Foreign Movies
Foreign movie reviews of arthouse world cinema from an indie film perspective.
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The Creator of the Jungle (Hot Docs review)
The Creator of the Jungle tells the story of Garrell, a man who has spent 45 years building a giant playground in a forest. He started as a child, and with age the scale of his work increased dramatically....
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The Reunion
Anna Odell’s The Reunion is split into two distinct halves, each half appearing to be directly inspired by a different film. The first half, called “The Speech”, clearly owes a lot to Thomas Vinterberg’s The Celebration. It opens at...
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The Wind Rises
Following his recent announcement of a retirement from directing, it’s difficult to ascribe any thoughts to Hayao Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises without also finding the analogue between himself and his subject. Both are concerned with the aspirations of a...
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Le Week-End
If the success of films such as The Best Exotic Marigold, Hotel, Quartet, and Philomena have proven anything, it’s that there is certainly an audience for films with older ensembles. One that perhaps isn’t being fully served. Romance and excitement aren’t...
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My Brother the Devil
My Brother the Devil, director Sally El Hosaini’s first feature length film, takes us deep into the heart of London’s housing projects. We follow the story of two brothers, Rashid and Mo (played by James Floyd and Fady Elsayed,...
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Grigris (SF Indiefest)
Director Mahamat Saleh Haroun spends no time establishing the main draw of Grigris' title character; in the opening moments we see the young, disabled dancer (played by non-professional Souleymane Démé) busting some moves on the dance floor to a...
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Jeune & Jolie
Following the well-received In The House, François Ozon returns with yet another voyeuristic character study with Jeune & Jolie (French translation: Young and Beautiful). Over the course of four weather seasons, the film follows a sexually driven adolescent striving...
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Big Bad Wolves
If you’ve heard of Big Bad Wolves, it’s could be because of Quentin Tarantino. Late last year he declared Big Bad Wolves to be the best film of 2013. It really doesn’t come as a surprise that Tarantino is...
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Reaching For the Moon
An examination of Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet Elizabeth Bishop’s pivotal years spent in Brazil in the 1950’s and ’60s, Reaching For the Moon is an ironically literal, trite, unpoetic biopic that likely wouldn’t have been met with approval by its...
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Everyday
Michael Winterbottom is a director who’s not afraid to fully commit himself to an idea that he likes. Whether he’s teaming up with actors Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon for three diverse but equally funny films (24 Hour Party...
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The Selfish Giant
After making the incredibly devastating pseudo-documentary The Arbor, Clio Barnard has returned with her own original story for The Selfish Giant. Loosely inspired by Oscar Wilde’s short story of the same name, it takes place in the same area...
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Here Comes the Devil
One could say that Here Comes the Devil opens with a bang. Literally. The opening scene is striking; two women having passionate sex while a loud and unpleasant soundtrack obliterates your ears. The scene is reminiscent of something David...
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Paradise: Hope
The last installment of the Paradise trilogy is Ulrich Seidl’s Paradise: Hope, a coming-of-age film about a teenage girl who develops a crush on a doctor at a camp for overweight teens. Although this film is by far Seidl’s...
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Faust
Aleksandr Sokurov’s 2011 film Faust, screening now at New York City’s Film Forum, is essentially a story of striving and corruption. Drawing from Goethe’s famous play (which is based on an even older legend), the film begins with our...
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A Touch of Sin
The opening of Jia Zhangke’s A Touch of Sin shows a conversation communicated entirely with violence. A migrant worker (Wang Baoqiang) travelling on his motorcycle is stopped by three young men in an attempt to rob him. The man...
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The Broken Circle Breakdown
A major success in its home country of Belgium (and the country's submission for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars), The Broken Circle Breakdown is prime material for audiences craving more sombre and dramatic content during this fall's awards...
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Fill the Void
Turning 18 means different things in different cultures, but almost every culture agrees it’s an age of adulthood. In the religious culture of Orthodox Judaism, at 18 a young woman is preparing for the important ritual of marriage –...
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Humano
With such a philosophical subject as trying to discover the reason for our existence, Humano is indeed as heady of an experimental study as it sounds. At one point the filmmaker, Alan Stivelman, takes hallucinogens while pondering if the...
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Bastards
No matter what your opinion is on Claire Denis‘ films (full disclosure: I’m not the biggest fan of her work myself), it’s impossible to deny her skills at making one hell of an image. The opening moments of Bastards merely...
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Blue Is the Warmest Color
Was I a little upset that I did not catch Blue Is the Warmest Color while at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year? Absolutely I was. Especially when the film went on to win the top prize of...
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On the Job
It’s genius in a wicked kind of way, really. Hire a hitman who’s already in prison. Get him outside the prison walls for a day (corrupt prison guards come in handy here). He’ll make the hit, return to the...
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Populaire
Set in late ’50s Paris, Populaire is a loving throwback to the saccharine rom-coms of that decade, dipped in candy coating and wrapped in bright art-deco packaging. It’s scrumptious with every bite, and it’ll make you smile, but it...
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Il Futuro
Alicia Scherson’s Il Futuro (The Future) is an adaptation of a Chilean novel by Roberto Bolano about two recently orphaned siblings that must find a way to make it on their own. Their uncertain future is the backbone of...
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Manakamana (TIFF review)
On paper, the description of Manakamana will have most people running in the opposite direction. Directors Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez put a stationary camera inside a cable car that takes passengers up and down a mountain to the...
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Stranger by the Lake
Never leaving the rural French lakeside setting on which it opens, Alain Guiraudie’s new film Stranger by the Lake (L’inconnu du lac) establishes an economy from its opening frame. In spite of the abundant sunlight and wide, cinematographic expanses...
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The Patience Stone
Like an intoxicating, slow-moving swirl of deep colors and even deeper emotions, Afghani filmmaker and novelist Atiq Rahimi’s The Patience Stone, an adaptation of his own award-winning novel, Syngue Sabour, quietly enraptures the senses and rewards those who possess...
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Thérèse
Premiering as the Closing Night film at the Cannes film festival last year was Claude Miller’s final film (before passing away) Thérèse. Adapted from a novel of the same name, Thérèse is a slow-burner period piece about a newlywed...
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The Past
For many (myself included), the work of Iranian director Asghar Farhadi was relatively unfamiliar before a little film called A Separation rode on a huge wave success; from unprecedented victory in every major category at the Berlinale Film Festival,...
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Drug War
After a brief journey into romantic comedies and dramas, Johnnie To returns to the genre he knows best with Drug War. To, who has established himself as one of today’s best action directors, continues to solidify his reputation as...
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The Attack (SFJFF Review)
Though set in the trenches of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Ziad Doueiri’s mystery-thriller The Attack operates predominantly on an intimate, human level, centering on a Palestinian man living in Tel Aviv (Ali Suliman) who’s bent on smoking out the people...