Drama

Jonathan Rosenbaum Review:

When we speak of “seriousness” in fiction ultimately we are talking about an attitude toward death. –Thomas Pynchon

Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man, a disturbing, mysterious black-and-white western, opens with someone named William Blake (Johnny Depp), a recently orphaned accountant from Cleveland, traveling west on a train with the promise of a job at a metal works in a town called Machine. He keeps dozing off and waking to new sets of fellow passengers, including several who fire their guns out the windows at a herd of buffalo. (Such occurrences were common in the 1870s, encouraged by the government as a means of wiping out Indians by eliminating one of their staples; in 1875, over a million buffalo were slaughtered.)Read More »

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Jorge de Sena was forced to leave his country. First he moved to Brazil, and later to the USA. He never returned to Portugal. During his 20-year-long exile, he kept an epistolary correspondence with Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen. These letters are a testimony of the profound friendship between the two poets, letters of longing and of desire to “fill years of distance with hours of conversation”. Through excerpts and verses, a dialog is established, revealing their divergent opinions but mostly their strong bond, and their efforts to preserve it until their last breaths.Read More »

During the holidays three men try to break into the Belgian National Bank from a florist’s shop. During their rain-hampered digging, they discuss trips to sunnier climes, the basic laws of physics and those back at home in Eastern Europe.Read More »

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It’s 1968, and the whole world is watching. With the U.S. in social upheaval, famed cinematographer Haskell Wexler decided to make a film about what the hell was going on. Medium Cool, his debut feature, plunges us into the moment. With its mix of fictional storytelling and documentary technique, this depiction of the working world and romantic life of a television cameraman (Robert Forster) is a visceral cinematic snapshot of the era, climaxing with an extended sequence shot right in the middle of the riots surrounding the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. An inventive commentary on the pleasures and dangers of wielding a camera, Medium Cool is as prescient a political film as Hollywood has ever produced.Read More »

Michele Geary wrote:
When George visits his family before heading off to the Vietnam War, he is confronted by the conflicting ideals of his veteran father, who encourages his patriotism, and his militant brother, who urges him to stay home in protest. The complex issue of whether African Americans should be fighting for justice at home or abroad is registered most poignantly in the youngest son Bobby, a schoolboy torn between the political allegiances of his father and older brothers.Read More »

IMDB Plot Synopsis
A New York film director, working on his latest movie in Los Angeles, begins to reflect the actions in his movie and real life, especially when he begins an affair with the lead actress.Read More »

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The story of a father and two teenaged sons, and the rivalry between the two siblings as they begin to discover the attraction of girls.

YOUTH OF THE SON (1952, aka MUSUKO NO SEISHUN) marked Masaki Kobayashi’s official directorial debut, telling the story of a father and two teenaged sons, and the rivalry between the two siblings as they begin to discover the attraction of girls. Although Kobayashi is credited as director, the movie was heavily influenced (and larger supervised) by Kobayashi’s longtime mentor Keisuke Kinoshita (1912-1998) and as such, it is more dominated by a sentimental tone common to Kinoshita’s films than displays of Kobayashi’s later, familiar lyrical visual style.
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Plot
Kate Mercer (Charlotte Rampling) and her husband Geoff (Tom Courtenay) had to cancel the party for their 40th anniversary at short notice when Geoff underwent bypass surgery. The comfortably off, left-wing, childless, provincial couple now have a week to go before a replacement party to celebrate their 45th anniversary. Theoretically, this week should just involve planning, dress purchasing and a bit of social fretting. This is not to be: shattering news arrives for Geoff from the Swiss authorities, explaining that the perfectly preserved body of his ex-girlfriend, Katya, has been found, 50 years after she slipped into an Alpine crevasse. From the moment the news is received Kate can ‘smell Katya’s perfume in the room’ and her perspective on their marriage changes forever. (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)Read More »

Propaganda film detailing the plight of ethnic Germans, known as “Volga Germans”, in the Soviet province of Manchuria.Read More »