Japanese travellers to the Next World are detained in a nondescript institutional facility -- a mundane Purgatory -- where they must select one (and only one) memory from their lives to carry with them into eternity. A shaky premise (only one?) is shaken further by the prosaic documentary treatment: talking-heads …
A woman discovers a shocking secret after the unexpected death of her husband. Direcetd by Aleem Khan, starring Joanna Scanlan, Nathalie Richard, and Talid Ariss.
The opening long take and the quietly unexpected off-camera appearance by the film’s shamefaced lead character set the tone for this powerful family melodrama. For most of its running time, director and co-writer Joachim Lafosse gives the impression that he’s drilled a hole into the side of a married couple’s …
Keira Knightley, Jason Clarke, and Alexander Skarsgård star in a romantic drama set in post WWII Germany. James Kent (Testament of Youth) directs.
Living most of his adult life in Chicago, Franek (Ireneusz Czop), developed a fondness for throwing the word “Yid” around. But upon returning to Poland after a 20 year absence, Franek discovers the town he grew up in harbors a bulwark of genuine, old-school anti-Semites. Schindler’s Light. Writer-director Wladyslaw Pasikowski’s …
Writer-director Jill Soloway digs into the psyche of the happy homemaker's shadow self, the miserable mommy. (When all your needs are met, that's when you notice you're unhappy.) Rachel (Kathryn Hahn) is uninterested in her child, unmoved by her husband, and unconsoled by her friends. On a joyless lark, she …
A conversation between Malaysian director Tsai Ming-liang and his long-time leading man, Lee Kang-sheng. In Mandarin with English subtitles.
Nancy Biurski's documentary on the astonishing ballerina affectionately known as Tanny is not quite a great movie: there are a few too many stills, some clunky voiceovers, and an occasionally foray into the lugubrious. But it does tell a great story. Tanny, whose long limbs and angular grace were expansive …
It wasn’t a random act of violence like the ones that hit classrooms with greater frequency, but rather a broken spring of nature. More than 6000 parents whose children perished in the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake were inspired by the government to cut their losses and have another one. (Those who …
Few people can be put out with Ingmar Bergman for having not kept his promise that Fanny and Alexander would remain his last movie. Still, Bergman has felt obliged to argue, with perhaps an overrefined sense of integrity, that inasmuch as After the Rehearsal was made originally for Swedish television, …
“New friends at my age mean one thing — more funerals,” scoffs Yoshiko (Kirin Kiki), the matriarch of the Shinoda family, as she attempts to work past the recent death of her husband. If American filmmakers could write characters half as observant and compelling as Hirokazu Koreeda, you’d never again …
Rhinestone heist thriller (a brandished DVD of To Catch a Thief establishes a standard of comparison) about a couple of high-tech jewel thieves in smug retirement in the Islands: "Now the challenge is to find joy in simple things." But then the third of the priceless Napoleon Diamonds, of which …
A fair-haired Danish do-gooder at an insolvent Bombay orphanage is summoned against his will to his native Copenhagen on a hat-in-hand fundraising mission, and upon arrival is summoned additionally to the wedding of Mr. Moneybags's daughter. To our surprise (and who else's?), Mrs. Moneybags turns out to be an old …