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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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Dog Lady

13/4/2016

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by Jeremy Meckler
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(Re-posted from Jeremy's Rotterdam Roundup.)

Dogs felt like a strong theme amongst this year's Tiger competitors, but in La mujer de los perros they play their most prominent role. This near-wordless meditative drama follows a reclusive woman—played by co-director Verónica Llinás—who lives in an abandoned shack along with a pack of 10 or 15 wild dogs. The dogs follow our wordless protagonist everywhere, even in her frequent forays into town to scrounge and steal supplies from wherever she can.
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MSPIFF
Wednesday, April 13, 7:00 pm
Thursday, April 14, 7:00 pm


Directors: Laura Citarella, Verónica Llinás
Producer: Mariano Llinás
Writers: Laura Citarella, Verónica Llinás
Cinematographer: Soledad Rodríguez
Editor: Ignacio Masllorens
Music: Juana Molina
Cast: Verónica Llinás, Juliana Muras, Germán de Silva, Juana Zalazar

Runtime: 98m.
Genre: Drama
Country: Argentina


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Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World

13/4/2016

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by Benjamin Voigt
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A loose, episodic account of the Internet’s incursions into our public and private lives, Werner Herzog’s latest documentary is an exercise in breathlessness. Like much of his recent work, Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World is essentially expository, even if it’s more interested in eccentricity and excitement than information. Indeed, the film begins in the birthplace of the Internet, a drab UCLA computer lab, but quickly departs for stranger shores, exploring subjects ranging from online harassment to artificial intelligence to Internet connectivity on Mars.
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MSPIFF
Tuesday, April 12, 5:15 pm
Thursday, April 21, 7:20 pm


Director: Werner Herzog
Producers: Werner Herzog, Rupert Maconick
Cinematographer: Peter Zeitlinger
Editor: Marco Capalbo
Music: Mark Degli Anotoni

Runtime: 98m.
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

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Eisenstein in Guanajuato

13/4/2016

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by Peter Valelly
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In his latest opus, veteran oddball filmmaker Peter Greenaway brings his ornate, grotesque, and visually immaculate style to bear on a particular and peculiar chapter in the life of Soviet ur-auteur Sergei Eisenstein. As its title suggests, Eiseinstein in Guanajuato follows the iconic filmmaker during an extended stay in Mexico. In the early 1930s, Eisenstein arrived in Guanajuato seeking to create an epic film chronicling Mexican history and politics, sponsored financially by left-wing muckraking American novelist Upton Sinclair. The project never quite came together, but not before Eisenstein blew through his budget shooting dozens of miles of film—all while allegedly undergoing a sexual awakening thanks to an affair with Jorge Palomino y Cañedo, a young academic who had been appointed his guide to Mexico.
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MSPIFF
Wednesday, April 13, 4:30 pm
Sunday, April 17, 7:10pm


Director: Peter Greenaway
Producers: Bruno Felix,
San Fu Maltha, Cristina Velasco, Femke Wolting
Writer: Peter Greenaway
Cinematographer: Reinier van Brummelen
Editor: Elmer Leupen
Cast: Elmer Bäck, Luis Alberti, Maya Zapata

Runtime: 105m.
Genre: Drama/History
Country: Netherlands/Mexico/Finland/Belgium

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Kaili Blues

13/4/2016

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by Joseph Houlihan
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Kaili Blues, the first feature film by director Bi Gan set in the southern Chinese province of Guizhou, offers a vivid and dreamlike meditation.
 
It begins with the text of the Diamond Sutra, a central sutra for Mahayana Buddhists, emphasizing non-attachment and the world as illusion. This sutra especially empowers the persistent interrogation of human laws, and perceptions of reality. The plot follows a doctor at a small clinic, as he navigates the relationship with his brother and nephew, and the persistence of loss surrounding parents.
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MSPIFF
Wednesday, April 13, 9:15 pm


Director: Bi Gan
Producer: Wang Zijan, Shan Zoulong, Li Zhaoyu
Writers: Bi Gan
Cinematographer: Wang Tianxing
Editor: Qin Yanan
Music: Lim Giong
Cast: Chen Yongzhong, Zhao Daqing, Luo Feiyang, Xie Lixun, Zeng Shuai, Qin Guangqian, Yu Shixue, Guo Yue, Liu Linyang, Yang Zuohua

Runtime: 110m.
Genre: Drama
Country: China


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Above and Below

10/4/2016

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by Jeremy Meckler
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(Re-posted from Jeremy's Rotterdam Roundup.)

