Drama

The film Maddalena tells the story of a woman who is desperate to find real love in a real steady relationship on the one hand; and a priest who is doubting his ability to cope with celibacy on the other hand. When Maddalena decides the priest is the man that she wants, an atmosphere of erotic tension and self-questioning about true Faith fill up the air. The film is long forgotten (thus the five), but the score for the film, parts of which were used in other films, is considered by some as one of Morricone’s finest, and quite rightly so. The already mentioned title part ‘Come Maddalena’, which mixes jazzy drumming with a modest church organ, the lyrical voices of Edda dell’Orso and a scatting choir, is probably one of the most evocative and thrilling parts of film music I have ever heard. Long before the world had ever heard of lounge music and chill-out, maestro Morricone must have sent the shivers down many a spine… as he has done so many times before and after.Read More »

After receiving a letter from a woman named Asiye asking for help to save her, the President of the Associations Against Prostitution visits the brothel to save Asiye. However, she finds herself in a strange musical show.Read More »

This serial killer suspense thriller by Robert Altman was originally broadcast as an episode of Kraft Mystery Theater, then expanded into a longer cut and released to theaters. It stars Charles McGraw, Ted Knight, and Carroll O’Connor, among others, and features an orchestral musical score by John Williams (billed as “Johnny Williams”) before he became famous with his scores for Jaws, Star Wars, and Superman.Read More »

Cult director Koji Wakamatsu (famous abroad for titles such as “Go, Go Second Time Virgin”) returns to helm the sixth in this perversely entertaining series. A Kabukicho gigolo with a gambling debt Mikio Osawa agrees to bump off a rich wife’s husband for a bundle of cash, but botches the hit. On the run in the snow-covered hills of northern Japan, he holes up in a shuttered, deserted house. But the house is not empty: a timid, traumatized girl Mika Ito lives there, in the thrall of a sick, hot-tempered trucker Shiro Sano who has kept her there since she was a tiny girl. Osawa tries hard but looks out of his depth here, as veteran Sano and 23-year-old ingenue Ito build an all-too-believable, monstrous relationship as sadistic paternal pervert and terrified tremulous child. File under guilty pleasure.Read More »

The Isle is a case in point. Based around a primitive fishing community on a lake, it’s beautifully shot though morally bankrupt, far too eager to visually astound one moment then deeply shock the next. It focuses on a pseudo sado-masochistic relationship between a mute woman and a murderous ex-cop and, seemingly, is out to break almost every taboo available. There’s animal cruelty on a grand scale. There’s at least one rape scene, and one scene in which sexual violence towards women is almost justified by the filmmaker. There’s self-mutilation; a myriad of bodily functions; and, perhaps only a hundred lines of dialogue in the entire movie. It’s almost as if Kim is setting himself up to be Korea’s Takashi Miike, only with better cinematography.Read More »

Synopsis
A mother’s last wishes send twins Jeanne and Simon on a journey to Middle East in search of their tangled roots. Adapted from Wajdi Mouawad’s acclaimed play, “Incendies” tells the powerful and moving tale of two young adults’ voyage to the core of deep-rooted hatred, never-ending wars and enduring love….Read More »

Just before twilight, a four-engine plane lands on the runway of a country airport. The plane comes to a halt. A single passenger disembarks: Joe, the last survivor of a Jewish family, the Falsches. He has an appointment with them all tonight, forty years after leaving Berlin for New York in 1938. They are all waiting for him in the arrival lounge of the airport. A night of encounters, of celebrations beyond life and death; a meeting which will soon turn into a family psychodrama.Thirteen people will confront each other about their links to Germany, their life in exile, the presence of Lilli among the Falsches; the cries of anguish in the face of death in the camps, incomprehensible to those who went into exile, the Berlin of today, where nobody remembers the Falsches – not even Joe, who would prefer to forget, and never see them again.Read More »

Polish writer-director Małgorzata Szumowska has created an interesting but massively preposterous and supercilious film, saucer-eyed on the subject of bought sex and students taking high-end escort work; it stars Juliette Binoche as Anne, a Paris magazine journalist writing an in-depth piece based on anonymous interviews with two young women, Charlotte (Anaïs Demoustier) and Alicja (Joanna Kulig. As they reveal the non-PC possibility that they are not necessarily demeaned by the work, Anne begins to question her own relationship. Like all movie journalists, her workload is quaintly imagined, and Binoche does some embarrassing “arguing with her editor on the phone” acting. The final dinner-party sequence is toe-curlingly predictable. That said, Elles has some sharp insights into the secrets and lies involved, and the acoustic guitar sing-along between one of the students and a pathetic client is a great scene.
Peter Bradshaw, GuardianRead More »

Belgium, 1980. On the banks of the Meuse River, against the enormous background of a steel-producing city, factories close one after another and lay off workers. One of those made redundant is Fabrice who, at thirty-five, is proud of his trade, rendered mythical by fire and steel, but feels he has become useless. His wife, Celine, tries to renew his interest in life. Despite a few moments of rediscovered happiness, Fabrice remains trapped in his confusion and one day disappears… Celine, her intense love leading the way, goes looking for him and eventually finds him. Once again, she tries to save him from himself. Can love resuscitate a languishing man? That is Celine’s wager.Read More »