Psychflix. com. 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS (4 luni, 3 saptamani si 2 zile) (Cristian Mungiu, Romania, 2. THEMES: SUPPORTIVE PEER RELATIONS; LIFE CRISIS; ILLEGAL ABORTION; DEPENDENT PERSONALITY. For roughly 2. 4 hours, we share the tensions and uncertainty of two young women, students who are dorm roommates, as one of them, Gabita (Laura Vasilio), seeks an illicit abortion and the other, Otilia (Anamaria Marinca, in an award winning turn), tries to help her. Though much has been made of a subtle political trope in this film (it is set in 1. ![]() Alkaline Diet Plan Review: Does It Work? Does changing your body’s pH levels through diet have any benefits? Read WebMD's Alkaline Diet review to find out. Ceausescu regime), I found this theme too understated to be very noticeable. For me the film is primarily a study of character, of personality and adaptability, in the face of unaccustomed stress. Where Otilia is principled, dependable, resourceful and loyal, Gabita is self absorbed, deceitful, unreliable and dependent. Granted, Gabita is the one who is pregnant, but you’re struck by the sense that her helplessness cuts far deeper than her present exigency can explain. The other principals are also interesting studies: Viarel Bebe (Vlad Ivanov), the steely abortionist, and Adi Radu (Alexandru Potocean), Otilia’s nebbisher boyfriend. The two women remind me of the pair in Erick Zonca’s 1. ![]() The Dreamlife of Angels, also about an outgoing, caring young woman (played by Elodie Bouchez) and an apartment mate who is self centered, mercurial, even suicidal (Natacha Regnier). A life lesson in both stories is that you can knock yourself out for someone else without influencing them to change one whit for the better. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try, of course. You do the right thing. News archive. Home > 2017 > May Tuesday Tom Cruise reveals 'Top Gun 2' to start filming soon; A third of Britons keep their old mobile phone as a spare. It’s just that you have to accept the limits of your influence as well as the limits of the other person's capacities. Winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes and awards for best film and best director at the European Film Awards. Grade: B+ (0. 2/0. YEARS OF ALCOHOL (Richard Jobson, UK, 2. SPOILER ALERT! It is indicative of the paradoxical quality of this film, Jobson’s first feature as writer- director, that the title misleads. Yes, alcohol has a prominent place in the life of the protagonist, Frankie (Kevin Mc. Kidd), but it takes a back seat to serious fighting. Frankie is the leader of a small street gang in 1. Edinburgh and gets his kicks by bashing up bartenders and, now and then, more unruly members of his own gang. When he swears to his lover that he will change his life and attends an AA meeting with her, he introduces himself not as an alcoholic but as “a violent man.” This is a semi- autobiographical film. Jobson was himself a member of a large street gang in Edinburgh until he was asked to join a punk band, The Skids, in the late 1. ![]() He’s been a musical star, poet, model, screenwriter and producer in the years since. If this film’s styles (yes, that’s a plural) tug us in differing directions, it’s because Jobson tries too hard to make Alcohol express all of his creative impulses. With its use of Mc. Kidd and Ewen Bremner, it makes us think for a moment or two of Trainspotting, or My Name is Joe, or Sweet Sixteen. The screenplay is formulaic. One of the biggest engineering challenges of building a towering skyscraper isn’t keeping the structure from falling over, it’s moving all the people around. Reviews of films (domestic and foreign, documentary and fiction) that depict psychiatric and psychological themes: mental health issues, mental health professionals. Young boy becomes disillusioned watching his father’s drunken philandering and his mother’s heartbreak. He grows up furious and untrusting, cannot shake the psychological manacles of his past, and comes to a bad end. There are visuals of lush, lyrical intimacy. The close up partial faces of new lovers smiling or gazing with adoration (we may only see their mouths or eyes). The twinkling glitter of rich amber whisky as it’s poured into a faceted glass. Hope is the medicine of people who lead difficult, unfulfilling lives, we learn in voiceovers toward the beginning and end of the film, and the more familiar one is with hope, the less effective it becomes. Stuff like that. Some of these utterances are banal. Others are well said and poetical enough. But they seem unintegrated with the story at hand. It’s not that they don’t sound the same themes. It’s that Frankie the man, inarticulate in the extreme, would appear to be incapable of delivering such poetic homilies in his disembodied form. Gifts Differing: Understanding Personality Type. Isabel Myers. The original book, by the creator of the MBTI, that explains the Myers & Briggs personality types. All the latest news, reviews, pictures and video on culture, the arts and entertainment. Experts evaluated a handful of the most popular diets and identified the best. Which top-rated diet is best for your health and fitness goals? Among the supporting cast, only Susan Lynch, as Frankie’s lover Mary, and Lewis Macleod, as his father, hold one’s interest. Sean O’Hagen, writing in the Guardian Observer, puts the most favorable spin on Alcohol when he calls it “. THEME: WOMEN’S WORKPLACE ISSUES. Nonstop noisy frenetic drivel just about sums up this fractious business about the difficulties for women who desire to maintain their professional careers while also growing a family. The plot idea was fair enough: “2. Hour Woman” is the title of a daily talk show slanted toward younger women. The film opens as the show's savvy producer, Grace Santos (Rosie Perez), discovers, to her surprise, that she is pregnant. Grace and her executive producer decide to use her situation to feature pregnancy in a daily segment on the show. So far so good. But the chaotic lunacy that erupts among all the characters is way overdone and ultimately sinks the project. Grade: C (0. 