?Sometimes you need to close your eyes and start over to see clearly.? No Man?s Land, from director Conor Allyn, is at one level a story about borders, but at a deeper level it is about the importance of welcoming the stranger in our midst. The Greer family has a small cattle ranch along the…
Oualid Mouaness?s 1982 is a story about fear and courage, love and war, innocence and maturity. The film is Lebanon?s official submission for Best International Film consideration. For fifth grade student Wissam (Mohamad Dalli) the end of year exams aren?t a problem; he?s a top student. What he is worried about is if he will…
What a strange year for films. Most of the blockbuster films planned for the summer and awards season are hiding out from COVID-19. Maybe they?ll find their ways to open theaters sometime this year. Many films wound up going straight to streaming services. In some ways that?s good?it means that people who don?t have an…
The ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes is credited with saying, ?Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever.? Those of us who drink may recognize that concept. A touch of alcohol can make us just a bit more outgoing, more witty, more entertaining. Of course, too…
Switzerland?s entry for Best International Feature, My Little Sister (Schweterlein), from directors St?phanie Chuat and V?ronica Reymond, is the story of a bond between siblings. It also asks the existential question of what is life if we cannot live it out? Lisa (Nina Hoss) is a playwright who has not been writing. Originally from Berlin,…
I recently had the chance to take part via Zoom in a roundtable interview with Paul Greengrass to discuss his film News of the World. The film tells the story of Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, an itinerant newsreader, who is tasked with returning Johanna, a young girl raised by the Kiowa, to her relatives. For…
Latvia?s official entry for the Best Foreign Feature Oscar is Blizzard of Souls from director Dzintars Dreiberg. The film is based on a book by Aleksandrs Grins, which was banned in the Soviet Union. The film has been the most watched film in the history Latvian cinema. The story follows Arturs (Oto Brantevics), a young…
Films have to ability to take us into unknown worlds?maybe through science fiction, or a setting in a different culture or time period. When I?m in a theater (ah, those were the days!) and the lights go down I feel a bit of excitement about where we will travel to today. The Reason I Jump,…
Sometimes what is going on around us colors what we see when we watch a film. For example, today (I?m writing on January 6, 2021) I chose to watch the wonderful documentary John Lewis: Good Trouble. Part way through, my wife came out and told me to turn on the news, where a seditious mob…
Some stories and the worlds they bring to us are too big for a single film. Sometimes that means trilogies or ongoing sequels without end (like Star Wars). But for Steve McQueen to bring us a vision of the world he grew up in, it required the Small Axe anthology. This is a series of…
