FANTASIA20 REVIEW: Fellwechselzeit [Time of Moulting] [2020]

What about final wishes? Young Stephanie (Zelda Espenschied) is utterly alone. It doesn’t matter that she lives with her parents (Freya Kreutzkam‘s Mom and Bernd Wolf‘s Reinhardt) because their physical presence pales in comparison to their emotional absence. And nothing will ever change. It can’t. Stephanie’s mother is too far lost in the past to think about the girl’s childhood when memories of her parents keep her forever longing for the childhood she herself wasn’t afforded. Stephanie’s father is conversely too busy living in the present to worry about anyone…

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FANTASIA20 REVIEW: Freies Land [Free Country] [2020]

My dream killed them. From post-Francoist State Spain to post-reunified Germany, director Christian Alvart moves Alberto Rodríguez and Rafael Cobos‘ Goya Award-winning thriller Marshland to a newly democratized remote village outside of Berlin via Freies Land [Free Country]. Considering detectives Patrick Stein (Trystan Pütter) and Markus Bach (Felix Kramer) are thrust together despite building their careers in the West and East respectively, Alvart and co-writer Siegfried Kamml have ample room with which to retool things through a prism of their own nation’s potential for dark political secrets and guilt-ridden pasts.…

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FANTASIA20 REVIEW: Une sirène à Paris A Mermaid in Paris] [2020]

The ghosts of my memories are leaning on the bar. Gaspard (Nicolas Duvauchelle) has lived his entire life in pursuit of fulfilling a promise from his grandmother that he’s never quite understood. She was the matriarch of a family that reached well past blood to encompass a group of artistic “Surprisers” who gathered at her famed Flowerburger—an underground speakeasy of sorts doubling as a safe haven for anti-fascist disruptors during the war where song and dance led to poems and love. With a wealth of important Parisian history many will…

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REVIEW: Спутник [Sputnik] [2020]

Victors are not judged. Heroism comes at a cost, but rarely is it the hero’s to bear. They reap the benefits, bathe in praise, and maybe even start believing they’ve earned it regardless of whether the title was bestowed upon them for saving lives or simply being a “pioneer.” Those who suffer are the families left behind who compete for this hero’s time and those faceless strangers the hero trampled upon with a sense of entitlement and lack of remorse. A hero exists for what could be while that which…

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REVIEW: Ut og stjæle hester [Out Stealing Horses] [2019]

I’ll be damned. Tragedy strikes forty years after moving to Sweden and the loss is so profound that Trond (Stellan Skarsgård) discovers it difficult to continue on as before. When your life is changed so fully and abruptly, a desire to “pick up the pieces” very often pales in comparison to simply leaving them behind. Gone was his tether to the city and connection to his possessions. Gone was his sense of home itself. So he decides to leave and find another in the desolate countryside of Norway. Trond escapes…

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REVIEW: Perempuan Tanah Jahanam [Impetigore] [2019]

We just don’t want what your family left behind. Life has never been easy for Maya (Tara Basro). Raised by her aunt with no knowledge of her parents’ history, she’s struggled finding her place in the city. Her sole comfort is best friend Dini (Marissa Anita), a tollbooth operator like herself who’s promised to help open a clothing business if they ever save enough money. So when a strange man drives through her lane on a deserted evening three separate times, it’s hard not to fear the worst. No matter…

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REVIEW: Family Romance, LLC [2020]

We can only do what we really are. Leave it to the Japanese to create an industry where you hire actors to fill-in for every occasion. The father of the bride can’t attend the wedding due to illness? Hire a performer to take his place so the absence isn’t noticeable (no sitcom antics a la headsets via “Arrested Development” or motorized computers via “The Big Bang Theory”). Unable to relive the excitement you felt upon winning the lottery? Pay someone to randomly surprise you as though you’ve won again to…

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REVIEW: La vérité [The Truth] [2019]

You can’t trust memory. Despite the title of her autobiography being La vérité [The Truth], it takes a while before Fabienne Dangeville (Catherine Deneuve) says what we know to actually be true. Her stories about being a loving mother in text are just that: stories. Despite being a screenwriter, not even Fabienne’s daughter Lumir (Juliette Binoche) could conjure an anecdote that bore any resemblance to such an idyllic façade if she tried. But while everything boils down to what the aging actress finally expresses during a defensive fit of anger,…

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REVIEW: Selvmordsturisten [Exit Plan] [2019]

Life never stops. Life is forever. Max (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) is an insurance adjuster who just told his latest client that her claim wouldn’t be approved since her husband’s six-month disappearance isn’t confirmation of death. It’s a revelation that leaves her distressed not because she won’t be getting the money, but because she’ll have to continue living with the possibility he might still be alive. She wishes for a body because it would provide answers. She wishes Max would sign-off on the plan anyway because doing so would supply a legal…

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REVIEW: Le daim [Deerskin] [2019]

Meet the beast. This is a mid-life crisis. Strike that. This is a mid-life crisis in a Quentin Dupieux movie. I add that clarifier because most people don’t turn into serial killers when buying a high-priced item or having an affair will suffice. But most people aren’t like Georges (Jean Dujardin)—he does all three. Well, strike that from the record too. We don’t actually know if he’s had an affair. All we know for certain is that his wife never wants to see him again. Withdrawing 7,500 euros from the…

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REVIEW: Vitalina Varela [2019]

Fear can also get to Heaven. When Pedro Costa knocked on Vitalina Varela‘s door in Lisbon, he was looking for a house in which to shoot some of his latest film Horse Money. What he got instead was an impossibly tragic story about how her long-awaited arrival from Cape Verde happened three days after her estranged husband’s death. Apart for decades and forever holding out hope for the promise of one day reuniting, fate intervened at the eleventh hour to leave her in a new country with nobody she could…

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