Lasse Hallström | Sweden

Comedy/Drama, 1h 40m, PG sexual references

IMDB: 7.6 RT: 100% / 90%

“My Life as a Dog (Mitt liv som hund) tells the story of Ingemar, a twelve-year-old from a working-class family sent to live with his uncle in a country village when his mother falls ill.

There, with the help of the warmhearted eccentrics who populate the town, the boy finds both refuge from his misfortunes and unexpected adventure.

Featuring an incredibly mature and unaffected performance by the young Anton Glanzelius, this film is a beloved and bittersweet evocation of the struggles and joys of childhood from Oscar-nominated director Lasse Hallström.”
– Janus Films.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/my_life_as_a_dog

Maryam Touzani, France/Morocco/Belgium/Denmark

2022 Drama, M nudity & sex scenes

IMDB: 7.5 RT: 96% / 88%

Halim and Mina run a traditional caftan store in one of Morocco's oldest medinas. In order to keep up with the commands of the demanding customers, they hire Youssef.

Slowly Mina realizes how much her husband is moved by the presence of the young man. Morocco's official entry for Best International Film at the 95th Academy Awards

“Anchored by three remarkable performances and a beautiful script that never wastes a line, Maryam Touzani‘s film… oozes love from almost every frame.”
– Christian Zilko, Indiewire

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_blue_caftan

Jerzy Skolimowski, Poland/Italy

2022 Drama 1h 28m, R13 violence, animal cruelty, offensive language & content that may disturb

IMDB: 6.7 RT: 96% / 65%

“Veteran director Jerzy Skolimowski returns in triumphant form with this lovely tale of animal life. Sometimes harsh, sometimes sweet, always beautiful, EO tells the story of a donkey and its journey through a world dominated by humans.

EO is an homage to Robert Bresson’s masterpiece Au hasard Balthazar. Though their methods are different, Bresson and Skolimowski both use their animal protagonists as litmus tests for humanity, with their varying treatments showing the best and the worst in us.

Where Bresson is austere and suggestive, Skolimowski is emotive and lyrical; this is a wonderfully moving film.”
– Vancouver International Film Festival 2022

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/eo

Laura Poitras, USA 

2022 Documentary, 1h 57m, M nudity, strong sexual imagery & content may disturb

IMDB: 7.5 RT: 95% / 63%

“In her essential, urgent, and arrestingly-structured documentary, Oscar-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras (Citizenfour) weaves two narratives: the fabled life and career of era-defining artist Nan Goldin and the downfall of the Sackler family, the pharmaceutical dynasty Goldin personally took on in her fight to hold accountable those responsible for the deadly opioid epidemic.

Following her own personal struggle with opioid addiction, Goldin, who rose from the New York ‘No Wave’ underground to become one of the great photographers of the late 20th century, put herself at the forefront of the battle against the Sacklers, both as an activist at art institutions around the world that had accepted millions from the family and as an advocate for the destigmatization of drug addiction.

Illustrated with a rich trove of photographs by Goldin, who mesmerizingly narrates her own story, including her dysfunctional suburban upbringing, the loss of her teenage sister, and her community’s fight against AIDS in the 1980s, Poitras’s film is an enthralling, empowering work that stirringly connects personal tragedy, political awareness, and artistic expression.”
– New York Film Festival 2022.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/all_the_beauty_and_the_bloodshed

Christopher Pryor & Miriam Smith, New Zealand

1999 Documentary, 1h 39m

IMDB: 7.8

The Sisters of Compassion have lived in the remote village named Jerusalem, in New Zealand, for 120 years. Today, only three nuns remain - their legacy on the river is coming to an end. This is a complex world of powerful dualities; Maori & Christian spirituality, parties & prayers, pig hunting and perfume appreciation.

“The film which Chris Pryor and Miriam Smith shot while they lived at Jerusalem on the Whanganui River is first and foremost a rapt pictorial response to its beautiful setting through four seasons.

Its recurrent subject is whether three Pākehā nuns, kaitiaki of the church and convent founded in the 1880s by Suzanne Aubert, are serving any useful social purpose there in 2011.

Several of the students come into sharp focus; Chevy, a beautiful, open 13 year old, smart beyond her years; Damien, a gleeful pint-sized maniac; and the charming oddball DJ, a Kiwi filmmaker’s dream boy gifted with a face that registers amazement with every emergent thought. The gentle, chipper sisters are not missionaries: it’s themselves they set out to improve.

As Pākehā artists, Pryor and Smith are perfectly placed to touch us with the sisters’ awkwardness and humility as they too achieve connection with this bewitching bend in the river – and its hospitable, bemused tangata whenua.”
– Bill Gosden, New Zealand International Film Festival 2012

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/how_far_is_heaven_2012

Sébastien Laudenbach & Chiara Malta, France/Italy

2023 Animated Comedy, 1h 16m, PG coarse language

IMDB: 7.1 RT: 97% / 100%

“In the animated French feature Chicken for Linda!, a mother accuses her young daughter of stealing a ring of great and mournful value. When the mother, Paulette, discovers her error, she promises to do whatever her daughter Linda wishes by way of apology. Linda was an infant when her father died, so she asks her culinarily challenged mother to cook her father’s go-to dish: chicken and peppers.

A general strike—Vive la France!—tosses a slapstick wrench into Paulette’s pledge, closing stores and forcing her to secure the chicken by other means. Police officers give slapstick chase. A watermelon truck and its kindly driver enter the fray. Paulette’s older sister, Astrid —a yoga teacher who self-medicates with candy—is dragged into the mess. And the children and denizens of the congenial apartment complex observe and participate in the increasingly madcap antics of mother and child.

