1991-2000

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Based on the fantastic book by Michel Houellebecq :

OUR hero in this gloriously dark piece is a depressed, cynical, sexually obsessed systems engineer moping through life perked up only by the fun he has putting others into a similarly suicidal state. When he is sent on a work trip to train up clients to use his company’s software he is forced to travel with the slimy Raphael, an unreconstruted male bursting with such sheer desperation that he is destined never to have success with the women he chases…Read More »

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Eddie, a small town ex-con, discovers he has talent for selling anything and everything. Eddie sees a way to rise above the low life by setting up on his own. What he didn’t bargain for, was the murder and mayhem along the way.Read More »

Tony Rayns, Time Out Film Guide wrote:
One-time Lino Brocka protégé O’Hara is not shy of traditional melodrama, still the lifeblood of most Filipino cinema, but Demons fits no established genre template. Part social history, part ghost horror story, part romance, part quasi-Marxist parable, it has no obvious antecedent except parts of Night of the Hunter. Set on Negros Island, the action spans nearly 20 years in the lives of Nena (De Leon), daughter of a fish-farmer, and Jose (Alano), the son of casual labourers. As they move through puberty and try to bridge the class gap, the island is riven by terrorist actions and military reprisals (echoing assassinations and political turmoil in faraway Manila), giving new meaning to the local mythology of jungle demons. O’Hara balances the narrative between drama and elegy, between occasionally shocking images and the poetry of Amado Hernandez and Florentino Collantes. Often wonderful.Read More »

An interesting documentary about an interesting man, to say the least. Kazuo Hara follows up his controversial work “The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On” with a bio-documentary about Mitsuharu Inoue, a famous and popular (especially among women) post-war Japanese writer. The film follows the last few years of the life of Inoue before he dies of cancer in 1992. The film starts out as a usual bio-documentary like many others, but the second half of the film digs into the writer’s past and comes up with some unexpected discoveries.Read More »

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An Innuit hunter races his sled home with a fresh-caught halibut. This fish pervades the entire film, in real and imaginary form. Meanwhile, Axel tags fish in New York as a naturalist’s gofer. He’s happy there, but a messenger arrives to bring him to Arizona for his uncle’s wedding. It’s a ruse to get Axel into the family business. In Arizona, Axel meets two odd women: vivacious, needy, and plagued by neuroses and familial discord. He gets romantically involved with one, while the other, rich but depressed, plays accordion tunes to a gaggle of pet turtles.Read More »

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Divorce Iranian Style challenges preconceptions about what life is like for women in Iran. The most startling thing about the film is simply that it was made. The filmmakers follow the cases of three women who are attempting to divorce their husbands. Although Iranian religious law frowns on divorce, a man is allowed to claim the privilege without needing to show cause, provided he pays his ex-wife compensation. A woman, however, can only sue for divorce if she can prove that her husband is sterile or mad, or if he agrees to let her out of their marriage contract. In the last case, the compensation becomes the bargaining chip: the man will sometimes give his wife her freedom if he doesn’t have to pay.Read More »

Synopsis
After many years away, Silvestro returns from northern Italy to the Sicilian countryside of his childhood to visit his mother. On his journey, he has conversations with strangers in a port, fellow passengers on a train, his mother, and a knife-sharpener.Read More »

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A young woman visiting Paris, misses the last bus home, finds herself stranded on the outskirts of Paris. Entering a local club, she meets a troubled drug addict.Read More »

Treasure Island is an experimental, 16 mm black-and-white drama written, directed, and photographed by producer Scott King. The loosely constructed plot shows the private lives of two British code-crackers (Lance Baker and Nick Offerman) during WWII who decode letters and look for hidden meanings behind the words. As a counterintelligence ploy, they decide to drop a dead body off the coast of Japan before a discovered invasion. The film then turns to these men’s personal lives and the problems with the women they love, along with the secrets they hide.Read More »