Teaching audiences to view films actively
By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Richard Wong
Starring: Brian Raffi | H.P. Mendoza | Jake Moreno | L.A. Renigen | Sigrid Sutter
Michael says: “This past week at the Sunday Eye Opener, we got to act as a bit of an informal test screening audience for a new film called COLMA: THE MUSICAL. I was contacted by the film’s distributor, Eric d’Arbeloff,
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Dalia Hager | Vardit Bilu
Starring: Katia Zinbris | Naama Schendar | Smadar Sayar
Beth says: “This film received low ratings on netflix, rotton tomatoes, and metacritic (~60%). But I really liked it. This film is a about a friendship between two young adult women, Mirit (Neama Shendar) and Smadar (Smadar Sayar), fulfilling their
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Rating: 4.75 cats
Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Starring: Ebru Ceylan | Nazan Kirilmas | Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Bruce says: “While I enjoyed DISTANT, Celylan’s last film, I found its many flaws curbed my enthusiasm. I have not seen Ceylan’s earlier films so I have no way of knowing whether there was ever an inkling of such an
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Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Micha X. Peled
Bruce says: “The subject of CHINA BLUE is the denim industry in China. Less than twenty years ago it was not possible for those living in rural areas to migrate to cities where work in factories was plentiful. The Chinese
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Mike Nichols
Starring: Julia Roberts | Philip Seymour Hoffman | Tom Hanks
Bruce says: “CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR is not a film I was looking forward to seeing. To my surprise it was my favorite among the Hollywood year-end fare. Had I thought it through I might have not been so surprised. After
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Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Linda Hattendorf
Michael says: “Most filmmakers should be so lucky to come across Jimmy Mirikitani, an elderly Japanese-American man who was living on the streets of lower Manhattan in 2001. A self-proclaimed ‘Grand Master’ of an artist (with the work to back
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Gaston Biraben
Starring: Bárbara Lombardo | Osvaldo Santoro | Susana Campos
Bruce says: “In the 70’s Argentina had a Dirty War. Those who criticized or opposed the government were frequently disappeared. Over 30,000 missing persons have been reported. What is lesser known is many of the women captured during that time
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Eytan Fox
Starring: Alon Freidman | Daniela Virtzer | Ohad Knoller
Bruce says: “Having loved Eytan Fox’s last film, WALK ON WATER, I greeted THE BUBBLE with great enthusiasm. I was hoping for a masterpiece. That clearly is not the case. In spite of examining up-to-the-minute issues Fox has made a
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Zoe R. Cassavetes
Starring: Drea de Matteo | Justin Theroux | Melvil Poupaud | Parker Posey
Chris says: “Here’s a tale we’ve heard before: Nora (Parker Posey), a woman in her mid-30’s, is in pre-midlife crisis mode. Her administrative hotel job neither challenges nor fulfills her and she has yet to truly fall in love. Substitute
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Rating: 2 cats
Director: Anthony Minghella
Starring: Jude Law | Juliette Binoche | Robin Wright Penn | Vera Farmiga
Bruce says: “It’s hard to image how a film with so much potential could leave one feeling totally empty but Anthony Minghella’s flat, soulless BREAKING AND ENTERING does just that. Minghella’s script is the basic problem. It is obvious where
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Rating: 4.75 cats
Director: Guy Maddin
Starring: Gretchen Krich | Jake Morgan-Scharhon | Maya Lawson | Sullivan Brown | Todd Moore
Beth says: “Guy Maddin. His latest, a semi-autobiographical silent film, with a live musical accompaniment, a narrator and a foley effects crew. Pretty much unmissable, really, even if I don’t always get Maddin – I love silent films shown with
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Rating: 2.75
Director: Markie Hancock
Chris says: “Markie Hancock’s middle-class childhood in Altoona, PA was typical in every way except for one: she was raised as a Fundamentalist Christian. Later, as an adult, she came out as a lesbian and renounced her faith. This documentary
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Rating: 1.5 cats
Director: Isidore Rosmarin
Bruce says: “As the camera pans over acts of violence, serene countrysides or samples of everyday life in Israel, a written paragraph prefaces each BLOOD AND TEARS chapter. Covering the battle between Israelis and Palestinians, starting with the Turkish and
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Francisco J. Lombardi
Starring: Magdyal Ugaz | Melania Urbina | Montserrat Carulla
Bruce says: “Having seen STATE OF FEAR and THE FALL OF FUJIMORI, the political background of BLACK BUTTERFLY was infinitely more understandable than it might otherwise have been. Those films chronicled the Fujimori presidency and its gradual phasing into a
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Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Laura Muscardin
Starring: Carmen De Santos | Marco Bonini | Paolo Gasparini | Susy Laude | Thierno Thiam
Bruce says: “Billo (Thierno Thiam), a young man from Senegal, has wanted to be a fashion designer since he was a small child put to work in his uncle’s garment business. He and his mother have always been the black
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Rating: 3.25
Director: Takashi Miike
Starring: Masanobu Andô | Ryuhei Matsuda | Shunsuke Kubozuka
Jason says: “Takashi Miike showed down a bit a couple years ago to take a stab at doing a big-budget family movie, but since then he’s gotten back to what passes for normal where he’s concerned: Churning out movies at
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Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: Michael Caton-Jones
Starring: Claire-Hope Ashley | Dominique Horwitz | Hugh Dancy | John Hurt | Nicola Walker
Bruce says: “‘The films you care about are the ones you make with a lot of love and not much money,’ claims director Michael Caton-Jones. BEYOND THE GATES was made in six months for $3 million Euros. The film has
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Manoel de Oliveira
Starring: Bulle Ogier | Júlia Buisel | Leonor Baldaque | Michel Piccoli | Ricardo Trêpa
Bruce says: “In a film career that has spanned eight decades de Oliviera has made forty two films. He has completed at least one film every year since 1990 when he was only 82. The 98 year old director of
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Rating: 4.75 cats
Director: Sidney Lumet
Starring: Albert Finney | Brian F. O’Byrne | Ethan Hawke | Marisa Tomei | Philip Seymour Hoffman | Rosemary Harris
Bruce says: “A few weeks ago the producer of BELLA, an independent film that opened at the same time as BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD, sent out an email chain letter that was a rant against Lumet’s film, a
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Venutra Pons
Starring: Jordi Bosch | Josep Maria Pou | María Botto | Núria Espert | Pablo Derqui | Rosa María Sardà
Bruce says: “Ventura Pons (BELOVED/FRIEND, FOOD OF LOVE) is noted for his melodramatic, comic films which often have gay themes. BARCELONA (A MAP), a venture into more traditional heterosexual dramatic content, is a slight departure although it is stylistically consistent
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