Teaching audiences to view films actively
By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Joe Cornish
Starring: Alex Esmail | Franz Drameh | Jodie Whittaker | John Boyega | Leeon Jones | Luke Treadaway | Simon Howard
Jason says: “ATTACK THE BLOCK got ridiculously high praise from genre fans at festival showings this year, and it’s not quite that good. Then, in between its US opening and its expansion to Boston, the London riots started, and talk
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Rating: 4.25 cats
Director: Michel Hazanavicius
Starring: Bérénice Bejo | Beth Grant | James Cromwell | Jean Dujardin | John Goodman | Penelope Ann Miller
Thom says: “This delightful black & white silent film is an out-and-out winner. Silent film superstar George Valentin (Dujardin, Best Actor at Cannes 2011) is worried that with the advent of talkies he will lose his stardom. His marriage is
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Richard Griffin
Starring: Alexander Lewis | Alexandra Cipolla | Brandon Luis Aponte | Colin Carlton | Daniel Lee White | David Lavallee Jr. | Michael Reed | Ruth Sullivan | Sarah Nicklin
Jason says: “It’s fair to look at a movie like ATOMIC BRAIN INVASION and sigh. Another one of these things? After all, to put it bluntly, the people with legitimate first-hand nostalgia for 1950s sci-fi flicks are dying off, and
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Rating: 5 cats
Director: Clio Barnard
Chris says: “Outside of England and perhaps a few modern drama departments, playwright Andrea Dunbar remains obscure, a status this unusual documentary hopes to obliterate. Raised on a notoriously tough council estate, she wrote a play (which gives this film
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Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Mike Cahill
Starring: Brit Marling | DJ Flava | Matthew-Lee Ehrlbach | Meggan Lennon | William Mapother
Jason says: “I’m not sure which part of ANOTHER EARTH annoys me more – the terrible science or the weird relationship that develops over the course of the film. Though stranger things than the latter have happened in real life,
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Rating: 2.5 cats
Director: Roland Emmerich
Starring: David Thewlis | Derek Jacobi | Edward Hogg | Helen Baxendale | Joley Richardson | Mark Rylance | Rafe Spall | Rhys Ifans | Sam Reid | Sebastian Amesto | Trystan Gravelle | Vanessa Redgrave | Xavier Samuel
Diane says: “Is this really eligible? Very Hollywood in production design, camerawork, dialogue and hair. A story of who really wrote Shakespeare’s plays (in this version, Edward Devere), amid a lot of court intrigue. “Vanessa Redgrave is wonderful as the
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Rating: 2.5 cats
Director: Tom Tykwer
Starring: Angela Winkler | Annedore Kleist | Devid Strieso | Sebastian Schipper | Sophie Rois
Diane says: “3, Tom Tykwer’s latest about a love triangle, is sabotaged by its very ordinary ending (see movie poster). Up to then, it’s smart, snappy, visually appealing, and has two great leads. The metaphor of stem cell manipulation is
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Rating: 1.5 cats
Director: Guoqiang Tang | Jackie Chan | Li Zhang | Tao Hai | Wei Li
Starring: Bingbing Li | Jackie Chan | Jaycee Chan | Joan Chen | Winston Chao
Jason says: “Jackie Chan’s hundredth movie commemorates the hundredth anniversary of the revolution that brought down the Qing Dynasty, and both of these events seem to deserve something better for commemoration than this lifeless history lecture. “1911 and 1912, for
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Rating: 4.9
Director: Takashi Miike
Starring: Gorô Inagaki | Koji Yakusho | Masachika Ichimura | Takayuki Yamada | Yusuke Iseya
Thom says: “As is probably well known, I am a colossal Takashi Miike fan. I’ve almost certainly seen more (feature) films by Miike than any other director, so I had to see this presentation. What most surprised my brother and
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Rating: 3 cats
Director: Woody Allen
Starring: Anthony Hopkins | Antonio Banderas | Gemma Jones | Josh Brolin | Naomi Watts | Pauline Collins
Diane says: “Woody Allen’s latest, starring Anthony Hopkins and Naomi Watts among others in a fab-o cast. Fast and clever, but my companions were right when they said that Allen usually has respect, if not sympathy, for his characters, and
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