Teaching audiences to view films actively
By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 1 cat
Director: Lee Hwan-Kyung
Starring: Jeong Man-Sik | Kal So-Won | Kim Ki-Cheon | Oh Dal-Su | Park Won-Sang | Ryoo Seung-Ryong
Kyle says: “MIRACLE IN CELL NO. 7 is a despicable patriarchal fantasy presented as a comedic tearjerker about a wrongfully imprisoned intellectually impaired but adoring father Young-Goo (Ryoo Seung-Ryong) of a precious little girl Je-Seung (Kal So-Won), who is smuggled
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Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Yves Montmayeur
Bruce says: “Michael Haneke does not like to discuss his personal life – he prefers to concentrate on the man behind the camera. Those wishes are granted by director Yves Montmayeur. It is likely those wishes were conditional in making
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: P.J. Hogan
Starring: Anthony LaPaglia | Liev Schreiber | Rebecca Gibney | Toni Collette
Kyle says: “Whether you are a potential viewer of this latest work by the director best known for MURIEL’S WEDDING depends on how open you are to a comedy about mental illness. The title refers not only to the wildly
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Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: Hal Hartley
Starring: D.J. Mendel | Danielle Meyer | George Feaster | James Rich | Miho Nikaido | Penelope Lagos
Thom says: “I’ve followed Hal Hartley’s career quite closely & had seen all his feature-length films sans FLIRT (1995) & SURVIVING DESIRE (1993) & have loved some of them including TRUST, AMATEUR, HENRY FOOL, & FAY GRIM. Others haven’t been
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Chad Hartigan
Starring: Demetrius Grosse | Kristin Slaysman | Paul Eenhoorn | Richmond Arquette | Tom Plunkett
Chris says: “Deceptively simple and effortlessly graceful, this character study is the type of American indie you wish would receive the release and promotional heft of something like THE WAY WAY BACK. Martin Bonner, a divorced, sixty-ish man of Australian
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Martin Villeneuve
Starring: Catherine Dhavernas | Jacques Languirand | Paul Ahmarani | Robert Lepagee
Jason says: “As much as I’m glad the Boston Sci-Fi Film Festival is getting a better class of movies, I kind of wish that the timing of MARS ET AVRIL hitting the festival circuit and then having its regular release
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Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: Carlos Jaureguialzo
Starring: Cecilia Roth | Dario Grandinetti | Manuel Vicente | Marcelo Melingo | Rafael Spregelburd | Susans Lanteri
Bruce says: “Loosely based on the characters of Leopold and Molly Bloom in James Joyce’s Ulysses, MARRIAGE is a dawn-to-dusk examination of a marriage from within the minds of both husband and wife. It is a day in which both
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Rating: 3.75 cats
Director: Justin Chadwick
Starring: Idris Elba | Naomie Harris | Riaad Moosa | Simo Mogwaza | Tony Kgoroge | Zolani Mkiva
Jason says: “MANDELA: LONG WALK TO FREEDOM is a tidily-arranged biography; it organizes what people are interested in where Nelson Mandela is concerned and presents it in a manner that is respectful and stirring without feeling like it is getting
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Zack Snyder
Starring: Amy Adams | Diane Lane | Henry Cavill | Kevin Costner | Michael Shannon | Russell Crowe
Bruce says: “I generally try not to review the big blockbusters but as a gigantic Superman fan I thought I could add my 2-cents-worth. I’ve seen SUPERMAN, SUPERMAN II, SUPERMAN III, SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE, SUPERMAN RETURNS, &
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Caradog W. James
Starring: Caity Lotz | Denis Lawson | Jade Croot | Sam Hazeldine | Toby Stevens
Jason says: “THE MACHINE is not the sort of science fiction movie that comes from someone who is, at heart, making a western, or because setting it in the future gives the FX guys a reason to make cool visuals,
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Rating: 4.25 cats
Director: Jeff Chang
Starring: Chen Bo-lin | Chiu Yang-Shiang | Kuo Xue-fu | Masuyama Yuki | Owodog | Vivian Hsu
Jason says: “This movie seems like it has no business being as good as it is – it’s a sweet, goofy thing that makes occasional ventures into crude adult territory, and the world of sentai action it’s set in demands
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Rating: 3.8 cats
Director: Jeffrey Friedman | Rob Epstein
Starring: Amanda Seyfried | Bobby Cannavale | Chris Noth | Hank Azaria | James Franco | Peter Sarsgaard | Sharon Stone | Wes Bentley
Chris says: “Linda Lovelace, star of the seminal mainstream porno DEEP THROAT, had a life story seemingly tailor-made for a biopic: plucked from obscurity, she became an instant, infamous celebrity, but paid dearly for it. LOVELACE revels in that dichotomy,
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Macky Alston
Bruce says: “LOVE FREE OR DIE begins with scenes at the 2008 Lambeth Conference, a once-a-decade get together for Anglican Bishops, a by-invitation-only event engineered by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. One of the Bishops noticeably uninvited is Gene
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Rating: 1.5 cats
Director: Troy McGatlin
Starring: Adair Jameson | Chuma Gault | David Pevsner | Jan Van Sickle | Patrick John Hurley | Robin DeMarco
Jason says: “There are times when I watch movies and it’s not the obviously bad science itself that bothers me so much as the ignorance about the people and processes involved. It’s not the only discipline filmmakers seem to not
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Rating: 3.25
Director: Xu Zheng
Starring: Huang Bo | Tao Hong | Wang Baoqiang | Xu Zheng
Jason says: “Comedies are tough imports; wordplay gets lost in translation and different cultures find different things odd enough to be considered funny. So, it’s the big, unmistakable gags that cross borders best, but they’re not usually in the best
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Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: Cate Shortland
Starring: André Frid | Hans-Jochen Wagner | Mika Seidel | Nele Trebs | Saskia Rosendahl | Ursina Lardi
Jason says: “Set LORE in almost any other time and place, and it’s an impressive adventure story of a certain type, with fine young actors playing kids who must make an impossible-seeming journey against incredible odds. But it’s not set
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Dheeraj Akolkar
Bruce says: “A love affair that evolved into a friendship spanning five decades is the best way to describe the relationship between Swedish director Ingmar Bergman and Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann. They met during the filming of Bergman’s PERSONA on
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Bille August
Starring: August Diehl | Bruno Ganz | Jack Huston | Jeremy Irons | Lena Olin | Martina Gedeck | Mélanie Laurent | Tom Courtenay
Jason says: “Sometimes, there are things that the written word can do that a film can’t. In NIGHT TRAIN TO LISBON, Raimund Gregorius (Jeremy Irons) tells how certain sentences in the book at the film’s center had a profound effect
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Abbas Kiarostami
Starring: Denden | Rin Takanashi | Ryo Kase | Ryota Nakanishi | Tadashi Okuno
Bruce says: “Kiarostami’s films have been on serious filmgoers’ lists for a long time now. Interest in his work began when he was strictly an Iranian director documenting the Iranian cultural landscape through his narrative works such as A TASTE
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Rating: 2 cats
Director: Liz W. Garcia
Starring: Amy Madigan | David Lambert | Joshua Harto | Kristen Bell | Mamie Gummer | Martin Starr
Jason says: “It is, almost undoubtedly, a sign of encroaching middle age that the first thing that annoyed me about THE LIFEGUARD was the way that the characters not even a full generation younger than me acted. But I figured,
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