It’s a rare piece of cinema that is able to hearken back to atrocities committed during World War II through spoken recollections in the midst of a home invasion plot, but that’s exactly what we’ve been given with Winter Hunt (“Winterjagd”). Astrid Schult has crafted a unique, aging Nazi thriller, brimming with unending desires to…
One of the main aims of a whodunnit mystery movie is to ensure that the audience doesn’t guess who done it, so by that metric, London Fields misses its mark entirely. It’s the rare movie that plays its cards so early that anyone paying even a sliver of attention during the first two minutes can…
“A day once dawned, and it was beautiful. A day once dawned from the ground. Then the night she fell . . . The night she fell all around” — From the Morning, Nick Drake Directed by Belgian director Felix Van Groeningen (“Belgica”) and adapted for the screen by Luke Davies (“Lion”), Beautiful Boy is…
“The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” — Muriel Rukeyser (Poet and physicist) Liyana, directed by the Swaziland-born husband and wife team of Aaron and Amanda Kopp, is a genre bending documentary that follows a small group of Swazi children — residents of Likhaya Lemphilo Lensha, a Swaziland orphanage — as they participate…
Grass is a symbol of renewal in Korean director Hong Sangsoo’s latest film, simply titled Grass, his fourth in the last twelve months. Only 66 minutes in length and shot in black and white by cinematographer Kim Hyungku, the film is set in a quiet Seoul café where the camera intrudes on conversations that begin…
Damien Chazelle’s interpretation of the Apollo 11 moon landing is a visceral, emotive and carefully executed film, and a drastically different follow up to his Oscar-winning 2016 musical, “La La Land.” Based on strong source material from James R. Hansen, with a poignant score from frequent collaborator Justin Hurwitz and Chazelle’s celestial vision and tight…
Film critic and current director of the New York Film Festival, Kent Jones’ first feature, Diane, offers a psychological portrait of a woman whose attempts to reach out to others hides her own inability to forgive herself for her past misdeeds. A 70-year-old divorced woman living in rural Massachusetts, Diane (Mary Kay Place, “Downsizing”) fills…
