Drama

Quote:
In a remote mountain village, the teacher must leave for a month, and the mayor can find only a 13-year old girl, Wei Minzhi, to substitute. The teacher leaves one stick of chalk for each day and promises her an extra 10 yuan if there’s not one less student when he returns. Within days, poverty forces the class troublemaker, Zhang Huike, to leave for the city to work. Minzhi, possessed of a stubborn streak, determines to bring him back. She enlists the 26 remaining pupils in earning money for her trip. She hitches to Jiangjiakou City and begins her search. The boy, meanwhile, is there, lost and begging for food. Minzhi’s stubbornness may be Huike and the village school’s salvation.Read More »

Summary:
1668. The jihad is in its heat in the Southeastern Europe. A corps of janissaries is commissioned to the Rhodope Mountains under the command of Karaibrahim. At the time, he was, as all the janissaries were, kidnapped from his Bulgarian family, raised as a Muslim, trained to be a ferocious warrior and convert infidels to Islam in a most brutal way. His cruelty stuns even local Ottoman ruler. He stops at nothing but the resistance of some of the locals is invincible. The struggle is half a success, there are many converts, the death toll is heavy, but all the Bulgarian keep their language and traditions on.Read More »

An Icon Film Distribution (in Australia/U.K.) release of a Screen Australia, Little Gaddelsden presentation of a Sixteen Films/See-Saw Prods. production, in association with Fulcrum Media France, EM Media, South Australian Film Corp., Deluxe, Screen NSW, BBC Films. (International sales: Icon Entertainment, London.) Produced by Camilla Bray, Emile Sherman, Iain Canning. Executive producers, Rebecca O’Brien, Arnab Banerji. Directed by Jim Loach. Screenplay, Rona Munro, based on the book”Empty Cradles” by Margaret Humphreys.Read More »

Synopsis:
Johnny Farrell has just arrived in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he is making a living cheating in gambling, primarily in informal street games. He begins a more stable life when, upon a chance meeting, he convinces Ballin Mundson, the violent and less than scrupulous owner of the local illegal casino, to hire him on the premise that it is better for Ballin to have the “enemy” on his side. Besides the casino, which the local authorities are aware of, Ballin is involved in an international illegal tungsten cartel. Johnny quickly rises to be Ballin’s trusted right hand man. Read More »

Gruber is a normal 16-year-old growing up in Budapest in 1962, but he has a problem – how does he get to know the opposite sex? At the Sunday afternoon dance classes the young “ladies and gentlemen” hold each other while dancing, and that makes the lessons worth something. Otherwise, the pianist’s attention wanders and the orchestra does not exactly play with a single-minded dedication. In fact, everybody seems to have other things on their minds, except for the enthusiastic dance instructor and his ever-smiling assistant. LetterboxdRead More »

Synopsis:
British Intelligence during World War II is trying to get the German High Command to shift its forces away from Italy prior to the invasion. To create the illusion that England is in fact planning to invade Greece, they plan to procure a dead body, plant secret papers on it, and arrange for the Spanish authorities to find it and send the papers on to the Germans. That’s the plan, anyway. First they have to find a body that will look drowned, then create an identity for it that will pass German scrutiny. Based on a true story.Read More »

In 1960 Kazimierz Kutz’ second film NIKT NIE WOLA / NOBODY’S CALLING, based on a Jozef Hen novel that was never published in Poland, described the fate of Poles on the Eastern Front. Kutz used the film to explore new formal solutions, collaborating closely with cinematographer Jerzy Wojcik to reveal the psychological landscape of a pair of lovers who are strongly affected by wartime events. The camera recorded the couple’s inner experiences, contrasting their muted intimacy against the surrounding scenery of a ruined town. The film did not win over critics at the time of its release. It was not until later that critics recognized Kutz’s effort to experiment with aesthetics in a manner akin to that pursued by filmmakers of the new wave. NOBODY’S CALLING came to be compared with Michelangelo Antonioni’s THE ADVENTURE, which was produced around the same time.Read More »

Synopsis:
An aging politician tries to get re-elected one last time in the changing world of the 1950s when TV started to play a bigger part in politics. Based loosely on the career of multi-term Boston Mayor James Michael Curley, this film examines the good and evil inherent in politics and all the things that go into an election. Tracy’s uphill battle to stay in office is set against the political machinery that preyed on ethnic hatred and old-time money.Read More »

‘Socrates’ Mirrors the Platonic Touch of Rossellini
Something more than wordplay is involved when one describes Roberto Rossellini’s “Socrates,” which opened yesterday at the New Yorker Theater, as the great Italian director’s most Socratic film, in his most Platonic style.

Although the movie was shot entirely in Spain with lots of correctly costumed extras, who walk around what look to be the freshly painted, spruced-up remains of the sets of Anthony Mann’s unfortunate “Fall of the Roman Empire,” it concedes no more than it absolutely must to the demands of a popular cinema that seeks access to the intellect through visual grandeur and primal emotions.Read More »