Arthouse

Finnish director Risto Jarva’s fascinating, futuristic sci-fi mystery is set in a dystopian, Pop Art-designed world of gleaming white towers, Sony video monitors and inflatable furniture, where the beautiful inhabitants all dress as Edie Sedgwick-like pixie sprites or medieval page boys out of LOGAN’S RUN. A historian of late 20th century culture – “before class boundaries were abolished” – named Raimo (Arto Tuominen) is researching the death many years earlier of a free-spirited erotic model named Saara (Ritva Vepsä) who died under mysterious circumstances.Read More »

Quote:
On the Oregon Trail in 1845, three couples travel in covered wagons with slippery guide Stephen Meek (an unrecognizable Bruce Greenwood), but days pass, and water remains elusive. Emily (Michelle Williams, who anchored Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy) laments that “he’s gotten in over his head.” Meek insists that relief lies around the next ridge, but that’s never the case, until an alkaline lake appears. Unfortunately, it’s unsuitable for drinking, so they push on. Always attuned to the rhythms of nature, Reichardt has produced a meditative take on the genre that feels more enigmatic than most–with the possible exception of Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man–even if the period details always look right. With her focus on faded calico dresses and vast aquamarine skies, Meek’s Cutoff offers a beautiful vision of harsh times.Read More »

PLOT: The second part of Aki Kaurismaki “Finland” trilogy, the film follows a man who arrives in Helsinki and gets beaten up so severely he develops amnesia. Unable to remember his name or anything from his past life, he cannot get a job or an apartment, so he starts living on the outskirts of the city and slowly starts putting his life back on track.Read More »

Political and sexual repression in Hungary, just after the revolution of 1956. In 1958, the body of Eva Szalanczky, a political journalist, is discovered near the border. Her friend Livia is in hospital with a broken neck; Livia’s husband, Donci, is under arrest. In a flashback to the year before, we see what leads up to the tragedy. Eva gets a job as a writer. She meets Livia and is attracted to her. Livia feels much the same, but as a married woman, has doubts and hesitations. In their work, they (and Eva in particular) bang up against the limits of telling political truths; in private, they confront the limits of living out sexual and emotional truth.Read More »

Quote:
The voices and the remembrances of May Shigenobu and Masao Adachi – the two characters of Baudelaire’s Super 8mm documentary – are presented onto the backdrop of images with different sources. From the panoramic depiction of Tokyo and Beirut, to found footage material from TV clips and films, The anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu presents itself as a contemporary Fukei Ron, a theoretical reflection on Japanese Landscape.Read More »

Roberto is an insurance salesman who dreams of writing his own novel. When he meets Estela, a young woman about to commit suicide, it serves him as material to make this work.Read More »

Synopsis:
The mayor (Pascal Greggory) of this unpolished provincial town has plans for a beautiful field on the edge of town, and he’s quite sure they will be put through the central government in time to help him with his political career. He intends to replace the field with a sports and “cultural” center, along with a large parking lot. The only overt opposition to this plan at the outset comes from an environmentally sensitive grammar school teacher (Fabrice Luchini), and he’s hardly a threat, because he doesn’t imagine he can successfully oppose the builders’ designs. Meanwhile, the mayor has fallen in love with one of the local representatives of the intelligentsia, a woman novelist (Arielle Dombasle). Trouble begins to percolate into the mayor’s life and thwart his plans when his daughter and the daughter of the schoolteacher become friends.
~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie GuideRead More »

In 1975, the West German filmmaker, Hans-Jurgen Syberberg directed an astounding documentary called The Confessions of Winifred Wagner (Winifred Wagner Und Die Geschichte Des Hauses Wahnfried Von 1914-1975). Throughout the film, Winifred, the geriatric daughter-in-law of the famed composer Richard Wagner, talks about her cultural and political influence during the Third Reich. Yet in contradiction to the films’s title, Winifred confesses nothing. The contradictions within her discourse do, however, reveal the extent of her delusions and political commitment as an unrepentant fascist. She paradoxically describes herself as a completely apolitical being, adamant that her classification as a grade three Nazi at the end of the war was a grave injustice. Read More »

Quote:
An adaptation of George Buchner’s novella, “Lenz”, chronicling the poet Jakob Lenz’s slide into insanity and madness. The setting is transposed from 18th century Germany to New York in the early 1980s.Read More »