La Niña Santa (2004)

Recommended

Argentina/Italy/Spain/The Netherlands

Feature Film

Director: Lucrecia Martel

Writers: Juan Pablo Domenech, Lucrecia Martel

Cinematographer: Félix Monti

Composer: Andres Gerszenzon

Cast: Mercedes Morán, Carlos Belloso, Alejandro Urdapilleta, María Alche, Julieta Zylberberg, Mía Maestro, Marta Lubos

When a middle-aged doctor, who’s in town for a medical conference, presses his groin against her provocatively in a small crowd, Amalia, a teenage girl and the daughter of the proprietress of the hotel in which the doctor is staying, determines, feeling that she has been given a calling, to save his soul, in Martel’s intriguing, sensual, and beautifully drawn examination of the ambiguities of sexual attraction. Iain.Stott

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Mrs Mandela (2010)

Recommended

UK

Television Film

Writer/Director: Michael Samuels

Cinematographer: Wojciech Szepel

Composer: Daniel Giorgetti

Cast: Sophie Okonedo, David Harewood, David Morrissey, Vusi Kunene, David Dennis, Jacques Gombault, Rika Sennet

Michael Samuels’s beautifully crafted impressionistic biopic, featuring an excellent central performance from Okonedo, depicts the life of Winnie Mandela from the early days of her courtship with Nelson until his release from prison some 30-odd-years later, detailing her growth as a woman, activist, and revolutionary as well as some of her more unsavoury traits and actions, including the torture and murder of a 14-year-old boy who was a suspected informer. Iain.Stott

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Cowboys in India (2009)

Cautiously Recommended

UK

Feature Documentary

Director/Cinematographer: Simon Chambers

Composer: Evan Jolly

Documentarian Simon Chambers travels to Orissa, one of the poorest regions of India, to examine the effect, whether it be positive or negative, that a British mining company has had on the area’s people, but decrepitude, incompetence, timidity, and fear ensure that all he really manages to document, besides a cursory glance at local poverty, is his own comic nightmare, in this entertaining if rather frustrating documentary. Iain.Stott

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Northfork (2003)

Recommended

USA

Feature Film

Director: Michael Polish

Writers: Mark Polish, Michael Polish

Cinematographer: M. David Mullen

Composer: Stuart Matthewman

Cast: Nick Nolte, Duel Farnes, James Woods, Mark Polish, Daryl Hannah, Robin Sachs, Anthony Edwards, Ben Foster, Graham Beckel, Joshuin Barker, Peter Coyote, Jon Gries, Rick Overton

As government agents busily traverse around town, aiding the forced evacuation of the final stubborn inhabitants of a small town that is about to be flooded, a gravely ill young boy, the last resident of a dilapidated orphanage, tries to convince four otherworldly figures that he is an angel, in the Polish Brothers’ enigmatic, allegorical comedy, a film of great formal beauty and absurd wit. Iain.Stott

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Niagara Motel (2006)

Recommended

Canada/UK

Feature Film

Director: Gary Yates

Writers: Dani Romain, George F. Walker

Cinematographer: Ian Wilson

Composer: Guy Fletcher

Cast: Craig Ferguson, Peter Keleghan, Damir Andrei, Wendy Crewson, Anna Friel, Kristen Holden-Ried, Kevin Pollak, Caroline Dhavernas, Catherine Fitch, Tom Barnett, Normand Daneau, Janet-Laine Green

Yates’s much derided ensemble black comedy, an adaptation of Walker’s six play series, Suburban Motel (1997), touchingly, perceptively, and blackly comically presents several intertwining tales about love and money, revolving around a dilapidated Niagara motel and diner and its dysfunctional, down-on-their-luck residents, patrons, and employees. Iain.Stott

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Joy (2008)

Recommended

UK

Short Film

Directors: Joe Lawlor, Christine Molloy

Writers: Joe Lawlor, Christine Molloy, Ben Slater

Cinematographer: Ole Birkeland

Composer: Dennis McNulty

Cast: Annie Townsend, Sonia Saville

A police officer narrates the reconstruction of the last known movements of a girl who went missing two days before her 18th birthday, which begins as reverently as you would expect, gradually morphing into something more speculative and poetic, in Lawlor and Molloy’s mesmerising short, a beautifully photographed and scored accompaniment to their feature film Helen (2008). Iain.Stott

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Helen (2008)

Cautiously Recommended

Ireland/UK

Feature Film

Directors: Joe Lawlor, Christine Molloy

Writers: Joe Lawlor, Christine Molloy, Ben Slater

Cinematographer: Ole Birkeland

Composer: Dennis McNulty

Cast: Annie Townsend, Sandie Malia, Dennis Jobling, Sonia Saville, Danny Groenland, Sheila Hamilton, Betty Ashe

When a girl from a happy middle-class family disappears, Helen, a shy and quiet girl, who lives in a care home and is about to turn 18, gets selected to represent her in a police reconstruction of her last known movements, allowing her to briefly feel what it’s like to see the world through someone else’s eyes, in Lawlor and Molloy’s formally elegant and thematically intriguing film, let down slightly by some rather awkward supporting performances and some occasionally unwieldy dialogue. Iain.Stott

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