Involuntary / De Ofrivilliga (2008)
★★★☆☆
Ruben Östlund’s quirky Involuntary juxtaposes five snapshots of silly season in contemporary Sweden, challenging the audience to create their own connections.
Film reviews by Dog and Wolf
★★★☆☆
Ruben Östlund’s quirky Involuntary juxtaposes five snapshots of silly season in contemporary Sweden, challenging the audience to create their own connections.
★★★☆☆
Roving the labyrinthine world of artist Anselm Kiefer, there’s more to Sophie Fiennes’ documentary Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow than just watching paint dry.
★★★★☆
Cuffed and bound, a changing Romania is put in the dock in Corneliu Porumboiu’s Police, Adjective when a conscience-niggled policeman starts questioning the law.
★★★☆☆
One man, one coffin and 90 minutes’ oxygen, Rodrigo Cortés Buried is a deliciously claustrophobic one-hander for Ryan Reynolds. But can Cortés play by the rules?
★★★☆☆
Set deep in the bone-chilling Ozark woods, Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone rides high on the national spectre of repossession and will make Jennifer Lawrence a star.
★★★☆☆
Jam-packed with gore, Yannick Dahan and Benjamin Rocher breathe new life into the undead with their hybrid gangster/horror flick The Horde.
★★★★☆
Pedro González-Rubio’s Alamar is a touching tale of paternal love afloat upon the drifting Mexican sea.
★★★★☆
A Rohmeresque ramble under the Tuscan sun, Kiarostami’s Certified Copy is a freewheeling battle of the sexes. And Juliette Binoche is in a bitter mood for love.
★★★☆☆
Based on a script by Jacques Tati, Sylvain Chomet’s The Illusionist is a lyrical love story for sugar daddies and sweet dreamers. As well as residents of Dunedin.
★★★☆☆
When her simple son is sent to prison for the murder of a local girl, Boon Joon-Ho’s Mother springs into action. Thank you, Mommie dearest.
★★★★☆
Replacing a passive-agressive, quarrelsome maid isn’t easy, as Sebastián Silva’s comic gem La Nana shows. It’s class conflict gone the family way.
★★★☆☆
With a heroin junkie and her dead lover’s gay brother hiding away together, François Ozon’s Le Refuge is a subdued meditation on parenthood and loss. It’s baby boom and bust.
★★★★☆
With man-on-man love in a small Peruvian fishing village, Javier Fuentes-León’s Contracorriente has Latin American machismo swimming against a high tide.
★★★☆☆
As a passionate affair between two 20th century icons, Jan Kounen’s Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky is a perfumed symphony of style. But where are the heart notes?