Drama

Museum of Modern Art writes:
In a gender twist on the “meddling mother-in-law,” Nick Rocco’s old-world father, Vittorio Rocco (Salvatore Baccaloni), can’t help insinuating himself into his son and daughter-in-law’s lives. Nick and Emily are just a few days away from the birth of their first child and Vittorio—a skilled handyman—is called in to help with repairs in their new home. Nick is reluctant to rely upon his meddling dad, but the repairs have to be made before the baby comes home. Baccaloni was an opera singer and member of the La Scala Opera in Milan.Read More »

Synopsis:
‘Hannes Balla is the foreman of a group of building construction workers at the large construction site “Schkona” in the GDR. They spend most of their time working hard and drinking harder – to some they are fun, to some they are a public nuisance. Things get more complicated when the good-looking Kati Klee is employed as a young technician, and the ambitious new Party Secretary, Werner Horrath, aims to boost work efficiency and downsize Balla’s ego. Kati slowly warms up to Werner, but is also attracted to Balla’s nonconformity. A contemporary movie about work, love, and everything in between.’
– c.winterRead More »

Storyline
Vittorio Borghi, a middle-aged journalist torn between young mistress and wife he no longer loves, returns to his hometown Mantua. There he remembers childhood in the era of fascism, war and ghost of another woman he never forgot.Read More »

Synopsis by Clarke Fountain
Coup Pour Coup is a film about a worker’s strike at a textile plant, and is written and enacted by the actual striking workers. This film was a collaborative and collective effort. Videotapes of upcoming scenes were discussed by the workers, and camera angles as well as dramatic refinements were agreed on before any film was exposed. Given that the film presents the worker’s point of view and is a largely amateur effort, reviewers found it surprisingly effective as a dramatic piece. One interesting feature of the film, and of the strike itself, is that it was organized and led by women. While there had been male union leaders, they were bypassed or ousted for their lack of leadership, understanding, or negotiating skills.Read More »

A few days of a dandyish French intellectual in his late 20s named Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Leaud), who’s living with and supported by his lover, Marie (Bernadette Lafont); she’s in her mid-30s and runs a small boutique. In the first scene he borrows a neighbor’s car and tracks down a former girlfriend, Gilberte (Isabelle Weingarten), who’s just started a new semester at the Sorbonne, and tries to persuade her to marry him, only to discover that she’s just agreed to marry someone else. (We and Alexandre briefly glimpse Gilberte with her husband, played by Eustache, toward the end of the film, in the liquor section of a department store.) After hanging out with an equally idle friend (Jacques Renard) at the Deux Magots cafe, Alexandre follows a young woman after she leaves a nearby table, asks for her phone number, and scores; the remainder of the film is devoted to his courting of her.Read More »

From The Guardian
Filthy is right. This is a film to counter-balance any lingering misapprehension that the countryside is a place of picturesque tranquillity – and, thank heavens, it is not your everyday Britpic. Andrew Kötting’s second feature, adapted from Zola, is a gallery of bucolic grotesques set in a remote rural community in the early 20th century, long before EU subsidies, mad cows and agribusiness (but not before foot and mouth). The screenplay was written by Kötting and comic Sean Lock.Read More »

Let’s Make the Teacher Have a Miscarriage Club is a Japanese movie written and directed by Eisuke Naito. It was screened at the Nippon Connection Film Festival on April 30, 2011 and released by Spotted Productions in Japan on May 26, 2012.

Based on true events, the movie revolves around a group of junior high school students who attempt to make their pregnant teacher suffer a miscarriage. Mizuki (Kaori Kobayashi) is the ringleader of the group as she and her friends come up with a bunch of sadistic “pranks” to play against their homeroom teacher Sawako.Read More »

Quote:
As Another Girl, Another Planet’s hapless protagonist Bill (Barry Sherman) thinks back on relationships with girlfriends past, the Pixelvision might be read as the haziness of his memory drifting away from romantic love. As the characters break out into poetic litanies about pain and desire (“I wasn’t used to being happy. It was somehow exhausting,”) music becomes the tool to express their feelings. As one relationship crumbles apart, Nick Cave and the Bad Seed’s ferocious “The Mercy Seat” drives hard through the scene as Bill fiddles with lit matches. During a tender kiss between boy and girl, “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” opines in the background.Read More »

Synopsis
He can knock out an amazing speech on the American soul to dumbfounded schoolchildren, meddle in his fellow citizens’ lives, or make his 18-year-old daughter swear that never would she leave the family home. This is Simon Wolberg, mayor of a small provincial town, madly in love with his wife, an overwhelming father and provocative son! This man bears his family’s obsession, which drives him to put these ties to the test, verify their strength and fragility…Read More »