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25
Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry
“He’s not the kind of person you are familiar with in China art circles,” says Chen Danqing, a painter and art critic in Beijing. “You know, we all graduated from the Central Academy,” he goes on, cigarette in hand, “Here we call it being an artist ‘within the system.’ But he’s not. He’s a just himself.”
Chen’s version of Ai Weiwei is one of many assembled in Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry. They differ in what people know about the activist and artist Ai, what they guess about his intentions, what they think about his art, even hinting at what stakes they might have in that art or the challenges it poses. These challenges are both broad and particular in Ai’s work, as he has repeatedly targeted official Chinese political and legal structures, using Twitter and Facebook and his extended middle finger.
Such challenges have made Ai a target himself, inspiring surveillance by the government and also hope that China might change. Ai gained international fame when he collaborated with Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron in designing the Birds Nest Stadium for the 2008 Olympics. That fame took something of a turn—though it was still most potent outside of China—when Ai went on to take a photo of the stadium from a distance, his middle finger extended in the foreground. It’s not that he’s against the Olympics, he explains here, but “I am not for a kind of Olympics that forces immigrants out of the city, to tell the ordinary citizens they should not participate but just make a fake smile for the foreigners, and become purely Party’s propaganda. Which is very scary.” 
Cynthia Fuchs
The Kid with a Bike
Jean-Pierre, Luc Dardennes
Cecile de France, Thomas Doret, Jeremie Renier, Fabrizio Rongione, Egon Di Mateo
24
The Kid with a Bike
This quiet little tour de force about a troubled young boy has bewitched the critics at this year’s Festival. It is one of those movies one overhears talk of while in line for a screening, the critic using words like “classic” and “masterpiece” and “genius”. Recalling such top-shelfers as 400 Blows with its unflinching but nuanced treatment of childhood psychology and emotional distress, The Kid With a Bike portrays a world that feels eminently lived in, and true to the messiness of experience.
As the young boy (Thomas Doret) struggles with an absent and immature father (Jeremie Renier), a missing beloved bicycle, a gang of local toughs that wants him to join, and the disruption of a new foster mother (Cecile de France, in a pitch-perfect turn), we struggle with a gathering concern for his well-being. It is a minimalist, impressively naturalistic picture in almost every way. A small movie, yes, but it has a deep and powerful impact. Everything here is in perfect balance, like a superior instrument. Or, perhaps, a weapon. Stuart Henderson
Safety Not Guaranteed
Colin Trevorrow
Aubrey Plaza, Mark Duplass, Jake Johnson, Karan Soni, Jeff Garlin
23
Safety Not Guaranteed
Sadly falling prey to the sheer existence of more commercial love stories and louder time travel tales, Safety Not Guaranteed slipped under a lot of radars, but it’s definitely deserving of a viewing by any legitimate cinephile. Combining the narrative intimacy of Primer with the life-affirming romance of Silver Linings Playbook, Colin Trevorrow’s quiet achievement is emotionally believable and filled with characters who could be plucked from your workspace, if not from the audience. Not only that, but in a time when uncertainty has gripped the planet in a way never before seen, it offers more than the slightest glimmer of hope and is seeded with optimism, something rarely seen in the time travel travel subgenre that is so often clouded with despair, desperation and hopelessness. Kevin Brettauer
Celeste and Jesse Forever
Lee Toland Krieger
Rashida Jones, Andy Samberg, Chris Messina, Ari Graynor, Will McCormack, Emma Roberts, Elijah Wood
22
Celeste and Jesse Forever
Rashida Jones has played a lot of put-upon love interests in her career. She was the unfairly-suffering fianceé in I Love You, Man, it’s how her character started on Parks and Recreation, and it even happened in Our Idiot Brother, where she was playing a straight-laced lesbian. So when Jones got the opportunity to write her own romantic comedy, she swerved. Celeste & Jesse Forever begins with the titular couple (Jones and a low-key Andy Samberg), in the middle of divorce proceedings, but attempting to remain best friends. Celeste kept the house, but Jesse still lives on the property, in the garage. They hang out as a couple even though they’re not a couple anymore, and generally annoy everyone around them with their bizarre “we’re divorcing but we still wanna be best friends!” shtick.
At first it looks like Celeste, the successful career woman, just can’t bring herself to kick man child Jesse to the curb. But then Jesse gets into a serious new relationship and Celeste finds out that she’s the one who can’t deal with it. This is a comedy that isn’t afraid to get messy, and Jones and Samberg dig deep to unearth the serious emotional scars that are left when a long-term relationship disintegrates. Celeste & Jesse Forever is a better showcase for Samberg than any Adam Sandler-backed movie, and Jones is in top form here both as an actor and a writer. Chris Conaton
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Muhammet Uzuner, Yilmaz Erdogan, Taner Birsel, Ahmet Mümtaz Taylan, Firat Tanis, Ercan Kesal
21
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia begins with a shot pushing slowly into a window. Your view is obscured, though you can make out a TV screen, blue and bright, and three figures, blurred. As the focus clears, you see three men, hunched over a meal and laughing. drinking and laughing. One of them rises and comes to the window, his face filling your frame, under sounds of traffic, a thunder crack, a dog barking. The scene cuts outside, a long shot of the garage where the men work, framed by huge truck tires and a cloudy sky, a dog tied outside. A truck passes, a black shadow that wipes the screen.
You never see what happens, how Kenan kills his companion. Instead, you see distant cars at night, winding along hilly roads. They stop, men exit, they look for the spot where the body is supposed to be, but isn’t. The cops—along with the prosecutor, the doctor, and the two men who’ve buried their friend—resume their search. And as they drive, they talk about yoghurt: the camera takes up another slow push in, past Commisar Naci (Yilmaz Erdogan) and the driver Ali (Ahmet Mümtaz Taylan), whom everyone calls “Arab”—to their suspect in the back seat, crammed between Cemal and Nusret. By the time the shot becomes a close-up of Kenan’s face, you see that he is, in fact, nodding off, exhausted as they make their way through the dark.
Over the next two and a half hours, the men continue to talk, about the case, their jobs, their expectations. Naci has an ailing child, and his wife presses him on the phone to be sure to get medication from the doctor. The Arab extols the pleasures of hunting (“I love it here,” he says, “I load up my pockets with bullets, 40 or 50, and I come here and fire away, it’s a way of letting off steam”), then explains to the doctor the other uses of his weapon. Describing the basic brutality of his work and the bad men he sees every day, he says. “If it comes to it, you have to be ruthless and shoot them right between the eyes. That’s how it is around here, doctor, you’re kind of forced to take matters into your own hands.” As he speaks, the camera pans slowly, revealing grass that waves in the wind, eerily lit by their parked cars’ headlights, Cemal’s still profile, weary or resistant, and the Arab’s eye, wet, though it’s unclear whether from wind or torment. Cynthia Fuchs
