Teaching audiences to view films actively
By Michael Colford
Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Silas Howard
Starring: Amy Landecker | Ann Dowd | Claire Danes | Jim Parsons | Lee Aaron Rosen | Leo James Davis | Octavia Spencer | Priyanka Chopra
Thom says: “The extremely sensitive subject of transgender children is treated here with some understanding and compassion. Enough so that some insensitive bastard criticizing on Ratings and Reviews for New Movies and TV Shows – IMDb wrote that the educators
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Tara Miele
Starring: Aimee Carrero | Beth Grant | Diego Luna | Sienna Miller | Tory Kittles
Diane says: “I think I must be the target audience for WANDER DARKLY. I was completely sucked into every emotion in this chameleonic romance/psychological thriller that has touches of horror and dry humor. The two attractive leads don’t hurt. “LA couple
Read the review...By Michael Colford
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Dong-hoon Baek
Starring: Hyeon-ho Heo | Ja-Hyeon Chu | Jin Goo | Jin-Ki Baek | Kook-jin Han
Jason says: “Looking at the cast list for LE GRAND CHEF 2: KIMCHI BATTLE should raise some alarms; the main couple from the first film has been recast and a completely new character has first billing. Given that the plot
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.9
Director: Oliver Laxe
Starring: Amador Arias | Benedicta Sánchez | David de Poso | Elena Mar Fernández | Inazio Abrao
Diane says: “A convicted pyromaniac returns home after prison time. Home is his elderly mother’s simple cottage in rural and remote Galicia, in northwest Spain. We know from the title that fire will come again. But don’t expect a thriller or
Read the review...By Michael Colford
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Sunao Katabuchi
Starring: Chisa Bandai | J. David Brimmer | Masao Agawa | Romy Beckman
Jason says: “MAI MAI MIRACLE is charming. It’s a nostalgic memoir about growing up as free-range kids, but we can use all the good ones we can get before we run out of people who grew up that way. Nicely
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: Frank Capra
Starring: Adolphe Menjou | Barbara Stanwyck | Charlotte Henry | Dorothy Peterson | Ralph Bellamy | Thomas Jefferson
Thom says: “Here’s an early film from Hollywood legendary director Frank Capra (IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT, MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN, LOST HORIZON, YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU, MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON, MEET JOHN DOE, ARSENIC & OLD
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 1.5 cats
Director: Chad Hartigan
Starring: David Lennon | Jack O'Connell | Olivia Cooke | Raúl Castillo | Soko
Michael says: “Another film that started off strong, with a great premise, that really crashed and burned for me, and as time has passed, I’ve been trying to decide why this film ultimately failed for me, and I can’t quite
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 2.5 cats
Director: Kate McLean | Mario Furloni
Starring: Cameron James Matthews | Frank Mosley | George Psarras | Krisha Fairchild | Lily Gladstone | Michelle Maxson
Michael says: “FREELAND started off promising, as Devi (Krisha Fairchild), a former hippie and successful marijuana dealer with a large farm in California, struggles to transform her grass-roots, (illegal) sole proprietorship, into a legitimate business in competition with big national distributors,
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4.6
Director: Ekwa Msangi
Starring: Jayme Lawson | Joie Lee | Nana Mensah | Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine | Zainab Jah
Michael says: “Told in ‘Rashomon’ style, from three different points of view, FAREWELL AMOR is a complex and difficult story of a family trying ti come to America from Angola after the Civil War. Walter has been in New York
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: Christian Petzold
Starring: Anne Ratte-Polle | Franz Rogowski | Jacob Matschenz | Maryam Zaree | Paula Beer
Michael says: “Apparently German director Petzold, has built up quite a following with his last three films (TRANSIT, PHOENIX, BARBARA) and his latest, UNDINE, is a bit of a change of style for him. An undine is a mythical water
Read the review...By Michael Colford
Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: Arturo Ripstein
Starring: Ana Martin | Carmen Sa linas | Fernando Soler | Gonzalo Vega | Lucha Villa | Roberto Cobo
Thom says: “My brother has a dear friend in Seattle who’s a great film scholar and aficionado and he recently recommended Mexican auteur Arturo Ripstein with some 60 films credited to him. In fact, he’s still working. His films have
Read the review...By Michael Colford
Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Sam Mendes
Starring: Billy Postelthwaite | Colin Firth | Daniel Mays | Dean-Charles Chapman | George MacKay | Pip Carter
Thom says: “This highly-praised WWII film by the talented Mendes (AMERICAN BEAUTY) is especially impressive with its technical gifts following two British soldiers as they navigate a rough battle path trying to avoid bombs, bullets, & accidents hoping to deliver
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 2.5 cats
Director: Sonia Kennebeck
Chris says: “Matt DeHart, a ‘hacktivist’ charged with a crime he claims he didn’t commit is a fascinating subject for a doc/expose, but this format, heavy on reenactments and shocking reveals, does him no favors. In the tradition of CITIZENFOUR,
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3 cats
Director: Arab Nasser | Tarzan Nasser
Starring: Hiam Abbass | Ibrahim Altoubat | Maisa Abd Elhadi | Namil Alraee
Chris says: “Ostensibly a romance between Issa (Salim Dau), a lifelong bachelor who announces, ‘I’ve decided to get married’ and Siham (Hiam Abbass), a seamstress with an adult daughter, this plays out with a slight surreal twinge, almost like a
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Aisling Chin-Yee | Chase Joynt
Chris says: “Billy Tipton, a jazz musician born as a woman who presented himself to the world as a man, is obviously an intriguing subject for a documentary, but it’s actually only a part of this one. NO ORDINARY MAN
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4.25 cats
Director: Matthew Rankin
Starring: Brent Skagford | Catherine St-Laurent | Dan Beirne | Kee Chan | Louis Negin | Matthew Rankin | Mikhaïl Ahooja | Sarianne Cormier | Seán Cullen
Michael says: “You know you’re watching something perversely special when it features an ejaculating cactus. Paying liberal homage to the strangers films of Guy Maddin, Matthew Rankin’s first feature film is a wildly inventive, biopic (in the loosest sense of
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4.5 cats | 5 cats
Director: Darius Marder
Starring: Mathieu Amalric | Olivia Cooke | Paul Raci | Riz Ahmed
Michael says: “I have taken to watching films without really finding out too much about them first. Usually it’s one or two sentences from the synopsis, and I’ll make up my mind. SOUND OF METAL came as a big surprise,
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Jeff Orlowski
Michael says: “Workshopped at the Sundance Institute, this whistle-blowing documentary about the social media industry was picked up by Netflix. While not all that surprising for anyone who’s paying attention, it’s still pretty chilling as it paints a picture of
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Makoto Nagahisa
Starring: Keita Ninomiya | Kuranosuke Sasaki | Mondo Okumura | Rinko Kikuchi | Satoshi Mizuno | Sena Nakajima
Michael says: “The one-line synopsis on the Internet Movie Database for WE ARE LITTLE ZOMBIES states, ‘Four Japanese orphans form a rock band.’ While that statement is a fact, it barely scratches the surface of this fun, colorful, frankly, insane
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4.25 cats
Director: Hong Khaou
Starring: David Tran | Henry Golding | Molly Harris | Parker Sawyers
Michael says: “There’s a bit of a thread between COMING HOME AGAIN and MONSOON. Both deal with Asian families, and particularly sons dealing with the death of parents, and difficulty of accessing emotions. But where COMING HOME AGAIN was more
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