Metamorphosis: Film Review

MONTREAL The absurdist fables of Franz Kafka present a tremendous challenge to filmmakers hoping to adapt them; perhaps none more so than The Metamorphosis, whose protagonist is a traveling salesman who turns into a giant bug. Writer/director Chris Swanton, perhaps fueled by a first-timer's ambition, tackles this tale with a film that's quite faithful to the book. But while its source material will surely draw attention, the film is unlikely...

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The Gatekeepers: Telluride Review

You can scarcely believe what you're hearing and seeing at first: Six former heads of the Shin Bet, Israel's historically secretive internal intelligence agency, telling stories out of school about secret operations, the cultivation of informers, interrogation techniques, targeted assassinations, successes and failures and the dangers posed by the Israeli far-right. The most senior of them, who believes that the future is bleak, ends by lamenting...

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Last Rhapsody (Utolsó Rapszódia): Film Review

MONTREAL The final days of composer Franz Liszt are the subject of speculation in Bence Gyngyssy's Last Rhapsody, which imagines a 1911 stage production about Liszt's death being interrupted by a mystery woman bent on correcting its account. Respectful but not exactly spirited, it may interest hardcore classical music fans but lacks the romantic sweep needed to succeed in theaters. The film opens on rehearsals for the about-to-open play, whose script hews to the then-accepted (and since disputed) account of Liszt's death from pneumonia. A stranger...

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Wadjda: Venice Review

A real discovery from the Middle East and a film that will be one of the most-seen Arab-language films of the year, Wadjda has the distinction of being the first feature film ever shot in Saudi Arabia. And perhaps even more significantly, it is the first feature written and directed by a Saudi Arabian woman, the talented Haifaa Al Mansour. Her tale about a 12-year-old tomboy who wants to buy a bike would be a small jewel of tone and story-telling...

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7sex7: Montreal Review

MONTREAL An erotic anthology with enough flirtatious humor to keep it out of the art-porn zone, Irena kori's 7sex7 doesn't succeed on all fronts but should have something to stir the interest of nearly any date-night arthouse patron. Seven unrelated stories bump up against each other, with five heterosexual scenarios and one each involving gay men and a lesbian couple (the latter having recruited a "human vibrator" for a special occasion). Some stories begin in bed and go afield; some begin with sex looking highly improbable. None shows anything...

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Have You Seen Lupita? (¿Alguien A Visto A Lupita?): Toronto Review

MONTREAL A sort of holy-fool adventure that seems only to decide what it wants to be somewhere past its midpoint, Gonzalo Justiniano's Have You Seen Lupita? isn't as lucky in finding its way as its heroine, a not-all-there sweetie who every ten minutes escapes some kind of terrible fate. The pan-Latin production has meager prospects Stateside, though Spanish-language audiences might embrace it on a small scale. Dulce Mara plays Lupita, an attractive young woman who (perhaps thanks to big brother Maxi's carelessness with his drug stash years ago)...

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Paradise: Faith: Venice Review

VENICE Put together a subversive filmmaker like Ulrich Seidl with the subject of religious fanaticism and youre bound to get something provocative. But Paradise: Faith, the second part of the Austrian directors trilogy about three women from the same family on different quests, is possibly more interesting to think about and discuss afterwards than to sit through. Depending how you look at it, theres a pitch-black comedy buried in here or a redeeming shred of empathy at the tail end of two grueling hours. Either way, its strictly for the faithful....

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Stories We Tell: Venice Review

VENICE -- After establishing herself as a writer-director with 2006's double Oscar-nominated Away From Her and last year's followup Take This Waltz, Canadian child-star-turned-actress Sarah Polley now makes an audacious leap into autobiographical documentary with the long-gestating Stories We Tell. Making very public a long-buried family secret regarding Polley's origins, this playfully complex and gently slippery analysis of memory and personal...

