Beyond The Hills ★★★★½ & Spirit Of ’45 ★★★★ Best Films Of March

Back to our regular recap of what’s currently available in cinemas after a few weeks’ hiatus with a quick look at the best films released during that time. The month of March came unexpectedly full of interesting new releases that helped prevent or at least postpone the annual post-Oscar lull.

Our film of the month honour has to be shared by the latest offerings by two of favourite directors , Christian Mungiu and Ken Loach.

The Romanian auteur followed up his Palme D’Or Winner ‘4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” with another superbly observed drama, “Beyond The Hills” ★★★★½, where he reaffirmed his penchant for tales of “damsels in distress”; this time against the backdrop of religious intolerance. Two orphan girls who had somehow forged a strong bond during their difficult past are at the centre. One of them has chosen life in a convent and tries to convince the other to join her, so they can be together sheltered from the hostilities of the world. But her friend’s rebellious ways soon crashes with the strict discipline of the order. Far less frantic than its predecessor, Mungiu slowly builds this escalating conflict towards a dramatic climax, masterly depicting life in the convent as completely stuck in time, aside the reality surrounding it. A skilful use of cinematography widely contributes to that purpose. As the action happens in recent times, we can see the extreme contrast between the scenes where the nuns step into the real world and the ones indoors. Cosmina Stratan and Cristina Flutur, the film’s two brilliant young stars shared the best actress gong last year at Cannes.

The second standout film of the last month is Ken Loach heartfelt documentary ‘The Spirit Of ‘45” ★★★★, a superbly research look at the social and historical circumstances that after the second world war enabled an already organized population to build the welfare state as we know it, with public institutions as the NHS or the National Rail becoming the engines that pushed millions out of poverty and raised the bar of the rights to equality and dignity for all. Emotional interviews with surviving workers of the era; multiple activists and an impressive array of footage image, the film jumps all the way to the Thatcher years where the privatization process of everything public began. Loach’s ambitions behind this release, as revealed by himself during a Q&A launching session from the Ritzy, are to be a call to arms for all workers and militants of the very fragmented political left to join forces again and create a new strong political party that represents their interests, as Labour has long time lost his working class credentials, in the fight against the dismantling of the welfare state now speeded up by the shocking tactics used to “tackle” the financial crisis. You can find more information at the Left Unity website.

March also brought many other interesting films. And if we had to choose one more, our bronze would probably go to François Ozon playful farce ‘In The House’★★★★ , where the bright pupil of a bored high school literature teacher, gets him and his wife entangled on his twisted plans to intrude the privacy of a wealthier schoolmate’s family, narrating his advances step by step in the form of his writing homework. The French director heads a contingent of international auteurs grazing our screens with their latest work, featuring the satirical look at fame and celebrity obsession in Mateo Garrone’s ‘Reality’ ★★★½; Harmony Korine’s colourful take on the moral vacuum of the American dream as sold to the young post MTV generation, helped by a team of Disney starlettes and James Franco at his funniest in the role of a gangsta rapper in ‘Spring Breakers’ ★★★½ or divisive Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas with his visually astonishing and thematically challenging ‘Post Tenebras Lux’ ★★★. Also worth noticing is the attempt in both sides of the atlantic at recovering the much maligned subgenre of the erotic thriller; both Steven Sorderbergh in ‘Side Effects’ ★★★ and Danny Boyle in ‘Trance’ ★★½ seem to have flirted with that idea getting more or less uneven results in the making.

On a smaller scale, a number of indie gems from debuting or lesser known directors were part of the menu. From the moving portrait of the isolation of a father and daughter in charge of a gas station lost in the Scottish highlands, ‘Shell’★★★★, to the paranoia pervading the class system in modern Brazil as contemplated in ‘Neighbouring Sounds’ ★★★½; the frightening reflection on how the current corporative chain of command may be exploited to work against the most basic human dignity in ‘Compliance’★★★½ ; to the origins of the Northern Ireland’s punk movement in ‘Good Vibrations’ ★★★½ or the natural gaze at the disintegration of a Chilean family during a holiday trip in ‘Thursday Till Sunday’ ★★★ they all showed fresh talent is not in short supply.

Among the months re-releases The BFI honoured John Boorman with a fellowship and launched a retrospective of his work to celebrate it, the 70’s iconic thriller Point Black ★★★★½ was chosen for a extended run. Also Joseph Losey’s vindicated look at the British class divide in ‘The Servant’ ★★★★★ enjoyed a reissue.

The mainstream also offered some palatable surprises as ‘Oz, The Great and Powerful’ ★★½ Sam Raimi’s prequel of the beloved classic boasting a stellar cast, in which a first black and white part honoured the spirit of the original, but the second CGI infused one, held in the fairytale Kingdom, lacked of a big part of its magic; Magic was also the subject of ’The Incredible Burt Wonderstone’ ★★½ a run of the mill comedy about the rivalry between magicians, elevated by superior performances from a cast comprising Carrell; Buscemi; Arkin and a Jim Carrey that hasn’t been this funny for quite a long time. Good performances too by Nicole Kidman and Macy Gray couldn’t save Lee Daniels ‘The Paperboy’★★½ from being a mess. However, going to the lower ranks they would all pale in comparison to the very poor remake of horror cult film ‘Maniac’ ½ , worst film of the month. No contest.

And our Top 20 recommended films of the past few weeks are: