Fantasy

Quote:
Back in the summer of 2004, a friend from a website I used to review for encouraged me to review Stephen Chow’s movie Shoalin Soccer. Biting the bate, I decided to purchase the disc and give it a shot. I was not disappointed one bit. It was one of the most entertaining movies I reviewed that year. When it was announced that another of Stephen Chow’s movies would be released in the form of Kung Fu Hustle, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. After viewing this on DVD, I came to the conclusion this man is absolutely brilliant, in that he was excellent at using special effects and wire work in such a unique and interesting way. Instead of using special effects as an integral part of the story, he uses it to enhance the comedy, to create these outrageous scenarios that are silly and humorous, but at the same time interesting and ingenious.Read More »

A violent, guitar-playing, electrically charged boxer faces off against an electronic wizard half-merged with a metallic Buddha.Read More »

Adolpho Arrietta was a major figure in the new cinemas that appeared in the sixties and seventies in various countries. Thus he became one of the fundamental film directors in the history of Spanish cinema. As with Buñuel, a long exile seems to have been the condition that allowed his work to keep up with the most important trends in the cinema of his era. Throughout the seventies he produced a series of “punk à la française” films, as Severo Sarduy called them, which for their originality and influence are among the most important in French cinema of that decade. In 1989 he returned to Madrid, and despite noteable intervals, which other Spanish film directors of his generation also experienced, his work proceeded. Alone, like in the era of El crimen de la pirindola but with a digital camera, he produced what for the moment is his latest film: Vacanza permanente (2006).Read More »

Thomas Lemercier on Cineuropa wrote:
Pierre is a Parisian in his fourties whose life consists of his morning coffee in a run-down apartment, his phones, his keys, his computer on the train, page 9 of the fourth version of a file, then a demonstration of robotics to some clients, in English. But through the window, are emerging the outlines of a new journey, of a recovery (he does not yet know how radical it will be), of his existence. These outlines are the snow-capped peaks and the glacier where Thomas Salvador sets the scene (and a tent) for his second feature film, The Mountain [+], revealed in the Directors’ Fortnight at the 75th Cannes Film Festival. Read More »

Set during a smallpox epidemic in the village of Gimli, Manitoba near the turn of the century, TALES FROM THE GIMLI HOSPITAL (1988) is a dreamlike, elliptical film which explores the jealousy and madness instilled in two men who share a hospital room “in a Gimli we no longer know.” Zeitgeist Films and Films We Like in Canada present a brand new 4K remastering of TALES FROM THE GIMLI HOSPITAL REDUX by Guy Maddin, which had its world premiere at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). The new 4K digital remaster was supervised by Guy Maddin using original printing elements provided by the TIFF Cinematheque Library and includes the replacement of a long-lost scene. Maddin’s highly acclaimed first feature, released in 1988, is now regarded as one of the true cult hits on the midnight movie circuit.Read More »

Haunted by the indelible mark of loss and silent grief, sad-eyed María and her taciturn husband, Ingvar, seek solace in back-breaking work and the demanding schedule at their sheep farm in the remote, harsh, wind-swept landscapes of mountainous Iceland. Then, with their relationship hanging on by a thread, something unexplainable happens, and just like that, happiness blesses the couple’s grim household once more. Now, as a painful ending gives birth to a new beginning, Ingvar’s troubled brother, Pétur, arrives at the farmhouse, threatening María and Ingvar’s delicate, newfound bliss. But, nature’s gifts demand sacrifice. How far are ecstatic María and Ingvar willing to go in the name of love?Read More »

Irvine Welsh adapts three stories from his ‘Acid House’ collection for the screen. In ‘The Granton Star
Cause’, Boab Coyle (Stephen McCole) is happy playing for his local football team and dating girlfriend
Evelyn. When he loses both, however, along with his job and home, he turns to drink – only to meet God
(Maurice Roëves) in a pub. ‘A Soft Touch’ tells the story of Johnny (Kevin McKidd), an easily
manipulated man who loses his girlfriend to violent and psychotic neighbour Larry (Gary McCormack).
In ‘The Acid House’, raver Coco (Ewen Bremner) finds that he has swapped places with Tom, newborn
baby of middle class couple Rory (Martin Clunes) and Jenny, after an acid trip.Read More »

The first puppet kinescope in the world. It is based on the famous poetic comedy by William Shakespeare. Three worlds meet in this story: the noble world of three Athens couples, a common popular world of tradesmen amateur theatre and a fairy-tale happiness of magic creatures as elves and nymphs. The film is considered the most remarkable Jirí Trnka work and a milestone in the history of the world animation.Read More »

Laarmans (Romain De Coninck) is an old man, and finds his family life claustrophobic. Most evenings, he escapes the confines of the house and wanders around Antwerp’s red-light district. Three Afghani men who have become sailors approach him one evening, asking him to help them find a certain girl. But it seems they were given a false address. In the middle of the night all of them are searching and hoping. As he wanders around the city with the three sailors, he fantasizes about what this girl must be like…Read More »