Skip to content

The Debt (2010)

Directed by: John Madden

3 stars

Flipping between the mid-1960s and 1997, The Debt tells the story of the capture and killing by a Mossad team (Stefan, Rachel, David) of a Nazi war criminal, Dieter Vogel, the “Surgeon of Birkenau” – and the aftermath of that mission. Read more

Twilight Portrait (2011)
(Portret v sumer kakh)

Directed by: Angelina Nikonova

3 stars

Marina (Olga Dihovichnay, who co-wrote the story), a beautiful, middle-class social worker with a moderately unhappy marriage, is raped by three policeman after she seeks help when her bag is stolen.  Combined with all the cruelty she sees at work, and the petty nastiness she perceives in friends and strangers alike, she experiences a kind of catharsis – but exactly what kind is it? Read more

God Bless America (2011)

Directed by: Bobcat Goldthwait

4 stars

“I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take it any more!”  You can almost hear Peter Finch screaming inside the head of mild-mannered middle-aged divorcee Frank (Joel Murray) as he watches decency evaporate in the face of reality-TV and talk-show excess.  When life deals him a couple of extra hammer blows, something snaps, releasing his inner fascist, and he takes to the road blowing away people “people who deserve to die”, accompanied by oddball teenager Roxy (Tara Lynn Barr). Read more

Think Of Me (2011)

Directed by: Bryan Wizemann

4 stars

The state of your car says a lot about you in the movies.  In Think Of Me, Alice’s car is metonymically related to her life and, as the movie opens, her car won’t start.   Read more

Good Bye (2011)
(Bé Omid É)

Directed by: Mohammad Rasoulof

4 stars

“When you feel like a foreigner in your own country, it’s better to be a foreigner in a foreign country” says Noora (Leila Zare), a human rights lawyer whose licence to practice has been suspended, while her husband (a newspaper publisher whose newspaper has been shut down) is on the run from the police.  She wants to leave Iran, and she’s been advised to get pregnant and give birth while abroad.  But her husband is reluctant to leave, and now she fears her baby may be born with Down’s syndrome. Read more

Duch: Master of the Forges of Hell (2011)

Directed by: Catherine Dussart

3 stars

S21. 6 heads. 29 arrests. Prisoner 261.  12,380 executed. 1.8 million killed.

Numbers dominate this documentary about the work, from 1975-1979, of Kaing Guek Eav, a.k.a. Comrade Duch, in prison camp S21 in Cambodia during Pol Pot’s reign of madness. Read more

From Up On Poppy Hill (2011)
(Kokuriko-zaka kara)

Directed by: Goro Miyazaki

2 stars

Umi divides her time between preparing food for her extended family and guests at the boarding house where she lives, and school, where she falls for Shun, a boy a few years older. Together, they fight a campaign to prevent the school’s Club building from being demolished as part of the preparations for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.  Entwined with this struggle is their own growing affection, imperilled by the possibility that they may, in fact, be brother and sister. Read more

Vaquero (2011)

Directed by: Juan Minujín

2 stars

Vaquero is the story of a supporting actor hoping for a break into the big time via a Hollywood western being shot in Argentina.  The film follows Julián as he resents his way through day after day on a film-set, at the theatre, with assorted members of his family or alone in his apartment, where his voiced thoughts give us a glimpse into his violent fantasies.  Eventually, the offer of an audition gives him the prospect of the break he’s been looking for, just a he starts a relationship with a sweet member of the crew on his current movie.  Will he win his spurs and get the girl?  Or can he snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? Read more