Drama

Rod Steiger plays a benumbed Jewish survivor of the concentration camps who lives on in Harlem running a pawnship–fat, sagging, past pain, past caring. Adapted from the Edward Lewis Wallant novel and directed by Sidney Lumet, the film is trite, and you can see the big pushes for powerful effects, yet it isn’t negligible. It wrenches audiences, making them fear that they, too, could become like this man. And when events strip off his armor, he doesn’t discover a new, warm humanity, he discovers sharper suffering–just what his armor had protected him from. Most of the intensity comes from Steiger’s performance and from the performance of the great old Juano Hernandez, as a man who comes into the shop to talk.

-Pauline KaelRead More »

Synopsis:
In a Tehran hospital, a woman awaits anxiously for news about her grandchild – and she’s shattered when she learns that the baby is a girl. Outside the hospital are three young women – they’re anxious, fearful – and their attempts to leave the city are constantly thwarted. One of them, Nargess, tries unsuccessfully to make contact with her friend, Pari, who is recently out of prison and has been thrown out of her family home. Pregnant and desperate, Pari seeks help from Monir, a friend married to a Pakistani doctor.

In addition to these frightened, disenfranchised women we meet Nayereh, who is forced to abandon her little girl, and Mojgan, a prostitute. As the story spirals from one character to another, it eventually turns full circle. Read More »

A group of freshmen in an orthodox college are introduced in a world of cons, pleasure and money, but they soon discover that’s not the way one’s life should be lead.
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Synopsis:
Review from Midnight Eye:
Credits roll over a static shot of a prostitute, lying prone on her back with all the aloofness of Manet’s Olympia and nothing but the prostrate figure of a hulking black American GI stretched over her to mask her nudity. As the camera slowly pans along her bare flank, she raises her arm above her head to reveal a dense thicket of underarm hair.

Provocative stuff in a country where the one real taboo in the sexual arena is the onscreen portrayal of pubic hair, but it wasn’t this scene which landed its director in court for Japanese cinema’s first obscenity trial. As the screaming sound of jet planes which dominate the soundtrack of this brazen opening might suggest, Black Snow’s subversion goes beyond the mere carnal.
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Kyoko is a twenty-one-year-old artist who loves being at the center of attention. One day, feeling down, she lashes out against her assistant, sexually humiliating her in front of the rest of the staff. Suddenly someone yells “Cut!” and we realize that they are actually on a movie set.
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Like Piccolo mondo antico, Malombra is a film set in a grandiose, but a bit crowded aristocratic house, which is itself squashed between the beautiful, but deadly see, and the stolid, un-romantic mountains. A claustrophobic space with no escapes, a space of directionless hauntings and self-induced psychosis. Also, of course, a space of late, musty fascism. The reality of the second world war and the twilight of the Mussollini era is never directly alluded to, but it seems to penetrate all walls, clothes, the flesh itself.Read More »

Quote:
In this best-loved of Hitchcock’s British-made thrillers, a young woman on a train meets a charming old lady (Dame May Whitty), who promptly disappears. The other passengers deny ever having seen her, leading the young woman to suspect a conspiracy. When she begins investigating, she is drawn into a complex web of mystery and high adventure.

If one film challenges the idea that Hitchcock ‘found himself’ as a director only after he arrived in Hollywood, it is The Lady Vanishes. Released in 1938 by Gainsborough, it is arguably the most accomplished, and certainly the wittiest of Hitchcock’s British films, and is up there with the best of his American work.Read More »

Synopsis:
Klaus Kinski plays the title role of an obsessed opera lover who wants to build an opera in the jungle. To accomplish this he first has to make a fortune in the rubber business, and his cunning plan involves hauling an enormous river boat across a small mountain with aid from the local indians.Read More »

Quote:
The Executioner’s Song is one of the best films about crime and punishment ever made. Far from being lurid or simpleminded, it paints a stark picture of how it must have been to live around Gilmore during that time. It doesn’t glamorize him or turn him into a cardboard villain, but instead depicts him as a man whose inability to handle his growing rage and alienation led him to destroy his life and the lives of those around him. It’s smart enough to know that there can never be a definitive answer as to why someone would commit murder, but that it’s also important to try to understand those reasons nonetheless. It’s also a vital film whatever your views on the issue of capital punishment, as it renders many clichés on the subject useless (and predates the more acclaimed Dead Man Walking by a good thirteen years). Add one of the finest performances of Tommy Lee Jones’ career, and The Executioner’s Song is highly recommended for anyone interested in a thoughtful crime drama.Read More »