Comedy

Subversive satirist Mads Brugger’s latest is an odd-couple comedy about the pitfalls of striking out into the economic frontier; it charts two hapless Danes’ scheme to sell Saint Bernards to China’s rising middle class.Read More »

Synopsis:
Stephen Arden (Ralph Bellamy) benefits so much from his psychiatrist pal Tony Flagg’s drinking cure that he sends his fiancée Amanda Cooper to see Tony in hopes that she can be ‘cured’ of her reluctance to get married. Tony falls fast in love with Amanda but has a tough pursuit when she overhears him on a voice recording calling all females idiots. Tony’s hypnosis treatments gets out of hand when Amanda repeatedly leaves the sessions in an unconscious Ego-at-the-wheel state. The first time out she enjoys a destructive rampage on the city streets. Read More »

Quote:
Technical mistakes? This is a Brazil’s specialty, this land without know-how. The documentary which, as Marcio Souza said in his modesty, should be to current Brazilian cinema as Aruanda was to Cinema Novo, will be shown in Brasília – we hope – and should fall like a thorn inside the throat of all idiots who are yet to discover Brazil – by the way, Oswald de Andrade, anthropophagous, language designer, revolutionary and whatever more that could exist in this section of the Third World: Brazil.
– Jairo FerreiraRead More »

Quote:
A humorous criminal story about a dog that knew how to read, appreciated classical music and spoke a foreign language. His primitive master hates his dog’s superiority and tries to liquidate it physically. In the end he pays for it himself.Read More »

“Nipernaadi – The Adventurer” by Kaljo Kiisk (1983)

“I walk along gray endless road… I walk and walk”

Review by Taavi Lehari

“Nipernaadi / The Adventurer”, by Kaljo Kiisk (1983) is a sweet Estonian drama with slight humor about Toomas Nipernaadi, a vagabond who hasn’t got any past nor future.

In different Estonian places he gains new identity and presents himself as whoever – sailor, explorer, farmer etc. … whoever as long as he can seduce another young girl and promise her wealth and happiness. Every time before he has to achieve his promises, he disappears leaving everything behind. This is the first impression of this funny fellow.Read More »

Parents of all children around the world held a congress to discuss how to deal with their misbehaving. All parents came together, only one was missing, parents of Silvester, the best boy in the world. The congress decided to go see him so he could lead the other children by example. Silvester was truly an exceptional child, but his “being good at all times and under all circumstances” somewhat got out of hand …Read More »

The story of five girls who are looking for their first love and first lovemaking. Some will get their heart’s desire, and some will get their hearts broken… at least for a while.Read More »

Filmed in 2000 for the Toronto Film Festival’s 25th anniversary, Camera stars Videodrome’s Les Carlson (he played the Jim Bakker-inspired Barry Convex) in a six-minute monologue about cinema as a group of children invade his home with a large 35mm camera and prepare to film him. Shot in digital video until a final, wonderful change to real film, Camera provides and excellent showcase for Carlson and manages to be both creepy and moving at the same time. Cronenberg’s composer Howard Shore supplies a brief, poignant music passage at the end.Read More »

Set in Tokyo in the 1960s, this film shows the gradual transformation of Koen, a young geisha who is not good at music and dance, from carefree creature to a self-aware, mature woman through meeting and parting with a variety of men. Kawashima Yuzo, who excels at directing comedies, shows his strengths here by exposing his heroin’s delicate feelings with pathos. Wakao Ayako is radiant in her coquettish role. The director and the actress later went on to make such films as Wild Geese Temple (62) and Elegant Beast (62) together.Read More »