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Early on in “We the Animals,” a film adaptation of Justin Torres’ celebrated semi-autobiographical novel, there’s a devastating break in the poor-but-happy family mood set up thus far: The father, known as Paps (Raúl Castillo), beats up Ma (Sheila Vand) and disappears. Ma takes to her bed and neglects her children. The three brothers, Manny (Isaiah Kristian), Jonah (Evan Rosado) and Joel (Josiah Gabriel) run wild, stealing food from nearby gardens and stores, rattling around the town completely unmonitored. When Paps suddenly returns (it’s hard to tell how long he was gone), and he and Ma have a passionate reunion, it’s suddenly clear that the violence wasn’t a break. Instead, it was part of an ongoing cycle of abuse and reconciliation. The brothers ride the wave of their parents’ volatile relationship. This is all seen from the perspective of 10-year-old Jonah, and director Jeremiah Zagar uses a mixture of documentary reality and high-flung poetry in his approach, giving us a visceral sense of being there, in that house with those people.Read More »

From “Three Film Buffs”
Whity is a strange but beautiful movie. It is a German language western set in 1878. The only time any English is used is during the songs sung by the saloon whore who performs like she’s in a cabaret in Berlin in the early 1930’s. It was shot in Spain on the sets of Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns starring Clint Eastwood.

The bizarre story (believe me this is unlike any western you have ever seen) centers on the title character – real name Samuel King – the bastard son and slave to the wealthy Nicholson family. The father is a sadistic son of a bitch whose favorite form of punishment for his grown-up sons is a buggy whip. In one scene Whity willingly steps in for one of his brothers and takes the beating for him.Read More »

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Vivian Stanshall’s priceless film of exquisite lunacy is is a work of absurd genius. The labyrinthine plot sees Sir Henry, a mad aristocratic war veteran, attempt to exorcise the trouserless ghost of his dead brother, Humbert, whom he accidentally killed in a drunken duck-shooting accident. This is aided, or hindered, by his mad family and servants including the tapeworm-obsessed Mrs. E; Old Scrotum; the eternally knitting Aunt Florrie; the Lady Philippa of Stains, a turkey-legged old soak. With German POW’s in the garden, a mechanical bulldog, a horse in the billiards room and a marriage bed furnished with a barbed-wire divide, the mayhem of Rawlinson End is endless…
-Vivian StanshallRead More »

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Italian immigrant tries to become a member of Swiss society but fails as a waiter and even as a chicken plucker. He then becomes involved with shady wealthy character and tries to hide his Italian identity. He refuses to give up no matter how awful his situation.Read More »

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Following Punch and Judy from their malevolent medieval personas through their much-mollified assimilation into English folklore, this film finally restores the odd couple to their rightful roles as hair-raising anarchists. It is a stunning mixture of mime, mask, painting, crudely animated documents and mischievously reanimated newsreels, as well as the demonic atonalities of a modernist opera by Harrison Britwistle brought to “life” in a puppet fantasy/nightmare.Read More »

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The story deals with a young girl getting adopted by a family that holds her like a slave and then being “freed” by a young man working for this family´s company. 10 years later she gets involved in the murder of one of her step-sisters.Read More »

Innovative direction by Les Blair when constructing this too little known work, a collaboration with skilled players, includes the provision to the cast of only a mere outline, in lieu of a script, that ultimately expands into a 25 page scenario sans written dialogue. He motivates his actors to give dimension for the mere flinders furnished them, through pure improvisation that is grounded upon their own frames of reference. The outcome proves to be a nice job all around that ruffles some of the standards that have been adopted by cinema enthusiasts.Read More »

Everything happens during the course of a day. A toddler looks for his lost toy, some people look for their happiness, circling around in some kind of a lost kaleidoscope; they love and hate, suffer and enjoy, being that honest or fake, joyful or saddening. In the end, the boy finds his kaleidoscope, but the question remains if grownups have found their dreams, or at least their traces.Read More »

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Pilger tells a story literally ‘hidden from history’.

In the 1960s and 70s, British governments, conspiring with American officials, tricked into leaving, then expelled the entire population of the Chagos islands in the Indian Ocean.

The aim was to give the principal island of this Crown Colony, Diego Garcia, to the Americans who wanted it as a major military base. Indeed, from Diego Garcia US planes have since bombed Afghanistan and Iraq.

The story is told by islanders who were dumped in the slums of Mauritius and in the words of the British officials who left a ‘paper trail’ of what the International Criminal Court now describes as ‘a crime against humanity’ .Read More »