synopsis
The French Love Without Pity strikes different people different ways. To some, it’s the last word in profundity; to others, it’s a subtitled yawnfest. We suggest that you judge for yourself this story of low-down louse Hippolyte Girardot, who regards the women in his life as little more that doormats upon which to wipe his feet. It’s “just deserts” time when Girardot falls head over heels for Mireille Perrier, who proceeds to treat him like dirt.Read More »
Set in the not to distant apocalyptic future. Earth is under invasion from computer/arcade aliens, tensions run high and teenagers still want to ‘go out’.
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IMDB:
Mr. K is a do-it-yourselfer and he works very seriously. One day he has a problem with one of his screws. Furious, he decides to complain at the administration office of the Department Store of Non Ferrous Metals!…Read More »
Quote:Pauline et François contains little in the way of emotive revelations or garment rending histrionics. Its dramatic climax, if one can call it that, is a relatively minor moment of moral weakness thatâs quickly discovered and rectified. The film is neither artfully minimal nor flashily intense. But it is a haunting and compelling construction, built only with the most rudimentary of filmmaking tools. And Felyâs honest labor rewards his viewers with a memorable perspective of one familyâs drift down the meandering river of time.
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A small Mexican village faces the disappearance of a corpse. The dead man’s brother goes out to find his detective friend, a cowboy. However, he is killed by a gang that seeks to get the insurance money from the policy put on the dead man by his aunt. Meanwhile, a strange fish-man monster is stalking our heroes with the intent to kill! Can the cowboy solve the mystery in time?
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Even more so than The Orchid Gardener, this film anticipates Lars von Trier’s later work. The cross-wielding figure who emerges in the final shot before the end title in The Orchid Gardener appears here as “the Jew” who keeps the garden in the cloister where Menthe’s would-be mistress attempts to make her “remember” the things that they have lived together in a series of images that play with expectations about dominance.Read More »
Lars von Trier submitted this film as part of his application to film school. Many of the aesthetic and thematic fetishes of his later feature length films (including the Dogme films and his more recent return to the ‘fantastic’ in Antichrist, Melancholia, and the forthcoming Nymph()maniac) are already evident here. The film, as its subtitle says, tells “part of the story of Victor Marse”, an artist (played by Lars himself). The only English language synopsis of this film that I’ve found is reproduced in this wiki and seems to be a poor translation of a summary written by a 12 year old. Consult it at your own peril!Read More »
IMDb:
Toto most successfully attempts to go one better than Chaplin in this entry in which he cleverly uses his expressive face not only to telegraph laughs but to induce audience sympathy. Set against a war-scarred Rome in the middle of winter, Toto plays a petty thief, living on his wits to provide for his family, who are uncomplainingly making the best of a small, cold-water flat with no heating. The screenplay divertingly contrasts the gaunt, if talkative Toto with excitable, roly-poly but equally loquacious Aldo Fabrizi, playing a fathead police sergeant whose family is housed in comparative luxury.
The catalyst for the plot’s ingenious action is provided by that under-rated born-in-Wisconsin actor, William Tubbs, who is wonderfully perfect here in a major role which gently pokes fun at Americans. Not only are all his scenes an absolute howl, but they are most cleverly contrived to increase in intensity as the plot progresses. You will chuckle as Toto leads him on a merry path through the Forum in his introductory scene, gasp with delight when he confronts Toto at the grocery hand-out, split your sides when he gives chase to Toto all over the countryside, and absolutely roll on the floor when he complains bitterly to Fabrizi and Carloni at the police station. This riotous scene, cleverly compounded, when Tubbs finally exits, by a gloriously satiric look at various police regulations, marks the end of the First Act.
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“Ruth Stoops is a poor indigent drug-user (a huffer – inhaling glue and paint for a high) whose down and out existence is complicated once more by becoming pregnant (she has had and lost four children already). When a judge orders that she gets an abortion or face a felony charge, she is befriended by Gail Stoney, a pro-lifer whose husband is president of the local ‘Babysavers’ group. Suddenly Ruth is thrust into the middle of the pro-choice/pro-life struggle, with each side wanting her to take their side as a ‘message’ to others – and the situation escalates…”Read More »