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Krisha

25/3/2016

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by Lee Purvey
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Much has been made of the overlap between Krisha, which chronicles a recovering addict’s holiday reunion with her estranged son’s family, and its writer-director Trey Edward Shults’ actual life. Shot in Shults’ Texas home with a cast that features many of his relatives, the making of Krisha was very much a family affair, which is appropriate: Shults has cited a cousin’s holiday relapse and his broken relationship with his alcoholic father as the film’s twin inspirations. The project as a whole takes the pathos of art-making to an entirely new level.
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Edina Cinema

Director: 
Trey Edward Shults
Producers: Justin R. Chan, Chase Joliet, Trey Edward Shults, Wilson Smith
Writer: Trey Edward Shults
Cinematographer: Drew Daniels
Music: Brian McOmber
Cast: Krisha Fairchild, Olivia Grace Applegate, Bryan Casserly, Alex Dobrenko, Chris Doubek, Billie Fairchild, Robyn Fairchild, Victoria Fairchild
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Runtime: 83m.
Genre: Drama
Country: USA
Premiere: March 16, 2015 – South by Southwest Film Festival
US Theatrical Release: March 18, 2016
US Distributor: A24

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My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2

25/3/2016

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by Lee Purvey
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Arriving after a decade of romantic comedies that stuck to the cleanly binary logic of late-20th century courtship, My Big Fat Greek Wedding stood out, in 2002, as a love story that embraced the ensemble sprawl of the family comedy. The film retained that basic structure of the rom-com: introducing two attractive and temperamentally inoffensive lovers -- Toula (Nia Vardalos, who also wrote the film) and Ian (John Corbett) -- whose union is gently forestalled for about 90 minutes, then cheerily consummated. But while My Big Fat Greek Wedding didn’t break any new ground in terms of tone, in its central conflict, the film found a pleasantly messy and surprisingly substantive subject: the demands of Toula’s Greek immigrant family, whose old-world sexual politics and utter lack of boundaries create a comical set of hurdles between the young couple and the altar.
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Area Theaters

Director: 
Kirk Jones
Producers: Gary Goetzman, Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson
Writer: Nia Vardalos
Cinematographer: Jim Denault
Editor: Markus Czyzewski
Music: Christopher Lennertz
Cast: Nia Vardalos, John Corbett, Michael Constantine, Lainie Kazan, Andrea Martin, Gia Carides, Joey Fatone, Elena Kampouris, Alex Wolff

Runtime: 94m.
Genre: Comedy/Romance
Country: USA
US Theatrical Release: March 25, 2016
US Distributor: ​Universal Pictures


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The Club

27/2/2016

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by Lee Purvey
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​A nation with a complex and largely unspoken history of economic injustice, destruction of indigenous culture, and state-sanctioned violence, Chile is a ripe setting for Pablo Larraín’s new film, The Club, a blackly comic psychodrama that uses the Catholic Church as a vehicle to explore the interaction of blame, repression, and penance in modern life. Shot in impressionist blues and greys through fisheye lenses, the screen swells with the festering stench of its contents, evoking the warped delusion of nearly everyone that passes through the frame.
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Lagoon Cinema

Director: Pablo Larraín
Producers: Juan de Dios
Larraín, Pablo Larraín
Writers: Guillermo 
Calderón, Pablo Larraín, Daniel Villalobos
Cinematographer: Sergio Armstrong
Editor: 
Sebastián Sepúlveda
Music: Carlos Cabezas
Cast: Roberto Farías, Antonia Zegers, Alfredo Castro, Alejandro Goic, Alejandro Sieveking, Jaime Vadell, Marcelo Alonso,
José Soza, Francisco Reyes

Runtime: 98m.
Genre: Drama
Country: Chile
Premiere: February 9, 2015  – Berlin International Film Festival
US Theatrical Release: February 5, 2016
US Distributor: ​Music Box Films


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Hail, Caesar!

5/2/2016

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by Lee Purvey
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Sometimes the difference between the mundane and the absurd is a matter of seconds, a distinction upon which Joel and Ethan Coen capitalize with impressive consistency in their new film Hail, Caesar! A comedy that relies more on subverting norms of pacing and tone than comic bravado or witty dialogue, this 1950s Hollywood farce is able to coax hilarity out of fairly innocuous set pieces simply by letting the audience’s gaze linger just a little too long, inducing nervous chuckles with the slightest hint of a wink. Placed alongside Raising Arizona or The Ladykillers, Hail, Caesar! offers a softer, subtler manifestation of the Minnesotan brothers’ surreal vision -- one that elicits laughter at a pace nearly matching their best comedies.
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Area Theaters

Directors: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Producers: Tim Bevan, Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, Eric Fellner
Writers: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Cinematographer: Roger Deakins
Editors: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen 
Music: Carter Burwell
Cast: Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Alden Ehrenreich, Ralph Fiennes, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill, Veronica Osorio, Heather Goldenhersh, Alison Pill, Max Baker

