2001-2010

Synopsis:
Hidden in the bushes along the river bank, a woman’s body is found severed into six parts. Homicide forensics expert KANG is called into investigation, eventually arresting environmentalist fanatic LEE as the main suspect. Meanwhile, KANG heads to the airport to pick up his daughter who hasn’t been back in Korea for 10 years. A stranger, supposedly ordered by LEE, gives KANG an envelope filled with pictures of his petrified daughter held captive. KANG goes to meet LEE believing the river bank murder case is involved with his daughter’s kidnapping. In order to save his daughter, LEE tells KANG to release him within 3 days, pushing KANG into an impossible fork in the road.Read More »

Quote:
Believe the tale and not the teller., 10 July 2009

Author: The_Black_Rider from New Jersey

If Peter Greenaway presented his conspiracy theory to Rembrandt, the painter would probably laugh in the filmmaker’s face. Luckily art is subjective, and as long as you can make a decent enough case for an interpretation, it is legitimate. But Greenaway’s new film isn’t really about the conspiracy anyway; it’s about the image.

Greenaway famously believes cinema is an impoverished art form because it relies more on the text than on the image. “Just because you have eyes doesn’t mean you can see,” he says. He has been exploring this concept since the days of The Draughtsman’s Contract in which an artist naively uncovered an incitement to murder in his sketches. Here, Greenaway goes through every detail in Rembrandt’s painting and analyzes it. Why is Banning Cocq holding out his naked left hand? Where is the group portrait meant to take place? Who is hiding at the back? Didn’t we see all this in Nightwatching? Sort of. After a long stretch of commercial and artistic failures, Greenaway was clearly trying to reach out to the art-house crowds once again by mixing his exercise in art theory with the melodrama of Rembrandt’s love life. The problem is that Nightwatching is more of the latter than the former, and if there’s one thing Greenaway doesn’t do, it’s emotion. Rembrandt’s J’Accuse is indeed a rehash of the concepts of Nightwatching but the contrived story stripped away.Read More »

Anica lives in New Belgrade, a miserable district of tower blocks and concrete. She is mistress to Milutin, a wealthly local criminal who owns a solarium and runs a protection racket. Anica is determined not to grow old in this dump where neither love nor life seems to offer her a decent future. One grey winter’s day Anica has an idea to steal money from Milutin’s safe, get on a plane and leave the country forever.Read More »

Synopsis:
Three maintenance technicians, sent off to dig up and repair a faulty cable find themselves at odds with the blistering cold outside, a bottle of vodka and their own ingenuity.Read More »

From French Film Guide:

The first years of the new millenium have marked something of a revival for the French New Wave, with Nouvelle Vague directors Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette all releasing major works which achieved both popular success and critical acclaim. Rivette’s offering is a charming romantic comedy which reminds us of the director’s passion for the theatre seen in his earlier works, such as Paris nous appartient (1961).

Va savoir is constructed as a play within a play, and ultimately ends up with its denouement being played out on a theatre stage. The main action of the film, involving a rolling love cycle reminiscent of Max Ophüls’ La Ronde (1950), is inter-cut with scenes of the stage performance of an Italian play. The themes of this play, cheated love, deceit and revenge, are re-enacted by the characters in the “true life” part of the film, who each embark upon a whimsical diversion in their love lives. Although the film is shot and constructed as a conventional film, with naturalistic every-day sets and dialogue, it gives the impression that it is itself a stage play – indeed, watching the film in a cinema is very much a theatrical experience, in the best tradition of Shakespeare and Molière.Read More »

Synopsis:
Considered to be a modern classic of Indian cinema, LAGAAN is a musical drama which tells the story of a central Indian farming village in 1893. The village waits for the monsoons to come and rain on its crops, but the ground remains dry and infertile. Meanwhile, British ruler Captain Russell (Paul Blackthorne) demands lagaan–or double normal taxes–from the villagers. When it becomes clear that they can’t pay, Russell challenges the villagers to a game of cricket, a game they know nothing about. Teaching the villagers about the game falls on the shoulders of farmer Bhuvan (Aamir Khan). As they begin to learn, the villagers are inspired to go up against Russell, with tax negotiation as the stakes for the game. Full of choreographed musical numbers and climaxing in a pulse-pounding cricket match, LAGAAN is a fun, heartwarming British/Indian production that should have no difficulties translating across other national borders.Read More »

Plot:
As Japan nears defeat at the end of World War II, Emperor Hirohito starts his day in a bunker underneath the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. A servant reads to him a list of activities for the day, including a meeting with his ministers, marine biology research, and writing his son. Hirohito muses about the impact on such schedules when the Americans arrive but is told that as long as there is a solitary Japanese person living, the Americans will not reach The Emperor. Hirohito replies that he at times feels like he himself will be the last Japanese person left alive. The servant reminds him that he is a deity, not a person, but Hirohito points out that he has a body just like any other man. He later reflects on the causes of the war when dictating observations about a hermit crab, and then about the peace to come when composing a letter to his son. Soon enough General Douglas MacArthur’s personal car is sent to bring him through the ruins of Tokyo for a meeting with the supreme commanderRead More »

“From the opening rain-swept scene, in which a distraught woman, Ann (Huppert), follows her longtime b.f. Thomas (writer-director Xavier Beauvois) to his mistress’ house, actress and camera coexist in urgent lockstep. Ann’s refusal to process her lover’s betrayal radically disconnects her from any sense of continuum, her jerky, determined movements mirrored by disruptive closeups, and gaps in time and space open up between scenes as every action fades to black.

Ann discards all vestiges of her successful career as a composer/pianist — walking out in the middle of a concert, burning her sheet music and celebrated CDs. She sells her austerely luxurious Paris apartment and disposes of everything in it, turns off her phone, closes out her accounts and disappears, the camera recording every painstaking phase of the unexpectedly hard work involved. The only link she retains to her past is a long-lost childhood friend (Jean-Hugues Anglade), whom she unexpectedly runs into on the night she discovers her b.f.’s infidelity.
Read More »

Blessed with several large rivers, interconnected streams and springs, Japan’s ancient capital, Kyoto, anoints the land with a bountiful source of water. In this tranquil setting, three women join the flow of a small community with the subtle presence of a spring breeze. Setsuko , the proprietor of a whiskey-only bar; Takako, the owner of a coffee shop along the waterway; Hatsumi, a maker of tofu so delicious it seems to spring forth from the clear water. Under their subtle influence, other townspeople gradually begin their own streams too: Yamanoha, a local worker for a furniture workshop; Otome, the owner of a neighborhood public bath; Jin, a young man who assists him at the bath; Makoto, a wayfarer about the town. Among their daily lives, there is Poplar, a small child with a perpetually friendly smile.Read More »