Popular reviews

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  Review by reibureibu 4

  God, as was popularly believed by deists in the Enlightenment, can be thought of like a distant mechanist. He creates the universe in the beginning to be self-propelling machine, and then goes off elsewhere while we are left to our own devices. All the while His creation tiks and toks and whizzes and whirls until it is the end of time, at which point He returns to retire his worn-down clock.

  And so we too, can be God, at least in our own capacity. At Sea outlines the history of a freighter boat as it chugs across the world, carrying out the needs of its human creators until it is old and ornery and no longer useful to us. It…

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  Review by Valerie Orbach ★★★★★

  It's hard to think of another filmmaker who's as committed when it comes to capturing portraits of city and landscape in all of their poetic grandeur. He's not limited to that though. At Sea, one of Hutton's best and most ambitious films, is a highly engaging chronicle of the birth, life, and death of a mammoth container ship. At least on surface. Metaphorically, it's a haunting meditation on human progress and environmental crises.

  Charting a three year passage, the film is split into three parts: birth, life, and death. Each part follows a different ship: first we see a ship being constructed in South Korea, then a container ship out in the ocean, and finally an a ship being taken…

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  Review by Cian Mulligan ★★★★½ 6

  Why did I love a video of a container ship so much what the fuck is wrong with me

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  Review by Kyle Faulkner ★★★★

  Sound is taken for granted in the media of today. But many an old-world curmudgeon has gone on record concluding cinema died at the advent of the talkie. This is old hat. What could be most interesting about sound in cinema now is what happens upon its experimental negation.

  The films of Peter Hutton are designed for theatrical exhibition in complete silence. His first few decades of output, for all its composed, painterly, often hauntingly abstract images, lacks a certain formal etiquette, the likes of which I've always admired about, say, Benning, and one can't help but wonder if the added dimension of sound may have brought those films back from the passive photo-album impression they transmit.

  With At Sea,…

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  Review by cult_vegetables ★★★★

  The birth, life and death of a cargo ship, a silent arc that captures in almost magical dioramas an epic relationship with the sea. With camera still, scenes develop slowly, a meticulous painting come to life: construction, glittering ocean and ultimately decay on the mudflats. A rhythmic visual cycle.

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  Review by Shea ★★★★½

  Some of the most magnetic and evocative horizons ever captured (if, indeed, a horizon can be said to be "captured", if not only ever strived for). Perfect display of cinema's unique ability above all art forms to demonstrate the passage of time, which this does with exacting patience and then a bittersweet pathos, reaching a kind of humanistic transcendence simply through the act of observation. The boat is such a gorgeously multi-faceted symbol, a vessel (literally) for an exploration of existence itself.

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  Review by nadine x 1

  this and a blunt

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  Review by Mark Garrett ★★★★★

  One of the most gorgeously observant, patient, and vital films ever made

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  Review by Josiah Morgan ★★★★½

  Whereas I had previously watched this with an improvised cobbled-together playlist, this time I sat ensconced in the silences and let the power of Hutton's images alone win me over.

  This time was a far stronger experience.

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  Review by Jesús Cortés

  A LOS OJOS DE NADIE

  Los dos últimos planos encadenados del epílogo en blanco y negro que cierra "At sea" escenifican dos entierros. Consecutivamente, el del protagonista y el del medio que, esta vez, eligió Peter Hutton para inmortalizarlo.

  Escultor, pintor y cineasta, a Hutton, apenas le faltaría por filmar el esencial y minimalista tríptico "Three landscapes" en 2013 para así cerrar una carrera modestamente ejemplar, lejos, muy lejos de la mayoría de cineastas vanguardistas, experimentales, caseros y similares con los que suele compartir libros y retrospectivas y entre los que abundan los que nada tienen que ver con él. Falleció en 2016.

  Pero volvamos a esos dos planos.

  En el primero, un grupo de unos seis u ocho chatarreros,…

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  Review by Evan “Raymond Gun-Virus” Pincus ★★★½

  Has my favorite shot of the ocean I think

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  Review by Samuel ★★★★½ 4

  Le cinéma méditatif d'Hutton est un cinéma d'échelle et ce à plusieurs niveaux (figuratifs et symboliques). Ici, sa façon de jouer avec la grandeur du bateau, cette coque immense et ces minuscules silhouettes humaines. Et puis il y a la vie en mer et l'humain ne se manifeste qu'à travers des essuies-glaces, face à une mosaïque de conteneurs colorés. Le 3e et dernier segment, l'envers ou l'écho du premier. Et l'humanité semble exploser. Le bateau n'est plus qu'un cadavre qu'on dépèce, et on ne peut que ressentir de l'empathie pour lui, objet inanimé, et aussi pour ces hommes dont on discerne les visages, les sourires, qui travaillent en haillons, qui jouent au foot ou, quand la caméra est là, se…