A War Movie Review

The Danish entry and nominee for this year’s Foreign Language Film Oscar is A War written and directed by Tobias Lindholm. This is one of the more unusual foreign films you’ll see in that it more closely resembles a Hollywood film than most. It’s easy to forget that American soldiers haven’t been the only ones doing the fighting and dying in Afghanistan. A coalition of many nations sent soldiers there and A War is about a company of Danish men and women patrolling the countryside and villages to keep the Taliban at bay.

Phoenix Movie Review

There’s a current movement in German cinema. I’m not sure if it’s acquired a catchy name yet. “The Berlin School” is the closest I can find, but that’s not descriptive in the way that “film noir, “French New Wave,” or “Italian neo-realism” were. From my own observations it’s something like neo-German historical realism. But that’s a little clunky. At any rate, the movies, which tend to focus on post-war Germany or Communist Bloc East Germany, have been making their way stateside, illuminating the ways in which a new generation of German filmmakers and their audiences are responding to the important historical markers that shaped Gemany and its people today.

Wild Tales Movie Review (Relatos salvajes)

Damián Szifrón’s Wild Tales is a package film comprised of six short films united by the common theme of human nature’s propensity to resort to animal instincts of violence and moral turpitude at the slightest hint of transgression. The original Spanish title of this Argentine film (which was nominated for the Foreign Language Film Oscar this year) is Relatos salvajes which is more aptly translated as “Savage Tales.” These six stories are not just wild, as in a little crazy and beyond the pale. They are savage and occasionally brutal in the way wild animals have no regard for the violence they inflict on each other.

Tangerines Movie Review

Update 21 April 2015: This film was released commercially in the United States on 17 April 2015.

This film has not yet been released commercially in the United States.

Anti-war movies so often fail at being effectively anti-war because any depiction of fighting, violence, brutality, or death inherently glorifies it by making it sensational. One of the best anti-war movies I can recall is Danis Tanovic’s Oscar-winning No Man’s Land which featured virtually no fighting at all but was about two wounded soldiers from opposing sides in the Bosnian War stuck in the tract of land between the lines. It was about the absurdity and ineffectiveness of war and the need for human understanding in conflict. No Man’s Land was the movie I thought of most often during Tangerines, one of this year’s nominees for the award that Tanovic’s film won.

We Are the Best! Movie Review

Swedish director Lukas Moodysson went a little dark after his light and free-wheeling feature debut Together, one of my favorite movies from 2001. He came back last year with We Are the Best, another film similar in tone and just as light on its feet. It’s amazing to see a director as comfortable dealing with high energy electrifying characters as he is with moody depression. In his latest he tells an adorable story, adapted from his wife Coco’s comic book about three young girls in Stockholm in the early eighties trying to stand out as punks. The punk movement was on its way out by then and of course girls weren’t supposed to care. But Bobo (Mira Barkhammar) and her best friend Klara (Mira Grosin) are the school’s outliers, two kids who spike their short hair and dress alternatively. And they catch hell for it from their peers.

Timbuktu Movie Review

The global fight against implementation of Sharia law and the struggle against Islamofascism is given a very different perspective in Abderrah Sissako’s striking and thoughtful Timbuktu. In 2012, militants took over the city in Mali and laid down new laws regarding dress codes for men and women, music performance, smoking, and adultery. They also make clear what some punishments might be.

The city of Timbuktu is cosmopolitan. It is made up of people from many different places and cultures, they speak several different languages. The absurdity of foreigners walking into town and trying to create a new uniform culture is certainly on Sissako’s mind. There is no shortage of absurdity in Timbuktu including the hypocrisy of those who are meant to enforce the new laws. Football is not permitted but three soldiers fiercely debate whether Barcelona or Madrid have the better team. And the kids play a gorgeous game of soccer with no ball. They rely on their imaginations and ingenuity to have a good time. It is one of the film’s most sublime moments. Then as if to call to attention to just how ridiculous it is, a donkey wanders across the pitch. This was one of the greatest sequences in a film full of them.

Like Water for Chocolate Movie Review

Movies that age badly are fascinating to me. What to make of a movie that was well-regarded more than two decades ago upon its release, part of the Weinsteins’ Miramax success blitz in the 90s, and even garnered some middling awards attention, but left me scratching my head in wonderment at how anyone in their right mind ever thought this was a good movie. There are movies I don’t like that get lots of good critical attention where I can at least understand what people have fallen for. In the case of Como agua para chocolate – or Like Water for Chocolate in English – it struck me as more than just failing to appeal to my taste, but flat out bad filmmaking on a nearly objectively technical level.

