In Chinese culture, the number three is considered lucky for its similarity to the character meaning “life” or “to give birth.” As such, Mountains May Depart makes no small use of significant triptychs in telling its story. The film is segmented into three disparate chapters and time periods; its three main characters are caught up…
According to Swedish director Ruben Östlund (“Force Majeure”), society today has turned its back on the social contract, the obligation that people not only express their concerns for other’s well-being but act upon them in concrete and meaningful ways. Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, Östlund’s latest film, The Square,…
Whether or not it is designed as an allegory of modern Russia, no film in recent memory has examined the growing emptiness of human relationships with such expressive force as Andrey Zvyagintsev’s (“Leviathan”) Loveless, a heart wrenching drama about a couple on the brink of divorce whose emotional neglect of their son leads to devastating…
89-year-old filmmaker Agnès Varda (“The Beaches of Agnès”) said, “I have a nice relationship with time, because the past is here, you know? I’ve spent time, if I have something of my past, I’ll just make it, nowadays, I make it now and here.” Varda makes both past and present come alive in Faces Places…
For Iranian-born Swiss director Barbet Schroeder, venturing into the picturesque Mediterranean paradise that is Ibiza is something he is familiar with, shooting his 1969 debut film “More” in the country, now famed for its exuberant party life and strong love dedication to the hypnotic epidemic of electronic dance music. It is in this unsuspected concept…
The synopsis of acclaimed German director Werner Herzog’s 2016 thriller Salt and Fire, at first, seems to present a truly intriguing, unique and captivating story — “A renowned scientist is sent to Bolivia on an urgent mission to analyze a looming environmental catastrophe she along with her colleagues are deceived by a man claiming to…
Emad Etesami (Shahab Hosseini, “About Elly”) and his wife Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti, “The Wedlock”), a childless married couple in their early thirties, are amateur actors playing the lead roles in a local production of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” a play in which a good man’s virtue turns to hypocrisy and his marriage crumbles….
