Crime

In a single static shot a man is threatened with death at another’s gunpointRead More »

“A seductive and dangerous vagabond is the troubling protagonist of Peter Dourountzis’s first feature, a social thriller which has been awarded Cannes’ Official Selection.” ~CineuropaRead More »

After a dip into the mainstream with Mortal Thoughts, the wildest card in American cinema is back on his own bizarre terrain. This modern urban fairytale is a beautifully ambivalent re-telling of The Prince and the Pauper. Modine is the separated-at-birth twins (both of them), one a hood whose dream life – moppet children, a cooing fashion-plate wife (Singer) – is coupled with violent megalomania, the other a cringing wimp who can’t bring himself to date his best friend’s anguished, poetry-reading sister (Boyle). The whole is held together with a plot about an aspiring writer (Ferrell) on the track of her first real-life drama, and by an atmospheric soundtrack (Terje Rydal, Ali Farka Toure) that accompanies the characters’ hypnotically crazed manoeuvres. M Emmet Walsh steals the show as a garage boss in a drolly choreographed homage to Jacques Demy. Delirious stuff.Read More »

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Vic + Flow Saw a Bear is a darkly mysterious tale of lesbian two ex-cons, Victoria and Florence, trying to make a new life in the backwoods of Quebec. Seeking peace and quite, the couple the slowly begin to feel under siege as Vic’s probation office keeps unexpectedly popping up and a strange woman in the neighborhood soon turns out to be an increasingly menacing shadow from Flo’s past. With it’s collection of complex and eccentric characters, unexpected plot twists and unsettling humor, director Denis Cote (Curling, Bestiaire) has created an original film that is as once traumatizing, uplifting, and utterly breathless.Read More »

A yakuza member’s half-sister means much more to him, in a film that repeatedly depicts realities other than what normal societal rules allow. The overly protective and loving brother; however, soon has to contend with his sister falling for and dating her school teacher, but there is not much he can do about it if he is going to land in jail for stepping outside the bounds of the law.Read More »

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Two icons of 60s cinema, Terence Stamp and Peter Fonda, go head-to-head in Steven Soderbergh’s stylish reworking of the lone avenger theme. Stamp plays Wilson, an ageing Cockney villain newly out of jail, who arrives in Los Angeles to ask some awkward questions. His beloved daughter, mistress of powerful rock promoter Terry Valentine (Fonda), has died in a car crash; but Wilson’s far from convinced it was an accident. With his gaunt, grim features and sparse white hair, Stamp’s a dead ringer for the angel of death. Or maybe, as Soderbergh hints with some intricate flashback and flash-forward cutting, the whole story is a dying man’s dream of vengeance. Echoes of Get Carter and Point Blank aren’t far to seek. Read More »

A French waiter living in New York City witnesses a murder and must go on the run from the police and the mob.Read More »

Zoltan Fabry’s last movie is based on Ferenc Karinthy’s play “Housewarning”. The economical and political stakeholders of a small town come together in a luxury villa on a name day celebration. Everything starts as usual, but this time an incident disrupts the men’s festivities. Andrea Bíró, accompanied by her boyfriend, announces to her father, the director of the local Iron Works, that she wants to leave home. The father shots the boy in his quick anger. The attendants adjust the incident as an accident, but a local newspaper-writer, Luca Péteri, begins an investigation in the case, despite the obstacles and lethal threads.Read More »

Police Beat is a highly unconventional crime film in which the protagonist Z is so preoccupied with his possibly unfaithful girlfriend that he never once acknowledges criminal world that swirls around him. The crimes Z encounters become mirrors of the his turbulent inner state, allowing him to philosophize about his unstable romantic relationship as well as his own development as an emotional being. While Z’s regular interactions are in English, his thoughts ­ the film’s narration ­ are in his native Wolof, the primary language of West Africa. In this way, Police Beat is an unusual portrait of an immigrant new to the United States that focuses less on the protagonist’s socio-economic difficulties than on his emotional responses to American life.Read More »