Quote:
In the early 1990s a spate of hospital films were released in Japan, including Takita Yojiro’s two Let’s Go to the Hospital comedies, Itami Juzo’s drama The Last Dance and Ichikawa Jun’s Dying at a Hospital, shot in a semi-documentary style almost as straightforward as its title. Perhaps these films reflected the greying of Japanese society or, as Ichikawa suggested in an interview, a world afflicted by famine, AIDS and environmental destruction. Working from a book by Yamasaki Fumio, a practicing doctor, Ichikawa follows the progress of five cancer patients from the time they are admitted to the hospital to the end. For much of the film, we are literally standing at the foot of their beds, watching their lives unfold from the middle distance.Read More »

A young woman sits down in a chair. Only her mouth is visible as she begins to speak at a rapid clip, describing events that she insists did not really happen to her.Read More »

A group of Liverpudlians goes to Middlesborough to lay a tarmac road. Without the boss around, there’s a chance for some diversions with the locals, while keeping up the spirit of free enterprise, preferably on the firm’s time.Read More »

Synopsis
A lowly clerk at an accountant’s office, Yeong-ho (Kim Jin-kyu) is the head of a household that consists of his mother (Noh Jae-shin), who lost her sanity in the war and sporadically cries, ’’Let’s go!’’ his extremely pregnant wife (Moon Jeong-suk), who is suffering from malnutrition; his younger sister (Seo Ae-ja), who has become a prostitute for U.S. soldiers; and his younger brother Cheol-ho (Choi Mu-ryong), who is an unemployed war veteran. Unfortunately, his meager salary is barely enough to support his large family, and he does not even dare to go to the dentist even though he suffers from a toothache. His brother Cheol-ho tries to overcome their desperate reality by robbing a bank, but fails in the attempt. Yeong-ho receives a phone call from the police informing him of his brother’s arrest. Read More »

Quote:
An impressionable teenage girl from a dead-end town and her older greaser boyfriend embark on a killing spree in the South Dakota badlands.

Roger Ebert, in 1973, wrote:
They meet for the first time when she is in her front yard practicing baton-twirling. He has just walked off his job on a garbage truck. She thinks he is the handsomest man she’s ever seen — he looks just like James Dean. He likes her because he never knew a fifteen-year-old who knew so much: “She could talk like a grown-up woman, without a lot of giggles.” Within a few weeks, they will be the targets of a manhunt after he has shot down half a dozen victims.Read More »

Synopsis/Review:
In the ’80s and early ’90s, Hong Kong’s star-rich cinema was one of the most fascinating, fully evolved of national cinemas. Orgiastic violence and radical shifts from humor to romance to tragedy coexisted easily with themes of loyalty and humility in narratively rich films. Drawing equally from western and eastern models, these works spanned every genre, from classic ghost stories (Mr. Vampire) and historical epics (Once Upon a Time in China) to low-brow comedies (Wheels on Meals) and blood-drenched gangster movies (practically anything by Woo or Ringo Lam).Read More »

Quote:
Desperate and without luck, 25 year old David has failed as an exam and has lost the scholarship that kept him in the city. To gain it back he has to pass an exam that will take place in a year. To kill time, study for the exam and gain his independence back, David starts to live in La Pedrera, a little seaside town where he will have to build his own home during winter. It will be a year plagued with difficulties, surrounded by people that don’t want to work, ex girlfriends, hippies and books…Read More »

Synopsis:
George Cukor’s seldom seen adaptation of David Belasco’s Zaza, this one features Claudette Colbert in the lead role of Zaza a famous singer who falls for a married man played by Herbert Marshall. This one gets little attention in the careers of Colbert and Cukor, but it’s a solid if uneven film, and certainly worth a peak.Read More »

Quote:
Director Javier Rebollo’s first feature, Lola (Lo que se de Lola), was the unanimous choice of this year’s London Film Festival FIPRESCI jury. Partly shot in French and in Spanish, and located in both France and Spain, it is a visually provocative tale of a conventional loner who becomes a silent voyeur obsessed by desire and an impossible love.Read More »