The Film:

It's amazing how ethnocentric we can become, even those of us who feel we are above such petty distinctions and who would call ourselves completely open-minded. After I watched Frantz and realized that it was perhaps the best film I'd seen all year, I caught myself acting surprised that a few foreign films always make it to the top of my annual list, as if they were a genre all their own and I was paying them far too much attention. I had to take a step back and remind myself that there was no reason that another country couldn't make a singularly excellent movie, that nations all over the world are producing startlingly good theatre, that their bei...Read the entire review

There will be Academy Award talk this year surrounding A Quiet Passion, a film in which Cynthia Nixon commands the screen and for which she very well may receive an Oscar nomination. For an unobtrusive biographical movie about Emily Dickinson, any awards buzz will be big news, since the relative scope of the picture itself is one of much smaller scale. This isn't a blazing period piece full of romance and war, an epic that attracts the biggest stars and salivating audiences. But it is a stoic, often silent, time capsule of an underappreciated life, of a woman who longed to make an impact but never saw that dream realized. Nixon de...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Like a lot of people around my approximate age, I remember the days of Twisted Sister in the early and mid-1980s, and the launch of their careers into the stratosphere through extensive airplay of their videos "I Wanna Rock" and "We're Not Gonna Take It," one of which included Mark Metcalf, who played Neidermeyer in Animal House. Like a lot of people around my approximate age, I had little knowledge of the story of the band and their existence to that point, and Andrew Horn's documentary (titled "We Are Twisted Fucking Sister!") tries to explain this.

Rather than serve as a career retrospective, the story of Twisted Sister started a decade before the release of its first album, in clubs in Long Island, New York and New Jersey. The band played covers from David Bowie and Mott the Hoople among...Read the entire review

With a website called Archer Avenue, it isn't hard to guess that my favorite film is The Royal Tenenbaums. Apart from some genius directing from Wes Anderson and the creation of a fantastic world that is like our own only much better, the film is a wonder of story and characters, a look at family and death from a viewpoint that's both original and beautiful. A Man Called Ove is, in a strange way, the Swedish equivalent of Tenenbaums, the revelation of the good inside a bitter old man and the painting of a world around him that may not be perfect, but is full of the love and companionship he's been searching for his whole life...Read the entire review

The Film:

The Movie:

The depiction of intense hostage situations in movies, especially ones from Hollywood, tend to heighten the drama with poetic license, up to a point where there isn't much of a difference in style and tone between a hostage thriller and a run off the mill action flick. Real hostage situations are terrifying and wholly unpredictable, forcing the victims as well as the perpetrators to act in awkward and eccentric ways. Any research into a police event where people are taken hostage will show that there's nothing "cool" or "badass" about it. It's usually not much more than a tense nightmare that everyone's stuck in.

Director Rodrigo Pla's admirably raw thriller A Monster with a Thousand Heads strives to bring a realistic take on a suspenseful hostage situation, staying as far away from the Hollywood pizzazz of this sub-genre as possible. Adapted by Laura Santullo fr...Read the entire review

The Movie:

A little over a decade ago -- shortly after Mario Van Peebles attempted to recreate the chaotic production of his father's seminal cult film Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song in his own underrated drama Baadasssss! -- filmmakers Joe Angio and Michael Solomon completed a less personal but no less fascinating documentary portrait of Sweetback director Melvin Van Peebles, How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (And Enjoy It). The films tracks Melvin from his modest beginnings as a San Francisco cable car operator to his '70s apex as both an industry-changing filmmaker and a Tony-nominated Broadway playwright, before continuing on to ...Read the entire review

The Movie:

What drives mountain climbers to do what they do? It's hard to get an insightful answer to that question from the climbers themselves, since they tend to put their entire physical and emotional focus on the goal of reaching the summit. As evidenced by this year's perfectly serviceable mountain climbing disaster flick Everest, they'll probably answer your question of "Why?" with a simple "Because it's there!" Perhaps that's why, as a mountain-climbing documentary, Meru is so special, since it digs deep into the question of why so many people risk life and limb to climb mountains.

