Tag: foreign film

Screening Room: ‘The Wait’

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thewait1

In L’Atessa (The Wait), a grieving mother played by Juliette Binoche meets her son’s girlfriend for the first time after a funeral that’s left her emotionally devastated. Emotional gamesmanship ensues.

The Wait is playing now in limited release. My review is at Film Journal International:

Holding the center of Piero Messina’s dark oil painting of a story is Juliette Binoche, deftly submarined as Anna, the mother in mourning, with a grief-etched countenance as striking as worn granite. Unable to come to grips with her loss, she waits in a grand, remote Sicilian estate where the mirrors are covered in black shrouds and appears uninhabited even by the people who live there. Anna’s dark watch is interrupted by the arrival of Jeanne (Lou de Laâge), the pert French girlfriend of her son Giuseppe, whom she has never met. Invited by Giuseppe to spend the days before Easter at his house, Jeanne shows up in the funeral’s aftermath to find that he’s not there to greet her. Anna is welcoming but formal, distant and evasive…

Here’s the trailer:

Screening Room: ‘Mountains May Depart’

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mountainsmaydepart1Now that the Chinese stock market is whipsawing from highs to lows and the permanent growth cycle appears to be broken, it’s probably the perfect time for a state-of-the-nation drama from one of the great modern Chinese directors: Jia Zhangke.

mountainsmaydepart-poster1Mountains May Depart is playing now in limited release. My review is at PopMatters:

Whatever is left of China at the start of Jia Zhangke’s epic triptych Mountains May Depart, it isn’t a place for which anyone will feel nostalgic. The first scene, set in 1999 in the small northern city of Fenyang, seems shrouded in grey. The crumbling brick buildings and bare landscape denote the only work that seems on offer here, at a coal mine.

Still, this is a time of economic boom, when China is transforming into an industrial powerhouse the likes of which had never been seen before. The film goes on to reveal the costs of that era’s sky-high promises of prosperity and accompanying irrational exuberance…

You can see my review of Jia Zhangke’s last masterpiece, A Touch of Sin, here.

Here’s the trailer for Mountains May Depart:

Screening Room: ‘Mustang’

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The sisters of 'Mustang' (Cohen Media Group)
The sisters of ‘Mustang’ (Cohen Media Group)

In Mustang, France’s official entry for this year’s Academy Awards, five sisters living in a remote Turkish village strain against the prison-like limits put on them by a local male culture terrified of allowing them even the slightest hint of freedom.

Wild, exuberant, and altogether masterful, Mustang is playing now in limited release; make sure to seek it out. My review is at PopMatters:

The view from the family home of five sisters living in a remote Turkish village on the Black Sea is the kind of vista for which wealthy travelers pay dearly. Nearby mountains are covered in lush forests and the ocean slaps musically into sandy beaches below.

This panorama is also a taunt, because the sisters will never be allowed anywhere near it unless a male guardian accompanies them. Even then, they won’t be allowed to play and run and laugh, but instead will be expected to follow like docile sheep in shapeless dresses…

Here’s the trailer:

Screening Room: ‘Secret in Their Eyes’

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Chiwetel Ejiofor and Nicole Kidman in 'Secret in Their Eyes' (STX Entertainment)
Chiwetel Ejiofor and Nicole Kidman in ‘Secret in Their Eyes’ (STX Entertainment)

Based on the Oscar-winning 2009 Argentinian film of the same name, Billy Ray’s Secret in Their Eyes follows what happens when a police woman’s daughter is murdered and neither she nor her fellow cops can quite let go of it.

Secret in Their Eyes opens this week. My review is at Film Journal International:

After making Shattered Glass, one of the modern era’s greatest journalism films, one would have hoped that writer-director Billy Ray would have absorbed the cardinal rule: Don’t bury the lead. Yet that is exactly what he keeps doing all throughout Secret in Their Eyes, his strained and surprisingly star-heavy remake of Juan JoséCampanella’s morally complicated potboiler that was also the 2010 Foreign-Language Oscar winner. Initially a procedural about a retired FBI agent who can’t let go of a cold case, Ray’s version sidles into a buried romance and a commentary on post-9/11 security-state excesses without ever quite getting a bead on any of the many elements it’s juggling…

Here’s the trailer:

Screening Room: ‘The Wonders’

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wonders1

A sweet and strange offering from Italy, The Wonders opens this week in limited release. My review is at Film Journal International:

The state of the ramshackle Tuscan farmhouse inhabited by the family whose members dart and gambol all through The Wonders, Alice Rohrwacher’s sleepy one-ring circus of a film, perfectly mirrors their everyday state of affairs. It’s beautiful in its way but not exactly well-maintained. Nevertheless, it stays up, just like this family stays together even as many of their violently oppositional attitudes would seem to be pulling them apart…

Here’s the trailer:

Screening Room: ‘The New Girlfriend’

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newgirlfriend-poster

In Francois Ozon’s The New Girlfriend, after a woman’s childhood friend dies, she discovers that her friend’s husband has a secret. Complications of a romantic and gender-blurring nature ensue.