Short Cut Movie Review: Omar

A Short Cut Movie Review is normally less than 400 words, but in some cases may go slightly over. This is my attempt to keep writing about as many films as I see without getting bogged down with trying to find more to say. They are meant to be brief snapshots of my reaction to a movie without too much depth.

I almost can’t believe Omar snagged a nomination for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. Writer-director Hany Abu-Assad has taken an otherwise thematically interesting tale and designed it as a film with no teeth. Here’s the story of a Palestinian freedom fighter (er, terrorist) who is coerced into aiding Israeli intelligence in capturing his friends. Think of the great dramatic possibilities with this story. Think of all the internal conflict Abu-Assad could depict within Omar (Adam Bikri). Instead he turns it into a minor romantic struggle. He’s in love with the younger sister of his terrorist partner, Tarek (Iyad Hoorani). So is his childhood friend, Amjad (Samer Bisharat). If he goes to prison, he misses out on the life he dreams of having with Nadia. If he turns her brother in, he will forever be a traitor.

Then again, maybe it’s less the material that fails to express the real drama of the storyline, than it is the amateur acting. Bikri has one facial expression. And I’m not exaggerating. He really never changes the look on his face, wither he’s cooing with Nadia, lunging toward an Israeli soldier, or getting tortured in prison. As Nadia, Leem Lubany isn’t much better. The overall production is on the amateurish side as well. The shots are oddly composed and the editing jarring. I’ve never noticed editing so much. This was just a pure disappointment all around, especially coming from the director of the much better Paradise Now.

Short Cut Movie Review: Ernest & Célestine

The moment I start watching a foreign animated film, I realize how generic the American studio animation is. True, Pixar has been the gold standard for animated features, especially in terms of story and characterization. And theirs are among the few animated films where the director’s hand can be felt. But when it comes down to it, there’s an almost level uniformity to the projects coming out of Pixaar, Disney, Dreamworks, and Warner Bros. So to watch something like the French film Ernest & Célestine is to be reminded taht artistry, style, and uniqueness of visión can all be worked into animation. Also, the story can be based on a children’s book without pandering to children.

The Grandmaster Movie Review

Admittedly, I’ve never given the films of Wong Kar Wai a fair shake. I tried 2046 a few years back and found it, at the time, to be a little inaccessible and didn’t finish it. And from what I know about his style, I get the sense they require deep focus and a high level of mental commitment. Probably they key is to see his movies in the theater where there are no distractions. Anyone who wants to know what happens when a director of Chinese melodrama tackles the martial arts genre need look no further than The Grandmaster. I suppose it’s almost inevitable that every Asian director gets around to doing it at least once. But only Won Kar Wai can do it and make it about something that isn’t really action-oriented at all.

Short Cut Movie Review: Two Lives

A Short Cut Movie Review is normally less than 400 words, but in some cases may go slightly over. This is my attempt to keep writing about as many films as I see without getting bogged down with trying to find more to say. They are meant to be brief snapshots of my reaction to a movie without too much depth.

This film has not yet been released commercially in the United States.

The German-Norwegian co-production Two Lives is about the war children of Norway – babies fathered by Nazi soldiers during the occupation. Because Norwegians were considered true Aryans, these children were regarded as part of the pure race and so the movie, written by Georg Maas, Christoph Tölle, Stale Stein Berg, and Judith Kaufman (and directed by Maas), claims many of these children were forcibly removed from their Norwegian mothers and placed in Lebensborn homes in Germany. This is the story, based on an unpublished novel, of a woman who was reunited with her birth mother in Norway, but whose life begins to unravel after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Short Cut Movie Review: The Broken Circle Breakdown

A Short Cut Movie Review is normally less than 400 words, but in some cases may go slightly over. This is my attempt to keep writing about as many films as I see without getting bogged down with trying to find more to say. They are meant to be brief snapshots of my reaction to a movie without too much depth.

The Belgian film The Broken Circle Breakdown is precisely the kind of film that foreign countries typically enter as their candidates for the Foreign Language Film Oscar. They’ve learned to play the game. If it takes on subject matter that tends to be appealing to Hollywood, then they get noticed. And sure enough, it was nominated last week for the Oscar. A marriage in crisis and a cancer-stricken child are the two major plot points and it doesn’t get much more emotionally heart-wrenching than that. And really I’m not saying it’s a bad movie, but I’ve come to anticipate that foreign films will me something new. When they mimic some of the worst aspects of studio filmmaking, I’m disappointed.

