Comedy

Plot:
The film represents Henry Fonda’s return to the screen after an absence of seven years, part of which was spent playing the eponymous officer in the immensely successful stage version of Thomas Heggen’s novel. As cargo officer and second in command on a supply ship during World War II, the easygoing Lt. Doug Roberts is excluded from a much desired combat role while playing whipping boy to dyspeptic tyrant Captain Morion (James Cagney). Ensign Frank Pulver (Jack Lemmon), a brash yet cowardly wheeler-dealer, entertains Roberts with his elaborate pranks while the fatherly Doc (William Powell in his last screen appearance) offers advice. The young crew tries every available means of killing boredom, including eyeballing the nurses on a nearby island through a telescope, and Roberts does what he can to get them the R and R they badly need.Read More »

Alan, the assistant manager of the Rocket electrical store, is finally given a chance to prove
himself when he is left in charge on a busy bank holiday. What he wasn’t counting on,
however, was Frank, a sixty year old trainee who knows nothing about the retail, or
electrical, businesses…Read More »

Assola is an imaginary village on the border between Italy and France and the borderline crosses the village itself. The French customs agent Ferdinand is always trying to catch the Italian smuggler Giuseppe. Giuseppe discovers that Ferdinand was actually born in Italy and therefore he can’t be a French customs agent.Read More »

Quote:

A distillation not of Jacques Tati per se, but of communal spectacle and creation — cinema. The circus is the setting, abstracted into blank spotlights but with the audience always present, always as much a part of the show as the jugglers, acrobats, contortionists, drummers, and assorted pratfall artisans. At the center is Tati, silver-haired in a turtleneck, miming taking punches in the ring, riding a horse, directing traffic, swinging a tennis racket in slow-mo. Playtime and Traffic exhausted the French producers, so the auteur staged his swansong as a Swedish TV-special, a casual affair, a slender recording of dance-hall whimsy and a profound summarization of a man’s life and art.Read More »

Dysfunctional family and culture run amok in Toilet, which had an absolutely packed house last night at the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival and had many of the cast & crew in attendance at the screening. The film certainly has it’s Toronto roots showing as it was filmed here (although it’s actually set in the US), with familiar faces & locations on screen. We follow a family through a dysfunctional and eccentric set siblings Ray, Lisa and Maury and their grandmother from Japan, however a language barrier exists between the generations. It’s not the only barrier here as there are strong emotional barrier in each of the characters, all of whom have their own issues to work though. It’s an interesting tale of the individual journeys with the collective family journey, which although unintended become completely intertwined.Read More »

Doctor Julia Pfeiffer has the brain of the radical leftwing activist Ulrike Meinhof stored away in a box. Her rival, the extreme rightwing ideologist Detlev Schlesinger, is in possession of the remains of Michael Kühnen, a neo-Nazi gay who died of AIDS. What will happen when these characters meet? A little big provocation directed by the inimitable Bruce LaBruce.Read More »

Quote:
Greek Sea, World War II. An Italian ship leaves a handful of soldiers in a little island; their mission is to spot enemy ships and to hold the island in case of attack. The village of the island seems abandoned and there isn’t a single enemy in sight, so the soldiers begin to relax a little. Things change when their ship is hit and destroyed by the enemy, and the soldiers find themselves abandoned there. Actually, the island isn’t deserted and when the Greeks understand that those Italians are harmless, they came out of their hiding places in the mountains and continue their peaceful lives. Soon the soldiers discover that being left behind in a God-forgotten Greek island isn’t such a bad thing, after all…Read More »

Quote:
In Bujalski’s new film (notable director of Computer Chess, Funny Ha Ha, and Mutual Appreciation), the general manager at a highway-side ”sports bar with curves” has her incurable optimism and faith, in her girls, her customers, and herself, tested over the course of a long, strange day.Read More »

A full description of the film can be found in James Quandt’s edited collection of writings on (and by) Ichikawa Kon from the Cinemateque Ontario (in Sato Tadao’s essay “Kon Ichikawa” on pages 109 – 111). A Billionaire was one of a handful of 50s comedies that Ichikawa directed that were extremely successful at the box office. These films were characterized by rapid-fire dialogue and biting social commentary (others like this include Pu-San and Mr Lucky). This is definitely a period of Ichikawa’s career that deserves more focus from the West.Read More »