far outshine the fastidiousness displayed in the comparable methods of someone like Stanley Kubrick.
Obtaining a serviceable print of his titles often proves difficult (though the tenacious may yet unearth bootleg copies here and there), which hasn’t helped audiences acclimate to his idiosyncratic style. Passing away while working on the finishing touches of his last film, Hard to Be a God, a sci-fi epic taken as representative of the director’s work,...
Obtaining a serviceable print of his titles often proves difficult (though the tenacious may yet unearth bootleg copies here and there), which hasn’t helped audiences acclimate to his idiosyncratic style. Passing away while working on the finishing touches of his last film, Hard to Be a God, a sci-fi epic taken as representative of the director’s work,...
- 6/30/2015
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Hard to Be a God
Written by Aleksey German and Svetlana Karmalita from the novel by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Directed by Aleksey German
Russia, 2013
“The scholar is not the enemy. The enemy is the scholar who doubts.”
Aleksey German’s Hard to Be a God is in the running for the most disgusting films I’ve ever seen. The film produces an enormously affecting, intricately detailed, and thoroughly realized visceral nightmare, one that never wanes or becomes numbing over its three-hour runtime but instead accumulates into an at-times overwhelming journey into a world run by a phantom regime of hedonist ignorance and reactionary cruelty. Built upon a twist on science fiction that probes fascinating questions about politics, morality, and the myth of the arc of human progress, Hard to Be a God uses this genre framework as a platform to manifest a carnival of depravity and filth. Decades in the making,...
Written by Aleksey German and Svetlana Karmalita from the novel by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Directed by Aleksey German
Russia, 2013
“The scholar is not the enemy. The enemy is the scholar who doubts.”
Aleksey German’s Hard to Be a God is in the running for the most disgusting films I’ve ever seen. The film produces an enormously affecting, intricately detailed, and thoroughly realized visceral nightmare, one that never wanes or becomes numbing over its three-hour runtime but instead accumulates into an at-times overwhelming journey into a world run by a phantom regime of hedonist ignorance and reactionary cruelty. Built upon a twist on science fiction that probes fascinating questions about politics, morality, and the myth of the arc of human progress, Hard to Be a God uses this genre framework as a platform to manifest a carnival of depravity and filth. Decades in the making,...
- 1/28/2015
- by Landon Palmer
- SoundOnSight
Stars: Vilma Kutaviciute, Aleksey Mantsygin, Alexander Novyn | Written by Alexander Mindadze, Yuliya Pankasyanova | Directed by Aleksey Uchitel
Review by Scott Clark of Cinehouse
Russia circa 1999 (perhaps even now?) looks like a dangerous place, a place where men are men and looking at someone the wrong way can result in carnage. At least in Aleksey Uchital’s Break Loose, a high-testosterone tragedy that documents the concepts of family, poverty, and cyclical violence around a Russian Ghetto at the turn of the millennium.
The first and most prominent thing about Uchital’s delve into the grungy atmosphere of Russian casuals is the inherent violence of that circle. Violence is rife and actually egged on in both the professional and non-professional lives of this band of brothers. With a keen sense of the injustice of fighting, Uchital professes at first what could be a romancing, but is ultimately a condemning of Clockwork Orange gang violence.
Review by Scott Clark of Cinehouse
Russia circa 1999 (perhaps even now?) looks like a dangerous place, a place where men are men and looking at someone the wrong way can result in carnage. At least in Aleksey Uchital’s Break Loose, a high-testosterone tragedy that documents the concepts of family, poverty, and cyclical violence around a Russian Ghetto at the turn of the millennium.
The first and most prominent thing about Uchital’s delve into the grungy atmosphere of Russian casuals is the inherent violence of that circle. Violence is rife and actually egged on in both the professional and non-professional lives of this band of brothers. With a keen sense of the injustice of fighting, Uchital professes at first what could be a romancing, but is ultimately a condemning of Clockwork Orange gang violence.
- 10/17/2013
- by Guest
- Nerdly
Loose Caboose: Uchitel’s Latest Clings to Convention
Russian director Alexey Uchitel returns with Break Loose, a romantically tinged period piece crime drama that’s nicely packaged, but for a film about breaking free from ties that bind, it ironically adheres to formula. Set during the anxiety ridden days leading up to the new millennium, a close knit group of police officers are oblivious to anything outside a current conflict with a local mob boss. While all elements are seemingly in place for a boisterous good vs. bad guys actioner laced with peculiar political shifts taking place in the background, Uchitel’s exercise is akin to the watered down stakes of Gangster Squad sans the hysterically overwrought performances.
It’s 1999, right on the cusp of a new millennium, and a group of four friends that served a tour together in the army all currently work together for Omon, a Russian...
Russian director Alexey Uchitel returns with Break Loose, a romantically tinged period piece crime drama that’s nicely packaged, but for a film about breaking free from ties that bind, it ironically adheres to formula. Set during the anxiety ridden days leading up to the new millennium, a close knit group of police officers are oblivious to anything outside a current conflict with a local mob boss. While all elements are seemingly in place for a boisterous good vs. bad guys actioner laced with peculiar political shifts taking place in the background, Uchitel’s exercise is akin to the watered down stakes of Gangster Squad sans the hysterically overwrought performances.
It’s 1999, right on the cusp of a new millennium, and a group of four friends that served a tour together in the army all currently work together for Omon, a Russian...
- 9/8/2013
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Tipping on the edge of the tracks and threatening to fall under the weight of its hysterics, this film conveys the dark humor and chaos that was post-war Russia. Aleksei Uchitel.s steam punk masterpiece copped a 2011 nomination for a Golden Globe Best Foreign Language Film Award. It also railroaded the competition for three Russian Nika wins including Vladimir Mashkov for Best Actor, Yuri Klimenko for Best Cinematographer and Best Film. Together with another four nominations, .Kray. steamed off with nominations in half of all of the Nika categories in 2011. Not bad for a film with a half dozen actors and three old locomotives. Ok, they are great locomotives. So any of you steam engine aficionados...
- 11/21/2011
- by Ron Wilkinson
- Monsters and Critics
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