Teaching audiences to view films actively
By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.8 cats
Director: Ross Kauffman | Zana Briski
Diane says: “Too soon, too soon! Janet and I were not quite ready to relive the overwhelming traffic and highly-developed bureaucracy of India so soon after our visit in December. “Zana Briski is a British photographer who has been living
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Rating: 4 cats
Director: Ahmet Ulucay
Starring: Gülayse Erkoc | Ismail Hakki Taslak | Kadir Kaymaz
Bruce says: “At the Tribeca Film Festival the audience was told by one of the festival directors that BOATS OUT OF WATERMELON RINDS was chosen because it speaks in an original voice. I would certainly not introduce the film in
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Marco Tullio Giordana
Starring: Adriana Asti | Alessio Boni | Luigi Lo Cascio
Chris says: “Originally produced for (but never shown on) Italian television, director Marco Tullio Giordana’s six hour miniseries has a cinematic sweep and scope makes it translate successfully as a theatrical release. “Split into three-hour halves, the first part opens
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Barlen Pyamootoo
Starring: Davidsen Kamanah | Jérôme Boulle | Kristeven Mootien
Bruce says: “BENARES is the first film from novelist Barlen Pyamootoo who has lived and studied in France. It is also the first film ever from the country of Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar with
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4.4
Director: Jacques Audiard
Starring: Aure Atika | Emanuelle Devos | Gilles Cohen | Jonathan Zaccaï | Niels Arestrup | Romain Duris
Chris says: “American remakes of French films are usually trite, dumbed-down abominations, so does it follow that a French remake of an American film should have the opposite effect? I can’t fully say—I haven’t seen the original, James Toback’s FINGERS
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Miguel Albaladejo
Starring: David Castillo | Empar Ferrer | José Luis García Pérez
Michael says: “Many of you know how much I tend to dislike American films that tackle gay subject matter. I find that other countries tend to make better films dealing with the same subject matter (although I tend to think
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Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Heidi Ewing | Rachel Grady
Bruce says: “Twenty African-American boys, age 12, are selected each year to attend a two year program in Kenya. The Baraka School was built buy money from The Abel Foundation in Baltimore as an experiment to save some of Baltimore’s
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 2.25
Director: Sijie Dai
Starring: Kun Chen | Shuangbao Wang | Xun Zhou | Ye Liu
Scot says: ” The novel of Balzac has been making the rounds of book clubs lately, so to be honest, I was kind of prepared for this to be a let down. Often, when a book or a film is
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Rating: 3.75 cats
Director: Daniel Geller | Dayna Goldfine
Michael says: “BALLETS RUSSES does for ballet what BROADWAY: THE GOLDEN YEARS did for Broadway. The film documents the history of the Ballet Russes, the ballet company (and its offshoot) that defines ballet today through archival footage and interviews with
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Rating: 1.5 cats
Director: Emmanuelle Bercot
Starring: Emmanuelle Seigner | Isild Le Besco | Noémie Lvovsky | Valéry Zeitoun
Bruce says: “If only the last 90% of BACKSTAGE were as good as the beginning. – the first scenes were out of this world. Lauren (Emmanuelle Seigner) is a French pop star so unlike any female musician in America she
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Rating: 2.3
Director: Niels Mueller
Starring: Don Cheadle | Naomi Watts | Sean Penn
Barbara says: “Extremely bleak film which was ‘inspired’ by a true event. For 90% of it I thought Sean Penn was doing a fair imitation of Dustin Hoffman. For the remainder he reprised his role as the mentally challenged character
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Paul Provenza
Michael says: “Before entering this film, I told the seven other people with me that I wasn’t a fan of stand-up comedians. Here we were about to enter a documentary featuring dozens of stand-up comedians telling and reflecting on a
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Rating: 2.5 cats
Director: Pierre Salvadori
Starring: Daniel Auteuil | José Garcia | Sandrine Kiberlain
Michael says: “I decided to check out this trifle of a film because Daniel Auteuil (THE WIDOW OF ST. PIERRE, THE GIRL ON THE BRIDGE) was the star. Shades of THE CLOSET, APRÈS VOUS, is, for the most part, a
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Rating: 3 cats
Diane says: “This year’s version of the show compiled by Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt doesn’t reach the quality of the earlier one I saw. The best of the 12 shorts is Ward 13, an inexplicably successful horror Claymation. Also
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Shonali Bose
Starring: Brinda Karat | Konkona Sen Sharma | Yashpal Sharma
Bruce says: “‘I feel foreign,’ Kaju tells her Delhi cousins. Raised in Los Angeles by a single mom, Kaju is visiting her family in India for the first time on her own. Her cousin takes her to the university where
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Rating: 2 cats
Director: John Kirby
Bruce says: “‘If you see this film, it may not be the same film I saw, which was not the same film shown at the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival. The filmmakers confessed to having been up all night editing before
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Rating: 2 cats
Director: Michael Winterbottom
Starring: Kieran O'Brien | Margot Stilley
Hilary says: “Is it soft-core porn? Is it nine mini-concert films? It’s successfully neither; mostly just boring. “1 cat for the whole mess, 3 cats for the musical perfs”
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4.5 cats
Director: Pen-Ek Ratanaruang
Starring: Lalita Panyopas | Tasanawalai Ongartittichai
Bruce says: “After playing in film festivals for over two and one half years (January 2000 – August 2002) 6IXTYNIN9, never found distribution in the United States. As a result of the success of Ratanaruang’s LAST LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE,
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3 cats
Director: Francois Ozon
Starring: Stéphane Freiss | Valeria Bruni Tedeschi
Michael says: “The director of SWIMMING POOL, 8 WOMEN and UNDER THE SAND takes a slight stumble with his latest feature 5 X 2. Ozon shows us five stages in a couple’s relationship beginning with the day of their divorce
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Judd Apatow
Starring: Catherine Keener | Elizabeth Banks | Jane Lynch | Kat Dennings | Leslie Mann | Paul Rudd | Romany Malco | Seth Rogen | Steve Carrell
Janet says: “With THE 40-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN I expected a DEUCE BIGALOW/AMERICAN PIE type of sensibility with perhaps a few ribald laughs. Instead, I found a cleverly written and well-acted film. The characters are well developed, every setup pays off, and
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