Movies by Mills (October 2014) by Brian Mills

EDITORIAL The 18th issue of Movies by Mills has wrapped and is delivered to you our loyal readers and lovers of film. We proudly publicise the feature which opened this year’s Raindance Film Festival at the Vue West End, London. I ORIGINS is a magnificent film, one of the best films to ever be shown at this great independent film festival. Mike Cahill, director of the film, attended the UK premiere for a Q & A after the screening and we were there to eavesdrop on the proceedings, which you can read about within these pages along with our review of the movie. There are also reviews of Magic in the Moonlight, Human Capital, Mr Morgan’s Last Love and God Save the Girl. The latter two films are reviewed in retrospect of their limited screenings. It is the autumn where film festivals flourish and MbM reflects on one of the best in the world – Toronto. Take a look at some of the rich selection that made up the festival’s programme. Many of you will be able to see a few of these movies at this th year's London Film Festival which opens on the 8 October and will be part of MbM’s special edition next month. The Imitation Game, Foxcatcher, A Little Chaos, The New Girlfriend, Wild, The Drop, Eden, Hungry Hearts, Men, Women and Children and Pasolini were all screened at Toronto. See MbM’s recommendations in our feature: FilmFest Follower. Once again the magazine is fully illustrated with a selection of beautiful images to accompany the reviews and features. Thank you for those of you have taken time out from your busy schedules to post comments on Facebook and Twitter to praise MbM. And of course to the following we offer our sincere gratitude for their assistance and in providing material and images for this edition: Image.net. Milana Vujikov of the Picturehouse Gate Cinema, Notting Hill. www.picturehouses.co.uk/cinema/ gate_picturehouse Charlotte Aston of Warner Bros. Entertainment UK. Patrick Reed of Premiercomms.com Mike Cahill. Arrow Films. Elfilm.com The Raindancers at raindancefestival.org To Paul Ridler for the design and look of this publication. www.theco.co.uk Enjoy the read

Brian Mills

I ORIGINS Spoiler Alert When I saw you, I had the feeling that I had known you, like we’re connected from past lives. I don’t believe in that. What do you believe in? I’m a scientist. I believe in proof. Do you believe in reincarnation, or like Dr Ian Gray (Michael Pitt) a molecular biologist only believe in facts? He and his laboratory assistant Karen, are attempting to build a human eye and implant it into a sightless organism. But then the spiritual world, the universe, God or whatever you want to name it, throws the scientist a curve ball when he attends a college party and meets a girl there with the most amazing eyes he has ever seen. He immediately photographs her eyes for his laboratory tests. The two opposites attract and they fall in love. And then Sofi (Astrid Berges-Frisbey) this mysterious girl disappears. I Origins is a remarkable film which will invariably be debated for many years to come as all good films should. Are the eyes the windows of the soul? Sofi tells Ian that if she was given proof that there was no God then she would accept it. She asks Ian would he not change his mind too if he was given proof that God exists? But he keeps insisting that would never happen, and of course that is what gives the film such a powerful impetus at the very end of the film. There are many poignant scenes in the film and as Mike Cahill, the director, explained he likes to throw something into a film that challenges a character’s belief system: Ian is a left brained scientist who does not believe in magic of any kind, so there is this scene where Ian is in a cafe and he is suddenly aware of the number eleven cropping up one after the other until it ends by him looking up at this billboard poster that carries a picture of Sofi’s eyes. For just a brief moment 4

