Sundance 2014, for me, was about the levels of experience of its many directors. For a festival that showcases the work of emerging filmmakers, there were notably a remarkable number of films by well-established filmmakers. And the quality showed. Watching an Ira Sachs film or a Zellner Brothers film (this year being their eighth trip […]
Directed by Giulio Paradisio Written by Paradisi, Luciano Comici, Robert Mundi & Ovidio Assonitis Produced by Assonitis Released by Drafthouse Films With Paige Conner, Joanne Nail, Lance Henricksen, Mel Ferrer, John Huston, Shelley Winters, Glenn Ford & Sam Peckinpah Distributor Drafthouse Films is out to find the weird, the bizarre, the off-kilter (to say the […]
Directed by Jeffrey Schwarz Produced by Mr. Schwarz, Lotti Pharriss Knowles, Lance Robertson & Jon Glover Released by Automat Pictures. USA. 90 min. Not rated At Paramount, Josef von Sternberg turned Marlene Dietrich into a screen goddess. Forty years later, shoestring Baltimore filmmaker John Waters did the same, helping to mold a screen icon of […]
An Indian father accompanies his young—and only—son, Siddharth, to an outdoor bus station. He waves goodbye to his smiling boy as the packed bus drives off 200 miles north, where Siddharth has been sent to work in a trolley factory. The boy, nicknamed Siddhu, is supposed to come back a month later for Diwali, but […]
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, […]