Nicolas Steiner’s dizzying documentary look at the unseen underbelly of the American Southwest is literally incredible—its shots are so beautifully choreographed and photographed and its subjects so forthcoming that it leaves you incredulous about its veracity. The vistas are sweeping and the camerawork is flawless—suddenly floating up into a crane shot out of the blue without losing any of its handheld intimacy. Semi-standard documentary interviews are intercut with stunning non-narrative images, like a man swimming alone in a frame of nearly opaque sky-blue water or thousands of Ping Pong balls riding the flood wave through a storm drain, and while this artistry does pull away slightly from their stories, it elevates the film above the limitations of conventional documentary. This is as beautiful as any art film but also true.
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MSPIFF
Sunday, April 10, 7:00pm
Monday, April 11, 6:50 pm


Director: Nicolas Steiner
Producer: Helge Albers, Brigitte Hofer, Cornelia Seitler
Writers: Nicolas Steiner
Cinematographer: Markus Nestroy
Editor: Kaya Inan
Music: John Gürtler, Jan Miserre, Lars Voges

Runtime: 110m.
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA/Switzerland/Germany


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Endorphine

10/4/2016

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by Peter Valelly
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Directed by André Turpin, who has also served as a cinematographer for queer Québécois filmmaking wunderkind Xavier Dolan, among others, Endorphine is a masterclass in style in search of a stronger foundation of substance to ground itself in.
 
Stripped down to its most straightforward thread of plot—something along the lines of: “a teenage girl grapples with the trauma of witnessing her mother’s murder”--Endorphine might not sound like a film that would turn out to be a mindbending meditation on the nature of time, the permeability of reality, and the power of the unconscious mind. But that’s exactly what the film becomes over the course of its lean 83-minute runtime. Slowly and fitfully at first, the film veers into choppy narrative digressions and strange loops. Then, around the halfway mark, the story leaps ahead into the abstract while still remaining just barely tethered to its emotional core.
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MSPIFF
Sunday, April 10, 9:15 pm
Monday, April 18, 9:30 pm


Director: André Turpin
Producers: Luc Déry,
Kim McCraw
Writer: André Turpin
Cinematographer: Josée Deshaies
Editor: Sophie Leblond
Music: François Lafontaine
Cast: Sophie Nélisse, Mylène MacKay, Lise Roy, Guy Thauvette, Monia Chokri, Stéphane Crête, Anne-Marie Cadieux, Théodore Pellerin, Fanny Migneault-Lecavalier

Runtime: 84m.
Genre: Drama/Sci-fi
Country: Canada


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Chevalier

9/4/2016

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by Jeremy Meckler
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Athina Rachel Tsangari takes the fragility of masculinity as her focus in Chevalier, a brief, sardonic drama that seems to cut to the quick of ego-driven machismo as a competition among a group of men gets out of hand. The group—a hodgepodge of family and work acquaintances—is on a vacation together, spearfishing and relaxing on a rented yacht. As a way to pass the time, they devise a game called chevalier, in which they each make up some contest in which all the others must compete for points. The one with the most points at the end of the trip is awarded a chevalier ring to prove that they are the “best in general.”
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MSPIFF
Saturday, April 9, 9:50 pm
Tuesday, April 12, 9:45 pm


Director: Athina Rachel Tsangari
Producers: Maria Hatzakou, Athina Rachel Tsangari
Writers: Efthimis Filippou, Athina Rachel Tsangari
Cinematographer: Christos Karamanis
Editors: Matthew Johnson, Yorgos Mavropsaridis
Music: Juana Molina
Cast: Yorgos Kendros, Panos Koronis, Vangelis Mourikis, Makis Papadimitriou, Yorgos Pirpassopoulos, Sakis Rouvas

Runtime: 99m.
Genre: Drama/Comedy
Country: Greece

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