in time, Ian’s doctrine is dented by a happening that he cannot explain. The bottom line really is that science can’t explain away everything and a perfectly designed universe would leave them out of the equation of understanding. This is Mike Cahill’s third film as a director. His first was the documentary Boxers and Ballerinas, made in 2004. Seven years later he made Another Earth starring Brit Marling, who plays Karen in I Origins. In Another Earth, he explored the idea of loneliness and stated: “You may have great close friends, a great lover or a great family, but there are certain things that you have got to deal with yourself. There’s this inner monologue inside your head. What if it were externalized? The star of the film, Michael Pitt, began in the TV series Deltaventura, as the character Babyface. He played an uncredited dance student in his first feature part in 54. In the TV series, Dawson’s Creek he played Henry Parker, but it has been the series Boardwalk Empire, Jimmy Darmody, that really brought him recognition. Notable feature films have been Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers as Matthew, in Silk as Herve Joncour and Larry in the all-star cast of Seven Psychopaths. He can be seen next in You Can’t Win. Brit Marling has a bachelor’s degree in economics but changed her career to follow art and acting. Her first film was a Short called The Recordist, and her acting talent was soon recognised in only her second feature film, as Maggie in Sound of My Voice. Another Earth followed this, working with Mike Cahill. Both of them were at Georgetown, Washington, as students. They met and started making short films together. She would act in Mike’s films. They were just a little crew of filmmakers. Mike stated that when he wrote the part of Karen in I Origins, he wrote it for Brit. It was a part that she could do, a character she could understand. Brit has stated her beliefs about the shortage of good roles for women in films and in the industry generally. “There are not many stories of strong, powerful, sexy, entitled women because there are not yet that many female writer-directors, but that’s changing. I just think there aren’t many representations of how to be a girl or woman in the world” Perhaps in a few years she will be directing that change and even acting in a film about it. 5

Q&A MIKE CAHILL The following Q & A with the director of I Orgins took place after the screening of the film at the opening of the Raindance Film Festival at the Vue West End, Leicester Square, London. MC: I had this expansive backstory written. I met Michael Pitt in Brooklyn. It was a central meeting, we are both from the same agency, neither had an agenda. I admired him. The opportunity to meet was there and I jumped at the chance. We were talking for several hours and I thought of this ‘origin’ story about this doctor and his obsession with eyes. He said we should make that. So I wrote a script in two weeks for the ‘origin’ story and Fox agreed to make the story. Q: Were you interested in eyes before starting this project? MC: There’s a scene earlier in the film when Mike is sitting in a cafe in Brooklyn and there is a picture of an Afghan in the National Geographic with these amazing eyes; and the story was that the photographer took that photograph of the girl in a refugee camp, and then she went off to play with her friends. And when she became famous several years later, they mounted an expedition to find her and how they found her was through the eyes. I found that very inspirational that they would find someone through their eyes. Q: When you were casting Sofi and you found Astrid, did you put this on the casting call that she must have incredible eyes? MC: I was looking for an actress for the role and I would figure out the eyes eventually. We tried contact lenses; there were hand-painted ones and they looked so ridiculous. We tried using digital effect, but we have repulsion for fake eyes. We filmed Astrid with various lighting and then pasted Astrid’s eyes into the girl, frame by frame. Q: There are certain things in the world that are biologically complicated, that has arisen in evolution that we can’t find them? Where did you first hear about that? MC: In Darwin’s “Origin of the Species”. He was describing the process of natural selection, how we evolved. There is one line where he is talking about the human eye. Audience: What did the eleven mean? MC: There is a writing thing I try to do that is like, throw an opposite wrench at a character to see how they would deal with it. Here is a character who would never believe in anything magical so he can’t explain seeing all these elevens. 8

Audience: You create a sort of seesaw of emotions. Love is pure and immutable and then you have him with one woman and she dies and he goes on to the next woman, and she comes back. I’m trying to find out where this really goes. In terms of the characters, I’m really grappling with this. MC: I don’t think love is this a pure immutable thing and I think it is naive when it is presented in films this way. What I wanted to explore was the many types of love. I mean the love for Sofi and Karen, are completely different, yet they are both valid. Audience: What about the effects of karma from a past life? MC: In the original story of I Origins a baby was born knowing its future. There is a thing where wealthy people can leave their inheritance to their future selves. You can inherit all the wealth but you also inherit the baggage. For some, reincarnation is an excuse for their own repressed past. Audience: Awesome script. I loved it. How is your approach when working with actors? It is clear that scenes were scripted, but so much felt it was improvised, like actors were talking on top of each other, which was great. Could you talk a bit about your process of working with actors? MC: Sure. I really like rehearsals a lot. When you are working with actors who take the craft of acting as an art form and they prepare for their role and create a backstory from childhood, they are invaluable to a director. They know the character way better than you. They know th what they did on their 10 birthday, which you may not know. They know the first time that they fell in love, first time they broke their leg. And they craft these rich back stories that may never be up on the screen. I use that as a resource. I trust the actors with their suggestions, with their ideas. Like the song that Sofi was listening to on her earphones, Astrid suggested that. And the scene on the subway was originally scripted but we shot without dialogue and Michael suggested that. The way I talked to my collaborators on the film was, you have a piano and you have white notes and black notes. The sense of the black notes is that they are always flat or sharp and in the movie there are always these black notes. You think about when they go to get married, they don’t get married. They have to wait twenty-four hours. It is annoying, landing on an awkward spot. I was interested in constructing a story of all black notes. NB: According to the doctrine of reincarnation, a soul does not pass into another living creature until ten months after death. 9

MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT Spoiler Alert I believe the dull reality of life is all there is, but you are proof that there is more. It is Woody Allen time when cinemas release his latest film and whether we enjoy it as much as some of his greatest achievements is really not the point, just the comfortable feeling of familiarity that we get once we hear the New Orleans jazz score over the titles, the alphabetical listed credits, the subtle one-liners, the obsessive flirtation with metaphysics and the embraceable nostalgia. Magic in the Mooonlight has all of these, plus his love of magic and trickery which was part of his boyhood. Stanley Crawford (Colin Firth) a stage magician, enjoys the debunking of fakery in the form of tricksters and mystics. So when his friend and fellow magician Howard Burkan (Simon McBurney) confesses to being completely stumped as to how young and attractive mystic Sophie Baker (Emma Stone) is fooling everybody, Crawford can’t resist the challenge to expose the truth. He travels to France and meets the rich Cartledge family which includes their youngest son Brice, a ukulele-playing crooner, who is madly in love with Sophie and serenades her at every opportune moment, Sophie’s supportive mother (Marcia Gay Harden) and of course Sophie. As a test of her abilities, Stanley drives Sophie to Province to meet his Aunt (Eileen Atkins) and he cannot believe what he sees and hears. You can’t possibly know that! Is she a real psychic? If not, how is she able to trick two professional magicians? And will she marry Brice? Stanley is an obnoxious arrogant man with thoughts of no one but himself. He is cynical and passionless and his proposal of marriage to Sophie is priceless evidence of that. The film is an enjoyable experience. 10

Emma Stone is the latest of Woody Allen’s muses, and she will also star in his next as of yet untitled Woody Allen project. His muses started with Diane Keaton (Annie Hall) Mia Farrow (The Purple Rose of Cairo) Scarlett Johansson (Match Point) and now Emma Stone. All of these stars did their best under his direction. Diane Keaton, Woody’s first muse, has appeared in seven of his films, not including Play it Again, Sam, which was based on his play and starred them together but which he did not direct. Sleeper was the first film of Diane’s which he directed. Love and Death followed and then his first masterpiece Annie Hall, that won four Oscars. Interiors was next in line, his first drama, and then his second masterpiece Manhattan. There was then a gap of seven films before they worked together and that was in Radio Days. Manhattan Murder Mystery in 1993 was the last film that he directed Diane Keaton, but they are very good friends and it is quite possible that they he will make another with her. The interim period between the years 1986 to 1988 was when he discovered his second muse: *Mia Farrow, starring her in A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy. The underrated Zelig and then came three all-time greats in Woody’s oeuvre: Broadway Danny Rose, The Purple Rose of Cairo and Hannah and Her Sisters. Six films were still to come with Mia and amongst these were Crimes and Misdemeanours and Shadows and Fog. Scarlett Johansson was the third muse after a long bleak period without one. Match Point was a thriller that captured the talent of Scarlett in a very well received film, seemingly perhaps suggesting another golden period for Woody, but Scoop, Scarlett Johansson again, was a let-down. Fortunately, as Woody began to embrace Europe locations, he made Vicky Christina Barcelona in which he had Scarlett playing opposite Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem, a film which won critical plaudits. And so to Emma Stone, the fourth muse. She seems to have the charm and charisma that Diane Keaton has and it will be interesting to see how long the association lasts. Undoubtedly in Magic in the Moonlight, Emma steals the film from everyone, including her co-star Colin Firth. It is a known fact that Woody Allen has the best record of any film director in his actresses winning Academy Awards, Cate Blanchett being the latest in Blue Jasmine. *Her career nose-dived after leaving Woody Allen’s films. 11

