Camp 14: Total Control Zone review: George Orwell was an optimist
The only person known to have escaped from a North Korean re-education camp reveals some 1984-level shit, except it’s worse, because it’s not fiction…
non-English-language
Electro Chaabi review (London Film Festival)
An inexcusably blinkered documentary look at a modern youth movement in Cairo that utterly ignores how it cuts girls and women out of its quest for freedom.
Metro Manila review: world cinema writ small
One of the most enrapturing experiences I had at the movies in 2013: fiercely, grandly humanist, and almost unbearably tragic.
Rebellion (L’ordre et la morale) review
Sporadically exciting French action drama about a 1988 hostage crisis drags more often than it should.
A Hijacking (Kapringen) mini review
Harrowing drama of modern-day piracy as a sort of illicit corporate takeover; riveting and exhausting.
Inch’Allah movie review: it’s not all about us
The striking story of a Western doctor in Palestine and her long, hard path to the realization that all of her good intentions can barely begin to counter the tidal wave of history she has chosen to surf.
The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec review: gloriously goofy
This is what comic-book movies look like when they’re not blown up into $200 million monstrosities: friendly and eldritch and kinda cosy even in the middle of outrageous escapades. (new DVD US)
From Up on Poppy Hill review: gentle as a seaside breeze
Joyously warm and gentle… though perhaps too gentle to be entirely satisfying.
Reality review: television becomes us
Italian satire amusingly sends up our obsession with reality TV, but not in a wholly satisfying way.
In the House (Dans la maison) review: humour noir
As a black comedy, this never quite catches fire, though there is some mild amusement to be found in its social satire.
