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Keanu

30/4/2016

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by Matt Levine
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​Continuing the tradition of sublime ridiculousness established by sketch-comedy classics such as The State and Mr. Show, Key & Peele provided some of the best comedy on television from 2012 to 2015. Even when the show’s ideas fell flat (an inevitability for any show that whips up so much content from week to week), it was enlivened by the presence of its stars and creators: tall, lanky, often-manic Keegan-Michael Key, who can be laugh-out-loud funny simply with the tone of his voice; and droll, stocky Jordan Peele, a master of straight-faced absurdity. Whether the show was embracing its love for the truly ludicrous, tackling controversial subjects, or lampooning elements of black culture, the duo’s chemistry and willingness to embrace any half-baked idea was ingratiating at worst and euphoric at best.
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Area Theaters

Director: Peter Atencio
Producers: Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, Peter Principato, Paul Young, Joel Zadak
Writers: Jordan Peele, Alex Rubens
Cinematographer: Jas Shelton
Editor: Nicholas Monsour
Music: Steve Jablonsky, Nathan Whitehead
Cast: Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, Tiffany Haddish, Nia Long, Method Man, Darrell Britt-Gibson, Jason Mitchell, Jamar Malachi Neighbors, Luis Guzmán, Will Forte, Rob Huebel

Runtime: 98m.
Genre: Comedy
Country: USA
US Theatrical Release: April 29, 2016
US Distributor: Warner Bros. 


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Fireworks Wednesday

26/4/2016

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by Matt Levine
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If you’re wondering why Asghar Farhadi’s acclaimed third feature, Fireworks Wednesday, hasn’t gotten an American release until now—ten years after its original release in Iran—the answer is unsurprising, if depressingly familiar: money. In 2006, Asghar Farhadi was a less recognized name to international movie lovers than Jafar Panahi, whose Offside was released the same year. So while Fireworks Wednesday’s original American release was limited to the festival circuit, its belated distribution ten years later—after A Separation (2011) and The Past (2013) have cemented Farhadi as one of modern cinema’s great humanist filmmakers—amends that mistake, proving why Farhadi deserves to be mentioned alongside his compatriots Panahi and Abbas Kiarostami (though his style, tone, and subjects often differ markedly from them).
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Lagoon Cinema

Director: Asghar Farhadi
Producer: Jamal Sadatian
Writers: Asghar Farhadi, Mani Haghighi
Cinematographer: Hossein Jafarian
Editor: Hayedeh Safiyari
Music: Peyman Yazdanian
Cast: Hamid Farrokhnazhed, Hediyeh Tehrani, Taraneh Alidoosti, Pantea Bahram, Sahar Dolatshahi, Hooman Seyadi, Matin Heydarnia

Runtime: 102m.
Genre: Drama
Country: Iran
Premiere: February 8, 2006 - Iran
US Theatrical Release: March 16, 2016
US Distributor: ​Grasshopper Film


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Sleeping Giant

17/4/2016

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by Matt Levine
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Great coming-of-age movies make us feel the wistful beauty of youth, its sense of invincibility and vulnerability at once. Bad coming-of-age movies make us grateful we’ve matured past such a banal, self-obsessed period of our lives. Sadly, Sleeping Giant fits into the latter category. This Canadian film has won a handful of festival awards, but it’s hard to see why; the ensemble (both young and old) contributes grating, unsubtle performances, and writer-director Andrew Cividino (extending his own 2014 short film) doesn’t know how or when to rein in their performances for the sake of something more visual and mysterious. The actors were encouraged to improvise heavily, but in this case that results more in overstated theatrics than unflinching honesty.
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MSPIFF
Sunday, April 17, 8:50 pm
Saturday, April 23, 9:55 pm


Director: Andrew Cividino
Writers: Andrew Cividino
Cinematographer: James Klopko
Editor: James Vandewater
Music: Chris Thornborrow, Bruce Peninsula
Cast: Jackson Martin, Reece Moffett, Nick Serino, David Disher, Erika Brodzky, Katelyn McKerracher, Rita Serino, Lorraine Philp, Kyle Bertrand

Runtime: 90m.
Genre: Drama
Country: Canada


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The High Sun

15/4/2016

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by Matt Levine
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Anthology films are a tough undertaking, often prone to a measure of unevenness and redundancy; maybe no other narrative structure is more difficult to sustain. This is true of The High Sun, a Croat-Serbian-Slovenian co-production with three parts linked by the theme of love during wartime. The same two actors, Tihana Lazovic and Goran Markovic, appear as starcrossed romantic protagonists in three different time periods a decade apart—1991, 2001, and 2011. Each story has something to do with deep-seated hatred between Serbs and Croats endangering love, and if each tale too often succumbs to predictable clichés—from snickering, gun-toting soldiers to hunky handymen to drug trips conveyed via blurry lenses and weird camera angles—they’re also enlivened by heated performances and some beautiful widescreen cinematography (by Marko Brdar).
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MSPIFF
Friday, April 15 2:10 pm


