Teaching audiences to view films actively
By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4.3 cats
Director: Tsui Hark
Starring: Angelababy | Carina Lau | Chao You-ting | Feng Shaofeng | Ling Geng-xin
Jason says: “I’ve got to confess: When I hoped for more Detective Dee movies after seeing MYSTERY OF THE PHANTOM FLAME a couple years ago, I didn’t really think I’d get them. Happily, it seemed the people of China also
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Rating: 4.75 cats
Director: Eytan Fox
Starring: Lior Ashkenazi | Ohad Knoller | Orly Silbersatz Banai | Oz Zehavi
Bruce says: “I’ll admit to a bit of skepticism when I saw that a sequel to Eytan Fox’s wonderful 2002 film YOSSI AND JAGGER would be made. Sequel can be a very bad word for a film buff. Very few
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Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Juan Carlos Fanconi
Starring: Alvaro Matute | Fabian Sales | Juan Pablo Olyslager | Rocio Carranza
Jason says: “EL XENDRA is impressively ambitious for a Honduran science fiction movie, and it actually does a better job of delivering on those ambitions than a lot of movies whose reviews start that way. It’s not necessarily going to
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Rating: 4.75 cats
Director: Quentin Dupieux
Starring: Alexis Dziena | Eric Judor | Jack Plotnick | Mark Burnham | Regan Burns | Steve Little | William Fichtner
Jason says: “Even those who haven’t seen Quentin Dupieux’s previous feature-length bit of absurdity RUBBER can probably guess that this is going to be a strange movie from the title alone. The playful, cheery nature of the picture may be
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Rating: 2.75
Director: Catherine Corsini
Starring: Adele Haenel | Alban Aunard | Arta Dobroshi | Clotide Hesme | Raphaël Personnaz | Rasha Bukvic | Reda Kateb
Thom says: “”I had quite like Corsini’s LEAVING (2009) and went into this with my eyes wide open and was mostly satisfied. It’s the story of a man returning from his bachelor party with two friends who runs over an
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Director: Terence Malick
Starring: Ben Afleck | Javier Bardem | Olga Kurylenko | Rachel MacAdams
Brett says: “Terrence Malick has a new film out. Did you take your pill this morning? “Malick’s TO THE WONDER follows in the footsteps of his previous works, that of a slow-paced stroll through a series of contemplations against the
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Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: Hou Chi-ja
Starring: Chien Man-shu | Kai Ko | Kuo Shu-yau | Nikki Hsieh | Tsai Chen--nan
Kyle says:”A welcome respite from gangsters and ninjas, the New York premiere of this delightfully whimsical comedy is the remarkably assured work of director Hou Chi-jan, who directed the insightful documentary on Taiwanese cinema history called TAIWAN BLACK MOVIES —
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Kim Nguyen
Starring: Alain Lino | Mic EliBastien | Mizinga Mwinga | Rachel Mwanza | Ralph Prosper | Serge Kanyinda
Beth Ca says: “My goodness! This is a wonderful film! It’s amazingly beautiful and emotional!! I have to stop using exclamation points!!!! I’ve seen so many films this year I think are my favorite, but this one has stampeded past
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Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: Kieran Darcy-Smith
Starring: Antony Starr | Felicity Price | Joel Edgerton | Teresa Palmer
Jason says: “WISH YOU WERE HERE pulls off something of a neat trick, even if it doesn’t always mean to: The filmmakers might not have anticipated Joel Edgerton and Teresa Palmer getting top billing Stateside (they’ve each put on North
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Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: Bobcat Goldthwait
Starring: Alexie Gilmore | Bryce Johnson
Jason says: “Ever since THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT kickstarted the boom in found-footage horror a decade and a half ago, there’s been a tendency to make the form ever more elaborate, until the likes of CLOVERFIELD and TROLLHUNTER are basically
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Ben Nabors
Jason says: “WILLIAM AND THE WINDMILL does not so much tell the tale of a boy who builds a windmill to generate electricity for his poor village as one that has built such a windmill. After all, that’s the sort
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Arvin Chen
Starring: Kimi Hsia | Lawrence Ko | Mavis Fan | Richie Ren
Michael says: “Both thoughtful and whimsical, Arvin Chen’s WILL YOU STILL LOVE ME TOMORROW is a poignant exploration of a married couple’s domestic struggle while trying to have a child, when the husband realizes he cannot deny his homosexuality. Weichung
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Zach Clark
Starring: Anna Margaret Hollyman | Joe Swanberg | Laura Lemar-Goldsborough | Lydia Hyslop | Nathan Williams
Jason says: “It would be kind of amusing if, in the future, WHITE REINDEER winds up dropped into the Christmas rotation of independent-minded theaters, television stations, and online-streaming-lists as an apparent poison pill. Not that there aren’t already plenty of
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Pablo Trapero
Starring: Jérémie Renier | Martina Gusman | Ricardo Darín
Bruce says: “The ‘hidden cities,’ the slums of Buenos Aires, are not as famous as the favelas of Rio de Janeiro but that may be because they are a more recent phenomenon. The tribal people of the western mountains bordering
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Ahmad Alyaseer
Starring: Najwan Baqaeen | Zaid Baqaeen
Jason says: “I’m guessing that there’s not a whole lot of money for science fiction filmmaking in Jordan, which is why WHEN TIME BECOMES A WOMAN not only feels less like a movie than a one-act play, but also has
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Rating: 4.75 cats
Director: David Siegel | Scott McGehee
Starring: Alesander Skarsgârd | Joanna Vanderham | Julianne Moore | Onata Aprile | Steve Coogan
Thom says: “McGehee & Siegel have long fascinated me starting out with one of the strangest films ever made in SUTURE followed by two great films in THE DEEP END & BEE SEASON. While UNCERTAINTY was a decided letdown, because
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Amy Berg
Thom says: “Coming so close on the heels of my viewing of the PARADISE LOST trilogy: THE CHILD MURDERS AT ROBIN HOOD HILLS, REVELATIONS, & PURGATORY, I saw this the week it opened in San Francisco. With a big heft
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Jo Sung-hee
Starring: Jang Young-nam | Park Bo-young | Song Joong-ki | Yoo Yeon-seok
Kyle says: “The title is misleading only if your notion of ‘werewolf’ is defined by the usually unclad muscular body of Taylor Lautner as Jacob Black, and CGI transformations into a huge snarling but protective wolf, in THE TWILIGHT SAGA
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Jim Mickle
Starring: Ambyr Childers | Bill Sage | Jack Gore | Julia Garner | Kassie DePaiva | Michael Parks
Jason says: “WE ARE WHAT WE ARE makes a heck of a case for the much-maligned idea of remaking a foreign film in English. Though the original Mexican version was much-beloved by many (I thought it had a great opening
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Rating: 3.75 cats
Director: Jim Rash | Nat Faxon
Starring: Allison Janney | Amanda Peet | AnnaSophia Robb | Liam James | Maya Rudolph | Sam Rockwell | Steve Carell | Toni Collette
Thom says: “This new dysfunctional family-on-vacation coming-of-age dramedy is a first time effort from the directors who won the 2012 Oscar for adapted screenplay for THE DESCENDANTS along with Alexander Payne. It’s a decent first effort that is nicely character-driven
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