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Ornette: Made in America: Film Review

Free Jazz legend Ornette Coleman gets an appropriately out-there tribute in Shirley Clarke's Ornette: Made in America, a 1984 doc just restored as part of Milestone Films' "Project Shirley." Very much a work of its time, the doc offers unique perspectives for fans of both the saxophonist and the pioneering filmmaker, but is unlikely to attract a broad audience beyond those camps. A project that Clarke began in the late '60s and evidently would...

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Liv & Ingmar: Film Review

MONTREAL One of cinema's most significant romances is eulogized with reverence in Dheeraj Akolkar's Liv & Ingmar, which might more rightly be titled Liv on Liv & Ingmar. Cinephiles of a certain age (and younger ones with tastes shaped by the Criterion Collection) will lap it up, and Hallvard Braein's cinematography is certainly lush enough to justify a big-screen run before the doc gets to video. Late in the film, Liv Ullmann admits to...

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The Iceman: Venice Review

VENICE A densely plotted account of the life and crimes of Richard Kuklinski, who murdered more than 100 victims before he was apprehended in 1986, The Iceman is a vivid evocation of a remorseless sociopath sustaining a double life as a contract killer and devoted family man. Gritty, gripping and unrelentingly intense, Ariel Vromens film boasts richly detailed character work from an ideal cast. But the driving force is Michael Shannon in the...

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Cherry on the Cake (La Cerise sur le Gâteau): Film Review

MONTREAL A rom-com where strategic-deception farce coexists with a strong undercurrent of bitterness and the suggestion that relationships mightn't be worth the effort, Laura Morante's Cherry on the Cake has its charms but sometimes feels like the work of someone who wants love less than she wants to want it. A good-looking European sheen helps prospects at the arthouse, particularly for viewers who appreciate a romance that focuses on a woman...

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My Name Is Not Ali (Jannat' Ali): Film Review

MONTREAL Setting out to introduce us to one of the most intriguing characters in the circle of Rainer Werner Fassbinder but finding little more than a cipher, Viola Shafik's My Name Is Not Ali touches on the dark side of the director's famously rambunctious social/creative process but will be of interest mainly to obsessives. Best known for playing Ali, the young Berber laborer whose relationship with an older German woman is recounted in Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, El Hedi ben Salem was credited on close to a dozen Fassbinder films and was the director's...

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Betrayal (Izmena): Venice Review

VENICE -- The human heart yet again proves the unruliest of organs in Kirill Serebrennikov's adultery-themed Golden Lion candidate Betrayal (Izmena), at best a longshot to follow up Faust's Russian triumph from last year. Trump card in a technically accomplished affair is Franziska Petri's precisely modulated performance in the demanding central role, this striking German actress balancing ice and fire rather more fluently than the picture itself....

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Enzo Avitabile, Music Life: Venice Review

Director Jonathan Demmes enthusiasm for Neapolitan multi-musician and composer Enzo Avitabile is catching in this simple, straightforward documentary centered around a jam session that features extraordinary talents of contemporary world music playing rare and bizarre instruments. Though Avitabile, who has worked with James Brown and Tina Turner, has a popular following in Italy where the doc should be well appreciated, this salute to a unique...

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The Reluctant Fundamentalist: Venice Review

Three days before terrorist attacks toppled the World Trade Center, Indian director Mira Nair won the Golden Lion for best picture in Venice with her warm family comedy Monsoon Wedding. The Reluctant Fundamentalist, based on the novel by Mohsin Hamid, is just as colorful; convincingly rooted in Pakistan, its generally gripping drama painfully confronts the great cultural divide in peoples thinking created by the tragedy of 9/11. Meant to be thought-provoking,...

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The Possession: Film Review

Weve had zombies, demons, vampires and ghosts. Why shouldnt a dybbuk--the Judaic version of the possessing spirit--have a chance to finally shine again on the big screen? Representing a sort of equal opportunity religious variation on an all-too-familiar theme,The Possessionis a Jewish-themedExorcistthat, if nothing else, should discourage the practice of buying antique wooden boxes at flea markets. PHOTOS: The 10 Least Scary Movies of All Time...