Director: Dalibor Matanić
Producer: Ankica Jurić Tilić

Writer: Dalibor Matanić
Cinematographer: Marko Brdar
Editor: Tomislav Pavlic
Music: Alen Sinkauz, Nenad Sinkauz
Cast: Tihana Lazović, Goran Marković, Nives Ivanković, Dado Ćosić, Stipe Radoja, Trpimir Jurkić, Mira Banjac

Runtime: 123m.
Genre: Drama/War
Country: Croatia/Serbia/Slovenia

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April and the Extraordinary World

15/4/2016

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by Matt Levine
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​In a political climate where scientific facts are often dismissed in favor of bipartisan vitriol, fantasy movies about noble scientists preventing the end of the world have suddenly become chic. Last year’s Tomorrowland envisioned an alternate universe where scientists are jettisoned to start fresh, escaping the greed and political turmoil that have almost guaranteed the earth’s destruction. This year, it’s the French animated fantasy April and the Extraordinary World that depicts a dystopian planet stuck in the Dark Ages after the twentieth century’s greatest scientists go missing. Surprisingly morbid yet consistently exciting, April and the Extraordinary World offers a somewhat tepid indictment of man’s petty quests for power, but the real thrills are provided by gorgeous animation and a unique steampunk setting that resembles Mad Max transplanted to fin de siècle France.
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Lagoon Cinema

Directors: Christian Desmares, Franck Ekinci
Producers: Michel Dutheil, Franck Ekinci, Marc Jousset
Writers: Franck Ekinci, Benjamin Legrand, Jacques Tardi (graphic novel)
Editor: Nazim Meslem
Music: Valentin Hadjadj
French-Language Voice Cast: Marion Cotillard, Philippe Katerine, Jean Rochefort, Olivier Gourmet, Marc-
André Grondin, Bouli Lanners, Anne Coesens, Macha Grenon
English-Language Voice Cast: Marion Cotillard, Paul Giamatti, Tony Hale, Susan Sarandon, J.K. Simmons


Runtime: 106m.
Genre: Animated/Adventure/Comedy
Countries: France/Belgium/Canada
Premiere: June 15, 2015 – Annecy Film Festival
US Theatrical Release: March 25, 2016
US Distributor: Gkids


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My Golden Days

15/4/2016

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by Matt Levine
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​My Golden Days ends with a freeze-frame even more powerful than the one that closes François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (1959): youth interrupted at the peak of its hopefulness, as though the characters happened to look life in its eyes and were stopped in their tracks. French artworks have a long history of bottling the bittersweet brevity of youth, from writers such as Marcel Proust and Jean-Jacques Rousseau to filmmakers like Truffaut and Louis Malle. It’s a difficult balance, evoking both the joy and the sadness of being young, its sense of infinite expectancy and lurking fatalism. At its best, this focus on youth seems to convey, in a few short hours or several hundred pages, the electricity of being alive.
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Lagoon Cinema

Director: Arnaud Desplechin
Producer: Pascal Caucheteux
Writers: Arnaud Desplechin, Julie Peyr
Cinematographer: Irina Lubtschansky
Editor: Laurence Briaud
Music: 
Grégoire Hetzel, Mike Kourtzer
Cast: Quentin Dolmaire, Lou Roy-Lecollinet, Mathieu Amalric, Dinara Drukarova, Cécile Garcia-Fogel, Françoise Lebrun, Irina Vavilova, Olivier Rabourdin, Elyot Milshtein, Pierre Andrau, Lily Taieb, 
Raphaël Cohen

Runtime: 123m.
Genre: Drama
Country: France
Premiere: May 15, 2015 – Cannes Film Festival
US Theatrical Release: March 18, 2016
US Distributor: Magnolia Pictures

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Aferim!

14/4/2016

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by Matt Levine
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Like Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller or Pasolini’s The Hawks and the Sparrows, the Romanian Aferim! is a beautiful, funny, sometimes invigorating film about (in part) the awfulness of man. This apparent contradiction actually doesn’t seem too unusual given the movie’s unique setting: 1830s Wallachia (today a region of Romania), a time in which power-hungry boyars and upper-class merchants ruled over Gypsy slaves and “lowly” foreigners such as Turks and Russians. A lawman named Constandin (Teodor Corban) and his son/deputy Ionita (Mihai Comanoiu) search the mountainous terrain for an escaped slave named Carfin (Cuzin Toma), who’s been accused of sleeping with the wife of one brutally sadistic boyar (always referred to as “Bright Lord” by his constituents). As Constandin and Ionita encounter a motley ensemble who voice a horrible litany of prejudices and hatreds, one might hope that the two main characters will undergo a change of heart and allow Carfin to escape unharmed. Aferim!, however, stays true to its bitterly cynical worldview, depicting characters who care only about themselves in a struggle simply to survive.
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MSPIFF
Saturday, April 9, 9:20 pm
Thursday, April 21, 4:55 pm


