2001-2010

With Slaughterhouse 5 Kurt Vonnegut revealed that humour can be exploited in two ways: to make people roll over the floor laughing and to underscore the graveness of earnest problems. While Antonio Mercero’s Spanish dramatic comedy Planta 4ª (The 4th Floor) doesn’t tackle WWII but “only” possibly terminally ill children, its use of humour is similar. While it would be harsh to nickname the film Slaughterhouse 4 (the young patients of the cancer ward on the titular fourth floor all have at least one amputated limb), it shares with Vonnegut its exploitation of laughter in the face of the incomprehensible, or indeed the only sane way to confront the inexplicable madness of disease and death.Read More »

IMDB Plot summary :
Richard and Philippe live hand to mouth, backing up a gang of Spanish pickpockets on the streets of Paris, posing as policemen who arrest a gang member while the others rifle the pockets and purses of gawkers. When all of the gang except Richard and Philippe are pinched, things look grim. Plus, Richard insists that they take in a wide-eyed immigrant lad, a deaf-mute left behind in the arrests. Philippe suggests a three-person pickpocket trick, using the boy, but when that goes spectacularly badly, they hit rock bottom. Then, at the cinema, the lad finds a solution. It’s time to celebrate.Read More »

Review from BBC news:
Newly released audio tapes of interviews with John Lennon’s assassin reveal Mark Chapman’s self-confessed “compulsion” to kill the former Beatle.

“It was like a train, a runaway train, there was no stopping it,” Chapman told interviewers in a New York prison more than a decade ago.

The singer was shot by Chapman in New York on 8 December 1980. The tapes were recorded in the early 1990s by journalist Jack Jones, who wrote a book about Chapman and his crime. Chapman describes how he shot ex-Beatle Lennon five times in the back outside the Dakota apartment complex, adding “nothing could have stopped me”.”I was under total compulsion,” he says. “I’m thoroughly convinced in my conscience and in my heart that there was nothing I could do beyond that point to help myself, totally convinced of that.”Read More »

In this often very funny enquiry into crankiness, Toronto filmmaker Alan Zweig interviews notable curmudgeons like Fran Lebowitz, Harvey Pekar and Bruce LaBruce. Zweig wants to know what their frickin’ problem is and, more importantly, whether it’s the same as his. As in Vinyl, his equally irascible doc on record collectors, the endearingly dour filmmaker spends much of I, Curmudgeon spilling his guts directly to his camera and torturing himself with big questions that he can never answer satisfactorily. Zweig then confronts his subjects with the same questions, thereby making them even grouchier. (How grouchy? Andy Rooney is moved to kick Zweig out of his office.) Though I, Curmudgeon’s meandering structure and incessant jump-cuts are irritants, they’re also appropriate to the movie’s abrasive, anti-social personality. Consider this a testament to the power of negative thinking. – Eye WeeklyRead More »

allmovie wrote:
A pair of American security operatives (Zach Cohen and Iftach Ofir) are on patrol in Afghanistan when they stumble upon a Taliban fighter (Vincent Gallo), who kills them despite his terror and nervousness. While trying to escape, the Afghan is captured by American forces; he’s tortured during interrogation, but doesn’t tell the Americans anything, in part because an explosion has made it difficult for him to hear what they’re saying. The Americans ship the Afghan off to a detention facility with a number of other Taliban soldiers, but upon arrival he’s able to escape. However, the Afghan finds himself in a forbidding snowbound climate, and with no provisions or warm clothing he struggles to simply survive as he avoids his pursuers and struggles to find some way to get home.Read More »

Eun Sik is 28 years old and has recently started school at the university. He is a member of the Cha Ryu group and practices with them daily, through painful endurance training. He meets the much younger and gorgeous Eun Hyo, for whom he holds a completely one-sided attraction. Eun Sik’s amazingly unlucky, and a host of embarrassing situations happen to him. Through all of this, him and his insanely horny group of friends help make one of the most memorable sex comedies, complete with both hilarious and somewhat dramatic moments.Read More »

Quote:
“Simultaneously developed by its writer-director Simon Pummell as a film, a website, and a gallery installation, Bodysong is not a work lacking in ambition. It sets itself the task of providing an overview of the human condition with Pummell and his researchers trawling through film, video, and television archives, as well as drawing on home movies.Read More »

Social class, prideful martyrdom, and a dollop of beautifully expansive landscape weave a tale of operatic proportions, both by plot and physically exhaustive standards, in veteran Manoel de Oliveira’s latest exploration of motivation. Marrying for money instead of childhood love, Camila (Leonor Baldaque) naïvely assumes the supposed epic and selfless attributes of Joan of Arc to deal with her husband’s infidelity and the consistent treatment of being irrelevant to the very people that encouraged the doomed match.Read More »

Plot / Synopsis
The fantasy musical film “Passerby #3? by Korean director Shin Su-won won the Best Asian-Middle Eastern Film Award at the 23rd Tokyo International Film Festival.

Ji-Wan is a middle-aged mother with a case of malaise and hardly any backbone to speak of. She abruptly quits her job to follow her dream of becoming a film director; she’s been working on a script for five years. Her husband thinks she’s wasting her time; her son Si-Young is ashamed of her and lets her know it at every possible moment; and the producer she’s supposed to be working with, Choi, keeps trying to make the film into a commercial blockbuster.Read More »