This historical-biographical film begins in the first days of November 1918 on the western front. News comes to the soldiers of a revolutionary uprising in Kiel. Young Thälmann, a soldier against his will, would like to join the expanding conflict on the side of his comrades in Hamburg. As the revolution becomes threatened by the betrayal of the right-wing Social Democrats and the splintering of the working class, he nevertheless tries unremittingly to unite the workers. The reactionaries grow ever stronger and the neediness of ordinary people multiplies. In this dire situation, the Hamburg police commissioner would like to block the unloading of a ship full of provisions that were sent from Petrograd as a message of solidarity. But Thälmann prevails in unloading it. The high point and conclusion of the first part of the Thälmann films is established at the Hamburg Uprising in October 1923.Read More »

The second part of the Ernst Thaelmann films encompasses the time period between 1930 and Thaelmann’s murder in 1944. It shows Thaelmann’s battle to achieve a united front with all German workers against the National Socialists, his arrest following Hitler’s seizure of power and the eleven years of his incarceration, in which he unwaveringly clings to his beliefs until his death. An attempt to free him on the part of his comrades ends disastrously, and a corrupt offer of freedom from Goering himself receives Thaelmann’s refusal. Read More »

Synopsis:
Ajami is an area of Jaffa where Arabs, Palestinians, Jews and Christians try to live together in an atmosphere that is -to say the least – electric. Omar, an Israeli Arab, struggles to save his family from elimination by a gang of extortionists. He also courts a beautiful Christian girl, Hadir, but marrying her is far from obvious. Malek, an illegal Palestinian worker, tries to collect enough money to pay for his mother’s operation. Dando, an Israeli cop, does his utmost to trace his missing brother who may have been killed by Palestinians. Binj, Malek and Omar’s Arab friend, suffers from being rejected by other members of his community for mixing with an Israeli girl. All of them will meet violence, most of the time … with violence.Read More »

Synopsis:
In 19th Century Paris, the maniacal Dr. Mirakle abducts young women and injects them with ape blood in an attempt to prove ape-human kinship. He constantly meets failure as the abducted women die. Medical student Pierre Dupin discovers what Mirakle is doing too late to prevent the abduction of his girlfriend Camille. Now he desperately tries to enlist the help of the police to get her back.Read More »

Jonathan Rosenbaum from Essential Cinema: On the Necessity of Film Canons (2004), pp. 236-237:

Within my experience, Ruiz is the least neurotic of filmakers; he doesn’t even seem to care whether what he’s doing is good or not (and, as he’s aptly noted, bad work and good work generally entail the same amount of effort). No single film functions as the be-all or end-all of an evolving career but merely as part of an overall process. Example: the 1985 Régime sans pain — one of his films most influenced by his friend Jean Baudrillard, and perhaps the one that most calls to mind grade-Z SF — grew out of a commission to direct a music video. Ruiz offered a counterproposal that he direct several music videos rather than one; once this deal was made, he shot enough material to interconnect the various videos until he arrived at a feature.Read More »

Synopsis:
Yamasaki’s highly inventive take on the jidaigeki (historical drama) concerns a group of rural farmers treated poorly by tax authorities in the 18th-century Okayama town of Sanchu. On the verge of starvation, the farmers protest both the rising tax rate and the lack of access to the crops they grow… until samurai are dispatched to keep them under control. A devastating uprising appears inevitable. Combining glorious black-and-white cinematography in natural-light situations, animation, and an inventive final sequence that transports us to the modern day, Sanchu Uprising is both unique in style and compelling in its theme of wrestling with difficult choices.Read More »

In West Berlin at the height of the Cold War, British spy Eberlin (Laurence Harvey) is tasked with the dangerous assignment of finding and assassinating the treacherous KGB agent Krasnevin, who has killed many undercover British agents. He’s given a new partner, Gatiss (Tom Courtenay), to help eliminate the deadly Russian. What neither his bosses nor his partner know, however, is that Eberlin himself is Krasnevin, a double agent whose secret identity his Moscow bosses don’t want compromised.Read More »

As passions rise over Brexit many of the UK’s female MPs have received death threats and rape threats online. I struggled to comprehend the source of this tide of rage which seemed out of all proportion to a mere difference of political opinion. Then I watched this documentary about the online “incel” community and it all started to make a little more sense. “Incel” is short for, “involuntary celibate”, in other words, a guy who isn’t getting any sex.Read More »

Quote:
For his first studio picture, filth maestro John Waters took advantage of his biggest budget yet to allow his muse Divine to sink his teeth into a role unlike any he had played before: Baltimore housewife Francine Fishpaw, a heroine worthy of a Douglas Sirk melodrama. Blessed with a keen sense of smell and cursed with a philandering pornographer husband, a parasitic mother, and a pair of delinquent children, the long-suffering Francine turns to the bottle as her life falls apart—until deliverance appears in the form of a hunk named Todd Tomorrow (vintage heartthrob Tab Hunter). Enhanced with Odorama™ technology that enables you to scratch and sniff along with Francine, Polyester is one of Waters’ most hilarious inventions, replete with stomach-churning smells, sadistic nuns, AA meetings, and foot stomping galore.Read More »