The Past Movie Review

Further cementing himself as Iran’s (or anywhere’s) best director of taut human drama, Asghar Farhadi gives us an excellent follow up to A Separation, the film that won the Oscar for Foreign Language Film and made many critics’ top ten lists (including my own) two years ago. The Past is a masterful display of a great writer at work. Starting from the classical position of staging drama in a condensed period of time, it takes place over a handful of days during which enough secrets, emotions, and hidden motivations are revealed to fill a couple more movies.

The Hunt (Jagten) Movie Review

Once you put a piece of information out into the world, true or not, it stirs around forever. Years can go by and someone can come across it and it will start to kick u dust again. A now discredited doctor made up data that suggested a link between certain childhood vaccines and autism. Now there is a large and growing anti-vaccine movement. That all comes from an initial lie. The things most people think they know about Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris and their motivation for shooting up their high school in Littleton, Colorado, are based on initially flawed reporting and bad information. Those untruths continue to be the commonly held truth. The list can go on and on. To some extent, Thomas Vinterberg’s affecting drama, The Hunt is based on exactly that phenomenon on a microcosmic level.

Short Cut Movie Review: A Letter to Momo

A Short Cut Movie Review is normally less than 400 words, but in some cases may go slightly over. This is my attempt to keep writing about as many films as I see without getting bogged down with trying to find more to say. They are meant to be brief snapshots of my reaction to a movie without too much depth.

Before Hayao Miyazaki was introduced to the United States, the majority of the best known animation from Japan was action-oriented anime involving monsters, robots, words, guns, and superhero-like costumes. Miyazaki’s worlds centered on mystery, fantasy, mythical creatures, and the imagination of childhood. Now he has a list of former apprentices, protégés, and imitators who continue to produce interesting animated stories following his tradition. A Letter to Momo, from writer-director Hiroyuki Okiura, is like a tame version of a Miyazaki fantasy.

Cutie and the Boxer Movie Review

The day before sitting down to watch Cutie and the Boxer, I was thinking about my approach to documentary films. I tend to review them from the perspective of my reaction to the material rather than the way that material is presented. If my primary focus as a critic is on narrative filmmaking, then what do I hope to get out of documentaries? So I decided to try to look at them in terms of the stories they tell and how they’re told instead of focusing solely on the subject matter. Then I watched this touching and at time melancholy tale of two Japanese artists who’ve made their lives and careers in New York and I found a great story presented in a fascinating way.

Blue Is the Warmest Color Movie Review

Is a three hour running time for a romantic drama a little indulgent? In general, I’d say it probably is, but there’s no one size fits all answer. If the story is suited to it and it’s compelling enough to carry you through, then why not? The French drama Blue Is the Warmest Color, winner of this year’s Palme d’Or at Cannes, takes cinematic romantic love to rarely touched emotional depths. The epic length didn’t feel so long to me, which must be viewed as testament to the humane and sensitive direction by Abdellatif Kechiche and the incredible and brave performances by the two female leads, Adéle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux.

Short Cut Movie Review: The Intouchables

A Short Cut Movie Review is normally less than 400 words, but in some cases may go slightly over. This is my attempt to keep writing about as many films as I see without getting bogged down with trying to find more to say. They are meant to be brief snapshots of my reaction to a movie without too much depth.

I think there is great shame in the fact that The Intouchables didn’t even make the short-list of nine films vying for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. This was easily my favorite film of the year. Although it is a story so cliché-ridden it looks like it took several chapters out of the Hollywood Guide to Winning an Oscar and Scoring a Box Office Hit, it rises far above those clichés thanks to the directing team of Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache.

Just look at this: it’s based on a true story which gives it validation with audiences; it’s about a ridiculously wealthy quadriplegic looking for a full time caregiver; the second main character is an ex-convict from the housing projects of Paris who just wants to get his unemployment checks; and it’s about the changes both men experience by spending time with one another and learning to respect things outside their comfort zones. If this had been made in Hollywood, it would be cloying, sentimental, tacky, ham-handed, and trashy. It would fall somewhere on the spectrum between Patch Adams (insufferably awful in every sense) and A Beautiful Mind (well-intentioned and well-crafted pap).

