IFC Films

CHICAGO – The coming-of-age film has evolved over the years, from Andy Hardy to “Splendor in the Grass” to “The Graduate,” up through “American Pie.” Filmmaker Lena Dunham offers her own post-collegiate transition narrative, in the archly realistic and perversely funny “Tiny Furniture.”

Rating: 4.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Can dedication overcome all odds? Film has taught us for years that it is the truly justified, righteous, and committed that will prevail. Of course, life is not that simple. And the films of the masterful French director Claire Denis often brilliantly portray the true complexity of life. Her newest film, “White Material,” completes an amazing 2010 one-two punch with the excellent “35 Shots of Rum” released earlier this year. She’s one of our best international filmmakers.

CHICAGO – “Red White & Blue” is a deviously effective horror film precisely because it doesn’t appear to be one. There are subtle stylistic hints here and there, but nothing that truly signals the horrors to come. They emerge not from left field, but out of the character’s own pent up rage, and their increasing desire to inflict pain upon the world that has failed them.

CHICAGO – Here’s a knee-jerk horrorshow with a premise so monumentally galvanizing and profoundly disgusting that it manages to upstage the film itself. Once you’ve discovered what the “Human Centipede” is, in all of its grotesque awfulness, your mind instantly creates a vision more viscerally disturbing than anything that could possibly be captured on film.

CHICAGO – “Dying would be the ultimate trip.” This line is uttered early on in “Enter the Void,” the extraordinary new film from Gaspar Noé, a director who enjoys referencing his previous work almost as much as his hero, Stanley Kubrick. This line pays subtle homage to the “2001: A Space Odyssey” poster prominently framed toward the end of Noé’s previous film, “Irreversible.”

CHICAGO – The DVD Round-Up has gone silent for a few weeks on summer vacation but as more and more interesting titles threaten to fall through the cracks, it returns with three art films that are definitely worth a look. Don’t worry. Summer vacation hasn’t made the Round-Up arthouse-only, but it’s nice to comeback a little smarter-looking than when we left.

CHICAGO – Our film critic Matt Fagerholm may have felt that “The Good, The Bad, The Weird” valued style over substance to a fault (read his review) but this critic still holds it as one of the best films of the year; a joyful cavalcade of modern action and spaghetti western archetypes that’s unlike anything else released in 2010. Don’t miss this excellent movie now that it’s on Blu-ray.

Rating: 3.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Todd Solondz’s 1998 masterpiece, “Happiness,” is the darkest American comedy ever made. It’s so brutal and uncompromising that it calls into question the very definition of comedy. When one character explains to her sister that she isn’t laughing at her, but with her, the sister responds, “But I’m not laughing.” Solondz isn’t laughing either.

CHICAGO – Though graphic novels may read like great movie storyboards, they often fail to translate into compelling cinema. From “Sin City” to “Watchmen,” filmmakers have tried replicating graphic art with a reverence more suffocating than exhilarating. Images that reverberated with power on the page become coldly calculated on the big screen. No matter how tightly structured a film may be, it must give viewers the illusion of spontaneity. And there’s nothing more tiresome than a horror film in which all the scares feel telegraphed.

CHICAGO – I love IFC Films. They release such a diverse, interesting slate of films every year that one never quite knows what they’re going to get with each individual offering. Five recent IFC titles are the subject of the latest DVD Round-Up, our regular column drawing attention to titles that may have otherwise gone unnoticed.