After winning the screenplay award at Cannes, and topping many industry professional’s top film lists of the year, “Portrait of a Lady on Fir”e comes into the Toronto International Film Festival with elevated buzz. It’s apparently clear now that France will be deciding between Céline Sciamma’s female love story or another Cannes breakout playing at […]
Evidence of the growing popularity in international films can be seen this year as two of the films vying for the Academy Award’s five slots feature Hollywood actors. Monos is the official submission from Colombia and stars Moises Arias (Ender’s Game) and Julianne Nicholson (August Osage County) in two of the more prominent roles. The
By the time you read this, “Roma” will have already won Best Foreign Language film at the 91st Academy Awards last month. “Dogman,” Italy’s submission for the race, won’t have even been nominated, and for good reason. Matteo Garrone, the visionary director of “Tale of Tales,” entirely misses the mark on this story that pits the wimp against
In a different year, “Birds of Passage,” along with a myriad of other mildly interesting foreign film submissions would have been sure bets for the Oscar lineup. However, the bar for foreign films has been raised extraordinary high now thanks to Alfonso Cuaron’s “Roma.” Colombia’s submission to the 91st Academy Awards didn’t make the nominee roster,
Samuel Maoz’s film Foxtrot is a perplexing drama that pushes and pulls the audience into so many varying emotional states, you never know what to expect. Inspired from Maoz’s own devastation, he has created a very distinct three act feature that explores irony in its cruelest forms. Foxtrot is Israel’s submission to the 90th Academy
Five-year-old smoking cigarettes. Even in the confines of Jonas Carpignano’s latest film, is still a disturbing sight. A Ciambra is the curious and odd official selection from Italy for the 90th Academy Awards foreign film submission. The young filmmaker takes the audience into a world of disadvantage where a family of Gypsy’s live a life
Ireland’s submission to the 90th Academy Awards is by far the worst of the selections I have reviewed. Song of Granite is also one of the worst films I’ve ever seen. To be fair, Pat Collins black and white film is mixed media, combining documentary style interviews, recreations of characters and songs with archival footage.
A colleague of mine said, “if the film is too much ‘inside-baseball’, then it fails, and that’s on the filmmaker for not setting up his world clear enough.” For me that’s what happens here in The Square, the Cannes Palm d’Or winner and very likely foreign film nominee at the 90th Academy Awards. If we
Even though the 88th Annual Academy Awards are in the books, foreign film nominee A War is finally making its theatrical debut. It’s the 13th time Denmark has been nominated in the category, certainly a country favorite of the committee. However, after seeing a variety of the foreign film submissions this year, A War doesn’t
Norway’s submission to the 88th Annual Academy Awards wasn’t nominated for best foreign film. Still it’s an impressive piece of cinema for the country, breaking box office records on opening day. Yet when you widen the scope and compare The Wave to other disaster films, like Oscar nominated South American film The Impossible, it’s not