Apart from possessing the usual elements of these docs, complete with spectacular ...Read the entire review

The Film:

The Movie:

Downtown 81 is not so much of a movie per se as a snapshot of a specific place and time. The film centers on 19 year-old graffiti artist and musician Jean Michel Basquiat, playing a character who passes through Manhattan's gritty, vibrant early '80s music and art scene. Completed in 1981 but not given an official release until 2000, this semi-documentary has been digitally remastered and given several hours' worth of supplementary material for a two-DVD edition from Submarine Deluxe and Music Box Films.

Looking at it today, Downtown 81 comes across like a clumsily done film noir with fantasy elements, performed against a nihilistic, dingy, crime-ridden Manhattan that nonetheless pulsed with creative energy (Punk and Hip Hop w...Read the entire review

The Movie:

In our Western society, we'd like to think that the planet as a whole made considerable advancements in gender equality. Unfortunately, in high patriarchal societies governed primarily by religion, women still have next to zero rights when it comes to making decision concerning their own lives as individuals. The immensely captivating and rightfully infuriating courtroom drama Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem depicts such vast inequality and lack of respect for an individual with a unique storytelling approach and brutal honesty.

Before we get to the important and always relevant cultural themes of the story, I want to first give praise to brother and sister writing/directing team Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz for remind...Read the entire review

Content:
Maison Close (which translates to "Closed House") is a series that most probably never heard of. It's a steamy French series in the same vain of Fifty Shades of Grey but with much more substance. Despite the accolades the show received, the acclaim and the awards, the series was cancelled after only 16 episodes due to lackluster ratings. With the series being released stateside with the hopes of a broader audience, this box set contains the first 8 episodes of the series. Is the show worth a look?

Taking place in Paris circa 1871, briefly after the rise and fall of the Paris Commune (which was an uprising from the working class trying to claim power), Maison Close revolves around the life of a collection of prostitutes in a fancy brothel called "Paradise", a high end bordello known as the best around, only frequented by the upper class of society.

Not ever...Read the entire review

In November 2011, the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse case broke at Penn State University, where the former assistant football coach was indicted on 52 counts of molestation. Sandusky was not just a prominent figure in the local community, but a big name in the world of college football, and even ran a charity organization aimed at youths. The scandal became a national story, and resulted in a $60m fine from the NCAA as well as 23 settlements. Sandusky, being the perpetrator, was immediately labeled a monster, but the real battle lines were drawn over head coach Joe Paterno, a real figurehead in the community, and a beloved sports hero.

Happy Valley is not a recounting of the Sandusky case itself, but the way the community, which held football up as part of its DNA, reacted to the many revelations and developments in the case. Director Amir Bar-Lev does his best to stay objective, and approach the ...Read the entire review

Antarctica: A Year on Ice is not adocumentary film aboutthe place itself as much as it is about the people who live inAntarctica andhow they cope with and deal with living out day-to-day lives in anisolated andunfamiliar territory that most people never experience. With amazingphotography and a series of interviews with people who live inAntarctica, thedocumentary explores an element of Antarctica not commonly seen indocumentaryproductions.

The film was produced, photographed, and directedby nature-photographerAnthony Powell, who spent 10 years turning his project into adocumentary. This film is unlike most other Antarcticadocumentaries made before as everything about this effort is gearedmoret...Read the entire review

The Movie:

In Watchers of the Sky, Benjamin Ferencz, the chief prosecutor of the infamous Nuremberg trials and a lawyer who still dedicates his life to the pursuit of ending war making at age 93, explains why a documentary about a group of formidable people trying to stop genocide all over the world has a title that resembles a science-fiction flick: He tells the story of Tycho Brahe, a sixteenth century astronomer who studied the stars for 25 years. When asked why he bothered to study something no one will care about or appreciate during his time, he responded that the next generations could pick up where he left off, and that the least he could do was to save them 25 years of research.

Perhaps those who fight for ending atrocities like genocide all over the world are like Tycho, hoping that one day the world will be ready to leave behind crimes against humanity while doing whate...Read the entire review

The Movie:

I'd be shocked if there isn't at least one Hollywood studio developing The Green Prince as a feature. The true story of the son of a Hamas leader secretly collaborating with the Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service, in order to cut down on the amount of innocent lives that would have been taken by Hamas' terrorist attacks is ripe for an awards season prestige political thriller. In a perfect world, Mark Boal and Katherine Bigelow would collaborate for a third time in order to bring this story to the big screen. Until then, we have Nadav Schirman's excellent documentary to relay this extraordinary story to the audience.

