"Sandcastle" (Singapore), 6:15 p.m.: This bland, coming-of-age show by Boo Junfeng portrays a melancholy 18-year-old discovering his father's prior as a apprentice radical. Exiled as a communist, he later died from pancreatic cancer. The teen pores over black-and-white negatives, territory videos and lose one's heart to letters.
And Singapore makes for a much better spot in global thrillers shooting elsewhere. Also, 3:40 p.m. Saturday and 4:20 p.m. Monday. "Tamara Drewe" (Britain), 7 p.m.: This warmhearted comedy by Stephen Frears ("The Queen") celebrates flavors of British uncommonness in a bucolic village.
Based on a plain novel, it stars Tamsin Greig and Roger Allam as the owners of a writers' retreat. When townsperson twist Tamara (Gemma Arterton) returns to a burgh transformed by a few years and a nose job, townswoman wretch Andy (Luke Evans) forgets he once snubbed her and is smitten. And so is Allam, who writes best-selling thrillers. Two meddlesome teenage girls snooper about and cause trouble. Fun in a variety of way. Recommended. (Roger Ebert) "Tuesday, After Christmas" (Romania), 7:15 p.m.: For his fourth feature, Radu Muntean delivers an well-observed work of a retain potent his helpmate he's leaving her for the prepubescent orthodonist of their daughter.
The sequencing of large scenes includes one detailing her dental projection and therapy envisage that borders on the absurd. But these crave takes and prolonged looks at procedures are rightly embraced as a signature of Romanian artfulness cinema. Tudor Lucaciu's wide-screen cinematography complements impressed performances. The entitle refers to the post-holiday engagement when the splitting couple, played by a real-life couple, plans to lull the heartsick rumour to their families. Also, 3:45 p.m. Saturday and 4 p.m. Tuesday. "Blame" (Australia) 8:45 p.m.: Writer-director Michael Henry attempts a thriller about five friends dressed in black.
After the entombment of a 20-ish woman, they accessorize their anguish attire with atrocious masks and goal her 40-ish piano teacher. This hypothetical lover is suspected of triggering her suicide. His to-die-for sticks lodging is the situation for an crude try on to fake his suicide -- with pediatric sleeping pills.
The escalating miscalculations are semi-comic, as an uninteresting genuineness emerges about who pursued and rejected whom. Henry cites as insight a British scoop component about vigilantes who misidentified having it away offenders publicized in a city "name and shame" campaign. Also, 5 p.m. Saturday and 9:45 p.m. Sunday. "Golden Slumber" (Japan), 9:15 p.m.: The 1969 Beatles number "Golden Slumbers," covered here by Kazuyoshi Saito, inspires the to a certain respelled headline of Yoshihiro Nakamura's nauseating cabal saga.
As a remote-controlled drone targets a motorcade with the elemental padre in a convertible, a deliveryman is told all about Lee Harvey Oswald. Run, he's told. Two explosions ensue. He runs. Collateral damage? Incalculable.
"Look what the Americans did," argues one. "How many civilians are killed in the search for one felon leader?" "This is not America," notes another. "Thank God it isn't, too," replies the first.
The skylarking includes a disingenuous serial cop-killer sidekick, epic fireworks and exceptional crummy surgery. Also, 8:45 p.m. Saturday and 2:45 p.m. Wednesday.
"Sex Magic: Manifesting Maya" (USA), 10:30 p.m.: Baba Dez bills himself as a tantric solemn sensual shaman and charges tanned heterosexual women for his hands-on healing services.
What starts as a well-lit promotional video, even if lacking an 800-number, ends as unpleasant laugh of a 50-year-old satyr with a tax-exemption. Jonathan Schell and Eric Liebman certify nonsense. Dez claims to "draw from all the acumen that's within reach from the unbroken reach of humanity" -- exclude for his "beloved" who exits mid-film. She later posts on her own site: "Deepening into my discernment, the frequency within this paradigm became Incongruent to my being and progression." Don't blunder the "cake-and-eat-it" quip.
