Drama

A boldly conceived and bracingly told political drama, Policeman (Hashoter) possesses a special contemporary pertinence in the wake of the recent massive protests relating to the vast class and economic disparities in Israel. This intensely physical first full-length feature from writer-director Nadav Lapid, whose 50-minute Emil’s Girlfriend showed at Cannes in 2006, divides its attention between an elite anti-terrorist police unit and a small cell of young upper-class revolutionaries whose slogans sound oh-so 1968. The winner of three awards (best first or second work, screenplay and cinematography) at the Jerusalem Film Festival and recipient of a special jury prize at Locarno, the highly charged film should travel far on the festival circuit and attract distributor interest in numerous Western territories.Read More »

Hungry Hearts begins like a romantic comedy, then transformes into a moody relationship drama, until eventually to become something else entirely: a stylized thriller with a bit of Hitchcock’s Marnie thrown in…

After a chance encounter in the bathroom of a restaurant, Mina (Alba Rohrwacher) and Jude (Adam Driver) fall in love. Soon Mina is pregnant and after the baby’s birth, Jude gradually begins to grasp that their once welcoming home has been transformed into a den for Mina’s obsession and paranoia. As Mina slips farther down the rabbit hole, Jude is faced with a most dreaded realization…Read More »

Clement Mathieu has written a book, La cage aux rossignols, which recounts his recent experiences as a teacher in a typical French boys’ school. Having tried, in vain, to get the book published Mathieu succeeds in persuading a friend to print it in the newspaper he works for. The story he tells moves the thousands of people who read it, but it has most impact on the woman who is shortly to be his wife. In the 1930s, Clement Mathieu took up a teaching post at a school run with an iron fist by the authoritarian headmaster Monsieur Rachin. Read More »

Quote:
Religious con-men have probably been around as long as religion itself, though we have no way of knowing what scams fake shamans were running in the caves. For every Jesus, who had a low opinion of the rich and left little more than a strangely stained burial shroud (if that) on his demise, there have been dozens of priests, ministers and gurus raking it in, living it up and believing in nothing but the endless gullibility of the human race.Read More »

Berkeley Art Museum / Pacific Film Archive writes:
Hailed as John Huston’s “comeback” film in 1972, Fat City is a film that deserves to come back more often. Based on a novel by Leonard Gardner, who also wrote the screenplay, and photographed by the excellent Conrad Hall (In Cold Blood), it is a portrait of the seedy, small-time boxing milieu of Stockton, CA. (“Huston is in his element here,” Andrew Sarris wrote, “simply because his realistic affectations have always been merely a cover and an alibi for his romantic affection for the compulsive losers of this world.”) The losers in Fat City are two prizefighters (Stacy Keach and Jeff Bridges), a sherry-drinking barfly (Susan Tyrrell), her jailed and released black lover (Curtis Cokes), and assorted fight managers, boxers, lettuce pickers, bartenders and countermen…Read More »

Vlada works as a truck driver during the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999. Tasked with transporting a mysterious load from Kosovo to Belgrade, he drives through unfamiliar territory, surrounded by the consequences of the war. When his job is over, Vlada needs to return home and face the consequences of his actions.Read More »

Willem Dafoe’s first credited screen role.
A group of leather-clad bikers en route to some blistering racing action in Daytona, Fla., makes a pit stop in a backwater Georgia town. While waiting for one of their hogs to get fixed, the gang decides to raise hell. But they get more than they bargained for when the townsfolk battle back in this moody homage to “The Wild One.”Read More »

Quote:
One has to just think of a great film featuring a war and a train would automatically come to mind. While Czech cinema gave its immortal classic, ‘Closely watched trains’ directed by the legendary director Jiri Menzel to the admirers of cinema, Polish cinema also had its fair share of films depicting war where trains have played a major role. ‘Ludzie Z Pociagu’/’People on a train’ is one brilliant example of a war film featuring innocent people whose lives depended a lot on the running of a train. In this film, director Kazimierz Kutz depicts how an act of heroism involving the seizure of a gun is responsible in allowing the viewers to get a better idea of the microcosm of Polish society. Read More »

New Beverly Cinema writes:
Charlie (Mickey Rourke) is a restaurant manager and small-time hustler aspiring for more. Paulie (Eric Roberts) is his desperate, hotheaded cousin who thinks he may have just found it: the easiest money they’ll ever make, and it’s just sitting there! But the heist goes sour and attracts the ire of local mobsters. These two goombahs are taking huge risks, and their Little Italy lives start to feel a whole lot bigger. An irreverent coming-of-age tale and urban jungle crime story, The Pope of Greenwich Village captures the sensory experience of New York City, from the cut of a nice suit to wailing police sirens to the feeling of fifty thousand dollars right in your hand.Read More »