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Two old adversaries meet by chance in a rehab center and realize that the conflict which has dominated their lives since the Korean War has run out of road. Both men are in ruins. One is a former cop, the other a former communist guerrilla; the flashbacks to their sad backstories show Im’s skill in anchoring the currents of modern Korean history in wrenching emotional drama.Read More »
A Bombay cop tries to track down a serial killer who snipes at random victims.Read More »
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Hotel Monterey is a cheap hotel in New York reserved for the outcasts of American society. Chantal Akerman invites viewers to visit this unusual place as well as the people who live there, from the reception up to the last story.New York City’s Monterey is a residence hotel; the residents we see are older, most live alone. The camera, usually stationery, begins with a look into the lobby. The film ends with a panorama from the hotel’s rooftop. There’s no soundtrack. The lobby is clean with granite floors. Men wear hats. People enter and exit an elevator. The camera looks out from within the elevator as doors open and close. People sit alone and motionless in their apartments. There are long shots of empty halls. Paint peels. The flooring on upper levels is linoleum. Hall lights are florescent. Doors open a crack then close. The film provides the feeling of what it’s like to live there.Read More »
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Praunheim’s film is at once a pedagogical caveat and political manifesto. Following naïve country boy Daniel after he moves to Berlin and encounters a thriving gay community, It Is Not The Homosexual is a provocative look at the lives of gay men in 1970s Germany. The film follows Daniel from heteronormative behaviour to finding a sugardaddy to a job in a local gay bar, making him the most eligible bachelor in town. Through Daniel’s journey Praunheim comments on everything from the shallower tendencies in gay culture to cruising for sex in the early ‘70s until Daniel meets a group of revolutionary gays who introduce him to the gay rights movement. Like many of Praunheim’s films It Is Not The Homosexual caused a scandal in both the liberal and conservative establishment as well as in homosexual circles after it was first shown on German state television in 1973. What makes Praunheim’s work so provocative as a queer director is his fearlessness, what others call audacity, to not only point the finger at society, but also at the gay community itself as guilty of homophobia.Read More »
A young diplomat is prey to the sarcasm of his own “boy”, who sees in him one of the many black-skinned Europeans totally lacking in authenticity and adrift between two cultures. But this adaptation of a novella by Francis Bebey is not limited to this simple contrast. The black man may well fall for the deceptive seductiveness of the blonde woman, but this same white beauty just as easily allows herself to be seduced by the mystery of black Africa. After all, the stereotype differences between Blacks and Whites can never tell the whole story. This culture clash is also the story of a master and his servant, of a director and his secretary, of the same director and the director-general, of a husband and his wife. It cannot be by chance that in the end, after a ritual invasion of his own living room, the diplomat rediscovers his identity by means of the mask, which as we know always conceals and reveals at the same time.Read More »
Resolving the riddle of the Sphinx makes Oedipus the king of Thebes, but he also resolves another mystery – and it destroys him.Read More »
In a small village in southern Morocco, Amrouch cannot, because of his social position, marry the daughter of a wealthy farmer from the nearby village. Based on Federico Garica Lorca’s novel. This was filmed in French, but the DVD only had a Spanish dub.Read More »
he Japanese remake of Robert Enrico’s french film The Last Adventure, where Alain Delon & Lino Ventura have respectively exchanged their place with Ken Takakura & Shintaro Katsu… This version also stars Meiko Kaji (Lady Snowblood) and Noboru Ando (many yakuza films).
The Homeless follows the story of two prisoners released the same day, who meets again at the brothel where they help a prostitute to escape from yakuza. And together, they go treasure hunting.Read More »
From allmovie.com:
Maverick director Floyd Mutrux made his feature debut with this offbeat semi-documentary look at the realities of the Los Angeles drug scene. Mutrux and his camera crew follow a handful of real-life heroin addicts as they go through their daily routines of scoring dope and whiling away the hours until their next fix. (The dealers are played by actors, among them William Fraker, a noted cinematographer who helped shoot the film, and Billy Gray, a former child star from Father Knows Best.) Dusty and Sweets are a thirty-something couple whose often strained relationship is held together by their shared dependence on heroin. Kit is a blasé male hustler who turns tricks to support his habit. Read More »