Social class, prideful martyrdom, and a dollop of beautifully expansive landscape weave a tale of operatic proportions, both by plot and physically exhaustive standards, in veteran Manoel de Oliveira’s latest exploration of motivation. Marrying for money instead of childhood love, Camila (Leonor Baldaque) naïvely assumes the supposed epic and selfless attributes of Joan of Arc to deal with her husband’s infidelity and the consistent treatment of being irrelevant to the very people that encouraged the doomed match.Read More »

Plot:
He was a riverboat pilot, reporter, penniless prospector, Civil War dropout, would-be entrepreneur, loving family man, world traveler, pomposity burster and raconteur. It turns out the man who created adventures for Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and a Connecticut Yankee led a mighty adventurous life himself. “Truth is a very valuable thing,” says Fredric March’s Mark Twain. “I believe we should be economical with it.” And that sets the tone for what follows: a lovingly crafted Hollywoodized biopic tracing the immortal humorist’s life from Hannibal boyhood to Big River exploits to global literary lion and more. Riverboat’s a-comin’, hop aboard – with Tom, Huck, Jim and above all, Samuel Langhorne Clemens. From Warner Brothers!Read More »

The career of dramatist Robert is in steep decline – his last play was canceled after a two-week run. On top of that he is unable to decide what to do about an old love affair that is once again gaining steam. Finally, his neighbor Gus is able to shed some light on many issues when he and Robert spend the evening together in a highly unexpected situation. The picture captures the protagonists at fragile moments in their lives, when long suppressed truths come to light and there is no longer any uncertainty concerning the decisions they have made. Read More »

Plot / Synopsis
The fantasy musical film “Passerby #3? by Korean director Shin Su-won won the Best Asian-Middle Eastern Film Award at the 23rd Tokyo International Film Festival.

Ji-Wan is a middle-aged mother with a case of malaise and hardly any backbone to speak of. She abruptly quits her job to follow her dream of becoming a film director; she’s been working on a script for five years. Her husband thinks she’s wasting her time; her son Si-Young is ashamed of her and lets her know it at every possible moment; and the producer she’s supposed to be working with, Choi, keeps trying to make the film into a commercial blockbuster.Read More »

Quote:
The second feature of German director Valeska Grisebach is one of the pleasant surprises of the Berlin Competition here – a quietly unassuming tale of marital infidelity told in a brisk 90 minutes that is unexpectedly packed with a raw emotional power. It derives that power as much from the non-professional actors’ performances as from Grisebach’s austere approach to the material. Sehnsucht (Longing) is one of those rare films for which the overused axiom “less is more” is totally justified. With her latest feature, Grisebach could give the Dardenne brothers a run for their money.Read More »

Quote:
A college student receives a surprising offer to be a movie star in this unlikely Kinoshita film, sort of college film by the veteran director including even semi nude scene, but eventually the same themes of dreams versus reality and alienation come to the surface.
Still, it’s one of his lighthearted films.Read More »

In 1986 Paul Lacombe live out one’s remaining days in Sainte-Eulalie-de-Cernon, Aveyron. During 3 last years he wrote his memoirs. Claudine Nougaret films the meeting with her grandfather.Read More »

Touching short documentary about life in the island of St. Kilda, the most isolated of the Hebrides, shot between 1923 and 1928 (only a few years before it was abandoned by his inhabitants in 1930). The evacuation of this island inspired Michael Powell to create The edge of the world in 1937.Read More »

A jolly French film, with a rich vein of satire, is at the little Acme Theatre on Union Square under the name of “Mirages de Paris.”

In this fast-moving fantasy of the unsophisticated student (Mlle. Francell) who escapes from a boarding school to become, after many trials and tribulations, the “toast of Paris,” Fedor Ozep has managed to combine much of the technic of his native Russia with the flair for the ridiculous supposed to belong to all true Parisians.Read More »