‘Introduction’ Review: A Narrow but Deceptively Deep Cut of Hong Sangsoo Simplicity

Hilary Duff thinks baby no. 3 is going to be a boy.

Mark Schilling Japan CorrespondentFollowing his win of the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the recently concluded Berlin Film Festival for “Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy,” 42-year-old Hamaguchi Ryusuke suddenly finds himself catapulted to the directorial front ranks in his native Japan.It’s not that he’s exactly obscure there: Hamaguchi’s 2018 romantic drama “Asako I & II” was selected for the Cannes competition while his 2015 breakthrough, the five-hour-plus drama “Happy Hour,” won a group best

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentBerlin Grand Jury Prize winner “Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy,” Japanese writer-director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s deft three-story reflection on chance, the legacy of love and the contrariness of erotic desire, has clinched further key territory sales for its sales agent M-Appeal World Sales.Fast on the footsteps of clinching the top Berlinale 2021 Silver Bear in March 5’s Berlin prize announcement, “Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy” this week closed Spain

Jessica Kiang The public, the private and the deeply personal run on parallel tracks in French director Alice Diop’s documentary “We,” a series of vignettes of life along the RER B, a railway line running through the suburbs and exurbs of Paris out to the surrounding countryside.

International buyers dove into Wash Me in the River. The upcoming action-thriller, starring Robert De Niro, John Malkovich, and Jack Huston from Midnight in the Switchgrass director Randall Emmett, was snatched up by European and Asian buyers at Berlin's European Film Market.

Japanese filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi returns to what are fast becoming his signature themes in Berlin competition contender Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy: Odd coincidence, mysterious doubling, and intelligent women compelled by powerful but uncertain feelings. Many critics likened Hamaguchi's 2015 breakthrough, Happy Hour, to a sprawling literary novel (the film was five hours long and won plaudits for its beguiling dialog and finely observed set pieces).

The first thing to understand about the social dynamics in Mexico around police is that they differ greatly from how the public in the United States relates to law enforcement officers. Stateside, both the uncritical reverence some feel toward them—namely the Blue Lives Matter crowd—and the terror they incite among BIPOC communities emanate from their violent efficaciousness and status as inflexible figures reveling in a lack of accountability.

As industry guests enjoy the Berlinale from home this year, eagle-eyed viewers will take pleasure in spotting a familiar location in the latest film from South Korean auteur and festival-regular Hong Sang-soo. If we can’t stroll around Potsdamer Platz this year, at least the characters in “Introduction“ can share a moment there.

Japanese writer-director Ryusuke Hamaguchi won wide acclaim and festival prizes with his 2015 breakthrough feature, the bittersweet ensemble drama Happy Hour. But the nuanced, novelistic eye behind that delicately observed five-hour epic seemed to desert Hamaguchi on his 2018 anti-romance Asako I & II, which premiered to lukewarm reviews in Cannes.

Cinema Guild has picked up U.S. distribution rights to Introduction, the new film from acclaimed South Korean auteur Hong Sangsoo (The Woman Who Ran) thatpremiered in competition this week at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Cinema Guild has taken U.S. rights to Introduction, Hong Sangsoo’s latest feature that was selected in this year’s competition program at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Ben Croll Playing in Berlin’s Encounters sidebar, the French documentary “We” spins a tapestry of small moments and personal recollections, finding connections in the lives of migrants, immigrants, lovesick teens and retirees without downplaying their hardships.

It’s always interesting to see what an actor will deliver as they make the step towards directing, and for “Next Door” director and star Daniel Brühl has not shied away from a premise that closely parallels, yet distorts, his own life. It’s a film that explores a space of conversation highlighted to great effect in Bong Joon-ho’s recent towering success, “Parasite,” toying with societal dichotomies and opening up discussions around wealth, class, gentrification, and spatial divides.

South Korean filmmaker Hong Sangsoo has been a particular favorite at the Berlin Film Festival for quite some time — he won the Best Director prize there last year for The Woman Who Ran — and he’s back again this year with another competition entry, Introduction.

Toward the end of Tina, the revealing documentary tribute by Dan Lindsay and T.J. Martin for HBO, Tina Turner is seen in an extended concert clip performing the Beatles' "Help" as a decelerated ballad — intimate, melancholy and full of feeling.

Opening with a very real-looking hardcore sex tape, and climaxing with a deranged orgy featuring super-sized dildos, Romanian writer-director Radu Jude's latest taboo-busting polemical comedy is refreshingly untroubled by tasteful restraint. Shot during COVID lockdown last summer, with cast and crew all wearing anti-viral masks, the snappily titled Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn is a scattershot attack on sexual hysteria and political hypocrisy in an era of online slut-shaming.

Most cop movies — and most movies in general — spend the first reel setting up a story that usually kicks off after an “inciting incident,” to quote various screenwriting manuals, which takes place within the first ten or 15 minutes. For the rest of the film, we then watch how that incident unravels and affects the lives of all those involved.

Hungary’s most recent contribution to the implacable flow of war films pouring out of Eastern Europe is a far cry from the Russian tank operas and spectacular disaster films like Battle of Leningrad. Denes Nagy’s sensitive first featureNatural Light (Termeszetes feny), bowing in Berlin competition, is the opposite of these: a slow starter high on atmosphere but low on action, whose horrific main event takes place discreetly off-screen.