A young man in a small town in Turkey inherits a hotel from his parents in this disturbing drama. Zebercet (Macid Koper) falls for a pretty guest who promises to return the following week. When the woman fails to show up, Zebercet descends into psychopathic madness. He sleeps in the room previously occupied by the young woman and neglects his potential guests. After rejecting the homosexual advances of a young stranger, Zebercet rapes and strangles a hotel maid and kills her cat. Serra Yilmaz and Orhan Cagman co-star with Macid Koper, who gives an excellent performance of the disturbed killer. — Dan PavlidesRead More »

Hopelessly oblivious, frustratingly tyrannical, and emotionally stunted, a woman suffering from a wide variety of personality flaws does her best to talk through two deeply destructive friendships.Read More »

The life of a boy in the streets of Sao Paulo, involved with little crimes, prostitution, etc

From Allmovie
Review by Jonathan Crow

Not since Luis Buñuel’s Los Olvidados has there been as savage and harrowing account of the plight of street kids or as damning a critique of Third World poverty and societal indifference. 10-year-old Pixote (“Pee Wee” in Portuguese) endures the brutalities of Brazil’s repressive, corrupt reform schools, where military death squads and juvenile prison rape are the norm, only to flee to the dubious freedom of Sao Paolo’s streets. Soon Pixote becomes a pimp, thief, and multiple murderer. Yet, through it all, the audience never loses sympathy for Pixote; director Hector Babenco makes clear that all Pixote wants and needs is a stable loving person in his life. Babenco’s work is in the same spirit as the 1940s Italian Neorealists who coupled a realist style with a keen sense of social injustice. His visual style is documentary-like and almost artless–a straightforward depiction of events. His true artistic feat lies in his handling of his actors, most of whom were street kids in real life.Read More »

From the official website:

Mattie and James are in love. But too many mornings and too many miles apart have taken a toll on them. As they struggle with the distance between New York and Chicago, their visits become reminders of the difficulties, not the pleasures, of their relationship. Joe Swanberg and Greta Gerwig follow HANNAH TAKES THE STAIRS with this intimate portrayal of longing and confusion. This time Swanberg co-stars with Gerwig, and Gerwig co-directs with Swanberg, creating a film that resonates deeply and leaves scars that fade but can’t heal.Read More »

In Search of a Midnight Kiss is a rollicking comic ride and tender journey though love, sex, and modern romance in Los Angeles on New Year’s Eve. Wilson (Scoot McNairy), a twenty-nine-year old guy who has just had the worst year of his life, is new to Los Angeles, has no date, no concrete plans and every intention of locking the doors and forgetting the last year ever happened. That is until his best friend, Jacob (Brian McGuire), browbeats him into posting a personal ad on Craig’s List. When Vivian (Sara Simmonds), a strong-willed woman hell bent on being with the right guy at the stroke of midnight responds, a chaotic, sometimes hilarious, sometimes touching journey through the black and white streets of L.A. begins. In the waning hours of the year, emotional vulnerability and bitterly honest humor seem to be waiting around every corner.Read More »

Hannah is a recent college graduate interning at a Chicago production company. She is crushing on two writers at work, Matt and Paul, who share an office and keep her entertained. Will a relationship with one of them disrupt the delicate balance of their friendship?Read More »

Film Threat: When director Joe Swanberg hit the scene with “Kissing on the Mouth,” I was impressed. The film did exactly what it set out to do: take a microscope to inner-personal relationships and show an up close view, warts and all. As much as I liked the film, there’s still a feeling that it’s a cinematic experiment with a loose narrative that soars at times and stumbles through at others. Yet it was undeniably brave and intriguing. With his second feature “LOL,” Swanberg has settled into a solid narrative while still using his “Dogme” type style to look closely at how people relate to one another…or why they can’t.Read More »

Filmreference review
“Critical judgment remains sharply divided on Intolerance, D. W. Griffith’s most expensive and flamboyant spectacle. Those critics who pronounce the film a failure generally point to the four stories, which, they claim, are thematically too diverse to be effectively collated. Taking their cue from Eisenstein’s famous indictment, they argue that the film suffers from purposeless fragmentation and thematic incoherence. Others, notably Vachel Lindsay, Georges Sadoul, Edward Wagenknecht, and more recently Pauline Kael, list Intolerance among the masterworks, stressing its formal complexity, experimental daring, and thematic richness. René Clair, taking a middle position, writes, “it combines extraordinary lyric passages, realism, and psychological detail, with nonsense, vulgarity, and painful sentimentality.”Read More »

Winner – Special Jury Award, 10th Sofia International Film Festival
Official Selection Haifa 22nd International Film Festival
Official Selection 2006 St. Louis International Film Festival

Bosnian director Nenad Djuric’s postwar Bosnian comedy – a breezy, rib-tickling story about the clash of cultures – is a charmingly innocent love story set in a country that no longer wishes to dwell on recent atrocities.Read More »