Arthouse

This heady exercise in excess mixes the operatic passion of La Traviata, stylish decadence of Stroheim and Sternberg, and the macabre glee of Grand Guignol. Ingrid Caven plays Dietrich-like chanteuse stricken with CamilIe-like wasting disease. The disease seems to be arrested when a plump, wealthy young man (Peter Kern) develops a grand passion for her, but mortality raises its grinning skull again when she falls helplessly in love with another man. Jay Cocks in Time wrote, “La Paloma is a wonderful mad shotgun wedding of high camp movie mythology, bad taste, obsessive, romanticism, and impudent satire… Whatever it is, it certainly is some kind of fantastic movie.”Read More »

PLOT: complicated relationship between father and doughter and in the background of the story beautifull landscapes of east cost island in US.Read More »

In many of his most successful films, Naruse depicted common people, living their lives. With Repast the director set his characters to the task of navigating their way amidst a pungent atmosphere of fading love. Set shortly after World War II, Repast is about a struggling marriage between salaryman Hatsunosuke (Ken Uehara) and his wife Michiyo (Setsuko Hara). It focuses on the emotional crisis of the bored housewife. The tedium of her domestic life – consumed by repetitive tasks such as cooking and cleaning – is brought into focus by a visit from Hatsunosuke’s niece, Satoko (Yukiko Shimazaki). Satoko’s arrival, and the amount of attention Hatsunosuke devotes to her charms, leads to further unhappiness for Michiyo, who is forced to confront her future. In the hands of master director Naruse, this adaptation of an unfinished novel by Fumiko Hayashi offers a fascinating exploration of married life, from the habitual routine of everyday existence to the hope for a better tomorrow that may or may not keep such relationships alive. Eureka VideoRead More »

Markku Kuoppamäki wrote:
Magazine editor Jussi and his girlfriend Leena, an airline stewardess, share an apartment with Jussi’s sister Eeva. During a fashion shoot Jussi meets Telle, a professional model who has just returned to Helsinki after years in Paris. Looking for a place to stay, Telle gets Eeva’s room while Eeva goes to Stockholm for a few days. Jussi and Telle start an affair while still working on fashion features for the magazine.Read More »

Quote:
The Sin of Jesus was based on the story of Isaac Babel, a woman on a chicken farm who spends her days working at an egg-sorting machine. “I’m the only woman here.” She is pregnant, her husband spends his days lying in bed, and his friends encourage him to go out on the town with them. The woman talks to herself as she works, lost in the monotony of human existence. She counts the passing days in the same way she counts eggs. Even extraordinary events, such as the appearance of Jesus Christ in the barn, go under the stream of this melancholy solipsism.Read More »

Quote:
After killing his employer when said employer tries to cheat him out of his payment, a man becomes an outlaw and starts following a self-proclaimed saint.

Reehan Miah wrote:
Glauber Rocha’s Aesthetics of Hunger – a 1965 essay which attempts to explicate the Cinema Novo – reads like a convoluted mass of allegations, opacities and rhetoric (none of which are necessarily without substance). Somewhere within these imbroglios however, one stumbles upon an assertion that’s especially jarring:Read More »

MEN ON THE BRIDGE – KÖPRÜDEKİLER by Berlin director Asli Özge won Best Film at the Istanbul, London and Adana film festivals. The film premiered internationally in Locarno and Toronto. Caught between tradition and modernity, Europe and Asia, the lives of the three main figures stagnate in the permanent traffic jam of the Bosporus bridge.Read More »

After the fall of Napoleon, the Restoration begins. Fulvio (Marcello Mastroianni, La dolce vita), an aristocrat who has dedicated his life to the revolution has become disillusioned and his cowardice keeps him from joining his comrades. As he struggles to manage his evasion and lies he gets swept up in a suicidal uprising in Southern Italy. Stunningly photographed with lush period detail and featuring the Taviani brothers’ trademark magic realism and absurdist irony, Allonsanfàn has Mastroianni on top form as the reluctant insurgent and one of Ennio Morricone’s finest scores.Read More »

Histoires courtes, the France 2 short films program, gives carte blanche to Bertrand Mandico who brings together three of his short films.

“Rainer, A Vicious Dog in Skull Valley” (2023) 26 min.
Octavia Foss wants to stage a female version of Conan the Barbarian in the theater. She makes a pact with a dog-headed demon to achieve her goals.

“We Barbarians” (2023) 27 min.
On the set of a film in the making, four actresses take turns guiding us. They unknowingly drag us into their damnation.

“The Last Cartoon” (2022) 8 min.
A time, as much future as current, where “cinema will be will be all other and nothing else”. Where, “it will be the last appointment of the flesh”, where “the energy will be cannibal and the sun will reflect to say nothing”. Pessimistic or optimistic is this cinematic pamphlet on art ?Read More »