1991-2000

The opening sequence of Zero Kelvin scrolls across a bleak, vast Norwegian wilderness that is virtually inhospitable for men and most beasts. This white, magnificent landscape exudes tremendous beauty, but it also represents death for those foolish enough to fight its dominance. What happens to a civilized human being when he spends enough time is this environment? In this tightly constructed character study, director Hans Petter Moland explores the effect of this land on the fragile human psyche.

Gard Eisvold is a restless, poor young writer living in Oslo who decides to get a little more worldly by joining an Arctic fur-trapping expedition. Leaving behind his girlfriend, Eisvold travels to Greenland, where he’s confronted with the dual harshness of the elements and his profane station-captain, played with brilliant malevolence by the great Stellan Skårsgard. The captain doesn’t take kindly to having a violin-playing, poetry-writing college boy around the cabin, and he begins to torture Eisvold in a cunning if none too subtle fashion. Soon, of course, they’re at each other’s throats despite each needing the other’s help to survive the wilderness.
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IMDB:
part of a modern art classic
9/10
Author: Chris_Docker from United Kingdom
20 March 2004

The Cremaster Cycle 9/10 The Cremaster Cycle is a series of five films shot over eight years. Although they can be seen individually, the best experience is seeing them all together (like Wagner’s Ring Cycle) – and also researching as much as you can beforehand. To give you an idea of the magnitude, it has been suggested that their fulfilment confirms creator Matthew Barney as the most important American artist of his generation (New York Times Magazine).

The Cremaster films are works of art in the sense that the critical faculties you use whilst watching them are ones you might more normally use in, say, the Tate Modern, than in an art house cinema. They are entirely made up of symbols, have only the slimmest of linear plots, and experiencing them leaves you with a sense of awe, of more questions and inspirations than closed-book answers. The imagery is at once grotesque, beautiful, challenging, puzzling and stupendous. Any review can only hope to touch on the significance of such an event, but a few clues might be of interest, so for what it’s worth …
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Review
By the early ’90s, it was finally possible for filmmakers working in the former Soviet Union to deal honestly with the horrors of the 1930s, when Stalin and his regime “reassessed” the contributions of many heroes of the Revolution, resulting in mass imprisonments and death for many millions. Nikita Mikhalkov’s brilliant film about those dark days is ironically set at a sunny summer retreat where Serguei Petrovich Kotov (Mikhalkov), an officer who has been honored for his contributions to the success of the state, and his family are enjoying an idyllic summer’s day. The film’s deliberate pacing for a full half-hour (we might think we’re watching the Russian equivalent of Renoir’s Partie De Campagne) lulls the viewer into a false sense of serenity. When Dimitri, an old lover of Kotov’s young wife and now a government official, arrives, Mikhalkov allows our suspicion that Dimitri’s visit isn’t merely personal to accumulate slowly. The film flirts with sentimentality, especially in casting Mikhalkov’s real-life daughter as Kotov’s irresistibly cute little girl, but after all, the filmmaker’s goal is to show the toll that a repressive political regime can exact on the lives of individual citizens. (AMG)Read More »

Quote:
Sylvie Rousseau, a scientist working on a cancer vaccine, is informed by her brother Paul of the death of their father, Pierre-André, head of the world-leading armaments company Pax Industries. At first, the cause of death was believed to be an accident, but Sylvie learns that her father was instead pushed off a train by his colleague Walser. Seeking vengeance, she becomes a modern-day Electra, austere and energetic, acting in place of her brother, a weak and unwilling Orestes. But nothing goes according to plan.Read More »

from link –
In NORTH ON EVERS (1991) James Benning takes the road movie seriously, making his circular trip across the U.S. a marvelously photographed, intensely felt, and disturbing portrait of contemporary America. In many ways, this recent film is a departure of Benning’s earlier films which are characterized, at times, by extremely long, carefully planned takes and a minimal narrative approach. In NORTH ON EVERS, the shots are kept short with a narrative that is direct and detailed, like a diary or a long series of postcards to a friend. What this work shares with the other films is a dry wit and a deep interest in the American social landscape.Read More »

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‘Whispering Pages’ may be the most dimly lit film ever made. Set to the strains of Mahler, this 1993 film takes place in a city whose streets are rarely penetrated by sunlight. Look hard enough and you’ll discover the world of Dostoevsky, whose Crime and Punishment is the source of whatever scant plot exists in Whispering Pages.

Sokurov is one of the most painterly filmmakers alive, but he’s seldom interested in conventionally pretty imagery (or conveying the same grandeur sought by his former mentor, Andrei Tarkovsky). Instead, Sokurov’s images often seem flat and hollow, with the movie screen’s two-dimensionality emphasized rather than disguised. Some of the images in the shadowy Whispering Pages — like the wizened bureaucrat who covers his face with his newspaper or the prostitutes who wrestle in the street — might as well have been made from woodcuts.Read More »

It’s summer. Sébastien loves the singer Sheila. Lucia loves boys. And all Frédéric wants, is to get a nice tan…Read More »

A young mother of a ten month old baby (Sacha Hails) spends much time on her own, with her husband away on the mainland for an unspecified period of time. When a backpacker knocks at her door, asking if she can pitch her tent in the garden as the camping site is full, it provides some welcome relief from her solitude. Pretty soon, however, the backpacker (Marina De Van) is shown to have a sinister side to her…..Read More »

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The adventures of an upper-class suburban family abruptly confronted with the younger brother’s discovery of his homosexuality, the elder sister’s suicide attempt and sado-masochist tendencies, and the intrusion of a very free-spirited maid and her husband… And it all started with the arrival in the family of an innocent looking rat…Read More »