REVERSE SHOT CHOOSES IN JACKSON HEIGHTS AS THE FILM OF 2015

Reverse Shot has chimed in with its top ten list for 2015, and a documentary has come out on top. Frederick Wiseman's universally-acclaimed In Jackson Heights is the favourite film among critics polled, on a strong and diverse list. Many of the films below are among my favourites from last year too, and even the year before! Check it out:

Reverse Shot's Film of 2015
1. In Jackson Heights
2. Carol
3. The Assassin
4. Clouds of Sils Maria
5. Timbuktu
6. Hard to Be a God
7. Arabian Nights: Volume 1 - The Restless One / Arabian Nights: Volume 2 - The Desolate One / Arabian Nights: Volume 3 - The Enchanted One
8. The Look of Silence
9. Eastern Boys
10. Horse Money

LFF REVIEW - EXOTICA, EROTICA, ETC. (EVANGELIA KRANIOTI)

An invisible protagonist, neither seen nor heard but felt throughout, haunts Exotica, Erotica, etc. It is the filmmaker herself, Evangelia Kranioti, conducting a study of solitude, an anthropological examination of the ways of seamen and their loves and lovers in which Kranioti's active participation begets a palpable depth of emotion. She, a photographer and this film's sole crew member aboard these ships, captures images of bracing beauty and power, yet it is their precise significance in this precise context that imbues them with Exotica, Erotica, etc.'s essential emotive strength. The expression of the subjectivity of her experience, and of those whom she features, is pure in its delivery and intense in its recollection; her editorial fragmentation produces a melancholy disconnect, layered elements almost like early Frederick Wiseman, like waves of memories and messages from the past. There's a bruised physicality to Kranioti's images, a sense of physicality in them, a textural richness that is appealingly matched by the erotic remembrances of Chilean prostitute Sandy, whose segments provide Exotica, Erotica, etc. with a salient perspective that helps to characterise the film, even if these lack the gravity that the more abstract segments themselves provide. But all parts of this film combine to form a sumptuous, seductive snapshot of a way of life that is perceptibly disappearing, regressing into remoteness, briefly brought back to life in this film - a whole life, many whole lives, in a mere few minutes.