What could have been a morose, listless slog about a bitter whiner is energized into something of a soul-stirring seance in many layers and moments. If you’re taken away for 100 minutes to think about your life—what you’ve done and haven’t done—and what kind of man or person you want to be, one could do far worse than swoon to Gabriel Byrne and groove to Leonard Cohen.
Read MoreThroughout Four Letters of Love, two 1970s families in Ireland—one living on a remote western island and another from a more urban city home—experience difficult roads of distressing life events. Between them, there’s a drastic career change, the transition to a new school, future career uncertainty, parental abandonment, a few cases of writer’s block and artist’s block, relationship woes and competing affections before marriage, parental approval of their children’s paths, a handicapping injury, and two losses of parents and spouses.
Read More"Louder than Bombs" is the English language debut of Norwegian director Joachim Trier and his writing partner Eskil Vogt, best known for their 2006 Academy Award-nominated foreign language film "Reprise." Their newest work was a competitor for the Palme d'Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, Norway's first since 1979. Possessing a compelling rotation of inner monologues, the heavily dramatic film observes a fractured family of men dealing with the overhanging aftermath of losing their iconic matriarch.
Read More51st Chicago International Film Festival Highlight special presentation
In the hands of someone more bombastic, the finished product of "The 33" would be far more cliche and erroneously over-dramatized. Director Patricia Riggen certainly still employs a plentiful creative license to dramatize and compress this trauma into two hours, but the lionizing on one end and the vilifying on the other is remarkably low. "The 33" is a winning survival film where the people come before the stereotypes and theatrics.
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