“For a long time after the war I was afraid of the sky, even of raising my head towards the sky. I was afraid of seeing plowed-up earth. But the rooks already walked calmly over it. The birds quickly forgot the war” — Svetlana Alexievich, “The Unwomanly Face of War” During World War II, the…
“Just another Wednesday,” the visibly fatigued nurse exclaims as she tends to a bullet wound of one of the guests of her dimly lit, blood spattered hotel for crooks. The only rules of the underground institution: No guns, no cops, and no killing of other guests. Throughout the film’s jaunting plot we watch thieves, assassins…
From its opening shots of a city by night to its final image of a teenage boy entering an apartment block, La Granja (English title: “The Farm”) declares its interconnectivity and sociological credentials for all to see. Set in the Barrio La Esperanza area of Puerto Rico, writer-director Angel Manuel Soto’s film presents three narrative…
The Ottoman Lieutenant is a modest yet powerful film, one that sweeps the viewer into its world with majestic scope, while maintaining a keen eye for detail and never offering more than it can deliver. Romance, coming of age, duty and responsibility, violence and compassion, politics and history come together in an impressive whole, captured…
There is a sub-genre of the war film that focuses on those away from combat. These films do not display the horrors of warfare or the camaraderie of men under fire, but instead the dramas of those left behind or serving their country behind the lines. Such a film is Testament of Youth, based on…
The plot of Nurse 3D is clearly spelled out in the beginning of the movie when a sluttily dressed woman named Abigail Russell seduces a married man at a bar, slices open his femoral artery and pushes him over a roof ledge while saucily confessing to the audience she does things like this to cleanse…
We’ve all seen the advertisements of the The Skeleton Key telling would-be movie watchers that ‘this movie is as good as “The Sixth Sense”‘ and asking people to not ‘spoil the ending.’ So, as most of mindless America, I bit the hook and and let them reel me in. In a nutshell the movie casts…
