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Nebbishy filmmaker Joanna Arnow documents her yearlong relationship with a racially charged poet-provocateur. What starts out as an uncomfortably intimate portrait of a dysfunctional relationship and protracted mid-twenties adolescence, quickly turns into a complex commentary on societal repression, sexuality and self-confrontation through art.Read More »
To modern audiences, this interpretation of a segment of Jan Patocki’s The Manuscript Found In Saragossa is the hokiest thing they’ll ever see with over the top acting and its sheer ludicrousness but that’s part of the charm. Vecchiali’s mastery of light and colour work wonders as is his grasp of spontaneity. It is overt in its homoeroticism and there are shades of an incestuous relationship going on but Marika Green’s coquettish bashfulness is later transformed in a dance scene that while it may not have the same razzmatazz as a Ginger Rogers/Fred Astaire routine is effective nevertheless. (Malvad, letterboxd)Read More »
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A documentary film autobiography of Sam Shepard with selections from his plays and prose in performances by Ethan Hawke, Ed Harris, Gary Sinise and Vincent D’Onofrio. Shepard takes us on a quest into the idea of self, family and identity and a journey into the heartland of America – the landscape, characters, anxieties, and the music. The Signature Theatre presents a full season of his plays, spanning thirty years of writing. In his only extensive interview on film, Shepard speaks eloquently about the process of writing and the origins of his work.Read More »
Young woman comes to Moscow for three days. She has to buy a lot to take back to the village. Then she meets a taxi driver. He realizes he cannot lose this woman. But she comes to understand her feelings only later, when she comes back to her village with new buyings, impressions of Moscow and thoughts about unlived life.Read More »
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With his provocative feature debut, twenty-six-year-old Steven Soderbergh trained his focus on the complexities of human intimacy and deception in the modern age. Housewife Ann (Andie MacDowell) feels distant from her lawyer husband, John (Peter Gallagher), who is sleeping with her sister, Cynthia (Laura San Giacomo). When John’s old friend Graham (a magnetic, Cannes-award-winning James Spader) comes to town, Ann is drawn to the soft-spoken outsider, eventually uncovering his startling private obsession: videotaping women as they confess their deepest desires. A piercingly intelligent and flawlessly performed chamber piece, in which the video camera becomes a charged metaphor for the characters’ isolation, the Palme d’Or–winning sex, lies, and videotape changed the landscape of American film, helping pave the way for the thriving independent scene of the 1990s.Read More »
Perhaps inspired by the success of the detective novel adaptations of the 70’s, roman porno director Chûsei Sone decided to tackle his own version of the subject. This is exquisitely filmed (lots of wide shots, characters are almost always cramped together, etc.) and it’s certainly a worthy addition to the genre, with a great cast and featuring a young Yuya Uchida (RIP!).Read More »
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Mabel and Batavia Dibble are sisters. Mabel is dead and Batavia has stolen Mabel’s most valuable possession from her open coffin.Read More »
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Concieved and shot by Rachel Amodeo in her hometown of Terravecchia (Italy), Pierre Paolo (1998) is an introspective biographical portrait, reminiscent of italian silent cinema.Read More »
“Herakles” is a 1962 short film and the first film by the German director Werner Herzog, then 20 years old. The film relates to six of the twelve labors of Heracles. The film starts with shots of young male bodybuilders working out in a gym, posing on a stage and flexing their muscles. Each of the labors are then announced by on-screen text in the form of a question, followed by related scenes of modern challenges inter-cut with the bodybuilders.Read More »