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Top Picks

After Tiller

Directed & Produced by Martha Shane & Lana Wilson Released by Oscilloscope Laboratories USA. 88 min. Rated PG-13 After Tiller is a wrenching portrait of life and death decisions where even the definition of “life” is emotionally laden for doctors and pregnant women considering abortion. The title demarcates the impact of the murder of Kansas […]

12 Years a Slave

Directed by Steve McQueen Written by John Ridley, based on the book by Solomon Northup Produced by Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Bill Pohlad, McQueen, Arnon Milchan & Anthony Katagas Released by Fox Searchlight Pictures USA. 134 min. Rated R With Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Dano, Garret Dillahunt, Paul Giamatti, Scoot […]

When I Walk

Directed by Jason DaSilva Edited, Written & Produced by DaSilva & Alice Cook Released by Long Shot Factory USA. 85 min. Not rated After falling down and needing help to get up during a family vacation, Jason DaSilva’s new reality finally hits home a few months later after his diagnosis of primary progressive multiple sclerosis […]

The Wall

Written & Directed by Julian Roman Pölsler, based on the novel by Marlen Haushofer Produced by Rainer Kölmel, Antonin Svoboda, Martin Gschlacht & Wasiliki Bleser Released by Music Box Films With Martina Gedeck English & German with English subtitles Austria. 109 in. Not rated With Martina Gedeck I find it almost impossible not to compare […]

Shepard & Dark

Directed by Treva Wurmfeld Produced by Amy Hobby Edited by Sandra Adair Released by Music Box Films USA. 89 min. Not rated Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and Academy Award nominated actor Sam Shepard accepts a proposal to publish decades-worth of correspondence between himself and best friend Johnny Dark. He looks at the opportunity as a new creative venture. […]

All Is Lost

Written & Directed by J. C. Chandor Produced by Neal Dodson, Anna Gerb, Justin Nappi & Teddy Schwarzman Released by Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions USA. 107 min. PG-13 With Robert Redford This steadily absorbing man-adrift-on-a-damaged-sailboat saga has possibly the three most suspenseful sequences of the year and in many ways blows another survival-against-the odds-odyssey, Gravity, out of […]

Blood Brother

Directed & Edited by Steve Hoover Produced by Danny Yourd Released by Blood Brother LLC/Tugg Inc. USA. 93 min. Not rated Director Steve Hoover takes his camera and follows his best friend, Rocky Braat, on an adventure that many would never choose. While spending time in Chennai, India, on vacation, Rocky visited an orphanage, home […]

Camille Claudel 1915

Written & Directed by Bruno Dumont Produced by Jean Brehat, Rachid Bouchareb & Muriel Merlin Released by Kino Lorber French with English subtitles France. 97 min. Not Rated With Juliette Binoche, Jean-Luc Vincent, Robert Leroy, Emmanuel Kauffman & Marion Keller Writer/director Bruno Dumont gives a strongly feminist interpretation to the tragic story of the thwarted […]

God Loves Uganda

Directed by Roger Ross Williams Written by Williams, Richard Hankin & Benjamin Gray Produced by Julie Goldman & Williams USA. 90 min. Not rated For viewers who know about the Christian Right’s proselytizing in Africa, this film may be too basic. But for those who are unaware, it’s a real eye-opener. The idea that American missionaries […]