MR MORGAN’S LAST LOVE *Spoiler Alert

You can miss a single being even though you are surrounded by countless others; they are an unwelcome distraction. They cloud your vision So, I’m an unwelcome distraction? I cloud your vision? You are the only part of my life I haven’t figured out yet. Matthew Morgan (Michael Caine) is a grieving widower and a retired American philosophy professor in Paris, a city he loves, even though he cannot speak French. When by chance, he meets a young Parisian dance teacher, Pauline; he suddenly rediscovers the joys of life. Pauline encourages Matthew to attend her dance classes which he does and likes them. Both share an affinity of loss, for Matthew, his wife, and for Pauline, her father. They are seeking comfort, friendship and understanding and that they have found in each other. When Matthew’s son Miles (Justin Kirk) and his daughter Karen (Gillian Anderson), arrive from America, they rush to the hospital where their father is, having foolishly overdosed on pills. There they meet Pauline and totally misinterpret the relationship; the obvious friction between Matthew and Miles and Karen, worsens when they keep pleading with him to leave France for America. 14

Why would he want to leave, when he has collected so many memories to lighten his grief a little, helped by his friendship with Pauline? One instinctively knows that all will be resolved but never quite knowing how. Michael Caine gives a good performance, marred only by an irritating American accent that comes and goes as it pleases. Jason Kirk is excellent as the son who has always felt left out of the son part of a father-son relationship, but the mainstay of the film is Clemence Poesy as Pauline, who brings a magnetic quality to the film; epitomizing her philosophy: Acting makes you look at life and try to understand it in a beautiful way. Clemence got universal attention when she was cast as Fleur Delacour in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and the rest of the Harry Potter franchise. Further memorable credits for Clemence were Chloe in In Bruges opposite Colin Farrell and as Rana in Danny Boyle’s very successful 127 Hours. Observing Clemence’s ability as an actress gives me confidence to predict that she will be one of the screen’s top stars in just a few years. Meanwhile, see Mr Morgan’s Last Love, it is now available on DVD and Blu-Ray, and you will come away feeling good. It is a cuddlesome film. Supporting players are Jane Alexander and Michelle Goddet, the latter plays Mademoiselle Dune, who comments to Matthew while he studies the menu in a French restaurant, that it might be a good time for him to order in French...but not if he is hungry. The film was written and directed by Sandra Nettleback, who was nominated at the Shanghai Film Festival for her film. Michael Bertl also received a nomination for his cinematography at the German Film Awards. The line spoken by Matthew “There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in” is taken from the Leonard Cohen song Anthem. 15

GOD HELP THE GIRL Spoiler Alert Let me tell you this: if you want to hear your voice floating in a beautiful tapestry of frequencies; you’re going to need a pop group. Set in Glasgow, the story follows a girl named Eve who escapes from a hospital where she has been a patient suffering from manicdepression. Her dream is to sing and it is that goal that lifts her out of her depression by writing songs. Eve escapes to her friend’s home. James is a romantic idealist who left the music scene when the band he was in split up. The two of them form a three-piece band with Cassie one of James’ students. The film is wonderfully uplifting and the music is excellent, but then the director is Stuart Murdoch, who was weaned on the music scene. This is his first feature film as a director and it is quite an accomplishment. It was partly funded by Kickstarter. Besides the story and foot-tapping songs, the jewel that really makes the film sparkle is Emily Browning who plays Eve, who embodies all the qualities of a dreamer which audiences can empathise with and understand her passion. Anyone who is down-on-their-luck as Eve is as a wouldbe songstress, we can root for if we like them, and Eve is mesmerizingly likeable. I’m a massive daydreamer. I’m constantly lost within my own fantasies and my own thoughts personally, and I think maybe that is sort of represented in what we do for a living, the fact that we make believe everything and we escape into these other characters for a living. Australian-born, Emily Browning’s entrance into films came after she was spotted in a school play and she got an agent which led her to her first professional role in a TV movie The Echo of Thunder. After appearing in three TV series, she made her feature 18

