Canadian filmmaker Mark Raso bets on his audience in his terrific feature Copenhagen. It’s about an American called William (Game of Thrones Gethin Anthony) pretending to be Canadian while touring Europe. He tends to get into trouble a lot so he believes it adds another layer of fake “nice”. He is one of the most obnoxious male
Thanks to beautiful visual effects and the talents of Angelina Jolie, Disney’s ultimate villain has received a new a backstory worth telling – even if the movie has a few flaws in the telling of that story. The film delivers a new twist to the classic fairy tale and makes the audience understand why she
Laura Dern’s presence in Jean-Marc Vallée’s Wild is ethereal and steeped in memory and love. She’s Bobbi, the late mother of Reese Witherspoon’s character Cheryl. Bobbi died young of cancer which tipped her daughter into drug addiction and years of bad decisions. One day Cheryl embarks on a thousand mile solo trek to come to terms with
A rich slice of hardship and redemption from the unforgiving frontier. The opening scenes are as bleak as death itself. Parched plains, patched together clapboard houses, poverty so deep it rises up to greet you at the front door, and wind that never, ever, lets up. Tommy Lee Jones’ second feature film shows an America
A tight knit and brutally honest essay on familial conflicts and the complications of living a Western dream in an environment of limited possibilities. Nine year old Junior is on the war path with his mother. What else is new? The ageless story of kid versus parent is told again, this time in the tough
A lean and mean essay on human bondage, a minimalist examination of living life to the least. Peter Sattler’s directorial debut is as bare and exposed as a prisoner in a cell. A stripped down film about warehousing human beings and waiting for the next step. The next step for the inmate is release, and
Screenwriting bromedy that shows Bollywood is not that much different than its American counterpart. Dulal is the brains and Mainak is the street smarts in Amit Masurkar’s flighty bromedy screened at the 9th Seattle South Asian Film Festival. Like most screenwriters, these two need that one big break to make it into the big time.
A combination of spectacular special effects, marginal physics and grindingly slow treacle, McConaughey pulls this one out of the fire. Christopher Nolan’s $165 million IMAX space lollapalooza is all the better for starting in the most modest of environments. It is some time in the future, some place in the American Midwest. Things are not
Eco filmmaker Andrew Nisker’s about to raise alarms regarding a pervasive daily habit many of us share. His latest documentary The Dark Side of the Chew closing the 15th annual Planet in Focus Environmental Film Festival this Sunday lifts of the veil off gum pollution. It’s a complex problem that like smoking is widespread and initially seemed
A disturbing love story set in the unforgiving world of the Internet. Writer/director Zachary Wigon’s essay on the vicissitudes of internet love starts innocently enough. A quiet, intimate conversation in the privacy of Cody’s (John Gallagher Jr. – HBO’s “The Newsroom,” and “Short Term 12”) East Village apartment with a possible significant other. The woman