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Two of Hong Kong’s most adored screen goddesses lend their girlish charm to Last Romance, re-released 29 years after it became a rare commercial hit in the career of art-house director Yonfan.
While its fashion and social setting are somewhat dated, the 1988 film still packs a punch with its deeply poignant tale of friendship and love that is repeatedly derailed by materialistic greed and lamentable life decisions.Read More »
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My Frightening Rushed Palestinian Roadblock Wedding
Like the 1999 German hit “Run Lola Run,” the new movie by Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad opens with an ultimatum and a plucky heroine alone in her room, wondering which way to turn. Both films feature menacing dogs, lost plastic bags, and an aimless, poorly shaved lover.
But that’s where the similarities end, because contemporary Berlin is a happier place than Jerusalem in 2003. For one thing, Tom Tykwer’s redhead Lola didn’t have to deal with roadblocks, trigger-happy soldiers, and bomb squads. For another, Lola was fiercely self-determined, while Rana (Clara Khoury) has to contend not only with political oppression but the dominating role men are assigned in her culture.Read More »
Czech filmmakers have several times been galvanised by the writings of Jaroslav Havlíček. The result in most cases was a film that merged the quality of the literary template and the personality of the particular filmmaker, whether it be Barbora Hlavsová (1942) directed by Martin Frič, Prokletí domu Hajnů (The Curse of the Hajns’ House, 1988) directed by Jiří Svoboda, or Jaromil Jireš’s Helimadoe (1992). However, the most famous adaptation of a Havlíček novel is the psychological drama Petrolejové lampy (Oil Lamps). The film is based on an eponymous novel first published in 1935 as Vyprahlé touhy (Parched Desires) and released again in 1944 following revisions and a change of title. The motion picture was made in 1971 according to a screenplay from Lubor Dohnal, Václav Šašek and Juraj Herz, the last of whom also directed the film.Read More »
Inventor Carl Åkerblom is a rosy-cheeked 54 year-old admirer of Franz Schubert – and a patient in the psychiatric ward of Akademiska Hospital in Uppsala, after having attempted to beat to death his fiancée, Pauline Thibault. Together with another patient, Professor Osvald Vogler, they set up a film project: the living talkie. Before long, they set off on a frantic tour with their film, “The Joy of the Joyous Girl”… Written by Fredrik KlassonRead More »
Raúl Ruiz’s baroque mix of revolutionary politics, pop culture and semiotics is loosely based on the play La vida es sueño (Life is a Dream) by Pedro Calderón de la Barca. In this 17th-century classic, a young prince learns that life is but a dream from which we wake when we die, and that dreams may be as real as life.
Ruiz’s Prince is a Chilean revolutionary in hiding who spends his time in a run-down movie theatre watching old Flash Gordon serials while trying to remember a secret code he once memorized using Life is a Dream as a mnemonic device.Read More »
Based on the novel by Junichiro Tanizaki. Story of the beautiful blind daughter of a wealthy businessman who falls in love with a servant.Read More »
Tired and frustrated of being constantly awaken at midnight by his noisy young neighbor Mariana (Scanda), old Don Andres (Torre Laphame) engages himself into a solitaire crusade against his torturer. When Mariana’s party is struck by a police raid, she plots her cruel revenge. The anonymous love-letters she writes for the old man will conduct him to the fields of unrequited love, where Don Andres has never been in his entire life.Read More »
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Agnes and his brothers have little in common, except an eccentric old father, relationship problems that are totally screwing up their lives, and the distinct possibility those two things are connected. Hans-Jörg conceals his sexual frustration behind his meek librarian appearance. Sex addict meetings don’t seem to be stopping his incessant masturbation and awkwardness with women. But his life changes drastically when he finds outlets for his anger and lusty libido. Werner is much more successful at political combat than family diplomacy. He’s caught up in an upperclass suburban nightmare and bickering is the only heat left in his marriage.Read More »
One of the worst of many inhuman aspects of World War II were the “penalty” battalions in the German army, dramatized in this excellent film about several men serving in these units. Director Harald Phillipp spares no ounce of realism in first relating what kinds of men are conscripted, and then how they are treated. One man’s crime was not returning to his unit on time, another did not follow unscrupulous orders, yet another supposedly mutilated himself in order to escape the draft. Once in a penalty battalion, the assignments and the superior officers are brutal. The men are sent to the most dangerous battle fronts, they are asked to de-mine without equipment, and no one balks at leaving them without weapons if a hasty retreat is in order. Sobering and well-photographed, the men’s stories are engrossing from beginning to end.
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