Teaching audiences to view films actively
By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Juan Solanas
Starring: Holly Uloth | James Kidnie | Jim Sturgess | Kirsten Dunst | Timothy Spall
Jason says: “I admit, you can’t honestly look at Juan Solanas’s UPSIDE DOWN and call the writing much other than a mess – there really isn’t one thing in this movie that makes sense. But, on the other hand, I
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Claude Lanzmann
Kyle says: “AT BERKELEY and THE LAST OF THE UNJUST share little in common aside from both being Main Slate screenings of the 51st New York Film Festival, both having very long running times, and both being sharply revealing contemporary
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Rating: 1.75
Director: Will Slocombe
Starring: Amy Ferguson | Ashton Holmes | Cheryl Hines | Peter Bogdanovich | Ross Partridge | Sonya Walger
Jason says: “Folks from other continents much watch movies taking place on Thanksgiving and wonder why Americans have given themselves and extra week end of annoying travel to share a relatively bland meal and unresolved issues with family – even
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Rating: 2.3
Director: Danny Boyle
Starring: Danny Sapani | James McAvoy | Matt Cross | RosarioDawson | Vincent Cassell | Wahab Sheikh
Chris says: “Danny Boyle peaked early and spectacularly with TRAINSPOTTING; since then he’s mostly made one bummer after another (at this point, I’d watch only 28 DAYS LATER and maybe 127 HOURS again). What sinks most of his post-Ewan McGregor
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Shannon Plumb
Starring: Alexandra Hennrikson | Cody Cianfrance | Derek Cianfrance | Jason Quarle | Lora Lee Gayer | Shannon Plumb | Walker Cianfrance
Bruce says: “New York filmmaker Shannon Plumb draws on her own experiences of motherhood for the vignettes in TOWHEADS. In the film her name is Penelope and her real live husband, Derek Cianfrance (THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES and BLUE
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Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Lynn Shelton
Starring: Alison Janney | Ellen Page | Josh Pais | Rosemarie DeWitt | Scott McNairy | Shannon Kipp
Michael says: “Lynn Shelton’s latest film, TOUCHY FEELY, didn’t get very good reviews on rottentomatoes.com, but I actually quite liked it. Rosemarie DeWitt plays Abby, a massage therapist one day finds she has developed an aversion so skin and to
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Rating: 4.75 cats
Director: Zhangke Jia
Starring: Wu Jiang; Lanshan Luo; Li Meng; Baoqiang Wang; Jia-yi Zhang; Tao
Jason says: “Considering the tales that have been told about China’s film censorship bureau and the way that most of the films exported from tend to be set in a prosperous Beijing, the existence of something like A TOUCH OF
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Takashi Shimizu
Starring: Hikari Mitsushima | Momoko Tanabe | Takeru Shibuya | Tamaki Ogawa | Teruyuki Kagawa
Jason says: “TORMENTED is not a bad title for this particular Takashi Shimizu movie – it’s generic, sure, but it does reflect some of what’s going on. I must admit to favoring its original title, RABBIT HORROR 3D. I like
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Yoshihiro Nakamura
Starring: Gaku Hamada | Haru | Kana Kurashina | Kei Tanaka | Kento Nagayama | Naomi Ortega | Nene Otsuko
Jason says: “I feel vaguely like we’ve been taking Yoshihiro Nakamura for granted. Though he got his start writing horror movies for the likes of Hideo Nakata, he’s spent the last few years on a string of off-beat but surprisingly
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Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: John Haptas | Kristine Samuelson
Jason says: “It’s not uncommon to watch a documentary and say that the scale is in-between the usual levels, neither comprehensive nor truly a broad introduction. TOKYO WAKA at times seems to be around those extremes, covering an extremely specific
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Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Jonas D’Adesky
Starring: Jean Mary Pierre | Jules Vitaleme | Sima Mickelson
Bruce says: “About six months after the 2010 Haitian earthquake, Jonas D’Adesky’s girlfriend Ines decided she wanted to leave Belgium and travel to Haiti to volunteer her services. D’Adesky decided to accompany her and they stayed for six months. Three
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Rating: 2.3
Director: Evan Goldberg | Seth Rogen
Starring: Christopher Mintz-Plasse | Craig Robinson | Danny McBride | Emma Watson | James Franco | Jay Baruchel | Jonah Hill | Michael Cera | Rihanna | Seth Rogen
Kyle says: “Just about everything you need to know if you wish to see THIS IS THE END can be found in the above cast list: All these well-known actors play themselves. The title’s provenance is contained in lyrics for
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Rating: 4.25 cats
Director: Charles Murray
Starring: Charlayne Woodard | Elimu Nelson | Michael Beach | Omari Hardwick | Shanola Hampton | Tamala Jones
Jason says: “THINGS NEVER SAID, while it spends a lot of time on spoken word erformances, enough for it to be a major focus of the film and the way most people recommending it will describe it to others, isn’t
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Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: Marcelo Lordello
Starring: Elayne de Moura | Geórgio Kokkosi | Irma Brown | Jéssica Gomes de Brito | Maria Luiza Tavares
Bruce says: “On a remote highway in northern Brazil a car pulls over and suddenly two young kids, a boy and a girl, are standing alone by the side of the road. They have not been deposited at any specific
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Hernán Goldfrid
Starring: Alberto Ammann | Arturo Puig | Calu Rivero | Ricardo Darín
Bruce says: “The incomparable Ricardo Darin stars as Roberto Bermúdez, a professor of law who has acclaimed academic and forensic careers and a shambles of a personal life. The film opens with Roberto extremely hung over and lying on a
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Rating: 4.25 cats
Director: Hideki Takeuchi
Starring: Aya Ueto | Hiroshi Abe | Kai Shishido | Masachika Ichimura
Thom says: “I spent a good number of Saturdays trying to learn Japanese a year or two ago, and one thing I remember about those classes is that when students mentioned they liked manga, the teacher always asked if they
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Jean-François Laguionie
Starring: Adrien Larmande | Chloë Berthier | Jean Barney | Julian Bouanich | Serge Fallu | Thierry Jahn
Jason says: “THE PAINTING (LE TABLEAU in the original French) is beautiful, and witty, and smart; you can tell that from the first frame of this movie about the lives of the figures inside a painting. And if it merely
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Rating: 2.5 cats
Director: Aleksander Nordaas
Starring: Erlend Nervold | Jon Sigve Skard | Morten Andressen | Roland Astrand | Silje Reina
Thom says: “A two-man clean-up crew go deep into the Norwegian woods to a remote cabin where they discover a comatose woman that they revive. The woman has a long tail. Thale (the tailed figure) is apparently a Huldra a
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Chi-Ngai Lee | Fruit Chan | Simon Yam
Starring: Chery Ngan | Dada Chan | Kelly Chan | Simon Yam | Siu Yam-yam | Tony Leung Ka-fai
Jason says: “The last horror movie I saw that I recall really messing me up was ‘Dumplings’, Fruit Chan’s segment of the THREE…EXTREME anthology. After a decade of making movies that have not particularly traveled outside of the various Chinas,
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Stephen Fung
Starring: Angelababy | Daniel Wu | Eddie Peng | Peter Stormare | Qi Shu | Tony Leung Ka Fai | Yuan Xiaochao
Jason says: “In China, there was a mere four-week wait between TAI CHI ZERO and this second part of the story; depending where you are in America, it wound up being six to eight months. Not that it much matters;
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