2001-2010

  • Yimou Zhang – Man cheng jin dai huang jin jia AKA Curse of the Golden Flower [+Extras] (2006)

    Drama2001-2010ActionChinaFifth Generation Chinese CinemaYimou Zhang

    A dying love between two powerful people leads to deceit, infidelity, and conspiracy in this epic-scale historical drama from director Zhang Yimou. During the latter days of the Tang dynasty, the Emperor (Chow Yun-Fat) returns home from the war with his son Prince Jai (Jay Chou) in tow. However, the monarch gets a chilly reception from the Empress (Gong Li); though she’s eager to see her son, her marriage has become deeply acrimonious, and she’s taken a lover, Crown Prince Wan (Liu Ye), her stepson from the Emperor’s first marriage. The Emperor, meanwhile, has his own plan for dealing with his failing marriage — he’s ordered the Imperial Doctor (Ni Dahong) to find an exotic drug that will drive the Empress insane and administer it to her without her knowledge. However, the doctor’s ethical dilemma is intensified by the fact his daughter Chan (Li Man) has fallen in love with Crown Prince Wan and the two wish to elope. As the Emperor and Empress allow their estrangement to sink into violence and retribution, their youngest son, Prince Yu (Qin Junjie), struggles to keep the peace in the household.Read More »

  • Wes Anderson – The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)

    2001-2010ArthouseComedyUSAWes Anderson

    Quote:
    Internationally famous oceanographer Steve Zissou (Bill Murray) and his crew, Team Zissou, set sail on an expedition to hunt down the mysterious, elusive, possibly nonexistent Jaguar Shark that killed Zissou’s partner during the documentary filming of their latest adventure. They are joined on their voyage by a young airline copilot (Owen Wilson), a pregnant journalist (Cate Blanchett), and Zissou’s estranged wife (Anjelica Huston). Wes Anderson has assembled an all-star cast that also includes Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Michael Gambon, Noah Taylor, Seu Jorge, and Bud Cort for this wildly original adventure-comedy.Read More »

  • Faouzi Bensaïdi – Mille mois aka A thousand months (2003)

    2001-2010African CinemaDramaFaouzi BensaïdiMorocco

    It is the holy month of Ramadan in Morocco in 1981. Amina, accompanied with her seven years old son Mehdi, come to live with her father-in-law Ahmed in a small village in Morocco, after her husband was arrested for political reasons. The arrest of the father must stay a secret for Mehdi who was told that his father traveled to France for work.Read More »

  • Vladimír Morávek – Nuda v Brne AKA Bored in Brno AKA Boredom in Brno (2003)

    2001-2010ComedyCzech RepublicVladimír Morávek

    Quote:
    A biting comedy concerning the lives of two young people who meet one day in a house in Brno in order to put their ideals of love into practice. A story about a couple not yet prepared for sexual life and a renowned actor no longer in his sexual prime.Read More »

  • Dario Argento – Non ho sonno AKA Sleepless [+ Commentary] (2001)

    2001-2010Dario ArgentoGialloItalyThriller

    An elderly and retired police detective and a young amateur sleuth team up to find a serial killer whom has resumed a killing spree in Turin, Italy after a 17-year hiatus.Read More »

  • Takahisa Zeze – Moon Child (2003)

    2001-2010AsianDramaJapanTakahisa Zeze

    Quote:
    In the year 2014, Japan has collapsed economically and thus its people emigrated in large numbers and settled in other parts of the world. In a corner in Asia, there is a little street called Mallepa, a big melting pot where Asians such as Hongkongers, Taiwanese and Japanese live together. It was a place where people fought for order, food and freedom. It was there where Shou (Gackt), raised as an orphan and Kei (Hyde), who could live forever, met and became the best of friends. However, they were unable to escape from the fight for power involving gangs of different ethnicity on the street of Malepa.Read More »

  • Satoshi Kon – Sennen joyû AKA Millennium Actress (2001)

    2001-2010AnimationJapanSatoshi Kon

    Quote:
    A TV interviewer and his cameraman meet a former actress and travel through her memories and career.

    Quote:
    Behold Millennium Actress, Satoshi Kon’s anime answer to Mulholland Drive. This radical work by the director of Perfect Blue mainlines into a cosmic crawlspace between reality and fantasy from which it never leaves. Kon’s love for his animated diva is supreme and he plays her romantic saga for delirious world-weary sorrow. The genius of Millennium Actress is infinite: the practically monochrome palette that slowly saturates color as the film moves forward in time; the meta-cinematic conceits Kon employs in order to have the film’s male documentary filmmaker penetrate what’s supposedly an older Japanese actress’s recollection of her own past; and the countless rhetorical shifts that evoke the woman’s projection of her romantic melodrama onto her art.Read More »

  • Johann Lurf – VERTIGO RUSH (2007)

    2001-2010AustriaExperimentalJohann LurfShort Film

    ‘Vertigo Rush’ (Johann Lurf, 2007) starts with a slow and soundless Hitchcock zoom, but ends in a pulsating and electrically glowing mind fuck, which is as if Paul Sharits and Michael Snow had remade the last scene of Kubrick‘s ‘2001’.
    International Film Festival Rotterdam in January 2008Read More »

  • Mike Figgis & Ann Van den Broek – The Co(te)lette Film (2010)

    2001-2010Ann Van den BroekExperimentalMike FiggisPerformanceUnited Kingdom

    The Co(te)lette Film is Mike Figgis’ cinematographic adaptation of the dance performance by Ann Van den Broek.

    Women and flesh, beauty and perishableness, raw and fragile. A delirious desire overwhelms the dancers. A desire for physical and mental satisfaction. The dancers go from appeal to sensuality, over lust, fleshness, fame, success, reflection and control, to silence. They are slaves of their own desires while trying to get in control of them. Female bodies in a frenzy.Read More »

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