Tagged with foreign films

Review: Cold War, 2018, dir. Pawel Pawlikowski

Review: Cold War, 2018, dir. Pawel Pawlikowski

I did, four years ago, write a review of Pawel Pawlikowski’s post-war masterpiece Ida, but I’m not certain it’s still online or if I ever even shared it on this website; that’s too bad, because it’d be nice to revisit my words for context for Cold War, Pawlikowski’s new film, which I imagine years from now I’ll also … Continue reading

Review: Anatahan, 1953, dir. Josef von Sternberg

Review: Anatahan, 1953, dir. Josef von Sternberg

There are two primary reasons to see Josef von Sternberg’s <i>Anatahan</i>. The first is that it’s a rarity, the final film in Sternberg’s solo directing career before co-directing <i>Jet Pilot</i> in 1957 with Fred Fleck. <i>Anatahan</i> is a picture obscured by the passage of time and by its own financial failure, a box office stumble … Continue reading

Review: Is That You?, 2016, dir. Dani Menkin

Review: Is That You?, 2016, dir. Dani Menkin

Pardon me for falling off the “share my work” train, and for flooding your email and your various social media feeds with all that stuff I haven’t shared for like a month. Also pardon me for recriminating myself instead of talking about Is That You?, the movie that this post will eventually link to by the … Continue reading

Review: Mediterranea, 2015, dir. Jonas Carpignano

Review: Mediterranea, 2015, dir. Jonas Carpignano

“Occasionally, fate and movie release schedules collude with one another to drop a fresh title on audiences at exactly the right moment. That’s more or less the case with Mediterranea, the feature debut of short filmmaker Jonas Carpignano: Check his picture against the United States’ dialogue on immigration, and you may feel the unnerving sense … Continue reading

Review: Youth, 2015, dir. Tom Shoval

Review: Youth, 2015, dir. Tom Shoval

“Brothers Shaul (Eitan Cunio) and Yaki (David Cunio) Cooper are as close as two siblings can be: They watch movies together, they pee together, and, when their family’s financial chips are down, they kidnap and ransom people together. Israeli filmmaker Tom Shoval’s film Youthbegins with Shaul hatching the brothers’ plot as he follows their target—wealthy … Continue reading

Review: Prince, 2015, dir. Sam de Jong

Review: Prince, 2015, dir. Sam de Jong

If you’ve seen the coming-of-age movies and crime flicks that influence Sam de Jong’s Prince, you can guess where it’s heading within its first 10 minutes. Teenage boys with too much free time and too many hormones, menacing older boys who haunt their inner city neighborhood, pulsing house scores, adolescent infatuation, misguided masculinity, material obsession, … Continue reading

Review: Big Game, 2015, dir. Jalmari Helander

Review: Big Game, 2015, dir. Jalmari Helander

“Big Game’s stelliform cast isn’t the only proof Finnish director Jalmari Helander has gone Hollywood. The scene that best evinces his Tinseltown transition plays out in the film’s first few minutes, in which one of the supporting players from Helander’s international breakout movie, the wonderful Yuletide-horror gem Rare Exports, gets mercilessly exploded in a wanton … Continue reading