Teaching audiences to view films actively
By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3 cats
Director: Steve Rash
Starring: Brandon Routh | Chelsea Ricketts | Crystal Allen | Gil Birmingham | Michael Hudson
Jason says: “CROOKED ARROWS is a button-pushing sports movie notable for both the sport being played (lacrosse) and the underdog school (a Native American nation in upstate New York). It’s likely to be far from the best sports movie or
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Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: Sang-soo Hong
Starring: Isabelle Huppert | Jun-Sang Yu | Jung Yu Mi | Kwon Hye Hyo | Moon Sung Keun | So-ri Moon
Thom says: “The first of three films I saw that had the Goddess Ms. Huppert in starring roles. And, striking a novel turn that surmounted the duality of custom & culture brought 3 stories of three different women, all played
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Rating: 2.5 cats
Director: David Cronenberg
Starring: Emily Hampshire | Juliette Binoche | Paul Giamatti | Robert Pattinson | Samantha Morton | Sarah Gadon
Thom says: “David Cronenberg has for many years been one of my top 10 living directors and, in fact, he had eleven consecutive top-rated films with me, a feat only a handful of directors have ever achieved, but his next
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Alice Rohrwacher
Starring: Anita Caprioli | Paola Lavini | Pasqualina Scuncia | Renato Carpentieri | Salvatore Cantalupo
Thom says: “Here’s another brilliant offering from the sensational Film Movement catalog. While alarmingly anti-Catholic the film risks even more by adding an absurdist, very dark-humor to the proceedings to create an irreverent thought-provoking masterpiece. 13-year-old Marta (an amazingly languid
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Ralph Fiennes
Starring: Brian Cox | Gerard Butler | James Nesbitt | Jessica Chastain | Ralph Fiennes | Vanessa Redgrave
Thom says: “Being such a huge fan of Shakespeare I expected this film to be superlative, and by God it was even better than I had anticipated. After sitting through ANONYMOUS this film was a breath of fresh air, all
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Rating: 4.25 cats
Director: Steve Kerr
Starring: Catherine Yale | David Boutin | Gilbert Comptois | Janet Lane | Maxime Dumontier | Mylene St-Sauveur | Pierre Collin
Jason says: “COLUMBARIUM is not quite one jettisoned gimmick away from being a perfect little thriller, but it’s tight and suspenseful enough to impress as it is, telling a good little story without much in the way of fat at
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 2.75
Director: David Wu
Starring: Mickey He | Peter Ho | Rongguang Yu | Song Jia | Tony Leung Ka Fai | Victor Chen
Jason says: “’Do you like guns?’ is a line that appears in more or less every action movie of this type, where the heroes’ skill set is specifically tied to how well he can shoot, and the answer usually changes
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Andy Wachowski | Lana Wachowski | Tom Tykwer
Starring: Bae Doo-na | Ben Whisaw | Halle Berry | Hugh Grant | Hugo Weaving | James D'Arcy | Jim Broadbent | Jim Sturgess | Keith David | Susan Sarandon | Tom Hanks
Jason says: “CLOUD ATLAS is like a whole week of going to the movies compressed into three hours (and that’s for the likes of me; for the less fanatical, a month or two). It would be a pretty good week,
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Rating: 2 cats
Director: Josh Trank
Starring: Alex Russell | Anna Wood | Ashley Hinshaw | Dane DeHaan | Luke Tyler | Michael B. Jordan | Michael Kelly
Thom says: “This fast-paced earner certainly moved right along and I loved using Seattle as the background city (I grew up there) but the characters were all so hackneyed and the resolution so incomplete, plus there was that hand-held camera
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Makoto Shinkai
Starring: Hisako Kanemoto | Kakuhiko Inoue | Miyu Irino
Jason says: “Makoto Shinkai has occasionally been described as ‘the new Miyazaki’, which is tremendously unfair, both for how Hayao Miyazaki is almost universally beloved for a large body of work and for how it diminishes Shinkai’s own distinct gifts.
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Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Fernando Trueba | Javier Mariscal | Tono Errando
Starring: Blanca Rosa Blanco | Eman Xor Oña | Jon Adams | Limara Meneses | Mario Guerra | Renny Arozarena
Jason says: “For all the elements in CHICO & RITA that seem like they should make it more exciting (animation! jazz! passion! globetrotting! jealousy! revolution!), it turns out to be a strangely inert movie. It’s fairly unique – non-fantastical period
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Marjane Satrapi | Vincent Paronnaud
Starring: Chiara Mastroianni | Éric Caravaca | Golshifteh Farahani | Isabella Rossellini | Maria de Maderios | Mathieu Almaric
Bruce says: “After their huge success with PERSEPOLIS, filmmakers Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud were surprised to find that money for their second feature was so difficult to raise. It’s not that investors were down on the filmmaking duo, rather
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Jennifer Chambers Lynch
Starring: Conor Leslie | Eamonn Faren | Evan Bird | Gina Philips | Jake Weber | Julia Ormond | Vincent D'Onofrio
Thom says: “I don’t have much experience with avant-garde Lynch (daughter of illustrious David) other than her 2008 good drama/mystery SURVEILLANCE, but who can forget the Kim Basinger/BOXING HELENA stink? So, basically I wanted to see this disturbing effort due
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Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: David McMahon | Ken Burns | Sarah Burns
Jason says: “THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE states the reason for its existence plainly toward the end: To in some small way close the gap between how loudly its subjects’ guilt was proclaimed twenty-odd years ago and the attention paid to
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Rating: 1 cat
Director: Yannis Smaragdis
Starring: Catherine Deneuve | Evgeniy Stychkin | John Cleese | Juan Diego Botto | Sebastian Koch
Thom says: “This historical drama is about Greek hero Ioannas Varvakis who rose from being a Greek pirate to an international Russian caviar baron who has the ear of Catherine the Great. Later in life he returns to Greece to
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Carlos Sorin
Starring: Alejandro Javier Bures | Emma Jayne Carlton | Gisela Aringoli | Maria Abadi | Norma Argentina
Bruce says: “THE CAT VANISHES was the film I was most looking forward to at the 2012 Miami International Film Festival. It should probably surprise no one that it was my least favorite – that’s how things work sometimes. Too
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Jean-Baptiste Léonetti
Starring: Carlos Leal | Fejria Deliba | Jean-Pierre Andreani | Julie Gayet | Sami Bouajila | Valerie Bodson
Jason says: “So you’ve created a dystopic future based on existing brutalist architecture and creative cruelty. Now what? That’s a question that one can easily spend a lot of time asking during CARRE BLANC before it ultimately offers an answer.
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Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Dori Berinstein
Chris says: “You may argue that the world wasn’t waiting for a Carol Channing documentary, to which I respond, ‘Yes, but can anyone name another performer remotely like her?’ That instantly recognizable voice alone could inspire its own Broadway musical.
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Roman Polanski
Starring: Christoph Waltz | Eliot Berger | Elvis Polanski | Jodie Foster | John C. Reilly | Kate Winslet
Thom says: “I went to see this film at a theatre only 4 blocks from where I live. My brother is a huge Roman Polanski fan and I do admire his work greatly so off we went. Then a dear
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Rating: 2 cats
Director: Mikael Marcimain
Starring: David Dencik | Kristoffer Joner | Outi Mäenpää | Pernilla August | Ruth Vega Hernandez | Sven Nordin
Thom says: “CALL GIRL is set in the late 1970s – The film takes us on an excursion from the lowest of Swedish society (young teenage girls who are emotionally fucked-up, to the point where they refuse to respond to
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