Film-Forward

About Kent Turner

Kent Turner, the editor of Film-Forward, learned the ropes of the festival circuit at the San Francisco International Film Festival and has worked in film production and acquisition in Los Angeles. He is currently the director of programming at the Monmouth Film Festival.

Declaration of War

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 […]

By |January 29th, 2012|Drama, French|2 Comments

Miss Bala

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; […]

By |January 20th, 2012|Crime, Top Picks|0 Comments

The Iron Lady

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 […]

By |January 13th, 2012|Biopic|0 Comments

Lula, Son of Brazil

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 […]

By |January 13th, 2012|Biopic, DVD/Streaming/On Demand, Foreign|0 Comments

Norwegian Wood

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 […]

By |January 6th, 2012|Asian, Drama, DVD/Streaming/On Demand, Foreign|0 Comments

The Best of 2011

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 […]

By |December 23rd, 2011|DVD/Streaming/On Demand, Top Picks|0 Comments

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

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, […]

By |December 9th, 2011|Espionage, Top Picks|0 Comments

Shame

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 […]

By |December 2nd, 2011|Drama, New York Film Festival|0 Comments

The Artist

Written & Directed by Michel Hazanavicius
Produced by Thomas Langmann
Released by the Weinstein Company
France/USA. 100 min. Rated PG-13
With Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, James Cromwell, Penelope Ann Miller, Malcolm McDowell, Missi Pyle, Beth Grant & John Goodman

Studded with easy-to-spot film references, the black-and-white silent film The Artist is the type of film that movie buffs wished they had […]