Every once in a while, you come across a film that has everything: Compelling character study, gripping drama, incisive social critique.  French director Jacques Audiard’s Oscar-nominated (now Oscar-robbed, some have argued) A Prophet is that kind of film.

Tahar Rahim as Malik El Djebena in A Prophet

Set in a contemporary French prison, A Prophet follows Malik El-Djebena (newcomer Tahar Rahim) through a six-year sentence that turns him from an angry, illiterate adolescent with a penchant for beating up cops to a murderous tool of the Corsican Mafia led by a Godfather-like character named Luciani.  Coerced into his first murder by the Corsicans after entering prison friendless and powerless, he soon develops a taste for the money and influence organized crime can bring.

Read more…

Going into the Oscars, almost nobody (including me) has ever seen the short films. And, after the awards ceremony, most people quickly forget them.

Landmark Varsity is giving us a chance to remedy that this weekend, showing both the live-action and the animated 2010 Oscar-nominated shorts.

Read more…

This week, I Totally Agree with A.O. Scott’s perceptive review of The Exploding Girl.

When I first saw this film at SIFF last year, I was disappointed, even though it’s the kind of movie I generally like: restrained, contemplative, open-ended, with dreamy cinematography.  For reasons I couldn’t pinpoint, though, I left bored and annoyed. Read more…

Kathryn Bigelow becomes the first woman to win Best Director at the Oscars

It was a big weekend for women directors who tackle subjects normally reserved for their male counterparts. The big story, of course, is about Kathryn Bigelow, who last night became the first woman ever to take home the Best Directing Oscar for the independent war drama The Hurt Locker.

Bigelow, who rose to prominence with 1991’s Point Break, has never been one to stick to traditional women’s fare (i.e., rom-coms or period pieces), instead running with action and adventure films. To quote Twitter user gruber, “So proud that a woman has finally won Best Director and Best Picture, and that the movie she made featured huge explosions.”

But Bigelow wasn’t the only woman bringing home a fancy trophy this weekend. Friday night, local director Lynn Shelton—also treading on male turf (the minimalist mumblecore genre, which is dominated by pointy-headed male directors)—won the Independent Spirit John Cassavetes award for her lo-fi drama Humpday. (My review here.)

Read more…

The Northwest Film Forum’s 10th annual ByDesign festival opened last night, and will run all week.
Curated by designer and associate programmer Peter Lucas, the ByDesign fest takes a week every year to celebrate the intersection of design and film.
Tonight,  the brilliant Tania Kupczak will moderate a discussion between local animators Read more…

This week, I Totally Agree with the hilarious frivolity of  Slate’s Oscar coverage. Usually by this point, I can’t wait for the Oscars to be over, so I can hear about something else, but reading Dana Stevens’ and Troy Patterson’s emails to each other about, among other things, an axed Sacha Baron Cohen sketch Read more…

“[My brother] Marc would have given anything to be the man I’d have given anything not to be,” says Kimberly Reed, director and narrator of the autobiographical documentary Prodigal Sons.  “We were both haunted by the same ghost.”

Two years after telling her family about her male-to-female transition, Reed has returned to her hometown of Read more…

Recommended viewing for the weekend:  The Seattle premiere of the Red Riding trilogy over at Northwest Film Forum.  Released as a television miniseries in England, this three-part adaptation of novels about the Yorkshire Ripper—a serial killer who ravaged northern England for ten years in the ’70s and ’80s—has been well-received for its performances and its atmosphere, if criticized for an overly involved plot.

Each piece is by a different director (including James Marsh, director of 2008 Oscar-winning doc Man on Wire, which I liked enough to see twice in theaters), and the first two are playing back-to-back this weekend.

Read more…

There aren’t very many movies about adolescence that get it right.

Fish Tank does. It’s about desperation, powerlessness, frustration, naivete, heartbreak, painful awkwardness, and sexual and emotional vulnerability.  Living in the British projects with a careless and abusive mother, Mia (Katie Jarvis) is an enraged teen who takes a liking to her mother’s new boyfriend Connor (Hunger’s Michael Fassbender).  He returns the affection, a little too much, and a curious relationship develops between the two. Read more…

I’ve recently become aware of a neat resource for independent film geeks:  IndieFlix.
IndiFlix, based in Madison Park, is a distribution company for independent films that utilizes online streaming, DVD sales, and free community screenings to increase audiences and business for little guy movies.
Movies must have screened as an official selection at a film Read more…

Anybody who’s been following me on PubliCola for a while will know that I’m a huge fan of Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire.  It’s one of the best portraits of a city ever to hit the silver screen (see my review of it from last March here).  I can’t let a screening go Read more…