Teaching audiences to view films actively
By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: Ang Lee
Jason says: “LUST, CAUTION is almost long enough to contain its own sequel, although more in the literary mode where an author revisits characters in a way that seems almost disconnected from the initial work. Ang Lee’s latest doesn’t quite
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Yôji Yamada
Starring: Mitsugoro Bando | Rei Dan | Takuya Kimura
Jason says: “As Yôji Yamada’s samurai dramas have become bigger and bigger hits in their native Japan, their American distribution has shrank. This is a real shame, because all three (THE TWILIGHT SAMURAI, THE HIDDEN BLADE, and now LOVE AND
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Karim Aïnouz
Starring: Hermila Guedes | Maria Menezes | Zezita Matos
Bruce says: “The film starts out with a home movie of ‘The Day I Got Pregnant.’ Hermila dances around the beach with a blue blanket. She was determined to make this day ‘the happiest day of her life or die
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Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Béla Tarr
Starring: Erika Bók | Gyula Pauer | István Lénárt | Miroslav Krobot | Tilda Swinton | Volker Spengler
Bruce says: “THE MAN FROM LONDON, Béla Tarr’s black and white homage to French film noir, opens with a seemingly never-ending tracking shot that takes your breath away. The camera moves from a reflection of a rope and boat in
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Rating: 4.6
Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Starring: Martina Gedeck | Sebastian Koch | Ulrich Mühe
Michael says: “The first few months of every year are usually pretty dry when it comes to quality independent film, and even when you do see good movies, it still feels like you’re playing catch up with the previous year.
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Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Jorge Gaggero
Starring: Marcos Mundstock | Norma Aleandro | Norma Argentina
Bruce says: “Love/hate relationships are always good for a few laughs and LIVE-IN MAID serves that axiom well. Beba Pujol is used to having her own way. Belonging to the pampered class, Beba has never learned to pick up after
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Bahman Farmanara
Starring: Hedye Tehrani | Jamshid Hashempur | Reza Kianian
Bruce says: “A LITTLE KISS is a poignant essay on aging, friendship, death and dying. Kamal (Jamshid Hashempur) is Iran’s most famous writer. He has a short time left to live and is cared for lovingly by his grandson. His
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Nobuhiro Yamashita
Starring: Aki Maeda | Bae Doona | Shiori Sekine | Yu Kashii
Michael says: “What can be better than Japanese school girls in uniform with electric guitars? For sheer, unabashed enjoyment, you can’t get much better than LINDA LINDA LINDA. As the school fair approaches, a teen-aged all-girl band fears it will
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Bruce says: “LIGHTS IN THE DUSK is the third film in a trilogy Kaurismäki calls ‘films about losers.’ Unlike its immediate predecessor, THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST, this film is difficult to grasp. That is largely due to the blandness
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Barry Poltermann | Frank L. Anderson
Chris says: ” Like most of you, I know Charles Nelson Reilly from his 1970s appearances on THE ‘Match Game:’ permanently seated on the panel’s upper right-hand corner next to his foil, Brett Sommers, he was that decade’s Paul Lynde,
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Clint Eastwood
Starring: Kazunari Ninomiya | Ken Watanabe | Tsuyoshi Ihara
Bruce says: “Clint Eastwood has proven himself a gifted filmmaker over the years but there is nothing in his portfolio indicating he would create one of the best war films in the history of cinema. The Hollywood hype machine declared
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Jan Schütte
Starring: Barbara Hershey | Elizabeth Peña | Olivia Thirlby | Otto Tausig | Rhea Perlman | Tovah Feldshuh
Bruce says: “Director Jan Schütte has combined three short stories by Isasac Bashevis Singer – ‘Alone,’ ‘The Briefcase,’ and ‘Old Love,’ – into a clever, intelligent screenplay weaving the active imagination of a writer of fiction into the narrative line
Read the review...Last Man, The (Lebanon/France; 101 min.) directed by: Ghassan Salhabstarring: Carlos Chahine, Raia Haidar, Fayeh Hmaissé Bruce says: “THE LAST MAN is my first Lebanese vampire movie. Don’t think I’m cracking some kind of Rosie O’Donnell joke or making
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Craig Gillespie
Starring: Emily Mortimer | Kelli Garner | Patricia Clarkson | Paul Schneider | Ryan Gosling
Michael says: “To think this is the second film that I have seen in four years that prominently features a Real Doll (the first being the low-budget, creepy horror flick, LOVE OBJECT.) LARS AND THE REAL GIRL is a whimsical
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Tony Kaye
Chris says: “I can’t think of a more difficult topic for a documentary to tackle than abortion. In his first feature since AMERICAN HISTORY X, director Tony Kaye dives head first into the debate over abortion, examining it from seemingly
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Rating: 4.25 cats
Director: AJ Schnack
Beth says: “I really wish this and MONKEY WARFARE had not been literally back to back – my festival highlights came in a clump, as a result. Directed by AJ Schnack, one of Chlotrudis’ Advisory Board members, the film was
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Seth Gordon
Michael says: “In the world of documentaries I am often left thinking, how did the filmmaker find that story? Other times I think, they really put that film together well to make it a compelling story. Seth Gordon’s THE KING
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Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Vincent Katz | Vivien Bittencourt
Bruce says: “If ever two unrelated film projects deserved a pairing it is KIKI SMITH: SQUATTING THE PALACE with another film about the artistic process made a few years earlier, AGNES MARTIN: WITH MY BACK TO THE WORLD. Shown together
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Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: Jason Reitman
Starring: Allison Janney | Elliot Page | J.K. Simmons | Jason Bateman | Jennifer Garner | Michael Cera | Olivia Thrilby
Chris says: “JUNO, Jason Reitman’s follow-up to the wildly popular THANK YOU FOR SMOKING, greatly benefits from a solid, honest, hilarious first screenplay from newcomer Diablo Cody, a exquisite comic turn from lead actor Elliot Page, and an affable supporting
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Stanley Nelson
Michael says: “Most of us probably remember the late 70’s when Jim Jones and the People’s Temple committed mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana. Now director Stanley Nelson has put together a documentary about the People’s Temple that tries to focus
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