1991-2000

Plot:

Pierre, a young man of privilege, whose anonymously-published novel is a hit and who’s about to marry his blond cousin, Lucie, abandons all when a dark-haired vagrant tells him her secret late one night in the woods: that she is Isabelle, his sister, abandoned by their father. Pierre breaks off with Lucie and his doting mother, heading for Paris with Isabelle, intent on knowing the dark side of human nature. He begins a novel, sending chapters under a pseudonym to his publisher; his relationship with Isabelle moves beyond the fraternal; and, in winter, the frail Lucie comes to live with them. Family jealousies mount, and Pierre may have discovered despair instead of the truth.Read More »

After the death of her husband, the mother of Julie, Jack, Sue and Tom begins to suffer from a mysterious illness. Aware that she is going to have to go into hospital she opens a bank account for the children, so that they can be financially self-sufficient and will be able to avoid being taken into care by the authorities. Unfortunately she also dies and Julie and Jack (the older, teenage children) decide to hide her body in the basement so that they can have free reign of their household. Soon Tom has taken to dressing as a girl whilst Sue has become increasingly reticent, confiding only to her diary, meanwhile Jack and Julie sense an attraction developing for each other. However Julie’s new beau, Derek, threatens to unearth the many dark secrets within this family as he becomes increasingly suspicious of Jack. -IMDbRead More »

Review:
Mahjong (1996) is in many ways Yang’s greatest Satire, but has, at the same time, the beating pulse of a real dramatic story. In plays on the perception of Taiwan by foreign entities, urban locales, love, father/son relationships, and of course, themes of business & greed that Yang most vehemently loathes. The story is told through a variety of different viewpoints, but we are centered on a small gang of friends/hustlers, apparently led by Red Fish (Tang Congsheng), and consisting of Luen-Luen (Ke Yulun), a gentle-hearted translator, Hong Kong (Chen Chang of Crouching Tiger fame), a ladies man who is able to charm his way into any woman’s pants, and Little Buddha (the same actor who played “Cat” in Yang’s A Brighter Summer Day), a fake Feng-Shui expert who is used in the gang’s various scams. Read More »

Quote:
Switch is a faint-hearted sex comedy that doesn’t have the courage of its initially provocative convictions. Undemanding audiences will get a few laughs from the notion of a man parading around in Ellen Barkin’s body. Ladykiller Steve Brooks (Perry King) accepts an invitation for a hot tub frolic with three of his old girlfriends, only to be murdered by them for his innumerable emotional crimes against women over the years. Steve is given a chance to escape a fiery fate by returning to Earth and finding just one woman who genuinely likes him. Only catch is that he will henceforth inhabit the body of a woman, and that of an uncommonly sexy one.Read More »

Multi award-winning film, starring Maggie Cheung, Leon Lai and Eric Tsang. The film also features a role by renowned cinematographer Christopher Doyle (who has shot many of Wong Karwai’s films, and also shot films by Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou).

The film’s Chinese title (Tian Mi Mi) is the name of a song by Teresa Teng which plays throughout the film. It translates as “Sweet Honey”, but also implies a close loving relationship. (Leon Lai sings the title song for the ending credits.) The film shows the love that Chinese people have for the famous singer, who died the year before the film was released; the film is considered a love poem in memory of Teresa Teng.Read More »

Pierfrancesco Campanella’s first giallo (also his directorial debut). The plot is about a series of murders among homosexuals, but the erotic element is mostly represented in heterosexual couplings, so no worries there. Starring the always excellent Tomas Arana, with Alida Vali, Gioia Scola, Lorenzo Flaherty, Natasha Hovey and Barbara Scoppa.Read More »

Quote:
One of the most beautiful films ever made about aging. Voyage To The Beginning Of The World brings together 90-year-old Portuguese filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira and Italian icon Marcello Mastroianni, in what would be his last film. Playing a filmmaker clearly based on Oliveira, Mastroianni takes three actor friends on a driving tour of a mountain village, where one of the actors (Jean-Yves Gautier) is united with the elderly aunt he has never met.

Family becomes the link between the past and present, in a film of great simplicity, dignity and wisdom. Through Mastroianni, Oliveira speculates on beginnings and endings. The village is in the north (where the Portuguese nation began) on what remains of the past (a primitive wooden statue, the meaning of which has been lost) and on what disappears (the ruins of a hotel). The cinematography, by Renato Berta, is at once radiantly clear and surrealistically devoid of detail – as if what were seeing was already a recollection. (-Dave Kehr, NY Daily News – DVD Backcover)Read More »

The painful passage from being imprisoned in the extortionate dilemmas of familial and sexual relationships to accepting a personal point of view. A narrative constructed on the associative structure of memory and dreams.Read More »

After firing a colleague, the head of a PR company begins to question her lifestyle and values.Read More »