My review of The New Girlfriend, which opens this week in limited release, at PopMatters:

There is a sharp, sublime Almodóvar film trapped inside the blurry outlines of François Ozon’s The New Girlfriend (Une nouvelle amie), as if aching to get out. You can see this in The New Girlfriend‘s sly opening, with its finely sculpted woman being dressed seemingly for a wedding before the gag is revealed, and in the moments of interlaced satire and desire in later sections. But Ozon’s highly polished surface allows for none of the Spanish filmmaker’s lurking wit or malevolence. Though Ozon’s penchant for putting pretty people in mildly baffling situations makes it hard to take his work straight, so to speak, this is the course with which you’re left in this ultimately confused film…

Here’s the trailer:

Screening Room: ‘Eden’ Goes to the Rave

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'Eden': The party never ends (Broad Green Pictures).
‘Eden’: The party never ends (Broad Green Pictures).
Ah, to be young, French, and to care what DJs think or do. That’s the short synopsis of the new film from Mia Hansen-Love, whose Goodbye, First Love was one of the sweeter romantic films of the last few years. This time, Hansen-Love dives into the electronic music scene of the 1990s and throws love into the mix as well.

Eden opens this week, here and there. My review is at Film Racket.

Here’s the trailer:

New in Theaters: ‘Clouds of Sils Maria’

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Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart in 'Clouds of Sils Maria' (Sundance Selects)
Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart in ‘Clouds of Sils Maria’ (Sundance Selects)

In Olivier Assayas’ Clouds of Sils Maria, a venerable actress with a prickly assistant agrees to play the older character in a play that made her famous when she was in the younger role, now cast with a Lindsay Lohan-esque up-and-comer. It’s a rich dramatic environment, suggesting a marriage of Persona and All About Eve.

Clouds of Sils Maria opens this week; my review is at Film Racket:

In this richly satisfying film about age and art, a battle of wills over a new production of a classic play becomes a Rorschach test for two women’s friendship. It’s another subtext-laden drama from Olivier Assayas, whose best work has dug into the simmering tensions of long-term relationships and come up with melodramatic gold. Clouds of Sils Maria won’t be counted among his greater achievements like Summer Hours. But it’s a return to form for a director whose more recent films (Carlos, Something in the Air) have been packed with energy but lacking heft…

Here’s the (somewhat misleading) trailer:

Now Playing: ‘Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter’

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Rinko Kikuchi goes to the Great White North in 'Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter' (Amplify)
Rinko Kikuchi goes to the Great White North in ‘Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter’ (Amplify)

Do you like Fargo? Chances are, even if so, you don’t know it as well as the titular anti-heroine of the Zellner brothers’ chilly odyssey of quirk, Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter. It might be one of the first great films of 2015.

kumiko-posterKumiko, the Treasure Hunter is playing now here and there. My review is at PopMatters:

She’s alone and obsessive, and her particular object of obsession is the Coen brothers’ film Fargo. Sitting night after night in her dingy apartment with only her adorable rabbit Bunzo for company, she pores over a worn-out VHS tape with Talmudic fervency, keeping a notebook full of scribbled clues that only make sense to her. Because of Fargo‘s famous opening epigraph—“This is a true story. The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 1987”—she takes it as a faithful transcribing of reality. That’s why she keeps re-watching the scene where Carl (Steve Buscemi) buries the suitcase of cash by a fence in a snowy field. In Kumiko’s mind, she just needs to get to Minnesota…

Here’s the trailer:

New in Theaters: ‘White God’

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'White God': The dogs are coming (Magnolia Pictures)
‘White God’: The dogs are coming (Magnolia Pictures)

Ever year the Cannes Film Festival awards the Un Certain Regard prize to a standout film. For 2014, that film was Hungarian director Kornel Mundruczo’s White God, which is not about race or religion, but rather about what happens when people push dogs a little too far. Yes, it’s a metaphor.

White God is opening this week in limited release. My review is at Film Journal International:

They say that the eyes are the windows to the soul. That hasn’t always proven correct with some performers, who could look forcefully into a camera and still reveal nothing about themselves or the character they are inhabiting. The same problem presents itself in Kornél Mundruczó’s White God, only this time the eyes in question aren’t those of human actors, but canine ones. Eyes are important in this film because the story has so little to offer; about all that’s left to engage with are the dogs who spend a good amount of time peering soulfully out of the screen. And that’s before they rise up against their human oppressors…

The trailer is here:

New in Theaters: ‘Jauja’

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Viggo Mortensen (right) in 'Jauja' (Cinema Guild)
Viilbjørk Mallin Agger and Viggo Mortensen in ‘Jauja’ (Cinema Guild)

Jauja, a ghostly pseudo-Western set in the wilds of late-nineteenth century Argentina and starrting Viggo Mortensen, is opening this week in limited release. My review is at Film Journal International:

