'Radiograph of a Family': Film Review | IDFA 2020

A lyrical portrait of a former political giant in his twilight years, Vitaly Mansky's Gorbachev. Heaven is an unusually intimate docu-memoir that feels like an epitaph.

In theory, The Stand In might sound promising. It stars Drew Barrymore, was written by Four Lions and Peep Showscribe Sam Bain and directed by Jamie Babbit (cult queer classic But I'm a Cheerleader, plus some excellent TV episodes for Silicon Valley and Russian Doll).

There should be a limit to the number of plot twists a film can spring on an audience. Sure, it's okay for fiendishly clever puzzlers like Sleuth and Deathtrap to keep us guessing from one moment to the next.

If this were a normal festive season when it was possible to have a post-prandial snuggle on the couch with older relatives, or just fans of the best in old-school movie-star glamour, then this documentary about Audrey Hepburn — out Dec. 15 on DVD and Blu-Ray ahead of a Jan.

Far from the movie viewers may expect when they hear the words "German serial killer," Effigy: Poison and the City takes a dignified, old-fashioned approach to homicidal insanity that befits its early-19th century setting.

A vivid look at what it means for populations to rise up against governments intent on curbing their liberties, Ai Weiwei's Cockroach takes us to the streets of Hong Kong in 2019, as young people violently resist measures chipping away at their independence from mainland China. The third doc Ai has released this year (following Coronation and the Sundance entry Vivos), it's among his most effective films to date —tightly focused and morally urgent.

New York City-based filmmaker Judith Helfand broke through as a filmmaker in 1997 with a highly personal documentary, A Healthy Baby Girl. This multilayered essay on maternity, medical negligence and guilt, among many other things, explored how her mother Florence's use of a drug to prevent miscarriage led to Judith having first cervical cancer and then a radical hysterectomy in her twenties.

For non-Nordic viewers who only know of Tove Jansson as a name attached to the cuddly, dumpling-shaped creatures called the Moomins— mid-20th-century comic strip trolls resembling hippopotami, composed of negative space and living in some kind of tundra-adjacent landscape— the engaging biopic Tove will offer some interesting surprises.

Since my parents inexplicably failed to instill in me a love for killing at an early age, I've never gone hunting. But I can imagine that it takes a lot of patience and exactitude before achieving the satisfaction of the final result.

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The Cambridge Royal Family has just shared their Christmas card for the 2020 holiday season!

As the title suggests, the documentary “Queer Japan” is big and broad, not focused.

Kylie Jenner got the festivities started early when she started decorating her home before Thanksgiving. The Kylie Cosmetics founder, 23, showed off her holiday decor via her Instagram Story on November 13.“I am in full Christmas mode at my house,” Jenner said at the time.

As venues around the world open and shutter in sync with the fits and starts of local pandemic containment measures, it's reassuring to know that one of London's most cherished institutions, the jazz club Ronnie Scott's, founded in 1959, is still chugging along. (It's reopening after a short lockdown again Dec.

“There are eight million stories in the naked city,” went the voiceover in Jules Dassin’s classic Big Apple-set film noir. Two such stories make up the crux of the documentary Five Years North, which follows a pair of New Yorkers who couldn’t be more incompatible, even if their lives are connected in larger, more meaningful ways.

Joe Leydon Film CriticMore than two years after filming wrapped, “Superintelligence” the latest joint effort of Melissa McCarthy and her director husband Ben Falcone, has finally popped up on a streaming platform — specifically, HBO Max — which arguably is the natural habitat for a lightweight, undemandingly engaging comedy that can be enjoyed either entirely in one sitting, or sporadically in bite-sized chunks.

Also Read: See Johnny Flynn as David Bowie in First Look at Unauthorized Biopic 'Stardust'For better and for worse, “Stardust” grapples with those issues as it follows a 24-year-old Bowie on a promotional tour through the United States in 1971, accompanied by a long-suffering Mercury Records publicist named Ron Oberman.Johnny Flynn plays Bowie, Marc Maron plays Oberman, and the point of director and cowriter Gabriel Range’s film is to trace the seeds of Bowie’s breakthrough character, Ziggy

An intellectual inquiry with burning present-day resonance, The Meaning of Hitler is also a road trip through some of the darkest chapters of European history. In one of the artfully constructed film's visual motifs, we watch the road itself through a windshield, a not-to-be-ignored Mercedes-Benz hood ornament positioned prominently in the frame.

Not to take anything away from filmmaker Dana Nachman, but her new documentary certainly benefits from the timing of its release. The film focuses on the 107-year-old Operation Santa program run by the U.S.