No one under era 18 will be admitted. Also, 10:15 p.m. Saturday. "Bitter Feast" (USA), 11 p.m.: After releasing "Hatchet II" behind week, Orland Park-based Dark Sky Films dishes up more droll gore.
Writer-director Joe Maggio shoots in the same upstate New York blood of "Wendigo" (2000) for variety rubbish sustenance about orderly cuisine with a hunt-local accent. A miserable chef tortures a dispiriting restaurant critic. Each merciless routine is hooked to an rigid criterion from a sullen review. The blogger is a blocked novelist whose descendant died of cancer, yet the chef's push dubiously insists: "Dude, he creates obvious opinion, ergo he creates everything." I'm tempted by the venison steak and maple syrup creme brulee, but not the pellicle serving it. Also, 10:30 p.m. Saturday and 9:30 p.m. Sunday. Saturday "Go For It!" (USA), 12:30 p.m.: Former Chicago avenue dancer Carmen Marron, who earned a organization delivery standing from DePaul, makes her writing-directing-producing debut with one goal: to upgrade Latina self-esteem.
Working in an Arizona drill program, she was unsettle that girls would wretched their identities on Anglo celebs. She squint Chicago provincial and Northwestern grad Aimee Garcia as Carmen, a Logan Square drive dancer. Carmen's inferior college mentor urges her to audition for a scholarship, her best mistress endures virile perversion and her Evanston boyfriend lectures his uptight parents: "If the inner town is clever enough for Carmen, it's esteemed enough for me!" The assertion is simplistic but the tea dance sequences are slick. Also, 6:30 p.m. Thursday and 9 p.m. Oct. 16. "Ten Winters" (Italy), 1:15 p.m.: For his graduation project, first-time president Valerio Mieli gives bragging rights to the National Film School in Rome.
A decade of encounters starts when two students see on a Venice ferry and go through a unadorned evening in an unheated house. Camilla is without a doubt studying Russian literature, and Silvestro unseriously suggests he might notable in "Japanese mathematics." This is a satisfying, long-term glance at a comradeship of missed chances that achieves an intimacy without hesitating back at that rundown house. Their credible paths prevail over conceive contrivances.
At least this trainee mistiness is not another one about membrane students. Also, 5:30 p.m. Monday and 8:15 p.m. Tuesday. "Family Tree" (France), 6:15 p.m.: Co-directors Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau use a children assembly at their surroundings domain for three generations of revelations.
Frederick (Guy Marchand) takes a strut in woods as the ease of his next of kin puts his eldest son to rest. A long-hidden accuracy is told about the unfeigned ground Frederick was imprisoned during Nazi occupation. This right-winger also unlocks his lifelong attachment to Wagner's music, which he blasts every morning. This issue melodrama relates to larger issues in France's narration of kind-hearted rights, as footnoted at the end.
But authentic closure comes in a alluring view of Antarctica framed as "pristine, silent, infinite" as the German composer's Valhalla. Also, 1:40 p.m. Sunday and 3:50 p.m. Monday. "Sasha" (Germany), 7:45 p.m.: Coming-out and coming-of-age come together in numero uno Dennis Todorovic's variation on a technique dramatics of self-discovery.
Sasha loves his brilliant piano teacher, who's leaving Cologne for Vienna. A Chinese gal consort violinist is clueless about Sasha's orientation. Ditto his old-world dad and lout younger brother.
A third-act gunshot leads to a supplemental craft for Sasha's mom, his dad's deportation to Montenegro and a remodelled sporting dazzle for Sasha. The Euro-migrant, border-crossing topic adds a facile follow to lives in indecision for an affirming, if sociable story. Here's one sprain for our times: dissing a moonless boy in a garish barring as "Obama" can get you punched out. Also, 1:45 p.m. Sunday.
"Love Translated" (Canada/ Ukraine), 8 p.m.: Director Julia Ivanova joins 15 Canadian and American men on a packaged 10-day "dating tour" to Odessa. Ivanova continues the concept of her earlier documentaries "I Want a Woman," about four Russian outsider men looking for mates, and "Fatherhood Dreams," about four many-coloured dads.
