Dead Man Walking

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…

Hirokazu Koreeda is a director seemingly preoccupied with death: his films Maborosi, Hana, and Still Walking all focus on characters dealing with the death of a loved one. After Life is also concerned with death, but Koreeda approaches his subject from a different angle in this film. Whereas his other films showed what happens to the living after someone they know…

Spirited Away, perhaps Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki’s greatest work of art, is the beautiful and engrossing tale of a young girl, Chihiro, who enters a magical world through an abandoned amusement park. Of course, such a summary necessarily fails to do justice to the grand imagination on display in the film. The comparisons to Alice…

John Michael McDonagh says that Calvary is the second in a trilogy starring Brendan Gleeson as an embodiment of contemporary Ireland, which is delightful for me, because the first two have each been my favorite films in their year of release. The earlier The Guard was a perfectly realized tragicomedy, hilarious and full of grace amidst horror. Calvary, like the…

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…

“You gotta laugh, ain’t ya sweetheart? Else you’d cry.” This observation from working-class Londoner Cynthia Rose Purley (Brenda Blethyn) is a perfect summary of the tone running through Mike Leigh’s Palme d’Or-winning melodramatic masterpiece. A slice-of-life portrayal of broken individuals navigating the complexity of their familial ties, Secrets & Lies perfectly captures the quiet intensity of ordinary suffering. Both comic…