2011-2020

from amazon.com
The Shining by Stanley Kubrick – that strange story in which a writer and his wife and young son with ESP stay in a mysterious hotel in low season – has been fascinating viewers since its release in 1980.
Simon Roy first saw the film when he was 10 and was mesmerized by a particular line: “How’d you like some ice cream, Doc?” He has since seen the movie at least 42 times, because “it encompasses the tragic symptoms of a deep-seated defect that has haunted [it] for generations.” The painstaking bond he has knitted with this story of evil has enabled him to absorb the disquieting traits of its “macabre lineage” and fully reveal its power over him. This is an unusual and astonishing book.Read More »

During his acceptance speech for a lifetime achievement award, Nicolas Chauvin – a farmer-soldier, a veteran of the Revolutionary Army and the Napoleonic Wars, “father” of the chauvinism that bears his name – embarks on a monologue and recounts his life story. At the bend of a road, a spectral encounter shocks his (non-)existence.Read More »

In the deserted hills of an Indonesian island, Marlina (Marsha Timothy), a young widow, is attacked and robbed of all her livestock by a gang of seven bandits. She then defends herself, setting out on a journey to find justice, empowerment, retribution and redemption. But the road is long, especially when she begins to be haunted by the ghost of her victim. A stunning Scope western set to a Morricone-inspired score, this unique tale of female cinematic revenge takes no prisoners.Read More »

Lewd Looks: American Sexploitation Cinema in the 1960’s
by Elena Gorfinkel
Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: University Of Minnesota Press; 1st edition (Oct. 15 2017)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1517900174
ISBN-13: 978-1517900175

The untold story of the American sexploitation film—a major development in screen sex in the decade before “porno chic”
Read More »

Long is a Taiwanese killer known for his sword skills. After Long fails a Tokyo mission, he moves to a small town where no one knows about him.Read More »

Quote:
The goalkeeper of a little-known soccer team is kidnapped by a Argentinean government squad and sent to a detention center. After months of torture, he plots his escape with three other young men.

Quote:
If American moviegoers have plenty of reasons to feel icky about government-sponsored kidnappings and hidden prisons, “Chronicle of an Escape” gives them another good one, by viewing a fact-based Argentinean story through the stylized lens of a horror film. Laced with dread that builds to a thoroughly gripping third act, it should do well with art house audiences who like their history lessons to come with a shot of adrenaline.Read More »

Ozan is a ten-year old boy living in a small coastal town on the Aegean. His friends make fun of him, calling him an “infidel” because his grandfather Mehmet is an immigrant from Crete. Ozan is afraid of being left alone. He gets angry at his family, especially his grandfather, and he stubbornly challenges his family saying “We are Turks”.

Mehmet Bey, Ozan’s grandfather, is a respected shopkeeper in the community. He takes the people of the town under his wings, and helps them with their problems. Mehmet Bey is known for his tolerance and his grandson’s attitude not only has him worried but grieves him as well.
Read More »

Tender, erotic, and pathetic, this reconstructed narrative examines the obsession to chronicle the details of an adulterous affair. Suitcase of Love and Shame is a mesmerizing collage woven from 60 hours of reel-to-reel audiotape discovered in a suitcase purchased on eBay. Recorded in the 1960’s, a Mid-western woman and her lover become reliant on recording devises to document and memorialize their affair. The film suggestively foregrounds the tape recorder as the confidant, witness, and participant that the couple come to depend on — always omnipresent, the recorder creates a welcomed ménage-à-trois.Read More »

Driven around Paris by a loyal driver (Édith Scob), a mysterious man (Denis Lavant) dresses up in costumes and plays a number of strange, semiscripted roles.

Manohla Dargis wrote:
“Holy Motors,” from the French filmmaker Leos Carax, is a dream of the movies that looks like a movie of dreams. It is a reverie that begins, appropriately, with a seated audience waiting in the dark (like us) and then cuts to a dimly lighted room, where a man (Mr. Carax) rises from a bed that he shares with a dog. He lets the sleeping dog lie (no need for trouble just yet) and creeps over to a mysterious door hidden in a wall. With a strange metal key that’s apparently grafted to one of his fingers, he unlocks the door and — like Little Nemo tumbling into Slumberland, Dorothy crossing over the rainbow and Alice falling down the rabbit hole — leaves one world for another.Read More »