Following our top 50 films of 2019, we’re sharing personal top 10 lists from our contributors. Check out the latest below and see our complete year-end coverage here.
The mild, sedately humming anxiety of a decade’s end yields innumerable ideas, most pertinent to this list being the inclusion of festival premieres currently awaiting theatrical release. An exceptional desire to leave the 2010s runs concurrent with the realization that many fresh offerings are sans whatever spark gets something here, and if the brand-new film you saw this year exemplified much of what you’re seeking every time you even bother taking a chance, well, rules both real and imagined shall be foregone. That slack response is both the cinema and me, but I retain immense excitement for the 2020s–less about those I love continuing than one whose name currently means zero becoming a front-center fixture within ten years that will round...
The mild, sedately humming anxiety of a decade’s end yields innumerable ideas, most pertinent to this list being the inclusion of festival premieres currently awaiting theatrical release. An exceptional desire to leave the 2010s runs concurrent with the realization that many fresh offerings are sans whatever spark gets something here, and if the brand-new film you saw this year exemplified much of what you’re seeking every time you even bother taking a chance, well, rules both real and imagined shall be foregone. That slack response is both the cinema and me, but I retain immense excitement for the 2020s–less about those I love continuing than one whose name currently means zero becoming a front-center fixture within ten years that will round...
- 1/3/2020
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
A shot in the dark I expect to prove on-target: there will be no film (commercially released) this year at all like The Plagiarists, a lo-fi comedic whatsit from director Peter Parlow (who is 100% real; don’t look any further into the issue) that ponders questions of authenticity, intelligence, ambition, race, class, and male-female relationships without twisting itself into moralizing or incoherence. Nevermind that the film’s own trailer spins it to look like so, for I assume that’s mostly as a gag–it does match the movie’s prankish energy to a T.
If such a stew of intention and execution sounds even the least bit interesting, The Plagiarists is unlikely to disappoint. We’re thus happy to premiere a clip (courtesy distributor KimStim) wherein yet another important topic (hot guys) is debated in a manner entirely emblematic of the surrounding film: cringe-inducing in a way both recognizable...
If such a stew of intention and execution sounds even the least bit interesting, The Plagiarists is unlikely to disappoint. We’re thus happy to premiere a clip (courtesy distributor KimStim) wherein yet another important topic (hot guys) is debated in a manner entirely emblematic of the surrounding film: cringe-inducing in a way both recognizable...
- 6/20/2019
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
An official Selection of the Berlin International Film Festival and directed by experimental filmmaker Peter Parlow, The Plagiarists opens on June 28. Anna (Lucy Kaminsky) and Tyler(Eamon Monaghan), a young, and educated white couple, become stranded by a snowstorm and agree to spend the night with a black samaritan, Clip (Michael “Clip” Payne) who offers to help them. What follows is a personal journey that questions the binary between authenticity and plagiarism and shot on a handheld camera to create an authentic lo-fi experience.
Our review postulates, “Were The Plagiarists merely this observation of liberal minds in duress it would have made for a more than enjoyable watch but with credit to Kienitz and Wilkins’ terrific script, it becomes more nuanced and haunting only after that first act. Indeed, the film’s title alludes to an encompassing obsession with authenticity–as first seen in Anna’s self doubt regarding her...
Our review postulates, “Were The Plagiarists merely this observation of liberal minds in duress it would have made for a more than enjoyable watch but with credit to Kienitz and Wilkins’ terrific script, it becomes more nuanced and haunting only after that first act. Indeed, the film’s title alludes to an encompassing obsession with authenticity–as first seen in Anna’s self doubt regarding her...
