For those outside of Southern California, the Santa Barbara International Film Festival is a well-kept secret. Sorry to blow it. Though popular on the weekends (it’s an easy daytrip from Los Angeles), there was plenty of ticket availability during the week. An added screening of the Oscar-nominated Bullhead was held in the cavernous 1931 movie […]
Directed by Valérie Donzelli
Produced by Edouard Weil
Written by Donzelli & Jérémie Elkaïm
Released by Sundance Selects.
French with English subtitles.
France. 100 min. Not rated
With Valérie Donzelli, Jérémie Elkaïm, César Desseix, Brigitte Sy, Elina Lowensohn, Michèle Moretti & Philippe Laudenbach
Whatever direction Valérie Donzelli takes in her second feature film, she goes all out. That all of her narrative […]
Edited & Directed by Gerardo Naranjo
Written by Naranjo & Mauricio Katz
Produced by Pablo Cruz
Released by Fox International Productions
Spanish, with English subtitles
Mexico. 113 min. Rated R
With Stephanie Sigman, Noe Hernández & Lakshmi Picazo
Is nothing sacred? In Gerardo Naranjo’s Mexico of Miss Bala, the answer is a blunt no. Drug trafficking has infiltrated all spheres of society; […]
Directed by Phyllida Lloyd
Produced by Damian Jones
Written by Abi Morgan
Released by the Weinstein Company
UK/France. 105 min. Rated PG-13
With Meryl Streep, Jim Broadbent, Olivia Colman, Alexandra Roach, Harry Lloyd, Roger Allam, Iain Glen, Richard E. Grant & Anthony Head
In a recent New York Times interview, Meryl Streep admitted she couldn’t resist playing Margaret Thatcher, the first […]
Directed by Fábio Barreto
Produced by Luiz Carlos Barreto & Paula Barreto
Written by Daniel Tendler, Denise Paraná & Fernando Bonassi, based on the book by Paraná Released by New Yorker Films
Portuguese with English subtitles
Brazil. 128 min. Not rated
With Rui Ricardo Diaz, Felipe Falanga, Guilherme Tortolio, Glória Pires, Cléo Pires, Juliana Baroni, Milhem Cortaz & Sóstenes Vidal
Even […]
Written & Directed by Tran Anh Hung, based on the novel by Haruki Murakami
Produced by Shinji Ogawa
Released by Soda Pictures/Red Flag Releasing
Japanese, with English subtitles.
Japan. 133 min. Not rated
With Kenichi Matsuyama, Rinko Kikuchi, Kiko Mizuhara, Reika Kirishima, Kengo Kora, Eriko Hatsune & Tetsuji Tamayama (Nagasawa)
Eighteen years ago, Tran Anh Hung became the first—and so far only—Vietnamese […]
Go for broke—that could be the motto for many of this year’s noteworthy films. Terrence Malick created the world out of the Big Bang, all set to a pseudo-Wagnerian score, in The Tree of Life. Even Werner Herzog ventured back thousands of years to ponder life during the Ice Age—and in 3D, a format that […]
Directed by Tomas Alfredson
Written by Bridget O’Connor & Peter Straughan, based on the novel by John Le Carré
Produced by Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner & Robyn Slovo
Released by Focus Features.
UK/France/Germany. 128 min. Rated R
With Gary Oldman, Kathy Burke, Benedict Cumberbatch, David Dencik, Colin Firth, Stephen Graham, Tom Hardy, Ciaran Hinds, John Hurt, Toby Jones, Svetlana Khodchenkova, […]
Directed by Steve McQueen
Produced by Iain Canning & Emile Sherman
Written by Steve McQueen & Abi Morgan
Released by Fox Searchlight
UK. 99 min. Rated NC-17
With Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan, James Badge Dale & Nicole Beharie
Earnestly somber, Shame arrives with a lot of baggage, namely an envelope-pushing amount of sex and nudity. (The NC-17-rated film arouses the type of […]
