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Assayas has a fondness for casting striking leading ladies, such as Maggie Cheung (IRMA VEP, CLEAN) and Connie Nielsen (DEMONLOVER), and Argento’s role in BOARDING GATE fits neatly alongside these in the director’s oeuvre. The early, dialogue-heavy scenes give Argento and Madsen plenty of time to establish their tawdry relationship, but when Assayas transports the action to Hong Kong, the movie takes a different turn as the director sets up some nerve-jarring chase sequences. The director infuses the movie with all his usual visual flair–the shaky, hand-held camera work and dimly lit sets perfectly reflect the seedy nature of Assayas’s subject matter–but BOARDING GATE will mostly be remembered for Argento’ s supremely confident performance.Read More »

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The goalkeeper of a little-known soccer team is kidnapped by a Argentinean government squad and sent to a detention center. After months of torture, he plots his escape with three other young men.

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If American moviegoers have plenty of reasons to feel icky about government-sponsored kidnappings and hidden prisons, “Chronicle of an Escape” gives them another good one, by viewing a fact-based Argentinean story through the stylized lens of a horror film. Laced with dread that builds to a thoroughly gripping third act, it should do well with art house audiences who like their history lessons to come with a shot of adrenaline.Read More »

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Winner of the International Peace Prize at the 1953 Berlin Film Festival and considered “one of the really important postwar Japanese films, Where Chimneys Are Seen focuses primarily on the interconnected lives of two couples in a lower-middle-class neighborhood in Senju, a poor industrial section of Tokyo. The narrative is structured as a series of juxtaposed scenes that dramatize this connection and show the cause and effect of events on the couples’ lives. As part of this structure, there is the central motif of the chimneys and the kinds of “lyrical” interludes for which Gosho is famous.Read More »

Gueule d’Amour
Made partly while Grémillon was working at the Ufa Studios in Berlin, this film features the young Jean Gabin as a foreign-legion Casanova – the “lady killer” Lucien Bourrache – who meets his match in the mysterious seductress Madeleine (Mireille Balin). The sizzling electricity between Gabin and Balin made Gueule d’amour a rare popular success for the director.Read More »

Synopsis:
First part of two-film adaptation of Thea von Harbous novel “The Indian Tomb.” The focus of the elaborate adventure film is a dramatic love triangle: Chandra, the Maharajah of Eschnapur, lives happily with his wife Sitha. But Sithas former lovers Sascha from Germany in the palace arises, the revival of passion between the two
grounds for malicious intrigue. Prince Ramagani of secretly planning a coup d’etat, uses the occasion to the Maharajah of Sascha and Sitha raise. Both flee around
the world to Berlin, constantly haunted by Chandra and his entourage.Read More »

Synopsis:
Second and last part of the filming of Thea von Harbous Roman: After their daring escape from the jealous and the Maharajah Chandra intriguing Prince Ramagani reach Sitah the Maharani and her German lover Sascha back to India.
In the Palace of Eschnapur is the decisive confrontation between the main actors: Ramaganis coup attempt by Sascha and Sitah – given their lives for Chandra sacrifices – frustrated. Sascha Ramagani finally kills and is reconciled with the Maharajah.Read More »

Ozan is a ten-year old boy living in a small coastal town on the Aegean. His friends make fun of him, calling him an “infidel” because his grandfather Mehmet is an immigrant from Crete. Ozan is afraid of being left alone. He gets angry at his family, especially his grandfather, and he stubbornly challenges his family saying “We are Turks”.

Mehmet Bey, Ozan’s grandfather, is a respected shopkeeper in the community. He takes the people of the town under his wings, and helps them with their problems. Mehmet Bey is known for his tolerance and his grandson’s attitude not only has him worried but grieves him as well.
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Joseph McBride wrote:
Wee Willie Winkie provides a case study of how Ford approached what could have been another pot-boiler and infused it with his own artistic sensibilty. If there were any real justice in Hollywood, Ford would have won an Oscar for a film such as this one, whose truly superior craftsmanship is all the more impressive for seeming so effortless. With larger-than-life romanticism, Ford deflty creates a child’s storybook vision of the world, then introduces unexpectedly touching moments as reality impinges on the consciousness of the innocent protaganist. This stylised feeling was heightened in the film’s original release by tiniting the daytime scenes sepia and the nighttime scenes blue, reviving a practice from the silent cinema.Read More »

Beautiful, 24 October 2003
Author: Bruce Karam (Bruce.Karam) from Tucson, Arizona 85710 USA
A beautiful story of love, that reminded me of Greta Garbo’s “Anna Christie”. I loved Vilma Bankee’s voice and accent. I felt that the film was charming in it’s “innocence” and simplicity, while dealing with a very complex issue. I hope that I may someday see it again.Read More »