Given a précis of what Lisandro Alonso’s Jauja is ostensibly about, some might imagine they’re in for a South American updating of The Searchers. But even John Ford—who would have been happy to have a stolid leading man like Viggo Mortensen in his company—at his pokiest was never this unconcerned with story. Alonso is happy to let his scenes spool out at their own unhurried pace, captured in the old-fashioned boxy Academy framing. This can lead to some gorgeously observed tableaus but also stretches of dry tedium, hemmed in by a layered and mannered aesthetic…

Here’s the trailer:

New in Theaters: ‘Two Days, One Night’

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(IFC Films)
‘Two Days, One Night’ (IFC Films)

twodaysonenight-posterIn the latest film from the Dardennes brothers, Marion Cotillard deglams to play a factory worker who has to fight for her job in a particularly grueling way.  Hopefully, it’ll be the odds-on favorite for the Oscars next year.

Two Days, One Night opens on Christmas Eve in limited release and should expand around the country in the new year. My review is at Film Racket:

In the nervy pressure cooker Two Days, One Night, a hollow-eyed Belgian factory worker tries to convince her co-workers to keep her on at the company instead of getting a raise. The narrative is similar to those gladiator entertainments — see who wins and who goes home — but it’s structured around a different impulse. Here the protagonist is trying to succeed by convincing the other characters to listen to their altruistic instincts. It’s not the sort of thing people normally bet on…

The trailer is here:

New in Theaters: ‘Zero Motivation’

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Nelly Tagar tries to be all she can be in 'Zero Motivation' (Zeitgeist Films)
Nelly Tagar tries to be all she can be in ‘Zero Motivation’ (Zeitgeist Films)

The new Israeli film Zero Motivation—which played the film festival circuit earlier in the year—is a smart, dour comedy set in a military office where little gets done. The military satire is punched up with the occasional flash of surrealism; it’s a fantastic mix.

Zero Motivation is opening this week in limited release. I reviewed it at the Tribeca Film Festival for PopMatters:

On a base that feels as removed from any actual war as Sgt. Bilko, the human resources office is a den of sloth and ineptitude. Commanding officer Rama (Shani Klein) is frazzled trying to get any of the women in her command to care even remotely about their assignments. Her best friends Daffi (Nelly Tagar) and Zohar (Dana Ivgy) can’t be bothered to do much besides complain and play Minesweeper, as they all survive in a casually sexist division, where the men are assigned all the combat roles and so ascend to higher ranks, and female soldiers fetch coffee and bicker…

Here’s the trailer:

Now Playing: ‘Bird People’ Perches Between Rapture and Oblivion

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'Bird People' (Sundance Selects)
Anaïs Demoustier and friends in ‘Bird People’ (Sundance Selects)

birdpeople-posterTwo people, one hotel next to an airport, an atmosphere of rootlessness, a little bit of magic, and lots of sparrows. Those are the ingredients of Pascale Ferran’s gorgeously odd Bird People, which has almost everything going for it but a story. Plus Bowie.

Bird People is playing in very limited release now and deserves to be sought out. My review is at PopMatters:

Airports are all about promise. Springboards to the great elsewhere, they are also, for passengers en route, a comfortingly null zone wherein the normal rules of adult life are suspended. The promise of airports can be intoxicating. But the reality is more often deadening, not transportive.

In Bird People, Pascale Ferran’s ode to the in-between, Charles de Gaulle airport takes on both qualities. It’s at once an escape and a trap for the unwary…

You can see the trailer here:

New in Theaters: ‘Last Hijack’ Gets Inside the Mind of a Somali Pirate

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'Last Hijack': Let's steal a ship. (The Match Factory)
‘Last Hijack’: Let’s steal a ship. (The Match Factory)

In the latest take on the Somali pirate phenomenon, Last Hijack comes from a more innovative direction. It mixes on-the-ground documentary footage of Mohamed, the pirate captain who’s pushing for another escapade even as his parents and new wife beg him not, with imaginative animated segments that portray his roiling internal strife and traumatic memories of war.

Last Hijack opens today in limited release after playing a number of film festivals. My review is at Film Journal International:

In the rash of recent films centered on the Somali piracy outbreak, almost none have been shot from the pirate’s point of view (the 2012 short and 2014 feature Fishing Without Nets being a rare exception). It’s not surprising, as Western audiences prefer their pirate-centric films to be more lusty, fun-loving, highly fictional, and safely mired in the past. When the films, and the many books and magazines, about the subject have tiptoed into the causes behind the outbreak of piracy, some have fallen prey to the too-easy explanation of: The pirates were once fishermen, and after other nations’ fishing vessels stripped the ocean clean, they resorted to piracy to make a living. That’s a big part of the story. But what Tommy Pallotta and Femke Wolting’s smart, well-rounded documentary understands is another quite obvious explanation: Piracy in this scenario is not only a way to make easy money in a poverty- and war-ravaged land, it’s an addictive thrill…

You can see the trailer here: