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(11/20/17 9:43pm)
120 Battement Par Minute (Beats Per Minute) is director Robin Campillo’s second major film. The two and a half hour movie discusses many aspects of the French AIDS epidemic in the 1990s through a mostly historical fiction lens with some real documentary found footage. Campillo seems to define the afflicted gay community through an on-screen combination of sex, death, dancing and group solidarity. Even if there is disagreement among the more extreme members of ACT UP, the AIDS awareness group the film centers on, the entire community still feels connected.
(11/03/17 7:48am)
Takashi Miike has directed a long list of films ranging from action dramas to comedy musicals. One of his newest films, “Blade of the Immortal,” adds to Miike’s list of violent action dramas as it depicts the gruesome and emotional tale of Manji (Takuya Kimura), an immortal swordsman, and Rin Asano (Hana Sugisaki), a girl who was forced to watch her father’s murder and mother’s rape. She seeks out Manji to help her take revenge on a group of murderous swordsmen. Takashi Miike has succeeded before and succeeds again at creating a blend between a pure fantasy samurai film and an intense, emotional and realistic story.
(10/23/17 1:43am)
Antonio Santini and Dan Sickles have created a sweet and interesting look into the relationship of Dina and Scott, a couple who are both afflicted with Asperger’s syndrome. The camera disappears behind the couple’s daily interactions with each other and the world around them as the documentary follows their relationship from the day that they move in together to their marriage and ends with them returning from their honeymoon. The camera is almost too good, constantly being one step ahead of the couple to the point that the filmmakers may have pushed the couple to act a certain way or move to a specific location. But, tears, laughter and the interesting story take hold of the audience as more of the story unfolds and a dark history is revealed to contrast the kindness and romance of the couple.
(10/06/17 1:22pm)
Sean Baker continues his trend of directing dramatic, directionless films that serve as a window to an American lifestyle or culture that mainstream media rarely cover. In his previous movie, “Tangerine,” he focuses on two black, transgender prostitutes working in a very dangerous neighborhood. That high intensity film is offset completely by his latest film, “The Florida Project.” Prepare to laugh and cry at the innocence of these children as you walk around with them in their rundown Florida neighborhood.
(09/15/17 8:49pm)
Michael Cuesta directs the film adaptation of the New York Times bestseller, “American Assassin.” The action novel, written by Vince Flynn, received an incredible amount of praise from both critics and audiences, so it is not any surprise that Hollywood has decided to turn it into another action movie. However, this adaptation takes the mindless formula of a spy action movie to a whole new level─and not in a good way.
(07/10/17 1:03am)
Swiss director Frédéric Mermoud’s second feature film, “Moka,” follows the story of Diane (Emmanuelle Devos) who is struggling with the death of her only son in a hit and run accident. Diane is stricken with grief and anger as the police seem to be unable to find the killers, taking the case into her own hands by hiring a detective. She tracks a couple matching the description and infiltrates their lives to find hard evidence, subjecting them to the same pain that she is filled with. The film’s main question, “what does revenge mean?” gets over asked. What can Diane hope to accomplish by finding her son’s killers? What will it really change? Not once is there an actual answer.
(05/05/17 1:17pm)
“Angkor Awakens: A Portrait of Cambodia,” is a documentary focusing on the Cambodian genocide led by the Khmer Rouge in 1975 and its effect on present day Cambodia. The documentary focuses on the loss of culture and the Cambodian people coming to terms with their own history. Director Robert H. Lieberman portrays how the Khmer Rouge continues to affect everyday life in Cambodia.
(04/14/17 8:34pm)
Cristian Mungiu is the writer and director for “Graduation,” a Romanian language film set in a Transylvanian town and focuses on a doctor and his family. The simple summary is reflective of the incredibly realistic film. The doctor, Romeo Aldea (Adrian Titieni), is incredibly concerned with getting his daughter, Eliza (Maria-Victoria Dragus) to take her final exams and go to university in the United Kingdom, where she has scholarships already set up. Romeo is so concerned with this that he forces his daughter to take the exams even after she was assaulted and nearly raped the day before the exam begins. “Graduation” follows Romeo on a deep rabbit hole as he tries to do what he thinks is best, bribing and doing favors for those higher up in the education sphere.
(03/31/17 2:00pm)
The Japanese film “After the Storm” tackles the popular subject of a dysfunctional family with divorced parents and a struggling father. Director Hirokazu Koreeda follows the life of Ryota (Hiroshi Abe), who has just experienced the death of his father and is struggling with seeing his son, who is in the care of his ex-wife. Ryota wrote a famous, award-winning novel over a decade ago and has fallen on hard times, gambling away what little money he received from his private detective job or borrowing from his sister or mother. “After the Storm” discusses multiple questions that surround Ryota’s life: “How do I want my son to know me?” “Who do I want to be?” “What do I want to be remembered for?”
