force majeure
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Week in Review: Tom Hardy exits ‘Suicide Squad’, Jake Gyllenhaal may replace
UPDATE: /Film is reporting that Jake Gyllenhaal has passed on Suicide Squad. Tom Hardy, who is a brilliant actor but sounds unintelligible, was forced this week to drop out of the superhero franchise in the making Suicide Squad. Tom Hardy was to be the lead Rick Flag, alongside Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Jai Courtney, Cara Delevigne […] More
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50 Best Films of 2014
15. The Immigrant – If one were to rank the films of 2014 based solely on innovation, The Immigrant would probably end up near the bottom. Writer-director James Gray’s languid melodrama tells the tumultuous story of a resilient Polish woman looking to find a slice of the American Dream, without much in the way of […] More
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50 Best Films of 2014
40. Night Moves Since 2006, Kelly Reichardt has found a way to reach inside of the hearts of her audiences, plucking out strings one by one with desolate re-imaginations of the American Pacific Northwest, seen through the eyes of people not so different than ourselves. With Meek’s Cutoff, she departed from her typical genre and moved […] More
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Philadelphia Film Festival 2014 Round Up
The Philadelphia Film Festival completed another offering of debut, homegrown, and festival circuit successes. Cannes winner Winter Sleep, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s follow-up to his 2011 masterpiece Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is another slow-burner, awash in the director’s favored browns and tans. Thematically similar to both Anatolia and 2008’s Three Monkeys, Winter Sleep features […] More
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CIFF Day 1: ‘The Way He Looks’ and ‘The 100 Year Old Man…’
There’s a reason you go to film festivals, and it doesn’t always have to do with the lineup of movies. You could probably convince yourself that you’ll eventually watch The Imitation Game on Netflix, but the real reason to actually make a point and see it at a place like CIFF is that there’s nothing […] More
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Swedish dark comedy ‘Force Majeure’ gets a trailer
A selection at TIFF and the winner of the Jury Prize at this year’s Cannes, the Swedish comedy Force Majeure tells the story of a family on vacation in the French Alps whose trip goes awry when an avalanche throws things into disarray. It’s the fourth film from Director Ruben Östlund and is Sweden’s submission to […] More
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TIFF 2014: ‘Force Majeure’ is a searing and knotty satire of masculinity
The folly and arrogance of masculinity is harshly scrutinized in Swedish director Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure, an intense and intelligent domestic drama that asks some cutting questions about modern gender roles. High up in the French Alps, a family of four slowly crumbles after an instant of cowardice manifests itself and continues to marinate over the course of five days. That the act takes places in just the first 10 minutes and slowly festers up until the last few scenes speaks volumes about Östlund as a stylist. More
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Cannes 2014: ‘Force Majeure’ shows maximum control from the powerfully subtle Östlund
Ruben Östlund’s powerful tale of moral expectations begins in a pure-white canvas as a photographer cheekily moves the family through mundane vacation picture poses. The camera, though already framing excellently in 2.35, swerves along with the family of skiers to create a silent, elegant painting of action. Scenes are often shot in long-take, though the conversations they encompass may elevate its transfixing pace. It’s slow, droll, and has the visual competency of an action film which sets it up initially as a natural black comedy. However, an instigating event suddenly transforms relationships within the nuclear family and beyond adding a significant undercurrent of tension that’s been rightly compared to The Loneliest Planet. From a storytelling and tonal perspective, it’s a different kind of beast that relies and succeeds through timing the combinations of drama’s basic components. More