Arthouse

Two men emerge from the sea onto the beach carrying a large wooden wardrobe with a mirror on its front. After the two men clean up and rejoice to be in this new environment, they proceed to enter the nearby town, they carrying the wardrobe wherever they go. They just want to meet people and experience their new surroundings, but are largely shunned or ignored. In some instances, they are shunned even when their presence helps the situation. And in other instances of being shunned, they are beaten. And when they are ignored, the world just keeps going without them, often at the detriment of humankind. Ultimately, the two men, with their wardrobe, make a decision about what to do in light of their experiences.Read More »

A man walks down the exterior staircase of building of flats; he’s dressed to go out, taking care to wrap a scarf around his neck. He pauses as he passes a small window that’s about eye high. He ventures to look in, and there a young woman stands at a washbasin, drying her hair, the towel that obscures her face her only covering. The peeping tom gets an eyeful and smiles; he’s interrupted by a door opening, the flat’s occupant bringing out empty bottles to place on the porch. The man pretends to leave, departing down the stairs, only to return to the window after the flat’s door has closed. He again looks in the window, where a surprise awaits.Read More »

wikipedia:
Litoral is a four-part 2008 Chilean TV miniseries written and directed by Raúl Ruiz. Originally subtitled “Tales of the Sea”, it is thematically similar to the director’s film Three Crowns of the Sailor (1983) and is the second of the oneiric folklore-themed miniseries’ he made for TVN, following on from La Recta Provincia (2007).Read More »

The plot revolves around a brother and sister, who are staying with their aunt and uncle. There world is forever changed when a Cambodian boy comes to stay with them until he is able to be placed with a family permanently. The trio quickly become friends and daily they venture off into the woods near their home. One day they meet a crippled man who used to be a railroad engineer. They get this man to help them restore and teach them how to drive an abandon train they discover in the woods. The trio plan to take the train to Cambodia, so Hoang their Cambodian friend can reunite with his mother.Read More »

A young couple in Berlin’s “Mitte” district. He’s lying on the sofa, reading. She can’t stand it anymore. In the afternoon the parents come to see the baby. She goes out in the evening. The young man waits desperately. She comes back – but not alone.Read More »

Quote:
Documentary about young actress Romy Schneider, capturing just the right moment between her first career as a young actress in mainstream “Unterhaltungskino” (“entertainment cinema”) and her second one as acknowledged European arthouse actress.Read More »

Quote:
A couple is pursued by the police and citizens of the city for the crime of having invented love. “In every corner of the city on the walls of the bars on the doors of public buildings in the windows of the bus even that wall ruined through radios ads and detergents in the small shop window where no one enters the lobby of the railway station which was the home of our hope of escape a poster denounces our love …Read More »

“An ecological parable about the pleasures of storytelling,
capitalist greed and our relationship with nature…”

Synopsis:
Éléonore’s car breaks down somewhere in Brittany and she ends up stranded at a lakeside campsite. Legend has it that a giant fish has lived there since biblical times, and that it once fed Saint Corentin. With stoic curiosity and a parabolic microphone, Éléonore investigates the secret lives of the lake and the long-term campers. Her personal diary becomes a portrait of her new eccentric neighbours – the single mother with the chicken farm and the ageing cowboy from Ohio who records unrequited messages for his daughter every day.Read More »

Quote:
A three part-film based on short stories about the difficult lot of women in the early Meiji era. This is the film that swept almost all the Japanese awards for the year of Tokyo Story and Ugetsu (among others great films) — and lost to the fairly inconsequential Gate of Hell at the Cannes Festival. Imai and Kinoshita (and not Ozu, Naruse or Mizoguchi) were the most popular (and critically acclaimed) directors of the Japanese Golden Age of the 50s. While I find the contemporaneous adulation for Kinoshita beyond my understanding, I have found the few Imai films I’ve seen fairly impressive. And this is no exception.Read More »