Drama

Synopsis:
‘Sabotage of a Nazi factory is carried out by the husband of the lover of a resistance leader.’
– BFIRead More »

Quote:
Tula, the titular aunt is raising the children of her recently-deceased sister, alongside her brother-in-law Ramiro. She is austere and somewhat bossy, but the kids accept her as the replacement for their mother. Ramiro struggles being cooped up with her in their chaste relationship -he suggests they become man and wife, scandalizing Tula. But amid an atmosphere of Catholic hypocrisy -her priest recommends she marries Ramiro and never deems to criticize his unwanted advances to her- and unspoken patriarchy (her female peers all see marriage as their goal in life) she begins to wilt -only, too slowly for the lusty Ramiro, who matter-of-factly precipitates a devastating conclusion to their arrangement.Read More »

Rocha’s first film, a denunciation of exploitation and the superstition that helps maintain it; an exploration of ‘macumba’, the mixture of Christianity and African tribal religion whose superstition aids the successful subjugation and exploitation of the fishermen in the Bahia province.

Review from NY Times:
LEAD: ”BARRAVENTO” (”The Turning Wind”), opening today at the Public Theater, is the first feature by the highly regarded Brazilian director Glauber Rocha, who died at the age of 42 in 1981. The film, made in 1961, is about the efforts of Firmino, part revolutionary, part devil, to free the fishermen in his nativeRead More »

Probably the most notorious of the handful of pro-Soviet films produced by various Hollywood studios in 1943–44, going out of its way to defend the Soviet Union in every imaginable way: justifying the show trials of 1937, claiming that Finland acted as an aggressor in the Winter War of 1939, etc. Worth seeing for its historical importance, but not without some entertainment value, too, mainly thanks to Michael Curtiz’s direction and Walter Huston’s manic performance as the former Soviet ambassador Joseph E. Davies.Read More »

A deadpan, picaresque buddy comedy about two old friends through a series of urban adventures, loosely connected by the skull of an executed French aristocrat. Winter Song is a typically irreverent Iosselianian jaunt through a classy Paris apartment block contemplating the past, present and future.
by Busan International Film FestivalRead More »

Synopsis:
Set in a rugged little Algerian mountain village, in a moslem culture, where male and female society works under a strongly patriarchal controlling influence. Insensitive and brutish Sidi has three wives, one-near suicide, and an adoptive son whom he beats and intends to force into a farcical marriage. Simple-minded Kaddour cannot find a bride and is eventually married to a mannequin dummy…Read More »

Quote:
Directed by acclaimed Spanish filmmaker Jose Juan Bigas Luna, HUEVOS DE ORO (GOLDEN BALLS) stars Javier Bardem in his breakthrough role (for which he also received a Goya Award nomination). In this satire of Latin machismo and the excesses of the 1980s, Bardem plays Benito Gonzalez, who dreams of building a mighty skyscraper and thereby securing fame and wealth for himself. His main advantages are his uncontrollable self-assurance and skills as a lothario. He marries the daughter of a rich banker while keeping a mistress on the side, but his betrayal of both women begin to destroy his plans for the building as well as his chauvinist self-confidence. Bigas Luna brings his trademarks–an honest exploration of sexuality and surrealistic imagery–to this tale of male egotism and its undoing.Read More »

Quote:
When the opening titles credit a film as adapted from a short story in the Woman s Home Journal, you know you re onto a good thing. The Reckless Moment doesn t disappoint. Max Ophuls last American film is a women s picture in the grand tradition of Mildred Pierce (1945) – dark edged and melodramatic, and dripping with moral ambiguities.Read More »

Quote:
A new priest (Claude Laydu) arrives in the French country village of Ambricourt to attend to his first parish. The apathetic and hostile rural congregation rejects him immediately. Through his diary entries, the suffering young man relays a crisis of faith that threatens to drive him away from the village and from God. With his fourth film, Robert Bresson began to implement his stylistic philosophy as a filmmaker, stripping away all inessential elements from his compositions, the dialogue and the music, exacting a purity of image and sound.Read More »