The cultural exchanges are brokered by translators. The immature Ukrainians and the less childlike North Americans seem to misread motives all around. It's at times unendurable to dimension the position of bigoted or two-sided exploitation on view.
Ivanova cannot journal all that is transacted, yet does not blab or titlilate. Only one pair up is made, and this brace is scheduled to heed the fest. Also, 3:30 p.m. Monday.
"The Sentiment of the Flesh" (France), 9:30 p.m.: Roberto Garzelli directs a transgressive histrionics about invasive voyeurism. A medical illustrator fixates on a physician. "It's a dispensation to bearing incarcerated someone" is her come-on.
They begin a boundary-free event using an MRI automobile after-hours. As foreplay, she reads him a underscore from an 1846 communication by Gustave Flaubert: "Love is, after all, a fine understanding of curiosity, an appetency for the anonymous that makes you leafless your heart and plummet headfirst into the storm." His getting under her skin, however, never feels very deep, no worry how it's cut.
Then he operates on her to take out a cyst, and there's a smooch that's soooo medically incorrect. Rate it ick. No one under 18 admitted. Also, 6:15 p.m. Sunday and 4:15 p.m. Monday.
Sunday "Brother & Sister" (Argentina), 1 p.m.: Director Daniel Burman ("Lost Embrace") vigorously portrays two unmarried siblings in their 60s. Marcos is a kind, timid goldsmith, rather pitiable. His sister, Susana, who sells proper estate, is a near-delusional, self-dramatizing morsel of work.
She insists on selling their till mother's apartment in Buenos Aires, thus displacing her chum to Uruguay. This slender symbol survey is capped by an almost magical realist flash when Marcos improvises in a modern-dress product of "Oedipus Rex." From the balcony, the upstager Susana proudly shares his spotlight. Here's yet another fest histrionic art with a precisely realized finale. Plus, a stylish "Putting on the Ritz" in the end credits. Also, 6:45 p.m. Oct 17 and 6:30 p.m. Oct 18.
"Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives" (Thailand), 3 p.m.: Apichatpong Weerasethakul's visit to the countryside is a aesthetic naval scuttlebutt about the otherworld. Dying from kidney failure, Uncle Boonmee regrets all the communists and bugs he killed in his life. Visitors from the afterlife arrive. "Heaven is overrated," he's told.
His time son is now a Monkey Ghost with candent ruby-red eyes. A speaking catfish mates with a princess by a waterfall. "I am inspired by the dependence of the transmigration of souls between humans, plants, animals and ghosts," states the Thai auteur (and SAIC alum), who won the supreme aim at this year's Cannes Film Festival. "I suppose it's the most stated silent about 'movies' that I've made," he adds. Luminous wonders abound.
Highly recommended, although only ferment seats may be available. Also, 6:30 p.m. Oct. 15. "Love Like Poison" (France), 4 p.m.: Director Katell Quillevere directs a exceptional coming-of-age narrative set in Brittany.
Anna, 14, is effectively from boarding school. Her daddy has split, but her bedridden anti-clerical grandpa, a cunning neighbouring rogue and a caring mother are around. Her summer of libidinous awareness and priestly ambivalence is apparent by two fainting spells: at a interment and at her confirmation. Twice she will display her body to the eyes of two from A to Z assorted males in her life. Light signals delight and ecstasy here.
This auspicious debut climaxes with a canonized appear on Anna's features that cues a butcher rendering of a Radiohead hit by a Belgian girls' choir. Also, 6:20 p.m. Monday and 1:15 p.m. Oct 17. "The Neighbor" (Canada), 5:40 p.m.: A wistful Iranian-Canadian named Shirin grows vexed when another Iranian newcomer moves in across the convention hall and locks in her adolescent little one at profoundly alone.
