Archive for the ‘IFC Films’ Category
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Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 12th, 2010
In 1999, a troupe of US marines must transport some equipment across Romania. Leading them is Captain Doug Jones (Armand Assante), a man so committed to his duty that he does a pretty convincing job of appearing passionate and proud about what is, on the face of it, a rather dull, two-bit assignment. As matters develop, the mission is far from dull, though it is not interesting in the way Jones might have hoped. The train is waylaid in the small town of Capalnita by the corrupt stationmaster, and a comical clash of cultures ensues.
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Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on March 11th, 2010
In my lifetime, I’ve really only liked five zombie movies. There is Shaun of the Dead, the three Resident Evil movies, and Zombieland. Most of the other zombie type films either belong in the “Way too Gory” or “Nonsense” designation. So, naturally when I receive a zombie movie like Dead Snow, there is some apprehension. However, in this case I can say that this movie belongs in both of those designations and delightfully so.
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Disc Reviews by William O'Donnell on February 23rd, 2010
Nia Vardalos casts herself across from her My Big Fat Greek Wedding love interest James Corbett, in an attempt to rekindle the magic that was the unlikely Big Fat phenomenon. As star, writer, and director, the weight of the film falls onto her shoulders and thankfully she has enough carry to drag a rather sparse plot from beginning to end with a some genuine laughs.
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Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 15th, 2010
When the UK minister for International Development (Tom Hollander) has the nerve (not to mention lack of political acumen) to opine that war in the Middle-East is “unforeseeable,” all hell breaks loose. The pro- and anti-war bureaucrats in Washington see him as useful to their cause, and descend, talons outstretched. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister’s Director of Communications (Peter Capaldi), a Scot who makes Don King look even-tempered and restrained, goes into apoplectic overdrive in his attempts to keep everything on-message.
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on December 18th, 2008
<>An-a-mor-pho-sis n. pl. An image distorted so that it can only be viewed without distortion from a certain angle or using specific instrumentation.
In the case of this direct to video thriller, our serial killer is using the aforementioned technique in his murders. He dismembers bodies and reassembles them so that they appear differently depending on how you view them.
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Disc Reviews by David Annandale on October 17th, 2008
Very much in the tradition of such other overheated Mexican emotional dramas as Amores Perros and Y Tu Mamá También, Drama/Mex gives us two intertwining plot strands, each dealing with relationships as tormented as they are sexual. In one, upper-class Fernanda’s bad boy ex-lover Chino resurfaces, takes her violently, but she doesn’t exactly hate it, and this has, as one might imagine, some awkward consequences for her relationship with current boyfriend Gonzalo. Meanwhile, a middle-aged man, guilt-ridden over what he has done to his daughter (take a guess), is contemplating suicide when he runs into a precocious teenage hustler. In other words, basically enough material to give Sarah Palin a fatal coronary.
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Disc Reviews by Ryan Keefer on November 15th, 2007
I only know Tea Leoni for a couple of things, the big thing being that she married David Duchovny (The X-Files) and grew a couple of demon seeds with him. But I guess she was bored and inexplicably took on the role of producer and actress in a film starring an Oscar winner, Sir Ben Kingsley (Gandhi), in a low budget independent film named You Kill Me, which was a script that had been kicked around Hollywood for a few years.
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Disc Reviews by Ryan Keefer on November 12th, 2007
The premise of Day Night Day Night is relatively simple; a young woman decides to be a suicide bomber in Times Square. The motivations for her doing this, as in the outside forces who convince her to do it, aren’t really explained at all, so what makes it unique is that it focuses on the preparation the girl makes. She is portrayed by Luisa Williams, who appears in the film in her first role.
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Disc Reviews by David Annandale on August 13th, 2007
Mads Mikkelsen, whom we last saw taking a rope to James Bond’s family jewels, is here up to a far more praiseworthy activity: helping run a school for orphans in an impoverished region of India. The school is struggling to survive, and when a Danish businessman expresses an interest in providing stable funding, but only if Mikkelsen comes to Denmark for a meeting, the latter is reluctantly persuaded to leave India for the encounter. At said meeting, the tycoon (Rolf Lassgard) casually (it seems) invites Mikkelsen to his daughter’s wedding. Mikkelsen accepts, and at that wedding receives quite a shock. Lassgard, it turns out, has a very personal secret agenda at work.
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Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 17th, 2007
Synopsis
Famed for his obsessive love of petroleum jelly as a medium for sculpture, Matthew Barney uses 45 000 pounds of the stuff in the creation of Drawing Restraint 9. This film documents the making of that piece, which is both sculpture and film, done aboard a Japanese whaling vessel. Intimately involved in the production is Barney’s collaborator and partner Björk.
