Category Archives: Indie

The Diary Of A Teenage Girl review — The Truth About Teen Lust

August 20, 2015 flawintheiris

Directed by Marielle Heller, Written by Heller adapting the Phoebe Gloeckner illustrated novel It's a sticky proposition: How do you tell the story of a 15-year-old girl who loses her virginity to her mother's 35-year-old boyfriend, complete with lots of nudity and sex scenes, without it being queasy-making, salacious, or exploitative? The Diary Of A…Read More

The Gift review — Throwback with a sting

August 6, 2015 flawintheiris

Written and directed by Joel Edgerton One might say the domestic thriller has gone out of fashion since its 1990s heyday, but that's not entirely true. There was the Idris Elba/Taraji P. Henson picture No Good Deed, and the Jennifer Lopez drama The Boy Next Door. Halle Berry has made a couple, too. They're often morality…Read More

Reviews: Assassin, Copenhagen, Night Train To Lisbon, Son Of A Gun, and The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him and Her

July 9, 2015 flawintheiris

And now for some recent releases on VOD, iTunes, Netflix, Blu-Ray and the like. Assassin A London hitman named Jamie (Danny Dyer) works for a pair of shady gangster brothers (Martin and Gary Kemp, Spandau Ballet founders who were terrific as another pair of gangster brothers years back in The Krays). On his off hours…Read More

Me And Earl and the Dying Girl review — Quality teen cancer dramedy

June 24, 2015 flawintheiris

Directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, Written by Jesse Andrews adapting his own novel. It wouldn't be hard to be cynical about this movie. After the calculated-to-jerk-tears machinations of last year's teen cancer hit The Fault In Our Stars, having another teen cancer movie show up almost exactly 12 months later seems pretty frikkin' calculated, too. But trust me…Read More

Clouds of Sils Maria review — A strange and beautiful journey in the Alps

June 17, 2015 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by Oliver Assayas | 124 min | The Criterion Channel Remember the gifted storytellers in the wordy, if somewhat static, My Dinner With Andre? Or story-within-story pictures like The French Lieutenant's Woman or Vanya on 42nd Street, where the overlay of a fiction in the central narrative both enlivens and informs what's going on? If you do,…Read More

Ex Machina review — Stylish, essential science fiction

May 6, 2015 flawintheiris

Written and directed by Alex Garland Talented coder Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), working for global search engine Blue Book, wins a company lottery to join the CEO, Nathan (Oscar Isaac), at his mountain retreat for a week. The house is beautiful, a glass and concrete hideout—actually located in Norway. Caleb is automatically issued a passcard by…Read More

Reviews: The Homesman, Men Women & Children, Song One, Gemma Bovery, A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, Black Sea

May 4, 2015 flawintheiris

A few thoughts on movies now available on VOD, DVD and Blu-Ray The Homesman A powerfully sui generis western, the kind of a story that steps over so many of the generic Hollywood screenwriting conventions you'll never see where it's going. Director and star Tommy Lee Jones adapts a Glendon Swarthout novel about a woman…Read More

While We’re Young review — Generations unite and divide in Brooklyn

April 27, 2015 flawintheiris

Written and directed by Noah Baumbach I'm sure I'm not the first person to remark on this, but to me, at his best, Baumbach is a next generation Woody Allen, though the filmmaker's milieu is among the hipsters of Park Slope and Williamsburg instead of the dustier denizens of the Upper West Side or Fifth Avenue. It helps distinguish…Read More

Cast No Shadow: Q-and-A with director Christian Sparkes

April 1, 2015 flawintheiris

Opening Friday, April 3, in Halifax is Cast No Shadow, an already award-winning feature from Newfoundland. It took a host of gongs at the Atlantic Film Festival: Best Atlantic Film, Best Director (Christian Sparkes), Best Screenplay (Joel Thomas Hynes), Best Actress (Mary-Colin Chisholm), Best Actor (Percy Hynes White), and Best Cinematography (Scott McLellan). It was…Read More

It Follows review — A creepfest of the highest order

March 26, 2015 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by David Robert Mitchell | 101 min | Amazon Prime The last time I was so pleasantly perplexed by a genre picture it was Jonathan Glazer's Under The Skin, which came out last May. This is another puzzler with powerful undercurrents of sex and death, both an indie teen movie and a horror, often…Read More