Drama

  • Ira Sachs – The Delta (1996)

    1991-2000DramaIra SachsQueer Cinema(s)USA

    Quote:
    Set in Memphis, “The Delta,” Ira Sachs’ feature directorial debut, is an original but severely flawed gay-themed drama about the complex relationship between a white suburban adolescent and a Vietnamese immigrant. This small-scale, intimate picture displays a fresh cinematic voice, but suffers from narrative problems and ultra-modest tech credits that will damage its theatrical prospects, possibly limiting its showing to the gay and regional festival circuits.Read More »

  • Jacques Rivette – Histoire de Marie et Julien AKA The Story of Marie and Julien (2003)

    Jacques Rivette2001-2010DramaFrance

    Julien lives alone with his cat. He dreams of Marie, and a few minutes later, he sees her on the street and makes a date. He asks her to move in with him, and she does. Her boyfriend is dead, the rest of her past a mystery. Although they quickly seem to fall in love, she sometimes pulls away suddenly from Julien, is distant, and spends the night in a hotel. She also dreads something imminent and warns Julien that if he missteps, he will lose her and all memory of her. Julien responds by digging into her past: what explains her remodeling an upstairs garret room, her nightly dreams, her fears? What can Julien, now desperately in love, do when he learns why? Can either rescue the other?Read More »

  • Christopher Munch – Color of a Brisk and Leaping Day (1996)

    1991-2000Christopher MunchDramaUSA

    Quote:
    Winner of the Best Cinematography Award at the Sundance Film Festival, the eloquent historical drama Color of a Brisk and Leaping Day has been acclaimed as “a film touched with greatness” (Village Voice) whose “very existence vindicates the dream of an art house independent cinema” (Film Comment).Read More »

  • Peter Greenaway – Prospero’s Books (1991)

    1991-2000DramaFantasyPeter GreenawayUnited Kingdom

    Quote:
    Peter Greenaway’s “Prospero’s Books” is not a movie in the sense that we usually employ the word. It’s an experiment in form and content. It is likely to bore most audiences, but will enchant others — especially those able to free themselves from the notion that movies must tell stories. This film should be approached like a record album or an art book. Each “page” is there to be studied in its complexity and richness, while on the soundtrack we hear one of the great voices in theater history, John Gielgud’s.Read More »

  • Jean Aurel – Lamiel (1967)

    1961-1970DramaFranceJean AurelRomance

    Synopsis:
    ‘Lamiel (Anna Karina) is a poor orphan girl who climbs her way to the social elite in this 19th-century costume drama. A doctor (Michel Bouquet) lives vicariously through Anna as he oversees the progress of his female protege. Lamiel finds love with a young thief who steals into her bedroom after her marriage to a penniless count (Jean-Clause Brialy), and the two experience a romantic rendezvous of forbidden love after Lamiel goes from being a poor peasant woman to living a life of comparative luxury.’
    – Dan Pavlides (AllMovie)Read More »

  • Rea Tajiri – Strawberry Fields (1997)

    Drama1991-2000Rea TajiriUSA

    Amid the political turbulence and heady counterculture of early 1970s, Vietnam-era America, Irene (Suzy Nakamura), a rebellious sixteen-year-old Japanese American girl, leaves home and takes off on a road trip, heading west with her boyfriend and a pair of political activists. Her journey takes her on an unexpected detour of self-discovery, however, when she decides to visit the internment camp where her parents were incarcerated decades earlier. Drawing on her own family’s history, director Rea Tajiri fashions a profoundly cathartic look at the ways in which the traumas of America’s past echo into the present.Read More »

  • Paulus Manker – Der Kopf des Mohren AKA The Moor’s Head (1995)

    1991-2000ArthouseAustriaDramaPaulus Manker

    Quote:
    A family man slowly becomes dangerously obsessive and paranoid in this grim Austrian drama that contains a graphically violent ending. As the story begins, George, an engineer who works at a science facility, has a normal happy life with his wife and kids. They are in the process of building a new house when George learns that a nearby chemical plant has been leaking dangerous gas into the air. This causes George to begin suffering from terrifying hallucinations. His paranoia increases every time he hears another report of violence, crime, war, or any other social problems on the news. After learning that his company may be overtaken by a larger corporation, George decides to send his family on an Italian vacation while he stays home and turns their apartment into a strange refuge from the terrible world he knows is coming.Read More »

  • Aleksey German Jr. – Delo AKA House Arrest (2021)

    2021-2030Aleksey German Jr.DramaRussia

    Quote:
    David, a university professor, takes to social media to criticize his city’s administration. But instead of the mayor’s dodgy dealings being investigated, David is himself accused of embezzlement and placed under house arrest. Despite the overbearing surveillance, double-crossing acquaintances, and growing media interest, David remains defiant and will not apologise. With the court case drawing ever nearer, does David have any hope of winning this battle against Goliath?Read More »

  • Robert Kramer – Cités de la plaine AKA Cities of the Plain (2000)

    Robert Kramer1991-2000DocumentaryDramaFrance

    The final film from expatriate American filmmaker Robert Kramer, who died in France in 1999. Kramer and collaborators tell the somber life story of Ben. After leaving his homeland as a youth, he is greeted in France by menial jobs in industry. In time, he opens a fruit market, finds a wife, fathers a child, and has it all come crashing down when he learns his mother is in danger back home. Upon his return to France, he finds his life in ruin.Read More »

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