Runtime: 106m.
Genre: Comedy/Drama/Musical
Country: UK/USA
US Theatrical Release: February 5, 2016
US Distributor: ​Universal Pictures

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The Revenant

8/1/2016

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by Lee Purvey
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​Alejandro González Iñárritu’s The Revenant belongs to a class of film one might term “bro realism.” Over the past 10 years, a handful of male Western filmmakers -- among them John Hillcoat (who was at one point in talks to direct The Revenant), Derek Cianfrance, Jeremy Saulnier, and David Cronenberg -- have made a number of films which establish a new vocabulary of deadpan violence and dramatic nihilism within independent cinema. In their stories of revenge and self-destruction -- which endeavor to comment on violence, as much as they capitalize on its aesthetic and dramatic appeal -- these directors exchange the playful camp of turn-of-the-century genre nerds like Quentin Tarantino and Sam Raimi for a blunter relationship to violence onscreen. (This violence is usually of the physical variety, although the same lens can be applied to the emotional, as in Cianfrance’s punishing Blue Valentine.) Though this trend has produced some genuinely good filmmaking (notably Hillcoat’s The Proposition and The Road), there is something painfully juvenile about these filmmakers’ philosophy -- a headier, grown-up version of the kind of contrarianism that might send preteens to Harmony Korine or Ayn Rand.
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Area Theaters

Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Producers: Steve Golin, Alejandro
González Iñárritu, David Kanter, Arnon Milchan, Mary Parent, Keith Redmon, James W. Skotchdopole
Writers: Mark L. Smith, Alejandro
González Iñárritu, Michael Punke (novel)
Cinematographer: Emmanuel Lubezki
Editor: Stephen Mirrione
Music: Bryce Dessner, Carsten Nicolai, Ryuichi Sakamoto
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson, Will Poulter, Forrest Goodluck, Paul Anderson, Kristoffer Joner, Joshua Burge, Duane Howard

Runtime: 156m.
Genre: Adventure/Drama/Thriller
Country: USA
US Theatrical Release: December 25, 2015
US Distributor: ​20th Century Fox

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The Big Short

22/12/2015

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by Lee Purvey
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The Big Short’s sticky hypocrisy lies in its choice of characters. If its incisive denouement is any indication, the aspirations of Adam McKay’s new issue dramedy are basically populist. In his closing lament, resident good guy polemicist Mark Baum (Steve Carell) describes a parallel world in which the 2007-08 financial crisis spelled an end to the worst in American capitalism, before pulling this illusive tapestry out from under our feet. And yet, McKay’s heroes (Baum included) are as distant from the crisis’ worldwide aftershocks -- in the U.S., 10 percent unemployment rates, plummeting average incomes and housing values -- as the bankers who were the recession’s real authors. Indeed, while the dust was settling around Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, Baum and his associates were part of a small Wall Street minority getting incredibly rich.
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Area Theaters

Director: Adam McKay
Producers: Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Arnon Milchan, Brad Pitt
Writers: Charles Randolph, Adam McKay, Michael Lewis (book)
Cinematographer: Barry Ackroyd
Editor: Hank Corwin
Music: Nicholas Britell
Cast: Ryan Gosling, Christian Bale, Rudy Eisenzopf, Peter Epstein, Steve Carell, Leslie Castay, Tracy Letts, Marisa Tomei, Adepero Oduye, Rafe Spall, Hamish Linklater, Jeremy Strong, Stanley Wong, Finn Witrock, Brad Pitt, Melissa Leo, Karen Gillan, Lyle Brocato, Margot Robbie, Selena Gomez

Runtime: 130m.
Genre: Biography/Drama
Country: USA
US Theatrical Release: December 11, 2015
US Distributor: ​Paramount Pictures

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The Wonders

4/12/2015

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by Lee Purvey
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​The coming of age story, as much as any Western subgenre, tends to work off a pretty limited tonal palette. Whether it’s the accessible black-sheep-makes-good trajectories of most mainstream offerings (Almost Famous, The Breakfast Club) or the slightly headier tack of independent exercises in exultance like Boyhood and The Tree of Life, the coming of age flick can usually be counted on for at least one thing, and that’s catharsis. The mode of delivery may vary -- from rote moral resolution to the more nebulous manipulation of nostalgia and mood used by Linklater and Malick -- but the guarantee of the kind of seismic emotions one tends to associate with our bodies’ glandular heyday stays pretty much the same. Alice Rohrwacher’s The Wonders is the exception to this rule, exchanging the conventions of independent cinema’s least experimental genre for a much subtler mission: the meticulous documentation of the shifting moods, hopes, desires, and grudges contained in the day-to-day existence of a single family, as their eldest toes the line of womanhood.
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Lagoon Cinema

