Drama

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A creative and driven teenager is desperate to escape his hometown and the haunting memories of his turbulent childhood.Read More »

The depiction of the life of Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of Poland’s Solidarity movement, Lech Walesa, as events in the 1970s lead to a peaceful revolution.

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Wałęsa, an electrician at the Gdańsk Shipyards, participated in local demonstrations during the 1970s. Following the bloody aftermath, which remains with Wałęsa, he concentrates on his day-to-day duties. Ten years later, a new uprising occurs and he becomes an unexpected and charismatic leader of Polish dockworkers.Read More »

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La Strada is Federico Fellini’s moving masterpiece that explores the soul’s eternal conflict between the heart and mind. Zampano (Anthony Quinn) is a cruel, traveling carnival strongman who buys his assistant, a simple minded young woman named Gelsomina (Giulietta Masina), from her poverty-stricken family. Gelsomina is innocent and childlike (Masina’s exquisite performance is as comic as it is heartbreaking). She does Zampano’s bidding without question or resistance, even though he is abusive to her. He abandons her in the street to spend the night with a woman. He lashes her with a tree branch when she misquotes her introductory lines. He forces her to steal from a convent. Yet, she remains faithful and uncomplaining.Read More »

Three strong-willed women (Kristen Stewart, Laura Dern, Michelle Williams) strive to forge their own paths amidst the wide-open plains of the American Northwest: a lawyer who finds herself contending with both office sexism and a hostage situation; a wife and mother whose determination to build her dream home puts her at odds with the men in her life; and a young law student who forms an ambiguous bond with a lonely ranch hand.Read More »

IMDB: “When I Die” is about the making of the Gonzo Monument to Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, and the blasting of his ashes into the heavens. The infamous outlaw journalist described his funeral plans in a clip from a 1978 BBC documentary which opens “When I Die.”. Hunter wanted a 150 foot obelisk built in his backyard from which his ashes would be shot five hundred feet into the air and explode over his beloved Owl Farm in Woody Creek, Colorado. That is exactly what happened in August, 2005, six months after Dr. Thompson committed suicide. In “When I Die” the trials, tribulations and triumphs of this elaborate funeral production are inter cut with 35mm time-lapse photography and the final pyrotechnics are in breath-taking high speed 35mm.Read More »

For a long, in-depth review; see Jim’s Reviews link

From Bill’s Movie Emporium:
The story presented in Angst Vor Der Angst isn’t original by any means, although in 1975 I’m sure it had some originality to it. Originality doesn’t matter though, because Angst Vor Der Angst is about a quality director taking a relatively simple subject and turning it into a great movie. Angst Vor Der Angst is a dramatic tale, yet it is a tale we can relate to. Some of the characters may seem cliche, but they aren’t over the top and most of us have had a domineering mother-in-law or a bothersome sister-in-law in our lives.Read More »

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Two strangers, Jerzy (Leon Niemczyk) and Marta (Lucyna Winnicka), accidentally end up holding tickets for the same sleeping chamber on an overnight train to the Baltic Sea coast. While handsome, well dressed and rather laconic, Jerzy seems ill at ease, while Marta is not talkative and would prefer to be alone. Staszek (Zbigniew Cybulski) is a student and Marta’s spurned lover, and will not leave her alone. When the police enter the train in search of a murderer on the lam, rumors fly and everything seems to point toward one of the main characters as the culprit. [spoiler removed from quote]Read More »

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If there was one feature that lived up to its title in Berlin this year, it’s Bizarre, French director Etienne Faure’s squiggle of a film about a directionless and taciturn French teenager — with the prerequisite pout, hard abs and studiedly nonchalant way of always being semi-disrobed — who finds refuge in a Bushwick burlesque bar run by two girlfriends who are into (rather explicit) sex with other guys. Often indeed too bizarre for words, this collection of sounds and images in desperate need of a plot, or even just some recognizable human behavior, will appeal to that shady part of the queer market where young cuties plus the promise of nudity are enough for at least some VOD and DVD sales.Read More »

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Jerzy Skolimowski’s second feature (and first full-length narrative) cemented his status as a one-man Polish New Wave, with the rhythms of his films influenced as much by jazz and (his own) poetry as by more conventional storytelling. Skolimowski himself plays a dropout-turned-amateur boxer who’s distracted from his bouts when Teresa (Aleksandra Zawieruszanka), an old university friend, re-enters his life.Read More »