Drama

‘An expectant mother begins to question the identity of her unborn child’s father after entering into an extramarital affair with her sister’s lover. Marie and Antoine are living together and deeply in love when Marie voices her desire to become a mother. Unfortunately for Marie, Antoine has no interest in starting a family. Shortly thereafter, Marie meets Paul, and coolly rejects his advances. But later, when Paul begins sleeping with Marie’s sister Juliette, Marie realizes that he may in fact be the man of her dreams. Subsequently alternating between Antoine and Paul as she wrestles with her nagging conscience, Marie later learns she is pregnant and realizes that she can’t be certain which of her lovers is the father.” allmovieRead More »

Hungarian filmmaker Károly Makk was an important figure in the development of Hungarian cinema after WWII. He made his directorial debut in 1954. Prior to that, he attended the Budapest Academy of Film Art and then was an assistant director on Geza von Radvanyi’s Somewhere in Europe. While his films of the ‘60s were well respected in Hungary, Makk’s work did not receive international recognition until 1971, when his Love won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes. Since then, he has gained an international reputation. His 1982 film Another Way was the first Eastern European film to deal directly with gay and lesbian concerns. (Mubi)Read More »

Ekkehard Knörer @ jumpcut.de wrote:
Dominik Graf makes movies for TV that are bigger than TV, but in his case this might be not a problem at all. It seems that his films work best as movies made for TV, TV as movies. This is because of the hackneyed stories he and his writers certainly twist and turn – without the intention, however, of turning them into art. Or rather, it is an art that turns its back to TV. This movement of turning its back remains important, though, as a gesture, a gesture that works best at the place it turns away from: TV. Dominik Graf’s art is an art of transcending TV by means of using it, of reproducing it in a radically transformed way. It remains recognizable in the stories, the motives – not the emotions, though.Read More »

Huang, Lin, and Yeh find a dying classmate in an alley and try to find out what brought her to that point.Read More »

The Tower is an animation feature film, a deeply emotional fiction based on true stories of Palestinian refugees living in camps in Lebanon. The film tells the story of Wardi (11) and her family. It’s a story about the unbreakable bond between Wardi and her great-grandfather, and the sacrifice that he makes for her to have chance for a decent life. The love that family members share for each other and the way they keep hope alive is stronger than the difficulty of life in a refugee camp.

The film is based on interviews with Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.Read More »

Russell Edwards at Variety:
Domestic violence gets a compelling once-over in Hong Kong vet Ann Hui’s “Night and Fog,” which rises above its low-budget limitations on the basis of its hot-button topic and stellar performances. Establishing an air of fatalism at the start, this is a distinctly grim companion piece to Hui’s 2008 pic, “The Way We Are,” which offered a more benign portrait of the same Hong Kong town. Hui’s home fanbase should ensure respectable B.O. upon release in May for a subject many would like swept under the carpet. Further afield, the pic will become a fixture of quality fest programs.Read More »

A social worker falls in love with a teenager, and remembers an affair she had with a professor while she was at university.

Quote:
Cosmo Bjorkenheim@screenslate
“I spent a year at the Vidal Sassoon headquarters,” brags Lydia (Brigitte Lin), a sprightly social worker trying to impress Tian-An (David Ng), a stock market whiz kid and aspiring hairstylist. It’s a fitting overture for a movie brimming with striking hair, from Tian-An’s very 1987 mullet to Cai-Wei’s very 1966 bob-with-bangs, from Dr. Zhang’s (George Lam) caterpillar mustache to Lydia’s butch-adjacent boy-cut. It works; Tian-An falls for Lydia, and despite their nearly 20-year age difference, their relationship flourishes in health and happiness—or does it?Read More »

Quote:
In Tokyo in 1888, Kikunosuke Onoue, the adoptive son of an important actor, discovers that he is praised for his acting only because he is his father’s heir, and that the troupe complains how bad he is behind his back. The only person to talk to him honestly about his acting is Otoku, the wet-nurse of his adoptive father’s child. She is fired by the family, and Kikunosuke is forbidden to see her, because of the gossip a relationship with a servant would cause. Kikunosuke falls in love with Otoku, and leaves home to try to make a living on his own merits outside Tokyo. He is eventually joined by Otoku, who encourages him to become a famous actor to regain the recognition of his family.Read More »

Plot

Victory was the first of Joseph Conrad’s novels to be adapted to film, way back in 1919. The earliest talkie version, pointlessly retitled Dangerous Paradise, was lensed in 1930. Finally, Victory was given its best screen treatment in 1940 under the sensitive direction of John Cromwell. Fredric March plays an intellectual British recluse living in the Dutch East Indies. Having vowed to close himself off from the world, March is forced to break this promise to himself when lovely travelling showgirl Betty Field is imperiled by three murderous scavengers. The villains–led by Cedric Hardwicke at his most sardonically scurrilous–switch their attentions from Field to March when they’re led to believe that the recluse is wealthy. The experience shakes the morose March back into the real world, but his regeneration is tinged by tragedy. Not precisely perfect (it’s possible the book was unfilmable), the 1940 Victory is superior to the earlier film versions if for no other reason than its retention of Joseph Conrad’s overall sense of doom and foreboding.Read More »