REVIEW: El abrazo de la serpiente [Embrace of the Serpent] [2015]

“Knowledge belongs to all men” It’s 1909 and the colonists have arrived in Colombia searching for rubber. They kill, enslave, and rape the land of its resources, systematically destroying a way of life at the snap of their fingers to project their own culture, religion, and greed instead. One Amazonian shaman refuses to fall victim to the physical and spiritual slaughter. Karamakate (Nilbio Torres) chooses solitude to preserve all he knows in the midst of invasion. But what of the anaconda that fell from the Milky Way speaking to him…

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REVIEW: 捉妖記 [Zhuō yāo jì] [Monster Hunt] [2015]

“You gave birth to a white radish” Even if 捉妖記 [Zhuō Yāo Jì] [Monster Hunt] were billed in America with “from Raman Hui, the supervising animator of everyone’s favorite Dreamworks player the Gingerbread Man and co-director of Shrek the Third, comes a magical adventure of man and beast” on the posters, it wouldn’t be enough. But that’s okay because Hui didn’t make it for American audiences. Instead it stemmed from a desire back in 2005 to make an animated film in China after spending so much time with Steven Spielberg‘s…

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REVIEW: El Club [The Club] [2015]

“Has it ever occurred to you that you’re a criminal?” This is a film about deafening silence and how one unexpected intrusion can turn the normalcy of its sequestered solitude on its head. It’s a silence we have seen before a couple months ago in Spotlight—there too it was extracted from secret penance to the penal system of public consciousness. Pablo Larraín‘s vision is on a much smaller scale although the ramifications are just as brutally blunt and far-reaching. For him the issue wasn’t exposing the crimes of Catholic priests…

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REVIEW: Saul fia [Son of Saul] [2015]

“You failed the living for the dead” It’s stunning how all these years later a Holocaust film can come along and prove wholly unique from the myriad examples we’ve already received and lauded. But László Nemes‘ directorial debut Saul Fia [Son of Saul] does exactly that. Not only does he capture the brutality by entering into the bowels of 1944 Auschwitz amongst the men and women going to their deaths in the showers or the pits, he somehow exposes the numbness felt by those forced to assist the Nazis in…

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REVIEW: Krigen [A War] [2015]

“B for Bang” It’s not inconsequential that Tobias Lindholm‘s latest drama is simply and generically titled A War [Krigen]. This isn’t a story about Afghanistan or even Denmark—war is war no matter where it takes place or who is involved. Instead the film is about our actions both home and abroad, in the fight and outside it. It’s about our ever in flux notion of conscience and moral compass as it relates to patriotism rather than right or wrong. At the end of the day war is fought because governments…

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REVIEW: バケモノの子 [Bakemono no ko] [The Boy and the Beast] [2015]

“Find the meaning on your own” Two worlds collide once young Kyuta (Shôta Sometani) and warrior Kumatetsu (Kôji Yakusho) meet in Mamoru Hosoda‘s バケモノの子 [Bakemono no ko] [The Boy and the Beast]. The former was recently orphaned after his mother’s death (she had divorced his father years ago and her family refuses to get in touch with him), currently working his way towards becoming a solitary street urchin full of dark rage aimed at the human race for causing him such pain. The latter is a candidate to replace the…

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REVIEW: The Oath [2010]

“One month is like a year here” Documentarian Laura Poitras‘ The Oath is an intriguing film with a lot going on in—sometimes to its detriment. It wants to be an exposé on America’s false imprisonment of suspected terrorists in Guantanamo Bay, a heartfelt look at the guilt of a man responsible for another’s involvement in the Jihad, a commentary on the effect of peaceful interrogation rather than torture, and a portrait of a self-proclaimed terrorist who still aligns himself with the Jihad even if his weapon of choice is now…

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REVIEW: 旺角卡門 [Wong gok ka moon] [As Tears Go By] [1988]

“I found that glass” Writer/Director Kar Wai Wong hit the scene in 1988 with gangster drama 旺角卡門 [Wong gok ka moon] [As Tears Go By] in a way that many compare to Martin Scorsese‘s debut splash Mean Streets. It’s a gritty look at the streets of Hong Kong populated by men who are nothing without their fearsome reputations. “Guts” are what sustain them, keeping them alive within this cutthroat underground of tough guys bluffing in the hopes loud threats prove enough to stay at the top and crazy psychopaths calling…

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REVIEW: Faust: Eine deutsche Volkssage [Faust] [1926]

“The greatest miracle of all is man’s freedom to choose between good and evil” Director F.W. Murnau left Germany with a bang thanks to his big budget visual masterpiece Faust. Adapted like so many other versions from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe‘s classic take (Gerhart Hauptmann and Hans Kyser provide the titles), this rendition sets itself against the Black Plague and mankind’s hope for salvation. A massive trial to overcome, the disease becomes a cleansing of sorts weeding out the righteous with faith to carry them through. If any Earthly man…

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REVIEW: Panique au village [A Town Called Panic] [2009]

“Your car is completely broken” Based on the animated series of the same name, Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar‘s feature length Panique au village [A Town Called Panic] is a far cry from short five-minute skits. With that said, it’s easy to see how it was born from such a format considering the irreverent humor running rampant through its comedy of errors connected by the thinnest layer of glue. This is how they travel from a celebratory night of birthday festivities for Horse (Patar) to the undersea theft of brick…

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REVIEW: Alles wird gut [Everything Will Be Okay] [2015]

“We’ve come too far to turn back” It’s interesting how the phrase “everything will be okay” carries such a stigma of pandering deflection now. The words are for all intents and purposes meaningless in their true context, transformed instead to connote a sense of insecurity through hopeful platitudes without any sense of whether or not the situation will resolve itself in an “okay” manner at all. We try to soothe by saying it, but I’d argue we actually instill more trepidation. So when I saw the title of Patrick Vollrath‘s…

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