Teaching audiences to view films actively
By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Sophia Takal
Starring: Alex Ross Perry | Kate Lyn Sheil | Lawrence Michael Levine | Louis Cancelmi | Sophia Takal
Jason says: “Ignore the first scene of this movie; it sets a tone and a theme that winds up being a relatively minor part of what follows. The remaining hour or so turns into something much more interesting than the
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Rating: 3.75 cats
Director: Shinsuke Sato
Starring: Kanata Hongo | Kazunari Ninomiya | Ken'ichi Matsuyama | Natsuna | Yuriko Yoshitaka
Jason says: “It’s a funny thing that the first live-action GANTZ film feels kind of old-school; considering that the director’s last project was a CGI feature, the original manga does not hide that it is produced with digital tools, and
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Rating: 4.25 cats
Director: Joann Sfar
Starring: Anna Mouglalis | Doug Jones | Eric Elmosnino | Laetitia Casta | Lucy Gordon | Mylène Jampanoï
Bruce says: “Make no mistakes, GAINSGOURG: JTAIME .MOI NON PLUS is no straightforward biopic. Rather than attack his subject conventionally, Joann Sfar is capricious and daring in his portraiture of Serge Gainsbourg. Sfar pages back and forth to Gainsbourgs childhood to
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Rating: 3.25
Director: Miranda July
Starring: David Warshofsky | Hamish Linklater | Isabella Acres | Joe Putterlik | Miranda July
Jason says: “THE FUTURE is kind of amazing, in its annoying little way. It finds the shortest possible path from its characters doing something nice to them being ridiculous and insufferable, and then spends the next hour or so finding
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 1.5 cats
Director: Caleb Emerson
Starring: Aramis Sartorio | Brett Hundley | David Reynolds | Gia Paloma | Thea Martin
Jason says: “It’s not uncommon for critics to rate films they see at a festival a little higher than those they see elsewhere, in part because the discussions with the filmmakers afterward help forge a personal connection and often cast
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: David Sigal
Bruce says: “Cities have a way of defining themselves, adding up pieces the wholes of which greatly surpass the sums of their parts. FLORENT: QUEEN OF THE MEAT MARKET presents a case in point. Florent was not just another restaurant;
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 1.5 cats
Director: Kristin Canty
Thom says: “We can’t all be interested in everything, right? This documentary is the story of food clubs and farm co-operatives all over the United States that have been raided by local, state, and the federal government that reads more
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Chris Metzler | Lev Anderson
Thom says: “This film was a real find but it shouldn’t have been. Co-director Metzler had also co-directed one of my favorite documentaries PLAGUES AND PLEASURES ON THE SALTON SEA (2004) with Jeff Springer & I had shamefully forgotten that
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Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Hideaki Anno | Kazuya Tsurumaki | Masayuki
Starring: Fumihiko Tachiki | Kôichi Yamadera | Kotono Mitsuishi | Megumi Ogata | Yûko Miyamura
Jason says: “I didn’t think much of the first REBUILD OF EVANGELION movie when I saw it a couple years ago, but there might have been mitigating circumstances – the version I saw was dubbed, and it was the first
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Michael Webber
Diane says: “I guess I heard about this doc on NPR, in the aftermath of the exotic animal incident in Ohio a few weeks ago. Tim Harrison runs an organization called Outreach for Animals. ELEPHANT is primarily the story of
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Sebastian Gutierrez
Starring: Adrianne Palicki | Carla Gugino | Joseph Gordon-Levitt | Timothy Olyphant
Jason says: “Although ELEKTRA LUXX is being released in markets where WOMEN IN TROUBLE didn’t play theatrically, and you can probably follow along well enough without having seen the other one. And despite it picking up on threads from that
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Starring: Albert Brooks | Bryan Cranston | Carey Mulligan | Oscar Isaac | Ryan Gosling
Diane says: “The good: Ryan Gosling, of course. I was with a dozen or so women friends recently, and Ryan Gosling was the one actor they could all agree on as someone they’d like to sleep with. Albert Brooks. What
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Rating: 3.25
Director: Hirotsugu Kawasaki
Starring: Kentarô Itô | Ryuji Aigase | Satomi Ishihara | Sôsuke Komori | Yasuyuki Kase
Jason says: “The craftsmanship of LEGEND OF THE MILLENNIUM DRAGON is remarkable; it’s the sort of animated feature where every cel is frame-worthy and the assembly into a moving picture is wonderfully fluid. Like many animated films of its type,
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Rating: 2.5 cats
Director: Lee Tamahori
Starring: Dominic Cooper | Khalid Laith | Ludivine Sagnier | Mimoun Oaïssa | Philip Quast | Raad Rawi
Jason says: “You’d be forgiven for thinking that a movie taking place amid the inner circle of Saddam Hussein’s family over the past twenty-five years, and featuring the potential plot twists and mind-benders of look-alikes, would be something fairly exciting.
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 5 cats
Director: Jee-woon Kim
Starring: Byung-hun Lee | Gook-hwan Jeon | Ho-jin Jeon | Min-sik Choi | San-ha Oh | Yoon-seo Kim
Jason says: “A colleague of mine described Kim Ji-woon’s last film, THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE WEIRD, as an attempt to make an action movie with nothing but the Good Parts. Kim brings that same attitude to I SAW THE
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: Hark Tsui
Starring: Andy Lau | Bingbing Li | Carina Lau | Chao Deng | Tony Leung Ka-fai
Jason says: “DETECTIVE DEE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE PHANTOM FLAME hits a lot of my sweet spots – it can be described as a Chinese martial-arts take on Sherlock Holmes, with a blockbuster budget, Tsui Hark directing with abandon,
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 5 cats
Director: Alexander Payne
Starring: Amara Miller | BeauBridges | George Clooney | Nick Krause | Shailene Woodley
Jason says: “THE DESCENDANTS is, I suppose, a movie about trust and responsibility, although I’m not getting very far trying to boil it down to parallel situations and easy lessons. That’s okay, though; this lets director Alexander Payne put a
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: John Madden
Starring: Ciarán Hinds | Helen Mirren | Jessica Chastain | Marton Csokas | Sam Worthington | Tom Wilkinson
Jason says: “Attach enough talent to a movie, and more often than not, you’ll at least wind up with something worth watching, and THE DEBT has a fair number of good people working on it. Does it translate into a
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Travis Betz
Starring: Dustin Fasching | Rose McKinnon | Sarah Lassez
Jason says: “Films like Travis Betz’s THE DEAD INSIDE are some of my favorites to write about. Not so much the genre – although, let’s face it, you don’t pass up a chance to write up singing zombies – but
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Howard J. Ford | Jonathan Ford
Starring: David Dontoh | Prince David Oseia | Rob Freeman
Jason says: “Most people who decide to make a zombie movie do it in a bare-bones way, shooting in their hometown rather than going particularly far afield; when you’re working with no budget, it’s best to be in familiar territory.
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