AMREEKA DEPICTS PALESTINIAN IMMIGRANTS TO THE UNITED STATES A mother and son on the West Bank have long dreamed of life in Amreeka (the Arabic word for America). One day they receive approval to immigrate, thanks to a lottery drawing, but the letter arrives close to the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. Muna Farah […]

IN THE LOOP DEFECATES ON TWO AWARD-WINNING TELEVISION SERIES The British television comedy series Yes, Minister (1980-1984) and its successor Yes, Prime Minister (1986-1987) is a masterpiece of political satire that exposes how the British bureaucracy runs the government. A cowriter, Jonathan Lynn, later tried his hand at satirizing and exposing American politics by directing

Dead Snow (Dod Sno), directed by Tommy Wirkola, is a Norwegian tongue-in-cheek comedy built around the premise that Nazis during World War II inhabited an Article Circle naval base at Oksfjord to harass shipping between England and Russia. The brutality of 300 Nazis toward the 3,000 townspeople ultimately resulted in a revengeful massacre, though some

Offspring of a Seattle Chinese matriarch are informed by her housekeeper that their mother is dead in Dim Sum Funeral, directed by Anna Chi. None of the children and their spouses have good memories of her, and they dislike one another, but when they meet at her residence, they are unhappy to be informed that

Departures (Okuribito), directed by Yôjirô Takita, features the traditional Japanese burial ceremony. In the beginning of the film, a symphony orchestra is shut down for lack of funds. Daigo Kobayashi (played by Masahiro Motoki), a cellist, takes his wife and two daughters to his family’s house in the north of Japan, where by chance he

KABEI–OUR MOTHER, DEMONSTRATES THE SUFFERING OF JAPANESE CIVILIANS DURING WORLD WAR II Directed by Yôji Yamada, Kabei–Our Mother (Kâbê), is a biopic of the Nogami family during the years 1940-1945. After a portrayal of the family’s woes in the first half of the film, one tragic death after another piles up, with a weeping unimaginable

ANGELS AND DEMONS PROVIDES A TRAVELOG OF ROME Following up the Da Vinci Code, the film Angels and Demons provides yet another treasure hunt for something important, but this time a bomb of several megatons in the form of a canister containing anti-matter stolen from an experimental CERN lab in Switzerland. The flask is supposed

LITTLE ASHES REVEALS THE LOVE AFFAIR BETWEEN SALVADOR DALÍ & FEDERICO GARCÍA LORCA  Directed by Paul Morrison, the slowmoving triple biopic Little Ashes begins in 1922, when Salvador Dalí y Domènech (played by Robert Pattinson) and Federico García Lorca (played by Javier Beltrán) are students so infatuated with each other’s genius that they fall in

AN AMERICAN AFFAIR EXPLOITS THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION In a story that could be compared with The Reader (2008), directed by William Olsson, a teenage schoolboy approaches an older woman with sex on his mind but gets caught in a deeper plot than he realizes. The boy, Adam Stafford (played by Cameron Bright), attends a Catholic