1981-1990

Synopsis
[In Hick’s Last Stand] we witness yet another incarnation of a Last Bavarian Mohican, incoherently staggering across the badlands of South Dakota and Wyoming in white cowboy boots, black leather jacket, and a feather on his hat. Without dialogue, without other players besides Herbert Achternbusch, and with the most minimal narrative progression, the film consists only of an image track over which we hear Hick’s extended monologue, a declaration of love to the absent Mary, occasionally interrupted by songs by Judy Garland, Native American chants, and classical music. Read More »

Quote:
Among those who made interesting women’s films in the 1980s, and in the centre of the controversy about a feminist cinema, was Atıf Yılmaz. “A Divorced Woman” is one of those films about a woman who in the past had no other role but being a pretty ornament and sex object. She discovers her new sexuality with another woman. And adaptation of Necati Cumalı´s story by the same name (note: his play “bir sabah gülerek uyan”), about a woman who frees herself from male-dominated conventions.Read More »

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 »