When Aron Ralston (James Franco) left his home on a Friday evening he planned on a weekend of carefree mountain climbing. What he got was the most horrifying, soul searching, and eye-opening experience of his young life over the next 127 hours. Based on the novel “Between a Rock and a Hard Place” by Aron […]
2010
AIFF Film Review: Tiny Furniture and Quality Time
Twenty-two year old Aura has just come home from college in Ohio with a degree in film theory and no idea what to do with herself. “I’m in a post-graduate delirium,” she says. Tiny Furniture plays like a post-graduate, post-The Graduate–quarter-life crises of Woody Allen if Woody Allen was a twenty-two year old girl. Lena […]
AIFF Film Review: Judge
“The law is the law, but men enforce it.” That line is said to Judge Tian (Ni Dahong), a fair and honest court official dealing with the sudden death of his daughter in a car accident. Tian is presiding over the case of Qiu Wu, a poor young man accused of stealing two cars, a […]
AIFF Film Review: Best Worst Movie and Winner: Best Short Film
If I tried to explain to you the plot of Troll 2 you would not believe me. Many have tried to dissect the nonsensical structure and chaotic visual style that’s rendered it notorious; either for its outrageous ineptitude or its towering avant-garde genius, depending on your point of view. Whatever your flavor of fanaticism, Best […]
AIFF Film Review: Circo and La Nostalgia del Sr. Alambre
American writer/director Aaron Schock wanted to make a documentary about a traveling circus, but in the U.S. that kind of entertainment is a relic of a bygone era. So, he went to Mexico. The subject of Schock’s film, La Gran Circo de Mexico, is nowhere near as majestic as its name, consisting only of members […]