Drama

Cinepad.com wrote:
The deadpan comic buzz you get from Gus Van Sant’s Drugstore Cowboy is practically narcotic. The movie heightens your senses and mildly anaesthetizes them at the same time, like a potent mixture of stimulants and depressants. One of the most invigoratingly original American comedies since Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise, Drugstore Cowboy follows druggie, irregular rhythms all its own. Whether in a heavy-lidded daze or wired with giddy, post-high paranoia, Drugstore Cowboy displays an uncanny alertness to detail and texture — yellow-white bus headlights that barely penetrate the slate-grey, late-afternoon gloom on a rain-drenched north-western road; the surreal surge of blood into a hypodermic syringe as it enters a vein in intensified close-up… But the film’s vibrant aliveness to such minute sensations is submerged beneath a cold, clammy complexion: the blue-grey pallor of a day-old corpse.Read More »

OCCUPY LOVE captures the heart of the movement of movements that is sweeping the planet in response to today’s economic and environmental crises. ‘Philosopher-filmmaker’ Velcrow Ripper travels to history-making hot spots, asking the question, ‘How can crisis create a love story?’ Scenes include the Egyptian revolution in Tahrir Square, Spain’s Indignado movement, Occupy Wall Street NYC, The Maple Spring in Quebec, and indigenous activists at the Alberta Tar Sands. The film explores the aspects of this arising that take the form of what Martin Luther King Jr. called ‘Love in action.’ Woven throughout is a deep exploration on the meaning and importance of ‘public love’ – the love of humanity, the love of the planet.Read More »

Based on actual events, a fisherman tries to survive in the freezing ocean after his boat capsizes off the south coast of Iceland.Read More »

Gebo (Lonsdale) is an elderly accountant who lives with his wife Doroteia (Cardinale) and his daughter-in-law Sofia (Silveira). Despite his advanced age and increasing fatigue, he continues to work to provide for his family. Doroteia is concerned for her son João (Trêpa), who has been missing for some time. Gebo and Sofia have some idea of João’s whereabouts, having spotted him begging and living in the streets. But Gebo, who doesn’t want to destroy Doroteia’s idealized version of her son, conceals the truth from her. When João returns to the family home, however, this falsehood proves to have disastrous consequences, as the prodigal son is unable to resist the temptation of a bag of money entrusted to Gebo’s keeping.Read More »

Put together a subversive filmmaker like Ulrich Seidl with the subject of religious fanaticism and you’re bound to get something provocative. But Paradise: Faith, the second part of the Austrian director’s trilogy about three women from the same family on different quests, is possibly more interesting to think about and discuss afterwards than to sit through. Depending how you look at it, there’s a pitch-black comedy buried in here or a redeeming shred of empathy at the tail end of two grueling hours. Either way, it’s strictly for the faithful.Read More »

In 1993, a group of students and teachers from a Welsh secondary school visit St Petersburg to learn about Russian art, and to discover themselves in the process. Communication difficulties lead to the students and teachers becoming separated before they reach St Petersburg. Made by S4C in 1993, this was the first time that a Western crew filmed in Russia after the breakup of the Soviet Union.

From IMDB: Seven teenagers and three teachers from a Welsh school visit Russia in a bid to rediscover themselves. On the overnight sleeper service to St Petersburg the students get separated from the teachers, which allows the students ample scope for rediscovery.Read More »

“A twenty-something generation that doesn’t know what it wants is laid bare with droll accuracy but also a dose of sympathy in this slow-burning romantic dramedy by young Romanian director Paul Negoescu. Following on in the new-wave Romanian tradition of stories that pan out in less than 24 hours, A Month In Thailand charts the indecisions of a young man on New Year’s Eve as he dithers between his current girlfriend and the one he ditched months before.” – Lee Marshall, Screen DailyRead More »

Quote:
Diego (Cirilo Recio) is a cross-eyed, middle-aged man who works as a doorman in a government building and spends the day counting the persons who pass in front of him. His younger wife Blanca (Laura Saldaña) works in a fast-food sushi bar. They do not have much to say to each other after a hard day’s work and so they wile away the hours watching televison. They do have an active sex life with Blanca usually leading the way. One day he arrives home to find her waiting for him nude on the floor with her legs spread wide open.

But the downside of their marriage is her jealousy. When a co-worker’s son is kidnapped, Diego walks her home and embraces her in kindness. Blanca finds out about this gesture and explodes in anger. Her apologies usually consist of sexual favors.

When Karina (Claudia Orozco), Diego’s daughter from a previous relationship, shows up and wants to stay with them, Blanca refuses and he is forced to set her up in a hotel room. She is trying to end a relationship with an addict who has gotten her into drugs. Karina’s inability to deal with the real world puts an incredible amount of pressure on her father in the mysterious last sequence of the film which takes place at a gigantic rubbish dump outside the city.Read More »

SYNOPSIS/PLOT: A man and a woman seeking refuge from the world: Nihat at a remote forest fire tower, Seher in her room at a rural bus station. When their lives collide, each now has to fight their battle of conscience before the other. Read More »