Teaching audiences to view films actively
By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3 cats
Director: Alejandro Amenábar
Starring: Ashraf Barhorn | Max Minghella | Michael Lonsdale | Oscar Isaac | Rachel Weisz | Rupert Evans
Jason says: “I adore AGORA, and I’ll readily admit that a large part of it is that I agree with the politics and philosophy of the thing. Rather than it being a movie about a scientist who encounters something her
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Xiaogang Feng
Starring: Chen Li | Daoming Chen | Fan Xu | Guoqiang Zhang | Jin Chen | Jingchu Zhang | Yi Lu
Jason says: “It’s not hard to get the wrong impression of AFTERSHOCK; the poster in the theater lobby notes that it was released in IMAX (interestingly, though showing the North American release date, the text on that one-sheet is almost
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Vipul Amrutlal Shah
Starring: Aditya Roy Kapoor | Aishwarya Rai | Akshay Kumar | Alok Kumar | Neha Dhupia | Randhir Kapoor
Jason says: “Western movie fans may have some doubts about the provenance of Vipul Amrutlal Shah’s new film, ACTION REPLAYY. It’s an adaptation of a 1994 play with almost the same name (the play spells it correctly), although Warner Brothers,
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Reed Cowan | Steven Greenstreet
Thom says: “You might well have thought that due to my living in California & being gay & Proposition 8 being right in my state I would have been more appreciative of this piece of agitprop. It’s certainly not because
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Danny Boyle
Starring: Amber Tamblyn | Coleman Stinger | James Franco | Kate Mara | Sean Bott | Treat Williams
Jason says: “There is not a whole heck of a lot to 127 HOURS, story-wise: Guy goes climbing on his own, gets pinned by a falling boulder, and has to figure out a way to get out of a thoroughly
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Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Miguel Arteta
Starring: Erik Knudsen | Jean Smart | Michael Cera | Portia Doubleday | Steve Buscemi | Zach Galifanakis
Jason says: “The night I saw this, I tweeted that I wasn’t sure whether Youth in Revolt was more amusingly or annoyingly mannered, and I still haven’t decided. It is, frequently, very funny, with great combinations of slapstick, wordplay, situations
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Rating: 4.25 cats
Director: Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi
Bruce says: “Films about artists often fall short because the filmmaker does not know how to balance the personal life of the artist with the product he or she has created. The two united several years ago I was in
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Jean-Marc Vallée
Starring: Emily Blunt | Jim Broadbent | Miranda Richardson | Paul Bettany | Rupert Friend | Thomas Krestschmann
Jason says: “A quality, old-fashioned costume drama, well-done enough that there’s really not a whole lot to say about it. Emily Blunt is fairly impressive in the title role, humanizing a figure often thought of as little but stern and
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Roy Andersson
Starring: Björn Englund | Briggita Persson | Elisabeth Helander | Jessika Lundberg | Leif Larsson | Olle Olson
Michael says: “It’s nearly impossible to describe the absurdist films of Roy Andersson, whose SONGS FROM THE SECOND FLOOR was a minor Chlotrudis hit several years ago. Andersson’s films examine the human condition, with sly, deadpan humor, and static shots
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Allen Hughes | Brett Ratner | Fatih Akin | Joshua Marston | Mira Niar | Natalie Portman | Randall Balsmeyer | Shekhar Kapur | Shunji Iwai | Wen Jiang | Yvan Attal
Starring: Blake Lively | Bradley Cooper | Christina Ricci | Ethan Hawke | Natalie Portman | Orlando Bloom | Shia LaBeouf
Thom says: “This companion piece to PARIS JE T’AIME isn’t quite as good as the Paris version. The former concentrated on all different districts of the ‘City of Light,’ each with its own yarn, and was quite a bit more
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Rating: 1.6 cats
Director: Aviva Kempner
Diane says: “The radio show ‘The Goldbergs’ began in 1930 and morphed into a TV show in the ’50s. This docu is about the show’s creator and star, Gertrude Berg, who played a warm and somewhat ditsy matriarch with a
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Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Andrzej Fidyk
Bruce says: “YODUK STORIES is one of those films that makes perfect sense during the screening but disintegrates considerably the further one gets from the viewing. The concept is unusual. Andrzej Fidyk traveled to North Korea to make a short
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Rating: 3.25
Director: Sook-yin Lee
Starring: Ali Liebert | Cristin Milioti | Kevin McDonald | Mark Rendall | Patrick Gilmore | Sheila McCarthy | Will Sasso
Thom says: “JUNO meets SHORTBUS as one reviewer states. Well, not really & it’s never wise to compare an inferior film to another. My opinion is that this film didn’t belong at TIFF & got a shot due to its
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Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: Bobcat Goldthwait
Starring: Alexie Gilmore | Daryl Sabara | Jermaine Williams | Michael Thomas Moore | Robin Williams
Jason says: “WORLD’S GREATEST DAD is deliciously black comedy, the sort that revels not just in how horrible the characters can be, but also regularly raises that bar by going for absurdity as well. That’s not terribly uncommon; lots of
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Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: Sebastian Gutierrez
Starring: Adrianne Palicki | Cameron Richardson | Carla Gugino | Connie Britton | Garcelle Beauvais | Marley Shelton
Jason says: “To a certain extent, I don’t care who the audience for WOMEN IN TROUBLE is – it made me laugh out loud and then did a little more than amuse me, and that makes it good in my
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Marleen Gorris
Starring: Ben Miller | Benjamin Sadler | Emily Watson | Ian Hart | Jimmy Yuill | Pam Ferris | Ulrich Tukur
Diane says: “I have a problem with Holocaust movies! I can’t help but consider them as entertainment and not as windows into the horror of what happened. When SCHINDLER’S LIST came out, my reaction was ‘movies shouldn’t be made about
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Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: François Dupeyron
Starring: Claude Rich | Elisabeth Oppong | Félicité Wouassi | Jacky Ido | Mamadou Dioumé | Mata Gabin | Ralph Amoussou
Bruce says: “Sonia (Félicité Wouassi) is having many difficulties – with her gambling husband George (Mamadou Dioumé), her pregnant daughter Suze (Elisabeth Oppong), her seemingly suicidal pre-adolescent son Leo (Charles-Étienne N’Diaye) and her son Victor (Ralph Amoussou) who is running
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Alexander Olch
Diane says: “Lacking the directorial genius of Jonathan Caouette (TARNATION) and the painfully fascinating subjects of GREY GARDENS, deceased Harvard film prof Richard Rogers tried for twenty-five years to create an autobiographical documentary. He failed. In fact, Rogers called himself
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Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Emily Kunstler | Sarah Kunstler
Jason says: “For most documentaries, the narrator is relatively anonymous – a reassuringly familiar celebrity voice, perhaps with some connection to the subject matter. For WILLIAM KUNSTLER: DISTURBING THE UNIVERSE, it is Kunstler’s youngest daughter, Emily, who made the film
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Julian Netizberg
Jason says: “I sympathize with the Boone County D.A. who, in the opening reel of THE WILD AND WONDERFUL WHITES OF WEST VIRGINIA, asks why the White family should get so much attention. There’s a boy in the county from
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