At first glance, this year’s New York Film Festival is almost unrecognizable—a departure from its slimmer, more restrictive, and less glitzy programming of only a few years ago. What was once a small, curated festival has expanded, thanks to more screening space, but also perhaps due to an organizational objective to wedge itself as a […]
South Korean director Kim Ki-duk’s monochromatic, blood-soaked Jacobean tale of revenge and forgiveness, Pieta, won the Golden Lion award last weekend during a chaotic awards ceremony televised live on the RAI Cinema channel. It triumphed over several richer films, like Ulrich Seidl’s comedy of cruelty, Paradise: Faith, and Terrence Malick’s To the Wonder (far from […]
I don’t want to say that the European auteur film has hit a dry spell (although it did cross my mind), but many such films either fell flat or seemed too familiar in the opening six days of this year’s Venice Film Festival—at least nine were all-out disappointments. Thankfully, three films, all from the Middle […]
Written & Directed by Marjane Satrapi & Vincent Paronnaud, based on the graphic novel by Satrapi
Produced by Hengameh Panahi
Released by Sony Pictures Classics.
French, with English subtitles.
France/Germany/Belgium. 91 min. Rated PG-13
With Mathieu Amalric, Edouard Baer, Maria de Medeiros, Golshifteh Farahani, Eric Caravaca, Chiara Mastroianni, Mathis Bour, Serge Avédikian, Jamel Debbouze & Isabella Rossellini
Marjane Satrapi and […]
Directed by Lee Toland Krieger
Produced by Lee Nelson, Jennifer Todd & Suzanne Todd
Written by Rashida Jones & Will McCormack
Released by Sony Pictures Classics
USA. 89 min. Rated R
With Rashida Jones, Andy Samberg, Chris Messina, Ari Graynor, Eric Christian Olsen, Will McCormack, Rebecca Dayan, Rich Sommer, Matthew Del Negro, Rafi Gavron, Elijah Wood & Emma Roberts
Relief has […]
Written & Directed by Michael Winterbottom, based on Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Produced by Winterbottom & Melissa Parmenter
Released by Sundance Selects
English & Hindi with English subtitles
UK. 118 min. Rated R
With Freida Pinto, Riz Ahmed & Roshan Seth
Not wasting any time, Michael Winterbottom hurls Thomas Hardy’s 1891 novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles into […]
Written & Directed by Woody Allen
Produced by Letty Aronson, Stephen Tenenbaum, Giampaolo Letta & Faruk Alatan
Released by Sony Pictures Classics
English & Italian with English subtitles
USA/Italy/Spain. 112 min. Rated R
With Woody Allen, Alec Baldwin, Roberto Benigni, Penélope Cruz, Judy Davis, Jesse Eisenberg, Greta Gerwig, Ellen Page, Alison Pill, Flavio Parenti, Alessandro Tiberi, Alessandra Mastronardi, Fabio Armiliato […]
Written & Directed by Mathieu Demy
Produced by Demy & Angeline Massoni
Released by MPI Pictures
English, French & Spanish with English subtitles
France. 105 min. Not rated
With Mathieu Demy, Salma Hayek, Geraldine Chaplin, Chiara Mastroianni, Carlos Bardem, Jean-Pierre Mocky & Sabine Mamou
Two reasons make Americano noteworthy. One, it offers the meaty role of a low-rent Tijuana prostitute for […]
Directed by Matthew Akers
Produced by Jeff Dupre & Maro Chermayeff
Released by HBO Documentary Films/Music Box Films.
USA. 105 min. Not rated
This celebratory and fascinating documentary tops off what have been two very good years for the Yugoslavian-born artist Martina Abramovic. Her 2010 blockbuster retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, “The Artist Is Present,” drew […]
