Heavy on Loachian social realism and undergirded by the intensity and heavy stakes of a Safdie Brothers flick, Juan Diego Botto’s gritty eviction thriller “On the Fringe” — produced by Penélope Cruz, who also lends her name to the billing sheet — makes for hard-hitting stuff. Premiering at the Venice Film Festival today in the Orrizonti section, here’s a slice of agitprop that feels as timely as ever, with the energy crisis surging across Europe, the costs of living rocketing from shore to shore, and society’s most marginalized left to pick up the tab. 

Anyone with half a heart and half a brain will be quickly won over by its interweaving stories, following three different people in the same Spanish city living under the cold, foreboding shadow of red-stamp eviction notices: though a little baggy in the second act, the first and final thirty-minutes are appropriately earnest and affecting.

Continue reading ‘On The Fringe’ Review: Hot-Button Eviction Thriller Starring Penélope Cruz Sticks Up A Righteous Finger At Landlords [Venice] at The Playlist.

TIFF Review: Julio Medem's 'Ma Ma' Starring Penélope Cruz

Continue reading TIFF Review: Julio Medem’s ‘Ma Ma’ Starring Penélope Cruz at The Playlist.

The trailer for Jim Jarmucsh’s “The Limits of Control” is finally here and of course it gives us a few more clues into the secretive story of a mysterious loner (played by Issach De Bankole), a stranger (hitman?) whose activities remain meticulously outside the law.

His character is decidedly methodical and lives within certain ascetic guidelines and codes and his possible vice appears to be the sexy Paz De La Huerta who coos with temptations, “No guns, no sex, how can you stand it?” Plus the synopsis says ambiguously, “His journey, paradoxically both intently focused and dreamlike, takes him not only across Spain but also through his own consciousness.” Hmm, a mindbender in here somewhere?

Continue reading ‘The Limits of Control’ Trailer Has An Awesome Slow-Burn Ominousness at The Playlist.