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Penance (Shokuzai): Venice Review

Kiyoshi Kurosawas made-for-TV serial drama Penance is a wild, uneven ride through the oddities of the Japanese psyche, as much as it is a psychological thriller examining the far-reaching after-effects of a little girls murder. Complexly plotted, elegantly shot and orchestrated, this is the kind of long-winded, intermittently involving festival package that will earn the director of Tokyo Sonata more critical appreciation, but will struggle to...

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Hollywood to Dollywood: Film Review

Dolly Parton has played many roles in her film career, but up until now The Wizard of Oz hasnt been one of them. At least until Hollywood to Dollywood, depicting the titular road trip undertaken by aspiring screenwriters Larry and Gary Lane to personally present the country legend with the screenplay theyve written especially for her and make their dreams come true. Ultimately, however, the documentary is less about the destination than the journey....

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Dead Europe: Melbourne Review

MELBOURNE -- Australian director Tony Krawitzs debut feature, adapted from compatriot Christos Tsiolkas ambitious and disturbing third novel, is a riddle wrapped in ugliness and shrouded in spite. A morose mood piece tracing a young Greek-Australian mans ill-fated return to his ancestral homeland, Dead Europes impenetrable narrative and dogged bleakness make it a decidedly uncommercial prospect. It is, however, proficiently made, and festival...

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Somewhere Between: Film Review

Four bright teenage girls represent a generation of intercontinental adoptees in Linda Goldstein Knowlton's Somewhere Between, an affecting look at the wave of children displaced by China's One Child Policy. Full of accessible human drama and likable (if not particularly colorful) characters, the film should benefit from good word-of-mouth among documentary fans and the large pool of families who'll see themselves reflected here. Bookending the...

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Bad Seeds (Comme Un Homme): Film Review

PARIS -- A bizarre amalgam of psychological thriller, family tragedy and Haneke-style teensploitation flick, Bad Seeds (Comme un homme) attempts to be many films at once, but never quite flowers into a credible whole. Nonetheless, this relatively intriguing and well-realized effort from genre-jumping director Safy Nebbou (Dumas, Mark of an Angel) has enough appeal to warrant minor art house and ancillary play following its mid-August French release....

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The Apparition: Film Review

Todd Lincoln's suburbia-set ghost flick The Apparition, which involves various fungus-like manifestations of the otherworldly, is in a couple of ways like dealing with a black-mold problem: You have to be a certain kind of person to get very disturbed by it, and once it's over you're quite likely to feel cheated. It may draw in the reliable genre audience on opening weekend, but word-of-mouth won't serve it well. PHOTOS: Iconic Horror Movies Stars...

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The Revenant: Film Review

Combining elements of everything from An American Werewolf in London to Zombieland to Death Wish, D. Kerry Priors horror comedy features the intriguing premise of zombies turned vigilantes. The sort of effort that attracts lots of attention at horror film festivalswhere its been kicking around for three years--and seems specifically designed to achieve cult status, The Revenant ultimately suffers from an uneven execution and repetitive overload....

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Premium Rush: Film Review

An asphalt-action tale as unadorned as the fixed-gear cycle its hero rides, David Koepp's Premium Rush supplies just enough dramatic rationale to set a series of Manhattan bike chases in motion and then follows without pretending it cares much about anything beyond the adrenaline. A quick pace and always-enjoyable lead Joseph Gordon-Levitt will please moviegoers, even if the pic's ticking-clock approach isn't as invigoratingly pulpy here as in...

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Hip Movements: Locarno Review

LOCARNO - A broody young woman resorts to desperate measures to become pregnant in this dark comedy from the actor-director Herv-Pierre Gustave, aka HPG, who also co-stars. A former porn star who later crossed over into directing, Gustave is a maverick figure in French cinema, with a spotty track record mostly consisting of experimental shorts and narcissistic documentaries. All the same, his second narrative feature is far more watchable and conventional than his dramatic debut We Should Not Exist, which made a minimal splash at the Directors...

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