Day: February 12, 2015
Berlin Film Review: ‘Sworn Virgin’
February 12, 2015The rising profile of transgender issues in popular culture could clear an arthouse path for Laura Bispuri’s sensitive, deliberate debut feature, “Sworn Virgin,” though it’s not a film that actively advertises its own topicality. Set instead within a fascinating subset of Albanian society where female-to-male gender transition is a tradition as as old as the snow-blasted […]
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Berlin Film Review: ’13 Minutes’
February 12, 2015Before making yet another film about the Third Reich, it would be wise for filmmakers to ask why. Is it to “never forget,” or is it because there always seems to be funding available for a Nazi pic? Oliver Hirschbiegel’s cinematic return to the era, “13 Minutes,” resurrects the story of Georg Elser, Hitler’s would-be […]
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Film Review: ‘Humpback Whales’
February 12, 2015Some animals were simply made for the bigscreen, as the subjects of “Humpback Whales” prove all too swimmingly. It’s hard to believe there hasn’t already been a dedicated Imax nature doc about the massive creatures, but veteran filmmaker Greg MacGillivray (“Everest”) seizes the opportunity with striking imagery, which goes a long way toward compensating for his […]
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Film Review: ‘2015 Oscar-Nominated Short Films: Animation’
February 12, 2015The shortest of this year’s Oscar-nominated animated shorts, “A Single Life,” offers a zippy, mordantly funny time-travel journey through a woman’s later years. In a similar sense, the other four entries in this solid, sometimes inspired roundup all address the unique challenges of life at a particular stage — dealing with the wants and insecurities […]
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Berlin Film Review: ‘One & Two’
February 12, 2015A brother and sister cursed with special powers live in a rural farmhouse encircled by a tall, impenetrable wall in the enticingly conceptual North Carolina-based indie “One & Two.” Why are they sequestered? And is the wall there to protect them from people on the other side, or the other way around? Like an M. Night […]
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