Adrian and Ninel are among the inmates crammed into the freight cars that have just arrived in one of the forced labor camps of the Danube-Black Sea Canal. Among those convicted, there are teachers, lawyers, poets, philosophers, peasants, artists, scientists. Gradually, they realize they are there because the communist regime wants to exterminate them all.Read More »
Ettore Scola’s dark, romantic tale of a woman so stubborn and passionate that nothing can dissuade her from pursuing the object of her affections.
When Captain Bachetti arrives at his new post in Northern Italy, he already resents the reassignment, which has separated him from his mistress, the exquisite Clara. And the situation becomes even more disturbing when this man with a taste for beautiful women finds himself subjected to the persistent attentions of the spectacularly ugly Fosca; everything about this brash, loud, impolite and unattractive creature fills him with horror.
But the Captain has never before encountered the transformative power of love.Read More »
Evening Land presents fictitious events in the Europe of those days. It opens in a Copenhagen shipyard with a strike due to the construction of four submarines, potential carriers of nuclear weapons for the French Navy, beside the salary freeze that the deal has entailed, and as an anti-nuclear protest. In parallel with this, a group of radical demonstrators kidnaps the Danish minister of the EC during a summit, as a token of support with the strikers. The Danish police brutally repress the demo and crush the “terrorists”. Evening Land was released to both a hostile left and right wing, and the few film critics who valued it pointed out that it strayed from the style that Watkins had developed in his previous films. Danmarks Radio refused to broadcast it, and Watkins decided it was high time to leave Scandinavia and start what would be a new period of voluntary exile.Read More »
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Veteran Japanese filmmaker Kaneto Shindo was 82 when he directed this meditation on life, death, and loss. Following the passing of her husband, elderly former actress Yoko Morimoto (Haruko Sugimura) travels to her summer home in the mountains of Central Japan. Upon her arrival, her servant Tokoyo (Nobuko Otowa) has sad news for her — her long-time gardener has recently committed suicide. Adding to Yoko’s sorrow is the arrival of Tomie, an old friend from her days in the theater, who is traveling with her husband Tohachiro Urshikuni (Hideo Kanze), also an actor. Read More »
Ultimately a story about destiny, “La Note Bleue” seems a personal reflection of Zulawski’s experiences, for both he and Chopin were Polish expatriates in France.
The film is highly theatrical and occasionally hilarious, but despite its ups and downs, the movie’s highlight is Chopin’s music, brilliantly performed by Polish pianist Janusz Olejniczak.Read More »
Niagara Motel is a 2006 Canadian drama film directed by Gary Yates. The film earned numerous nominations, including a Genie Award for Best Supporting Actress for Caroline Dhavernas.
Niagara Motel features its namesake and the ongoings amongst the inhabitants of the motel located in Niagara Falls. The characters include a knockout waitress (Caroline Dhavernas) being recruited to star in low budget porn videos, a young couple with a criminal past struggling to recover their child from social services, and a middle class husband and wife in a marriage that is disintegrating in near record time all led by a drunken motel caretaker.Read More »
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This family drama by Monicelli features an impressive international cast: Liv Ullmann, Catherine Deneuve, Philippe Noiret, Stefania Sandrelli and Bernard Blier, and it won a series of prestigeous film awards upon its release. It is a less comedic film, than most of Monicelli’s oeuvre up to this point, although the folly of the Italian male is still a central theme, as it had been in so many of his films from the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s.
In this case, a group of several generations of women are pulled together, when an accident strikes the padre familias (Noiret) that they all in various ways are, or have been, involved with. Thus, the second half of the film focusses on this group of very different women, and how they manage to relate to each other and get along, when they are faced with a series of serious challenges.Read More »
David Cronenberg’s adaptation of Christopher Hampton’s play detailing the deteriorating relationship between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung as they contend with a particularly troubled patient. The year is 1904. Carl Jung, a disciple of Sigmund Freud, is using Freudian techniques to treat Russian-Jewish psychiatric patient Sabina Spielrein at Burghölzli Mental Hospital. But the deeper Jung’s relationship with Spielrein grows, the further the burgeoning psychiatrist and his highly respected mentor drift apart. (~blu-ray.com)Read More »
Mila, a young pianist, tries to prepare for an audition abroad but her brother, Niki, keeps distracting her with his annoying talent for the absurd. Todor, their astrophysicist father, seems unable to deal with his children’s anxieties. A family portrait during their last summer together.Read More »