Tag: USA-vixtv

Director Zhang Yimou, who already has remarkable wuxia films like Hero and House of Flying Daggers under his belt, delivers another exceptional epic. Set during China's Three Kingdoms era (220–280 AD), Shadow revolves around a great king and his people, who are expelled from their homeland but will aspire to reclaim it. The story requires a fair amount of patience at first, as it slowly builds a world consisting of various characters with different motives, before the real action begins. The journey through Shadow is visually pleasing thanks to its stunning cinematography, impressively choreographed combat, and overall brilliant production design. Packed with sequences that will take your breath away, it is an inventive martial arts epic with one amazing scene after another.

Genre: Action, Drama

Actor: Chao Deng, Deng Chao, Feng Bai, Guan Xiaotong, Hu Jun, Leo Wu, Li Sun, Qianyuan Wang, Ryan Cheng, Ryan Zheng, Ryan Zheng Kai, Sun Li, Wang Jingchun, Wang Qian-Yuan, Wang Qianyuan, Zhang Yimou

Director: Yimou Zhang, Zhang Yimou

Rating: Not Rated

No one likes to be replaced. Even when it gets difficult, hardwork and years put in effort to take and keep these roles makes it feel precious, and that’s exactly how househelp Raquel feels in The Maid. It’s a funny domestic comedy, with a scowling Catalina Saavedra ready to protect the role she’s held onto for years, but Saavedra and writer-director Sebastián Silva crafts an empathetic, realistic character study of a woman so worn down from poverty, power imbalance, and having had no breaks that the rare instance of compassion feels like a threat. La Nana doesn’t quite critique the entire system that keeps Raquel in her role, but it’s a rare film that acknowledges the importance of rest and empathy in order to feel human.

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Actor: Agustín Silva, Alejandro Goic, Andrea García-Huidobro, Anita Reeves, Catalina Saavedra, Claudia Celedón, Claudia Paz, Delfina Guzmán, Juan Pablo Larenas, Luis Dubó, Luis Wigdorsky, Mariana Loyola

Director: Sebastián Silva

When a regime falls, what follows isn’t a clean slate– it lingers, and it haunts those that were able to survive, part due to what was done to them and part to what they have done. Marshland ostensibly is a police procedural investigating a series of women murdered in rural Spain, but it’s also a clash of ideologies between New Spain, that wants to unearth the injustices that haven’t been acknowledged, and Old Spain, that wants to let sleeping dogs lie. The two plot threads don’t weave together as neatly as it could be, but La Isla Minima still works on both fronts, recreating that feeling of betrayal within that key transition period of Spain.

Genre: Crime, Mystery, Thriller

Actor: Adelfa Calvo, Ana Tomeno, Ángela Vega, Antonio de la Torre, Javier Gutiérrez, Jesús Carroza, Jesús Castro, Manolo Solo, Nerea Barros, Raúl Arévalo, Salva Reina

Director: Alberto Rodríguez

Where The Secret Garden championed the restorative powers of tending to a garden as well as one’s thoughts, Swiss novel Heidi touched on similar themes a few decades before, celebrating instead the natural beauty of the Alps mountainside, and the titular character bringing back joy and hope to her family. The film remains faithful to the novel, playing out the book’s events with a more sleek look and even more stunning landscapes of the Swiss Alps. While previous generations would inevitably compare the version of their time to this latest version, 2015’s Heidi is a decent adaptation, recreating the classic tale for today’s kids.

Genre: Adventure, Family

Actor: Anna Schinz, Anuk Steffen, Beth Armstrong, Bruno Ganz, Charlotte Hamlyn, Gabriel Bismuth, Hannelore Hoger, Isabelle Ottmann, Jamie Croft, Jella Haase, Kate Fitzpatrick, Katharina Schüttler, Lucille Boudonnat, Maxim Mehmet, Michael Kranz, Monica Gubser, Monique Hore, Nicole Shostak, Penny Cook, Peter Jecklin, Peter Lohmeyer, Peter McAllum, Quirin Agrippi, Sophia Morrison, Tess Meyer, Thierry Gondet

Director: Alain Gsponer

Rating: G, N/A

Although limited by the timeframe in which it was released—that is, before its characters really got to finish organizing themselves in response to the film's subject matter—Aftershock still provides a detailed primer on the ways the American healthcare system has been manipulated to take advantage of the underprivileged. The documentary can get technical but since it grounds its reporting on two tragic stories of preventable loss, there's more than enough reason to pay full attention. It definitely isn't meant to answer every question about pregnancy care, but it definitely compels deeper inquiry into the ways we've been socialized into perceiving romantic notions about childbirth.

Genre: Documentary

Director: Paula Eiselt, Tonya Lewis Lee

Some bigots like to equate genitals to one’s gender and sexual orientation, but in practice, it’s not always a straightforward equation, especially for the rare, but natural, occasion when people are born with both male and female sex organs. XXY isn’t the first film to discuss the intersex experience, but it’s one of the first features that managed to be critically acclaimed. Unlike some of its predecessors, XXY is much more grounded, taking place in the modern era, and is mostly centered on Alex’s gender and sexual exploration. The film isn’t a perfect depiction– at the time, intersex wasn’t even the most common term, and sex-reassignment surgery was often the default action– but there is a lot in the film that dared to question certain ideas, such as having to choose only between a binary. Not many intersex films were created after this, in part due to how rare intersex is, and how broad the term encompasses multiple conditions, but XXY stands out all the more because of it.

Genre: Drama

Actor: Ailín Salas, Carolina Peleritti, Carolina Pelleritti, César Troncoso, Germán Palacios, Guillermo Angelelli, Inés Efron, Lucía Puenzo, Lucas Escariz, Lucía Puenzo, Luciano Nóbile, Martín Piroyansky, Ricardo Darín, Valeria Bertuccelli

Director: Lucía Puenzo

Rating: Not Rated