Teaching audiences to view films actively
By Chris Kriofske
Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Asghar Farhadi
Starring: Bárbara Lennie | Eduard Fernández | Inma Cuestra | Javier Bardem | Penélope Cruz | Ricardo Darín
Chris says: “Asghar Fahardi’s latest is his least essential feature to date, but only when you consider his exceptional track record. If you’ve already seen A SEPARATION, THE PAST and all the rest, you could do much worse than this
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Terry Gilliam
Thom says: “Dear, talented auteur director Terry Gilliam has always in his long career been quite interesting, and yet, that might be damning him with faint praise. I’ve seen all his repertoire: MONTY PYTHON & THE HOLY GRAIL (3 CATS),
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: James Kent
Starring: Alexander Skarsgård | Fionn O'Shea | Flora Thiemann | Jack Laskey | Jason Clarke | Keira Knightley | Monika Foris Kvasnicková
Thom says: “It’s post-WWII Hamburg where a colonel is there with his family to help with Reconstruction and they move into a house still populated by the German owner and his shy daughter. Of course, the British colonel and his
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Carlos López Estrada
Starring: Daveed Diggs | Ethan Embry | Janina Gavankar | Jasmine Cephas Jones | Rafael Casal
Chris says: “As regional/provincial cinema goes, this is valuable enough—it depicts Oakland lovingly without sentimentalizing it. Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal are also good together (and apart) and should each be in more films, please. However, the direction’s ham-fisted, the
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Dexter Fletcher
Starring: Aidan Gillen | Allen Leach | Ben Hardy | Gwilym Lee | Joseph Mazzello | Lucy Boynton | Mike Myers | Rami Malek | Tom Hollander
Thom says: “Here’s the over-produced, super-hyped, hugely successful biopic of Queen, but more importantly Freddie Mercury as ostensibly, there would be no Queen sans Freddie, although, truth to tell, I might wait t o see how well the revitalized Queen
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.5 cats | 4 cats
Director: Nadine Labaki
Starring: Boluwatife Treasure Bankole | Fadi Kamel Youssef | Kawthar Al Haddad | Yordanos Shiferaw | Zain Al Rafeea
Chris says: “If anything, Nadine Labaki has a talent for coaching great performances from child actors: Zain Al Rafeea, the 12-ish-year-old lead is exceptional for his age, but one-year-old Boluwatife Treasure Bankole nearly goddamn steals the show from him. Loses
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Christian Petzold
Starring: Barbara Auer | Franz Rogowski | Godehard Giese | Lilien Batman | Maryam Zaree | Paula Beer
Chris says: “It’s a canny move to set the 1942 source material in the present day, and shrewder still for director Christian Petzold (PHOENIX) to indulge in stylistic motifs that one would find in a film from that era (most
Read the review...By Chris Kriofske
Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Linda Goldstein Knowlton
Chris says: “The Radical Monarchs are an Oakland-based alternative scouting troop for young girls of color–instead of learning about making crafts or developing camping skills (though they do a little of both), they’re taught about social justice: how to take
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Riley Stearns
Starring: Alessandro Nivola | Imogen Poots | Jesse Eisenberg | Phillip Andre Botello | Steve Terada
Julie says: “I had the pleasure of seeing THE ART OF SELF-DEFENSE (TAOSD) at the Coolidge as part of the IFF Boston 2019. It was a late showing (~9:40 pm) and the previous movie left me dosing off at one
Read the review...By Chris Kriofske
Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Madeleine Olnek
Starring: Amy Seimetz | Brett Gelman | Jackie Monahan | Kevin Seal | Molly Shannon | Susan Ziegler
Chris says: “Since it plays like a clunky SNL sketch at times, I wasn’t expecting to like this odd little film in the end, but I kinda did. I only appreciated what it was attempting once I realized Mabel Todd’s
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