film debut in The Man Who Sued God, opposite Billy Connolly. Her first really big break came when she won the role of Violet in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, starring Jim Carrey. She has stated that she was afraid of being fired from the film because she was laughing at Jim Carrey so much. I was lucky – the first eight productions I auditioned for, I got cast. In 2011, she replaced Amanda Seyfried in Sucker Punch, which brought her critical acclaim. Also in the same year, she replaced Mia Wasikowska in Sleeping Beauty. There was a scene in Sucker Punch which was cut. It was a mild love scene with Jon Hamm. It was like heavy breathing and making out. It was hardly a sex scene. I think it’s great for this young girl to actually take control of her own sexuality. Yet further acclaim for Emily in Sleeping Beauty, a film of arthouse status, a haunting portrait of a university student trapped in a predatory world of voyeurism. What makes Emily so stable in her approach to acting and her attitude to working in the films? My family are very supportive and always have been. They weren’t the kind of parents that pushed me into it. I know a lot of parents of kid actors I’ve worked with have pressurised them into acting, but my parents are different. I’m really lucky to have them because they let me make my own decisions. The whole point of our job is to be able to realistically portray a human being and if you don’t experience life, if all you experience is acting and being on a set, how on Earth are you going to be able to connect to real people and portray these characters? I realized if I want to do this, I have to have a life. A film of Emily’s which did not have a wide theatrical release, but is worth watching is Summer in February in which she plays opposite Dominic Cooper, in a story set in an artist’s colony in Cornwall. Her next film is Shangri-La Suite about a couple who fall in love in a mental hospital. But the one which MbM is really relishing with anticipated excitement is the film which Emily is currently filming: Legend, starring Tom Hardy as the Kray twins, the gangsters who terrorised London during the 1950s and 60s. As for God Save the Girl it is still being screened at selected cinemas across the UK. 19

HUMAN CAPITAL Spoiler Alert This film is Italy’s official submission to the Best Foreign Language film category for the 2015 Academy Awards. It tells the story of two Italian families wrapped in a web of wealth, greed, lust and lies and how the families descend into another world which they seem unprepared to face when the money markets collapse and they turn to desperation and fear; made worse by the scandal of an accident which killed a cyclist and involves all of them when they discover that the driver under suspicion was probably one of their own offspring. I asked the film’s director, Paolo Virzi, how was the film received in Italy? He answered that it had mixed reviews. In the north of Italy, Milano and Lombardy, it was praised but in other parts of the country it was criticised for depicting the wealthiest families in a state of anxiety and avarice. Based on Stephen Amidon’s novel Human Capital but transferring the setting from Connecticut to Milan without losing any of its ferocity and strong characterisation. There is a multi-layered plot which is told in chapters. Dino ( Fabrizio Bentivoglio) is an estate agent consumed with envy for the lifestyle of his neighbours, hedge-fund manager Giovanni (Fabrizio Gifuni)and his wife, Carla (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi)whose spoilt son, Massi(Guglielmo Pinelli), has been dating Dino’s daughter, Serena (Matilda Gioli). Pathetic Dino begs to invest his family’s entire wealth in one of Giovanni’s high-yield VIP schemes, resulting in disaster when everything collapses. Giovanni’s wife was to buy a derelict theatre and bring it back to former glory. Her husband bought it for her but now he has to sell it and she is devastated. All of them worshipped at the altar of mammon and madness but now are left kneeling in the pews of purgatory. Of course everyone is to blame but themselves. 22

