Teaching audiences to view films actively
By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.75 cats
Director: Xavier Dolan
Starring: Anne Dorval | François Arnaud | Monique Spaziani | Patricia Tulasne | Suzanne Clément | Xavier Dolan
Bruce says: “Xavier Dolan began writing his script for J’AI TUÉ MA MÈRE when he was sixteen with the goal in mind of getting his film into the Cannes Film Festival. Not only did he achieve that goal but he
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Rating: 4.125 cats
Director: Toni Myers
Jason says: “The Hubble Space Telescope did not make a great first impression; its launch in 1989 was quickly followed by the discovery that a warped mirror rendered it no more powerful than ground-based telescopes. This got a lot of
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Jeffrey Friedman | Ron Epstein
Starring: Alessandro Nivola | Bob Balaban | David Strathairn | James Franco | Jeff Daniels | Jon Hamm | Mary-Louise Parker
Thom says: “There wasn’t any reason to suppose that this wouldn’t be a great film but since this was Epstein & Friedman’s first dramatic film (although based on recorded events) I only plunged in because they have made quite a
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Ursula Meier
Starring: Adélaïde Leroux | Isabelle Huppert | Kacey Mottet Klein | Madeleine Budd | Olivier Gourmet
Michael says: “As we near the final quarter of 2010, I’ve started to catch up on some movies I’ve missed in the theater (and there are a lot of them!) HOME is a French film starring Isabelle Huppert, the first
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Rating: 2.5 cats
Director: Clint Eastwood
Starring: Bryce Dallas Howard | Cécile de France | Derek Jacobi | Matt Damon | Thierry Neuvic
Thom says: “I’m certainly not Clint Eastwood’s biggest fan (UNFORGIVEN is his only 5 CATS film for me) but he definitely has to be greatly admired for not sticking to one style or genre. Here he goes for a dramatization of the
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Director: Darko Lungulov
Starring: Antone Pagan | Branislav Trifunovic | Cyndi Lauper | David Thornton | Goran Radakovic | Jelena Mrdja | Mirjana Karanovic
Bruce says: “HERE AND THERE is a tale of two cities, New York and Belgrade. It is not the best of times in either city. New York is very un-Manhattan is this film. Belgrade, we are told, in part of
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Alain Resnais
Starring: André Dussolier | Anne Consigny | Emanuelle Devos | Mathieu Amalric | Sabine Azéma
Bruce says: “You have to be a devotee of absurdist comedy to appreciate a film like LES HERBES FOLLES (now re-titled WILD GRASS for English audiences.) Similar in theme to HAPPENSTANCE, the Audrey Tatou vehicle prior to her success with
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 2 cats
Director: Christine Molloy | Joe Lawlor
Starring: Annie Townsend | Danny Groenland | Dennis Jobling | Sandie Malie | Sonia Saville
Jason says: “I’d like to think I’m generous when reviewing and rating movies: If I enjoy a movie while watching it, but it loses something on later examination, I make sure to emphasize that this doesn’t undo the initial good
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Rating: 2 cats
Director: Pascal Chaumeil
Starring: Andrew Lincoln | François Damiens | Héléna Noguerra | Julie Ferrier | Romain Duris | Vanessa Paradis
Jason says: “Making a good romantic comedy seems easy enough, in theory: Come up with some witty banter, figure out what makes the people delivering it interesting and likable, add a reason that they aren’t kissing by the end of
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Lucrecia Martel
Starring: César Bordón | Claudia Cantero | Daniel Genoud | Guillermo Arengo | Inés Efron | Maria Onetto
Jeff says: “In the end, how you will have come through this movie will depend on what you saw in a brief shot towards the beginning of the picture. Vero, a successful dentist in a rural Argentine town, fumbles for
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Bob Byington
Starring: Alex Karpovsky | Justin Rice | Kevin Corrigan | Kristen Tucker | Pat Healy
Diane says: “Caught this at International Film Festival of Boston. A very funny, rambling story of one guy’s heartbreak, and the response of those around him. (Could he be compared to the Job of A SERIOUS MAN?) Justin Rice is
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Bette Gordon
Starring: Aidan Quinn | Campbell Scott | Jamey Sheridan | John Savage | Karen Young | Mariann Mayberry | Steve Buscemi
Bruce says: “In 1983 Bette Gordon was an underground artist who decided she could make as good a film as the next guy (let’s face it, there were few female filmmakers in 1983.) The result was the stunning VARIETY which
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Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Julio DePietro
Starring: Aaron Yoo | Alexis Bedel | Andrew McCarthy | Anna Chlumsky | Bryan Greenberg | Scott Porter
Jason says: “Tommy Fielding (Scott Porter) is a pretty good guy, especially considering he’s a Wall Street trader. He doesn’t overindulge; he isn’t pressuring his girlfriend Beth (Alexis Bledel) to have sex even though it’s been a couple months and
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Dagur Kári
Starring: Brian Cox | Isild Le Besco | Paul Dano
Bruce says: “Who would have guessed that the two stars of the 2001 film L.I.E., one a Scotsman and the other an American teenager, would end up eight years later working together in Iceland? Although Paul Dano (2008 Chlotrudis Award
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Ji-woon Kim
Starring: Byung-hun Lee | Kang-ho Song | Woo-sung Jung
Jason says: “A few years ago, I saw a movie called A BITTERSWEET LIFE AT FANTASIA and loved it, saying it was the sort of action movie John Woo and Chow Yun-fat used to make before they came to Hollywood
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Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: Niels Arden Oplev
Starring: Lena Endre | Michael Nyqvist | Noomi Rapace | Peter Andersson | Peter Haber | Sven-Bertil Taube
Jason says: “Stieg Larsson’s ‘Millennium’ novels – all three published posthumously, and given names that begin The Girl Who… in the United States – are kind of a big deal. How can you tell? Well, the three movies with high
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Rating: 3.75 cats
Director: Roman Polanski
Starring: Ewan McGregor | James Belushi | John Bernthal | Kim Cattral | Olivia Williams | Pierce Brosnan
Thom says: “Polanski, perhaps because of his continuing legal problems, is not the most prolific of world-class directors, but I’ve still managed to see 17 of his films. I loved his early oeuvre of KNIFE IN THE WATER, REPULSION, &
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Aaron Schneider
Starring: Bill Murray | Lucas Black | Robert Duvall | Sissy Spacek
Thom says: “This period piece about a hermit in Tennessee in the 1930s has its plusses, especially with pretty horses, good photography and editing, finally ends up disappointing. The truculent hermit has a big secret that separates him from the
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Jeff Reichert
Jason says: “Disdain for the technique of redrawing voting districts in strange ways for political gain (‘gerrymandering’) doesn’t unite America’s political parties, so much as alternate between them as convenient. Because of this, GRRYMANDERING-the-movie actually has a better chance than
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Rating: 3.75 cats
Director: Adam Green
Starring: Ed Ackerman | Emma Bell | Kane Hodder | Kevin Zegers | Rileah Vanderbilt | Shawn Ashmore
Jason says: “FROZEN is straightforward, at times almost to a fault. In short order, we get friends with a certain amount of tension between them, a situation we really wouldn’t want to be in, and things getting worse. Fortunately, this
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