Come to the CANES FILM FESTIVAL and see the next Martin Scorcese, Pedro Almodovar, Woody Allen, Agnes Varda, or Steve McQueen (actor and director) this
weekend at the Cosford.
The University of Miami School of Communication's CANES FILM FESTIVAL is a competitive festival open to undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in the Motion Picture Program at the University of Miami. The films are juried by a panel of professionals from the film and television industry.
Prepare yourself for three days of student films, panels, and parties that celebrate the art of filmmakiing - UM-style.
Films will be screening Friday, Saturday, and Sunday with a special BEST OF FEST program - Sunday from 7PM to 9PM! Screenings are open and free to the public.
This is the LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE of the year. Don't miss this odd, quirky comedy that won top honors at the SXSW film festival last year. It is anchored by an astonishing and revelatory performance from Rachel Harris, one of Hollywood's greatest character actor/scene stealers! Don't miss the Miami Premiere of this film festival darling at the Cosford. Join this road trip film as the perfect summer getaway.
"NATURAL SELECTION is a road movie, an unlikely buddy comedy, a drama of loss and renewal, a roman a clef inspired by people in the filmmaker's life - and a coming-of-age portrait of a sweet, innocent, middle-aged Christian woman who bursts through the confines of a sexless marriage."
-Amy Biancolli, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
"First-time feature director Robbie Pickering shows promise to spare in NATURAL SELECTION, a small gem of an indie movie whose rewards far exceed its bare-bones budget. The marvelous Rachael Harris stars..."
-Peter Travers, ROLLING STONE
"Winner of both the jury and audience awards for narrative feature at the SXSW Film Festival, NATURAL SELECTION is an engagingly offbeat comedy that respects its characters too much to push too hard for easy laughs... A perfectly cast Rachael Harris gives a career-breakthrough performance."
-Joe Leydon, VARIETY
Linda White (Rachael Harris), a devoted Christian housewife, leads a sheltered existence in suburban Texas. Her world is turned upside-down when she discovers that her dying husband, Abe, has a 23-year old illegitimate son named Raymond (Matt O'Leary) living in Florida. Somewhere on the edge of guilt and loneliness, Linda grants Abe's final wish and sets off on a quixotic journey to find Raymond and bring him back. Along the way, Linda's wonderfully bizarre relationship with Raymond will teach her more about herself than she ever imagined possible and force her to come to terms with her troubled past.
Directed by Robbie Pickering. Rated R.
USA, 2012, Digital Projection, 90minutes, Color, English.
Celebrated at the Tribeca Film Festival, DETACHMENT, from the director of AMERICAN HISTORY X and one of the most lauded casts in recent memory (the Oscar and Emmy nominations abound), comes to the Cosford. A new spin on classic teacher films like TO SIR WITH LOVE, CONRACK, and STAND AND DELIVER, DETACHMENT explores a teacher who maybe as despondent as his students. If you are looking for a summer movie with substance, don't miss DETACHMENT!
"Detachment gets to you. It hits hard."
-Peter Travers, ROLLING STONE
"It's sheer audacity grabs your attention."
-Stephen Holden, NEW YORK TIMES
"Brody, as the semi-fallen idealist, has a haggard eloquence, and Tim Blake Nelson, Christina Hendricks, and James Caan, as his colleagues, act out a bitterly funny spectrum of desolation."
-Owen Gleiberman, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
"It is a wrenching and powerful achievement."
-Andrew O'Hehir, SALON
"Harrowing depiction of the American educational system features a superb performance by Adrien Brody."
-Frank Scheck, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
In director Tony Kaye's DETACHMENT, Adrien Brody stars as Henry Barthes, an educator with a true talent to connect with his students. Yet Henry has chosen to bury his gift. By spending his days as a substitute teacher, he conveniently avoids any emotional connections by never staying anywhere long enough to form an attachment to either students or colleagues. When a new assignment places him at a public school where a frustrated, burned-out administration has created an apathetic student body, Henry soon becomes a role model to the disaffected youth. In finding an unlikely emotional connection to the students, teachers, and a runaway teen he takes in from the streets, Henry realizes that he's not alone in his life and death struggle to find beauty in a seemingly vicious and loveless world.
Directed by Tony Kaye. Rated R.
USA, 2012, Digital Projection, 100minutes, Color, English.
The Bolshoi’s production of the Bright Stream has been described as one of the funniest ballets ever seen on stage, when a big city dance troupe visits a collective farm to perform for the bemused workers.
