Denis Cote chronicles the bizarre after-effects of a small-town tragedy, weaving supernatural elements into the tattered social fabric of a rural community.
Loosely adapted from the debut novel by Montreal-based writer Laurence Olivier, this is a curious film, deliberately threadbare in its plotting and muted in its emotional effect. But it is open to any number of interpretations, touching on fear of outsiders and otherness, the importance of reckoning with the past and the danger for insular small-town communities of being forgotten, as much due to their own closed-off nature as to big-city migration. It could just as easily be dismissed as slight, but you get out of it what you’re willing to put in.Read More »

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A man’s obsession with his designer deerskin jacket causes him to blow his life savings and turn to crime.Read More »

Based on a novel by Mario Vargas Llosa, City and the Dogs is set in a brutal boys` military academy. Juan Manuel Ochoa plays a tough young cadet who rules a student clique called The Circle, which supplies the other boys with forbidden cigarettes, booze and pornography, and even provides answers to upcoming tests. When Ochoa is caught, he places blame on Eduardo Adriazen, the weakest member of the Circle. Adriazen informs on Ochoa, who subsequently kills him. During the investigation of Adriazen’s death, the academy tries to cover up the crime lest the institution be destroyed by the scandal. The principal whistle-blower, a sensitive young “outsider” (Pablo Serra), is himself discredited because it is he who has been writing the pornography that Ochoa has been selling.Read More »

In a remote house in Maine, two friends predict shifts in global financial markets by viewing footage of the forest.
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A digital-pastoral drama of friendship, landscape and technology, “For the Plasma” begins as the story of two young women (Anabelle LeMieux and Rosalie Lowe) employed as forest-fire lookouts in Northern Maine, and ends in a hundred places at once. Along the way, the girls make financial predictions based on surveillance footage of the surrounding forest, the local lighthouse keeper and a pair of unusual investors interrupt their solitude, and a dreamlike portrait of small town America and contemporary life is revealed. “For the Plasma” is a film of minimal means but ambition, shot in Super 16mm and 4:3 with a small cast and crew, and scored by the great Japanese experimental composer, Keiichi Suzuki. great Japanese experimental composer, Keiichi Suzuki.Read More »

Criterion wrote:
Years before they became major players in Hollywood, a group of young German filmmakers—including eventual noir masters Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. Ulmer and future Oscar winners Billy Wilder and Fred Zinnemann—worked together on the once-in-a-lifetime collaboration People on Sunday (Menschen am Sonntag). This effervescent, sunlit silent, about a handful of city dwellers (a charming cast of nonprofessionals) enjoying a weekend outing, offers a rare glimpse of Weimar-era Berlin. A unique hybrid of documentary and fictional storytelling, People on Sunday was both an experiment and a mainstream hit that would influence generations of film artists around the world.Read More »

From All Move Guide:
Before he became cult director Douglas Sirk, Detlef Sierck cut his teeth on such lavish European star vehicles as Hofkonzert (Court Concert). Marta Eggerth is cast as Christine, a young singer who aspires to find out who her father was. Her odyssey brings her to the court of a mythical kingdom, where she is romanced by handsome lieutenant Walter (Johannes Heesters). He is warned not to lose his heart to a “commoner,” but all turns out all right when King Serenissimus (Otto Tressler) turns out to be Christine’s long-lost daddy. Hofkonzert was designed as a comeback for Marta Eggerth, whose star had eclipsed by the mid-1930s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie GuideRead More »

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Olivier Assayas directed this French drama, examining several relationships over a year’s span, capturing varying textures and shades of feeling between people from late August of one year until early September of the next. Gabriel (Mathieu Amalric) and Jenny (Jeanne Balibar) separate, despite the affection that still binds them. A new love develops between Gabriel and young designer Anne (Virginie Ledoyen) as they overcome their fears and uncertainties.Read More »

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The sideshow of Madame Tetrallini (Rose Dione) is going well until acrobat Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova), in league with strongman Hercules (Henry Victor) decides to marry and murder the rich midget Hans (Harry Earles) for his inheritance. Hans’ midget girlfriend Frieda (Daisy Earles) can do nothing, and neither can circus clown Phroso (Wallace Ford) or ‘normal’ performer Venus (Leila Hyams). But Hans is not alone: The freaks have an unwritten code among themselves to punish cruel outsiders.Read More »

Synopsis:
As Pandit Shyam Sunder prayed in Bhagwan Shivji’s temple on the occasion of Janamashtami, his wife gives birth to a daughter, Rupa, and passes away, leaving her child to bear the brunt of being an ill-omen. Years later, Rupa burns her face from a frying pot, thus disfiguring the right side of her face completely, so much so that when she matures, the scar being so hideous, that no one in the village nor surrounding area wants to marry her. Then an Engineer named Rajeev arrives from Bombay, he approaches Shyam Sunder to seek his permission and blessings, so that he can marry Rupa. Read More »