Drama

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Willi Hengstler’s adaptation of Jack Unterweger’s autobiography.

Johann “Jack” Unterweger (16 August 1950 – 29 June 1994) was an Austrian serial killer who murdered prostitutes in several countries. First convicted of a 1974 murder, he was released in 1990 as an example of rehabilitation. He became a journalist and minor celebrity, but within months started killing again. He committed suicide following a conviction for several murders. Austrian psychiatrist Dr. Reinhard Haller diagnosed him with narcissistic personality disorder in 1994.Read More »

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This haunting, unforgettable film, based on Maxim Gorky’s 1913 autobiography, follows a 12-year-old’s journey in life against the tumultuous backdrop of 19th-century Russia. With vivid imagery, it recounts the touching relationships that develop when Gorky goes to live at his grandparents’ home. Most notable are the powerful portraits of lower-class people whose qualities of integrity and dignity shine through their hopeless circumstances. (Rottentomatoes)Read More »

Summary
A young woman, Ah Ying, works at her family fish stand. Discontented with her home life and neglectful boyfriend, she joins an acting class run by a professor who, as it happens, is at work on the script of a film that is supposed to document the lives of ordinary people. A friendship blossoms between teacher and student, and he begins to delive into her life for inspiration.Read More »

A young Kurdish refugee finds friendship from an unlikely source in Welcome, writer-director Philippe Lioret’s dramatic (chronicle of intersecting lives. The tale unfurls in Calais, a seaside community in the north of France where one can glimpse the white cliffs of Dover, England with the naked eye. Vincent Lindon stars as Simon, a local swimming instructor privately reeling in turmoil because he dreads an imminent divorce from his wife (Audrey Dana). Soon, his path unexpectedly criss-crosses with that of Bilal (Firat Ayverdi), a 17-year-old Kurdish refugee with two aspirations: swim the English Channel, and join his girlfriend in England following a lengthy separation. Despite their differing ages, the two men discover that they have a fair amount in common, and soon forge a tight bond marked by similar goals.)Read More »

From Jim’s Reviews:
Disclosure: I have written the liner notes for Fantoma’s DVD release of this film. With a few changes, that essay appears below.

Image”You hear the one about the guy goes into a bakery, orders a loaf of bread? ‘White or black?’ the baker asks. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ the guy says. ‘It’s for a blind person.'”

How do we move from these opening words of Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? – one of five rapid-fire jokes delivered by Herr R.’s co-workers – to its climactic killing spree? Like the title, that’s another gnawing, and resonant, question.Read More »

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A rule bound head butler’s world of manners and decorum in the household he maintains is tested by the arrival of a housekeeper who falls in love with him in pre-WWII Britain. The possibility of romance and his master’s cultivation of ties with the Nazi cause challenge his carefully maintained veneer of servitude.Read More »

Synopsis:
From the award-winning Korean writer/director/editor Kim K-Duk comes this critifcally acclaimed and exquisitely beautiful story of a young Buddhist monk’s evolution from innocence to Love, Evil to Enlightenment and ultimately to Rebirth.

Prayer, meditation, and appreciation of nature are the sacraments by which two monks live a simple life in Korean director Kim Ki-Duk’s SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER… AND SPRING. A wise old monk (Oh Young-soo) is master to a young student, and remains so throughout the changing seasons of the younger monk’s life. In springtime the young monk is a 5-year-old boy, in summer he is a teenager, in fall he is a 30-year-old man, and in winter he is in mid-life. The master and his student live in a tranquil house that floats in the middle of a pond hidden in a vast woodland. Paddling their row boat to the edge of the pond, they roam the forest collecting herbs for medicine, observing animals, and learning deep lessons about life.Read More »

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“Tuesday, After Christmas” (Marti, dupa craciun, 2010) is the latest film from Romania to hit the film festival circuit and cause a stir. I saw it at this year’s Chicago International Film Festival.

A great many of the films coming from Romania have all been fiercely political. There was “12:08 East of Bucharest” (A Fost sau n-a fost, 2007), “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” (4 luni, 3 saptamani si 2 zile, 2007), “How I Spent The End of the World” (Cum mi-am petrecut sfarsitul lumii, 2006) and the movie which started this recent “new wave” in Romanian cinema “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” (Moartea domnului Lazarescu, 2006). But “Tuesday, After Christmas” is much different. There is absolutely no mention of politics or even social injustice.Read More »

“Gittoes’s work often asks two questions: what are the experiences of other artists working and surviving in war zones? Or, what is his moral responsibility as an artist-correspondent? When Gittoes allows his subjects to explain the former, or, when he talks about his own experience of the latter, his work is clear and insightful.Read More »