Drama

Le Père Noël a les yeux bleus
(Santa Claus Has Blue Eyes)
Jean Eustache, 1966. B&W. 47 min.
With Jean-Pierre Léaud, Gérard Zimmermann, Henri Martinez, René Gilson.

Daniel (Jean-Pierre Léaud) is desperate to buy a new duffle coat but has no money to do so. Taking a job as a street-corner Santa Claus, he begins to earn income and, more surprisingly, the attention of many young women taken with his costume. Eustache infuses Daniel (and his hometown of Narbonne, where the film takes place) with a keen sense of compassion. As always, daily reality is at the forefront: how Daniel spends his time, his efforts to meet girls, his attempts to make money. A wonderfully earthy film, and Eustache’s first major work.Read More »

the film presents a group of kids – mostly of arab descent – in the “cit?s” (us= projects) who stage the marivaux play of the same name.

at the Istanbul International Film Festival/, it also took the international critics’ prize and a special jury prize for the ensemble acting. Kechiche was awarded a special jury prize at the European Film Awards for his first feature, La faute ? Voltaire (also highly recomended, if you can find it.)Read More »

Cult Epics wrote:
Civil war is an act of cannibalism. It is the rending of a nation’s own flesh, the final act in a spiral of devolution towards base subversion. It is brother vs. brother, mother vs. father. It is as psychologically traumatizing as it is physically brutal and the scars left by a civil war don’t heal clean, they arre ragged, gaping wounds that fester and bloom. In Spain, the wounds of civil war sprouted around a single tree: the Guernica Tree.Read More »

Based on the short story “A Gentle Being” by Dostoievski.

“St. Petersburg. The capital. Hardly any other place could influence a man’s soul in such dark, harsh and mysterious ways … like St. Petersburg does it. Now, see for yourselves what is happening in those big black dusky houses of St. Petersburg. Look closer. And see for yourselves – what kind of life this is.”
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Vatroslav Mimica (born 25 June 1923 in Omiš) is an award-winning Croatian film director and screenwriter. He had his directorial and screenwriting debut in the 1952 Yugoslav film In the Storm (Croatian: U oluji) which starred Veljko Bulajic, Mia Oremovic and Antun Nalis. This crime melodrama takes place in Dalmatian region and follows the fate of widow Rose who tries to commit suicide.Read More »

Story of a gang of young people who live in one of the concrete ghettos outside Stockholm. They commit a series of murders of those they feel responsible for their situation. This one is often described as a cheap Swedish Clockwork Orange spin-off.Read More »

Description: “Face to Face was intended to be a film about dreams and reality. The dreams were to become tangible reality. Reality would dissolve and become dream. I have occasionally managed to move unhindered between dream and reality, in Persona, Sawdust and Tinsel and Cries and Whispers. This time it was more difficult. My intentions required an inspiration which failed me. The dream sequences became synthetic, the reality blurred. There are a few solid scenes here and there, and Liv Ullmann struggled like a lion, but not even she could save the culmination, the primal scream which amounted to enthusiastic but ill-digested fruit of my reading. Artistic license sneered through the thin fabric.”
— Ingmar Bergman, The Magic LanternRead More »

Following up on his shaded character study of Adolf Hitler in Moloch, acclaimed filmmaker Alexander Sokurov directs this companion piece — the second in a planned trilogy — based on the waning days of the life of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Set in 1923 in the newly created U.S.S.R., state founder Lenin (Leonid Mozgovoy) — though he is never mentioned by name — is convalescing from a stroke at age 51 in his dacha. Surrounded by watchful guards, a live-in doctor, his wife, and his sister, this formerly titanic figure lives as a virtual prisoner after the deterioration of his health. Unable to make contact with the outside world — newspapers are forcibly removed and the phone lines cut — Lenin spends much of his time puttering around in the garden or eating with his loyal wife. One day, Stalin (Sergei Razhuk) pays him a visit, even though Lenin isn’t quite sure who the future tyrant is. He presents the sick man a walking stick, mentioning that he wanted it to be engraved but Trotsky vetoed the idea. After the visit, Lenin becomes upset that he is living in luxury while his countrymen are starving. This film was screened in competition at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie GuideRead More »

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Poignant and poetic, The Fugitive Kind is a challenging film that works more often than it doesn’t. Based on Tennessee Williams’ Orpheus Descending—a play that had been critically panned and did little business in its original Broadway run—this adaptation boasts terrific performances, atmospheric direction by Sidney Lumet (The Verdict), and excellent cinematography by Boris Kaufman (On the Waterfront).Read More »