If there were a subtitle to Joshua Oppenheimer's "The Act of Killing," it could be "Fun Loving War Criminals." A cadre of aging Indonesian gangsters relive their part in a pogrom against communists in the sixties.
In the political chaos of the time, the Indoneisan army staged a coup in order to pre-empt a suspected communist takeover of the government and saved Mel Gibson and Sigourney
Lynn Shelton is an undeniably accomplished writer, editor, and director; her first film “We Go Way Back” won the grand prize at Slamdance in 2006. Since then she has distinguished herself through her astute observations of human relationships in all their weirdness and confusion. 2009's “Humpday” focused on two male friends considering making a gay porn film together, and led to a remake being done in France. Her 2011
Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley are such a naturally charming on-screen couple that it takes quite awhile to realize the movie they're in, "The Spectacular Now," isn't very good.
Directed by James Ponsoldt (who debuted with the far more focused and wrenching "Smashed" last summer) and adapted from a Tim Tharp novel by writers/co-producers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber (who also wrote
Should art challenge us? Can we just let ourselves be taken by its emotional implications? These are some of the questions that revolve around "Ain't them bodies saints," a picturesque, if sometimes vexing, new film headed for the cineplex next Friday.
The seventies somewhere in Hill Country Texas; grasslands, the occasional canyon, cities. Casey Affleck Affleck and Rooney Mara play the outlaw Bob Muldoon and his wife, Ruth Guthrie
"The Gardener," coming out today in select cities, is a new documentary about Baha'ism directed by Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf ("The Bicyclist," "Kandahar") which was filmed in Jerusalem, Haifa (where the Baha'i world organization is located) and Saint Jean D'acre in Israel. In it, the director himself and his real-life son Maysam try and come to terms with world religions through the lens
Two inept brothers decide to rob a bank after the nursing home their grandfather lives in is threatened with a shut-down order from developers. Bad luck of the draw, they’ve picked the worse time to carry on their crime: a zombie epidemic just struck through the heart of London.
Having gotten some on-the-job training directing commercials and music videos, in 2008
A Welshman directed a foreign-language cop drama (see our REVIEW of Gareth Evans’s "The Raid: Redemption”) in Jakarta, so why couldn't a Brit direct one in The Philippines? "Metro Manila," half-thriller, half-drama, delivers an elegant and astute finish that will have you cheering and clapping. But the ninety minutes that precede this are so bogged down with politically-correct clichés and mournful impressionism that its storytelling potential is eviscerated.