• Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne – Rosetta (1999)

    1991-2000BelgiumDramaJean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne

    Quote:
    The film opens with a chaotic scene: Rosetta (Emilie Dequenne), dismissed from her station after her employment trial period has elapsed, refuses to leave the factory, and is escorted off the premises by security guards. Shot through a handheld camera, the confusion seems to continue as we follow Rosetta as she crosses a busy intersection, makes her way through the woods, changes into her water-repellent boots that she hides in an exposed concrete pipe, and returns to her rented trailer home that she shares with her alcoholic mother (Anne Yernaux). It is a bleak life, and one that she desperately wants to escape. If she could only find a job. But Rosetta is a resourceful young woman, and remains undeterred by the latest setback. She returns to town with a bagful of repaired clothes to be sold to the local thrift store, and canvasses local merchants for job openings. Riquet (Fabrizio Rongione), a waffle vendor, takes interest in Rosetta, and when the food preparer is fired for absenteeism, he encourages her to apply. However, the job proves temporary as well, as the owner (Olivier Gourmet) is compelled to hire his own son. Without any new prospects, she sacrifices her friendship with Riquet to obtain a job.Read More »

  • Ovidio G. Assonitis – Chi sei? aka The Devil Within Her aka Beyond The Door (1974)

    1971-1980CultHorrorItalyOvidio G. Assonitis

    IMDB User wrote:
    I won’t waste time summarizing the plot for this film since the other users have done quite a good job themselves. Basically, you’ve got just one more in a stream of films that cashed in on the success of William Friedkin’s 1973 classic “The Exorcist”. I can only recommend “Beyond the Door” to those who enjoy these types of movies. Director Ovidio G. seems to be the Italian version of William Girdler, who directed his own “exorcist” knock-off that same year with “Abby”, a blaxsploitation version that was actually taken out of theaters after two weeks due to a lawsuit filed by Warner Brothers for plagiarism. If I’m correct, “Beyond the Door” was also attacked by Warner Brothers but I’m not sure what the outcome of that one was. It did manage to stay in the theaters though and actually did good at the box office. “Beyond the Door” copies “The Exorcist” in almost every way and you will either hate it or love it. This time, instead of a young girl, we have Juliet Mills (Nanny and the Professor, Passions) who levitates, vomits, spins her head around, and curses like a sailor, saying things like “lick the whore’s vomit” in a demonic voice.Read More »

  • Ben Hopkins – Pazar – Bir ticaret masali AKA The Market: A Tale of Trade (2008)

    Drama2001-2010ArthouseBen HopkinsTurkey

    Mihram is a small time Turkish black marketeer who gambles and drinks too much. Something that bothers both him and his wife, Elif. He wants to better his life and when he hears about the enormous amount of cell phones being sold, he wants to enter that market. For this, he needs money and when the local doctor asks him to get medicine from Azerbaijan for the sick children, he sets out to get the medicine, aided by his crotchety elderly uncle Fazil. (IMDb)Read More »

  • David Robert Mitchell – The Myth of the American Sleepover (2010)

    Drama2001-2010ComedyDavid Robert MitchellUSA

    An official selection of Cannes Critics Week and winner of the Special Jury Prize at SXSW, THE MYTH OF THE AMERICAN SLEEPOVER is a youthful and tender coming-of-age drama from first-time writer/director David Robert Mitchell.Read More »

  • Raoul Walsh – Regeneration (1915)

    1911-1920CrimeRaoul WalshSilentUSA

    Raoul Walsh had just come off The Birth of a Nation both as one of Griffith’s assistant directors and as an actor (most prominently as John Wilkes Booth), when he made this film. In his autobiography, Walsh credits Griffith with “teaching” him not only about much of the art of fiction filmmaking, but also about production management technics that aided him in taking full advantage of many of New York City’s most pictorial exterior locations. The locations play an important role in adding to the naturalism of an otherwise highly melodramatic plot with the high society young woman turned heroine social worker (much overplayed by a major star of the 1910s, Anna Q Nilsson) and the regeneration of the one-time Lower Manhatan gang leader. The wonder of this film is the performance of the male “star”, Rockliffe Fellowes, who played in over a dozen nearly unremembered films until he died in 1950. His performance is so subtly varied and electrically alive that one is reminded of Brando in his early 1950s films.Read More »

