(Every so often articles published on our affiliate blog Iranian Film Daily will be reprinted here based on relevance). Filmmaker Marion Poizeau has some kind of chutzpah. Two years ago she grabbed her board and traveled to the most dangerous place in Iran to surf and share her love of the sport with others. “A friend of mine told me about the waves in neighboring Pakistan. We figured there might be some ocean swells in Iran

If you have ever watched a televised murder trial and wondered why the family would support the killer, then Xavier Dolan’s “Mommy” is the film for you. This provocative French-language Canadian film (it had its world premiere at the 2014 Cannes Festival) zeroes in on the extreme relationship of a mother and her child. At times violent at others tender and finally doomed to tragedy Dolan's "Mommy" draws the full circle of a mother's love

A lot of the buzz surrounding “Still Alice” revolves around Julianne Moore’s Oscar-worthy performance as a woman struggling with Alzheimer’s. And upon viewing there is no denying that Moore’s performance is the film’s winning factor. However, that is not to say that “Still Alice” is not a well-made film, because it is. Shot for less than five million dollars over the course of twenty-three days “Still Alice” is a spirituously-beautiful film that casts an

After exploring the Stasi period in "Barbara" German filmmaker Christian Petzold here goes a step backward to take in the aftermath of the Nazi debacle with his lens in "Phoenix," a film currently being shown in Europe and headed for theatrical here in late 2015. As was the case in most of the filmmaker's previous films the luminous actress Nina Hoss has the leading role, this time that of Nelly, a survivor of the Auschwitz camp

The public has been relatively kind to director Ava DuVernay’s “Selma” though this recounting of an extraordinary moment in our country’s march toward civil rights is bloated and inaccurate. Which may explain, rather than some anti African-American conspiracy, why it was spurned for the Academy Awards nomination. Martin Luther King, here played superbly by David Oyelowo, is the closest anyone in contemporary times comes to

While the film’s plodding pace and largely muted action may be discouraging for some viewers, “Year” triumphs from the slow and gripping tension of its character drama. Writer and director J.C. Chandor (“All is lost”) has proven to be especially adept at depicting characters battening down the hatches. His first film “Margin Call” was a taut Wall Street drama set during the onset of the 2007-08 financial crisis. In “All is Lost” a man battles it out

In college I wrote a paper on the subversion of the detective novel in Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49. I got an A, although the paper received its highest compliment in 2009. That’s when Pynchon finally lived up to my astonishing insight and published a detective novel, “Inherent vice.” This survey of Los Angeles weirdness circa 1970 is brought to the screen by Paul Thomas Anderson. The Crying of Lot 49 features suburban housewife Oedipa Maas