1981-1990

After finishing a strict and traumatizing education at a Jesuit seminary, young Roberto is offered a post by the priest of his village: The local count is looking for a new teacher for his eight year old niece, Flora. Roberto accepts the post and soon finds himself traveling to the remote estate of the count by the seaside which is taken care of by the old housekeeper Mrs. Antonia. In the beginning, everything is well but with the arrival of Flora’s elder brother Mikel who has been expelled from school, things start to get disquieting. In his attempts to find out why Mikel was expelled, Roberto soon unearths unsettling secrets – about himself and about Cristina, his deceased predecessor and Pedro, a former servant of the count who now seems to lurk within the dark corridors of the mansion. Could it be that these two sinister beings are trying to get back to life by the souls of the children?Read More »

Stephanie, arrives as a patient at a private clinic for sufferers of sexual dysfunction run by Dr Hildesheimer. Stephanie’s fellow patients all have their own issues including inhibition, neurosis, fixation, delusions etc. Stephanie begins a tentative affair with one of the other patients while a killer stalks the institution.Read More »

Synopsis:
With his raw style of filmmaking, Maurice Pialat has been called the John Cassavetes of French cinema, and the scorching À nos amours is one of his greatest achievements. In a revelatory film debut, the dynamic, fresh-faced Sandrine Bonnaire plays Suzanne, a fifteen-year-old Parisian who embarks on a sexual rampage in an effort to separate herself from her overbearing, beloved father (played with astonishing magnetism by Pialat himself), ineffectual mother, and brutish brother. A tender character study that can erupt in startling violence, À nos amours is one of the high-water marks of eighties French cinema.Read More »

Kazuo Kuroki’s international award-winning period drama was produced in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the death of Shozo Makino, “the father of Japanese films.” Set in the 1830s near the end of the age of the samurai, Ronin Gai is populated by an ensemble of colorful characters, social outcasts who patronize a restaurant and brothel on the outskirts of Edo. Among them are prostitutes and masterless samurai reduced to drunkenness and debauchery. The disgraced and disillusioned former warriors get a chance at redemption when renegade samurai invade the area to murder the prostitutes.Read More »

Quote:
James Herbert, filmmaker and painter, was to become well-known for his video clips for R.E.M., but his films are rarely seen. Somewhere between voyeuristic attraction and reflection, they demonstrate the filmmaker’s sensibility for reinterpreting the body by means of photography: figures of naked couples in a visual setting, reflections of the impression of touch or loneliness, while the film intensifies with the grain, the texture and the light.Read More »

Quote:
The plot of the film is taken from two traditional Portuguese tales: A donzela que vai a guerra («The maiden who went war» 15th Century?), of Judeo-Iberian origin, and a novella, The dead one’s hand, orally transmitted, which forms part of the Bluebeard cycle.

Dom Rodrigo has two daughters, one legitimate, the other bastard, Silvia and Susana. Growing old, and without male heir, Dom Rodrigo decides to marry off Silvia to his neighbour, a rich nobleman, Dom Paio, with the aim of securing and expanding his domain. After a brief visit from the fiancé, a great glutton and skirt-chaser, Dom Rodrigo leaves for the court to invite the king to the nuptials. Upon his departure, he instructs the girls not to open the doors of the mansion to any stranger.Read More »

Set in Brooklyn, New York this Dutch film is based on a true story that appeared on a New York newspaper in 1980. Desirée lives in the past. A series of flashbacks expose us to her psychologically troubled childhood very much affected by a promiscous mother. Her present life evolves around three people: her employer Mrs. Resnick, Freddy, her lover and Father Siego, leader of the church “The True Confessors”. Desirée’s relationship with each one of these characters is at the origin of her falling apart. Freddy is an insecure black man who finishes their love affair with a sad note, Father Siego is the leader of a rigid narrow-minded religious sect and Mrs Resnick is a racist, prejudiced white woman who feels black people are inferior and incapable of living their own live. Rejected by all because of her pregnancy, Desirée blames her child as the source of evil. She is then possessed by evil and wants to exorcise it. The only way is to get rid of her daughter…Read More »

Synopsis by Hal Erickson
The Emerald Forest is based on a true story, as related by Los Angeles Times correspondent Leonard Greenwood. Powers Boothe stars as Bill Markham, a US engineer working on a dam project in the Amazonian jungles. Bill’s young son, Tomme (played by director John Boorman’s son Charley Boorman) is kidnapped in the rain forest by a tribe called “The Invisible People” because of their skills at camouflage – a group that has reportedly never experienced contact with Caucasians. Read More »

Scott B and Beth B, successful makers of short, experimental films made The Vortex an attempt at a “camp” film with a pessimistic “noirish” atmosphere. The detective Lunch (Lydia Lunch, a popular underground musician and poet) investigates a band of corporate businessman who seek government defense contracts through real “corporate wars” and the manipulation of politicians. Though a bit confusing, this film does have an excellent performance by Lunch, as the detective. – AllMovieGudeRead More »