1981-1990

Quote:
Sounding like some cheap pastiche, The German Chainsaw Massacre comes as a surprisingly independent feature, able to stand on it’s own without the crutch of it’s predecessor. However, Tobe Hooper’s movie is not so much tipped and winked as screamed in the face of in this relentless madness and more specifically in a similarly edited chainsaw chase through a forest. Choosing to loosen Hooper’s tight bolts of ‘humour’, Schlingensief loses dramatic intensity but gains an awesome sense of the egregious: unemployed customs officials form appalling folk groups at the West/East border and a woman with a knife up her butt sits down…Read More »

Synopsis:
Jacques Darnay (Delon) is released after having served ten years in prison for robbing a jewelry store. Much about that crime remained a mystery: the stolen diamonds were never recovered, and no one knows exactly how Charby the jeweler died. At his trial it was declared that Darnay acted alone, yet the size and complexity of the heist make that seem highly unlikely. Darnay’s release is anxiously awaited, by both the police, who hope he’ll reveal more information about the crime, and by some of Darnay’s former friends, who have a few ideas as to what might have happened to the diamonds. Having, perhaps, played in his years enough of both, Delon is the perfect point man in this duel between cops and crooks, capitalizing on each side’s strengths and weaknesses while decidedly pursuing his own agenda.Read More »

The Sacrifice, director Andrei Tarkovsky’s final film, begins in Bergmanesque fashion on a small, remote island, where friends and family gather for drama critic Alexander’s (Erland Josephson) birthday celebration.

The revelry is interrupted by a radio announcement: World War III has begun, and Mankind is only hours away from utter annihilation. Each of the guests reacts differently to the news: the most dramatic response is Alexander’s, who promises God that he’ll give up everything he holds dear – including his beloved 6-year-old son – if war is averted. Allan Edwall, a local mailman with purported mystical powers, offers to intervene with the Creator on Josephson’s behalf.Read More »

This highly kinetic tableaux of uprooted sights and sounds works most earnestly to expose the racial biases concealed in familiar images. Relying on valuable snippets from feature films such as “Exodus”, “Lawrence of Arabia”, “Black Sunday”, “Little Drummer Girl”, and network news shows, the filmmakers have constructed an oddly wry narrative, mimicking the history of Mid East politics.Read More »

Paranormal novelist Gideon Harlax is drawn into a battle between the forces of good, represented by alien angel Helith, and the forces of evil, represented by Helith’s evil brother Asrael. Ranging from Oxford to Denmark, a North Sea ferry to an alien planet, Harlax unwittingly becomes part of an ancient plot that may result in the destruction of Earth…Read More »

This is no street gang or gang of mobsters. It’s a Yuan Dynasty army, out to destroy the Hsien Lung “gang” of anti-Yuan revolutionaries. Their leader is the redoubtable Chen Kuan-tai, the real-life South-East Asian Chinese Martial Arts Tournament champion and master of “Monkey-King Split and Deflecting Arm” kung-fu, who must face paternal murder, brother against brother plots, and shocking discoveries that could change the course of history.Read More »

Synopsis:
A perverted social outcast lures young sailor-suited virgins to the back of his truck where he torments and murders them before disposing of their corpses in an acid bath. With one, however, he meets his match. Doing for the vibrator what Tobe Hooper did for the chainsaw, this particularly disturbing portrayal of borderline pubescent girls far more knowing than their adult male counterparts is arguably one of the most unpleasant Sadean sex fantasies ever to hit the big screen.Read More »

Independent filmmaker John Sayles creates one of his more artistic works with this period feature about a volatile 1920s labor dispute in the town of Matewan, West Virginia. Matewan is a coal town where the local miners’ lives are controlled by the powerful Stone Mountain Coal Company. The company practically owns the town, reducing workers’ wages while raising prices at the company-owned supply and grocery. The citizens’ land and homes are not their own, and the future seems dim. When the coal company brings immigrants and minorities to Matewan as cheaper labor, union organizer Joe Kenehan (Chris Cooper) scours the town to unite all miners in a strike. Read More »

Quote:
Structured in five parts, Il Corpo Scuro (The Dark Body), The Language of the Birds, The Night of Sense, Stunned by the Drum, and The Living Flame, the tape envisions a metaphysical journey of rational and intuitive thought, from the natural world to spiritual rituals. Viola’s poetic investigation of subject and object, observing and being observed, and his search for knowledge of the self is encapsulated in an indelible visual metaphor: an image of the artist reflected in the pupil of an owl’s eye.Read More »