Quote:
A movie like Female Trouble (1974) could be most easily classified as a comedy, but that is selling it short. “Comedy” doesn’t capture the specific satiric edge, the desperate shout, the exaggerated depravity of this film. It’s a loud, abject, offensive, and joyful declaration of self-determination and identity in the face of a world that has no use for anyone outside the norm.Read More »
Synopsis Smala Sussie (2003):
When Erik, a Stockholm urbanite, learns that his beauty-queen sister, Susie, is missing, he goes to their country roots to look for her. But after talking to the eccentric locals — including a shy video store clerk and a corrupt police officer — Erik finds a woman who is not at all like the girl he left behind. Award-winning director Ulf Malmros helms this black comedy infused with hipster flair.Read More »
Mange (2012) Synopsis:
Laura is a lawyer, she’s beautiful and has a nice boyfriend. But 15 years ago she was fat, bullied and without friends. Now she has come to terms with her bulimia. She is celebrating her first year abstinence.Read More »
Double Happiness (1994). Jade is a twenty-something Chinese-Canadian struggling actress. But she is caught between two worlds — traditional and modern — and this is affecting important aspects of her life, from the men she dates to how she fares at auditions. In terms of men, Jade reluctantly satisfies her parents’ old world standards by letting them choose her dates, and even letting them decide how she’ll look when she goes out. But on the sly, Jade’s modern attitudes are reflected in the motorcycle jackets she wears, and her involvement in an interracial relationship. Meanwhile, on auditions, Jade would prefer to play non-“Asian“ characters, but nonetheless finds herself being typecast at every turn. How will Jade rectify the dichotomies that are affecting her life — without losing her family?Read More »
Synopsis Tian xia di yi (1983):
It’s the 10th century BC, the emperor is not well, and the medicines he is receiving from con artist “Immortal Li” are in reality only making him worse.Read More »
Undskyld jeg forstyrrer (2012)
A story about the beautiful but confused young woman Helene, who, according to her mother, was born as a ‘technical error’. Helene suspects that her father, who left his family before Helene was born, might be the once celebrated director of a dilapidated theater in Copenhagen. Assisted by a series of bizarre coincidences and by her mother’s dog (a creature in whose shadow Helene has always lived), Helene manages to get closer to her father. »In Heat« is a rugged, larger than life comedy about finding your place in life. About being accepted and the price you pay in doing so. It’s a story about identity—amongst all creatures, including humans.Read More »
Kinamand (2005):Hulking Keld Decker (Bjarne Henriksen) looks little more than befuddled when Rie (Charlotte Fich), his wife of 25 years, leaves him. With his business on the rocks, he sells off nearly all his possessions, and starts eating atthe Chinese take-out restaurant across the road, methodically working his way through the menu.Read More »
Kamata kôshinkyoku (1982)
Quote:
The English title Fall Guy is fitting – this is a film about a stuntman who takes several plunges for his movie star friend – but there’s a clever touch of subversion in the less obvious Japanese title. Kamata Koshin-Kyoku refers to Shochiku studio’s theme song. But this film about the production of a samurai epic on the Toei studio lot in Kyoto is hardly a fawning tribute to the world of cinema. It’s a film by Kinji Fukasaku. Like the director’s masterpiece, Battles Without Honor and Humanity, Fall Guy exposes the injustices visited on honest, hard-working men serving corrupt and undeserving bosses; all he has done is change the setting. In the place of low-ranking yakuza are stuntmen, the foot soldiers of the entertainment industry. In the place of Japan’s criminal underground is a movie set.Read More »
