Drama

Long-Repressed Tale of Repression
The junk heap to which the characters of “Larks on a String” are consigned is a kind of paradise. Here, in the early 1950’s, former members of Czechoslovakia’s banished bourgeoisie are nominally engaged in forced labor, but in fact are free to play cards, discuss philosophy, joke sardonically about their situation and languish as they choose.

The men in this group — among them a professor who refused to destroy decadent Western literature, a saxophonist whose very instrument was considered an offense against the state and a lawyer who upheld the radical idea that a defendant ought to be allowed to plead his case — also spend a lot of time trading secret smiles and sidelong glances with a group of female prisoners nearby. The women, dressed in drably functional uniforms, nonetheless manage to look nymphlike as they laugh and frolic and hum little tunes. The setting is bleak and the season unspecified, but in spirit, it might as well be spring.Read More »

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Clocking in at only 70 minutes, Argentine director Pablo Fendrik’s unsparingly tense drama El Asaltante (AKA The Assailant, 2007) observes – in real-time – the various conflicting emotions undergone by a perpetrator before he commits a serious and potentially lethal act of aggression. After premeditating the event in his mind for ages, the titular assailant opts to move forward, step by step, and experiences a co-mingling of fear, apprehension, rage, and an overriding loss of hope that will ultimately drive him to commit the most desperate act of his life.Read More »

The story of a woman fighting for her son. Many years ago she abandoned him for her career. Now she is coming out of rehab determined to rectify something for which she has lacked the courage for years.
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Jim Ridley wrote:
With exquisite, heartrending calm, Bresson’s 1966 masterpiece Au Hasard Balthazar lays out the life of a donkey, from first brays to final rest. Baptized Balthazar, the donkey goes through passages of life parallel to his early owner, a farmer’s daughter named Marie (played as an adult by Anne Wiazemsky).
Together and separately, they experience the full spectrum of man’s failings: Balthazar is kicked by passing thugs, beaten by an owner, and eventually used for theft, while Marie is seduced, abandoned and ultimately assaulted. Yet while Bresson’s vision is harsh, it’s also redemptive, even merciful. It ends on a note of quiet transcendence, as if to say all suffering, no matter how grave, cannot last.Read More »

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Discredited professor Edward G. Robinson organizes a seven-person criminal gang. Robinson plans to steal a fortune from the underground vaults of the Monte Carlo casino. Despite a few tense moments, the plot moves like clockwork. Alas, Robinson isn’t around long enough to enjoy the fruits of his labors. As for the other criminals, they find that fencing their stolen booty is next to impossible. All they come away with is $3000–won legitimately at the gaming tables. Those not interested in the male contingent of Seven Thieves (Robinson, Rod Steiger, Eli Wallach et. al.) are advised to feast their eyes upon leading-lady Joan Collins, in her considerable prime. ~ Hal Erickson, RoviRead More »

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Under the Sun of Satan opens to an inherently solemn ritual as a senior priest, Canon Menou-Segrais (Mauric Pialat) shaves a spot on the top of the head of a pensive young priest named Father Donissan (Gérard Depardieu) who, in turn, uses the occasion to express his feelings of profound estrangement and inutility from the practical concerns of their congregation. Acknowledging both his mediocre scholastic aptitude at the seminary that nearly prevented him from becoming ordained, and his indebtedness to Menou-Segrais for his admission into the parish ministry (despite the young priest’s perceivable disapproval of his superior’s spiritual resignation and complacency), Donissan nevertheless declares his intention to request the archbishop for a re-assignment, preferably to a Trappist monastery where he believes that his temperament and secular detachment would be more conducive to their contemplative, monastic life of humble (and seemingly unobtrusive) service.Read More »

AMG wrote:
Mitsuo Wada (Toshiyuki Nagashima) works at raising tomatoes in a greenhouse, next to a big public housing complex. Because his father has moved out to go live with his girlfriend, Mitsuo lives alone with his mother and grandmother, a situation that does not particularly curb his romantic life. First he becomes involved with Kaede (Rie Yokoyama) a cafe manager, but that is not going to be a very permanent relationship once he discovers she is married. Next, he goes through slightly more formal channels to meet Ayako Hanamura (Eri Ishida) and the two decide that marriage might be the best option for both of them. Unfortunately, his former lover Kaede has run off with his best friend, Hirotsugu Nakamori (Johnny Ogura) — who is in a lot of trouble already because of stealing some money — and the two are not heard from again until the day of Mitsuo’s wedding. Hirotsugu shows up alone at the wedding, bearer of a tragic tale — not the kind of auspicious beginning Mitsuo and his bride would have wanted for their new life together.Read More »

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Balancing between feverish dreamlike hallucinations of a tormented past and a grim disoriented reality, the grizzled Joe–a traumatised Gulf War veteran and now an unflinching hired gun who lives with his frail elderly mother–has just finished yet another successful job. With an infernal reputation of being a brutal man of results, the specialised in recovering missing teens enforcer will embark on a blood-drenched rescue mission, when Nina, the innocent 13-year-old daughter of an ambitious New York senator, never returns home. But amidst half-baked leads and a desperate desire to shake off his shoulders the heavy burden of a personal hell, Joe’s frenzied plummet into the depths of Tartarus is inevitable, and every step Joe takes to flee the pain, brings him closer to the horrors of insanity. In the end, what is real, and what is a dream? Can there be a new chapter in Joe’s life when he keeps running around in circles?Read More »

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Independence is a crucial part of the legend of John Cassavetes, the original Method actor turned DIY filmmaker. For that reason his early forays into studio directing — he made 1961’s “Too Late Blues” for Paramount and 1963’s Stanley Kramer-produced “A Child Is Waiting” for United Artists — are usually thought of as footnotes at best, or compromised failures at worst (a view that has been ascribed to Cassavetes himself).

But even in these minor works, the Cassavetes touch — the delicate way of handling emotional messiness, the tough but ultimately generous view of human behavior — is unmistakable. The rarely seen “Too Late Blues,” new to DVD from Olive Films, is an especially resonant work, a parable about the price of artistic independence and the conflicts of ego and idealism — in other words, something like a confessional manifesto from the emerging director, 31 when he made it.Read More »