Arthouse

Quote:
Woman living in São Paulo goes to Gramado, South of Brazil, to visit a friend of hers. Together, they meet an odd woman who engages in strange experiences in parapsychology. From then on, bizarre events are bound to happen.Read More »

Quote:
Are you afraid of death? According to statistics, two people on earth die each second. Die Tomorrow zeroes in on the last day of its protagonists, each of whom have no idea of their fate. The film picks up on six everyday situations and turns them into moving stories. With true lightness of touch, director Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit forges shots that play out over considerable time and then combines them with documentary-like interview footage, news reports, sound recordings, statistics and archive material, thus creating an elaborate essay. Read More »

Synopsis:
Icelandic filmmaker Olafur Sveinsson takes on the challenge of documenting one of his native country’s social ills by focusing on the homeless people taking shelter in the capital city of Reykjavik’s main bus terminal in his 2002 sociological documentary Hlemmur (Last Stop). Most of the people Sveinsson interviewed were either mentally handicapped or grappling with some sort of debilitating addiction, both conditions which obviously had tremendously negative impacts on the subjects’ personal lives and resulted in their social marginalization. Read More »

“Ostensibly a faithful adaptation of Pierre Klossowski’s autobiographical novel about the struggle between rival doctrinal factions with the Catholic Church, THE SUSPENDED VOCATION illustrates Ruiz’s belief that institutions, in order to survive, must treat all forms of dissidence as treason. In 1942, a film entitled The Suspended Vocation was begun by a group of monks; running out of money, they abandoned the project. Twenty years later, a religious order hires a professional director to again take up this film project; the director, having examined the earlier footage, concludes that it is unusable. He decides to use professional actors, at which point the church authorities, fearful of the escalating costs, withdraw their support. Read More »

The film’s main hero is Chermen. An illegitimate son, Chermen is striving to assert his dignity. He is opposed by Dacco, the elder of the Aldar clan, in whose village Chermen lives. Guided by mercenary motives, Dacco strikes a deal with Prince Tsarai. Together, they rob people and then divide the loot between themselves.
By some chance, Chermen learns of the deal and informs his friends about it. At first, he thinks that no one in the Aldar village would believe him, the bastard, and that the plot would remain unexposed. But the friends accept the challenge.Read More »

Two narrators, one seen and one unseen, discuss possible connections between a series of paintings. The on-screen narrator walks through three-dimensional reproductions of each painting, featuring real people, sometimes moving, in an effort to explain the series’ significance.Read More »

Quote:
A peeping-tom academic (Michael Lonsdale) and a hunchbacked prizefighter (Jean-Bernard Guillard) find nocturnal rapprochement in their shared inability to sleep. Bottomless philosophical discussions take the men further afield of reality, and they eventually decide to rape a pregnant woman named Violette (Olimpia Carlisi), who then throws herself into the Seine—only to return time and again in new, horrifying forms, including the spectral visage of her son (Ruiz’s child alter ego Melvil Poupaud). One of the director’s most confrontational visions, The Insomniac on the Bridge is a barbed avant-garde meditation on trauma, rationalization, and delirium—an underside that Ruiz, as always, reminds us is clinging to the crust of day-to-day reality.Read More »

Love is a universe of two in Philippe Garrel’s fatalistic romance “Frontier of Dawn.” Shot in richly textured and contrasting black-and-white celluloid, it centers on a young photographer, François (Louis Garrel, the filmmaker’s son), and the two women with whom he finds and loses love. After his affair ends with Carole (Laura Smet), a famous actress given to flare-ups and meltdowns, he immerses himself in a new life with Eve (Clémentine Poidatz), who promises him a child and perhaps a chance at real happiness. There’s more, including madness, electroshock treatment, a discussion about the cost of baby diapers, and the sudden emergence of a ghost in a mirror, all of which Mr. Garrel connects so loosely that they feel more like moments out of time than narrative fragments. — Manohla Dargis, The New York TimesRead More »

In a small Café, Min-hee Kim plays a guest who prefers to observe but not interact with the other guests herself.Read More »