8 years ago
AFI (10 posts found)
AFI Fest Review: “Felt”
Felt might be more vitally of the moment than any other film that people aren't likely to see (though it\ was picked up by Amplify out of AFI, so fingers crossed). Right now, a very necessary conversation about rape culture and the myriad ways that society is ...
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AFI Fest Review: “Girlhood”
There’s a moment around two-thirds of the way through Girlhood where it seems as though the movie is winding up. It isn't. In fact, it goes on for another 30-40 minutes. But every single event that takes place in that time is redundant, in light of what the fi...
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AFI Fest Review: “Wild Tales”
Six films, six twisted tales of vengeance. An Argentine anthology film with a dark sense of humor and a gruesome streak, Damian Szifron's Wild Tales links its six vignettes together through a single, common theme: revenge. Not revenge in the grand, Shakespeare...
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AFI Fest Review: “The Tribe”
At the post-screening Q&A for The Tribe, one Concerned Citizen asked director Miroslav Slaboshpitsky whether deaf people might take the film as an unflattering depiction of their culture. Which immediately calls to mind the similar complaint that a Sundanc...
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AFI Fest Review: ‘We Are the Best!’
It's 1982, and punk is dead. But a trio of preteen girls decides that they'll keep its spirit alive.
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AFI Fest Review: ‘Moebius’
Moebius seems like the purest distillation of everything that Ki-duk Kim is as a filmmaker. It's completely without dialogue, tears through taboos like the Kool-Aid Man through tissue paper, and sticks itself in your mind like a difficult thorn. It's the kind ...
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AFI Fest Review: ‘Our Sunhi’
There are blind spots in every cinema lover's list of films that they have seen, and then there's whatever I have with Hong Sang-soo. Until this year, I had never even heard of the man. And once I had, I discovered that a good deal of critics and movie lovers ...
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AFI Fest Review: ‘Her’
I've loved all of Spike Jonze's work, but I was incredibly skeptical of Her. What looked like a story about a man falling in love with Siri, complete with him spinning in romantic circles with his phone, just seemed like too much. It was a rotten attitude to b...
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AFI Fest Review: ‘Nothing Bad Can Happen’
The original German title of Nothing Bad Can Happen is Tore Tanzt, or "Tore Dances." Anyone who watches the trailer for the film will recognize that the new title is meant as bitterly ironic. This is a story about many, many bad things happening. But while Tor...
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AFI Fest Review: ‘The Congress’
There's a moment in Ari Folman's previous film, the animated Invasion of Lebanon documentary Waltz With Bashir, that pulls you back to reality in an emotionally devastating fashion. After experiencing the entirety of the film's disturbing events through Folman...
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