Teaching audiences to view films actively
By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Zhang Yimou
Starring: Jet Li | Maggie Cheung | Tony Leung | Zhang Zhiyi
Chris says: “Zhang Yimou’s long-delayed (in the US, anyway) martial arts epic is stunning, at least technically. Cinematographer Christopher Doyle outdoes himself, the awesome color-coding even more sensual than IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE’s rain-drenched streets and intricate, congested apartments.
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Starring: Alan Rickman | Daniel Radcliffe | Emma Watson | Rupert Grint
Chris says: “Of course this is the best Harry Potter film by miles, as Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN director Alfonso Cuarón is a virtuoso compared to the execrable Chris Columbus. This is the first Harry Potter book I’ve actually read
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Penny Panayotopoulou
Starring: Ioanna Tsirigouli | Stelios Mainas | Yorgos Karayannis
Diane says: “Writer/director Penny Panayotopoulou’s 2002 debut hasn’t gotten much of a release, but Ellen and I saw it in Newburyport. It’s a negative of THE RETURN: in 1969 Athens, a traveling salesman comes home for a few days to
Read the review...Guerilla: the Taking of Patty Hearst (USA; 90 min.) directed by: Robert Stonedocumentary Michael says: “It’s a fascinating subject, to be sure, and the archival news footage and interviews with two of the surviving members of the Symbionese Liberation
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Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Takashi Miike
Michael says: “Ah, the rollercoaster ride that is a Takashi Miike film. With his latest American release, GOZU, we have a ride that starts of slowly, if perplexing. Midway through, things have gotten downright freakish, but the pace is still
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Ryan Fleck
Starring: Karen Clinton | Matt Kerr | Shareeka Epps
Chris says: “I wish our short film festival received more entries like this somber, subtle, soulful sketch about a 12 year-old girl and one of her teachers. Everything is delicately nuanced and left open; if the filmmakers succeed in expanding
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Rating: 3.6
Director: Ming-liang Tsai
Bruce says: “Ming-liang Tsai’s films are somewhat of an acquired taste, a delicious long-lasting taste once one gets in tune with his style. Not many directors go out of their way to capture the aesthetic of a deserted hallway or
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Rating: 3.75 cats
Director: Wolfgang Becker
Starring: Chulpan Khamatova | Daniel Brühl | Katrin Saß
Janet says: “In this worthwhile film, a young East German man hides the unification of Germany in order to protect his fragile Socialist mother from dying of shock. Like most films that work the premise of going to any length
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Masaaki Tezuka
Starring: Katsuya Onizuka | Miho Yoshioka | Noboru Kaneko
Michael says: “I am filled with Mothra love! While not quite as strong as the epic GODZILLA, MOTHRA, KING GHIDORAH: ALL-OUT GIANT MONSTER ATTACK!, this penultimate entry into the Godzilla cannon is fun (it even includes the Mothra fairies again,
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Peter Webber
Hilary says: “The film is adapted from the novel by Tracy Chevalier, which creates a backstory for the Vermeer painting, ‘Girl With a Pearl Earring.’ As with most book-to-film adaptation, the timeline is condensed and little of the heroine’s, Griet
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Rating: 3.4
Director: Zach Braff
Starring: Ian Holm | Natalie Portman | Peter Sarsgaard | Zach Braff
Bruce says: “In 1997, Elizabeth Wurtzel grabbed the country’s attention by declaring we were a Prozac Nation. Prozac is just one of many drugs generously distributed by doctors to fight depression. In GARDEN STATE, Andrew Largeman (Zach Braff), now 26,
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Ian Gabriel
Starring: Arnold Vosloo | Quanita Adams | Zane Meas
Bruce says: “Each year the Toronto International Film Festival has a program which highlights films from a single country – this year that country was South Africa, chosen to celebrate the tenth anniversary of democracy and the end of apartheid.
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Rating: 4.2 cats
Director: Errol Morris
Bob says: “Errol Morris gets up-close-and-personal (in more ways than one) with Robert McNamara. Even if the former Secretary of Defense did not deliver some of the most profound, thought-provoking statements ever uttered here, the film would still be a fascinating
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Rating: 3.25
Director: Laura Poitras | Linda Goode Bryant
Michael says: “Filmed over four years in Columbus, Ohio, FLAG WARS presents a disturbing look at gentrification and class structure in our country. Linda Goode Bryant and Laura Poitras are both first-time directors, and they present the many views clearly
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Jørgen Leth | Lars Von Trier
Bruce says: “THE FIVE OBSTRUCTIONS is not the film it was purported to be nor was it at all what I had anticipated. The film is billed as a ‘battle of the minds’ between Lars von Trier and Jørgen Leth,
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Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Marc Forster
Starring: Dustin Hoffman | Freddie Highmore | Ian Hart | Johnny Depp | Julie Christie | Kate Winslet | Radha Mitchell
Michael says: “You can feel the Miramax hand on Marc Foster’s FINDING NEVERLAND, which is a shame, although doesn’t disrupt the film all that much. One suspects that it would have had a lot of the same sentimental elements because
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Bob Smeaton
Robert says: “Historically overshadowed by Woodstock is the series of rock shows that toured Canada by train in 1970. The brainchild of promoters Ken Walker and Thor Eaton, the shows featured acts like Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead and The
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4.3 cats
Director: Aleksandr Sokurov
Bruce says: “FATHER AND SON opens with a close-up of two men, one holding the other. There are no immediate clues but as the scene unfolds we learn that it is a father and his son, who is having a
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Michael Moore
Bruce says: “If you still think that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that there was a link between Al Qaida and Iraq before 9/11 or that George Bush has been telling us the truth, please see this
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Ferzan Ozpetek
Starring: Giovanna Mezzogiorno | Massimo Girotti | Raoul Bova
Bruce says: “Ferzan Ozpetek keeps growing with each film; first STEAM, then HIS SECRET LIFE and now FACING WINDOWS. I’ve felt each of his films has had problems which get in the way of achieving anything resembling perfection. Perfection, however,
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