First seen in the Orizonti section of the 2013 Venice Film Festival this portrait of two young punk girls at the peak of their adolescent years makes for a compelling and fun drama about female friendship. Swedish director Lukas Moodysson of "A hole in my heart" fame (2004) hadn’t directed anything since "Mammoth” which he took to Berlin in 2009 and was received rather coolly. He is making a comeback with this friendly

Kelly Reichardt likes uncomplicated. As early as when “Wendy and Lucy” came out her films have testified to her ultra-sharp minimalism and efficiency. “Night Moves,” a genre film in which three environmentalists (they're David Koresh league, but for the tree-hugger set) conspire together to blow up a dam follows the same ethos of subtlety. In lieu and place of a psychological drama about eco-terrorism Reichardt ventures

"Disillusioned youths groping for self-worth in the teenage wastelands of California." This could be the long-form title of newcomer Gia Coppola's directorial debut, adapted from a collection of short stories by James Franco. In a particularly lucid moment Franco said that he only wanted a woman to direct this adaptation, and that was the right move. She's been able to turn the violent environments of Franco's novels into tender

The other film produced by Gabe Cowan this year and shown at Tribeca (see our REVIEW of “just before I go”) is the clever and relatable “Loitering with Intent.”

The cast includes Ivan Martin and Michael Godere, who are the screenwriters of this film in real life, as two starving-artist screenwriters, named Raphael and Dominic, who after being offered the chance to sell a screenplay repair to the countryside to write it. Only, they’re met with anything but the hoped-for peace and quiet at their new address.

Four songs and four seasons provide the pace of “Young and beautiful” (title in French: "Jeune et Jolie"), the absorbing new film by France's Francois Ozon (“The swimming pool”) which comes out this week. But the film's neat organization serves another purpose: to make the whiplash effect that's felt later on even cruder.

As he's done in previous films Ozon frames family carefully: he plies us with all its clichés

Of all the sick Nazis whose names have gone down in history as an unforgettable reminder of that period’s infamy, surely one of the very worst is the Auschwitz doctor Josef Mengele. One can only imagine this mad “scientist” given thousands of live subjects he could submit at will to his experiments, pulling out eyes, cutting out hearts and other organs without anesthesia, conjoining twins, using benighted and shaky science

A lonesome wanderer’s life is shattered by terrible news. He starts a long trek back to his childhood home to carry out a revenge kill.

The narrative device is simple: to provoke a reaction out of this vulnerable—pitiful, even—character named Dwight (excellently played by a Macon Blair who uses his puppy-dog look to cunning effect, gradually morphing into a cold executioner) ) and confront him to the unbearable fact that the man