Category Archives: International

High Life review — Arty sci-fi lost in space

May 4, 2019 flawintheiris

Directed by Clare Denis | Written by Denis, Jean-Pol Fargeau, Geoff Cox, and Nick Laird | 113 min Clare Denis leaves behind her colonial concerns and her French language films—her most recent being the diverting Let The Sunshine In—for an English debut set in deep space. To call it retro-futurist would be a stretch, but it…Read More

Carbon Arc Reviews — Winter 2019 Season

April 30, 2019 flawintheiris

Carbon Arc Independent Cinema's most recent season has concluded. As a programmer I am grateful to have been able contribute to the screening selection, though as a volunteer I wasn't able to see every film that showed. The ones I missed, disappointingly, include Rafiki, Capernaum, Styx, Birds Of Passage, and Ziva Postec: The Editor Behind The Film Shoah.…Read More

Stockholm review — Cancel this Swedish vacation

April 22, 2019 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by Robert Budreau | 92 min Stockholm is a stultifying experience at the movies due to the picture's sheer lack of identity. Writer-director Budreau gave us a mediocre Chet Baker biopic, Born To Be Blue, and here he's back with another bland, lifeless picture. Stockholm introduction includes the tag line: "based on an…Read More

Gloria (2013) and Gloria Bell reviews — Oscar-winning filmmaker revisits his past

March 25, 2019 flawintheiris

Gloria (2013) | Directed by Sebastian Lelio | Written by Lelio and Gonzalo Maza | 110 min Gloria Bell | Directed by Sebastian Lelio | Written by Lelio and Alice Johnson Boher, adapting the original script | 102 min There is a brief history of international filmmakers who remake their earlier work when they get…Read More

Everybody Knows review — Family melodrama trumps suspense

March 12, 2019 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by Asghar Farhadi | 133 min Two of Iranian auteur Farhadi's last three features won the Best Foreign Film Oscar, A Separation in 2011 and The Salesman in 2016. In between those two was The Past, also excellent. Farhadi is a humanist filmmaker, who roots his social realist tales in character and family. They crackle and…Read More

Cold War review — Potent love story spans decades

February 7, 2019 flawintheiris

Directed by Pawel Pawlikowski | Written by Pawlikowski, Janusz Glowacki, and Piotr Borkowski | 89 min Pawel Pawlikowski’s Ida from 2013 was an Oscar winner and high water mark for the Polish filmmaker, whose 2004 same-sex romantic drama My Summer of Love launched Emily Blunt into the cinematic universe. Accordingly, my expectations for this film were outsized, and it did not…Read More

The Kid Who Would Be King review — Arthurian legend for younger audiences

January 27, 2019 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by Joe Cornish | 120 min When I was a kid, live-action family movies had titles like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Cat From Outer Space, and Herbie Goes Bananas. None were hugely memorable. For, say, a group of six-year-olds hanging out on a Saturday afternoon, they totally fit the bill: fun fantasy…Read More

Shoplifters review — Gentle Oscar-nominee is lovely, but lacks conflict

January 25, 2019 flawintheiris

Written and Directed by Hirokazu Koreeda | 121 min Beloved Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Koreeda's drama won the Palme d'Or at Cannes last summer, and is now up for Best Foreign Language film, and it's not hard to see why. The story of an impoverished family living in the margins in Tokyo—an elderly woman, an adult couple,…Read More

The Girl in the Spider’s Web review — Stylish thriller is too Bond-ed for comfort

November 12, 2018 flawintheiris

Directed by Fede Alvarez | Written by Alvarez, Jay Basu, and Steven Knight, from the book by David Lagercrantz, based on characters by Stieg Larsson | 117 min For Sony Columbia to dive back into this popular series of books so late in the game feels like a calculated gamble, but not one likely to…Read More

#FIN2018 reviews — The Guilty, Bad Reputation

September 17, 2018 flawintheiris

That enormous wooshing sound you may have heard around 3:30 on Sunday afternoon was my exhalation of relief for having survived the Script Development Program Pitch Session. All my fellow workshop participants were terrific, and people say I did OK. It's all a bit of a blur right now. Then I went to see a…Read More