For those, such as myself, for whom this is a first exposure to Barney, this film is both intriguing and frustrating…
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Disc Reviews by Michael Durr on June 1st, 2007
Synopsis
Most people don’t know where to place Puerto Ricans. Some would like to think they are Hispanic, some would like to think that they are African. To treat them as anything beside their own culture would be a mistake. They are Puerto Rican, proud and have been in the United States for almost a century. Puerto Ricans have been for the most part unfairly discriminated against and put into groups that they simply do not belong in. From Pedro Albizu Campos to Jennifer Lopez, there has …
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Disc Reviews by David Annandale on March 14th, 2007
A young woman leaves her small town and intensely religious family to study at University. Even as she experiences the new freedom of campus life, her epileptic seizures become much worse, and she gradually comes to the conclusion that she is possessed. Her friends try to help her as her suffering becomes intolerable, but she eventually turns to a priest who wants to perform an exorcism.
If the above synopsis sounds familiar, that’s because this film is based on the same case that inspired The Exorcism of Emily Rose.
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Disc Reviews by Ryan Keefer on March 4th, 2007
On its surface, Coastlines is a modestly produced film that was written and directed by Victor Nunez (Ulee’s Gold), telling the story about a guy who was just released from prison for dealing drugs, but bites the prison bullet for the favor of a friend. He comes out and is looking for the financial windfall promised him, but also tries to get back in touch with his roots. On a deeper level, Coastlines, well, doesn’t go that much deeper I guess.
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Disc Reviews by Ryan Keefer on January 19th, 2007
Back in 1979 (that’s a whole generation ago, kids!) Matt Dillon was appearing in films that would make the average reader of Tiger Beat swoon. He was in plenty of material like Little Darlings, Rumble Fish and The Outsiders that didn’t help that idea too much in the eyes of his female fans (of which there are scores). But since the early ’80s, he’s gone through a bit of a rediscovery, and in the film Factotum, based on the works of author Charles Bukowski, he may have hit his best stride to date.
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Disc Reviews by Aric Mitchell on December 20th, 2006
Some films never achieve greatness, but still manage to leave their viewers with a wry smile, and a “that wasn’t so bad, I’m glad I watched it” mentality. Lonesome Jim from IFC Films is one such motion picture. Starring Casey Affleck and Liv Tyler and directed by Steve Buscemi, this is one mood-swinging comedy that will lull you into complacency, then occasionally drop large hilarious bombs into the experience when least expected. Centered on a depressing, tight-lipped, tell-it-like-it-is, loner, who is for…
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Disc Reviews by Mark Dancer on October 11th, 2006
Synopsis
About to be married for what he hopes will be the final time, Caveh Zahedi turns to us and reveals his long battle with sex addiction. His story is a difficult one for him to tell, not only for the (very, very funny) personal humiliation it entails, but because he keeps interrupting himself and jumping from one moment in his life to another, but also because he gets tangled up with explaining how the recreations were done in the movie we are now watching. Thus, having just said that he could…
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Disc Reviews by Ryan Keefer on October 4th, 2006
One of the nice things about I Am A Sex Addict is that it is both a comedy and a documentary. I am thrilled that at some point somebody figured out that documentaries can be entertaining as well as informative. Filmmakers have certainly turned the camera on themselves before, but I don’t recall seeing one be quite as intimately honest as Zahedi is here. This is a film that is just what the title suggests… an examination of the life of a sexaholic. The document is sometimes funny, but frequently uncomfortable…
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Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on September 22nd, 2006
Fortunately, American Gun does not appear to be about the debate on owning guns. It’s a trap, and I doubt there will be much movement on either side of the issue. The film instead mostly deals with members of a community where three years earlier a Columbine-like school shooting occurred. The story slowly plods through the lives of several families, most notably the mother and brother of one of the deceased gunmen. This is where the title and its advertised premise confuse me.
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Disc Reviews by Mark Dancer on August 17th, 2006
Synopsis
Marnderlay is part two of the trilogy that began with Dogville. Picking up where that film left off, we see Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard replacing Nicole Kidman) and her gangster father (Willem Dafoe taking over from James Caan) arriving at Manderlay, a plantation where slavery never ended. Grace, horrified by this state of affairs, orders slavery abolished, but her attempts to bring freedom to the slaves lead inexorably to disaster.
While one does, at first, miss the l…
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