Quote:
Gabriele Muccino is an Italian filmmaker (“The Last Kiss,” “Ecco Fatto”) who had a high-profile moment of going Hollywood. He was handed the plum of directing two Will Smith vehicles in a row, “The Pursuit of Happyness” (2006) and “Seven Pounds” (2007), and he was able to bring his earthy intelligence and humanity to at least one of them. (The less said about “Seven Pounds” the better.) One way to talk about Muccino’s new film, “Summertime,” which premiered tonight at the 73rd Venice International Film Festival, is to say that he is once again an “Italian filmmaker.” But that wouldn’t be quite accurate. “Summertime” is more like an American film embedded in an Italian one.Read More »

Veteran Hong Kong screenwriter Ivy Ho (Divergence) makes his feature directorial debut with this tale about a clandestine romance between a marketing secretary and a married manager. No one in the office suspects that Pearl (Karena Lin) and Tom (Ekin Cheng) are having an affair, not even their close friends Jewel (Chucky Woo) and John (Derek Tsang). As the story begins shifting between past and present, we come to understand just how the affair came to be, and where it could be heading in the future.
~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie GuideRead More »

New, restored high-definition digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Following the collapse of his clan, an unemployed samurai (Tatsuya Nakadai) arrives at the manor of Lord Iyi, begging to be allowed to commit ritual suicide on the property. Iyi’s clansmen, believing the desperate ronin is merely angling for a new position, try to force his hand and get him to eviscerate himself—but they have underestimated his beliefs and his personal brand of honor. Winner of the Cannes Film Festival’s Special Jury Prize, Harakiri, directed by Masaki Kobayashi is a fierce evocation of individual agency in the face of a corrupt and hypocritical system.Read More »

A unique look at the history of 20th century France as illustrated in popular culture, Le Bal is set in a Parisian dance hall and features no narrative, no dialogue, and no continuous characters. The film moves from one dance number to the next, as the music reflects the political and cultural tenor of the times, from the Popular Front of 1936 to the German Occupation of World War II, on to the breezy openness of the post-war era and the open rebellion and turmoil of May 1968, and finally closing in the early 1980s. A troupe of dancers portrays all the film’s characters, with make-up and costume changes (as well as appropriate period music) indicating the different time periods. Directed by Ettore Scola, Le Bal was based on a stage production that was a great success in Europe.
— Mark DemingRead More »

Four prominent men take under their wing a young Parisian flower girl.
With the help of her Pygmalions she becomes a famous cabaret singer. She falls in love with a charming gambler, Henri, who becomes her first lover. Abandoned by him, and after years spent in Russia with Prince Vladimir, Frou-Frou returns to France, where she has to rebuild her own life by singing in second-order theaters.
She then meets and has a relationship with a painter, Michel, by whom she has a daughter. After Michel’s suicide she devotes herself to her.Read More »

From imdb:
She caught his eye. He was caught off guard. Now Daryl Allen is caught in the line of fire. After six years behind bars, a reformed street hood(Bokeem Woodbine) puts down his gun and struggles to go legit. But when a beautiful, mysterious young woman gets him involved with a bag of stolen diamonds, corrupt cops and a Jamaican mobster, his dreams for an honest future are shattered by a hail of gunfire. Snoop Doggy Dogg and LL Cool J cameo in this gritty action-thriller, from the producers of “Menace II Society” and “Tales from the Hood”.Read More »

Plot
An early CHC melodrama produced by Lumiton in 1943. Based on the British play Sixteen by Aimée & Philip Stuart.

A naive teenager faces a distressing reality when her widowed mother finds love anew 12 years after her first marriage ended.Read More »

BEDEVIL is the stunning debut feature from Tracey Moffatt (NIGHT CRIES, NICE COLORED GIRLS) and the first feature directed by an Australian Aboriginal woman. Inspired by ghost stories she heard as a child from both her extended Aboriginal and Irish Australian families, Tracey Moffatt has constructed a sublime trilogy in which characters are haunted by the past and bewitched by memories. All three stories are set in Moffatt’s highly stylized, hyper-real, hyper-imaginary Australian landscape. Read More »

A beautiful executive lady at an advertising company realizes with horror that her vagina has started to talk and is leading her to indecent sexual acts. This was the first exclusive hardcore feature film produced and released in France to meet international success. It is based on a significant tradition in literature and art of talking vaginas, dating back to the ancient folklore motif of the vagina loquens, and in particular a story by Denis Diderot (1713–1784). Among future film makers involved in this production are Francis Leroi (producer), Didier Philippe-Gérard (script and actor), Gérard Kikoïne (editor) and Pierre B. Reinhard (assistant editor).Read More »