Teaching audiences to view films actively
By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: Philippe Le Guay
Starring: Camille Japy | Fabrice Luchini | Lambert Wilson | Maya Sansa
Bruce says: “Several years back, dogged director Phillippe Le Guay travelled to the Île de Ré near La Rochelle to deliver a script to actor Fabrice Luchini who was not returning his calls. Luchini, a well-known stage actor, had a
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3 cats
Director: AJ Edwards
Starring: Braydon Denney | Brit Marling | Cameron Mitchell Williams | Diane Kruger | Jason Clarke | Wes Bentley
Thom says: “This is the debut film from director Edwards and his love for the project is evident throughout this pastoral work. It takes place in 1817 in Indiana where the young Abe Lincoln is growing up over a 3-year
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 5 cats
Director: Yuval Adler
Starring: George Iskander | Hisham Suliman | Hitham Omari | Michal Shtamler | Shadi Mar'i | Tarik Kopty | Tsahi Halevi
Kyle says: “The murky moral morass of murderous ages-old conflict between Jews and Arabs, and the seemingly never-ro-end war been Israel and Palestine, have brought us two of the year’s best films. The first is OMAR, about which Jason wrote
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Giuseppe Tornatore
Starring: Dermot Crowley | Donald Sutherland | Geoffrey Rush | Jim Sturgess | Kiruna Stamell | Sylvia Hoeks
Bruce says: “Virgil Oldman (Geoffrey Rush) is a preeminent expert in antiquities. He authenticates, appraises and auctions only the finest works of art. A confirmed bachelor, Oldman is a virgin who could easily be classified as a fetishist. He has
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Aron Gaudet | Gita Pullapilly
Starring: Aidan Gillen | Callan McAuliffe | Emory Cohen | Kymberli Bryant | Natalie Johnson | Zoe Levin
Jason says: “If you look at a map of Maine, you’ll find that the northern half of the state is primarily a grid of unincorporated rectangular territories without names, with a few slightly more inhabited towns hugging the Canadian order.
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 5 cats
Director: Flora Lau
Starring: Carina Lau | Chen Kun | Lawrence Cheng | Stephanie Che | Tian Yuan
Kyle says: “BENDS is the opening title of the seventh season of ContemporAsian screenings at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Most films offer so little that it is tempting to go overboard in praising something as wonderful
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.8 cats
Director: Amma Assante
Starring: Emily Watson | Gugu Mbatha-Raw | Matthew Goode | Sam Reid | Sarah Gadon | Tom Wilkinson
Jason says: “I don’t watch a lot of costume dramas or read the sort of classic romances that are this film’s close relations, so I’m not sure how often they are focused on matters of ritual and plotting and how
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Chen Sicheng
Starring: Carina Lau Ka-ling | Chen Sicheng | Nana Ou-young | Tong Liya | Tony Leung Ka-fai | Wang Xue-bing
Jason says: “BEIJING LOVE STORY tells five overlapping stories of romance, and it could have gotten by with just three or four: Some feel like fragments just meant to tie others together, and some could use a little more fleshing
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 5 cats
Director: John Carney
Starring: Adam Levine | Catherine Keener | Hailee Steinfeld | Keira Knightley | Mark Ruffalo | Yasiin ‘Mos Def’ Bey
Jason says: “I wonder if there’s something about making a movie about popular music that puts filmmakers into a zone where they don’t need to work in quite so straight a line – they’re already thinking in terms of coming
Read the review...Before I Go To Sleep (UK/France/Sweden; 92 min.) directed by: Rowan Joffestarring: Nicole Kidman; Colin Firth; Mark Strong; Ben Crompton; Anne-Marie Duff; Adam Levy Thom says: “Gorgeous, super-talented Nicole Kidman has had such a strange career. She did finally win
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Mary Dore
Chris says: “The feminist movement’s early years (roughly 1966-71) seem like such a fruitful topic for a documentary that one wonders why it hasn’t been done before, or at least with the scope of Mary Dore’s thorough, entertaining and wonderfully-titled
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.75 cats
Director: Jennifer Kent
Starring: Barbara West | Daniel Henshall | Essie Davis | Hayley McElhinney | Noah Wiseman
Kyle says: “THE BABADOOK is a slick well-made horror genre item that sets up the events to follow with a car speeding to local hospital with mother in labor crashing and killing the father. It follows logically that the relationship
Read the review...Ayiti Toma (Canada; 82 min.) directed by: Joseph Hillel documentary Jason says: “Full disclosure: I missed the first few minutes of AYITI TOMA, so I admittedly cannot give a full accounting of the film. That happens when you try to
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Director: Gabe Ibáñez
Starring: Antonio Banderas | Birgitte Hjart Sørensen | Dylan McDermott | Melanie Griffith | Robert Forster
Jason says: “For the purposes of AUTOMATA, filmmaker Gabe Ibáñez reduces Asimov’s traditional three laws of robotics to two: Do not harm a living thing, and do not engage in self-modification. Most movies about rogue machines would concern themselves with
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Director: Yang Woo-seok
Starring: Jung Won-joong | Kim Young-ae | Kwak Do-won | Siwan | Song Kang-ho
Jason says: “THE ATTORNEY made its way to the United States rather quickly after its box-office success in South Korea, taking just a month and a half to cross the Pacific. It isn’t hard to see why it did so
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Jennifer Grausman | Sam Cullman
Jason says: “One of the neat things about ART AND CRAFT is that it hints at a number of different angles to an already-interesting story, acknowledging that it is all but impossible to fit the entirety of a tale of
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 1 cat
Director: Jonathan Sobol
Kyle says: “Kurt Russell plays a character named Crunch Calhoun, a failed daredevil con-man art thief who repeatedly mutters, ‘Oh boy!’ when he’s in a jam. The only worse Kurt Russell performance I can think of is his indelible Steve
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 5 cats
Director: Joanna Hogg
Starring: Amy Lloyd | Christopher Baker | Kate Fahy | Lydia Leonard | Tom Hiddleston
Bruce says: “ARCHIPELAGO begins with a plein air painter working on a canvas. The painting is abstract and is more about mood and feeling than it is about recording facts. Christopher (Christopher Baker), the painter, is only a peripheral character
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 2 cats
Director: Isabel Coixet
Starring: Charlotte Vega | Claire Forlani | Gregg Shelton | Jonathan Rhys Meyers | Rhys Ifans | Sophie Turner
Jason says: “ANOTHER ME didn’t look like much – a young-adult thriller that likely would have gone straight to video-on-demand but for a slow release week and the fact that the other line on star Sophie Turner’s filmography is ‘Game
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Freida Lee Mock
Bruce says: “As a former co-worker of Clarence Thomas, Anita Hill was sent a questionnaire regarding her experience working with Clarence Thomas. She answered the questions truthfully, documenting what we now call sexual harassment. Unexpectedly, Hill was summoned to Washington
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