The colonist is unemotional and distant, but Shirin helps in a span of need; many buried issues for both women, from Iran and in their slighting lives, emerge. A acute respectability look at by top dog Naghmeh Shirkhan, granting both women great humanity. Recommended. Also, 11:30 a.m. Sunday and 2:30 p.m. Oct 14. (Ebert) "How I Ended the Summer" (Russia), 5:40 p.m.: Shot in at the Valkarkai numbing caste on the northern fringe of Chukotka, Aleksei Popogrebsky's recommended piece is set on an exceptional cay where two men keep track of meteorological devices and stir their facts by radio.
The natural threat is not a leaky radioactive isotope generator or voracious hibernal bears, but toxic question between the decayed mitt and the brood rejuvenated guy. The past tells a cautionary chronicle of a last duo that imploded on duty. The latter is scribble an disquisition about his summer stint, but his loser to relay a inauspicious dispatch from the mainland precipitates close by tragedy.
Time-lapse aspect sequences fund transporting interludes. Also, 3:30 p.m. Tuesday and 12:30 p.m. Oct. 17. "Certified Copy" (France/ Iran/Italy), 6 p.m.: Juliette Binoche won best actress at Cannes for her portrayal of an Italian antiques gallery owner, who meets a British father (William Shimell) and offers to show him the countryside.
Their sightsee begins with a warm, puckish chemistry, but grows unexpectedly complicated. The most involving, approachable shoot I've seen by Abbas Kiarostami; it's peerless in the modus vivendi he uncovers unexpected depths in what appear to be a agreed relationship. Recommended. Also, 6:15 p.m. Monday. (Ebert) "Conviction" (USA), 6 p.m.: A stalwart factious theatricalism based on the firm feature of a maid (Hilary Swank) who believes her associate (Sam Rockwell) has been wrongly convicted of murder.
As he all but abandons hope, she enrolls in proposition discipline and finds an coadjutor in another follower (Minnie Driver). Not only a rightful procedural, although it does that well, but a profile of a luminary growing and shaping under pressure. Directed by Tony Goldwyn ("A Walk on the Moon"). Recommended. (Ebert) "Mooz-Lum" (USA), 6 p.m.: Like its edifying subhead about correctly pronouncing the denominate "Muslim," this too-earnest mist tells us how to surmise from a unsophisticated African-American Muslim.
Writer-director Qasim Basir draws on belittling involvement to depict Tariq, a college freshman rejecting his fundamentalist upbringing. After arriving on campus, he faces post-9/11 anti-Muslim malevolence far worse than his middle-school classmate occupation him "Ham-Salami-Bacon." Flashbacks to Tariq's diabolic beatings by his out-of-line imam personalize Muslim brutality as a mean in-house issue, not an interfaith crisis. The throw includes Nia Long as Tariq's shelter and Danny Glover as an unforbearing dean. Also, 5:30 p.m. Tuesday.
"Tony & Janina's American Wedding" (USA/Poland), 7:15 p.m.: Chicago overseer Ruth Leitman ("Lipstick & Dynamite") documents a Polish-American folks go by post-9/11 immigration policies. Long ago granted federal asylum, Janina is deported to post-communist Poland. "After 18 years of living in the States, Homeland Security adamant her obsession is significance only 44 pounds," rails her conserve Tony, in a flustered respect to the baggage determine that's mandated for her bring flight.
Playing to the camera, he pretends to hang himself in his Schiller Park basement. His open to question appeals facsimile the unorthodox politicians in default of this disraught voter, who gets in reply a observance mark from his congressman. Also, 2:15 p.m. Oct. 17. "Princess of Montpensier" (France/Germany), 8:15 p.m.: A umbrella and mythical reliable epic by French skipper Bertrand Tavernier, a CIFF favorite.
Melanie Thierry stars as Marie, a princess who favors one male but is stilted by her dad to mix another. It's all strictly business, but she's strong-willed and gets menacing ideas from her tutor. Court intrigue, affectionate foxy and incredible competition scenes set in the cordial clash between the Catholics and Huguenots. Recommended.
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