Teaching audiences to view films actively
By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3 cats
Director: Marvin Kren
Starring: Anka Graczyk | Michael Fuith | Theo Trebs
Jason says: “RAMMBOCK is far enough outside what usually the parameters of what shows up on multiplex screens – a low-budget German horror movie so short that only an hour and fifteen minutes passes between the lights going down and
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Caroline Bottaro
Starring: Alexandra Gentil | FrancisRenaud | Kevin Kline | Sandrine Bonnaire | Valérie Lagrange
Jason says: “There should be more chess movies, although there are probably more than I think because I just haven’t gotten around to seeing many (I remember Siskel & Ebert raving about FRESH, but I missed it). It’s a game
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Wing-cheong Law
Starring: Anthony Wong Chau-sang | Candy Lo | Janice Man | Maggie Cheung Ho-Yee | Richie Ren
Jason says: “PUNISHED levels with the audience pretty quickly, opening with two scenes that don’t say everything but make it clear that this movie is less about resolutions than the process of getting there. Later on, it spells out just
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Rating: 1.5 cats
Director: Usama Alshaibi
Starring: Dejan Mircea | Manal Kara | Molly Plunk
Jason says: “Congratulations, Usama Alshaibi. You’ve managed to make spiritualism, Islamic mythology, and kinky sex boring in one brief eighty-minute feature. That’s quite an impressive accomplishment, considering that most of the movie doesn’t seem interested in accomplishing much of anything.
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Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Francois Ozon
Starring: Catherine Deneuve | Fabrice Luchini | Gerard Depardieu | Judith Godrèche | Karin Viard
Thom says: “Earlier on in the beginning of his career Ozun showed he might well be on the way to become one of the great French directors but lately he seems to have lost his way. I was fascinated, while
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Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: Fred Cavayé
Starring: Claire Perot | Elena Anaya | Gérard Lanvin | Gilles Lellouche | Mireille Perrier | Roschdy Zem
Jason says: “POINT BLANK is not a French remake of the classic 1967 John Boorman flick that starred Lee Marvin; that would require being mean down to its very bones, and this one is a shade or two warmer than
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Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: Chang-dong Lee
Starring: Da-wit Lee | Hira Kim | Joeng-hie Yun | Nae-sang Ahn | Yong-taek Kim
Ibad says: “POETRY is a fascinating and often heartbreaking story focusing around an older woman desperate for fulfillment, vision, and control over her thoughts and memories. At the center of it is a behemoth of a performance by Jeong-he Yoon,
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Wim Wenders
Bruce says: “For twenty years Wim Wenders and Pina Bausch planned on making this documentary. Wenders could not get started on the project because he could not figure out how to put her choreography on film. Finally, he decided to
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Nicolás Goldbart
Starring: Daniel Hendler | Federico Luppi | Jazmin Stuart | Yayo Guridi
Jason says: “In most zombie/contagion movies, the point where the tension really cranks up is when, after braving the various horrors to get to what should be a safe place, the characters discover that the greatest danger isn’t out there;
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Anne Renton
Starring: Elizabeth Peña | Emily Deschanel | Jason Ritter | Kathleen Turner | Richard Chamberlain
Chris says: “For film festivals from Cannes to Toronto, it’s usually a safe bet that the opening night film will not be the fest’s pick of the litter. Those selected for the Provincetown International Film Festival (now in its 13th
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Dee Rees
Starring: Aasha Davis | Adepero Oduye | Charles Parnell | Kim Wayans | Pernell Walker | Sahra Mellesse
Michael says: “Saw PARIAH last week, and I want to urge anyone who is heading out to the movies this week to try to catch it before nominations. PARIAH is the story of a young African-American lesbian in high school
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Andrew Rossi
Diane says: “Had resisted seeing this one for so long, but… “The main thrust of the docu, about how the Web, social media, etc. are killing newspapers, is a stale story by now. What excited me were the stories of
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Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Takeshi Kitano
Starring: Jun Kunimura | Kippei Shiina | Ryo Kase | Takeshi Kitano | Tomokazu Miura
Jason says: “Takeshi Kitano has apparently been doing unusual stuff lately, with GLORY TO THE FILMMAKER and TAKEHSHIS apparently being considered weird for even Japan. Those projects haven’t been doing quite so well, so Kitano has gone back to the
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Jesse Peretz
Starring: Elizabeth Banks | Emily Mortimer | Janet Montgomery | Kathryn Hahn | Matthew Mindler | Paul Rudd | Rashida Jones | Shirley Knight | Steve Coogan | T.J. Miller | Zooey Deschanel
Jason says: “OUR IDIOT BROTHER is just as broad a comedy as its name suggests but a good deal less mean-spirited. In other eras, it might have been a door-slamming farce, although in the present its screwball tendencies are held
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Andrea Blaugrund Nevins
Diane says: “Doc about middle-aged punk rockers becoming ‘F’athers. Snippets of interviews about men teaching street-crossing rules to their kids after a career of being anti-authority, being accepted by other preschool parents despite all those nasty tattoos, blaming their parents
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Jeff Chiba Stearns
Jason says: “There’s an interesting idea at the center of ONE BIG HAPA FAMILY – investigating the astonishingly high rate of mixed marriages among ethnically Japanese Canadians – and director Jeff Chiba Stearns is enthusiastic about pursuing it and occasionally
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Xavier Beauvois
Starring: Lambert Wilson | Michael Lonsdale | Olivier Rabourdin | Philippe Laudenbach
Diane says: “I had avoided this one for quite a while because I thought it would be trite. But no! Based on the true story of French monks in Algeria in the late 1990s, much of the film covers the
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Jeong-beom Lee
Starring: Bin Won | Hyo-seo Kim | Sae-ron Kim | Seong-oh Kim | Thanayong Wongtrakul
Jason says: “One thing that I’ve noticed from reviewing Korean movies is that action movies are fairly likely to have the same person credited as writing and directing, whereas in Hollywood (and elsewhere) there will be many more names in
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Rating: 4.25 cats
Director: Patricio Guzmán
Jason says: “I don’t think it was Patricio Guzmán’s plan to do a bait-and-switch with his documentary NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT, but if it was, he executes an unusually smooth and effective one here: It’s one thing to start with
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Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Takashi Miike
Starring: Hiroki Matsukata | Mikijiro Hiro | Naoko Takenaka | Shido Nakamura | Susumu Terajima
Jason says: “For the last few years, I’ve had this recurring joke about how hiring TakashivMiike to direct family movies is the Japanese equivalent of Warner Brothers getting the rights to Harry Potter and deciding that the right man for
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