synopsis
Theresa (Diane Keaton) is a dedicated school-teacher of deaf children during the day. Once she moves out of her parents’ place, she chooses to spend her evenings seeing adult films, cruising bars, and looking for abusive men with whom she can engage in ever more violent sexual encounters. She furthers her self-destruction by a rather aimless intake of drugs and alcohol, leading to both demeaning and dangerous situations, completely at odds with her daytime commitments. In need of a father figure, she makes herself available to numerous men and eventually pays a price for her hedonistic behaviour.Read More »

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Based on a play by V. Rusov, this Russian film is a love story set during the early years of WWII. Widowed by the war, Tatyana Samoylova reluctantly marries her late husband’s cousin, hoping that he’ll be a surrogate for her fallen spouse.Read More »

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Almost a decade before Imamura’s Vengeance Is Mine, Shindo crafted this fascinating documentary-inspired portrait of a serial killer that drew upon the actual events of a troubled nineteen-year old who went on a murderous rampage, killing four people with a pistol stolen from an US navel base. Shindo’s meticulous research into the background of the anti-social youth, including extensive interviews with his mother and acquaintances, brings a rare authenticity of unexpected detail to a film that also reads as an astute critique of American imperialism and reckless tabloid journalism.Read More »

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The definitive film on the history of the toe-tapping, foot-stomping music of French Southwest Louisiana. Includes many Cajun and Zydeco greats, featuring Michael Doucet and Beausoleil, Clifton Chenier, Marc and Ann Savoy, D.L. Menard, and many othersRead More »

Born on the fourth of July, 1900, the future holds unlimited potential for newborn John Sims. But dreams soon fade with the death of his father when John is but a lad. Like many before him, John sets out to make his mark in New York City, but ends up a faceless worker (#137) in a large office of a large business. Still he is happy with his fate and soon meets a young woman named Mary on a blind double date. Things take their course and they soon marry and live in a small apartment. Soon John is bickering with Mary and finds that he has no love for the in-laws. When the marriage looks like a bust, he finds that Mary is with child and he stays. After 5 years, he has a son and a daughter and the same dead end job. When tragedy strikes, John must find the conviction to continue or lose what little he has left.Read More »

Synopsis
A father-daughter relationship is melded, strained, and deepened by a shared angst: the grandmother in the family left her home by train and never arrived at her destination. The father Pierre (Jean Rochefort) is distraught that the police could basically dismiss the issue as inexplicable, and he decides to retrace on foot the voyage his mother should have made. His daughter Amelie (Camille de Casablanca) goes with him, and the story evolves as the two walk along the train tracks, searching in the nearby terrain and bushes for any evidence that might point to what happened. Along the way, their once antagonistic and distanced relationship (Amelie is a student, her father is a picture-restorer) begins to work itself out…Read More »

from the DVD:
Greg Watkins’ romantic black comedy A SIGN FROM GOD depicts a semi-fictional day in the life of independent filmmaker Caveh (Caveh Zahedi) and his girlfriend Laura (Laura Macias) as they struggle with a series of challenges and accidents (including eviction from their apartment, possibly pregnancy, and a car crash) while desperately seeking a sign from God about the future of their troubled relationship. Laura’s increasingly pessimistic attitude — she perceives that the cascading negative events of their lives portend a negative “sign” about the relationship — is offset by Caveh’s serene and abiding faith that everything happens for a reason…Read More »

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Flushed with the success of his Elvira Madigan, Swedish director Bo Widerberg concocted another story of teenaged love juxtaposed with social upheaval in Adalen 31. The title refers to the 1931 worker’s strike against the Adalen paper mill in Northern Sweden. As the strikers debate whether or not to use violence in pressing their complaint, the daughter of the factory owner (Marie De Geer) is impregnated by the son of a worker (Peter Schildt). The strike is “resolved” in a bloody confrontation between the laborers and government troops, resulting in the death of the boy–and, on a greater scale, the collapse of Sweden’s Conservative Government. The girl ultimately opts for an abortion, which partially explains why Adalen 31 was originally given an “X” rating by the then-conservative Motion Picture Association of America.Read More »

from rogerrobert.com
The hero of the film (Yves Montand) is a Spanish citizen who has been engaged ever since the war’s end in a variety of underground anti-Franco movements. He is part of a network that moves people and information in and out of Spain, prepares reports, calls general strikes, prints propaganda newspapers and does everything else that seems to be indicated. But the members of the underground are weary; they subscribe to political dogmas that no longer seem relevant, except to a few of them; they can show few tangible results.Read More »