Slant Magazine wrote:
At first, Yearning appears to be a typically late-Narusian offering, a low-key and observational drama that obsessively details Reiko’s day-to-day routines. In addition to keeping her small business afloat, Reiko must deal with her meddling in-laws, who have their minds set on selling the grocery store, and also attend to Koji, who inexplicably indulges in a rebellious cycle of petty crime and violence. One of Naruse’s great talents is in making the mundane mysterious so when Koji declares, seemingly out of nowhere, that he’s been in love with Reiko for years, it takes more than a few moments to acclimate to the film’s suddenly malleable emotional terrain, even though, in retrospect, it makes perfect psychological sense. It’s a shock to witness how charged and raw the duo become after Koji’s admission, and Naruse’s camera, under the guiding eye of cinematographer Jun Yasumoto, never blinks, maintaining a harsh, voyeuristic presence as the characters move, like increasingly frenzied celestial bodies, through a space made unfamiliar because of a naked confessional moment.Read More »

Jonathan Rosenbaum Review:

When we speak of “seriousness” in fiction ultimately we are talking about an attitude toward death. –Thomas Pynchon

Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man, a disturbing, mysterious black-and-white western, opens with someone named William Blake (Johnny Depp), a recently orphaned accountant from Cleveland, traveling west on a train with the promise of a job at a metal works in a town called Machine. He keeps dozing off and waking to new sets of fellow passengers, including several who fire their guns out the windows at a herd of buffalo. (Such occurrences were common in the 1870s, encouraged by the government as a means of wiping out Indians by eliminating one of their staples; in 1875, over a million buffalo were slaughtered.)Read More »

Quote:
Jorge de Sena was forced to leave his country. First he moved to Brazil, and later to the USA. He never returned to Portugal. During his 20-year-long exile, he kept an epistolary correspondence with Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen. These letters are a testimony of the profound friendship between the two poets, letters of longing and of desire to “fill years of distance with hours of conversation”. Through excerpts and verses, a dialog is established, revealing their divergent opinions but mostly their strong bond, and their efforts to preserve it until their last breaths.Read More »

During the holidays three men try to break into the Belgian National Bank from a florist’s shop. During their rain-hampered digging, they discuss trips to sunnier climes, the basic laws of physics and those back at home in Eastern Europe.Read More »

Quote:
It’s 1968, and the whole world is watching. With the U.S. in social upheaval, famed cinematographer Haskell Wexler decided to make a film about what the hell was going on. Medium Cool, his debut feature, plunges us into the moment. With its mix of fictional storytelling and documentary technique, this depiction of the working world and romantic life of a television cameraman (Robert Forster) is a visceral cinematic snapshot of the era, climaxing with an extended sequence shot right in the middle of the riots surrounding the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. An inventive commentary on the pleasures and dangers of wielding a camera, Medium Cool is as prescient a political film as Hollywood has ever produced.Read More »

Quote:
As a woman anxiously awaits her overdue period, she performs African-based rituals of purification. She cleans house and body, and calls on the spirits (Orishas in the Yoruba tradition), receiving much needed inspiration and assurance in a dream. The film combines beautifully intimate still and moving images of the woman’s body and home space, along with playful stop-motion sequences. —Jacqueline Stewart, UCLA Film and Television ArchiveRead More »

Michele Geary wrote:
When George visits his family before heading off to the Vietnam War, he is confronted by the conflicting ideals of his veteran father, who encourages his patriotism, and his militant brother, who urges him to stay home in protest. The complex issue of whether African Americans should be fighting for justice at home or abroad is registered most poignantly in the youngest son Bobby, a schoolboy torn between the political allegiances of his father and older brothers.Read More »

Irish filmmaker Vivienne Dick helped define New York’s No Wave film scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The No Wave movement embraced a brash guerrilla aesthetic and Dick’s films, shot on Super-8 and starring an unruly cast of artists and musicians, perfectly capture the lo-fi glamour of the scene. Guerrillere Talks is Dick’s first film, it consists of six cartridges of Super-8 footage strung together, each running for three and a half minutes.Read More »

IMDB Plot Synopsis
A New York film director, working on his latest movie in Los Angeles, begins to reflect the actions in his movie and real life, especially when he begins an affair with the lead actress.Read More »