Teaching audiences to view films actively
By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Elizabeth Lucas
Jason says: “FADE TO WHITE alternates between three science fiction stories taking place in and around New York City’s Central Park over the course of 112 years, and while they are in some ways a bit of a mixed bag
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Raul Garcia
Jason says: “Raul Garcia has been making the various pieces of EXTRAORDINARY TALES for a while; three of its five segments, all based upon Edgar Allan Poe stories, are listed on the IMDb as shorts released as far back as
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Ángel Vivas
Jason says: “EXTINCTION starts off problematically, with a prologue that involves three people doing what seems like the same dumb thing in a row, leading to nearly everybody getting killed by zombies. It’s the sort of thing that has the
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Rating: 4.25 cats
Director: Michael Almereyda
Jason says: “I really hope that this one opens fairly wide, because I’d like to give it a second look. I came out of it with an odd sort of ambivalence, liking almost all of what it did but feeling
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Rating: 3.25
Director: Tian Yu-Sheng
Jason says: “As far as I can tell, the first ‘Qian Ren’ (‘Ex Files’) didn’t have any sort of official release in North America when it came out last year, but that probably doesn’t much matter – though I would
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Rating: 3.75 cats
Director: Patrick Kennelly
Jason says: “Perhaps surprisingly for an underground film festival, a lot of people coming into this show were using the phrase used to describe it in the program – ‘body horror’ – like it was two words that they had
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Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Alex Garland
Kyle says: “When a robot referred to clinically as the A.I., or Ava (Alicia Vikander), tells Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) that her maker Nathan (Oscar Isaac) is ‘not your friend’ during a power outage, we expect him to pay close attention,
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Rating: 2 cats
Director: Corneliu Porumboiu
Thom says: “If I hadn’t gotten a chance to see this gratis I might have passed as the director has a rather poor track record with me. 12:08 EAST OF BUCHAREST (2006) (3 CATS) & POLICE, ADJECTIVE (2009) (2 CATS).
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Rating: 3.25
Director: Rick Alverson
Jason says: “When people describe independent films as pretentious crap and those who like them as pretentious jerks, they’re often referring to things like ENTERTAINMENT, and I can’t exactly blame them. Even when I don’t enjoy a movie, I try
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Rating: 1 cat
Director: Victor Teran | Youssef Delara
Kyle says: “ENTER THE DANGEROUS MIND, also known confusingly by its working title and alternate Netflix listing as SNAP, is an attempt at a psychological thriller based on a variation of the Faust story. Except this Mephistopheles avatar seems unclear
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: James Ponsoldt
Starring: Anna Chlumsky | Jason Segel | Jesse Eisenberg | Joan Cusack | Mamie Gummer
Jason says: “There are a lot of things that can be done with David Lipsky’s interview of David Foster Wallace, and I don’t think that a movie is at the top of the list. The magazine article it was originally
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Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Charles Binamé
Chris says: “Nothing in the colorful, florid opening scene, set at an opera performance in postwar Cuba suggests that the bulk of ELEPHANT SONG will unfold at a visually drab, wintry mental hospital in mid-1960s Canada. Similarly, little in the
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Richard Laxton
Jason says: “There is much more to the life of Euphemia ‘Effie’ Gray than the film bearing her name presents; it limits itself to what are likely the three worst years of her life and maintains so tight a focus
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Maude Michaud
Jason says: “Maude Michaud’s DYS- looks to be on the path to dystopia as it starts, but as with many stories that start with an outbreak, that turns out to be the background for some intense dysfunction. It’s the sort
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Peter Strickland
Jason says: “It’s tempting to interpret the characters’ behavior in THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY in terms of closets and shame; it’s sort of the default for this period and would probably be a fascinating way to play it. Peter Strickland
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Marielle Heller
Chris says: “I’ve seen enough coming-of-age films to contribute to a Chlotrudis poll about them, but I’ve seen nothing quite like THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL: funny, intense and sexually graphic in equal measures, it’s also a period piece,
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Chao Deng | Yu Baimei
Jason says: “The very first scene of DEVIL AND ANGEL makes it clear what sort of broad comedy it’s going to be, and it’s a pretty dumb one. And it’s not a dumb comedy that is secretly kind of clever;
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Dibakar Bannerjee
Jason says: “This movie has an exclamation point in its title, and putting that together with it being from India yields a certain set of expectations – something flashy that jumps from tone to tone, at least some of them
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Daniel F. Cardone
Thom says: “Here’s another free ticket I nabbed to the annual San Francisco LGBT Film Festival. This was yet again a documentary entry and once more it shows that as I’m getting older it’s just as difficult being objective as
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Jason Lei Howden
Jason says: “I skipped DEATHGASM at Independent Film Festival Boston figuring it would play Fantasia while other things on the IFFBoston schedule might not otherwise play theaters, and the gambit paid off. Not just because the movie played, but also
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