CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Clarissa Mora The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Sanjeev Waters A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Isbel A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

MartinHafer An academician, Isa, and his girlfriend, Bahar, are on vacation. Both are bored with each other. Ultimately Isa tells Bahar he wants to split up--which they do. Bahar goes off to make films while Isa becomes MORE depressed after she leaves.Imagine you are watching an Ingmar Bergman film where you have a depressed and vaguely dissatisfied couple. Then, you turn the film to half speed and make all this boredom and sadness seem to go even slower and last a whole lot longer. This is what I think of "Climates"--an incredibly plodding film from Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan. What makes this a tiny bit interesting is that Nuri stars in the film as does his wife, Bahar. Otherwise, I found very little to like about the film. Technically, I suppose it's well made but the story is paper-thin and unsatisfying...which, I understand, it THE point of the film but I just didn't care.

zetes Palm D'Or nominated feature by the director of Distant (2002). This is nearly as good as that one. Like it, it's a slow, contemplative art film about relationships. This one stars the director and his wife, Ebru Ceylan, as an unhappily married couple on vacation. They mutually decide to break up. Much of the rest of the film follows the husband trying to cope with his loss. The latter part of the film has him follow his wife to a snowy mountain region where she has moved for work. I hate to harp on it, and I frequently attack others who have this complaint about films, but the main problem with Climates is that the protagonist is incredibly unlikeable. Like I said, I hate to have that complaint, because there are so many bad people in the world. Why shouldn't some movies explore the less than enviable characters? I suppose, though - and this is how I felt about this film - spending a lot of time with such a character can become something of a bummer. Yet he is a human being, and I do like that Ceylan explores him. He's not exactly redeemed by the end (there's a certain act in the movie that's pretty much unforgivable), but we understand him. The end of the film makes it well worth seeing (besides, it's only just over 90 minutes anyway). Those final two scenes are exquisite. Despite my complaints, this is worthwhile.

arabtanguera If you enjoy a movie made up of five-minute close-ups of actors' faces, the sounds of flies and bees, and very little more, this is the movie for you. There is no plot or characterization and some pointless dialogue in the first 45 minutes. I don't know what happens next, because I stopped watching at this point. There are many good Turkish movies out there; this is not one of them.The story, if there is one, is about the breakup of two miserable people, neither of them remarkable in any way. We do not learn much about them except that they are unhappy. One thing that I enjoyed, but that does not make the movie worth seeing, is the natural landscape.

Tony Camel Climates, by Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan, is about as personal as it gets. Ceylan wrote, directed, edited and stars as Isa, a middle-aged professor chewing over his crumbling relationship with his much younger girlfriend Bahar (played, wouldn't you know it, by his real wife Ebru Ceylan). What begins as a dinner table row while on holiday with friends escalates on the beach, where they agree to split, and then reaches a poisonous, and almost terminal, climax, when a bike ride nearly leads to a fatal accident.That, however, is about as action-packed as it gets. Climates unfolds through body language and gestures with little by way of dialogue or events. It looks as beautiful as a painting and moves about as fast, with Bahar's relocation to the mountains of East Turkey sparking Isa into life (of sorts) as he decides to follow her in a doomed bid to rekindle the affair. It's a self-conscious and thoroughly art-house exercise that will probably delight the minuscule audience for which it is intended.