FRAME LINE is a collage film in black and white. Glimpses (both visual and audial) of Stockholm, people, gestures, flags and the Swedish national anthem appear through drawings, paintings and cut-outs. It is a film with an eerie flow between the ugly and the beautiful about returning, about roots and also about reshaping.Read More »
A documentary about John C. Holmes, who was the biggest star in the adult film industry in more ways than one.Read More »
This magnus opus is a domestic symphony from a woman’s point of view, the portait of a grandmother, monther and child and their home. The women and their personal objects are mostly seen alone or relating to one another (except for touching scenes of the grandmonther and grandfather together).
A key aspect of RED SHIFT is the reading of selections from Calamity Jane’s “Diaries”, the most narrative apsect of the film. The Diaries are read against activities seen through a window, life passing by (people walking in winter, a river flowing). They tell how Jane lost her daughter and had to survive by using her talents to act like a tough and physically competitive man…Read More »
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Wickedly funny and observant slice of life NYC gangster pic, that’s decidedly Jewish, quirky and anarchistic. The surprise cult comedy/drama hit was shot in 1969 and put on the shelf when no distributor was willing to take a chance on it when test audiences didn’t laugh, but it was released in 1989 to play in the NYC Film Festival. Rave reviews gave this pic a new lease on life, and it got its long awaited theatrical release–only twenty years too late to help the splendid aging unknown cast advance their careers.Read More »
Archipel des amours is a collection of nine short films by Paul Vecchiali and eight other filmmakers associated with his company Diagonale. Each of the films in this collection presents an intimate situation complicated by the kinks and jinxes that prevent or forestall the consummations and satisfactions of love. The segments’ would-be lovers are thereby isolated from one another as if each were an island unto her- or himself. In the anthology form, the films are sometimes connected by brief shots of a shore of an unknown insular coast and/or the sounds of waves lapping again the piers.Read More »
The film COMMITTED, which Sheila McLaughlin realized together with Lynne Tillman, is not a biography of actress Frances Farmer but rather a fictional analysis of the same. It deals with the disturbed relationship between Farmer and her mother, the sociopolitical climate in the USA of the 30s and 40s, the role of psychiatry as an increasingly powerful determinant in this period and the destructive love story between a woman (actress) and a man (director). COMMITTED is conducted as a Film noir and a period piece – the latter of which is unusual for an independent film.Read More »
At a gathering of would-be society debauchees, the Baron Plessis de Regard and the attractive young Nathalie hatch their individual plans to use sex to respectively ruin and punish their selected enemies. The Baron’s plan is to scupper the political ambitions of right-wing parliamentary candidate Colonel Montvilliers by setting him up with a sexy female companion and publicly exposing his new-found vices. He chooses Eliane to give private classes for Montvilliers’ son, Robert. Nathalie’s quest is of a more personal nature, to destroy her estranged father Charles Leroy-Merville by corrupting his innocent 17-year-old daughter Sophie, a task she intends to achieve by securing employ as the girl’s summer tutor.Read More »
After changing the face of science fiction cinema forever with Alien and Blade Runner, director Ridley Scott turned his visionary eye to the fantasy genre, teaming with writer William Hjortsberg (Angel Heart) to create a breathtaking cinematic fairytale with one of the screen’s most astonishingly rendered depictions of Evil.Read More »
A young housewife is not having a good day. Her husband is never home, the rent is late, her kid has caught the flu, and now – someone’s at her door. It’s a salesman, trying to pawn off some stupid thing or other. There’s no time to deal with it. Just tell him to go to hell, to peddle his goods someplace else. And then, when he doesn’t listen, she slams the door in his face. Or more accurately, on his hand. And this guy is pissed. The psycho salesman decides to teach her a lesson. He starts making phone threats. Soon the sick bastard has mustered enough guts to break into her apartment. He savagely torments mommy and child until the woman finally turns the tables… -Thomas Weisser, “Japanese Cinema: Essential Handbook”Read More »