Two narrators, one seen and one unseen, discuss possible connections between a series of paintings. The on-screen narrator walks through three-dimensional reproductions of each painting, featuring real people, sometimes moving, in an effort to explain the series’ significance.Read More »
Quote: “Forza Bastia” is a 26-minute film documenting a UEFA Cup match between PSV Eindhoven and French club SC Bastia at the Furiani Stadium in 1978. Jacques Tati directed the piece at the request of friend Gilberto Trigano – the President of the Bastia club at that time. It was subsequently shelved and kept in storage until Tati’s daughter Sophie Tatischeff eventually assembled the footage for release in 2002.Read More »
Quote: A peeping-tom academic (Michael Lonsdale) and a hunchbacked prizefighter (Jean-Bernard Guillard) find nocturnal rapprochement in their shared inability to sleep. Bottomless philosophical discussions take the men further afield of reality, and they eventually decide to rape a pregnant woman named Violette (Olimpia Carlisi), who then throws herself into the Seine—only to return time and again in new, horrifying forms, including the spectral visage of her son (Ruiz’s child alter ego Melvil Poupaud). One of the director’s most confrontational visions, The Insomniac on the Bridge is a barbed avant-garde meditation on trauma, rationalization, and delirium—an underside that Ruiz, as always, reminds us is clinging to the crust of day-to-day reality.Read More »
Love is a universe of two in Philippe Garrel’s fatalistic romance “Frontier of Dawn.” Shot in richly textured and contrasting black-and-white celluloid, it centers on a young photographer, François (Louis Garrel, the filmmaker’s son), and the two women with whom he finds and loses love. After his affair ends with Carole (Laura Smet), a famous actress given to flare-ups and meltdowns, he immerses himself in a new life with Eve (Clémentine Poidatz), who promises him a child and perhaps a chance at real happiness. There’s more, including madness, electroshock treatment, a discussion about the cost of baby diapers, and the sudden emergence of a ghost in a mirror, all of which Mr. Garrel connects so loosely that they feel more like moments out of time than narrative fragments. — Manohla Dargis, The New York TimesRead More »
Plot: When Jesse learns that Krager is cheating settlers, he and his gang rob trains to obtain money for them to purchase their land. Krager, finding a Jesse look alike in Burns, hires him to wreck havoc on the ranchers. When Jesse kills Burns he switches clothes and goes after the culprits. The last of the Frontier-era films starring Roy Rogers. From this point forward through the last of the Roy Rogers’ film at Republic, the time period was always the modern west, or the mythical version of such. The exception to all of his remaining films not being set in a historical period was in Heldorado that contained a flashback segment. Read More »
Chris wants to show girlfriend Tina his world, but events soon conspire against the couple and their dream caravan holiday takes a very wrong turn.Read More »
Aired on BBC4 January, 2013. Shortlisted for Best Documentary, 2013 Academy Awards; Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize, 2012.
Quote: As America remains embroiled in overseas conflict, a less visible war is taking place at home, costing countless lives, destroying families and inflicting untold damage on future generations of Americans. For over forty years, the War on Drugs has accounted for 45 million arrests, made America the world’s largest jailer and damaged poor communities at home and abroad. Yet for all that, drugs are more available today than ever before.Read More »
Keep the Lights On chronicles an emotionally and sexually charged journey of two men in New York City through love, friendship, and addiction. Documentary filmmaker Erik (Thure Lindhardt) and closeted lawyer Paul (Zachary Booth, Damages) meet through a casual encounter, but soon find a deeper connection and become a couple. Individually and together, they are risk takers – compulsive, and fueled by drugs and sex. In an almost decade-long relationship defined by highs, lows, and dysfunctional patterns, Erik struggles to negotiate his own boundaries and dignity while being true to himself. Director Ira Sachs’ fearlessly personal screenplay is anchored by Lindhardt, who embodies Erik’s isolation and vulnerability with a gentle presence. Harrowing and romantic, visceral and layered, Keep the Lights On is a film that looks at love and all of its manifestations, taking it to dark depths and bringing it back to a place of grace.Read More »