During a harvest festival on a collective farm in the Russian steppes, a Moscow dance troupe arrives from the big city to entertain the workers, causing all manner of hilarious trouble when they interact formally and informally with the locals in the process. With a sparkling and witty score by the great Dmitri Shostakovitch, The Bright Stream is a rich, comedy of errors love story with mistaken identities, hilarious deceptions and happy resolutions.
Magic like this is increasingly rare in the cinema. THE FAIRY is as light as air and filled with delicate exuberance inspired by the greats of silent comedy, such as Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Jacques Tati. Belgium-based trio Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon and Bruno Romy follow their acclaimed ICEBERG and RUMBA with another Tati-inspired, candy-colored romp: this time, a charmingly off-kilter adventure about a hotel clerk who falls in love with a wish-granting fairy. Don't miss this modern masterpiece only at the Cosford!
"When THE FAIRY is on, it creates entirely new comic synapses in your head."
-Ty Burr, BOSTON GLOBE
"Physical comedy is so rare in movies now that a team like Bruno Romy, Fiona Gordon, and Dominique Abel is something to be treasured."
-J.R. Jones, CHICAGO READER
"For all its brazen goofiness, The Fairy is subtly designed to reward careful viewing."
-Mark Jenkins, NPR
Dom works the night shift in a small hotel near the industrial sea port of Le Havre. One night, a woman arrives with no luggage and no shoes. Her name is Fiona and she tells Dom that she is a fairy that can grant him three wishes. Fiona makes two of his wishes come true then mysteriously disappears. Dom. who has fallen in love with her by then, searches for her everywhere.
Directed by Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon, and Bruno Romy. Unrated.
Belgium/France, 2011, 35mm Film, 93minutes, Color, French with English Subtitles.
From the bizarre mad man mind of Guy Maddin comes KEYHOLE. A connoisseur of film noir and classic Hollywood cinema, Maddin gives a new spin to the films that defined post-war American cinema. But like Maddin's other films, MY WINNIPEG, THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD, and BAND ON THE BRAIN, nothing is exactly as it seems. KEYHOLE evokes its mystery and unease through a dreamlike lens that has earned Maddin the title of "Canada's David Lynch." Don't miss this blend of comedy, suspense, and quirk.
"KEYHOLE may be a perfect getaway into the bizarre and fertile world of a unique film artist."
-A.O. Scott, NEW YORK TIMES
"Maddin looks to the past of film the same way he often obsessively examines his own, and the two can't really be separated."
-Ian Buckwalter, NPR
"The film is infectiously somnambulant, so convincingly and unrelentingly dreamlike that its sudden end mimics the sensation of snapping awake from deep sleep."
-Karina Longworth, VILLAGE VOICE
If you enjoyed MELANCHOLIA's somber take on the apocalypse, take a look at Abel Ferrara's latest 4:44 LAST DAY ON EARTH. Ferrara, honored at the 2009 Miami International Film Festival and director of films such as BAD LIEUTENANT, THE FUNERAL, and GO GO TALES, provides an unusually intimate look at the end times. Using found footage from contemporary events to display the end of the world, gives this film an experimental and ominous feeling unlike other high-budget, special-effect laden apocalyptic films. Starring Willem Defoe, Shanyn Leigh, and Natasha Lyonne, 4:44 LAST DAY ON EARTH provides the perfect antidote the summer blockbuster take on the the end of the world.
"Ferrara movingly celebrates connection, cooking life down to just its barest essence: a man, a woman, and a need."
-Mark Olsen, LOS ANGELES TIMES
"It's both chamber drama and experimental found-footage film, relying heavily on appropriated media to provide context and subtext to its disaster fiction."
-Karina Longworth, VILLAGE VOICE
“Live every day as if it were your last” is a piece of corny wisdom I never quite understood until Abel Ferrara's new film explored an obvious corollary: Your last day — or, as it happens, the whole planet’s last day — will be just like every other one."
-A.O. Scott, NEW YORK TIMES
In a large apartment high above the city lives our couple. They're in love. She's a painter, he's a successful actor. Just a normal afternoon - except that this isn't a normal afternoon, for them or anyone else. Because tomorrow, at 4:44 am, give or take a few seconds, the world will come to an end far more rapidly than even the worst doomsayer could have imagined. The final meltdown will come not without warnings, but with no means of escape. There will be no survivors. As always, there are those who, as their last cigarette is being lit and the blindfold tightened, will still hope against hope for some kind of reprieve. For a miracle. Not our two lovers. They - like the majority of the Earth's population - have accepted their fate: the world is going to end.
Directed by Abel Ferrara. Unrated.
USA, 2012, Digital Projection, 85minutes, Color, English.