- 6/17/2019
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
SauvageNew Directors/New Films (Nd/Nf) returns to the Film Society of Lincoln Center and Museum of Modern Art for its 48th edition, and once again proves that for New Yorkers it’s the key festival to discover an exciting new crop of young filmmakers, most of them presenting debut or second features. The program includes some movies previously covered on Notebook: Sofia Bohdanowicz’s Ms Slavic 7, Peter Parlow’s The Plagiarists, and Mark Jenkin’s Bait (Berlin Film Festival premieres), Andrea Bussmann’s Fausto (Locarno Festival), Phuttiphong Aroonpheng’s Manta Ray (Venice), Ognjen Glavonić’s The Load (Directors' Fortnight), and Eva Torbisch’s All Is Good (Locarno). While diverse, overall, this year’s slate is thoughtful and yet agile, with films that invite both risk and ambiguity.Not since Agnès Varda’s Vagabond (1985) has there been a film in which the main character drifts into willful dissolution with as...
- 3/26/2019
- MUBI
Photo courtesy of Pablo Ocqueteau and Berlinale 2019Below you will find our favorite films of the 69th Berlin International Film Festival, as well as an index of our coverage.AwardsFAVORITE Filmsdaniel KASMANHeimat Is a Space in Time (Thomas Heise)Just Don’t Think I’ll Scream (Frank Beauvais)Fourteen (Dan Sallitt)I Was at Home, But... (Angela Schanelec)Synonyms (Nadav Lapid)The Plagiarists (Peter Parlow)Delphine and Carole (Callisto McNulty)Holy Beasts Years of Construction (Heinz Emigholz)Bait (Mark Jenkins)Giovanni Marchini CAMIASynonyms (Nadav Lapid)I Was at Home, But... (Angela Schanelec)The Plagiarists (Peter Parlow)Just Don't Think I'll Scream (Frank Beauvais)The Blue Flower of Novalis (Gustavo Vinagre & Rodrigo Carneiro)The Portuguese Woman (Rita Azevedo Gomes)The Last to See Them (Sara Summa)Earth (Nikolaus Geyrhalter)Heimat Is a Space in Time (Thomas Heise)Ms Slavic 7 (Sofia Bohdanowicz & Deragh Campbell)Jordan Cronki Was at Home, But... (Angela Schanelec...
- 2/28/2019
- MUBI
Perhaps the last thing one would expect, in a film that, among other things, playfully weighs the artistic expressiveness of cinema against that of literature, is for the film to come down pretty definitively on the side of the written word. But that is just one of the mischiefs that Peter Parlow’s 76-minute lower-than-lo-fi “The Plagiarists” works on us — and with such conviction that even the convention of attributing the film solely to its director feels wrong here. Filmmaker and artist James N. Kienitz Wilkins vies for authorship too, credited as co-writer of the springy, self-aware script (with Robin Schavoir), as well as Dp, producer, and editor. Wilfully student-video amateurish in form, but impishly sophisticated in content, a gleeful cultural curiosity fairly crackles off “The Plagiarists,” and it is highly contagious.
The image is square, and striped with the low-definition buzz of old Betamax, the premise so blandly rote...
The image is square, and striped with the low-definition buzz of old Betamax, the premise so blandly rote...
- 2/13/2019
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
In the new feature film The Plagiarists a young, white, highly educated couple on their way home from a weekend getaway have car trouble and find themselves stranded on the side of a snowy, secluded road. They are soon discovered by an enigmatic and charming stranger, who is black. He offers to call a friend who can fix their car. He then invites them to stay the night.
The Plagiarists was directed by Peter Parlow and was co-written by James N. Kienitz Wilkins and Robin Schavoir, who each seem to have taken great pleasure in concocting this slippery set-up. The opening of their film suggests a horror movie but it soon becomes apparent that Parlow is more interested in putting their characters’ progressive, middle-class sensibilities under the microscope, at least for the first while. The lovers are named Anna (Lucy Kaminsky) and Tyler (Eamon Monaghan)–a novelist without a novel...
