Inspired by the 2001 Dos Palmas kidnapping of foreign tourists and missionaries by the Islamic separatist group Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines, Philipino director Brillante Mendoza, a Cannes Festival favorite (Kinatay, Serbis) Captive excruciatingly follows the twenty hostages as they are dragged at gunpoint from their hotel, spirited onto a fishing boat and led through various towns and jungles for over a year. Isabelle Huppert

In Berlin for a while, everyone talked about Caesar must die, a historical and literary reenactment filmed by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani in superb documentary style--but it's a feature film documenting a jail bound theater production. The Tavianis (Padre Padrone, Kaos), who are now in their eighties, entered a high-security prison near Rome to film a production of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar.” Mixing footage of the final production with

Halfway through the 62nd installment of the Berlin Film Festival, no single film has emerged to carry the fest’s top prizes. The international jury, this year’s headed by British director Mike Leigh, will have a difficult time distributing the Gold and Silver bears if the competition fare remains this lackluster. Benoît Jacquot’s French-Revolution drama, Les Adieux à la Reine was the firing shot in a festival year that is taking a hard look

It’s that time of year again when this critic must sift through the hundreds of films consumed in the past twelve months and make choices—some easy, some more difficult—about the year’s best batch of films. A Separation – Asghar Farhadi’s marital drama snatched top prize at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, and for good reason. Back in February, I wrote, “One of the film’s best qualities is that it treats heavy subjects in a down-to-earth

Nader and Simin: A Separation by Asghar Farhadi is the Iran-made candidate for Best Foreign Picture at the Academy Awards. Not only is it a superb film with nary a wasted shot, but actors Leila Hatami and Peyman Maadi (they won the Best Actor awards at the last Berlin Film Festival) give three-dimensional, wholly believable performances as the two sides of an acrimonious couple going through a sloppy divorce.

Swedish director Tomas Alfredson exploded onto the international scene in 2007 with his unsettling child vampire flick, ‘Let the Right One In.’ In that film, he took a rather implausible premise and turned it into one of the more unsettling horror films of recent memory. Pushing forward into the realm of the improbable, Alfredson unveils his surefooted adaptation of John Le Carre’s unfilmable novel “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” (the only other adaptation

The 68th Venice Film Festival was a pandemonium of pushy, autograph-hounding journalists, hapless stargazers and underage fashionistas talking their way into exclusive parties. Walking along the beach, as the late-summer sun beat down on the Lido, it was easy to forget that this festival was about movies of differing shapes and sizes, where big Hollywood productions vied with quirky indies and inaccessible foreign productions.

The surprise winner of the 68th Venice Film Festival was […]

Marjane Satrapi’s “Poulet aux Prunes” (“Chicken with Plums”) is the French-Iranian filmmaker’s live-action adaptation of her namesake graphic novel. Co-directing once more with Vincent Paronnaud, who also worked on the 2007 film adaptation of “Persepolis,” Satrapi creates a fairly-tale 1950s Tehran as the backdrop for the story of Nasser Ali, a violinist (Satrapi’s uncle, or so she claims) who resolves to die

Costume dramas and fairy tales set the tone for the opening days of the 68th Venice Film Festival. David Cronenberg’s hotly-awaited A Dangerous Method details the collaboration and rivalry between Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud and set on the eve of World War One. “A Dangerous Method” arrived on day three of the festival and has been one of the stronger entries in the 22-film-strong main competition program.