I?m sure that many people head to the kitchen for dessert when the Oscar is awarded for Best Foreign Language Film. But that is one of the categories that I pay special attention to. Films that come from other countries and cultures often give us wonderful insights...
?Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world. Have mercy on us. Give us peace.? A group of aging priests live in a house outside a remote seaside town, looked after by a former nun. They spend their days in recreation and training a greyhound for the local races....
Oscar-nominated (Best Foreign Language Film) Embrace of the Serpent is an artful exploration of the spirituality of natural religion. It is the story of Karamakata, a shaman, and two journeys he undertakes many years apart with European ethnologists. The story is...
?We?re all on the same endless highway.? Southbound is an anthology of five loosely-related horror stories, each from different directors and writing teams. Some of the films have a bit of a Twilight Zone feel to them. The mood is set with a deep melodious radio voice...
?Don?t blame me for being a man.? What is the cost of infidelity within a marriage? Should it just be assumed that a man will wander? What about a woman? In the Shadow of Women takes a look at such questions in the lives of a young couple. Pierre (Stanislas Merhar)...
The films nominated for Best Short Documentary may be the ones most people are likely to see because they often find their way to PBS, or (as is the case with three of this year?s nominees) are HBO documentaries and will be playing there. The short documentaries often...
Shorts are the incubators of filmmaking. It is by making short films that the filmmakers of the future learn their craft. Often in that learning process, a filmmaker will make something that is not just a learning exercise, but is a quality product. Each year a few of...
Animated films come in a variety of styles. That is certainly the case with the five films nominated in the Oscar category of Best Animated Short. Those films (along with some other animated films to fill out the program) are playing in select theaters to allow people...
?We live as we can, not as we want.? Aferim! is set in 1835 in the Balkans. It is a time in which the structures of society were clearly stratified. Everybody had their place?and nearly all groups looked down on other groups. For filmmaker Radu Jude, this is an...