Review: Oscar Nominated Short Films 2019
I always look forward to watching the shorts. (Short being 40 minutes or less, so some of them aren't all that short.) This year's crop had clear winners and losers…
Quickie Review: In Like Flynn
In Like Flynn is all about swashbuckling Errol Flynn in the days before he became a star, when he was traveling around the South Seas looking for adventure and getting…
Quickie review: Don’t Come Back from the Moon
This quietly meditative indie sells itself on James Franco's involvement, but truth be told, he's only in it for a moment before he, like all the other fathers in town,…
Review: Cold War
In this passionate love story set in Soviet-era Poland, Zula, a young singer with a past, enters a state-run performing academy where she meets the love of her life, Wictor,…
Arty Chick’s Best of 2018 list
This was a hard year to choose my favorites. There were great movies in a lot of categories that deserved attention. It was a GREAT year for foreign films and…
Review: Mary Queen of Scots
2018 is the year filmmakers decided to school their audiences on the Queens of England. In the archly funny The Favourite, a couple of women battle to become Queen Anne's…
Review: Destroyer
When beautiful actresses make themselves ugly for a role, it's always hard to see them that way. In Destroyer, Nicole Kidman plays an LA detective whose life took a dark…
Adaptation
Arty Chick
Danish
Date movie
Drama
Romance
Scandinavian
Science Fiction/Fantasy
Swedish
Thriller
Quickie Review: Border (Gräns)
You probably won't see a more satisfyingly strange film this year than Border. The main character is Tina, a Swedish customs agent with an extraordinary talent. She can smell fear…
Review: Capernaum (Capharnaüm)
"Capernaum in French is used usually in French literature to signify chaos, to signify hell, disorder," according to Lebanese filmmaker Nadine Labaki, director of this emotionally wrenching film. At the center…
Review: Vox Lux
Vox Lux aka A Pop Star is Born begins in 1999 with a school shooting where young Celeste played by Raffey Cassidy (Tomorrowland, The Killing of a Sacred Deer) is…
Review: Roma
Director Alfonso Cuarón (Children of Men, Gravity) recreated the Mexico City neighborhood of his childhood to tell the story of Cleo, an indigenous woman who worked for his family and…
Review: First Reformed
It's that time of year again. The run-up to awards season, when I catch up on all the films I missed for one reason or another. And since First Reformed…
Review: Becoming Astrid
This lovely Swedish biopic tells the story of the challenging early life of Astrid Ericsson (Lindgren) who would go on to write the children's classic Pippi Longstocking and a slew…
Review: The Favourite
The Favourite was another of my top picks at The Middleburg Film Festival. England's Queen Anne was such a sad queen. But this period dramedy of the fight to be…