For all its playful color-block hues and deceptively casual illustrations, the movie delivers a sharp mix of pathos and humor. Chicken for Linda! explores the differences in grief and memory for child and spouse with a touch as wisely light as the movie’s score, by the composer Clément Ducol’s, which lands festive, thrilling, sorrowful notes instrumentally and in songs.

As the indomitable chicken makes break after break for it, and more and more people are involved in its capture, you’d be right to wonder: What about the tray of peppers one of Linda’s friends left cooking in the oven?”
– Lisa Kennedy, NY Times 

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/chicken_for_linda

Ken Loach, UK

1969 Drama, 1h 49m, PG coarse language

IMDB: 7.9 RT: 100% / 91%

A working-class Yorkshire boy finds purpose and escape from his troubled life when he trains a wild kestrel.

“Kes remains one of Loach’s best-loved films. His hallmark traits of effortless naturalism and unpatronizing attention to working-class lives are on show here, fully formed and deeply affecting. The extraordinary performance of the non-professional Bradley as Billy is the film’s heart: he’s simultaneously as earnest, lively, and distracted as any 14-year-old but also resourceful and completely aware of his hopeless circumstances.”
– Chris Drake, Film Comment

“Kes had a tremendous influence on… my career as a whole. It’s the perfect balance of comedy and pathos that Ken Loach is so adept at. I can’t think of another film that has me laughing hysterically one moment, in tears the next. Loach’s craft has never been stronger, in my opinion. Cinematographer Chris Menges uses long lenses and hidden cameras to sell the realism while retaining lush, beautifully framed images”
– Sean Baker 

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/kes

Jan Ole Gerster, Germany 

2012 Comedy Drama, 1h 28m,  M violence & content that may disturb

IMDB: 7.3 RT: 0.77% / 0.74%

A day in the life of Niko, a twenty-something college dropout wandering around Berlin, confronting the questions of life's meaning and direction while trying to get a decent cup of coffee.

“This funny, jazz-inflected account of a bad day in the life of an über-cool young Berliner has snapped up audience prizes at European festivals and trounced all comers to carry off a load of Lolas at the German Film Awards.

Niko (Tom Schilling) wakes up to what looks like the scruffy last goodbye of an exhausted relationship, and spends the rest of the day finding he’s slipped a few other moorings as well.

He screws up a bizarre psychological test to reclaim his driving licence, his bill-paying father figures out that he’s not been to college in two years and a promising encounter with an old schoolmate gets very weird. And he really needs a coffee.

Shooting in lustrous black and white, debut director Jan Ole Gerster guides us from ironic hipster comedy into a poignant ode to today’s Berlin, wryly placing Niko’s troubles alongside those of a handful of other Berliners who mistake him for a good listener and accost him with theirs.”
– Bill Gosden, New Zealand International Film Festival 2013

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/a_coffee_in_berlin

Matt Johnson, Canada

2023 Drama Comedy Biography, 1h 59m, M offensive language

IMDB: 7.4 RT: 97% / 94%

Chronicles the rise and fall of BlackBerry, focusing on the Canadian company that revolutionized the smartphone industry before being overtaken by competitors.

“The genius and hubris of the tech industry collide in this wildly entertaining account of the dramatic rise and fall of the world’s first smartphone.

Mock-documentary specialist Matt Johnson takes us back to the mid-90s and to the beginnings of BlackBerry’s wild ride to cultural ‘CrackBerry’ ubiquity. Loosely based on the 2015 tell-all book Losing the Signal, the film delivers a slyly satirical and frequently uproarious look at the creative chaos of the tech world as the geeks inherit the Earth.”
– Melbourne International Film Festival 2023

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/blackberry

Céline Sciamma, France

2021 Drama Fantasy, 1h 12m, PG

IMDB: 7.4 RT: 0.97% / 0.8%

A tender and delicate tale about an 8-year-old girl who, while helping clean out her deceased grandmother's house, meets another young girl in the woods who turns out to be her mother as a child. Directed by Céline Sciamma, the film explores themes of grief, mother-daughter relationships, and childhood with a touch of magical realism.

“Céline Sciamma’s luminous Petite Maman is a once-upon-a-time tale with a twist. Set in present-day France, in an isolated hamlet made for solitude and imagination, it is a story about family ties, childhood reveries and unanswerable questions.

It’s also a story about finding someone who, like the final piece of a jigsaw puzzle—the piece you knew existed but just needed you to find it—completes the picture. Put differently, it is a story about love.”
– Manohla Dargis, NY Times

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/petite_maman

Bob Fosse, USA

1979 Drama Musical, 2h 3m, M

IMDB: 7.8 RT: 87% / 85%

Bob Fosse's semi-autobiographical masterpiece follows Joe Gideon, a brilliant but self-destructive director-choreographer juggling his movie editing, stage show directing, and complicated personal life while facing his own mortality. The film blends surreal musical numbers with stark reality, featuring Roy Scheider in a tour-de-force performance.

“Blending Broadway and filmmaking razzle-dazzle with American New Wave grit, and incorporating nonlinear editing techniques that had begun in early 20th century experimental cinema and blossomed in mid-century art house classics like Hiroshima, Mon Amour, this is one of the most aesthetically sophisticated, morally complex, and sheerly pleasurable films ever made.”
– Matt Zoeller Seitz

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/all_that_jazz