This is one of Gosha Hideo’s last great movies before entering into his “Women’s Films” stage. Set in the frigid wilderness of Hokkaido during the early days of the Meiji era, this film stands out for its mixture of brutality, sexuality, romance, and bloody violence. Nakadai Tatsuya stars as the brutal warden of Kabato Prison, where the convicts were sentenced to forced labor to build the roads needed to open up the territory. All the elements of his greatest films are here, from vicious catfights to brilliant sword action and a plot that’s filled with twists and turns like no other.Read More »
Drama
-
Hideo Gosha – Kita no hotaru aka Fireflies in the North (1984)
1981-1990DramaHideo GoshaJapan -
Nuanxing Zhang – Qing chun ji AKA Sacrificed Youth (1985)
1981-1990ChinaDramaNuanxing ZhangTimeOut London wrote:
A lyrical, elegiac tale about the generation of students banished to remote agricultural regions of China during the Cultural Revolution. 17-year-old Li Chun, a shy, even repressed Han girl from Beijing, is sent to work in a small village in the Dai countryside, down near Laos. At first disdainful of the natives’ rural superstitions and poverty, only slowly does she overcome her outsider status and learn the value of the Dais’ appreciation of beauty, nature and human warmth. An unsentimental celebration of tradition, exotic landscape and cultural independence, Zhang’s film is both a loving portrait of Dai life and a sensitive, partly autobiographical study of one girl’s hesitant awakening to sensuality. Infused with a discreet, gentle eroticism and a final, touching sense of loss, it charms through its narrative simplicity and visual elegance.Read More » -
Ralph Murphy – The Notorious Sophie Lang (1934)
1931-1940CrimeDramaRalph MurphyUSAAfter an extended stay in England, Sophie Lang returns to America. She is beautiful, sophisticated–and a notorious jewel thief. A New York police detective who’s been trying to nail her finally comes up with what seems a foolproof scheme–to catch her off guard by having her fall for a handsome and suave jewel thief who happens to be in the U.S. traveling under an assumed nameRead More »
-
Ingmar Bergman – Höstsonaten AKA Autumn Sonata (1978) (HD)
1971-1980DramaIngmar BergmanMusicalSwedenAfter having neglected her children for many years, world famous pianist Charlotte visits her daughter Eva in her home. To her surprise she finds her other daughter, Helena, there as well. Helena is mentally disabled, and Eva has taken Helena out of the institution where their mother had placed her. The tension between Charlotte and Eva only builds up slowly, until a nightly conversation releases all the things they have wanted to tell each other.Read More »
-
Ernesto Contreras – Sueño en otro idioma AKA I Dream in Another Language (2017)
2011-2020DramaErnesto ContrerasMexicoQueer Cinema(s)Quote:
A millenary language agonizes: Its last two speakers, Evaristo and Isauro (70´s) had a quarrel 50 years ago and haven’t spoken to each other since. Martin, a linguist, will undertake the challenge of bringing the two old friends back together and convince them to talk again in order for him to be able to obtain a record of the language. Yet, hidden in the past, in the core of the jungle, lies a secret hidden in the language that makes it difficult to believe that the heart of Zikril will beat again.Read More » -
Jinglei Xu – Yi ge mo sheng nu ren de lai xin aka A Letter from an Unknown Woman (2004)
Drama2001-2010AsianChinaJinglei XuThis is an adaptation of Stefan Zweig’s story “Letter from an unknown woman” to China settling in a time period before the cultural revolution (1930-1948).
Plot:
Peking, 1948. A winter night. A man returns home to find a letter awaiting him written by a woman before her death. in the letter she tells him the story of her love for him – a life-long passion that has not diminished over time, but one that he has never known. Her story spans 18 years from the moment she -then a 13 year-old girl- sets her eyes on her new neighbor. She tells their brief but passionate love in her youth and the hardship she goes through raising their child alone, and their final encounter after the war, during which the man fails to recognize her and one which leaves her in despair. Now having lost her son, she no longer has the courage to live on. Only in a letter is she capable of telling him everything, for the first and the last time. Shaken by the letter, the man searches his memory for the nameless woman…Read More » -
Risto Jarva – Ruusujen aika AKA A Time of Roses (1969)
1961-1970DramaFinlandRisto JarvaSci-FiSynopsis: Taking place in the year 2012, the film is a fantasy of a “utopian” time when all class conflicts have been erased, at least superficially. A history researcher Raimo Lappalainen becomes obsessed by the life of nude model Saara Turunen, a woman who died in 1976, and tries to reconstruct it for TV, with help from an actress. At the same time a strike in a nuclear plant will lead to a violent upsurge, which media only manages to keep secret from public with a clever cover-up.
Read More » -
Glauber Rocha – Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol AKA Black God White Devi (1964)
1961-1970BrazilCultDramaGlauber RochaBlack God, White Devil (Portuguese: Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol, literally, “God and the Devil in the Land of Sun”) is a 1964 Brazilian film directed and written by Glauber Rocha. The film stars Othon Bastos, Maurício do Valle, Yoná Magalhães, and Geraldo Del Rey. It belongs to the Cinema Novo movement, addressing the socio-political problems of 1960s Brazil.
Glauber Rocha was 25 years old when he wrote and began to direct the film.Read More »
-
Sebastian Schipper – Victoria (2015)
2011-2020DramaGermanySebastian SchipperThrillerQuote:
Victoria, a young woman from Madrid, meets four local Berliners outside a nightclub. Sonne and his friends promise to show her a good time and the real side of the city. But these lads have gotten themselves into hot water: they owe someone a dangerous favor that requires repaying that evening. As Victoria’s flirtation with Sonne deepens into something more, he convinces her to come along for the ride. And later, when things become more ominous and possibly lethally dangerous for Sonne, she insists on coming along. As the night takes on an ever more menacing character, what started out as a good time, quickly spirals out of control. As dawn approaches, Victoria and Sonne address the inevitable: it’s all or nothing and they abandon themselves to a heart-stopping race into the depths of hell.Read More »









