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The quality and quantity of Israeli movie exports have increased significantly in recent years. Most of those features, while well-made, tend to be serious - not surprising considering the volatile situation those living there find themselves in. ...

Filtered through a prism of Italian neo-realism, The Battle of Algiers is an unflinching portrayal of how high-minded ideals get trampled underfoot in the heat of war. The film is relevant to modern-day audiences not so much in the specificity ...

The Beat that My Heart Skipped is director Jacques Audiard's re-imagination of James Toback's Fingers. Although Audiard and his co-writer, Tonino Benacquista, have retained the premise and some of the ideas of the original, this is, for the most par...

Memory: it's an integral element to our definition of who we are. In our lives, most of us forget far more than we remember, but our ability to recall events, faces, and names forms the building blocks of our identity. It's no surprise, therefore,...

"Time never dies. The circle is not round." As well as being a repeated line in Before the Rain, this statement clarifies director Milcho Manchevski's perspective. The film is an exploration of the vicious circle that is violence in the Balkans,...

If the goal of Bel Ami was to capture a fleeting flavor of Dangerous Liaisons, the intention should be deemed a failure. Based on Guy de Maupassant's 1885 novel, Bel Ami is the meandering, unfocused tale of the rise of an unprincipled opportunist i...

Deep within the cloistered confines of a convent, a young nun becomes embroiled in an intensely erotic lesbian affair while using her wiles to advance and maintain her position. While this might easily be the synopsis of a porn movie, octogenarian...

The Best Man is not what it initially seems to be. Despite starting out with all the earmarks of a fairly ordinary romantic comedy, the project develops into a surprisingly effective look at a man's quest for rebirth after events topple him from a...

Is it A Bigger Splash or A Bigger Bore?  Despite a strong cast, gorgeous cinematography, and a suffocating sense of sexual tension, this movie takes far too long to get off the ground. When it finally does - more than an hour into the 120+ minut...

Black Girl is the feature debut of acclaimed African author-turned-filmmaker Ousmane Sembene. Clocking in at roughly an hour in length, the movie suffers from a number of what might be considered “teething” flaws: uneven pacing, wooden act...