An assassin accepts a dangerous mission to kill a political leader in seventh-century China.

J. Hoberman wrote:
“The Assassin” is extraordinarily beautiful. The film’s editing and narrative construction are, however, no less remarkable. For all its exquisitely furnished interiors and fantastic landscapes, “The Assassin” is far too eccentric to ever seem picturesque. Nor does it unfold like a typical wuxia. Mayhem is abrupt, brief and fragmentary — predicated on suave jump-cuts and largely devoid of special effects.Read More »

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Jean-Luc Godard wrote, directed, and edited this mind-boggling comedy. “The Idiot” (also known as “the Prince” and played by Godard himself) has been guaranteed financing for a film, if he can deliver it within 24 hours. But he encounters all sorts of hilarious problems as he attempts to do so. Meanwhile a pop group (Les Rita Mitsouko) works on a new album. (-DVD cover)

With a tip of the hat to Jerry Lewis, Buster Keaton, Jacques Tati, and (for good measure) Dostoyevsky, Jean-Luc Godard wrote, directed, edited and stars in this mind-boggling comedy. The rambling plot involves a hapless filmmaker (Godard) and his attempt to meet a deadline for delivering a film. From there the movie branches out into an abstract, episodic structure. “…engages even as it baffles…The confusion that results, punctuated by glimmerings of understanding, is the point” (A.O. Scott, The New York Times).Read More »

A 1927 British silent sports film directed and written by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Carl Brisson, Lillian Hall-Davis and Ian Hunter. It is one of Hitchcock’s nine surviving silent films. The Ring is Hitchcock’s only original screenplay although he worked extensively alongside other writers throughout his career.Read More »

Synopsis
A young woman finds out she is condemned to gradually lose her sight while spending her summer vacation at a beach resort. While her mother Maud has vowed to make Ava’s month of holidays an unforgettable experience, Ava decides to take a another route.Read More »

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The film portrait Ulrich Seidl – A Director at Work depicts the controversial Austrian filmmaker Ulrich Seidl at work for the first time, painting a vivid picture of the much-debated “Seidl method”.Read More »

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The director Gaspard Bazin is preparing a new feature film. For now, he is still in the casting and financing stages. He’s asking the help of Jean Almereyda, a producer once fashionable but now at low ebb, who has more and more difficulties to raise cash for his company. His wife, Eurydice, dreams of being a movie star. Between the two men, a perverse game is starting, Almereyda wishing to please his wife, but the unrepentant seducer reputation of Bazin holds him to require a part for Eurydice…Read More »

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The provocative tale of a woman (Marianna Palka) who snaps under crushing life pressures and assumes the psyche of a vicious dog. Her philandering, absentee husband (Jason Ritter) is forced to become reacquainted with his four children and sister-in-law (Jaime King) as they attempt to keep the family together during this bizarre crisis.Read More »

From cinemaperspective.com
When filmmakers possess a signature style that can be identified across their body of work, they are sometimes referred to as an auteur of cinema. It’s a term that might get banded around too frequently, but one that is often used when discussing Icelandic visionary Baltasar Kormákur. His latest feature is crime thriller The Oath, a personal project which he amazingly produces, directs, co-writes and stars in. The story follows family man heart surgeon Finnur (Kormákur) who tries to rescue his daughter Anna (Hera Hilmar) from her thuggish boyfriend Óttar (Gísli Örn Garðarsson) when she becomes entangled in his dangerous, criminal lifestyle.Read More »

Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote:
Jacques Rozier is perhaps the least known of the most talented French New Wave directors, if only because his output is so limited—about one feature per decade. His subject is teenagers, and his method owes a lot to cinema verite. This first feature, made toward the beginning of the 1960s, is also probably his best; it concerns a young TV worker who is dating two 18-year-old girlfriends and can’t choose between them. Rozier’s graceful style is a mixture of sweetness and light, devoid of pretension and open to youthful energies. Recommended.Read More »