Director: Radu Jude
Producer: Ada Solomon
Writers: Radu Jude, Florin Lazarescu
Cinematographer: Marius Panduru
Editor: Catalin Cristutiu
Cast: Teodor Corban, Mihai Comanoiu, Cuzin Toma, Alexandru Dabija, Alexandru Bindea, Luminata Gheorghiu, Victor Rebengiuc, Victor Rebengiuc, Alberto Dinache

Runtime: 106m.
Genre: Drama
Country: Romania/Bulgaria/Czech Republic


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Embrace of the Serpent

3/4/2016

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by Matt Levine
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​Ripples on the surface of the Amazon River form the first image of Embrace of the Serpent, shimmering in black-and-white and seeming to conceal something unknown inside. From the very start, the film reveals its links to surrealism, specifically when one character implores another (before a transcendental drug trip) to experience a world “realer than reality,” recalling one of surrealism’s main credos: that there’s a hidden layer of reality right before our eyes, one that we could see if only we looked hard enough. The surrealism of Embrace of the Serpent, though, is different, more melancholy and more humane. It stems from the belief that human life is all interconnected, diverging from a spiritual place that may or may not be found within the jungles of the Amazon.
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Uptown Theatre

Director: Ciro Guerra
Producer: Cristina Gallego
Writer: Ciro Guerra
Cinematographer: David Gallego
Editor: Etienne Boussac
Music: Nascuy Linares
Cast: Nilbio Torres, Jan Bijvoet, Antonio Bolivar, Brionne Davis, Yauenk
ü Migue, Nicolás Cancino, Luigi Sciammana

Runtime: 124m.
Genre: Drama/Adventure
Countries: Colombia/Venezuela/ Argentina
Premiere: May 15, 2015 – Cannes Film Festival
US Theatrical Release: February 17, 2016
US Distributor: Oscilloscope 

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Creative Control

19/3/2016

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by Matt Levine
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Creative Control is absolutely a movie of our time; whether or not that’s a good thing depends on your tolerance for the Digital Age and its accompanying self-obsession. To be sure, the film condemns this shallow culture, ultimately making the point that the preponderance of digital devices and social-media platforms in our lives forces us to crave an artificiality that actually makes us miserable. But in order to arrive at this sensitive, humane conclusion, Creative Control wades through a lot of narcissism and glibness, as infatuated as it is dismayed with its characters’ flaws.
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Lagoon Cinema

Director: Benjamin Dickinson
Producers: Mark De Pace, Zachary Mortensen, Melody C. Roscher, Craig Shilowich
Writers: Benjamin Dickinson, Micah Bloomberg
Cinematographer: Adam Newport-Berra
Editors: Megan Brooks, Andrew Hasse
Music: Drazen Bosnjak
Cast: Benjamin Dickinson, Nora Zehetner, Dan Gill, Alexia Rasmussen, Reggie Watts, Gavin McInnes, Paul Manza, Jay Eisenberg, Himanshu Suri

Runtime: 97m.
Genre: Drama/Comedy
Country: USA
Premiere: March 14, 2015 - South by Southwest Film Festival
US Theatrical Release: March 11, 2016
US Distributor: ​Amazon Studios  


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The Witch

19/2/2016

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by Matt Levine
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First-time directors throughout the history of film have turned to the horror genre to make an indelible mark. “Godfather of Gore” Herschell Gordon Lewis made a living knocking out schlocky horror pics on minuscule budgets; John Carpenter defined a subgenre with his first feature, Halloween (1978). David Lynch avoided the confines of the horror genre per se, but still made terrifying early shorts and one of the most hauntingly beautiful feature debuts with Eraserhead (1977); and a few decades later, Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick, with the help of some shrewd and influential online marketing, made blurry handheld video truly frightening in The Blair Witch Project (1999). 
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Area Theaters

Director: Robert Eggers
Producers: Daniel Bekerman, Lars Knudsen, Jodi Redmond, Rodrigo Teixeira, Jay Van Hoy
Writer: Robert Eggers
Cinematographer: Jarin Blaschke
Editor: Louise Ford
Music: Mark Korven
Cast: Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Harvey Scrimshaw, Ellie Grainger, Lucas Dawson, Bathsheba Garnett

Runtime: 93m.
Genre: Horror/Drama
Country: USA/UK/Canada/Brazil
Premiere: January 23, 2015 – Sundance Film Festival
US Theatrical Release: February 19, 2016
US Distributor: A24

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