And of course there is still the hanging basket of guilt that the driver of the car on that fateful night of the accident was one of their own. The directing and acting of the film is of a very high standard and Paolo Virzi is getting internationally noticed and respected. Of the cast, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, is the most known in the UK. She has made over sixty-four feature films and directed three. In 5 x 2 she was Marion, caught in the sensuous love story which unfolded against exotic scenery and haunting music. It charmed audiences everywhere. Directed by Stephen Spielberg in Munich which did average business but Tedeschi excelled. The following year she played opposite Russell Crowe in A Good Year. It did quite well at the box office. Earlier this year she was seen opposite Toni Servillo in the outstanding Viva Liberta. The film was directed by Roberto Ando. It told the story of the main opposition party led by Enrico Olivieri who is facing a crisis. The opinion polls show that he is losing. One night after another protest, Enrico goes missing. Andrea and his wife Anna try to understand the reason why he has disappeared Then Anna remembers that Enrico has a twin brother Giovanni Emani an ingenious philosopher who suffers from bipolar depression. Andrea decides to meet him and ends up fascinated by him that he starts to dream of a plan that has a plot of a dangerous gamble. So it is that one day The Secretary turns up again. He starts speaking in a poetic and lucid way that is both surprising and striking and so different to the oratory of his brother. Suddenly the votes start coming in and enthusiastic crowds start attending the rallies. The Secretary becomes the object of an unprecedented admiration. But his brother has been watching the results and wants a bit of that success and plans to return. Valeriaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s character may appear to be in the shadows of what is happening, but is also controlling things. There is a scene in Human Capital when she has heard the news that her dreams have been crushed and she starts crying while heading for a family party. When she arrives no one can know of the trauma and pain she has been feeling. Human Capital was released in the UK on September 26th. 23

REFLECTING ON TORONTO WHIPLASH. transfixed its audience and received a

vociferous standing ovation. It is about an ambitious jazz drummer, Andrew Newman (Miles Teller, who wants to be one of the greatest drummers of all-time.

EDEN. documented France’s short-lived love affair

with electronic music. It follows Paul (Felix de Givry) and his best friend, who form a DJ duo called Cheers and get caught up in the euphoria of fame.

MANGLEHORN. Al Pacino plays a locksmith in a small

town and he has never got over the love of his life. Clara was a beautiful idealized woman who left him heartbroken 40 years ago; Pacino in one of his best roles.

THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING. Come Oscars, this could be

the one to be so honoured. It is the story of Stephen Hawking and his wife Jane who supports him through the earth-shattering diagnosis that he has a disease that has no cure. Eddie Redmayne seems to be odds on favourite to win Best Actor for his amazing performance.

STILL ALICE. Julianne Moore plays a woman trying to

stay connected to who she once was after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Moore’s character frantically uses her iPhone to try to keep her memory loss at bay; again, a heartbreaking performance given by this great actress.

WILD. Reese Witherspoon as Cheryl Strayed, a woman

determined to throw her reckless past away, while still treasuring the memory of her mother, she commits to hike her away over more than a thousand miles on the Pacific Crest Trail on her own.

CAKE. Jennifer Aniston as a woman obsessed with the

suicide of a fellow member of her chronic pain support group, and then develops a relationship with the woman’s grieving husband. Anna Kendrick, William H Macy, Felicity Hoffman and Sam Worthington are the supporting players.

WHILE WE’RE YOUNG. is a pleasurable experience with

Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts playing a middle-aged couple whose career and marriage are overturned when a disarming young couple enters their lives. 26

FILMFEST FOLLOWER MbM RECOMMENDS October 8th to 19th

BFI London Film Festival

THE IMITATION GAME

Directed by Morten Tyldum Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch. Keira Knightley. Matthew Goode. Mark Strong. Mathematician and cryptanalyst Alan Turing works on a machine that he believes will crack the German Enigma code to help Britain win World War II.

WHIPLASH

Directed by Damien Chazelle. Starring: Miles Teller. J. K. Simmonds. Andrew is determined to be one of the greatest drummers of alltime, is tutored, or tortured, by a ruthless instructor who begins to push him beyond his inspirational limits to make him the best.

MEN, WOMEN & CHILDREN

Directed by Jason Reitman. Starring: Adam Sandler. Ansel Eigort. Rosemarie DeWitt. Jennifer Garner. Quite a unique, but apt way, of showing the invasion of modern technology into a familyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s life: social network, online games, emails, Twitter, Ipads,, to reveal the darker side of what we are seeing.

