8 years ago
Festivals (10 posts found)
Outfest 2014 Roundup: “Tom at the Farm,” “The Foxy Merkins,” “Salvation Army,” and More
The 2014 iteration of Outfest, Los Angeles' premier LGBTQIAetc film festival, has now come and gone. For 10 days, West Hollywood was abuzz with new movies that explore all manner of non-heteronormative characters, topics, and ideas. Here are capsule reviews of...
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LAFF Reviews: “They Came Together”, “Nightingale”, and “The Well”
They Came Together
For over a decade, fans of the ludicrous summer-camp spoof movie Wet Hot American Summer have been waiting for the director/co-writer duo of David Wain and Michael Showalter to create a follow-up for their cult-classic comedy. Although we...
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LAFF Review: ‘The Overnighters’
"Love thy neighbor" is one of the foundational creeds of Christianity, which is, according to many, the set of beliefs by which Americans are supposed to live their lives. But America today is a land of rampant corporatism, a system in which love is not a tene...
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Dardennes, Dolan and Berlinale Winner the Highlights of the 2014 Sydney Film Festival
This past Sunday, the 61st annual edition of the Sydney Film Festival came to a close. Of the more than 180 films that screened at the festival, a dozen fought it out in the Official Competition, with the $61,000 prize eventually going to Luc and Jean-Pierre D...
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LAFF Review: “Frank” is Gleefully Manic Until Its All Too Real
Once there was an English musician-comedian named Chris Sievey who would perform wearing a large fake head under the name of "Frank Sidebottom." Sievey was a thoroughly underground sensation for his whole career, until his death from cancer in 2010. Now, bits ...
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LAFF Review: “Love is Strange”
Ira Sachs's new film Love is Strange opens with Ben and George being asked if their decision to marry is of their own free will. They, of course, say yes. And almost immediately after that, they are hurled into circumstances that are beyond their control, prec...
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The 2014 Los Angeles Film Festival: “Starred Up” and “Runoff”
The British crime picture is a seemingly ubiquitous genre, and its sister sub-genre, the prison film, is nearly as popular, with Nicolas Winding Refn's Bronson kicking off a renaissance of sorts. Like Bronson, David Mackenzie's Starred Up centers on a charisma...
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LAFF Review: “Snowpiercer” is Spectacularly Off the Rails
Once upon a time, Bong Joon-Ho's ambitious sci-fi action film Snowpiercer was threatened with an Americanized edit by controversial industry magnate Harvey Weinstein. Fans of the Korean auteur (as well as fans of good sci-fi in general) were understandably ver...
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“Winter’s Sleep” Headlines Cannes Film Festival Winners
The coveted Palme d'Or prize for best picture was awarded today, and like most years at Cannes, there was no front-runner winner. Speculation had Leviathan, Mommy or perhaps even early awards favorite Foxcatcher as potential top honors out of all the festival ...
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Cannes days 3 & 4: Uncaptivating “The Captive”, lethally funny “Wild tales”, velvety “Saint Laurent”, and Mikkelsen going Wayne in the wild, wild West
The Captive
Certain competition choices in Cannes make critics' jaws drop. Sometimes it's in awe, but way too often in disbelief. I choose to think the programmers invited Atom Egoyan to join the tight Palme d'Or race as a friendly gesture towards Canada's ...
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