Drama

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The Wild Pear Tree is a gentle, humane, beautifully made and magnificently acted movie from the Turkish film-maker and former Palme winner Nuri Bilge Ceylan: garrulous, humorous and lugubrious in his unmistakable and very engaging style. It’s an unhurried, elegiac address to the idea of childhood and your home town – and how returning to both has a bittersweet savour. As in his previous film, Winter Sleep, he draws on the spirit of Chekhov. But his style is all his own: not Chekhovian, but Ceylanian. There are scenes in which people placidly watch TV: largely histrionic soaps whose contrast to the film itself is a type of comedy the director playfully allows us to notice. In fact, The Wild Pear Tree is not unlike a telenovela of family life, taken at a very high-minded, andante pace.Read More »

Suburban Connecticut, 1973. While the Watergate hearings blast from the TV, the wayward Hood and Carver families try to navigate a Thanksgiving break simmering with unspoken resentments, sexual experimentation, and cultural confusion. With crystalline clarity, characteristic subtlety, and even a dose of wicked humor, Academy Award–winning director Ang Lee adapts Rick Moody’s acclaimed novel of American malaise into a trenchant, tragic portrait of lost souls. Featuring a tremendous cast of established actors (Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Sigourney Weaver) and up-and-coming stars (Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci, Elijah Wood, Katie Holmes), The Ice Storm is one of the finest films of the nineties.Read More »

The Milky Way is an interesting film from Brazil. Heitor, a literature professor, meets and falls in love with Julia, a young actress. During the course of the movie we see scenes from their relationship where they both love and fight each other. Through the film Heitor is driving around the busy streets of Sao Paulo trying to reach and reconcile once more with Julia. This provides an opportunity for the director to interject characters from Sao Paulo’s street environment in to the picture, from child beggars to crazy men with guns. The chaotic nature of life in Sao Paulo is contrasted with serene shots of Brazilian country side to further reinforce the impact of environment on personal relationships. The first encounter between Heitor & Julis takes place at a show by an experimental theatre company. In its way, The Milky Way can also be called an experimental and non conventional movie for those who are looking for something a little off the mainstream track of films. Read More »

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Early on in “We the Animals,” a film adaptation of Justin Torres’ celebrated semi-autobiographical novel, there’s a devastating break in the poor-but-happy family mood set up thus far: The father, known as Paps (Raúl Castillo), beats up Ma (Sheila Vand) and disappears. Ma takes to her bed and neglects her children. The three brothers, Manny (Isaiah Kristian), Jonah (Evan Rosado) and Joel (Josiah Gabriel) run wild, stealing food from nearby gardens and stores, rattling around the town completely unmonitored. When Paps suddenly returns (it’s hard to tell how long he was gone), and he and Ma have a passionate reunion, it’s suddenly clear that the violence wasn’t a break. Instead, it was part of an ongoing cycle of abuse and reconciliation. The brothers ride the wave of their parents’ volatile relationship. This is all seen from the perspective of 10-year-old Jonah, and director Jeremiah Zagar uses a mixture of documentary reality and high-flung poetry in his approach, giving us a visceral sense of being there, in that house with those people.Read More »

From “Three Film Buffs”
Whity is a strange but beautiful movie. It is a German language western set in 1878. The only time any English is used is during the songs sung by the saloon whore who performs like she’s in a cabaret in Berlin in the early 1930’s. It was shot in Spain on the sets of Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns starring Clint Eastwood.

The bizarre story (believe me this is unlike any western you have ever seen) centers on the title character – real name Samuel King – the bastard son and slave to the wealthy Nicholson family. The father is a sadistic son of a bitch whose favorite form of punishment for his grown-up sons is a buggy whip. In one scene Whity willingly steps in for one of his brothers and takes the beating for him.Read More »

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Italian immigrant tries to become a member of Swiss society but fails as a waiter and even as a chicken plucker. He then becomes involved with shady wealthy character and tries to hide his Italian identity. He refuses to give up no matter how awful his situation.Read More »

Innovative direction by Les Blair when constructing this too little known work, a collaboration with skilled players, includes the provision to the cast of only a mere outline, in lieu of a script, that ultimately expands into a 25 page scenario sans written dialogue. He motivates his actors to give dimension for the mere flinders furnished them, through pure improvisation that is grounded upon their own frames of reference. The outcome proves to be a nice job all around that ruffles some of the standards that have been adopted by cinema enthusiasts.Read More »

Everything happens during the course of a day. A toddler looks for his lost toy, some people look for their happiness, circling around in some kind of a lost kaleidoscope; they love and hate, suffer and enjoy, being that honest or fake, joyful or saddening. In the end, the boy finds his kaleidoscope, but the question remains if grownups have found their dreams, or at least their traces.Read More »

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A film inspired by the life and work of Nelly Arcan. The portrait of a fragmented woman, lost between irreconcilable identities: writer, lover, call girl and star.Read More »