  • James Kent – The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister (2010)

    2001-2010BBCDramaJames KentQueer Cinema(s)TVUnited Kingdom

    from imdb:
    In nineteenth century Yorkshire wealthy orphan Anne Lister lives with an aunt and uncle, anxious for her to marry well and blissfully unaware that she is a lesbian,recording her thoughts and exploits in a coded diary. When her lover Mariana Belcombe makes a marriage of convenience to rich old Charles Lawton,she feels betrayed and,although Mariana visits and has sex with her,the relationship is going nowhere. Helped by old flame Tib she makes a play for innocent Miss Browne but sees she is barking up the wrong tree and diverts herself by renovating the family hall. A drunken Tib almost exposes her secret and scornful mine-owner Christopher Rawson,whose marriage proposal she rejects,tells her that her sexuality is a subject of local gossip. Undeterred Anne meets Ann Walker who becomes her new ‘wife’ and they open a coal-mine ,living happily together. An end title tells us that Anne Lister died prematurely in 1840 on holiday in Russia.Read More »

  • Alessandro Blasetti – Aldebaran (1936)

    1931-1940Alessandro BlasettiDramaItalian Cinema under FascismItalyRomance

    Quote:
    Aldebaran is in some places erroneously reported as a “lost” film, but here it is! After
    a couple of projects had either been postponed or fallen through for Blasetti, it was
    suggested that he should make a film about the navy in peacetime. The result is this
    strange film, which at the outset plays like a propaganda piece for the might of the Italian
    navy, only to veer off into high melodrama, as it zeroes in on Commander Corrado Valeri
    (Gino Cervi), and his conflict between duty and the jealousy of his wife. There are comedic
    asides, a visit to a North African club, affording Blasetti to contribute the first scenes of
    nudity in Italian film, and there are moments of heroics, including a mission to rescue the
    doomed crew of a wrecked submarine. As if all of that was not more than enough, the film
    features a star studded cast including Evi Maltagliati, Gianfranco Giachetti, Doris Duranti,
    Elisa Cegani (in her debut), and even a brief cameo by Blasetti himself.Read More »

  • David Cronenberg – Rabid [+Commentary] (1977)

    1971-1980CanadaDavid CronenbergHorrorSci-Fi

    Freud and Camus and the great Canuck fuck, a David Cronenberg bash. It begins with an abstruse dash of Dreyer (They Caught the Ferry) and briskly gets down to business, a biker chick (Marilyn Chambers) mangled in a road crash and pieced back together via “very experimental” skin-graft surgery. She awakens from her coma bewildered and bloodthirsty, under her armpit now lurks a quivering little Venus flytrap equipped with a peekaboo stinger; helplessly lunging at victims, she embraces, penetrates, and contaminates. The road to Montreal is littered with oozing cannibals snapping at each other, martial law is declared and machine-guns are brought out. On TV, the voice of Science weighs in: “So, uh… don’t let anybody bite you.” The venereal upheaval that bubbled up within the high-rise community in Shivers logically spills out into a foamy Quebec apocalypse, a wintry landscape smacked with tremor upon omnisexual tremor. Read More »

  • Nisan Hançer – Zagor Kara Korsanin Hazineleri AKA Zagor The Black Pirate’s Treasure (1971)

    1971-1980AdventureEuro WesternsNisan HançerTurkeyWestern

    Quote:
    Zagor is an Italian fumetto hero created by editor and writer Sergio Bonelli (pseudonym Guido Nolitta) and artist Gallieno Ferri. Zagor was first published In Italy by Sergio Bonelli Editore in 1961. It’s the most popular comic book since 1960’s in Turkey. There are two unofficial Turkish Zagor adaptations. In this one Zagor with his sidekick Chico fand Digging Bill fights againist the evil Black Pirate. This movie was lost so many years until the last October. This’s a remastered version by Horizon films.Read More »

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