Amazing Grace

Whirring helicopter blades slowly dissolve into the rotating ceiling fan of Capt. Willard’s Saigon apartment, as he drinks himself into oblivion. Lt. Col. Kilgore blasts Wagner from his infantry helicopters as they decimate a Viet Cong village. The mad genius, Col. Kurtz, sets himself up as a god, deep in the jungles of Cambodia. These…

Review coming. Directed by: Abderrahmane Sissako Produced by: Rémi Burah Etienne Comar Sylvie Pialat Olivier Père Benoît Quainon Gilles Sitbon Written by:Abderrahmane Sissako Kessen Tall Music by: Amin Bouhafa Cinematography by: Sofian El Fani Editing by: Nadia Ben Rachid Release Date: 2014 Running Time: 96 Language: French, Arabic, English Arts & Faith Lists: 2020 Top…

Marc Rothemund’s fact-based Sophie Scholl: The Final Days is a riveting portrait of a young woman of formidable intellect, dogged self-possession, and excruciatingly steady nerves. At 21, Sophia Magdalena Scholl (Julia Jentsch) is old enough to have outgrown the brash overconfidence of immaturity, but not too old for the purity and ardor of youthful idealism. She is…

Most family epics are downers, tragedies, stories of something organic that slowly unravels. But Yi Yi—Edward Yang’s painstakingly observant film about a couple of weeks in the life of a Taiwanese family—is a vast tapestry of discouragement, questioning, realization, and hope. Has there ever been a family epic that offered a richer tapestry of trouble and…

When we first see the priest, he is leaning over a grieving woman.  He is reading the Bible to her and praying for her.  He is doing his duty.  Father Barry has just arrived after longshoreman Joey Doyle was pushed to his death from the top of a tall building.  Edie is the woman who is in shreds on…

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is a slow film about a man fading quietly from this life in a death rite of bureaucratic and cultural ineptitude. But the carelessness that lends Lazarescu its excruciating pace creates a setting for a criticism of the Romanian health care system that transcends its own context. Mr. Lazarescu has had a headache…