DVD Review: "Cafe Society"

by Chris Feil

While never reaching the heights of his other showbiz-adjacent comedies, Woody Allen's Cafe Society has charm and gloss to spare. Allen is marking the same thematic territory and era fascinations as he has frequently visited in the past, here with more hidden snideness than much of his recent works. Under its sparkling surface, Society is a subtly mean-spirited film.

Much of that tone comes from Jesse Eisenberg's central performance as Bobby Dorfman, a transplant to 1930s Hollywood under the not so watchful eye of his talent agent uncle (Steve Carell). Bobby is quick to chase girls, ultimately arriving to (or creepily wearing down) secretary Vonnie (Kristen Stewart), who also is secretly having an affair with his uncle. Vonnie becomes Bobby's girl on an eternal pedestal, always more an idea of a person than the woman before him...

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Doc Corner: Ava DuVernay's '13th' is Essential

by Glenn Dunks

Sometimes to be a film-lover is to question why we indulge in certain films. It’s a question we have no doubt all asked ourselves at one point or another after a particularly gruelling film. It would have been so much easier to just let it slip passed us and be content within our bubble. It would be easy to see 13th, for instance, the new documentary from Selma and Middle of Nowhere director Ava DuVernay, on our Netflix screens and think that it is not for us – that because we already see the world through a lens of equality without racism that it is not necessary viewing, that it is just preaching to the converted. Why spend 100 minutes feeling as if the weight of misery is bearing down on us?

But 13th is an essential viewing for everybody. It is essential for you and for myself. Essential for Americans and those outside its borders. Essential most of all for white people and black people and everybody else. That its subject and themes still bear immediate relevance make it so. But DuVernay’s best achievement with the thorough and the soulfully searching 13th isn’t that it is just a wake-up call for race relations in America right at this very moment, but that her film will no doubt prove to be invaluable in the understanding of America’s history of racism for years to come.

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"Rogue One" Cast Gets Death Starred

Chris here. The rumors of behind the scenes trouble for Rogue One - A Star Wars Story keep circulating, but the actual goods just keep on delivering. Last week's full trailer was warmly received for its narrative details and for its snappy visuals, and now we have a new set of character posters to peruse. Whether the whispers are true or not, Disney doesn't seem to be shying away from Rogue One's darker tone. See the full set (and our thoughts) after the jump...

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Foreign Film Race Pt 5: "Hey, I know that face!"

"Everything u ever wanted to know about the foreign film category"
Pt 1 All the trailers (A-I) | Pt 2 All the trailers (J-Y) 
Pt 3 Debuts | Pt 4 Female Directors 

Pt 5. Actors You Know & Possibly Love
Successful actors really rack up the frequent flyer miles. Some pick up a second or third or fourth language and actually use those languages in their careers. Others merely stick to films in their native tongue but are magnetic or lucky enough to become well known all over the world.

So after surveying the 85 movies that are hoping to be nominated for this year's Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, here are 12 actors you may already know (or at least recognize) who star in one or more of the submissions this time around... 

Gael García Bernal made his feature film debut in the Oscar nominated Amores Perros (2000) and Oscar just kept right on gazing at him. As did we. To date he has starred in three Best Foreign Language Film nominees (Amores Perros, The Crime of Father Amaro, and No) and three other Oscar nominated films (Y Tu Mama Tambien, The Motorcycle Diaries, and Babel). He could add two more Academy stamped titles to that very impressive list this year since he headlines both the Chilean submission (Neruda, reviewed) and the Mexican submission (Desierto, which just opened in US theaters).

Fionnula Flanagan has been working in Irish, British and US TV and film since the mid 1960s and has won an Emmy (for the 1970s miniseries Rich Man Poor Man) as well as a lifetime achievement prize at the Irish Film and Television Awards over the course of her long career. She won lots of new fans and a Saturn Award for her role as the spooky housekeeper in The Others (2001) and this year she co-stars in the interlocking stories of Little Secrets, the Brazilian Oscar submission.  

Ten more famiiar faces after the jump...

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"Moonlight" in Three Acts

Since Barry Jenkins' new film Moonlight is told in triptych style, we've opted to bring you our NYFF review in the same way with three of us writing it! - Editor

"Little" by Murtada Elfadl
Moonlight is a patient movie that takes its time to give us a full portrait of what goes on in a young man’s mind. Long beautifully rendered scenes provide us pivotal snippets of days in a life. The economy of the scenes mixed with the patience in storytelling means that every gesture and word counts. Barry Jenkins takes Tarell McCraney’s unproduced play "In Moonlight Black Boys Boys Look Blue" and paints it on screen, using his actors’ faces and bodies to deliver singular poetic images.

The languid melancholic tone fits the inner monologue of the main character Chiron (who is called "Little" in this first of three segments),  who is struggling to understand himself...

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