WILD

Directed by Jean-Marc Vallee Starring: Reese Witherspoon. Laura Dern. To help clear herself of the traumas of a broken relationship, the loss of her mother, and her past drug addiction, Cheryl Strayed (Witherspoon) embarks on a thousand mile trek on the Pacific Coast Trail on her own.

THE SALVATION

Directed by Kristian Levring. Starring: Mads Mikkelsen. Eva Green Jeffrey Dean Morgan. In the vein of the great westerns of Sergio Leone and Corbucci, Levring delivers a powerful anti-hero bent on revenge.

3 HEARTS

Directed by Benoit Jacquot. Starring: Charlotte Gainsbourg. Benoit Poelvoorde. Chiara Mastroianni. Catherine Deneuve. A chance meeting, when a tax official misses his train, with a rather mysterious woman, leads them to arrange another rendezvous with chance intervening once again. Later he returns to the same town, meets another woman, but then they are both in for a very big surprise. 29

HUNGRY HEARTS Directed by Saverio Costanzo. Starring: Adam Driver. Alba Rohrwacher. Pregnancy and marriage quickly follow between two New Yorkers, but soon their relationship turns into stress and strife on how to bring up their baby.

SERENA Directed by Susanne Bier. Starring: Bradley Cooper. Jennifer Lawrence. Rhys Ifans. Cooper and Lawrence re-team after American Hustle in this story of a logging magnate and his ambitious and brilliant wife during America’s depression era.

EXIT Directed by Hsiang Chienn. Starring: Shiang-chyi Chen. A woman in her forties faces a bleak future after losing her job in a garment factory. On one of her visits to her elderly mother in hospital she befriends an injured man and begins to care for him

PASOLINI Directed by Abel Ferrara. Starring: Willem Dafoe. Ferrara’s film chronicles the last day of film director Pier Paolo Pasolini’s life before he is brutally murdered.

ALTMAN Directed by Ron Mann. Featuring Robin Williams. Julianne Moore. Bruce Willia. James Caan. Paul Thomas Anderson and Lily Tomlin. A documentary on filmmaker Robert Altman including archive footage of the director on shoots and in conversation. Among his inspired films: Mash, Nashville, The Player, Short Cuts. His TV comedy series Tanner, starring Michael Murphy, won him an Emmy.

THE DROP Directed by Michael R Roskam. Starring: Tom Hardy. Noomi Rapace. James Gandolfini. A film noir set in Brooklyn, where Bob Saginowski (Hardy) tends bar, funnelling cash to local gangsters. Soon he finds himself at the centre of a robbery that goes wrong, resulting in an investigation into the neighbourhood’s past.

THE TURNING Directors: 18 Starring: Cate Blanchett. Rose Byrne. Hugo Weaving. Mia Wasikowska. An omnibus film of eighteen parts. Based on Tim Winton’s short stories.

THE WONDERS Directed by Alice Rohrwacher. Starring: Monica Bellucci. Alexandra Lunghi. Sam Louvyck. In rural Italy, a family try to survive by running a bee-keeping farm, but the eldest daughter out of her frustration, enters the family into a bizarre TV talent show.

EDEN Directed by Mia Hansen-Love Starring: Felix de Givry. Pauline Etienne. Greta Gerwig. The ‘90s and the sudden rise of the French electronic music scene and a DJ duo called Cheers. 30

EXTRAS DVD OF THE MONTH

CASTING BY

Featuring: Robert Redford, Robert Duvall, Woody Allen, Dustin Hoffman Clint Eastwood and so many more.

FILM ****

This is an amazing documentary, homage to one of the greatest casting people in the motion picture history who discovered some of the greatest acting talents, all who credit her with their success. It is a film buffâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dream and will sit proudly in their collection of DVDs.

EXTRAS

The whole film is the extras..

Movies by Mills is an independent production for the promotion of Art House Movies around the world.

For more information about Movies by Mills please contact us. Also if you have any information about Art House Movies or you would like to advertise with us. Please use the email address below. You could of course Tweet:@Saroyanw or Facebook: bajmills@facebook.com info@movies-by-mills.co.uk www.moviesbymills.com