Teaching audiences to view films actively
By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Musa Syeed
Starring: Gulzar Ahmed Bhat | Mohammed Afza | Neelofar Hamid
Kyle says: “Although VALLEY OF SAINTS made its debut at the Sundance Film Festival three years ago, it is only now in 2015 receiving a general release. That it was shot during the 2010 Kashmir rebellion against India,
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Rating: 3.25
Director: Matthew Leutwyler
Starring: David Clayton Rogers | Lucy Griffiths | Mark Webber | Rainn Wilson
Jason says: “UNCANNY jokes about the Turing Test casually enough to make even longtime science fiction fans marvel a bit at how the phrase has started to enter the general lexicon in the last few years. The go-to reference for
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Ryan Miyamoto | Samantha Futerman
Jason says: “I’ve noted before that young actresses often have to write something for themselves if they want a good part, but what about when you discover that your own life may be that good part. If you’re Samantha
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Lee Byeong-heon
Starring: Jung Joo-yeon | Jung So0min | Kang Ha-neul | Lee Joon-ho | Lee Yoo-bi | Min Hyo-rin
Jason says: “I suspect that TWENTY being successful enough in South Korea to merit a quick try-to-beat-the-pirates release in the United States owes as much to the popularity of its good-looking young cast as anything else; it’s not a particularly
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Anouk Whissell | François Simard | Yoann-Karl Whissell
Starring: Aaron Jeffery | Laurence Leboeuf | Michael Ironside | Munro Chambers
Jason says: “TURBO KID seemed to be on the fast track to being a cult hit well before its release; folks seemed keen on the short film produced as part of a contest connected to ABC’S OF DEATH and it
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Jay Roach
Starring: Alan Tudyk | Bryan Cranston | Diane Lane | Helen Mirren | John Goodman | Louis C.K. | Michael Stuhlbarg
Jason says: “TRUMBO has what is really a distractingly good cast in more ways than one, especially for those who love movies and as a result have a sharp eye for those involved. Right away, you’ve got to decide whether
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Rating: 3.75 cats
Director: Matt Chow | Wilson Yip
Starring: Amber Kuo | Charmaine Sheh | Francis Ng | Julian Cheung | Louis Koo | Oceane Zhu | Sammy Chung
Jason says: “There’s a shiny new Shaw Brothers logo among the vanity cards before TRIUMPH IN THE SKIES, likely because it’s a spinoff of a TV show that ran on Hong Kong’s TVB network, which was also founded by the
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Rating: 4.75 cats
Director: Miroslav Slaboshpitsky
Starring: Grigoriy Fesenko | Rosa Babiy | Yana Novikova
Jason says: “Well, that’s certainly something I’m glad to have seen, although I’m also sort of thankful that I’ll likely never see the like again. The excited parts of that sentence are to be expected from a movie whose opening
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Daniel Benmayor
Starring: Adam Rayner | Josh Yadon | Luciano Acuna Jr. | Marie Avgeropoulos | Rafi Gavron | Taylor Lautner
Kyle says: “As a die-hard vampire movie fan, and unapologetic TWILIGHT SAGA maven, who sighed along with legions of tweens at the performance of Taylor Lautner as Jacob Black the werewolf in NEW MOON and ECLIPSE, I have followed with
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Rating: 4.4
Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud
Starring: Ankhnyam Ragchaa | Basen Zhabu | Feng Shaofeng | Shawn Dou Xiao | Yin Zhusheng
Jason says: “I’ve got a rule of thumb that may not apply to everybody, but which has treated me fairly well: When a foreign, documentary, or otherwise limited-release movie plays on a 3D or IMAX screen usually reserved for much
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Xavier Dolan
Starring: Anne Caron | Evelyne Brochu | Lise Roy | Manuel Tadros | Pierre-Yves Cardinal | Xavier Dolan
Kyle says: “TOM AT THE FARM is a 2013 film (only now receiving its New York release in August 2015) by wunderkind maverick virtuoso genius-boy (as Walter Pidgeon refers to Kirk Douglas in THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL) writer/director Xavier
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.75 cats
Director: Dante Lam
Starring: Choi Si-won Choi | Eddie Peng Yu-yen | Shawn Dou | Wang Loudan
Jason says: “The characters in Dante Lam’s latest, TO THE FORE, often seem like they wouldn’t know what to do if they couldn’t be professional cyclists, and in a way, the film he made reflects that: When the characters are
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Abderrahmane Sissako
Starring: Abel Jafri | Cheik A.G. Emakni | Ibrahim Ahmed dit Pino | Layla Walet Mohamed | Mehdi A.G. Mohamed | Toulou Kiki
Jason says: “It’s a bit odd that the first film from Mauritania to be nominated for an Academy Award is about Mali, but this isn’t the sort of movie that a country generally makes about itself until much later in
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Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: Perry Blackshear
Starring: Evan Dumouchel | MacLeod Andrews | Margaret Ying Drake
Jason says: “It feels a bit like giving the game away to say that THEY LOOK LIKE PEOPLE is seldom the movie it’s expected to be from the descriptions written in festival programs, which talks about how Wyatt (MacLeod Andrews)
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Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: David Rühm
Starring: Cornelia Ivancan | Dominic Oley | Jeanette Hain | Karl Fischer | Tobias Moretti
Jason says: “The title of THERAPY FOR A VAMPIRE (‘DER VAMPIR AUF DER COUCH’ in the original German) suggests something that may not quite be hackneyed, although I’m sure I’ve seen a vampire getting psychoanalysis before, but which is a
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4.75 cats
Director: Johnnie To
Starring: Chow Yun-fat | Eason Chan Yik-shun | Lang Yue-ting | Sylvia Chang Ai-chia | Tang Wei | Wang Zi-yi
Jason says: “As a fan of filmmakers giving me something great that I don’t necessarily expect, I was kind of already in the tank for OFFICE (aka GORGEOUS OFFICE WORKERS aka DESIGN FOR LIVING) – who expected the first time
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Kristina Grozeva | Petar Valchanov
Starring: Ivan Barnev | Ivan Savov | Ivanka Bratoeva | Margita Gosheva | Stefan Denolyubov
Thom says: “I had a lot of mixed feelings about this laconic film. It’s obscure, dim, pastel color palette somehow melds well with its depressing, austere style that features an enormous number of obnoxious, repellent characters. An appealing teacher takes
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Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: Naji Abu Nowar
Starring: Hassan Mutlag Al-Maraiyeh | Hussein Salameh Al-Sweihiyeen | Jacir Eid Al-Hweitat | Jack Fox
Jason says: “The Western never really dies; it just picks up and moves to unexpected places in unexpected forms. In this case, that’s a coming-of-age film set in Arabia, and it’s an impressive, thrilling piece of entertainment. “The year is
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 2 cats
Director: Amit Sharma
Starring: Arjun Kapoor | Deepti Naval | Manoj Bajbayee | Raj Babbar | Shruti K. Haasan | Sonakshi Sinha
Jason says: “There is a lot of bloat in TEVAR, a 157-minute Bollywood ‘thriller’ that could be remade as a direct-to-video action flick roughly half that length without particularly suffering for the revision. It’s all well and good to have
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4.25 cats
Director: David Felix Sutcliffe | Lyric R. Cabral
Jason says: “I suspect that many watching (T)ERROR, even with plentiful assurances to the contrary, will be expecting that, by the end, a curtain will be pulled back to reveal the film as fictitious, heavy on re-enactments, or some other
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