Posts by Neely Swanson

It is unlikely you will see a bleaker movie than”Santosh,” the outstanding feature directorial debut of documentarian Sandhya Suri. Opening this Pandora’s Box filled with poverty, racism, caste hatred, corruption and governmental incompetence is gut wrenching because it goes beyond the horror of everyday life in rural India telling the journey of young widow Santosh…

“The Count of Monte Cristo,” a new edition of this oft-told tale, adapted and directed by the team of Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de la Patellèreof, is a sweepingly romantic adventure full to overflowing with love, hate, greed, betrayal, revenge and resurrection. The villains are painted in the blackest blacks, but what makes it most…

“The Girl with the Needle” is Denmark’s submission for the Best International Feature at the 97th Academy Awards. Directed by Magnus von Horn and co-written with Line Langebek, he has created what he thinks is a modern day fairy tale. This film, however, is more grim than Grimm and definitely darker than a Hans Christian…

Noel Coward is a name that seems to have dropped from the modern lexicon and that’s entirely unfair. I’d done my fair share of dismissal until I saw a production of “Present Laughter” in London starring Andrew Scott. Now, granted, Scott could read the phone book (if we used such things now) and it would…

“Daaaaaalí!” is the ultimate fluff piece. It’s a French existential comedy that replays like “Groundhog Day,” revisiting the same surreal theme, Dalí himself, over and over using multiple actors playing the master himself. Young Judith Rochant (Anaïs Demoustier), tired of her day job as a pharmacist, has decided to redefine herself as a journalist and…

“The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry,” written by Rachel Joyce based on her best seller, is directed by Hettie Macdonald. Macdonald, whose work on the popular Irish series “Normal People” established her as an artist who fully understands the importance of character development really knows how to tell  a small story with bigger aspirations and…

Make no mistake, “Wolfs” is not going to make anyone’s “Best of” list for 2024 but that doesn’t mean it’s not a lot of fun, because it is. A starring vehicle for two of the biggest movie stars on the planet, Brad Pitt and George Clooney, the script is a tad too light to sustain…

The more things change, the more they remain the same, or at least they do in “Coup!” set during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. The city has been abandoned; businesses have closed; people are starving; the government of Woodrow Wilson is cracking down on dissenters and anyone spreading criticism of the efforts to curb the…

“Good One” is an uncomfortably insightful film by India Donaldson in her feature writing and directing debut, and it is purposefully ambiguous, starting with the title.  Sam (Lily Collias) and her dad Chris (James Le Gros) are in the midst of packing for their annual father/daughter camping trip. Chris stumbles over the baby toys strewn…

Karen Kain was the much beloved and lauded prima ballerina of the National Ballet of Canada. She followed up her dancing career by becoming its Artistic Director. Announcing her retirement, she was determined that she would not go gentle into that good night, by declaring that her last act would also be a first. She…

There are films that defy expectations and there are those that turn those expectations upside down. Lee Tamahori’s “The Convert” is a movie that does both. Tamahori, a Maori/English filmmaker from New Zealand, burst on the scene in 1994 with “Once Were Warriors” about a violent Maori family. In “The Convert,” he returns to those…

“Chronicles of a Wandering Saint,” a true gem, is about the unexpectedly surreal and funny actions of a woman whose expectations rise to the heavens. That woman is Rita Lopez. She lives in a tiny, neglected Argentine village in the middle of nowhere, where the local Catholic church, dedicated to Santa Rita, is the central…

Agnieszka Holland, the fabled director of “Europa Europa” about a young Jewish boy’s survival in Nazi Germany, has set her laser focus on the migrant crisis in Poland. “Green Border” won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival as well as a number of nominations and awards around the world. Most Polish film…

“Wildcat,” Ethan Hawke’s audacious film about Flannery O’Connor, tries for the kind of gothic approach that this Southern writer might have liked. Most ambitious was his desire to reintroduce O’Connor, considered one of the leaders of Southern Gothic literature, a group that included William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams and Carson McCullers. This style often included elements…

“Io Capitano,” nominated for this year’s Academy Award for Best International Film from Italy, is a complicated web and complex film. Written and directed by Matteo Garrone,  “Io Capitano” is the story of two teenage boys from Dakar, Senegal with stars in their eyes and Europe as a goal.  It’s not so much the endless…