Drama

Synopsis –
Hallam is almost over the sudden death of his mother when he begins to suspect that his beautiful step mother may have had a hand in her death, and it doesn‘t help that Hallam fancies her rotten. After a confrontation with his step mum, Hallam escapes to Edinburgh. Out of money and out of friends, he finds his tree–top skills well suited to the rooftops of the city, where he lives ferally, attempting to avoid the perils of the streets below and becoming obsessed with a gorgeous girl who happens to look just like his mother.Read More »

Set at the end of the 1940s, this drama about Pedro (Imanol Arias), a medical researcher, and his relationships with his family and women underscores the mood of repression that dominated Spain during Franco’s fascist regime. Pedro lives in a boardinghouse and is attracted to Dorita (Victoria Abril), his beautiful neighbor. He wiles away his time with a wealthy friend and generally leads a normal life until he tries to save the life of a young woman who has had an abortion that went tragically wrong. He fails, and the woman’s boyfriend comes after him, believing that he killed her. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie GuideRead More »

Mainly the story of Shinsuke and his stepmother, ranging from Shinsuke’s infanthood to his mid-teens. Coal workers and the mines dominate nearly every aspect of the life of the characters. Shinsuke’s father dies while bravely using dynamite to rescue a group of trapped Korean miners. Several older men attempt to help he and his mother cope, including a kind Korean and a Harley-riding yakuza. —SharptongueRead More »

The three films directed by Valerio Zurlini at Titanus—Violent Summer, Girl with a Suitcase and Family Diary—were products of a fruitful collaboration interrupted by Titanus’ financial crisis of the mid-1960s. The Professor marked the reunion of director and studio after a decade in which Zurlini was only able to make two films. Here he returns to his trademark style: sober melodrama involving complex characters. The focus is on the title figure, a teacher—played by Alain Delon—who arrives for a temporary position in Rimini in the midst of a midlife crisis. Unable to face his depressive mistress, he spends his nights drinking and gambling as a mutual attraction develops between him and one of his students.Read More »

In his earliest work, German director Werner Schroeter was inspired by opera, and made several short 8mm films about the prima donna Maria Callas. This film focuses on Maria Malibran, a legendary Spanish-French opera singer who died in 1836 at the age of 28. She forms the starting point for a series of stylised tableaux introducing variations on different levels, including in the form of musical phrases. The spectator is thrown into fragments of stories that take place in a non-existent country, in which the characters do not have any clear identity and are mutually interchangeable. The film, a reflection on the 19th century cult for geniuses and divas, was regarded by Schroeter, who died last year, as his most important work. It focuses on acting, including that of Magdalena Montezuma (regular Schroeter actress), Candy Darling (from the Warhol stable) and Ingrid Caven.

Werner Schroeter mixes Stravinsky, Beethoven, Brahms, Maria Callas and Janis Joplin in this delirious biography of the doomed nineteenth-century mezzo-soprano.Read More »

Another early Masumura with Wakao Ayako, based on the novel by Blue Sky Maiden’s (青空娘) Genji Keita. This time we have Wakao as the third daughter of the Nonomiya family, whose two elder sisters have married the two elder sons of the Mihara family. While Kawaguchi Hiroshi plays the third, unmarried son… so you can imagine the ensuing events. Maybe not as much fun as Ichikawa Kon’s Goodbye, Hello (あなたと私の合言葉　さようなら、今日は), also made at Daiei around the same time with the same leads and a similar story, but Masumura can do no wrong either.Read More »

Eva, a sexology teacher, stays at Robertinho’s farm to cure him of his sexual shyness. Successfully, she seduces him and his sister Naná, despite the uncompromising morality of their parents, who are from a traditional family in Minas Gerais. The father, after some resistance, reveals that his moralism comes from a childhood trauma when he caught his parents in a sexual relationship. Eva believes the father can benefit from her expertise and will try to cure him.Read More »

When two people meet one night in London, their relationship blossoms and fractures, intertwined with impending societal collapse.Read More »

Quote:
A strange, beautiful and critically-acclaimed film by Gyula Gazdag, A Hungarian Fairy Tale begins at a performance of Mozart’s The Magic Flute where a beautiful young woman meets a handsome stranger and, transported by the music, they share one night of love. The son born of this magic night is raised by his mother but at the age of three, must be given a father’s name, even a fictitious one, according to Hungarian law. Years later, the engaging Andris sets out to find his “father” as his “father” begins a separate journey.Read More »