(03/06/17 12:56am)
“My Life as a Zucchini” is a well appreciated break in this oversaturated market of animated children’s movies. The only Oscar-nominated animated film with a PG-13 rating, Claude Barras does not veil the awkward yet dire situation of these children in his first feature length film. This is not a children’s movie at all. “My Life as a Zucchini” follows the life of Icare, a 9-year-old nicknamed Courgette (the French word for zucchini).
(02/10/17 11:11pm)
The sequel to Chad Stahelski’s 2014 film, John Wick, brings back the same level of action and stunts in John Wick: Chapter 2. The movie follows John Wick, played by Keanu Reeves, as he ties up loose ends after the events of the first film. The introduction is filled with a menacing Russian mobster smoking a massive cigar as he describes the horrors that John Wick has committed. As he basically describes the entire events of the previous movie, John Wick brutally murders almost all of the mobster’s soldiers. These opening events serve as a taste of the tone and style of the movie and serve no purpose to the rest of the film. A problem with the beginning scene is that it is filled with references to the first movie and focuses a little too heavily on comedy. There is comedy in the rest of the film, it is much more spread out.
(01/20/17 3:00pm)
Split is like the dissociative identity disorder seen in the antagonist: a confusing jumble of good and bad elements that result in a weak film. James McAvoy portrays Kevin, a man who houses 23 incredibly different identities. Some require glasses or insulin shots while others are female or as young as 9 years old. All of these identities and characters are played very well by McAvoy as he kidnaps three teenage girls and ominously talks about “The Beast,” an unknown identity that is explained throughout the film. The girls, played by Haley Lu Richardson, Jessica Sula and Anya Taylor-Joy, constantly plan to escape as Barry (one of Kevin’s identities) meets with his increasingly suspicious therapist.
(12/09/16 2:00pm)
Black Mirror, created by Charlie Brooker, depicts a horrifying version of where our society is moving to in the near future. The show turns the mirror back on society and it speaks to how social media is creating a false reality, how technology can be evil, the future of incarceration and so much more. If there is any problem with Black Mirror, it is that it covers so much and forces the audience to question nearly everything about current and future Western society. Yet, because the show has a completely different plot and different actors for each episode, the message behind each story is easily digested by the audience.
(11/18/16 12:00pm)
Tom Ford’s second feature film, Nocturnal Animals, tells the story of Susan Morrow (Amy Adams), an artist and art gallery owner. Her ex-husband, Edward Sheffield (Jake Gyllenhaal) mails her a manuscript of his newest novel, which tells the heart wrenching story of a man, Tony Hastings (also played by Jake Gyllenhaal), whose wife and daughter are raped and murdered by a psychotic man in rural Texas. These two stories are told at the same time as Susan remembers her life with her ex-husband and why she leaves him for Hutton Morrow (Armie Hammer), a richer and successful businessman. It seems complicated when written here, but the three stories are interwoven beautifully and as more is revealed throughout the film, some questions are answered while more are raised.
(11/11/16 12:00pm)
Arrival is a spectacle of a movie. Director Denis Villeneuve created one of the most immersive film experiences of 2016. I was consistently on the edge of my seat as I watched Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams) and Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) struggle to communicate with aliens that have landed on Earth. When 12 alien vessels, called “shells” by the military, land across the world, Dr. Banks, a linguist professor, and Ian Donnelly, a quantum physicist, attempt to converse with the shell that lands in Montana using their different skills -- the humanities and sciences, respectively.
(11/04/16 12:46pm)
Hacksaw Ridge is this year’s basic, Oscar-bait, cliché war movie. Mel Gibson’s newest movie stars Andrew Garfield as Desmond Doss, a conscientious objector during World War II in the Pacific theater. Doss refused to even hold a rifle but voluntarily signed up for the military expecting to become a medic. He was met with a large amount of pushback from the military as he refused to even hold a weapon and defend his division, but he was legally allowed to continue to serve as a medic. He worked as a medic at the Battle of Okinawa and helped save the lives of 75 soldiers, while under constant grenade, mortar and machine gun fire. Exposing himself to the enemy multiple times, he used only a rope to lower the wounded men down a cliff face and only stopped when he was injured in the leg by a grenade and shot in the arm by a sniper. For this feat, he was awarded the Medal of Honor, the first of only three conscientious objectors to receive the honor.
(10/07/16 8:35pm)
The Birth of a Nation, directed by Nate Parker, follows the true story of Nat Turner (Nate Parker), a preacher slave who is ordered to go to other plantations to placate any uprising. But, after seeing first-hand the horrors of some of the slave masters, he orchestrates a rebellion in 1831. After killing around 60 people over the course of 48 hours, the rebellion was put down. In retaliation, nearly 60 slaves were executed and 100 to 200 more slaves were killed by roaming militia. The title of the film is taken from the 1915 silent film of the same name. The older film was directed by D.W. Griffith and depicts an incredibly racist view of the South if it was ruled by the black slaves.