Tag: foreign films
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One Fine Morning review: Léa Seydoux in a lovely role
One Fine Morning (Un beau matin) stars Léa Seydoux in a gentle and sweet character study. This French film was written and directed by Mia Hansen-Løve. The work I’ve seen from this director in the past was introspective and seemingly uneventful. This is similar. It’s a personality study that moves through a few months in…
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Full Time review: a single mom’s frantic schedule
Full Time (À plein temps) shows in frantic, fast-moving detail what life is like in the week of a life. Julie (Laure Calamy) is a single mom. She’s having a bad week because her ex has not sent the alimony money and the bank is calling her about her mortgage. He’s unreachable, her son’s birthday…
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Norma, who finds herself in mid-life
Norma comes from Argentina. It’s a charming drama about how Norma transforms herself in mid-life. The life she was leading is stifling. She can’t breathe, she’s prone to panic attacks, she can’t sleep. She needs a change and doesn’t know it. When she realizes that things need to be different she makes huge changes that…
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L’immensità: Penélope Cruz mothers a trans child in 1970s Rome
L’immensità tells a tender, heartbreaking story about a mother’s love for her children, one of them trans, in this Italian drama starring Penélope Cruz. The setting is Rome in 1970, not a time and place where gender dysphoria was understood or accepted.
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Love is in the Air, Australian romcom flies by
Love is in the Air has pretty people falling in love while flying around Australia showing off the pretty scenery in Queensland. It’s a standard romcom with the standard plot and predictable outcome the genre promises.
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Wingwomen, women’s action flick from France
Wingwomen (Voleuses), an action flick from France, comes from director Mélanie Laurent. Mélanie Laurent also plays a leading role as one of the women thieves featured in the story. The first thing you need to know is don’t pay any attention to the film’s description. It was written by someone who read the book or…
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7 Women and a Murder, fun Italian mystery
7 Women and a Murder (7 donne e un mistero) was billed by Netflix as a cross between Agatha Christie and Knives Out. It wasn’t quite as good as either of those, but it was a fun film with twists, surprises, and 7 women. It’s set in the 1950s with clothes and hairstyles from that…
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Forgotten Love, a gem from Poland
Forgotten Love (Znachor) is a beautiful film full of hope and love. It’s set in rural Poland at a time when horses and buggies were more common than cars, telephones were rare, and finding what you lost was difficult.
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Ehrengard: The Art of Seduction, broad Danish comedy
Ehrengard: The Art of Seduction, based on a novel by Karen Blixen, feels like a Shakespearean comedy. It uses broad strokes, outlandish characters, and funny situations to tell a story about art, seduction, and royal political shenanigans.
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Eiffel review: Let’s build a tower!
Eiffel, from France, is not entirely successful at telling the story of the construction of the Eiffel Tower or of the romance between Gustave Eiffel and Adrienne Bourgès. It tries to do both and be inspiring at the same time.