The 51st New York Film Festival arrives with a touch of scandal, courtesy of two French films. As soon as it premiered at Cannes, Blue Is the Warmest Color was almost overshadowed by its extended lesbian sex scenes, but not enough to obscure the strong performances. It won the Palme d’Or, awarded to its director […]
Programming a vast array of some 288 features films, the Toronto International Film Festival offers a varied and overwhelming selection. One course of action is to see films by known directors or that have played at other festivals, with some allowance for happenstance, taking a chance on a movie based on the very brief synopsis […]
Written & Directed by Hannah Fidell Produced by Kim Sherman & Fidell Released by Oscilloscope Laboratories USA. 77 min. Not rated With Lindsay Burdge & Will Brittain A high school teacher punctuates the banality of her daily routine—commuting to work, administering her classroom, jogging, etc.—by banging a student. We begin with the teacher, Diana (Lindsay […]
Directed by Ulrich SeidlProduced by Ulrich Seidl Film Produktion Written by Veronika Franz & Ulrich Seidl Released by Strand Releasing German & Arabic with English subtitles Austria/France,/Germany, 113 min. Not rated With Maria Hofstätten & Nabil Saleh Ulrich Seidl’s “Paradise Trilogy” was originally conceived as a single film of interwoven stories following three female family […]
Written & Directed by Ryan Coogler Produced by Nina Yang Bongiovi & Forest Whitaker Released by the Weinstein Company USA. 85 min. Rated R With Michael B. Jordan, Melonie Diaz, Octavia Spencer, Kevin Durand, Chad Michael Murray & Ahna O’Reilly In the early morning hours of New Year’s Day 2009, 22-year-old Oscar Julius Grant III, […]
Perhaps the two main stories that emerged from this year’s Cannes Film Festival were the jewelry heists (who knew Brian De Palma’s Femme Fatale was so prescient?) and the praise and immediate backlash heaped on the Palm d’Or winner Blue Is the Warmest Color, namely Elaine Sciolino’s piece in the New York Times in which […]
The main difference that sets the Cannes Film Festival apart from other fests is the anticipation: you want to see the films debuting in the competition, especially if they are directed by the likes of the Coen brothers, Alexander Payne, Roman Polanski, and Asghar Farhadi, to name four. Few shots in the dark here. There […]
Written & Directed by Terrence Malick Produced by Sarah Green & Nicolas Gonda Released by Magnolia Pictures USA. 112 min. Rated R With Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko, Rachel McAdams, Javier Bardem, Tatiana Chiline & Romina Mondello To the Wonder is a surprise. Even with all of his hallmarks and impressionistic flourishes, Terrence Malick’s new film […]
Brazil has been well represented throughout the years at the annual New Directors/New Films series, and this year Marcelo Lordello’s They’ll Come Back arrives, following last year’s Neighboring Sounds, which made quite a splash. Here’s hoping for more of a Brazilian new wave offering engaging, clear-eyed, and varied vivisections of contemporary life, of both rich […]