Schirman cleverly employs a fairly simple visual and narrative approach in order to construct the tale of Mosab Hassan Yousef, a.k.a. The Green Prince. A majority of the film's running time is devoted to interviews with the film's two main subject...Read the entire review

The Movie:

The Last Sentence is a stark, intimate drama which may appeal to World War II history buffs. With this 2012 film, master Swedish filmmaker Jan Troell crafted a sympathetic portrait of journalist Torgny Segerstedt, a fellow Swede who was instrumental in alerting his country to the threat of Fascism coming from Germany - years before it had a devastating effect on history. Segerstedt is given an excellent, stately portrayal by Danish actor Jesper Christensen in what amounts to a turgid, well-intentioned biopic. In focusing on the subject's inner thoughts over the enthralling history he helped create, Jan Troell laid down one bone-dry, resistible movie.

An admiring view of investigative journalism - crisply photographed in black and white - <...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Based on a book called Shokuzai by Japanese author Kanae Minato, Penance, directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa was originally made as a TV mini-series before it was readjusted to work as a long feature film. The series revolves around the murder of a girl named Emili and how it affects her mother, Asako (Kyoko Koizumi), and those around her in the small village where the heinous crime took place. Although there were some witnesses, the crime goes unsolved by the local authorities. The four classmates who found Emili's body swear they can't recall the murderer's identity.

Understandably Asako is very upset over all of this, but it's what she does to cope with this grief that gives the series its backbone. When what would have been her daughter's birthday rolls around, Asako gathers up the four former playmates and tells them in no uncertain terms that if they don't spill it ...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Despite trying constantly, poor Niko (Generation War's Tom Schilling) finds himself unable to procure a cup of coffee during the twenty-four hours or so that unfold in Jan Ole Gerster's debut feature, A Coffee In Berlin (retitled from the original: Oh Boy). This failure turns out to be emblematic of the many misfortunes that befall him during this short period. Niko goes to speak to a government shrink about getting his driver's license reinstated after a DUI, but he angers the doc and gets his suspension extended. He tries to buy a train ticket, but the machine is broken and he gets hassled by moronic ticket inspectors. His dad finds out h...Read the entire review

Ida (AgataTrzebuchowska) is a catholic nun working towards taking her vows withinthe &nbsp;covenant where she stays. She is soongoing totake those vows but is told that first she is supposed to go visit afamilymember and speak with them. Unfortunately for Ida, this is somethingthat comesas a huge surprise: she must go and visit a family member that Idapreviously hadn'teven realize existed.

The person she meetsfollowing this bit of news is Wanda (Agata Kulesza), whom she quicklydiscoversis her aunt. Before long, Ida learns that her real name is Siostra Annaandthat her family heritages makes her Jewish. She begins to spend timewith Wandaand forms a new connect...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Did you ever play this game with your friends as a child? You and your buddies sit around in a circle, each of you write a paragraph of a short story, fold it, then another kid writes the next paragraph without seeing what comes before it. This process continues until the page is full. Afterwards, you read the whole story and laugh about how hilariously nonsensical it turned out. Watching Jackpot is that kind of an experience.

Character backgrounds and motivations change wildly from scene to scene without any explanation, last-minute plot twists are haphazardly introduced without any foreshadowing or build-up, and every scene feels like it was made up on the fly, inspired by whatever location, actors and props they had available any given day.

This approach could have worked if we were dealing with a pretentious love letter to The French New Wave but for what's su...Read the entire review

Michael Kohlhaas (Mads Mikkelsen) is a merchant, who makes a quiet running a farm with his wife (Delphine Chuillot) and young daughter (Melusine Mayance). On his journey to the market one day, he discovers that a local Baron has blocked the road, and the guard at the gate demands a permit. Michael objects, never having had to provide one before. Michael is forced to give up two horses in order to pass through. Later, one of Michael's valets gets into a fight over the same horses, and the Baron's men sic dogs on him. The horses are returned, covered in welts, severely overworked. Michael is furious, and his quest for justice begins, first through the courts, before building into a physical battle between Kohlhaas and the Baron's men to get what he believes he is owed.

The story of Michael Kohlhaas was published back in the 16th century, a partial adaptation of the life of a real person. Age of Upr...Read the entire review