Drama

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The film centers on a brother and sister who live in their family’s traditional Japanese house long after both of their parents have died. Kenichi (Naoto Ogata), who is in his twenties, works in a used bookstore while his sister, Yoko (Urara Awata), who has just finished up high school, dutifully takes care of the house. Since his parents are dead, Kenichi is serious about looking after his underaged sister. He even spurns his girlfriend — another clerk at the same bookstore — because she wants to get married before Yoko comes of age. On Yoko’s end, she longs to break out and be free. One day, she brings home a bumptious freelance photographer (Toru Tezuka) whose crude ways do not impress the conservative Kenichi. In spite of this — of perhaps because of this — Yoko beds him and soon is spending more and more time with the lad. With his orderly life coming apart at the seams, will Kenichi be able to get his sister back? ~ Jonathan CrowRead More »

A young schoolboy tries to help the girl he likes to pass a math test.
Elem Klimov’s student work.Read More »

This revolutionary bombshell by Sarah Maldoror chronicles the awakening of Angola’s independence movement. Based on a true story, Sambizanga follows a young woman as she makes her way from the outskirts of Luanda toward the city’s center looking for her husband after his arrest by the Portuguese authorities—an incident that will ultimately help to ignite a national uprising. Featuring a cast of nonprofessionals—many of whom were themselves involved in anticolonial resistance—this landmark work of political cinema honors the essential roles of women, as well as the hardships they endure, in the global struggle for liberation.Read More »

Harry Kümel’s last major film to-date, a masterpiece of vividly operatic style and fluid camerawork. Despite being based on a 19th century classic Dutch novel, the film is less a traditional costumer (as apparently the critics took it to be) than a flamboyant fantasy on Kümel’s running theme of a vicious cycle of repeated wrong decisions and bad choices that engulf the lead character and eventually destroy her. The film displays the usual influences of von Sternberg, Resnais, Bergman, the Belgian symbolists, but creates a uniquely Kümelian feel and texture of a different reality at one remove from ours.Read More »

The sentimental battle that two men, Dany and Michele, who are fighting to conquer the heart of Manuela, a beautiful and alluring woman who has become the only person who gives meaning to the lives of both men. They are part of the same lineage and must play their cards properly with the intention of falling in love with the girl. Even so, she goes out of her way to downplay the issue every time people ask about her two suitors.Read More »

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A good portion of the film depicts the last days of the Russian Imperial Family in Yekaterinburg, largely narrated by Timofyev’s voice-over from the perspective of Yakov Yurovsky, the chief guard and ultimately executioner of the family. In the scenes, Yurovsky is impersonated by Timofyev (McDowell) and Tsar Nicholas II by Dr. Smirnov (Yankovsky). Other members of the family function merely as background, with few or no lines.Read More »

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Shinnosuke (Kiyohiko Shibukawa) and Misawa (Keishi Nagatsuka) are joint managers of a Bonsai shop. Suddenly Shinnosuke’s childhood friend Haruko (Mami Nakamura) turns up. She has split up with her boyfriend and finds herself out on the streets. Shinnosuke starts to like Haruko and really wants to cheer her up, but he can’t manage to express his real feelings or stop picking up other women. Misawa is dumbfounded by Shinnosuke’s behavior but also has complex feelings of love for his friend. Haruko realizes that Shinnosuke is falling in love with her but she pretends not to notice in order to keep the peace between the friends. Then one day Shinnosuke suddenly blurts out his feelings for Haruko, but she has just hooked up with another man. Haruko moves out of the shop and in with the man, but then his wife returns and Haruko finds herself out on the streets again. Shinnosuke has to start cheering her up all over again.Read More »

A composition of symbolic, surreal and almost mystic images.Read More »

Two young siblings ended up living on the streets, having nothing left but their love. It’s a story about survival, second chances and second falls.Read More »