A Chinese family discovers their grandmother has only a short while left to live and decide to keep her in the dark, scheduling a wedding to gather before she dies.
On the eve of their high school graduation, two academic superstars and best friends realize they should have worked less and played more. Determined not to fall short of their peers, the girls try to cram four years of fun into one night.
Director:
Olivia Wilde
Stars:
Kaitlyn Dever,
Beanie Feldstein,
Jessica Williams
This documentary explores the sexual and social identity of contemporary black America through intimate, eye opening and often hilarious accounts from women and men who find love and community in the underground world of exotic dancing.
The tragic and controversial story of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in Texas for killing his three children after scientific evidence and expert testimony that bolstered his claims of innocence were suppressed.
Set in the Parisian publishing world, an editor and an author find themselves in over their heads, as they cope with a middle-age crisis, the changing industry and their wives.
Director:
Olivier Assayas
Stars:
Guillaume Canet,
Juliette Binoche,
Vincent Macaigne
The trailer for this movie (which is in itself a wonder) set up some expectations for me, and they were met: it's a melancholy film about a black man feeling pushed away from the city he loves. But the movie is so much something more that I'm still reflecting on it three days after viewing. The film is gentle and expansive, anything but divisive or self-pitying: a celebration of the unique, oddball, all-embracing quirkiness that San Francisco inspires and cultivates. It's just as much about a friendship between black men that endures because of San Francisco's peculiarly protective cover. I came away moved by the friendship story - the kind of friendship that the film itself suggests changes lives and can survive gentrification.
The trailer promises visual beauty and the film delivers, coming as close as a movie can to diagramming the cool, foggy spell San Francisco can cast - but the images on the screen are there to both break a heart and to inspire hope.
And man, are these images beautiful! This movie is a natural addition to the ranks of "Vertigo," "Bullitt," "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and "Tales of the City" - movies that lean on SF as more than a backdrop, but indeed as a co-star. It all works to underscore why the hero (Jimmie Fails, playing himself) is so compulsively distracted by, even focused on, his unsettled business with his hometown. Set to a dreamy score by Emile Mosseri and Michael Marshall's cover of "If You're Going to San Francisco," there are moments in the movie that well up and stir; that are flat out unforgettable.
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The trailer for this movie (which is in itself a wonder) set up some expectations for me, and they were met: it's a melancholy film about a black man feeling pushed away from the city he loves. But the movie is so much something more that I'm still reflecting on it three days after viewing. The film is gentle and expansive, anything but divisive or self-pitying: a celebration of the unique, oddball, all-embracing quirkiness that San Francisco inspires and cultivates. It's just as much about a friendship between black men that endures because of San Francisco's peculiarly protective cover. I came away moved by the friendship story - the kind of friendship that the film itself suggests changes lives and can survive gentrification.
The trailer promises visual beauty and the film delivers, coming as close as a movie can to diagramming the cool, foggy spell San Francisco can cast - but the images on the screen are there to both break a heart and to inspire hope.
And man, are these images beautiful! This movie is a natural addition to the ranks of "Vertigo," "Bullitt," "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and "Tales of the City" - movies that lean on SF as more than a backdrop, but indeed as a co-star. It all works to underscore why the hero (Jimmie Fails, playing himself) is so compulsively distracted by, even focused on, his unsettled business with his hometown. Set to a dreamy score by Emile Mosseri and Michael Marshall's cover of "If You're Going to San Francisco," there are moments in the movie that well up and stir; that are flat out unforgettable.