Plot:
Julia (Cyndi Williams) works in a bingo-hall near her home, in a suburb of Houston, Texas. A haggard-looking mother of two daughters, Julia is perhaps in her mid-30s but could pass for a decade older. Her husband Bobby (Kenneth Wayne Bradley) is sympathetic and attentive, but Julia is rapidly reaching the end of her tether. Christmas is looming; she’s underpaid and overworked; is underappreciated at home; conscious that she’s getting no younger, no thinner, no happier. Read More »
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Lunch Break features 42 workers as they take their midday break in a corridor stretching nearly the entire shipyard. Contrary to her previous films, the camera is untethered and, as it slowly moves down the corridor, we experience what was a brief interval in the workday schedule expanded into a sustained gaze. Lined with lockers, the hallway seems not only an industrial nexus but also a social one, its surfaces containing a history of self-expression and customization.Read More »
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Sharon Lockhart’s film Rudzienko was shot over two years in collaboration with the residents of the Youth Center for Sociotherapy in Rudzienko, Poland. Building on the relationship she established in 2009 with Milena, who later moved to the center, Lockhart conceived of a series of workshops to empower the young women. The group worked together to develop dialog and movements to be enacted on camera based on their collective activities. The resulting film features a range of conversations, from the philosophical to everyday teenage concerns, and depicts actions both theatrical and mundane that voice the girls’ rich humanity. The Polish-language film proposes an innovative approach to the relationship between image and language by offsetting the spoken conversations with their written translations. (lockhartstudio.com)Read More »
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With the recent passing of stalwart science fiction / horror scribe Nigel Kneale, it seems only appropriate to cover an unjustly hard-to-find title Mr. Kneale worked his unique sort of magic upon. Adapted by Kneale from Susan Hill’s 1983 novel and directed by Herbert Wise, The Woman in Black is a genuinely frightening, “old school” ghost story in the mold of tales told by M.R. James and Daphne Du Maurier.Read More »
A black hairstylist has sex with his female customers, and tries to keep the Mafia from taking over his business.Read More »
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This short film by American director Ramin Bahrani (Goodbye Solo) traces the epic, existential journey of a plastic bag (voiced by Werner Herzog) searching for its lost maker, the woman who took it home from the store and eventually discarded it. Along the way, it encounters strange creatures, experiences love in the sky, grieves the loss of its beloved maker, and tries to grasp its purpose in the world.Read More »
Plot
A crooked cop tries to stick up a drug dealer in Central Park, and is shot dead. The drug dealer is brought to trial, but Weller becomes convinced that he didn’t fire first, and that the incident is the tip of an iceberg of corruption in the police department. His friend Elliott becomes convinced of the same thing, and together they work inside and outside the law to help the defendant beat a murder rap and expose other corrupt cops. Weller has some nice moments in the courtroom, although his legal style is so informal and disorganized it’s hard to believeRead More »
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This informative documentary focuses on the Dani people of New Guinea, and in particular tribal members Weyak and Pua. Weyak, an adult, protects the land his tribe lives on from other tribes and outsiders. Their territory was then one of the few places not colonized by Europeans. Pua is a young boy who cares for the village’s pigs. Battles take place frequently between the various Dani tribes. When someone is killed, the death must be avenged, and the fighting continues in a deadly cycleRead More »
Plot: This is the sixth movie in the Boston Blackie series. An ex-thief helps some fellow ex-cons adjust to life as defense workers, only to get involved with a robbery investigation.Read More »