Synopsis: MTV-worshiping seventeen year old Denise, who is one of the only white people from the poor part of a Dutch city, falls in love with the charming young Arab man Michael who promises her a life she can only imagine. But Michael is a so-called “loverboy” who has a secret agenda and manipulates her into prostitution making her believe that’s the only way to continue their expensive lives together.Read More »
This suspense film revolves around the crime of child abduction. The parents of the missing child undertake a feverish search for their son. The police are contacted, and a ransom letter is received.
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Michael Haneke’s latest torture mechanism is less funny game than daunting debasement ritual. Isabelle Huppert stars as Erika Kohut, an icy piano teacher who goes masochistic when handsome young Walter Klemmer (Benoit Magimel) wants to play with her cold ivory. Huppert responds to Haneke with such straight-faced precision that you might just buy into the director’s seemingly shallow provocations. Spousal punishment in Bergman’s Cries & Whispers came in the form of self-mutilation. Haneke, though, has Huppert paint a more squeamish picture of self-love that also contemplates the possibility of pleasure in pain. The director has an uncanny ability to force the spectator’s gaze and takes his time revealing Erika’s many fetishes. Though all-powerful in the classroom, Erika is slapped around by her busybody mother as if she were a constantly misbehaving child.Read More »
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A look at the lives of 3 well-off Iranian couples who are ostensibly living an idyllic life and are going to have a get-together for a birthday party. Each couple bearing their own sordid secrets attend the party to find out what follows on the hills of the cold welcome of their host.Read More »
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Marnie Edgar is a habitual liar and a thief who gets jobs as a secretary and after a few months robs the firms in question, usually of several thousand dollars. When she gets a job at Rutland’s, she also catches the eye of the handsome owner, Mark Rutland. He prevents her from stealing and running off, as is her usual pattern, but also forces her to marry him. Their honeymoon is a disaster and she cannot stand to have a man touch her and on their return home, Mark has a private detective look into her past. When he has the details of what happened in her childhood to make her what she is, he arranges a confrontation with her mother realizing that reliving the terrible events that occurred in her childhood and bringing out those repressed memories is the only way to save her.Read More »
Ten-year-old Axel lives with his mother and three sisters in a flat in Buenos Aires. The mother, Margarita, lives locked up in a room beyond the bathroom, while the children are her prison guards. The children communicate with her mother through a small window, giving her blankets, DVDs and reading material and celebrating her birthday in the corridor. When she’s eventually had enough, it’s Axel that must decide what to do.Read More »
Synopsis (possible spoilers):
“Twenty-five years after having been burnt at the stake for heresy, Joan of Arc returns to King Charles VII of France as a ghost and taunts him for having betrayed her. They recall the time when Joan, driven by divine messages, persuaded Charles, then Dauphin, to allow her to lead an army to attack the English at Orleans. Did Charles show gratitude when Joan defeated the English, a victory that enabled him to be crowned king at Reims? No, he only wanted her to return to her village and resume the life of an anonymous peasant girl. When she failed in her attempt to take Paris from the English, who came to Joan’s aid when she was arrested and tried by the Catholic Church for heresy? No one…”
– Films de FranceRead More »
Synopsis by Michael P. Rogers
Before Eddie Constantine became a French pop icon as the slapdash “Lemmy Caution,” he played Johnny, a straightforward London taxi driver. When his new taxi is smashed and he needs a big loan, he agrees to a five-minute marriage to Malou, a naive French girl, so she can become a British citizen. As planned, the two part after the nuptials, not realizing that this has all been rigged as a recruiting scheme by Nick (Herbert Lom), the boss of a Soho prostitution ring. Malou learns of Nick’s plans for her future and tries to escape but is drugged and locked up. With help from the head “girl,” Vicki (Diana Dors), Johnny learns of Malou’s peril, and hatches a plan to free her. This dark action thriller has a few clever twists, and Dors is gorgeous, but her fans may be disappointed at the smallness of her roleRead More »
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David spends the last of his money on a room at the luxury hotel Waldhaus, where he plans to commit suicide. As part of his final act he invites his unsuspecting brother Gian along, ostensibly to spend his last days with him. Unexpectedly, Gian comes along with his girlfriend Valeria. David’s decision to end his life is constantly with them, and as the trio float through the days at the hotel, they come face to face with their past, unfulfilled dreams and an almost unbearable present. Eventually, Valeria becomes so captivated by David’s suicidal romanticism that the three of them end up in a ménage à trois – either their salvation or the end for each of them.Read More »