A godforsaken Kazakh village in the mid-1990s where four youths are trying to find their way in life. Zharas suffers because his father, an ex-con, cannot find a job. To help make ends meet the boy takes on casual work at a corn merchant’s. Balapan can sing ‘Ave Maria’ as clear as a bell but his schoolmates provoke him into using his fists rather than his voice. Zhaba roams about the village ruins looking for waste metal he can sell. He comes across three bedraggled boys of his own age who have run away from a nearby home and are sleeping in a derelict tunnel. Aslan is about to take up studies in medicine but, after having persuaded his girlfriend to have an abortion, he undergoes a complete change in personality. Read More »

Part One: Such Such Were the Joys
‘From a very early age, perhaps the age of 5 or 6, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer …One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.’
George Orwell is one of the greatest writers England has produced. Tonight and for the next four nights Arena presents a unique full-scale portrait of this remarkable man, filmed in the places where he lived and worked and told in his own words and the words of those who knew him.
The first programme traces Orwell’s upbringing in a sedate middle-class home near Henley, his horrific experiences at preparatory school, his years at Eton and as a military policeman in Burma – and closes with his sudden and dramatic emergence as a writer with Down and Out in Paris and London, a book drawn from his experiences among vagrants, tramps and outcasts. Among those appearing are Jacintha Buddicon Sir John Grotrion, Malcolm Muggeridge Cyril Connolly and Professor Bernard CrickRead More »

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Little exists, critically speaking, on the subject of Yoshishige Yoshida’s “Heroic Purgatory”. It is a singular experience in that it has never been the subject of much acclaim or criticism. Film sites boast very few, if any, reviews. You will not find its name amongst the more famous Japanese cinematic works. Once one has seen the film, that is all there is. There is no chance to read a critical evaluation and put the pieces together with the help of a more wise, trusted and noted critic. The film extrapolates no farther than itself and its viewer.Read More »

Rick Todd uses the dreams of his roommate Eugene as the basis for a successful comic book.

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky wrote:
There’s a meaty essay to be written about the lengths to which modern-day Americans will go to distance themselves from Jerry Lewis. Lewis represents the unrefined tastes of some earlier era of moviegoing, explained away through pejorative references to “slapstick” and “the French.” (Never mind that Lewis was never as popular abroad as he was in the U.S.) The truth, of course, is that though Lewis produced his share of dross, the gold remains pretty damn funny, and the stuff that isn’t funny tends to be strange and formally audacious in a way Hollywood comedies rarely are. It’s possible to be turned off by Lewis’ mugging (which is fairly relentless) and still appreciate the command of style displayed by his best films, whether it’s the ones he directed himself, or his collaborations with cartoonist-turned-director Frank Tashlin.Read More »

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After a number of stressful affairs, a court lady becomes a nun in order to pursue a life without desire.Read More »

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Tough gangster Ryuichi and his ethnically Chinese gang make a play to take over the drug trade in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district by massacring the competition. He meets his match in Detective Jojima, who will do everything to stop them.Read More »

Synopsis:
In the 20’s, the anarchist revolutionary Sakae Osugi is financially supported by his wife, journalist Itsuko Masaoka. He spends his time doing nothing but philosophizing about political systems and free love and visiting with his lovers Yasuko and the earlier feminist Noe Ito. He conveniently defends three principles for a relationship between a man and a woman: they should be financially independent (despite the fact that he is not); they should live in different places; and they should be free to have intercourse with other partners. In 1969, twenty year-old student, Eiko Sokuta, has an active sexual life, having sex with different men. Her friend, Wada, is obsessed with fire and they usually play weird games using a camera while they read about Osugi and Ito.Read More »

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“I’m your audience,” Ulrich Mühe confesses to an actress in a bar somewhere in the middle of The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen), and he means it in two ways: one, he has seen her perform on the stage but two, he is a member of the Stasi, the secret police arm of the East German government whose stated goal is “to know everything”, and he has been keeping her and her playwright boyfriend under surveillance for some time. The Lives of Others is concerned with three things: ostensibly and obviously it tackles the effects of government oppression, specifically on the lives of artists, but on a subtler level it also addresses the transformative power of art and how our ordinary lives can be interpreted as narrative.Read More »

Synopsis wrote:
A self-centered man (Gérard Depardieu) with many diversions occasionally visits his 4-year-old son (Antoine Pialat) and the boy’s mother (Géraldine Pailhas).

Janet Maslin @ Nytimes wrote:
Having played far-flung movie characters from Cyrano de Bergerac to a Disneyfied friendly ghost, Gerard Depardieu finds one of his most interesting roles closer to home. He plays a well-heeled, powerful Frenchman named Gerard in a new film by Maurice Pialat, the subtle and disturbing film maker with whom Mr. Depardieu has worked so well (in ”Loulou,” ”Police” and ”Under Satan’s Sun”).Read More »