Director: Alice Rohrwacher
Producers: Karl "Baumi" Baumgartner, Carlo Cresto-Dina, Tiziana Soudani, Michael Weber
Writer: Alice Rohrwacher
Cinematographer: 
Hélène Louvart
Editor: Marco Spoletini
Music: Piero Crucitti
Cast: Alba Rohrwacher, Maria Alexandra Lungu, Sam Louwyck, Sabine Timoteo, Agnese Graziani, Monica Bellucci


Runtime: 110m.
Genre: Drama
Countries: Italy/Switzerland/Germany
Premiere: May 18, 2014 – Cannes Film Festival

US Theatrical Release: October 30, 2015
US Distributor: Oscilloscope Laboratories

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Heart of a Dog

27/11/2015

 
by Lee Purvey
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A line from Kierkegaard, placed halfway through Laurie Anderson’s Heart of a Dog, neatly summarizes the director’s project with the film: “Life can only be understood backwards. But it must be lived forwards.”
 
These words are at the heart of this ambitious, thoughtful documentary, in which, by attempting to assemble meaning from a number of lives already lost—foremost among them the artist’s beloved rat terrier, Lolabelle—Anderson turns to the past to cope with a pain she continues to carry.
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Uptown Theatre

Director: Laurie Anderson
Producers: Laurie Anderson, Dan Janvey
Writer: Laurie Anderson
Cinematographers: Laurie Anderson, Toshiaki Ozawa, Joshua Zucker-Pluda
Editors: Melody London, Katherine Nolfi
Music: Laurie Anderson
Cast: Archie, Jason Berg, Heung-Heung Chin, Bob Currie, Paul Davidson, Dustin Defa, Etta, Evelyn Fleder, Willy Friedman

Runtime: 75m.
Genre: Documentary
Countries: France/USA
Premiere: September 4, 2015 – Telluride Film Festival
US Theatrical Release: October 21, 2015
US Distributor: ​Abramorama

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Trumbo

20/11/2015

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by Lee Purvey
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It seems like every four years the definition of “America” -- which, we’ll remember, is only a proper noun -- gets dragged out and publicly renegotiated in our national consciousness. In our contemporary political landscape, so many of the issues that inform our executive elections -- from immigration to Second Amendment rights to government surveillance to foreign policy -- provide a canvas upon which wildly disparate ideas of some presumed national character get inscribed. With the campaigns for the White House and the Academy Awards both underway, films like Brooklyn and Bridge of Spies have begun to appear: movies endeavoring to make sense of a nation that has survived centuries of political and demographic flux. What is America, these films ask? And who gets to enjoy the identity and attendant rights of participation in this national community?
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Landmark Edina Cinema
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Director: 
Jay Roach
Producers: Kevin Kelly Brown, Monica Levinson, Michael London, Nimitt Mankad, John McNamara, Shivani Rawat, Janice Williams
Writers: John McNamara, Bruce Cook (book)
Cinematographer: Jim Denault
Editor: Alan Baumgarten
Music: Theodore Shapiro
Cast: Bryan Cranston, Michael Stuhlbarg, David Maldonado, John Getz, Diane Lane, Helen Mirren, James DuMont, Alan Tudyk, Louis C.K., Dan Bakkedahl, Richard Portnow, Roger Bart

Runtime: 124m.
Genre: Biography/Drama
Country: USA
US Theatrical Release: November 6, 2015
US Distributor: ​Bleecker Street Media

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The 33

13/11/2015

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by Lee Purvey
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​The 2010 mining accident depicted in The 33 -- in which that number of Chilean men found themselves trapped underground for more than two months before their eventual rescue -- exists too immediately in our collective memory for anyone to be surprised by the film’s ending. The image of the miners emerging one by one from a rescue capsule that lifted them 700 meters from beneath the earth was broadcast internationally to an audience intrigued by the peculiar drama of their story. Though well aware she is playing with an open hand in her new feature, director Patricia Riggen is surprisingly willing to let the same question that so many wondered five years ago -- Will the miners make it out alive? -- dictate the parameters of her retelling of this true event.
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Area Theaters

Director: 
Patricia Riggen
Producers: Robert Katz, Edward McGurn, Mike Medavoy
Writers: Mikko Alanne, Craig Borten, Michael Thomas, Jose Rivera (screen story), Héctor Tobar (book)
Cinematographer: Checco Varese
Editor: Michael Tronick
Music: James Horner
Cast: Antonio Banderas, Rodrigo Santoro, Juliette Binoche, James Brolin, Lou Diamond Phillips, Mario Casas, Jacob Vargas, Juan Pablo Raba, Oscar Nu
ñez, Tenoch Huerta, Marco Treviño

Runtime: 127m.
Genre: Biography/Drama/History
Countries: USA/Chile
US Theatrical Release: November 9, 2015
US Distributors: Alcon Entertainment, Warner Bros.

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