1991-2000

A beautiful but hopeless fight against circumstance and the death of an American dream in a by-passed Welsh town. Three kids, forced to make up their own rules, are seduced by the possibility of something better. For what other choice is there when reality lets you down?

Set in the present day in Banwen, a two-bit town in the wilds of Wales’ industrial south, House of America, centres around the Lewis family – Sid, Boyo and Gwenny – whose father Clem has apparently run away to America. Left in charge of their eccentric and mysterious mother – Mam – the kids yearn to escape to the States to visit their father, but the chance of them doing so is remote as there are no jobs for them in the small town.
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What first appear to be photographs of elderly Russian peasants and farmers, becomes an evocative meditation on old Russia and new, a snapshot of a disappearing way of life. As they stand in their work clothes, often with tools by their side, looking into the camera, this remarkable film with poetic rigor, captures a people, a world, that is quickly vanishing.Read More »

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The film develops as the author’s diary, where unbiased narration is dissolved in the lyrical intonation. You watch the real persons in the particular circumstances on the screen. They are Russian frontier–guards on the Tadjik–Afghani border. But it is also a piece of art, where aesthetic laws give the theme and arrange the facts taken from life.

That is why the film begins with the story about Mozart, about death concealing under the poor cover of the daily routine, about music, breaking through this cover and absorbing spiritual voices of the Universe. And that’s why the northern landscape is being shown during a long while, motionless and at the same time subtly changing.
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Somersault in a Coffin (Turkish: Tabutta Rövaşata) is a 1996 Turkish film, written and directed by Derviş Zaim, about a homeless criminal and car thief. The film, which was released on November 15, 1996, received awards at several international film festivals including the Golden Orange for best film at the Antalya International Film Festival.Read More »

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River of Grass has all the elements of a conventional road movie: a car, a gun, criminal plans, and young lovers on the run from an angry father who also happens to be a suspended police officer. But writer and director Kelly Reichardt has instead taken these familiar elements and fashioned an anti-road movie, a deadpan film that is more existentialist comedy than crime drama. The young lovers in question are Cozy, the cop’s daughter, and Lee Ray, a shady character from the wrong end of town.

Lee Ray comes into possession of a pistol, and soon he and Cozy find themselves unintentionally involved in a shooting. Fearing capture by the law, the two make plans to leave town, committing a series of robberies on the way. However, they don’t manage to get very far; indeed, the film’s central premise is how the romantic myth of lovers on the lam proves disappointing in the face of a far more pedestrian reality.
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Yilmaz Arslan directed this Turkish-German-Swiss drama. A woman arrives at an apartment building in a German city to visit her friend Hülya (Yelda Reynaud), only to learn that Hülya has returned to Turkey with her aunt and uncle because of an unspecified illness. There are indications Hülya was kidnapped by her family. Back in Turkey, the unhappy Hülya refuses to speak or eat. At the first chance, she escapes, heading back to Germany without money or identity papers. Beginning the arduous journey, she collapses on the road, is taken care of by peasants, locates her estranged mother, has a run-in with police, and is thrown into a women’s mental institution. Dream sequences are intercut throughout. Shown at the 1998 Venice Film Festival.

— Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
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The Marquis de Sade in a More Complex Guise
Raving lunatic or subversive bad boy? Revolutionary intellectual or fiend from hell? The Marquis de Sade is such an inflammatory figure that when you contemplate his life, the imagination tends to run wild. But as embodied by the French actor Daniel Auteuil in ”Sade,” Benoît Jacquot’s smart, cool-headed costume drama, the marquis is a disturbingly recognizable figure: a sly, charming, ruthlessly arrogant bon vivant with a scary current of rage zipping like a live wire under his reptilian surface.

When Sade casts a hard, beady-eyed gaze on a virginal young woman, his expression is the cold, evaluative stare of a jaded predator. In his too-glittering eyes, you can almost read the graphic sexual scenarios dancing through his mind. Mr. Auteuil’s Sade, with his mixture of tense, coiled civility and ferocious willfulness, has almost nothing in common with the histrionic madman played by Geoffrey Rush in ”Quills.” Mr. Rush’s Sade, for all its high dramatic flourishes, conveniently excused the viewer from having to judge the Marquis. Because his character was so obviously crazy, he was not one of us.Read More »

A veteran bank robber and his sidekicks plan a heist that goes awry.Read More »

A lonely security guard can’t even get a decent blind date, so he begins peeping at women through their bedroom windows. Before long he’s paying call girls to come over and secretly videotaping every session.
Within two weeks he’s blown his life savings and been subjected to a lot of verbal and physical abuse. This bizarre black comedy is loaded with naked women!

Starring Andren Scott – with Monica McFarland, Karen Pombo, Becky Van Lewen and Sheila Traister. Directed by Ronnie Cramer, music by Alarming Trends.

“The Best Drive-in Movie of 1992…” Joe Bob BriggsRead More »