The Owners (Vlastnici)
This Czech comedy written and directed by Jiří Havelka is based on his award winning play, The Society of Owners. Produced in 2019, it is just now making its way…
Men of Deeds
A couple of years ago, I saw a very funny little film from Romania called Two Lottery Tickets that takes place in a little backwater inhabited by odd characters. That film's…
Amanda
Amanda (Benedetta Porcaroli) is 25. She has no friends and doesn't really have much of a life. She lives alone in a tiny, dingy room. Refuses to work in the…
L’immensità
Set in 1970s Rome, L'immensità is a semi-autobiographical look at one summer in director Emanuele Crialese's youth. In the film, the eldest child in the family is a teenage Adri…
The Worst Ones (Les pires)
Set in Picasso, a gritty, working class town in the north of France, The Worst Ones is a film-within-a-film. Belgian director Gabriel (Johan Heldenbergh) comes to the town to shoot…
Review: Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle
A couple of weeks before I saw this film, I read filmmaker Werner Herzog’s first novel "The Twilight World,” which draws on his meeting 25 years ago with Hiroo Onoda,…
Reviews: She Said and Women Talking
I saw these two films just days apart and they seemed to speak to one another. Both take on sexual predation, but from very different viewpoints. She Said is a…
Review: TÁR
I am quite late with this review (the film is out in theaters) because I'm still trying to figure out how best to give it a fair shake. I was…
Review: Happening
Talk about a film arriving at just the right moment! This gripping French drama about a young woman in the early 1960s who gets pregnant and has to go through…
Review: Hit the Road
This wonderful road trip drama traverses the Iranian landscape with a family and their dog. Along for the ride are a mother (Pantea Panahiha) and father (Hasan Majuni) and their…
Review: Topside
This is a really gritty and entirely engaging little film. It's about Nikki (co-director Celine Held) and her 5-year-old daughter Little (Zhaila Farmer) who're living on the edge underground in…
Review: Licorice Pizza
This quirky coming-of-age rom-com was one of my favorite films of the year. The leads, Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman, are unknowns, but there are some fabulous cameos from A-listers,…
Review: Drive My Car
Adapted from a short story by Haruki Murikami, one of my favorite authors, Drive My Car is a haunting drama about love and grief and reckoning. It centers on two…
Review: The Power of the Dog
Set in the gorgeous wide open expanses of 1925 Wyoming, The Power of the Dog from Oscar-winning director Jane Campion (The Piano, Angel at My Table) is downright suffocating a lot of…
Review: CODA
CODA doesn’t have the dramatic heft of Children of a Lesser God (for which deaf actress Marlee Matlin won an Academy Award), or the grittier themes of Oscar nominee Sound…