Stuart Paton’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1916) is an epic retelling of Jules Verne’s classic novel, shot on location in the Bahaman Islands. Allen Holubar stars as the domineering Captain Nemo, who rescues the passengers of an American naval vessel after ramming them with his iron-clad, steampunk submarine, The Nautilus. Incorporating material from Verne’s Mysterious Island, the film also follows the adventures of a group of Civil War soldiers whose hot-air balloon crash lands on an exotic island, where they encounter the untamed “Child of Nature” (Jane Gail). Calling itself “The First Submarine Photoplay Ever Filmed,” the film is highlighted by stunning underwater photography (engineered by Ernest and George Williamson), including an underwater funeral and a deep sea diver’s battle with a giant cephalopod. In honor of the film’s extraordinary technical and artistic achievement, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was added to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.Read More »

Synopsis: In the northeast region of Brazil, the concentration of land and the droughts victimize a peasant family, which leaves once again in search of a place to survive.Read More »

A sequel to ‘LAST BUS’, this semi-dramatised documentary looks at what the subsequent history might have been of the boys in the gang that attacked the conductor in Last Bus, what might have caused the boys to behave in the way they did, and what the nature of their punishment will be.Read More »

The Nakagin Capsule Tower, designed by Kisho Kurokawa and completed in 1972, is an exemplary work of post-war Japanese architectural movement Metabolism. Today, however, this historic building is in danger of demolition. Why do we need to preserve a building? What are the difficulties of preservation? Is demolition a tragedy or a natural phenomenon for modern architecture? Tracing the history of postwar Japanese architecture and reviewing the characteristics of the Nakagin Capsule Tower, this documentary examines the meaning of preservation and demolition from various points of view. The documentary includes interviews with residents of the Nakagin Capsule Tower, an architectural historian, a former Kurokawa office architect who was in charge of the Nakagin Capsule Tower project, Kurokawa’s son, and leading architects Arata Isozaki and Toyo Ito.Read More »

Jane Campion directs this notable adaptation of the Henry James novel, The Portrait of a Lady of 1881.
Independent woman Isabel Archer (Nicole Kidman) refuses two suitors, Lord Warburton (Richard E. Grant) and Caspar Goodwood (Viggo Mortensen), when they propose marriage. Instead she travels to Florence, where family friend Madame Merle introduces her to Gilbert Osmond (John Malkovich) and his daughter Pansy. Soon Isabel finds herself falling for the mysterious Osmond. They are engaged to be married within three months, but much unhappiness lies ahead.Read More »

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An undead teenage girl befriends a blind boy that she meets in a forest she haunts and hunts in. Both have been victims of unimaginable abuse, and each finds solace in the other. There may be a chance of light at the end of their tunnel, but it will come with a body count.Read More »

Shortly after WW2, a military transport plane carrying an assortment of passengers crashes into the South China Sea forcing the survivors to await their rescue into a life-raft.Read More »

Leading very separate lives, Christy and her boyfriend Buddy live together in her parent’s basement with their baby Mikey. As Christy, a waitress and aspiring writer, and Buddy, a plumber’s apprentice, struggle with the realities of their lives, questions are formed about obligations, consequences, and all the identities we employ to get through the day.Read More »

Review (Geraldine Bloustien, ‘Jane Campion: memory, motif and music’. Continuum)
Passionless Moments, although possibly one of Campion’s most whimsical pieces, has all
the hallmarks of her later films. It is concerned with the insignificant, unsolicited
moments of daydreaming when one is caught almost unawares. The film consists of ten
self-contained vignettes of the sudden thoughts of ten very different individuals.
Classical Hollywood cinema concerns itself with the heightened moments of passion of
individuals with whom we identify in some way because of their bravery, humour, innocence,
heroic qualities and so on. In traditional feature films and documentaries we are usually
introduced to the characters’ backgrounds, motives and problems. However, in Passionless
Moments the characters serve only to illustrate some quirky aspect of human nature and
relationships.Read More »