8/9. DAYS (Betty Thomas, US, 2. Sandra Bullock stars as Gwen, a thrill seeking alcoholic pill popper, who is sent to a residential chemical dependency program after a drunk driving accident. This send up of life in a substance abuse treatment program is by turns improbably corny, genuinely hilarious, and also, pardon the pun, sobering. Gwen's rapid progress is perhaps too good to be true. Still, beneath the hyperbole, the basic lessons of early recovery are all covered. With Steve Buscemi as the serious recovering program director and Azura Skye as Gwen's roommate, Andrea, a young, severely dependent borderline personality. Loudon Wainwright II provides the on ward music. See also my article titled . THEMES: LESBIAN COMEDY; GROWING UP (BETTER LATE THAN NEVER). ![]() ![]() Hlynur is an immature 3. Mom's house. His main pursuits are booze, weed and women. His mom takes a lesbian lover (Victoria Abril) whom he impregnates while Mom's away. It's all too unsettling for Hlynur, whose choices are to destroy himself or get a life. Droll yet thoughtful comedy. THEMES: ALCOHOLISM; COCAINE DEPENDENCE; ADDICTIONS AND THE FAMILY; FATHER- DAUGHTER CONFLICT. Portrait of alcoholism and addiction. Study in human redemption and compassion. Aberdeen is all of these: a taut, spare film that combines good acting and filmcraft. Stellan Skarsgard is Tomas, the end- stage alcoholic father of Kaisa (Lena Headey) and long estranged common- law partner of Kaisa's mother, Helen (Charlotte Rampling). Helen summons the others to her bedside in Aberdeen, where she is dying of cancer. Kaisa is a London lawyer who is successful despite her major coke habit. Tomas now leads a besotted tavern dweller's existence in Oslo. The central plot consists of the struggle for Kaisa to escort her drunken father across northern Europe to Aberdeen for the reunion. It is a trip from Hell. But in the end circumstances arise which offer Tomas an opportunity to redeem himself. Love triumphs here over fear and self indulgence in a manner that is not maudlin but instead distinctly believable. Headey is terrific. Grade: B+ (0. 1/0. ABOUT A BOY (Paul & Chris Weitz, UK, 2. The story concerns Schmidt’s life over several months following retirement from his workaholic career as an insurance actuary, and then, almost immediately, the unexpected death of his wife of 4. For more on this film, see my article, More Rooms in the House of Grief. Grade: A (0. 1/0. AFFLICTION (Paul Schrader, US, 1. James Coburn and Nick Nolte are excellent as the father and son. Equally though more subtlely portrayed is the dilemma of Rolf (Willem Dafoe), Wade's younger brother. He never returned to his hometown, not until his mother's death. Apart from this family psychodrama, the film also features a murder, or was it an accident? ![]() THEMES: FALSE CONVICTIONS FOR CAPITAL CRIMES; EXONERATION BASED ON DNA EVIDENCE; LIFE EXPERIENCES AFTER EXONERATION. Documentary about men who had been incarcerated, some for 2. DNA- based evidence proving their innocence, chemical analyses that were either unavailable or not conducted at the time of their original trials. These conviction reversals are, almost without exception, the result of pro bono legal assistance and inspiration provided by the Innocence Project, a non- profit legal clinic and criminal justice resource center established in 1. Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, at Yeshiva University, in New York City. The two founding lawyers of the clinic, Barry C. Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld, have waged a relentless and tireless battle to aid wrongly convicted men facing execution, in the process encouraging the development of similar clinics and legal efforts in 3. To date, 1. 75 persons have been exonerated through these efforts. Former Illinois Governor George Ryan was so impressed by the likelihood of error in capital convictions that, shortly before leaving office early in 2. This film focuses on eight or nine affected men, exploring the events and circumstances that followed the demonstration of their innocence. We learn some shocking things. Exoneration brings no assistance to these men. For example, even the expungement of the conviction from the criminal justice record is not automatic. It must be applied for through a convoluted paper process. In one state, the exonerated individual must pay $6,0. Whereas guilty felons placed on parole may be entitled to myriad services and sources of aid for things like education, employment and heath care, exonerated persons receive no such entitlements. No state has arranged a program to offer compensation to any of these people. In nearly every instance, they don’t even get an apology from the State for erroneously taking away their freedom for years upon years. We also are reminded of bad things we already knew from expos! Music, TV & radio, books, film, art, dance & photography. We've noticed you're adblocking. We rely on advertising to help fund our award- winning journalism. We urge you to turn off your ad blocker for The Telegraph website so that you can continue to access our quality content in the future. 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