ND/NF, 3/28.

"This Saturday and Sunday, the programmers for New Directors / New Films are presenting a selection worthy of the festival's storied history and the too-often-unmet promise inherent in its name: Reprise [site], one of the most passionately and intellectually uninhibited works from a young director I've seen in ages," writes Manohla Dargis. "Directed by Joachim Trier, who wrote the tender, funny, narratively ambitious screenplay with his fellow Norwegian Eskil Vogt, this galvanizing first feature traces the parallel adventures of two best friends whose twinned literary aspirations and everyday lives take the shape of a punk-rock bildungsroman." Two more recommendations: Lionel Baier's Stealth [site] and Craig Zobel's Great World of Sound.

Also in the New York Times, AO Scott's tips for the final stretch: Congorama [site], "a madcap melodrama, a wild jaunt through some of the backwaters of the Francophone world that somehow, without making a big deal about it, touches on quite a few of the central puzzles and anxieties of modern life"; Euphoria [site] "is vivid and baffling. I mean both of those descriptions as compliments"; and Day Night Day Night, "for its seriousness of purpose and exactness of execution, certainly counts as a pleasant surprise."

Posted by dwhudson at March 28, 2007 12:54 AM