Shoplifters became the first Japanese film to win the Palme D’or since 1997. Typically that honor shortlists the winner for the Academy Awards best foreign language top five. Hirokazu Koreeda’s slow, meditative drama about a family living in poverty is the type of cinematic story that unfolds through patience and understanding. Shoplifters presents some difficult […]
In the hands of Wes Anderson, a stop-motion animated film with mostly dogs as characters and an allegorical theme will captivate children and adults without pandering to either. Probably by coincidence, writer-director Anderson, with the help of Roman Coppola, Jason Schwartzman, and Kunichi Nomura, employ themes of topical relevance today: government corruption, foreign influences on
Icon Martin Scorsese’s latest film Silence is a 20-year passion project. It feels more like something he needed to do for himself (and maybe producer Irwin Winkler who calls it his best film), rather than something made for a universal audience. The 74-year-old director has made his mark in the history of cinema, and for
Two-time Oscar winner Mel Gibson (“Braveheart”, “Apocalypto”) continues his 2016 comeback, this time back in the director’s chair, for the first time in a decade. “Hacksaw Ridge” is based on the equally incredible and humbling true story of WWII Conscientious Objector Desmond T. Doss. Gibson brings together his vast war film experience to embed the
Best known for his 2003 international cult classic Old Boy, South Korean director Chan-wook Park has been making waves with his latest The Handmaiden. Crafted specifically for the stereotypical, single, live at home, surrounded by comic book memorabilia fan boy; The Handmaiden titillates more than it entertains. Told in a Quentin Tarantino chapter style, involving
I love the sheer humanness of this Japanese film with deliberate exposition and minimal music, which highlights the visual beauty on the screen and eloquent mindfulness of the dialog. Writer of the screenplay and director Hirokazu Koreeda has adapted Akimi Yoshida’s diary into a “moviescape” [I don’t know how else to put it] in which