All in the Family

If you had gone to a movie theater showing Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead in 2007 without knowing anything about it or who directed it, you’d probably think it was the work of a dynamic new director who had talent to burn, someone possibly in his or her late twenties or early thirties. Of course, we know it’s the work of the 83-year-old Lumet but the film is just as fresh, surprising and alive to the harrowing and painful emotions of its tough familial breakdown as Lumet’s best work and that means on a par with 12 Angry Men (1957), Serpico (1973), Dog Day Afternoon (1975) and Network (1976).

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Gloria, G-L-O-R-I-A

Paulina Garcia dancing to her theme song in Gloria (2013)

Paulina Garcia dancing to her theme song in Gloria (2013)

This woman is being transported to someplace we can’t see by “Gloria,” the original Italian version of the pop tune by Umberto Tozzi and Giancarlo Bigazzi. That song became a Top Forty hit in the US by Laura Brannigan in 1982 and is an appropriate theme song for the heroine of a new film by Sebastian Lelio (El ano del tigre, 2011) with the same name. And this film is proof that the Chilean film industry is still enjoying a renaissance; Gloria played to a full house at the recent Virginia Film Festival in Charlottesville. Continue reading