2001-2010

France, 1562. Against a background of the savage Catholic/Protestant wars, Marie de Mézières (Mélanie Thierry), a beautiful young aristocrat, and the rakish Henri de Guise (Gaspard Ulliel), fall in love, but Marie’s father has promised her hand in… France, 1562. Against a background of the savage Catholic/Protestant wars, Marie de Mézières (Mélanie Thierry), a beautiful young aristocrat, and the rakish Henri de Guise (Gaspard Ulliel), fall in love, but Marie’s father has promised her hand in marriage to the Prince of Montpensier (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet). When he is called away to battle, her husband leaves her in the care of Count Chabannes (Lambert Wilson), an aging nobleman with a disdain for warfare. As he experiences his own forbidden desire for Marie, Chabannes must also protect her from the dangerously corrupt court dominated by Catherine de Medici. Director Bertrand Tavernier translates Madame de Lafayette’s 1622 novella into a bracingly intelligent and moving evocation of the terrible conflict between duty and passion. Though the themes are classic, Tavernier, with the cinematographer Bruno de Keyzer’s vivid landscapes and Philippe Sarde’s pulsing score, makes them feel passionately, urgently contemporary.Read More »

Voice From Rogerebert wrote:
With the voices of Michelle Caucheteux, Jean-Claude Donda, Michel Robin, Monica Viegas, Beatrice Bonifassi and Charles Prevost Linton.
“The Triplets of Belleville” will have you walking out of the theater with a goofy damn grin on your face, wondering what just happened to you.Read More »

imdb wrote:
Mitsuko, a thirty-something Japanese secretary, lives a very simple life devoid of ambition. She has an affair with Eiji, a rich, arrogant and newly divorced businessman who is intrigued by her retiring personnality but she quickly breaks up as he repeatedly tries to make her change her lifestyle and values. While Eiji ponders the reasons of the breakup, Mitsuko falls for one of her neighbours, a young slacker who has the same approach to life as her. But Mitsuko’s new lover is fascinated by Eiji’s power and social status… A triangle that will inevitably leave one of the characters “unloved”.Read More »

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Oblivion is of a man’s elderly paralytic literally unspeakable monologue of pain and fury as he finds himself caught in the isolation of dependency and sexual loss. His mind attempts to regain a certain equilibrium of desire as the women who he once loved surround his shrinking and shrieking mind with tantalising distain and pornographic voyeurism. They are both real and imaginary and appear, disappear, and suddenly come back to torment his memory. He is motionless and powerless to control even his fantasies, and in the confused, claustrophobic space the inner world of love and hate, death and life, loneliness and togetherness, and sex, all ambiguously collide as if they were torn out of time. His life becomes represented, not as remembrance, but of the traces and signs of an absence. Suggested by the book “Le Con D’Irène” by Louis Aragon.Read More »

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Olivier Assayas is about as protean as today’s great filmmakers come, but the last thing I expected from the mad genius behind the globe-trotting, gorgeously kinetic Boarding Gate is a Chekhovian chamber drama whose mantra could be essentially reduced to: posterity cares. If Boarding Gate convincingly documented a 21st century where human beings can be bought, sold, and shipped from New York to Paris to Hong Kong like shares on the NASDAQ, Summer Hours is the sobering requiem for the safety of objects, for the shape and weight of everything we leave behind when we give in to perpetual flux. Together the two films offer a deeply affecting inquiry into the meaning (and market necessity) of attachment in an age of unfettered globalization.Read More »

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Albert Maysles, Christo and Jeanne-Claude discuss their friendship, the films, and their ongoing collaboration as well as the upcoming Gates Project for New York City’s Central Park.Read More »

The Fallen Angel tells the story of a young man who has felt since childhood utterly alien from others around him. Since that time he has learned to put on a face to hide his alienation. He feels incapable of belonging to the human society, especially so by society’s refusal to take him seriously. He then follows a descent into alcohol, drugs, & suicide …Read More »

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This stunning visual masterpiece is an exuberant testament to the resolve of women of the ’60s and ’70s sexual revolution and feminist movement in Italy. Acclaimed director Alina Marazzi takes viewers on gorgeous storytelling journey through archival footage, advertisements, and colorful images juxtaposed with the true-life struggles and first person narrations of three diverse Italian women: Anita, who is struggling with an oppressive father and the strict rules of her Catholic faith; Teresa, who must resort to a heartbreaking illicit abortion; and Valentina, a militant feminist caught between love and her commitment to the movement.Read More »

Grain in Ear follows the plight of Cui (Liu Lianji), a young Korean mother living on the outskirts of Chinese society. With a husband in jail and a son to support, she barely makes a living selling kimchi to workers along the side of a bleak, industrial road. A love affair with a fellow Chinese-Korean leads to tragic consequences as Cui struggles against the vulnerability of her position.Read More »