2001-2010

Synopsis:

The music business is a tough nut to crack. Just ask Hajime, a raspy voiced singer/songwriter not short of talent but somewhat anachronistic in his choice of dress. Sporting a shiny bob wig, velvet blazer and heavily ruffled shirt, he’s every bit the picture of a GS (group sounds) frontman but several decades too late for that brief trend. His busking draws curious stares and his attempts to get signed to a label are met with indifference. His semi-retreat into a career as a radio DJ seems like a good fit, especially when Miki stops by for an autograph. She’s young, cute, and clearly in awe of his musical persona. That night they have sex, and she shocks him into speechlessness by climbing on top and climaxing during the act. Within the minute he’s writing a new song, smitten, and by the next scene they’re shacking up. Things are ideal until they wake up after a night of passion and Hajime discovers Miki’s secret: After sex, she sheds a layer of skin like a snake in one large piece. Like a tissue-thin Miki suit. It’s an eye-opener.Read More »

Quote:
A drug dealer finds an unlikely traveling companion in a runaway kid trying to dodge social services.Read More »

A 19th century French aristocrat, notorious for his scathing memoirs about life in Russia, travels through the Russian State Hermitage Museum and encounters historical figures from the last 200+ years.Read More »

IMDB:
Portrait of an artist as a young man. Roughly chronological, using archival footage intercut with recent interviews, a story takes shape of Bob Dylan’s (b. 1941) coming of age from 1961 to 1966 as a singer, songwriter, performer, and star. He takes from others: singing styles, chord changes, and rare records. He keeps moving: on stage, around New York City and on tour, from Suze Rotolo to Joan Baez and on, from songs of topical witness to songs of raucous independence, from folk to rock. He drops the past. He refuses, usually with humor and charm, to be simplified, classified, categorized, or finalized: always becoming, we see a shapeshifter on a journey with no direction home.Read More »

The misadventures of an gangster who escapes from prison and who wants to quit the crime world. Having killed a criminal as pay-back, he goes to Marseille to head abroad with his girlfriend. But a lack of money forces him to accept a job, a hold-up, to settle accounts with the victim’s brother, all this with the cops on his tail.Read More »

In an old Parisian apartment block, Zao, an elderly refined Chinese man, crosses paths with Sarah, a troubled young Australian actress, who has just moved in across the hallway. The day she reveals her plans for a vengeful suicide, he proposes a pact: to cook for her until the fateful date. And so begins an ambiguous and subtly erotic friendship, under the ever watchful and envious eyes of the other inhabitants who do their best to disrupt this mystifying relationship.Read More »

AMG: Based on the best-selling novel by Isabel Pisano, Spanish actress-turned-director Maria “Luna” Lidon’s The Life offers an intimate glimpse into the experiences of male and female prostitutes in a variety of culturally diverse settings including Budapest, Madrid, Paris, and Las Vegas. Dispersed among the facts are performances from Daryl Hannah, in the role of an aging thespian who has taken to supplementing her income by dabbling in the world’s oldest profession, and her neighbor (Denise Richards), an anthropology student who approaches her for help after her grant money is depleted. The Life also features Joaquim de Almeida in a supporting role.Read More »

In this deeply affecting portrait of ordinary courage in present-day South Africa, a single mother—Shirley Adams—struggles to care for her paraplegic teenage son, Donovan, in a depressed district on the outskirts of Cape Town. Wearied but resolute, she desperately clings to him as he withdraws from the world following a suicide attempt, and is hopeful when his spirits are momentarily lifted by the appearance of Tamsin, a pretty but overeager social worker. But when the relationship between Donovan and Tamsin sours, his fragile emotional health declines, and Shirley’s faith and perseverance are put to the ultimate test. First-time director Oliver Hermanus’s observant camera holds close to its subjects, capturing the claustrophobia, intimacy and hushed anguish surrounding the tender daily routines of a mother and her child.Read More »

Director Tanada Yuki offers a frank depiction of sexuality at 17 in her brilliant adaptation of Saso Akira’s coming-of-age manga. Charging forward with all the stagnant urgency and high-strung awkwardness of adolescence, “Ain’t No Tomorrows” weaves three episodes of high school angst and sexual awakening. Sex-obsessed virgin Hiruma (Emoto Tokio, Your Friends) desperately pursues a sickly classmate (Miwako). His buddy Mine (Endo Yuya, Nodame Cantabile) becomes the unlikely savior for a naive schoolgirl (Ando Sakura, Love Exposure), and chubby Ando (Kusano Ini) unexpectedly scores with the class beauty (Misaki Ayame, Ghost Friends).Read More »