Teaching audiences to view films actively
By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Peter Pau | Tianyu Zhao
Starring: Bao Bei-er | Chen Kun | Li Bing bing | Summer Jike Juanyi | Winston Chao | Yang Zi-shan
Jason says: “Maybe the best way to describe ZHONG KUI: SNOW GIRL AND THE DARK CRYSTAL (to give it the full name that appears on-screen) is to imagine if Ray Harryhausen had been born in China, making the sort of
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Rating: 2 cats
Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Starring: Harvey Keitel | Jane Fonda | Michael Caine | Paul Dano | Rachel Weisz | Robert Seethaler
Kyle says: “My notes on Paolo Sorrentino’s atrocious YOUTH include pages of terrible lines, and scenes so grandiose, stuffed with so much visual information and shots held to the point of masturbatory self-indulgence (the sort of garbage that has people
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Rating: 3 cats | 4.25 cats
Director: Kiah Roache-Turner
Starring: Catherine Terracini | Jay Gallagher | Keith Agius | Leon Burchill | Meganne West
Jason says: “It’s no bad thing, I say, that WYRMWOOD feels like a season’s worth of an eventful TV series packed into an hour and a half; it’s an exhausting ride at times, but there’s not ten or fifteen minutes
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Rating: 3.75 cats
Director: Denny Tedesco
Jason says: “THE WRECKING CREW has had a long time on the path to release – it played the festival circuit back in 2008, but it started shooting in 1996, meaning that it took director Denny Tedesco nearly two decades
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Rating: 1 cat
Director: David Burris
Starring: Adelaide Clemens | Haley Joel Osment | Jeremy Irvine | Minka Kelly | Noah Wyle | Steve Earle
Kyle says: “‘Violence begets violence,’ says Leonard, the character portrayed by Noah Wylie, whom we know is sensitive because he listens to Aaron Copland’s ‘Appalachian Spring’ but nonetheless picks up his rifle whenever the dog barks or the sound of
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Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Daigo Matsui
Starring: Ai Hashimoto | Jun Aonami | Marie Machida | Yu Inaba
Jason says: “As soon as I saw this one, I figured that it may need some mulling over, although more for its downright peculiar ending than the occasional sense that as someone who is not a teenage Japanese girl, this
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Crystal Moselle
Jason says: “I suspect that film fans are going to talk THE WOLFPACK up more than it truly merits; the only thing we like more than an amazing story is meeting folks who love movies as much as we do,
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Fernando Coimbra
Starring: Antonio Saboia | Fabiula Nascimento | Isabelle Ribas | Leandra Leal | Milhem Cortez
Kyle says: “Although the title A WOLF AT THE DOOR is metaphorical, a number of candidates can be considered for the titular character in this intriguing Brazilian domestic melodrama, the first full-length feature film by writer/director Fernando Coimbra. A 6-year-old
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Ahn Sang-hoon
Starring: Lu Han | Wang Jing-chun | Wayne Liu Rui-lin | Yang Mi | Zhu Ya-wen
Jason says: “It’s a sign of how big the Chinese film industry has grown that they are now pulling one of Hollywood’s signature tricks – not just remaking a foreign film for the local market, but luring the director there
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Starring: Demet Akbag | Haluk Bilginer | Melissa Sözen | Serhat MustafaKiliç
Michael says: “Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan has yet to let me down. I have enjoyed (now, including this one) all five of his films that I have seen, including ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA, which scored a Chotrudis
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Rating: 4.25 cats
Director: Ringo Lam
Starring: Joseph Chang Hsiau-chuen | Louis Koo | Shawn Yue Man-ick | Tong Liya | Yuen Qiu
Jason says: “Welcome back Ringo Lam, a director who has been absent from the Hong Kong movie scene for too long, but who doesn’t really seem to have missed a beat with this neon-noir. In many ways, Hong Kong cinemas
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Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: Damián Szifrón
Starring: Dario Grandinetti | Erica Rivas | Germán de Silva | Julieta Zylberberg | Oscar Martinez | Osmar Núñez
Kyle says: “WILD TALES is Argentina’s entry into Academy Award contention for Best Foreign Language Film of 2014. I am always amused when the same people who usually dismiss Oscar-bait talk out of hand suddenly invoke it with the sanctimonious
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Patrick Forbes
Kyle says: “After survivors tell heartrending tales of losing loved ones to sudden heart attacks, and medical professionals argue about scans versus stents, there comes a telling moment near the end of THE WIDOWMAKER, when Wendell Potter, former Director of
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Rating: 0 cats
Director: Tim McCann
Starring: Britt Robertson | Dodie Brown | Nick Krause | Ryan Lee | Sam Trammell | Todd McLaren
Kyle says: “As someone who believes that right-wing America’s idiotic misinterpretation of the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution is one of the fatal flaws of a system that is mistakenly referred to as a democracy (see any recent interview with
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Kornél Mundruczó
Starring: Gergely Bánki | Lili Horváth | Lili Monori | Sándor Zsótér | Szabolcs Thuróczy | Zsófia Psotta
Bruce says: “One of the great things about watching AMORES PERROS on DVD was the accompanying special feature that explained how dogs were trained so that no harm was actually done to them during the filming. While such technological detail
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Hiromasa Yonebayashi
Starring: Kasumi Arimura | Nanako Matsushima | Sara Takatsuki | Susumu Terajima | Toshie Negishi
Jason says: “Toward the end of WHEN MARNIE WAS THERE, I found myself feeling a delightfully paradoxical appreciation for how it was put together: It somehow feels simultaneously surprising and inevitable, with the symbolic and the literal overlapping in ways
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Liz Garbus
Diane says: “Multi-Grammy-winning jazz musician Nina Simone wanted nothing but to be the first female black concert pianist. This doc draws on a wealth of concert videos and interviews to tell her story: playing in her mother’s church at age
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Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: Ted Geoghegan
Starring: Andrew Sensenig | Barbara Crampton | Larry Fessenden | Lisa Marie | Monte Markham
Jason says: “It’s funny which little details will make a movie really work for someone. Take WE ARE STILL HERE, for instance; it’s quite a well-executed ghost story with a nifty cast, good for a decent star rating even if
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Rating: 4.25 cats
Director: Michael Madsen
Jason says: “THE VISIT is apparently meant to be the second in a thematic trilogy of documentaries by Danish filmmaker Michael Madsen, and I’m curious what grand-scaled idea will round them out. I hope it’s something a little more like
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Rating: 3.75 cats
Director: Sebastian Schipper
Starring: André Hennicke | Burak Yigit | Franz Rogowski | Frederick Lau | Laia Costa | Max Mauff
Jason says: “In certain hands, VICTORIA might just have been an impressive achievement in logistics for hitting an ambitious set of marks as a single-shot, real-time thriller. It winds up being a fair bit better than that, even if there
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