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Mongrel Media

Reviews

They Shot the Piano Player

They Shot the Piano Player is an animated docdrama that, ultimately, failed to connect with me.  But, to credit filmmakers Javier Mariscal and Fernando Trueba (co-directors of the Oscar-nominated animated film Chico & Rita), the movie’s efforts are certainly not wasted.

Reviews

The Peasants

With The Peasants, filmmakers DK Welchman and Hugh Welchman return to a similar animation style that previously earned them an Academy Award nomination for 2017’s Loving Vincent.  Loving Vincent was a tribute to artist Vincent van Gogh, both in spirit and in visual flare.  The Peasants adapts Wladyslaw Reymont’s novel of the same name, and channels the artistry of various painters from the 19th and 20th century.  While I can’t confidently comment on how faithful…

Reviews

The Promised Land

The Promised Land presents itself as an epic period drama about a former soldier, Captain Ludvig Kahlen (Mads Mikkelsen of Casino Royale and Another Round), dedicating his remaining lifetime to mend a troubled Danish heath and build a settlement.  The challenges he faces include the environmental barrenness of the land, outsiders who doubt Kahlen’s ambitions, and the breaching interruptions by selfish and wealthy Frederik de Schinkel (Simon Bennebjerg).

Reviews

Four Daughters

Tunisia’s harrowing Oscar nominated documentary Four Daughters is a trip in the sense that you never know what to expect from it. It’s a sympathetic filmmaking experiment that aims to work as closure for its subjects but, along the way, rediscovers old family wounds that also need to be addressed.

Reviews

Memory

Evoking the reflective nature of meditative character dramas like Pieces of a Woman and Trouble in the Garden, Memory roots itself in disturbing subject matter only to uncover beautiful and organic growth between two societal outsiders.

Reviews

Freud’s Last Session

Movie goers who have claimed big screen adaptations of stage plays are stilted may be ready to dismiss Freud’s Last Session, but I hope they give it a chance.  This two-hander between Academy Award winner Anthony Hopkins (as neurologist Sigmund Freud) and Matthew Goode (as British author C.S. Lewis) is riveting and reminds viewers about the power of great acting.