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A Dangerous Method (2011)
Director: David Cronenberg By Roderick Heath I tend to blow hot and cold on David Cronenberg’s oeuvre, filled as it is with works such as Videodrome (1982), Naked Lunch (1991), and A History of...
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Hell to Eternity (1960)
Director: Phil Karlson By Roderick Heath Phil Karlson is one of those indispensable figures for the enterprising movie fan in search of lost heroes: a jobbing studio hand with a chequered career whose...
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Ed Wood (1994)
Director: Tim Burton By Roderick Heath The career of Edward D. Wood Jnr. went thus: he made bad movies, was not rewarded for this, and died young, poor, weird, and obscure. A simple narrative, one...
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CIFF 2012: The Last Sentence (Dom Över Dod Man, 2012)
Director/Coscreenwriter: Jan Troell 2012 Chicago International Film Festival By Marilyn Ferdinand At 81, Jan Troell, a contemporary of Ingmar Bergman, continues to make finely crafted films that plumb...
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CIFF 2012: The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosni (2012)
Director/Screenwriter: Rania Stephan 2012 Chicago International Film Festival By Marilyn Ferdinand For the record: I don’t expect there to be a more exciting film at the Chicago International Film...
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Marley (2012)
Director: Kevin Macdonald By Marilyn Ferdinand Reggae is in my blood. Around 1980, when I was only a couple of years out of college and on my own in Chicago, I started visiting a new club called the...
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Lincoln (2012)
Director: Steven Spielberg By Roderick Heath Lincoln’s opening shots depict warfare: writhing bodies in primordial mud, flesh punctured by bayonets, and mouths yawing in screams of pain and murderous...
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CIFF 2013: Wałęsa: Man of Hope (Wałęsa. Człowiek z nadziei, 2013)
Director: Andrzej Wajda By Marilyn Ferdinand The biopic genre is one that most film fans approach with a certain amount of caution. Rarely are they historically accurate, and oftentimes, they fall into...
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CIFF 2013: Papusza (2013)
Directors/Coscreenwriters: Joanna Kos, Krzystof Krauze By Marilyn Ferdinand This seems to be the year for biopics among the Polish entries to the Chicago International Film Festival. Wałęsa: Man of...
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CIFF 2013: H4 (2014)
Director: Paul Quinn By Marilyn Ferdinand The film community has been debating the appropriateness and relative merits of well-known filmmakers asking the public for financing through Kickstarter, most...
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Hannah Arendt (2012)
Director/Coscreenwriter: Margarethe von Trotta By Marilyn Ferdinand In this age of extreme practicality, the pursuit of a philosophy education may seem a useless self-indulgence. Yet, there is nothing...
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Dallas Buyers Club (2013)
Director: Jean-Marc Valée By Roderick Heath As a child of the ’80s, the menace of the AIDS epidemic is engraved on my formative years. The spectre of the disease’s infiltration into world consciousness...
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The Doors (1991)
Director/Coscreenwriter: Oliver Stone By Roderick Heath The Doors, the psychedelic blues band formed by Jim Morrison, Ray Manzarek, Bobby Krieger, and John Densmore in 1966, had the stuff of the movies...
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Mr. Turner (2014)
Director/Screenwriter: Mike Leigh By Roderick Heath Here there be spoilers. Joseph Mallord William Turner’s place in the heart of his native folk has only become more secure as time has advanced. He’s...
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CIFF 2015: Women He’s Undressed (2015)
Director: Gillian Armstrong 2015 Chicago International Film Festival By Marilyn Ferdinand My 2015 Chicago International Film Festival coverage kicks off today, and the film under consideration is a...
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Aimée & Jaguar (1999)
Director/Coscreenwriter: Max Färberböck By Marilyn Ferdinand At least through February 28—Oscar night—it’s a pretty sure bet that people will be talking about Todd Haynes’ Carol (2015) and its six...
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Anton Chekhov 1890 (2015)
Director/Screenwriter: René Féret 2016 European Union Film Festival By Marilyn Ferdinand On April 28, 2015, actor/director/screenwriter René Féret died, less than a month shy of his 70th birthday....
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The Seventh Room (1996)
Director/Coscreenwriter: Márta Mészáros By Marilyn Ferdinand It’s time again for me to review another film nobody’s seen or heard of from a prominent and still-working female director who is nearly...
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Christine (2016)
Director: Antonio Campos By Marilyn Ferdinand In 1974, Christine Chubbuck, a reporter at a small TV station in Sarasota, Fla., became a national news story when she shot herself on camera. I was in...
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Neruda / Jackie (2016)
Director: Pablo Larraín By Roderick Heath The biopic has become the most reliably rancid of contemporary prestige film genres. It’s supposed to be a mode for exploring vital cultural and historical...
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