Drama

Description: Directed by George Schaefer, this light made-for-television drama is based upon the novel of the same name by Robert Oliphant. Starring Bette Davis as Esther Cimino, a 73-year-old widow, the film traces the events following Esther’s son George’s (George Hearn) decision that she is no longer capable of caring for herself in her elderly state. Despite her protests, Esther is ruled incompetent by the legal system, leading her to wage a court battle to regain not only her estate but her dignity as well. Also starring Penny Fuller and Christopher Guest, A Piano for Mrs. Cimino first aired on February 3, 1982 on CBS and was later nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Film Editing.Read More »

Dan Harper wrote:
Any serious film director is concerned not only with meticulous representation but also with a kind of drama which must, by its nature, question the ethical rightness of things as they are…. Usually, a director is drawn to situations with maximum dramatic potential. Invariably that potential is provided by strife and friction between the individual and his environment. In the Japanese woman, Japanese directors have discovered the perfect protagonist. This does not mean that Japanese directors are feminists – even Kenji Mizoguchi, though he is often so described. It means rather that these directors in seeking objectivity as well as dramatic revelation have, naturally, shown Japanese women as they are.Read More »

Quote:
Non-normative texts concern themselves with subject matter that is marginalized, or not widely accepted as “normal.” Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho – an ode to the abandoned, and the isolated – is an example. It’s an exercise in brilliant directorial innovation, and cinematic ingenuity – required viewing for the capsized, fissure-ridden heart.

The film offers up a discourse on the fragility, and the emotional and intellectual convolution, of children who are left with the burden of trying to understand why their parents have abandoned them. This search becomes obdurate and lost, in the cases of Mike Waters (a physical and emotional narcoleptic, played to perfection by River Phoenix), and Scott Favor (Keanu Reeves); Mike is subverted by an idyllic yearning for the past, while Scott is consumed by familial regret and rebellion.Read More »

When we think of Iraq, we picture a war torn country which had seen the worst of a dictatorship under Saddam Hussein, where it spent many years in conflict with Iran, before the UN moved in during Desert Storm to liberate occupied Kuwait, followed by the US led invasion in Desert Storm II. Western media continue to pepper us with news that internal strife continues to this very day with news of suicide and miscellaneous bombings, and I’m sure we’re more than curious to want to know about tales from within, rather than agencies from the outside that continue to paint it like a war zone. This is as close as you can go on a road trip from Northern Iraq to Baghdad, onward to Nasiriyah then Babylon.Read More »

A full decade ahead of the New Wavelet Christian Jacque, Louis Jouvet and a belle equipe were showing the Godards and Truffauts how the Big Boys do it and neither Godard nor Truffaut ever made anything even remotely as good as this and Godard never will. It all comes together like clockwork from Henri Jeanson’s caustic script, written at times with a quill dipped in vitriol, to Christian Jaque’s perfect direction which coaxes performances close to perfection from Louis Jouvet on down. Ludmilla Tcherina is especially effective in her very first film which gives her lots of chances to remind us that she was first and foremost a great ballerina and Francois Perier shines as the callow youth besotted with her to the point of attempted suicide. Louis Seigner was still popping up fairly regularly in films at this time (1946) and etches a standout portrait of a ruthless businessman prepared to sacrifice his son on the altar of Mammon and let us not forget Marguerite Moreno adding yet another unforgettable portrait to her gallery of grotesques.Read More »

Chloe is a young Canadian doctor who divides her time between Ramallah, where she works with the Red Crescent, and Jerusalem, where she lives next door to her friend Ava, a young Israeli soldier. Increasingly sensitive to the conflict, Chloe goes daily through the checkpoint between the two cities to get to the refugee camp where she monitors the pregnancies of young women.

As she becomes friends with Rand, one of her patients, Chloe learns more about life in the occupied territories and gets to spend some time with Rand’s family. Torn between the two sides of the conflict, Chloe tries as best she can to build bridges between her friends but suffers from remaining a perpetual foreigner to both sides.Read More »

Sokol and Lorna, two Albanian emigrants in Belgium, dream of leaving their dreary jobs to set up a snack bar. They need money, and a permanent resident status. Claudy is a junkie – he needs money to satisfy his addiction. Andrei, the cigarette smuggler, must hold up for a while outside Russia; he has loads of money. Fabio, the Italian taxi driver and aspiring gang boss, elaborates a clever scheme: he will pay Claudy to marry Lorna so that she acquires a Belgian citizenship. Then she is to re-marry Andrei, who will in this way obtain the coveted EU passport – and pay a hefty price to Fabio and Lorna for the service. Like all plans, this one will not survive the contact with reality.Read More »

From the L.A. Times:
November 03, 1995
Kevin Thomas

“LOVE AND THE BERLIN WALL”

Margarethe von Trotta’s beautiful, stirring love story “The Promise” reveals, through the lives of one young couple, the profound impact the Berlin Wall had on all Germans, East and West alike. It is a splendid example of classic screen storytelling by a renowned international filmmaker, a work of strength and simplicity that illuminates with flawless craftsmanship many complex issues and contradictions. Epic in scale, spanning the entire 28-year existence of the Wall, it is at once romantic and political yet ultimately personal.Read More »

Quote:
Lisbon of the nineties. Three siblings, a girl and two boys, live together in a most close kind of relationship. The centre of the story is the girl, Maria, who hardly ever says what she thinks neither knows what she wants. “Teresa Villaverde re-states her sensitiveness in this portrait of a fragile girl in a film of high visual elegance of utmost sadness.”
Positif, November 1994Read More »