In a remote Slovak village in the closing days of World War II, a schoolteacher and his young wife find a wounded Russian parachutist in their front yard just as the Germans are coming in to occupy their village. As his wife readily becomes involved with anti-Nazi partisans, the schoolteacher collaborates with the Germans in fear.Read More »
A group of rabbits flee their doomed warren and face many dangers to find and protect their new home.
Criterion essay:
Watership Down delivers all the stuff of a solid animated adventure. Its visual style is naturalistic, even cautious, but often quietly lovely. There’s clever interplay among the nervous Fiver, the gently heroic Hazel, and the blowhard Bigwig, and there’s some genuinely funny comedy involving Zero Mostel’s extravagantly accented seagull. The climactic battle is ingenious and exciting. General Woundwort is one of the truly scary cartoon villains. That solidity gives us a comfortable place to stand while the story opens up to less familiar terrain.Read More »
IMDB:
In the drought areas of Northeastern of Brazil, groups of migrants move trying to find better place to live, at least with water. Some of them go to Recife, to get a vessel to Santos expecting to have a better life in the Southern. In the poor area of Recife, an old washerwoman launders clothes to survive and support her family. Her husband Zé Luis, a former sailor, is crazy due to a hit of the boom of a mast on his head. Her older son Raimundo works in a grocery and selling mangoes on the street, trying to save money to move to the Southeastern with his girl-friend Aurora. Her daughter wants to be a prostitute to have a better quality of life. Her younger son is seriously sick.Read More »
A retired sportsman, a young law student and small-time crook team up in order to plan the robbery of some jewels in the Andalusian express train
Based on real facts ocurred decades before, it’s an excellent spanish film noir, that mixed classical elements from noir, neorrrealism, existentialism and social literature of this moment. It’s a hard portrait of spanish society under Franco’s military dictatorship.Read More »
Quote:
Taken hostage along with his family and friends, psychologist Andrew Collins (Lee J. Cobb) is held by the murderous fugitive Al Walker (William Holden) and his gang. While Walker’s crew, which includes his lover, Betty (Nina Foch), tends to the other hostages, the desperate mastermind talks to Collins about his troubled past. As the night progresses, Collins gets Walker to focus on a disturbing dream, resulting in a psychological breakthrough that may help avoid a violent conflict.Read More »
In this comedy-drama from writer and director Israel Adrian Caetano, Mariana (Milagros Caetano) is a ten-year-old girl who lives with her mother Cristina (Natalia Oreiro). Mariana’s father Carlos (Lautaro Delgado) divorced Cristina when Mariana was an infant, and while he occasionally looks in on his daughter, he’s not around much while Mariana has begun displaying some behavior problems — she fights with her classmates, cranks up her CD player rather than listen to her mom, and insists that people call her Gloria. Carlos unexpectedly comes back into the household, but not in a way that makes Cristina happy — Carlos is short on work and has nowhere to live after breaking up with his girlfriend, so he’s renting a room in the house. With her mom and dad reunited in a sense but frequently quarreling, now Mariana has even more to willfully ignore.Read More »
Latiaozi was a Farmer who made a living with shepherding with his wife Jinzhizi. One day, their only son had been condemned for the crime. The couple scrabbled up 50000 Yuan to ask Li Datou, the able person of the town, for help, begging if Li Datou could find some big shot to reduce the penalty of their son. But they had been cheated. Latiaozi went to Li Datou’s home to argue for his money but he failed. On his way home, he met a fool by accident. He had no choice but to pick him home. After a night spent in sheepfold, the fool was sent back to the town…Read More »
Daw Ming Lee, The Historical Dictionary of Taiwan Cinema:
King Hu’s next film was a portmanteau film,The Wheel of Life/Da lunhui (1983), in which he once again codirected with Lee Hsing and Pai Chingjui, as he did in Four Moods. The Wheel of Life revolves around romance between two men and a woman that repeats itself in several generations. Hu was responsible for the story of the first generation, set in the Ming dynasty that he was most familiar with. It is an intriguing romantic story involving a secret service agent, the daughter of the governor, and the leader of the antigovernment army who is plotting vengeance. Hu directed the episode well. This film, too, failed at the box office.Read More »
Director Hirokazu Koreeda turns the popularly held conventions of the typical samurai evenge tale on their head with this story of a man whose quest to avenge the death of his father gradually takes a back seat to his emerging role as a key figure in the community. The year is 1702, and young samurai Sozaemon Aoki (Junichi Okada) has arrived in Edo to seek revenge against Jubei Kanazawa (Tadanoby Asano). Kanazawa is the man responsible for the death of Aoki’s father, and now it’s up to the grieving swordsman to settle the score. When Aoki begins teaching the children of Edo to read and write, however, his bloodlust slowly begins to subside as he cones to realize the true value of his useful place in society. Upon falling in love with the beautiful Osae (Rie Miyazawa), Aoki comes to realize that although the sword may be a powerful symbol of strength, allowing oneself to fall victim to its savage allure may not always be the best way to realizing ones true heroism.Read More »