Phillippe is the wealthy man (Francoise Cluzet), tired of receiving pity from his caregivers. When Driss breezes in and stirs the pot a little, he seizes on the opportunity and appeals to Driss’s competitive nature, telling him he won’t last two weeks in his employ. Phillippe is a refined consumer of high culture: he doesn’t blink at dropping 40,000 Euros on a painting; he loves classical music, but knows nothing of pop. Driss loves Earth, Wind and Fire and Kool and the Gang, those paragons of the disco era whose music can just light up a stuffy room full of tuxedoed tightwads enjoying a string orchestra.

Toledano and Nakache never force the emotion down your throat. The musical score remains loosely in the background and I can’t recall a single moment of feeling artificially manipulated. This is also due in large part to two wonderful lead performances in Cluzet and especially Omar Sy as Driss, who went on to win the Cesar Award for Best Actor (the French equivalent of the Oscar). The movie is simply full of soul and joy. Its lessons are worth learning and they exist within the film’s story, but they’re never driven home with a sledgehammer. This is just joyous filmmaking. 

Short Cut Movie Review From My Collection: Volver

A Short Cut Movie Review is normally less than 400 words, but in some cases may go slightly over. This is my attempt to keep writing about as many films as I see without getting bogged down with trying to find more to say. They are meant to be brief snapshots of my reaction to a movie without too much depth.

In Volver, Pedro Almodóvar takes on the ghosts of the past – literal in the case of his female protagonists; metaphorical in terms of his home country. He tackles so many subjects, plot elements, genres, and themes (many of which have formed the basis of his previous work) that the film should winde up crushed under the weight of its own indulgence. But Almodóvar, mixing elements of melodrama, Spanish telenovelas, magical realism, comedy, thriller, and mystery has a fleeting directorial hand, keeping everything so expertly balanced that the film remains equally light in spirit and severe in tone.

Raimunda (Penélope Cruz) is a working class mother, but like any good Almodóvar heroine, she fulfills several roles simultaneously: daughter; sister; wife. One night she is unexpectedly forced to cover up a horrific act in order to protect her teenage daughter. Meanwhile, all the women in her family go through their lives deceiving people in various ways. There’s the ghost of her mother (Carmen Maura) living unnoticed with her aunt; Raimunda’s sister, Sole (Lola Dueñas) covering up the eventual discovery of this strange phantasm (if that’s even what she is), and the long ago crimes committed and concealed that now begin to surface. The ghosts of our past will always come back to haunt us, Almodóvar seems to be saying with this movie that has little room for anything not directly related to the lives of women. Men are given short shrift in their minor roles before being disposed of, sometimes quite literally. Even a dashing young man who flirts with Raimunda, suggesting a romantic subplot, disappears as abruptly as he arrived.

Overall this is one of Almodóvar’s most purely entertaining films, eschewing all the weighty melodrama that made most of his films more difficult to sit through. It is wickedly funny at times and exhibits a beautiful and intimate understanding of Spanish life and superstition in los pueblos.

Short Cut Movie Review: Kon-Tiki

A Short Cut Movie Review is normally less than 400 words, but in some cases may go slightly over. This is my attempt to keep writing about as many films as I see without getting bogged down with trying to find more to say. They are meant to be brief snapshots of my reaction to a movie without too much depth.

This is what happens when foreign filmmakers try to replicate big Hollywood storytelling, but fall just a tad short. Yes, this is the most expensive movie in Norwegian history, but its budget still pales in comparison to the studios. Directors Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg try their hand at epic adventure filmmaking. The calculation worked because the Academy fell for it and nominated it for the Oscar.

The true story of a Norse adventurer who set out to drift across the Pacific on a balsa wood raft is not new to the Oscars, however. The documentary on the subject won the award more than 60 years ago. Thor Heyerdahl (Pål Sverre Valheim Hagen) wanted to prove (or demonstrate the possibility) that Polynesia was settled by travelers from South America and not, as science at the time believe, from Asia. The problem is that the Incas didn’t have ships. So Heyerdahl enlisted a crew of five, they built a raft using only materials available to the ancient Incans and they set out.

This is a typical story of a man with singleness of purpose, so driven that he loses his family in the process. You might be fooled by the Norwegian dialogue into thinking you’re watching a great movie. It looks good and all, but it’s really mediocre. I was put off by some early scenes of stilted pretension and poor writing. If this movie were in English hardly anyone would give it a second thought.