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,…
Headfort in Ireland is a boarding school with an illustrious history, long-held traditions and a burning desire to inspire the students to grow as people. With a curriculum comprised of reading, writing, arithmetic and Rock n’ Roll, John and Amanda Leyden have imparted knowledge and experiences onto multiple generations as the school’s most veteran professors….
When spotlighting the dysfunctional familial factors in a period piece film set against the background of retro-urban rambunctiousness, it is a creative challenge to balance the ingredients involved: Underlying marital strife, sibling rivalry, adultery, emotional stagnation and fragile relations. In co-writer/director Gillian Robespierre’s nostalgic mid-nineties comedy, Landline, we are whisked back to a “vintage” time…
There’s been a renewed interest in the Church of Scientology and that’s probably because of the commercial success of HBO’s “Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief” and A&E’s “Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath” television series (there are a few other documentaries on the topic, but they mostly regurgitate the same talking points)….
In the modern-day cinematic era reflecting racial divide, audiences are treated to their share of sensational discord, divisiveness, distrust and destruction with impacting, yet familiar fare, such as 2016’s offering of the immensely received “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story” and even the profoundly thought-provoking and absorbing male-bonding drama “Moonlight” that speak the…
In memoriam: American Democracy Mystics heal borders. They are the frontiers’ physicians. Surgeons of the lines. As scalpels come their words, their prayers that no one hears, for no one knows silence better than those whose words shall meet no ears. As scalpels come their prayers, immersed all in flesh and blood, in infatuated vessels…
Occupied village. Crying babies. Mothers many. Babies doze. Japanese colony. Korean village. Woman leaves. Baby stays. Both cry. Off goes. Jap’s house. The opening scene of Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden leaves no room for blinking. That is the secret of its hypnotic pace swimmingly swinging from a contemplative eye which leaves it all to a…
