Teaching audiences to view films actively
By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: David Gordon Green
Jason says: “David Gordon Green seems to make movies in spurts-first some noteworthy independent dramas, then some crude studio comedies. Now, a year after doing JOE and reminding audiences that, yeah, Nicholas Cage can act a little when he decides
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Rating: 3.75 cats
Director: Dave Boyle
Jason says: “There’s a moment at the end of a lot of the really good ‘Coen-like’ movies (a description unfair to everyone involved, but one people use) where someone sits down, has a long sigh, and considers just what all
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Pedro Pablo Ibarra
Jason says: “There are a lot of romantic comedies that start from from premises as ludicrous as that of A LA MALA, but few of them do as well in selling that starting point. It’s a goofy little thing, but
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Rating: 3.25
Director: Henry Hobson
Jason says: “Show me MAGGIE at a genre film festival with a cast of unknowns, and I likely react with unreserved excitement. That is, after all, the natural life-cycle and scale of movies such which play with genre conventions the
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Justin Kurzel
Jason says: “Though I can’t recite it from memory or anything, ‘Macbeth’ is probably the bit of Shakespeare that has lodged itself in my head the most firmly ever since high school, and that’s kind of an issue when watching
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Sion Sono
Jason says: “The first of three Sion Sono films being shown at this year’s festival is a joyous, crazy delight, piling whimsy ever-higher even while Sono reveals a darkness behind it. The great bit, though, is that the pieces that
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Rating: 4.25 cats
Director: Gaspar Noé
Jason says: “It’s almost a shame that Gaspar Noé apparently shot LOVE entirely in native 3D, because it might be fun to ask guys doing post-conversion work whether sex was a nice change of pace from the usual violence. That
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.25
Director: Gu Chang-wei
Jason says: “There’s a potentially great movie-industry satire inside LOVE ON THE CLOUD wrapped in a layer of romantic comedy just thick enough that a viewer will likely wonder whether director Gu Chang-wei and company are doing for something very
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Rating: 2.5 cats
Director: Ryan Gosling
Jason says: “Filmmaker Ryan Gosling thanks a number of filmmakers toward the end of the credits to LOST RVIER, some of whom he has worked with as an actor, and of that group, it’s Nicolas Winding Refn who leaps to
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Peng San-yuan
Jason says: “There is an unabashed simplicity to LOST AND LOVE that might often be called deceptive by those who might want to praise the film, especially if its early stumbling didn’t quite click with those viewers. That may not
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Joshua Oppenheimer
Chris says: “THE ACT OF KILLING is a tough act to follow, let alone surpass, but director Joshua Oppenheimer does just that with THE LOOK OF SILENCE. Billed as a sequel, it’s actually more of a companion piece: whereas the
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3 cats
Director: Jack Bryan
Kyle says: “’What I do isn’t about the people that die; it’s about the people that are left alive. They get the short end of the stick, as far as I’m concerned’. This is the moral of a tale told
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Stevan Riley
Kyle says: “To the mountains of writing about Marlon Brando, most famously by legendary film critic Pauline Kael, and most recently by New Yorker writer Richard Brody in a June 23 article suggesting that readers should ‘free yourself from the
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Rating: 4.9
Director: Andrey Zvyagintsev
Starring: Aleksey Serebryakov | Elena Lyadova | Roman Madyanov | Vladimir Vdovitchenkov
Chris says: “Andrey Zvyagintsev’s films do not easily conform to concise synopses. One could sum up his first (and best) feature, THE RETURN (2003) as follows: prodigal father suddenly resurfaces and takes his two sons on a road trip where
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Rating: 3.8 cats
Director: Jiang Liu
Jason says: “LET’S GET MARRIED is the third Chinese film based upon a popular television series in roughly as many months to get a simultaneous American release, although I can attest that no prior experience is necessary to enjoy it.
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Rating: 2.5 cats
Director: Takashi Miike
Jason says: “The late Roger Ebert would use the phrase ‘dead teenager movie’ dismissively, probably with the intention of getting horror fans riled up half the time. And while it’s not great form to glibly dismiss an entire genre, sometimes
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Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Brian Helgeland
Jason says: “One of my favorite ways to mess around during awards season and make the point that determining the winners is not nearly so important as shining a light on noteworthy achievements is finding a way to suggest nominating
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Rating: 3.75 cats
Director: Alec Su
Jason says: “Even after reading a description of this movie that I thought might give too much away and seeing the dedication at the start, I spent a good chunk of THE LEFT EAR thinking it was going to be
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Isabel Coixet
Chris says: “New York literary critic Wendy (Patricia Clarkson) breaks up with her longtime husband in the back of a cab after he confesses to cheating on her. Storming out of the car and into her apartment, she accidentally leaves
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Luo Luo
Jason says: “I am tempted, half as a joke and half dead serious, to write this review as six paragraphs of ‘Shu Qi is extremely pretty’, maybe with a different adjective or adverb swapped in every once in a while
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