The Plagiarists was directed by Peter Parlow and was co-written by James N. Kienitz Wilkins and Robin Schavoir, who each seem to have taken great pleasure in concocting this slippery set-up. The opening of their film suggests a horror movie but it soon becomes apparent that Parlow is more interested in putting their characters’ progressive, middle-class sensibilities under the microscope, at least for the first while. The lovers are named Anna (Lucy Kaminsky) and Tyler (Eamon Monaghan)–a novelist without a novel...
- 2/12/2019
- by Rory O'Connor
- The Film Stage
The PlagiaristsOne of the things I really appreciate about the Berlinale is their sense of what is important in American cinema, a welcome curatorial perspective that’s usually pretty darn far away from Sundance, which since our cinema doesn't really have art movies, epitomizes the popular understanding of the alternative to the mainstream, namely “independents.” As could be seen in Dan Sallitt’s excellent Fourteen, the indies in the Forum section of Berlin are really working a different tack than their higher-budgeted, less cinematically bold and generally more comforting brethren that premiered in Park City last month. Yet even Sallitt’s film seems somewhat conventional when compared to The Plagiarists, an intentionally discomforting yet frequently highly comic micro-indie directed by one Peter Parlow. It was shot and edited by James N. Kienitz Wilkins, who also co-wrote this biting and destabilizing comic drama with Robin Schavoir. Wilkins has been making a...
- 2/11/2019
- MUBI
We've seen this before, in almost every particular. It's a cold winter day. A car breaks down on the side of the road. A mysterious stranger arrives to help the stranded passengers. The tale could branch off in any number of directions, though the two most likely, given how these film festival dime-a-dozeners often go, would be "unlikely friendship" or "bloody murder." It's therefore to the credit of director Peter Parlow and co-screenwriters James N. Kienitz Wilkins and Robin Schavoir that their lo-fi indie The Plagiarists maintains a certain intrigue-laden obscurity throughout.
To start, is ...
To start, is ...
- 2/10/2019
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
We've seen this before, in almost every particular. It's a cold winter day. A car breaks down on the side of the road. A mysterious stranger arrives to help the stranded passengers. The tale could branch off in any number of directions, though the two most likely, given how these film festival dime-a-dozeners often go, would be "unlikely friendship" or "bloody murder." It's therefore to the credit of director Peter Parlow and co-screenwriters James N. Kienitz Wilkins and Robin Schavoir that their lo-fi indie The Plagiarists maintains a certain intrigue-laden obscurity throughout.
To start, is ...
To start, is ...
- 2/10/2019
- The Hollywood Reporter - Film + TV
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![Super 8 (2011)](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMjIzNjEyMzcwOF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMTkyMjE0NQ@@._V1_QL75_UX140_CR0,0,140,207_.jpg)
Selection includes 39 titles and 31 world premieres.
This year’s Forum programme at the Berlin Film Festival (Feb 7-17) will feature 39 films, including 31 world premieres.
The Forum brings together challenging and thought-provoking filmmaking that brings together film with visual art, theatre and literature.
Highlights include a Super 8 silent vision of Elfriede Jelinek’s ghost novel ’Die Kinder der Toten’ in a film of the same name by Kelly Copper and Pavol Liska, Ghassan Salhab’s “essayistic collage” An Open Rose for which the filmmaker has used the letters from prison by Polish Marxist Rosa Luxembourg, and the documentary Landless, the...
This year’s Forum programme at the Berlin Film Festival (Feb 7-17) will feature 39 films, including 31 world premieres.
The Forum brings together challenging and thought-provoking filmmaking that brings together film with visual art, theatre and literature.
Highlights include a Super 8 silent vision of Elfriede Jelinek’s ghost novel ’Die Kinder der Toten’ in a film of the same name by Kelly Copper and Pavol Liska, Ghassan Salhab’s “essayistic collage” An Open Rose for which the filmmaker has used the letters from prison by Polish Marxist Rosa Luxembourg, and the documentary Landless, the...
- 1/18/2019
- by Louise Tutt
- ScreenDaily
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