1991-2000

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A warm movie about two boys, who discover a secret of a painting that was considered to be lost. The adventures begin, when a boss of a bunch of criminals finds out about the painting.Read More »

PLOT SUMMARY
A group of idealistic Chinese students move into Toyko’s Shinjuku district to attend school in a more relaxed, less competitive setting. However, they soon find themselves inextricably embroiled in the Yakuza underworld with little hope of survival.Read More »

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Clifford Groves, toy manufacturer, is in full charge at the factory but feels left out and taken for granted by his wife and children at home. Alone and depressed, he meets old flame Norma, and one thing leads to another. While their relationship is still fairly innocent, his son Vinnie sees them together and suspects the worst. It’s time for tortured souls behind rain-streaming windows…Read More »

Synopsis:
Following the release of his Minbo No Onna — less a film than a textbook on how to extricate oneself from yakuza harassment — veteran director Juzo Itami was attacked and almost killed by the mob for his effort. In this crime-comedy, he voices his outrage at the attack, which he viewed as an attack on his right for self-expression. The film centers on Hiwako (played, as always, by Itami’s wife, Nobuko Miyamoto), a grand dame of the stage who witnesses a murder while exercising on a lonely country road. The victim turns out to be a lawyer who was snooping around in a shadowy cult clearly modeled on the subway-gassing sect Aum Shinrikyo. Hiwako manages to get a good look at the perpetrator’s face and identifies him as a cult member. Read More »

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This bizarre satiric comedy stars writer/director Joao Cesar Monteiro as Joao de Deus, who runs a small ice cream parlor in Portugal. Joao’s employees are mostly teenage girls, and he rigorously drills them in proper procedures and encourages a careful regimen of personal hygiene. But the single and rather lonely Joao has an unusual hobby — he collects women’s pubic hair, saving favorite samples in a scrapbook and claiming to have a few stray hairs from Queen Victoria. Eventually, Joao becomes romantically involved with one of the girls working at his shop, but when that relationship goes south, he finds himself attempting to seduce the 14-year-old daughter of the local butcher, which lands him deep in hot water. A Comedia de Deus was successful enough to inspire a 1999 sequel, As Bodas de Deus. ~ Mark Deming, RoviRead More »

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Allegedly based on a number of true cases, The Guys From Paradise is a prison story set in the Phillipines against a background of corruption, drug trafficking and paedophilia. This being a Takashi Miike film however, the results are far from conventional. It’s essentially a film of two parts: the first set in a prison named “Paradise” where a small community of Japanese prisoners led by veteran criminal Yoshida (Tsutomu Yamazaki) enjoy a life of relative freedom and privilege, the second the story of their exploits outside prison walls with police and a deranged yakuza on their trail.Read More »

Two neighbors, young Vincenzo and old Mr. Bartoloni, are utterly unhappy. On the one hand Vincenzo must lead a miserable and frustrating life as he cannot find any regular job, despite his Arts degree. On the other hand, Mr. Bartoloni is fed up with his despotic wife: the woman who used to be a beautiful artist is now a fat and shabby drunkard. The two men meet on a particularly sad night and, during an outburst Mr. Bartoloni asks Vincenzo to help him to get rid of his wife by simulating an accident with the promise of a considerable amount of money. Read More »

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This French anthology is a tribute to A Propos de Nice (1930), a classic documentary that took a poetic and sometimes satirical look at life in the French Riviera town. This version blends fact and fiction to chronicle life in modern-day Nice and is comprised of seven vignettes, each directed by an internationally renowned filmmaker. Only one of the episodes, “Reperages,” from Iranian directors Abbas Kiarostami and Parviz Kimiavi, stays close to the style of the original film by Jean Vigo as it chronicles the experiences of a filmmaker who came to Nice to do research on Vigo for his upcoming documentary. Read More »

Frank Lloyd Wright tells the story of the greatest of all American architects. Wright was an authentic American genius, a man who believed he was destined to redesign the world, creating everything anew. Over the course of his long career, he designed over eight hundred buildings, including such revolutionary structures as the Guggenheim Museum, the Johnson Wax Building, Fallingwater, Unity Temple and Taliesin. His buildings and his ideas changed the way we live, work and see the world around us.Read More »