When his twin brother dies, Willy, 50, finally decides to leave his parents’ home. He moves to a small nearby town to start afresh. “In Caudebec I’ll live. An apartment, I’ll have one. And friends too. And you can all go to hell!” Though a misfit, Willy tries to find his place in a world unknown.Read More »
A village has to be destroyed for coal mining. Henning, a 15 years old boy, who wants to visit his grandfather one more time, realizes that nothing will be the way it used to be.Read More »
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This film by Toyoda depicts the hard life of an unmarried mother in Tokyo. Umeko (Machiko Kyo), at 36, is working in a bar, struggling valiantly to keep her family together. Her 17-year-old daughter Takeko becomes increasingly upset by her mother’s constant drinking and yakuza boyfriend, and runs away from ho…Read More »
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In this musical Cinderella story, Chiemi Eri plays Midori, a sales girl for Camelia oil from the island of Oshima, with a talent for singing. Her talent is discovered and her career takes off, finally giving her the chance to perform at a venue in the prestigious Marunouchi area of Tokyo. The film’s climactic show is a gorgeously impressive spectacle.Read More »
In 1873, on the Gold Trail, Montana, the mysterious and controlling Dr. Joseph Frail arrives in the small town of Skull Creek with miners in a gold rush. Dr. Frail buys a cabin on the top of a hill and he sees the smalltime thief Rune wounded and chased by a mob that wants to hang him. Dr. Frail helps and heals Rune; but in return, he demands that the young man becomes his bond servant. The alcoholic healer and preacher George Grubb tells to the locals that Dr. Frail, who is an excellent gambler and gunfighter, is a devil and has a mysterious past but nobody gives attention to his words. Soon the stagecoach is robbed by thieves that kill the passengers but the coachman survives and three days later he reaches Skull Creek. He tells that the horses had speed down the hill with a young woman inside the stagecoach. The men organize a pursuit and the rude Frenchy Plante finds the Swedish Elizabeth Mahler burnt and blind. Dr. Frail and Rune take care of her and they learn that Elizabeth and… Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, BrazilRead More »
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A man uses different words to describe an amphibian as the film evolves.
Fred Camper, Chicago Reader 2001, wrote:
London artist John Smith uses light-hearted humour to explore theoretical concerns – Gargantuan, for instance, is both pleasantly silly and acutely conscious of how imagery depends entirely on its framing.
Elaine Paterson, Time Out 1992, wrote:
A wonderfully witty example of how to conduct pillow talk with a small amphibian.Read More »
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The story of a boy and his dog is a classic motif of children’s films. However, Franstišek Vláčil transformed this well-established convention into something sadly poetic, perfectly befitting the tenor of his time. As was the case with many artists, the post-Soviet Invasion years were not kind to Vláčil’s career, but by the mid 1970’s he was eventually allowed to take the reins of a smattering of short documentaries and films for young audiences. Though ostensibly one such children’s film, the adult world tragically intrudes in Sirius, Vláčil’s elegiac WWII-era coming of age film, which screens this Saturday afternoon as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Fantastic World of Franstišek Vláčil retrospective now underway at the Walter Reade Theater.Read More »
A teen runaway falls in love with a fellow heroin junkie. But the two are far too deep in their drug addictions for love to offer any hope.Read More »
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Sex and Lucía, not surprisingly, boasts ample doses of both sex and Lucía, but its rather straightforward title doesn’t begin to intimate what a simultaneously confounding and enticing experience the film really is. Julio Medem’s sumptuous, smoldering, and ultimately confusing fable begins in the middle, with Lucía (the fiery Paz Vega) fleeing her home after thinking her novelist boyfriend Lorenzo (Tristán Ulloa) has killed himself. The film’s first half jumps back and forth between the past and present, cross-cutting between the couple’s passionate first steps together (shot graphically, but not lewdly) and Lucía’s self-imposed exile on a mysterious island off the coast of Spain that Lorenzo spoke of reverently but refused to visit with her.Read More »