Written by Sean Walsh
After 18 years as a friar, Peter is no longer sure of his vocation. It is a happy life, maybe too much so, and now he has met Clare. Will his doubts run away with him? Runaway friars are officially “fugitives” who must be persuaded back to their order.Read More »
Burt Lancaster’s megawatt grin and acrobatic athleticism light up this grandly entertaining swashbuckler. He tumbles, vaults, and swings his way through the role of a Robin Hood-esque rogue who executes dazzling feats of derring-do as he and his rough-and-ready band of mountain men launch a rebellion against the occupying German gentry in 12th-century Italy. The filmmaker’s powers as an aesthetician are on full display in the exquisite Technicolor compositions, including one particularly striking moment of Tourneurian shadow play: a climactic duel in the dark wrought in finely shaded chiaroscuro.Read More »
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Banned in Spain and denounced by the Vatican, Luis Buñuel’s irreverent vision of life as a beggar’s banquet is regarded by many as his masterpiece. In it, novice nun Viridiana does her utmost to maintain her Catholic principles, but her lecherous uncle and a motley assemblage of paupers force her to confront the limits of her idealism. Winner of the Palme d’or at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival, Viridiana is as audacious today as ever.Read More »
In her provocative first feature, Chantal Akerman stars as an aimless young woman who leaves self-imposed isolation to embark on a road trip that leads to lonely love affairs with a male truck driver and a former girlfriend.Read More »
An elderly woman living in Nagasaki, Japan takes care of her four grandchildren for their summer vacation. They learn about the atomic bomb that fell in 1945, and how it killed their grandfather.Read More »
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At the age of 40, Leila has spent her entire life caring for her parents and four brothers. A family that is constantly arguing and under pressure from various debts in the face of sanctions against Iran. While her brothers are struggling to make ends meet, Leila makes a plan.Read More »
Synopsis:
Legendary animators Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata team up to create this nostalgic animated work aimed at adult women, based on a manga by Yuko Tone and Kei Okamoto. The film centers on Taeko, a 27-year-old office worker who is sick of her job and ready for a change. She suddenly recalls the year 1966, when she was young and full of hope. She ventures to rural Yamagata prefecture to visit her sister and her brother-in-law. There she helps with the family farm where they turn saffron flowers into pigment for lipstick. While there she meets a hunky young farmer who’s the cousin of her brother-in-law. She is immediately taken with his hard-working, salt-of-the-earth ways.Read More »
Aniceto is used to being lonely. When Francisca offers him her true love, his personal limitations and little miseries arise.Read More »
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Dog Days is an incredible film, though what it has to offer will certainly not be appreciated by every viewer. This is not to be meant as condescending – I simply mean not everyone will enjoy Ulrich Seidl’s aesthetics which have more than a little in common with Von Trier’s Domga 95 movement. Though Seidl doesn’t explicitly articulate his aesthetics the way Von Trier does, it features the same sense of realism. The characters are mostly non-actors wearing their own clothes and without makeup (except where diegetically necessary). The acting is very raw with many scenes calling for displays of intense emotional pain. There is no non-diegetic music. The film is shot entirely with hand-held DV. The film is, however, very aesthetically appealing. There are many beautiful, sun-drenched compositions, even if all the characters are sweating!Read More »