Mozart premiered The Abduction from the Seraglio in 1782, while a craze for all things Turkish, especially Turkish-style music, swept Western Europe. Constanze, a noble Spanish lady, her English servant Blondchen, and Pedrillo, the servant of Constanze's fiancé Belmonte, have been abducted by Moorish pirates and handed over to the Pasha Selim, who imprisons them in his seraglio (a combination of a palace and living quarters for his harem). Selim soon falls in love with Constanze, while Osmin, their coarse, cruel jailer, attempts to woo Blondchen. Belmonte manages to enter the palace in a bid to rescue them. Just as the two couples are about to flee, they are captured by Selim. Rather than kill them, as Osmin suggests, the pasha chooses to set them free, as a way of proving how civilized he is.
Directed by Christof Loy. Conducted by Ivor Bolton. Starring Diana Damrau.
Travel to South Korea this weekend for a unusual treat of a film. South Korea has quickly established itself as one of the world's freshest and most compelling national cinemas and one of the nation's shinning stars Sang-soo Hong has specialized in subtle comedies in the vein of Woody Allen and Eric Rohmer. Hong is a fixture at the Cannes International Film Festival, THE DAY HE ARRIVES showed in the Un Certain Regard section, and his latest film IN ANOTHER COUNTRY, premiered at the 2012 film festival. Whether you are already a fan of this renowned director or a newcomer, don't miss this truly remarkable film! It's like a wonderful combination of Woody Allen's STARDUST MEMORIES and GROUNDHOG DAY!
"Hong abstracts the tense network of fragile relationships to crisp, briskly sketched lines that he adorns with bubbly and self-deprecating humor and graceful wonders..."
-Richard Brody, NEW YORKER
"Hong offers a strange mixture of magic, mystery, rueful melodrama and dry comedy that's like absolutely nothing else."
-Andrew O'Hehir, SALON
"The movie becomes an exploration, both playful and rueful, of desire, narrative and the idea beautifully expressed by Faulkner... that "maybe nothing ever happens once and is finished."
-Manohla Dargis, NEW YORK TIMES
"Hong is wonderful with atmospheric effects, using whirling snowfalls to place his characters' inchoate longing in relief."
-Nick Pinkerton, VILLAGE VOICE
"Serves as an amusing itinerary of dinning, drinking and sexual dalliance that beguilingly plays with narrative time."
-Maggie Lee, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
A film director who no longer makes films, Seongjun, arrives in Seoul to meet a close friend. When the friend doesn't show up, Seongjun wanders the city aimlessly. He runs into an actress he used to know, shares a drink with some film students and against his better judgment, heads to his ex-girlfriend's apartment. The next day goes very much like the last; Seongjun meets the actress, has drinks with friends, and falls for woman who looks remarkably like his ex-girlfriend. Each new day plays out like a flimsy copy of the previous one, but only Seongjun knows why. Infused with a playfulness and dry wit, THE DAY HE ARRIVES is a delightful meditation on relationships, filmmaking, and the unknowable forces that govern our lives.
Directed by Sang-soo Hong. Unrated.
South Korea, 2011, Digital Projection, 79minutes, Black + White, Korean with English Subtitles.
Indulge your nostalgia for childhood with this warming and hilarious tale of growing up. Travel with us to New Zealand to meet a group of colorful characters as they navigate the trials and tribulations of life. A festival favorite, BOY has charmed audiences around the world and finally arrives in Miami this weekend at the Cosford.
"It's... super-exuberant and super-affecting, thanks to the pairing of James Rolleston as the boy of the title and the filmmaker as his father."
-Joe Morgenstern, WALL STREET JOURNAL
"A cross between THE 400 BLOWS and SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE."
-James Greenberg, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
"Joy juxtaposed with humiliation, silliness with sadness, fantasy with reality, and none of it formulaic. The editing feels fresh, as does the film."
-David DeWitt, NEW YORK TIMES
The year is 1984, and on the rural East Coast of New Zealand “Thriller” is changing kids‟ lives. Inspired by the Oscar nominated TWO CARS, ONE NIGHT, BOY is the hilarious and heartfelt coming-of-age tale about heroes, magic and Michael Jackson. BOY is a dreamer who loves Michael Jackson. He lives with his brother ROCKY, a tribe of deserted cousins and his Nan. Boy‟s other hero, his father, ALAMEIN, is the subject of Boy‟s fantasies, and he imagines him as a deep sea diver, war hero and a close relation of Michael Jackson (he can even dance like him). In reality Alamein is an inept, wannabe gangster who has been in jail for robbery. When Alamein returns home after seven years away, Boy is forced to confront the man he thought he remembered, find his own potential and learn to get along without the hero he had been hoping for.
Directed by Taika Waititi. Unrated.
New Zealand, 2012, Digital Projection, 93minutes, Color, English.