Drama

A harsh wintery scene on the Turkish Black Sea coast. Denise, a foreign botanist, has ended up here for research purposes. She stoically trudges through water knee-deep to get to the remote site where she cultivates her plants. With the same resolve and fearlessness, she also makes her way through the night to the secluded cabin where she meets her lover Hamit. He is a have-not who has only remained in this desolate region following a failed attempt to set up a livelihood abroad. And because of his relationship with Denise. It’s a dilemma, since Hamit cannot let her know that he works as a human trafficker, making a living by helping others flee to Europe. But Denise is tired of his mysterious behaviour. When she is called back to her home country and one of Hamit’s jobs spirals out of control, he makes a decision that ends in catastrophe.Read More »

A disabled child of separated parents gets caught up in police espionage due to his uncanny ability to remember license plate numbers.Read More »

TV production of August Strindberg’s great novel ‘Inferno’ purportedly depicting his own mental disintegration.

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The narrator (ostensibly Strindberg, although his narrative variably coheres with and diverges from historical truth), spends most of the novel in Paris, isolated from his wife (Frida Uhl), children, and friends. He associates with a circle of Parisian artists and writers (including Paul Gauguin and Edvard Munch), but often fears they are ridiculing and persecuting him. In his isolation, Strindberg successfully attempts alchemical experiments, and has his work published in prominent journals. He fears, however, that his secrets will be stolen, and his persecution mania worsens, believing that his enemies are attacking him with ‘infernal machines.’ He also dabbles in the occult, at one point casting a black magic spell on his own distanced daughter.Read More »

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A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE is a love story of a troubled marriage between a working class man, Nick (played movingly by Peter Falk), and his wife Mabel (played with brilliant attention to emotional nuance by Gena Rowlands). Mabel appears to be experiencing a breakdown, though there is not much difference between her normal and abnormal behaviour. The film explores the impact of her fragility, neediness, and shifts of feeling on Nick, their three children, relatives, and friends.Read More »

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Fired from his part-time job in a restaurant kitchen for absenteeism, rookie boxer Tamura has a lot to be angry and frustrated about in his life. But things start to change when he’s approached at the gym by the artist Hattori, who wants to use him as the new model for the manga character Yellow Kid. Yellow Kid first appeared in an American comic in the late 19th century, and Hattori revived him as an older character a century later. What makes the proposition intriguing for Tamura is that the first model for the revived character was former WBA Lightweight champ Mikuni Tokio, the man who inspired him to take up boxing. And Mikuni now lives as a virtual recluse in what seems to be a very fraught relationship with his girlfriend Mana. And Mana, now pregnant, used to be in a relationship with the artist Hattori… — Vancounver International Film FestivalRead More »

Synopsis:
‘In World War I, Brodie, a successful novelist and soldier, is pronounced dead and given a new identity by the Secret Service. Sent on an espionage mission in Switzerland, he is teamed with a fake ‘wife’, Elsa and an assassin, the General.’
– BFI ScreenonlineRead More »

Synopsis
A psychological study of a woman who chooses solitude as an escape from the duplicity and emotional barrenness of the men around her.Read More »

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The most electrifyingly timely movie playing in New York was made in 1965. Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers is famous, but for some time it’s been available only in washed-out prints with poorly translated, white-on-white subtitles. The newly translated and subtitled 35-millimeter print at Film Forum is presumably the version that was privately screened in August for military personnel by the Pentagon as a field guide to fighting terrorism. Former national-security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski volunteered this blurb: “If you want to understand what’s happening right now in Iraq, I recommend The Battle of Algiers.” I wonder if these politicos are aware that Pontecorvo’s epic was once used by the Black Panthers as a training film? In fact, not much in the current Iraq situation is historically comparable to the late-fifties Algerian struggle for independence dramatized in The Battle of Algiers, but its anatomy of terror remains unsurpassed—and, woefully, ever fresh.Read More »

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Saori has always disliked her gay father and has lived her life denying his existence. One rainy day she receives a visit at work from a young man called Haruhiko. He tells her that her father is dying of cancer and that the nursing home he operates is in danger of closing. Out of curiosity and debt, Saori goes to visit her father at the House of Himiko, a nursing home for gay old men. It is a sad place but filled with sardonic good cheer. Surprised but pleased, Haruhiko shows her around. The old men who live there are delighted. Saori is at first repelled by the relationship between Haruhiko and Himiko but she soon sees that their feelings are genuine. She begins taking an interest in keeping the nursing home alive…Read More »