About Twelve (2014)

Juana a los 12

2014 | Argentina | Martín Shanly | ★★★

Driven by Rosario Shanly's compellingly enigmatic central performance, Argentinian actor Martín Shanly's directorial debut, About Twelve, provides an often fascinating, if never entirely convincing, portrait of a young girl suffering, both academically and socially, through early adolescence.

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"Twelve-year-old Juana goes to a British school on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, where she fails both socially and academically. A week away from the exams that will determine her future in the institution, she is surrounded by the same routine; going to class and trying to pull her social life back together, with useless attempts in between. Juana goes through these strange days apparently feeling indifferent towards the situation." TMDb

Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)

2015 | UK | Matthew Vaughn | ★★

Matthew Vaughn's Kingsman: The Secret Service is a sporadically entertaining but wearyingly juvenile action comedy, buoyed by charismatic performances, but fatally hamstrung by its excessive runtime, soulless violence, and overbearing score.

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"Based upon the acclaimed comic book and directed by Matthew Vaughn, the film tells the story of The Kingsman; a super-secret spy organization that recruits an unrefined but promising street kid into his agency’s ultra-competitive training program just as a global threat emerges from a twisted tech genius" 20th Century Fox

At Ellen's Age (2010)

Im Alter von Ellen

2010 | Germany | Pia Marais | ★★★

Kept afloat by Jeanne Balibar's strong central performance, Pia Marais's mildly diverting, sporadically stimulating At Ellen's Age is a German existential coming-of-middle-age drama, featuring unpredictable plotting and abstruse characterisation.

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"Ellen (Jeanne Balibar) is a flight attendant edging into middle age who is growing disenchanted with her job and gets a wake-up call about her love life when her boyfriend Florian (Georg Friedrich) informs her he's been sleeping with another woman -- who is soon to make him a father. Florian proposes that he, Ellen and the other woman could all live together, which Ellen doesn't agree with. Ellen walks away from her job. With no idea of what she wants to do with herself, Ellen almost randomly falls in with a radical animal rights group and embraces a new life of political action, drugs and free love. Has Ellen truly embraced a new life, or is she simply reacting to her anger over what happened to the old one?" IMDb

See a Dog, Hear a Dog (2016)

2016 | USA | Jesse McLean | ★★★

Pennsylvanian media artist Jesse McLean's mildly stimulating See a Dog, Hear a Dog is an eclectically composed existential experimental short film about the various modes of communication between dogs, humans, and computers.

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"This tragicomic analysis of communication between humans, animals, and machines was made with original video footage, computer animations, and internet media, including YouTube dog videos, chatbot dialogue windows, and images from iTunes visualizer." TMDb

Abouna (2002)

أبون‎‎ / Our Father

2002 | Chad | Mahamat-Saleh Haroun | ★★★★

Anchored by the performances of Ahidjo Mahamat Moussa and Hamza Moctar Aguid, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun's elegantly directed, expressively lit Abouna is a brightly coloured Chadian parable, filled with memorable imagery and discomforting turns of plot.

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"Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s second feature following the award-winning Bye Bye Africa offers confirmation of the arrival of a visually assured and highly sophisticated new talent in world cinema. Set in Haroun’s native Chad, the sensuous Abouna begins with the striking image of a man in Western dress crossing a desert in the southern Sahara. The man, who pauses briefly to stare down the camera lens, is the father of 15-year-old Tahir (Ahidjo Mahamat Moussa) and Tahir’s eight-year-old brother Amine (Hamza Moctar Aguid). After being told by their beautiful mother (Zara Haroun) that he has left them, the two brothers undertake a momentous journey in an attempt to fill the void left by his absence." Optimum Releasing

Dog Lady (2015)

La mujer de los perros

2015 | Argentina | Laura Citarella & Verónica Llinás | ★★★

Featuring very little dialogue and almost no plot, Laura Citarella and Verónica Llinás's mildly diverting Dog Lady is an Argentinian observational slice-of-life drama about a woman (played by co-director Llinás) living on the margins of human society.

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"An existentialist fable about a woman who lives with a pack of dogs on the very edge of the populated world, with minimal contact with other people. The seasons come and go. On life and survival, love and death. Dog Lady finds in the outstanding performance of Verónica Llinás (also co-director) an enigmatic, quietly potent screen presence able to challenge the pillars of our society without need of words." Mubi

Twin Peaks: The Return (2017)

Twin Peaks

2017 | USA | David Lynch | ★★★★★

Equal parts hilarious, terrifying, and baffling, David Lynch's dreamlike, formally audacious Twin Peaks: The Return is an 18-part existential crime serial, featuring incomparably bold visuals, wonderfully full-blooded performances, and fantastically nonsensical plotting.

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"Directed entirely by David Lynch, the new Showtime 18-part limited event series picks up 25 years after the inhabitants of a quaint northwestern town were stunned when their homecoming queen Laura Palmer was shockingly murdered. Twin Peaks is written and executive produced by series creators David Lynch and Mark Frost, and is executive produced by Sabrina S. Sutherland." Showtime

See also:
Stotty's 2010s Favourites