Author Archive | Alex Kamody

The Office of Research and the Graduate College, in conjunction with the Athena Cinema, will be hosting a free screening of the film, Border Post by internationally renowned filmmaker and Eminent Scholar in film at Ohio University, Rajko Grlic as part of the International Educational Week.  Professor Grlic will introduce his film prior to the screening. ONE NIGHT ONLY, November 14th at 7:30

BORDER POST

At a small border-post on the Yugoslav-Albanian border, yet another generation of soldiers suffering the usual amount of boredom awaits the end of their service, counting days to the moment when they should take their uniforms off for good. It is the spring of 1987 and the thought never even crosses their mind that they would, in fact, put them back on quite soon and go to war. These are the last days of the country called Yugoslavia. Yet no one knew at the time.

Daily routine of the army is disrupted by unusual circumstances. Frustrated and always drunk, lieutenant Safet Pasic feels a strange pain in his groins. He seeks help from the only doctor among the soldiers, Sinisa Sircevic, who finds out, very discretely, that it’s a sexually transmitted disease. Not wishing his wife to know about it and trying to find excuses not to go home, Pasic declares a state of emergency, claiming that the Albanian army is preparing an attack against Yugoslavia. A joke transforms into war hysteria: soldiers dig trenches, Pasic grows wilder as days go by, Sinisa embarks on a dangerous liaison, and his best friend Ljuba Paunovic makes an unconditional decision to leave the army. The situation slowly runs out of control…

Speaking about not so distant past with no nostalgia and no hatred, Border Post is a comedy about people on the verge of tragedy.

“Rajko Grlic’s film is a sometimes wistful, sometimes farcical comedy, in the honorable Eastern European tradition, set along the Yugoslav-Albanian border in the halcyon days of 1987.”-Andrew O’Hehir, Salon.com

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94 MIN

Jane Hayes is a seemingly normal young New Yorker, but she has a secret. Her obsession with Mr. Darcy, as played by Colin Firth in the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, is ruining her love life: no real man can compare. But when a wealthy relative bequeaths her a trip to an English resort catering to Austen-crazed women, Jane’s fantasies of meeting the perfect Regency-era gentleman suddenly become realer than she ever could have imagined.

Decked out in empire-waist gowns, Jane struggles to master Regency etiquette and flirts with gardeners and gentlemen; or maybe even, she suspects, with the actors who are playing them. It’s all a game, Jane knows. And yet the longer she stays, the more her insecurities seem to fall away, and the more she wonders: Is she about to kick the Austen obsession for good, or could all her dreams actually culminate in a Mr. Darcy of her own?

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97 MIN

Brought to life with exquisite detail and rich cinematography by Bradford Young (winner of the US Dramatic Cinematography Award at Sundance), the gritty landscape of 1970s Texas Hill Country is the backdrop for this mood-drenched collision of love and crime. After his pregnant wife (Rooney Mara) makes one false move during a bloody shootout, a bank robber (Casey Affleck) faces a 25-year sentence that destroys his dreams of a family life. Shot through with the yearning and melancholy of a folk ballad, David Lowery’s directorial breakthrough — one of the most acclaimed films at Sundance and a special Critics’ Week selection at Cannes — extends the Bonnie and Clyde tradition with its breathtaking meditation on the fragility and transience of love.

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96 MIN

Anwar Congo and his friends have been dancing their way through musical numbers, twisting arms in film noir gangster scenes, and galloping across prairies as yodelling cowboys. Their foray into filmmaking is being celebrated in the media and debated on television, even though Anwar Congo and his friends are mass murderers. Medan, Indonesia. When the government of Indonesia was overthrown by the military in 1965, Anwar and his friends were promoted from small-time gangsters who sold movie theatre tickets on the black market to death squad leaders. They helped the army kill more than one million alleged communists, ethnic Chinese, and intellectuals in less than a year. As the executioner for the most notorious death squad in his city, Anwar himself killed hundreds of people with his own hands.

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115 MIN

After everything in her life falls to pieces, including her marriage to wealthy businessman Hal, elegant New York socialite Jasmine moves into her sister Ginger’s modest apartment in San Francisco to try to pull herself back together again.

“A jaw-dropping work, what we go to the movies hoping to see, and we do. Blanchett is beyond brilliant, beyond analysis. Her performance is one for the books.”-Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

“Richly chronicled characters, sharp dialogue and that stupendous centerpiece performance by Cate Blanchett are contributing factors in the best summer movie of 2013 and one of the most memorable Woody Allen movies ever.”-Rex Reed, New York Observer

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98 MIN

While in captivity, Tilikum, a performing killer whale, has been responsible for the deaths of three people, including a top orca trainer. Blackfish shows the sometimes devastating consequences of capturing and confining such intelligent and sentient creatures.

“Through the rueful voices of former trainers and whale experts, a narrative driven by disillusion and regret unfolds as the trainers point to a gap between SeaWorld’s public image and behind-the-scenes reality.”-Jeanette Catsoulis, New York Times

“After watching “Blackfish,” you come away with a sense of orcas’ singular intelligence, to be sure, even their astonishing playfulness, but most of all their glorious power, and the majesty of their existence in their natural habitat.”-Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal

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83 MIN

Coming to the Athena on Friday, September 6th.

Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me is a feature-length documentary film about the dismal commercial failure, subsequent massive critical acclaim, and enduring legacy of pop music’s greatest cult phenomenon, Big Star.

“The story that writer-director Drew DeNicola and producer-director Olivia Mori reconstruct has the power to move even those who prefer Mozart or Lil Wayne.”-Mark Jenkins, NPR

“A well-sourced account of a perfect, broken dream, Drew DeNicola and Olivia Mori’s slightly shaggy documentary captures what it’s like to discover music so good it seems as if it were made just for you.”-Nicolas Rapold, New York Times

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113 MIN

HELL BABY, a comedy scripted by Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant (Night at The Museum, Reno 911!: Miami) marks their co-directing debut. Jack (Rob Corddry) and Vanessa (Leslie Bibb) are an expectant couple that moves into the most haunted fixer-upper in New Orleans — a house with a deadly demonic curse. Things soon spiral out of control for Jack and Vanessa, as well as their-not-so-helpful neighbor F’Resnel (Keegan-Michael Key), Vanessa’s friendly psychiatrist (Michael Ian Black), Vanessa’s Wiccan sister Marjorie (Riki Lindhome) and the detectives assigned to look into the rising body count (Rob Huebel and Paul Scheer). Only the Vatican’s elite exorcism team (Garant and Lennon) san save them — or can they?

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98 MIN