Teaching audiences to view films actively
By Chris Kriofske
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Jennifer Trainer
Chris says: “North Adams, a depressed former mill town in far Northwestern Massachusetts is as unlikely a place for a contemporary art museum as one could imagine; MUSEUM TOWN is an in-depth study of how MassMOCA came to inhabit former
Read the review...By Chris Kriofske
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Alex Holmes
Chris says: “A genuinely inspiring story on its own, MAIDEN is further enhanced by its subject, Tracy Edwards, whom through considerable determination, chutzpah and luck managed to conceive of and lead the first all-female team to participate in the Whitbread
Read the review...By Michael Colford
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Ali Abbasi
Starring: Eero Milonoff | Eva Melander | Jörgen Thorsson
Chris says: “From the writer of LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, a contemporary fable about Tina (Eva Melander), a somewhat dumpy middle-aged guard for the Swedish border patrol who is excellent in her job, mostly due to her intense, visceral, almost superhuman
Read the review...By Jeffrey Pike
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Nathan Morlando
Starring: Bill Paxton | Colm Feore | Joe Cobden | Josh Wiggins | Sophie Nélisse
Jeffrey says: “A tidy, well-wrought, low-budget thriller, with some of the spirit of both LET THE RIGHT ONE IN and ANIMAL KINGDOM, it earns its thrills the hard way, by slowly building tension to nearly intolerable levels, rather than spilling
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Laurent Cantet
Starring: Florian Beaujean | Julien Souve | Mamadou Doumbia | Marina Fois | Matthieu Lucci | Mélissa Guilbert | Wanda Rammach
Michael says: “Laurent Cantet (THE CLASS)has constructed a fascinating film exploring the desire to kill, racism, and class in THE WORKSHOP. Centered around a racially mixed group of blue-collar students in a summer writing class led by an upper-class, middle-aged,
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Clea DuVall
Starring: Alia Shawkat | Clea DuVall | Cobie Smulders | Jason Ritter | Melanie Lynskey | Natasha Lyonne
Michael says: “THE INTERVENTION also has a summary that might give you pause.Ruby and Peter join three other couples on a holiday weekend at a beautiful family home in the bayou, but discover that their friend Annie has engineered the
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Christopher Landon
Starring: Blaine Kern III | Charles Aitken | Israel Broussard | JessicaRothe | Laura Clifton | Phi Vu | Ruby Modine
Thom says: “My friends all know I love horror films even though a high percentage of them are atrocious. This was supposed to be a one-off on my recent trip to New York but despite the GROUNDHOG DAY rip-off HAPPY
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Mazen Khaled
Starring: Carol Abboud | Hadi Bou Ayash | Hamza Mekdad | Moustafa Fahs | Raneem Mourad | Rashad Nasreddine
Michael says: “There’s some major symbolism going on in the Lebanese film,MARTYR by Mazen Khaled, possibly about the state of Beirut, where the film takes place, but the gorgeous shots of water, and actor Hamza Mekdad’s nude body lean more
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Antonio Santini | Don Sickles
Starring: documentary
Diane says: “Caught this Sundance winner doc at a small theater today. The central figure is a friend of director Dan Sickles’ (co-director is Antonio Santini; their first was MALA MALA). We land in the middle of the lives of
Read the review...By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Andrey Zvyagintsev
Starring: Aleksey Rozin | Maryana Spivak | Matvey Novikov
Chris says: “Not as sharp a political allegory as LEVIATHAN, nor does it possess that film’s necessary gallows humor (which might’ve been out of place here, anyway.) However, Andrey Zvyagintsev (whose greatest film remains his first, THE RETURN remains a
Read the review...