8 years ago
Festivals (10 posts found)
Hot Docs 2015: Music Documentaries
Biographical films can be a tough nut to crack. On one hand, there’s the problem of trying to condense a topic of such scope into a feature-length format. More pressingly, there's the paradoxical notion that, while a day in the life can be the stuff of great l...
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Hot Docs 2015: Roundtable, Part 1
When we think about manifestations of evil in the world, we are most comfortable with those that are outside our realm of experience. Monsters in childrens’ stories, corrupt world leaders in faraway places, or flashy serial killers in our primetime TV shows. W...
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SXSW Review: “Night Owls”
Night Owls begins at the end of an evening, with two drunk strangers stumbling toward bed together. We know even less about them than they do about each other: she's a beautiful brunette (Rosa Salazar) with a crazy streak; he's a funny doofus (Adam Pally) who ...
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Berlinale: “Taxi”
An unsurprising winner of the Berlinale’s Golden Bear, Jafar Panahi’s Taxi is a road movie come-societal commentary of the type that seems to now be a fixture in Iranian cinema. Following on from Abbas Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry (1997) and Ten (2002), Panahi...
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Berlinale: “Queen of Earth”
An often bracing study of faces, Queen of Earth is a film that once again underlines the anachronistic influences of director Alex Ross Perry. Following on from last year’s wryly grim Listen Up Phillip, which channelled New Wave narrative conceits around insuf...
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Berlinale: “Everything Will Be Fine”
James Franco is beginning to resemble the Berlinale’s bad luck charm. After grimacing his way through Werner Herzog’s risibly melodramatic Queen of the Desert, he can now be found sleepwalking through Everything Will Be Fine, Wim Wenders’ bizarre 3D picture ce...
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Berlinale: “45 Years”
"Less is more" could serve as a motto for Andrew Haigh's latest film, 45 Years, screening in the Main Competition at the 65. Berlinale. Starring Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay, and based on David Constantine's short story In Another Country, the film tel...
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Berlinale: “Knight of Cups”
With vacant eyes and mouth agape, man continues his seemingly irrevocable fall from innocence, in Terrence Malick’s eternally juvenile seventh feature Knight of Cups. Christian Bale ambles catatonically through various locales of present-day California as Gior...
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Berlinale: “Queen of the Desert”
Of all the stories surrounding one of the last remaining maverick superstar directors, only one of Werner Herzog’s many legends involves a car accident. Several years ago, Herzog is said to have pulled a dazed and confused Joaquin Phoenix from the wreckage of ...
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Sundance Review: “Knock Knock”
Bitches be crazy, am I right? Always knocking on your door with some sad-sack story about getting left out in the rain, needing to use a phone, and then forcing themselves on you before going batshit insane. Jeez!
That’s the tone and premise of Eli Roth’s l...
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