Trapped is a new Bollywood arthouse offering starring the incredible Rajkummar Rao. Desperate to find suitable housing for himself and his fiancee, Shaurya takes an temporary apartment in a vacant highrise, only to have the broken door lock him in with no electricity or running water, no mode of communication, and no way out. Really this is a meditation on urban isolation and alienation, and it is riveting! You can find it on Amazon Prime. Rajkummar Rao is one of my favorite new actors, and one to watch for. 5/5 |
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Borealis is an enjoyable Canadian road dramedy about a gambling addict, single-father (Jonas Chernick) who takes his teenage, pot smoking daughter (Joey King) from Winnipeg to Churchill to see the Northern Lights before she goes completely blind. Of course Jonah, the father, owes money and so he's also on the lam with two gangsters (Kevin Pollack and Cle Bennett) hot on his tail. This is a delightful little Canadian film. King delivers as the daughter who is rapidly losing her vision. Chernick wrote and produced the film. This is the 5th collaboration between Chernick and director Sean Garrity. Ultimately, the film could have dispensed with the gambling debt/mob sub plot but truly, Pollack and Bennett are really enjoyable as Tubby and Brick. Give it a whirl. Support Canadian cinema. 4/5 Beware the Slenderman is a very intense new documentary from HBO. It was was shot over the course of 18 months after a 12 year old girl was stabbed 19 times by her two classmates who were trying to please Slenderman. This film is terrifying. Not because "Slenderman" is scary, he's really just your average modern day boogie man; he's basic folklore. He's the Pied Piper... This film is terrifying because 1- teenage girls are just about the scariest creatures out there and 2- mental illness. This film gets 'real' very quickly. Beware the Slenderman follows the year long court case in which in would be determined if the two accused 12 year olds would be tried as adults or children. So, watching this as the mother of a teen girl I was simultaneously reminded I'm already somewhat living in a horror movie and that I would hate to see anything bad happen to my daughter or worse, because of her. Terror, indeed. Secondly, as a person with mental illness this documentary terrified me because of how we treat and deal with mental illness and criminality. This film sorta punched me in the guts in a way I was not expecting...at all. 5/5 Sonita is a very powerful documentary about a teenage girl living illegally as an Afghan refugee in Iran who is facing being sold into marriage. Instead, she breaks the law (women cannot sing) and she becomes a Hip Hop artist. Sonita's bravery is astonishing. I'm a big fan of Iranian cinema and this is no different. I'm a fan. This is an excellent documentary. Show your sons and daughters. 5/5 Dope is Dope. I very much enjoyed this clever little coming-of-age dramedy. It's a breath of fresh air. It's fun! Dope is about a self-proclaimed geek, Malcolm, and his two geeky friends who are high school seniors in Inglewood California. The trio ends up being tricked into moving a package of MDMA for a drug dealer. Hijinks ensue. 5/5 Beasts of No Nation is a new feature from Cary Fukunaga (True Detective), starring the always stellar Idris Elba. Beasts is an adaptation of a book by the same name by Uzodinma Iweala. Beasts follows an orphaned child soldier fighting with guerilla soldiers in an unnamed African country. This film was acquired by Netflix and was released this October simultaneously in theaters and on Netflix. Beasts premiered at the Venice Film Festival and the Telluride Film Festival. You can stream it on Netflix now! Make no mistake, Beasts is a brutal film. I highly recommend it, but it's no picnic. If you can, see it on the big screen. It's absolutely worth it. 5/5 This is one of the best films I have ever seen. No, seriously. It is for real one of the best films I have ever seen. Mes Petits Amoureuses is a French coming-of-age film from the early 1970s. Young Daniel lives with his grandmother, until his mother and her new boyfriend come to visit and he goes to live with them for a year. His mother doesn't want to pay for school books, so she sends Daniel to work instead. He dabbles at a bike repair shop, but mostly he wanders around, smoking cigarettes on park benches, and watching people make out--I don't know if that sells the film at all, but it was astonishingly perfect. Mostly Daniel is fascinated by and driven to understand the mystery of girls. Jean Eustache only made two feature films in his brief career. The Mother and the Whore is widely considered his masterpiece, and while I give both 5/5 I'm more inclined to re-watch and re-watch Mes Petits...again and again... 5/5 |
LindseyHere is where I post new reviews as I see films throughout the year. Archives
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