Now here’s something you don’t see every (or any) weekend at the movie theater: a film about life under an ultra-conservative religion (Orthodox Judaism), made by an adherent of said religion (first-time writer/director Rama Burshtein). Filmmaking is so heavily dominated by the secular left that even the most seemingly objective portrayals of these socially antiquated […]
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Given how pervasive the term “hipster” has become in the current cultural vocabulary, it’s astounding how few popular artworks have explored this segment of the population in any serious, human capacity (Lena Dunham’s HBO show “Girls” is the only one that immediately springs to mind). As a result, the relatively new social classification has remained
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After his thematically challenging, emotionally taxing first two films, “Shotgun Stories” and “Take Shelter,” one wouldn’t have naturally predicted that budding American auteur Jeff Nichols would next move on to an old-fashioned crowd-pleaser of a boys’ adventure film. But I suppose Nichols needed a break from doom and gloom, just as audiences do, and there
Those with no experience in François Ozon’s complex films might initially mistake “In the House” for an inspirational teacher movie — and in its own wicked, French way, it is. The curmudgeonly, washed-up-novelist of an English teacher protagonist (Fabrice Luchini) may not find the motivation to inspire his home-room of 20 impressionable youths—“The worst class I’ve
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Filmmaker Olivier Assayas was about the same age as protagonist Gilles (Clément Métayer) in 1971, the year “Something in the Air” takes place, and the film is undeniably intended to be read as an autobiography. It’s two hours of Assayas recreating that culturally turbulent time in France’s recent history—the period following the May 1968 revolution
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Critics and casual moviegoers alike frequently complain of a lack of originality in the output of Hollywood and the broader film industry, the implication being that we see the same half-dozen stories rehashed over and over again. But what if the gratingly familiar nature of most new releases has less to do with story itself
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Derek Cianfrance’s sprawling, epic “The Place Beyond the Pines” is Capital-A Ambitious filmmaking of proportions we haven’t encountered in a project with Hollywood stars since “The Tree of Life” a few years back. Well, perhaps that’s an overstatement—Cianfrance’s focus is smaller than Terrence Malick’s, which amounted to no less than the breadth of Creation—but still,
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“Starbuck” has a comic premise that Kevin Smith might envy: After years of donating sperm, a truck driver discovers that he has sired more than 500 kids—and now 142 of them want to know the identity of their prolific dad. At first glance, this French-Canadian production fits cozily into the present American trend of building
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“The Silence” is built around a novel idea: to depict the effect of a murder (two, actually) on everyone immediately impacted by the crime. We spend what seems like equal time with the murderer, his accomplice, the investigators, and the parents of the victims. The film is told with a surprising amount of empathy for
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Films about oppressive regimes tend to have a flair for the dramatic, either focusing on the tyrannical leaders themselves (as in “The Last King of Scotland” and “Downfall”) or the worst atrocities committed under their reigns (as in “Hotel Rwanda” and “The Killing Fields”). This is not a criticism, as the films I’ve mentioned (and
