Watch top movies and read movie reviews now? Czech artist Barbora Kysilkova responded to the theft of two prized paintings by befriending Karl-Bertil Nordland, the drugged-out gangster behind the crime. Benjamin Ree’s intriguing The Painter and the Thief tells the tale of their unlikely relationship from both of their perspectives, charting its ups and downs with formal astuteness and inviting intimacy. Beginning with Kysilkova’s decision to paint Nordland’s portrait (peaking with one of the year’s most stunning scenes), their bond is forged by underlying similarities: traumatic and abusive pasts, as well as their habit of risking their lives for their addictions – in his case, drugs; in hers, painting. Ree reveals such connections through subtle juxtapositions that emerge naturally from his subjects’ day-to-day travails, which eventually involve financial hardships and a near-fatal car crash for Nordland. In private moments alone and between the two, the director illustrates how the act of seeing each other – truly, and without prejudice – is key to their shared affection, thereby turning his documentary into a tribute to the transformative power of empathy.
Russian director Kantemir Balagov’s soul-crushingly powerful and exquisitely mounted historical drama (which really deserved at least an Oscar nomination this year; it was short-listed but didn’t make the final five) follows two female veterans trying to reconnect with life in postwar St. Petersburg. It starts off in unspeakable tragedy — the young director is known for booby-trapping his films with the occasionally devastating image or plot development — which makes for a striking emotional and structural gambit. As the characters wrestle with their own trauma, we, too, are dealing with the consequences of what we’ve seen. What makes it all work — and work so beautifully — is Balagov’s almost supernatural command of film language: the elegance of his storytelling, the vivid, symbolic use of color, the humanism of the performances. You can bask in Beanpole’s cinematic delights while simultaneously having your heart ripped to shreds.
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne gaze into the dark heart of religious fanaticism in Young Ahmed, a drama that’s all the more chilling for proffering no easy answers. By the time the filmmakers’ story begins, urban 13-year-old Ahmed (newcomer Idir Ben Addi) has already been indoctrinated by a jihad-encouraging imam (Othmane Moumen). No amount of adult counter-programming can affect the kid, and when he attacks a female teacher (Myriem Akheddiou) for her modernist Islamic teachings, he winds up in a juvenile detention center and, then, at a farm where the affections of Louise (Victoria Bluck) complicate his worldview. With a stony countenance and dark eyes that mask his interior thoughts, Ahmed is a chilling protagonist in thrall to a rigid ideology that preaches violence against all heretics. Their handheld camerawork trailing him as he embarks on his cataclysmic rise-and-fall journey, the directors’ aesthetics are as formally rigorous and evocative as ever, capturing the unyielding nature of zealotry, as well as the difficulty of loosening extremism’s terrible grip on individuals’ hearts and minds. Discover additional info at honest movie reviews.
GOM Player, or Gretech Online Movie Player, is a completely free Windows media player alternative that comes with inbuilt support for the most popular video and audio formats. That means it can play all the most popular video formats like AVI, MKV, MP4, FLV, MOV, etc. Apart from the basic functionalities that come loaded with other popular PC media players, GOM Player comes with lots of advanced features like A-B repeat, Media Player Capture, speed control, audio and video effects, screen capture, etc. It also gives you the choice to change skins and make the whole look of GOM Player highly customized. Using GOM’s own library, you can download lots of subtitles and enjoy movies and TV shows in your preferred language. You can also link this awesome media player for PCs with the vast database of OpenSubtitles.org. It could be possible that this media player software might not support some uncommon types. For that scenarios, GOM Player’s Codec Finder service will let you search for the missing codec. GOM Player for Windows supports a wide range of operating systems, ranging from Windows 10 to Windows XP SP3.
This low-budget debut feature is a UFO movie that takes time to achieve lift off. In addition to saddling the story with a mostly unnecessary framing device, which underlines the already obvious echoes of The Twilight Zone, director Andrew Patterson and the film’s writers open the 1950s New Mexico-set story with a handful of overly precious exchanges featuring the two main characters, chatty DJ Everett (Horowitz) and young switchboard operator Fay (McCormick). In the beginning, these two might get on your nerves. But once the movie locks them in place, tampering down the acrobatic camerawork and letting the sound design take control, the material finds a more natural rhythm, drawing on the hushed intimacy of old-fashioned radio drama. Like many of the best UFO yarns, The Vast of Night taps into a deep sense of yearning. Wanting to believe is half the battle. Read extra details at https://www.popcorntales.com/.