A movie set in a love hotel, but without a single sex scene? A 59-year-old woman as the heroine? It’s hard to imagine that particular pitch loosening purse strings at major Japanese media companies. A fatally ill teenager? That’s more like it.

Mark Schilling’s review from the Japan Times: No sex at a love hotel
A movie set in a love hotel, but without a single sex scene? A 59-year-old woman as the heroine? It’s hard to imagine that particular pitch loosening purse strings at major Japanese media companies. A fatally ill teenager? That’s more like it.
Director Izuru Kumasaka has incorporated these and other decidedly uncommercial elements into debut feature “Park and Love Hotel” (titled “Asyl” — short for “Asylum” — internationally), which won the Best First Feature Award at this year’s Berlin Film Festival. Read More »

In an extremely poor region in the Northeast of Brazil, a group of soldiers try to stop the population from sacking a food deposit.Read More »

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In the 1800s, American inventor Robert Fulton (Richard Greene) travels from Europe to New York intent on building a steamboat that will revolutionize river travel between waterfront boroughs, but instead gets a rude welcome from a vicious shipyard boss at a local tavern owned by salty beauty Pat O’Day (Alice Faye). Pat takes a shine to Fulton and offers to help him out, but her jealous boyfriend — sailor Charles Brownne (Fred MacMurray) — fears the new vessel will put him out of work.Read More »

Synopsis:
‘Based on the novel “Hotel Meuble” by Thomas Owen, this suspense thriller has a female police inspector Aurelia Maudru living in a baroque apartment house in Brussels, the site of a nasty murder. All the inspector’s neighbors are suspects in the case, and she is hard-put to ferret out the reasons for the foul deed from among the building’s strange inhabitants, including a death-obsessed undertaker and an aging photographer. As the suspense builds to the final scenes, the solution to who did it is as unusual as the residents of the building.’
– Eleanor MannikkaRead More »

The Yellow Scarf is a film by Janusz Morgenstern from 2000. Janusz Gajos plays its protaganist, a man fighting with alcoholism, and is proof that television productions do not have to be worse than feature films.

The protagonist – a middle-aged man at the top of his career – does not have a name, nor a surname; he is a universal character, an everyman that everyone can identify with. On the Christmas Eve he consecutively meets with his employees, his ex-wife, his son and his present partner. His persistently prolonged rambling is meant to postpone the inevitable Christmas visit to his mother.Read More »

Synopsis:
Dan Barr is a flatfoot on the trail of jewel robbers. Eve Fallon is his girl of 5 years. We meet them spitting and sparring, but never doubting they’re in love. Eve is a manicurist, with an eye for news. Soon after we meet her, she’s out of the beauty salon and into the news-room as an ace reporter. With Eve’s help, Dan nabs one of the jewel gang members, Cortig, whose stray bullet killed a baby in the park. A spooked witness and a slick lawyer get Cortig off. Disgusted with the lack of justice, Dan quits the force to find his own justice. Eve, likewise, quits the paper and returns to her job as manicurist. While giving a manicure, Eve unwittingly discovers that a prominent local citizen is the jewel gang’s leader. All the while, Dan is hot on the trail. Their trails merge and the case is solved.Read More »

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During the last days of WWII, an old railroad worker and his assistant guide a train liaded with explosives to the Western front. The journey is a perilous trek through rough terrain, occupied by ruthless German soldiers, desparate deserters, and dangerous gangs seeking easy money.Read More »

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Life in the Argentine pampas is nasty, brutish and short, judging by the intense, compelling drama “La Rabia.” Impressive if challenging-to-watch work by helmer Albertina Carri (“Los rubios,” “Geminis”) observes adultery, violence and animal slaughter largely through the eyes of two disturbed children, while use of jagged animation and luminous landscape shots transmutes the base material into something more sublime. “La Rabia” is certain to sweep through fests, but could have trouble finding distribution in some territories due to unfaked deaths of various animals which, per opening credits, “lived and died as they naturally would.”Read More »

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Bells From The Deep is a fabulous look at the faith and superstitions of human beings living in Russia and Siberia. Herzog quietly observes his subjects and never appears obtrusive. The camera of Jorg Schmit-Reitwen (Heart of Glass, Kaspar Hauser) captures many incredible moments as Herzog and crew move from one subject to another with grace and wonder. Herzog never questions or dissects his subjects rituals or beliefs, rather observes and embraces them for all they are.Read More »