The opening credits spell it out: 800,000 sheep among 320,000 Icelanders. Living in the remote northern part of the country, two brothers, bachelor sheep farmers past middle age, live alone on side by side farms. Their family has lived in the region for generations, raising prized thoroughbred stock. Both brothers have an attentive, paternal relationship with their herds—their constant companions—yet the men haven’t said a word to each other […]
Talk about your tough sell. Critics have their work cut out for them when discussing well-made but audience-repelling films. For example, Room, centered on a mother and her five-year-old son kept captive in a shed for years on end, is one of the lowest grossing films to be nominated for the best picture Oscar. The Auschwitz-set Son of Saul has earned wide acclaim, but it […]
The found-footage horror film is the ugly stepchild in a family of ugly stepchildren. If slasher films do not get respect, found-footage movies, save for one or two, tend to elicit groans and rolling eyes. They are super cheap to make, the cinematography and sound are generally awful, and the acting worse because, for the […]
Bleak Street makes Blue Velvet look like The Sound of Music. Mexican director Arturo Ripstein shares key artistic touches with David Lynch: surreal longueurs, a sense of claustrophobia, settings that feel tawdrily contemporary and enigmatically retro at the same time. But Bleak Street trawls through a far deeper level of brutal desperation than Blue Velvet. […]
“Kiss the hand you cannot bite.” Cynical and bitter, this helpful hint happens to be the title of a book about Romania’s late, hated dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu. But it’s also a key to understanding Romania itself. Authoritarianism and its craven twin, flattery, richly water the country’s roots. First, a feudal satrapy held Roma slaves for […]
Horribly, terrorism and assassinations seem more common now than when Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was gunned down while he was leaving a peace rally in Tel Aviv on November 4, 1995. Writer/director Amos Gitai’s frighteningly relevant and insightful re-creation of the days leading up to that murder is a sophisticated analysis of the ways […]
Censorship always adds the allure of the forbidden to material, and that notoriety seems to be the case with Censored Voices. With rare archival footage, director Mor Loushy illustrates this collection of audio interviews with Israeli veterans of the 1967 Six Day War that were taped almost immediately after Israel captured the West Bank, East […]
Retirees Geoff and Kate Mercer live in the English countryside under gray, silent clouds. A certain discreet formality overlays their routine of dog walking and shared meals. They make occasional trips into the touristy nearby town to plan a postponed anniversary party, but they mostly stay within the confines of their home, outfitted in tasteful […]
Taxi is the third unauthorized (and fascinating) film Jafar Panahi has completed (and smuggled out of Iran) since late 2010, when its government handed down a 20-year ban on him directing any movies, writing screenplays, or giving any media interviews. Like This Is Not a Film (2011) and Closed Curtain (2013), this is not just […]