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Wer war Edgar Allan? (Who Was Edgar Allan?). 1984. Austria/West Germany. Directed by Michael Haneke. With Paulus Manker, Rolf Hoppe. Based on the novel by noted Austrian writer Peter Rosei, who draws on Poe’s themes of doubling, shadowing, and the uncanny, this atmospheric mystery, set in Venice over four distinct seasons, follows a German art student suffering from some unnamed illness, existential or otherwise. He is befriended by a shady and secretive German American gentleman, “Edgar Allan,” who seems intent on driving him mad by dogging his every move. Haneke’s Venice is a figment of the (paranoid) imagination, where strange characters make unwanted intrusions and clues are laid out like pieces of an incomplete jigsaw puzzle. In German; 83 minRead More »

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“24 Realities per Second” portrays Michael Haneke’s work and his view of cinema.

Nina Kusturica and Eva Testor accompanied and observed Michael Haneke over a period of two and a half years during his work. Location scouts, film premieres, public appearances, discussions with audiences, radio interviews, on set, editing rooms. The rare conversations occur almost incidentally in cars, trains and planes. The objective of the film is the precise observation in different situations, out of which emerges an obsessed filmmaker. The thoughts of a man become apparent through his actions and the nature of his activity.

“24 Realities per Second” sketches with many little episodes and a few conversations the working universe of Michael Haneke. In contrast to the numerous interviews that Haneke gave in the course of his career, the film does not focus on his eloquence but concentrates on his craftsmanship.Read More »

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A bare bones synopsis of this film might lead you to expect that it is lethally boring. Four middle aged buddies are returning to Tehran from a trip to the mountains, trying to get back in time to watch an important soccer match on TV. Their homeward journey grinds to a halt when they round a curve in the highway and are confronted by a natural monolith, a 10 foot high, narrow rock formation, projecting straight up out of the ground, overlooking the canyon below. They spend the rest of the movie trying to topple it.Read More »

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The Hungarian Age of Illusions was the first feature-film effort by writer/director István Szabó. Andras Balint plays an electrical engineer who hops from bed to bed, never making any lasting commitment with any one woman. All this changes when he falls in love with a local celebrity whom he sees on television (Ilona Beres). Trouble is, he’s never met her; like her other fans, he can assess her only by what he witnesses on the small screen. When he finally does touch base with the girl, he’s in for a few surprises-some pleasant, many others not so. Completed in 1965, Age of Illusions was not given widespread distribution until 1967.Read More »

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Against a plain, unchanging blue screen, a densely interwoven soundtrack of voices, sound effects and music attempt to convey a portrait of Derek Jarman’s experiences with AIDS, both literally and allegorically, together with an exploration of the meanings associated with the colour blue.Read More »

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A four man US fireteam on patrol seizes a passing young vietnamnese girl and continue to torture, rape and kill her. Only one soldier refuses to take part in it and reports this incident to his superior, who dismisses it as simple wartime incident. As a consequence for his report, the soldier has to fear for his life. Later, the perpetrators are convicted, although subsequent appeals reduce their sentences significantly.
The plot takes place in a bavarian forest and reenacts a real war crime that happened in the vietnam war. The soldiers wear US uniforms, have authentic names but speak with a pronounced bavarian accent – a conscious directing decision known as Brechtian distancing effect.Read More »

from IMDB:
The copy of this film that I have is in Italian language with no subtitles, so there is little risk of my giving away any real spoilers, but suffice to say it does not take sitting through much of the film’s running time to determine that “Veruschka”, which is named after the then-popular supermodel who plays the lead, is not going to be the fun and frothy story of the jet set life one would expect a woman like Veruschka to lead. Instead we are treated to the story of a very unhappy young woman who is apparently so lost and hopeless that the viewer early on wants to help her, but likewise feels equally hopeless. Much of the film takes place in a car on the road, with Veruschka and her boyfriend (the great Luigi Pistilli) driving and getting into personal trouble all over Italy.Read More »

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An old shepherd lives his last days in a quiet medieval village perched high on the hills of Calabria, at the southernmost tip of Italy. He herds goats under skies that most villagers have deserted long ago. He is sick, and believes to find his medicine in the dust he collects on the church floor, which he drinks in his water every day.Read More »

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Franco Zeffirelli’s adaptation of William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew is a zesty version of the classic comedy, highlighted by performances by Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor and Nino Rota’s score. Instead of simply filming a play, Zeffirelli turned Shakespeare’s text into a lively, cinematic movie, with sweeping sets and cinematography. Set in Padua, Italy in the late 1500s, the story concerns the shy Bianca (Natasha Pyne) and the mean-spirited Katarina (Elizabeth Taylor), the two daughters of a rich merchant named Baptista (Michael Hordern). Though Bianca is being courted by a number of young men, Baptista announces that she may not marry until Katarina is wed. Read More »