1980s

This 1981 nihilist epic by Shohei Imamura is witty, grotesque, relentless, and beautifully engineered. The setting is the Edo era, when local warlords battle the emperor for control of the country, and all of Japan is under cultural pressure from its long delayed opening to the West. Political loyalties and personal loves disintegrate; the only certainty is money, and even that is crumbling. Imamura follows eight major characters through a bright, bursting, impossibly dynamic mise-en-scene, leading up to the Eijanaika (“What the hell?”) riots—a frightening, exhilarating explosion of empty freedom, the freedom of those who have lost everything. A very important film, and possibly a great one.Read More »

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Injured in a car crash, Edna Mae McCauley has an out-of-body experience where she sees faces from her past trying to guide her into the hereafter. But instead she returns to life. Soon after she discovers that she now has the power to heal. Back in the Mid-Western town of her childhood, she begins a faith-healing mission and tries to use her powers for good. But she must also deal with the condemnation of fundamentalists and a boyfriend who becomes religiously crazed and tries to kill her.Read More »

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Joseph Campbell, author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, a scholar who achieved legendary status as an explicator of myths, is reverently profiled in this documentary that encompasses his long life and career. During his childhood in New York City, Campbell was taken to see “Buffalo Bill” Cody’s Wild West Show at Madison Square Garden. Young Campbell was fascinated by the Native Americans in Cody’s performing troupe and eventually became obsessed with mythology. Read More »

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Jedes Jahrzehnt hat seinen eigenen Zugang zum Himmel.

Clonetown, 1974 bis 1979, die Chronik eines Abschieds. Charon, ein abgesprungener Terrorist, sitzt am Ufer zur Vergessenheit und kommentiert die bevorstehende Vermoderung eines entführten Autohändlers. In seiner Erinnerung ziehen seine zweiten und dritten Ichs herauf, der megalomanische Künstler und der perverse Teppichhändler. Die ehedem achtlos mißhandelten Dinge rächen sich in seinem Kopf.Read More »

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Based on the book by Keiko Ochiai, “The Rape” details the struggles and determination of a young woman who is attacked and raped on her way home from her lover’s and shows how she comes to terms with the crime and the perpetrator in life and in court.

Awards:
Nominated – Award of the Japanese Academy (1983) – Best Actress Yûko TanakaRead More »

Synopsis
This famous Chinese scroll painting traces the Emperor Kangxi’s second tour of his southern empire in 1689. Painted by Wang Hui (1632-1717) and assistants, it was executed before Western perspective was introduced into Chinese art. Hockney contrasts the more fluid spatial depictions of this scroll with a later scroll painted by Xu Yang and assistants, The Qianlong Emperor’s Southern Inspection Tour (1764-1770), scroll four. This scroll illustrates the same tour, but now taken by the Qianlong emperor, grandson of the Kangxi emperor. Read More »

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Armin Mueller-Stahl plays Hungarian family man Mike Laszlo, whose American citizenship is suddenly threatened when reports unearthed from a UN basement link him to horrific war crimes as part of an SS Death Squad.

He immediately turns to his daughter, defense lawyer Ann Talbot (Jessica Lange) who dismisses the charge, assuming it to be a simple case of mistaken identity. When the case progresses quickly to court, Ann goes against the advice of her peers and represents her father to defend him against the onslaught of allegations thrown at him by the prosecution (Frederic Forrest). Read More »

Plot synopsis:
Lloyd Hopkins (Woods) is a hard-boiled American police detective on the trail of a mass murderer who is victimizing women in Los Angeles. The pursuit leads him through a world that has become his own natural habitat – a nasty world of crime, drugs, prostitution and male hustlers where “innocence kills” and continued exposure corrupts.Read More »

A demonic reincarnation of a Japanese general from the 10th century appears in the early 20th century Tokyo with a mission to destroy the blooming city.Read More »