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 […]
Now in its 11th edition, this year’s New York Asian Film Festival is a little lighter than usual on the fanboy-baiting genre material, such as martial arts, horror, action, and the outré Japanese sex and gore imports, its usual bread and butter. But to this critic’s mind, that is all to the good, in terms […]
Surprising heroes persevere against complicated villains at the 23rd annual Human Rights Watch Film Festival at New York’s Film Society of Lincoln Center. The 16 films from 12 countries are presented around themes and strategies related to the work of the international advocacy organization. Cinematically, the films primarily use two storytelling styles: the struggle of […]
This year’s Open Roads: New Italian Cinema opens on the same weekend in New York as Alice Rohrwacher’s audacious debut, Corpo Celeste. Through the perplexed eyes of a 12-year-old girl on the verge of her confirmation, the director questions what it means to be a Christian and the values of contemporary Italians, who are out […]
This year, New Directors/New Films shakes up its usual art house lineup a little bit. The 41st edition jumps on the animated 3D bandwagon with The Rabbi’s Cat and steps into the grindhouse with a kill-a-thon from Indonesia, The Raid: Redemption. In what is another first, a surprise selection closes the series on April […]
You can talk all you want about the director as the film’s main auteur, but casting remains paramount to a film’s success in most of the entries in New York’s annual Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and Unifrance. A film series like this offers a glimpse into a […]
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 […]
After a foot of snow on opening weekend, it was been nothing but blue skies in Park City last week. But enough about the weather, here’s the word on the shuttle buses. Worth the hype: Beasts of the Southern Wild, Benh Zeitlin’s follow-up to his Sundance short Glory at Sea, was a favorite for the […]