Some Playlist staffers caught this at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, and can say it’s the notoriously cryptic filmmaker’s most stylistically straight-forward work since at least 1997’s ensemble drama “I Can’t Sleep,” far removed from the filmmaker’s last film, 2005’s heavily symbolic and narratively opaque epic “The Intruder.”

’35 Shots’ stars Denis regular Alex Descas, something of a French arthouse legend who delivers his most affecting and memorable performance since 1992’s “No Fear, No Die” (also a Denis film).

Continue reading Trailer: Clair Denis’ ’35 Shots of Rum’ at The Playlist.

The trailer for Jim Jarmucsh’s “The Limits of Control” is finally here and of course it gives us a few more clues into the secretive story of a mysterious loner (played by Issach De Bankole), a stranger (hitman?) whose activities remain meticulously outside the law.

His character is decidedly methodical and lives within certain ascetic guidelines and codes and his possible vice appears to be the sexy Paz De La Huerta who coos with temptations, “No guns, no sex, how can you stand it?” Plus the synopsis says ambiguously, “His journey, paradoxically both intently focused and dreamlike, takes him not only across Spain but also through his own consciousness.” Hmm, a mindbender in here somewhere?

Continue reading ‘The Limits of Control’ Trailer Has An Awesome Slow-Burn Ominousness at The Playlist.