Drama Rated PG
“…reveals pockets of empathy existing in defiance of Iran’s oppressive regime.”
Drama Rated NR
What is a movie? What is a documentary? What role does cinema play in our lives? I have one more question for you: Can an engrossing narrative film be made out of such meta concerns? Yes, at least in the hands of Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami. Close-Up is an exercise in film theory, but thankfully
Drama Rated R
"Whatever you’re told this movie is about, remember it’s about Phoenix’s face first."
A young woman gets caught in the midst of a married couple’s domestic drama when she’s hired to clean their apartment in Fireworks Wednesday, from writer-director Asghar Farhadi. The maid (Taraneh Alidoosti) is on the verge of being married herself, but she’d be forgiven for changing her mind at the end of this day. Used
Still ahead of its time. It isn’t only that writer-director and co-star Jean Renoir pioneered crucial cinematic techniques (he used deep focus here two years before Orson Welles employed it in Citizen Kane), it’s that the film has an attitude of empathetic enlightenment that remains a rarity. The first third of The Rules of the
The two dominant strands of post-revolution Iranian cinema – quaint neorealism and thick meta theory – come together in this wily experiment from writer-director-editor Jafar Panahi. The Mirror begins as the simple tale of Mina (Mina Mohammad Khani), a little girl whose mother is late to pick her up from school. Setting her face in
If The Deep Blue Sea had maintained the bravura formalist intensity of its opening third – all rich image and swooning score, like a silent film told in lushly burnished Instagram hues – writer-director Terence Davies may have fashioned some sort of retro masterpiece. As it is, we’re simply left with one of the best
Drama Rated PG-13
"Clever, but not clever enough to make its central conceit work."
“…belongs to its villain, through and through.”
The feature debut of writer-director Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter), Shotgun Stories deals in sins of fathers, feuds of brothers and all sorts of Biblically infused, familial drama. It’s weighty stuff, yet also told with a familiar matter-of-factness that makes you feel as if you could be hearing this story as gossip while sitting on a
