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MVFF37 Days 10 & 11: After The Fall, Timbuktu, & Wild
Closing weekend of the Mill Valley Film Festival just proves the authority of this small festival. It’s rare for a film festival to have such a high percentage of excellent films. No wonder its gained a reputation as a finely...
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Maika Monroe On Being a Badass, ‘The Guest’
In Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett’s The Guest, their genre-blending follow-up to 2013’s You’re Next, Dan Stevens plays an ex-soldier who ingratiates himself into the family of one of his fallen comrades. With his good looks and Southern charm, he’s got...
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Camp X-Ray
Camp X-Ray opens like a tense thriller, with the capture of Ali Amir (Peyman Moaadi) and his transportation to Guantanamo Bay, played out in quick, rapid cuts and an imposing soundtrack. The film may start with intensity but this isn’t...
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The Reel Indie Film Festival Brings A Wide Selection of Docs, Shorts and Music Videos
Only in its second year, the Reel Indie Film Festival (or RIFF for short) is kicking things off with a nice selection of music videos, shorts and features for audiences in Toronto. RIFF is a recent offshoot of Indie...
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MVFF37 Day 9: St. Vincent, Foxcatcher, & Two Days, One Night
Three of our most anticipated films at the Mill Valley Film Festival played on Day 9 in the 11-day stretch, and they didn’t disappoint. From Bill Murray’s performance as the grumpy titular character in St. Vincent; to Steve Carell’s long-awaited dramatic turn...
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The Guest
If you’re familiar with Dan Stevens, it’s probably with his work on Downton Abbey as the kind-hearted English gentleman Matthew Crawley. Other than that, his career is largely a blank slate, with most of us having no preconceived notions about him as an actor. This absence...
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MVFF37 Day 8: The Theory of Everything, 10,000 KM, & Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed
Forget waiting for the weekend to bring in the heavy hitters, Mill Valley says “It’s Thursday. Let’s party!” And what better way to kick off an early weekend than with the stirring and emotionally sensational biopic of Stephen Hawking, The...
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It Was You Charlie
The moment near the end of a film that puts everything you have just watched into perspective is a dicey proposition. It requires the closing payoff to be something worth waiting for–and more importantly, it demands deft storytelling. To...
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MVFF37 Day 7: Charlie’s Country, Nightcrawler, Black and White
We’re at the midpoint of the Mill Valley Film Festival and this is where I jump in. Having made the trek from Los Angeles to join in our coverage of the festival, I’ve been immediately greeted with colorful fall...
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Nadav Schirman, Mosab Hassan Yousef, Gonen Ben Yitzhak, and the Amazing Story of ‘The Green Prince’
A Palestinian and son of a Hamas leader, Mosab Hassan Yousef was raised deeply entrenched in the Middle Eastern conflict. In his early twenties, he was captured and interrogated by Gonen Ben Yitzhak, a “handler” working for the Shin...
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NYFF 2014: Listen Up Philip
In Alex Ross Perry’s follow up to The Color Wheel, the writer/director introduces us to author Philip Lewis Friedman as he angrily awaits the release of his 2nd book. Only steps behind Perry’s chaotic handheld camera movements, Jason Schwartzman...
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Automata
Sci-fi thriller Automata’s obvious parallel – so obvious that it has dominated press publicity — is with I, Robot, both the film and the Isaac Asimov novel it was adapted from. But it is instructive to consider where the...
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MVFF37 Day 6: Whiplash, Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem
After five days of the typical film festival arthouse heartbreakers and soul-shakers, I began to feel a bit of emotional fatigue as I reached the halfway point of MVFF37. Mr. Turner, The Homesman, Clouds of Sils Maria–all fine films, but how much...
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Hossein Amini: I Struggle So Much With Dialogue…I Find Silent Storytelling More Interesting
Best known for writing Nicholas Winding Refn’s Drive, Hossein Amini makes his directorial debut with the ’60s noir-ish throwback, The Two Faces of January, based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith. Set in Greece in 1962, the film follows a vacationing...
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