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James Herbert, filmmaker and painter, was to become well-known for his video clips for R.E.M., but his films are rarely seen. Somewhere between voyeuristic attraction and reflection, they demonstrate the filmmaker’s sensibility for reinterpreting the body by means of photography: figures of naked couples in a visual setting, reflections of the impression of touch or loneliness, while the film intensifies with the grain, the texture and the light.Read More »
Walter Hill’s first attempt at revisiting the history of the West… Here he retells the story of the James brothers in their raids with the Younger brothers without the romantic aura of the films of Henry King and Nicholas Ray. The parts of the brothers are played by the Carradine brothers and the Keach brothers (who also co-produced and co-scripted the movie)Read More »
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The plot of the film is taken from two traditional Portuguese tales: A donzela que vai a guerra («The maiden who went war» 15th Century?), of Judeo-Iberian origin, and a novella, The dead one’s hand, orally transmitted, which forms part of the Bluebeard cycle.
Dom Rodrigo has two daughters, one legitimate, the other bastard, Silvia and Susana. Growing old, and without male heir, Dom Rodrigo decides to marry off Silvia to his neighbour, a rich nobleman, Dom Paio, with the aim of securing and expanding his domain. After a brief visit from the fiancé, a great glutton and skirt-chaser, Dom Rodrigo leaves for the court to invite the king to the nuptials. Upon his departure, he instructs the girls not to open the doors of the mansion to any stranger.Read More »
Set in Brooklyn, New York this Dutch film is based on a true story that appeared on a New York newspaper in 1980. Desirée lives in the past. A series of flashbacks expose us to her psychologically troubled childhood very much affected by a promiscous mother. Her present life evolves around three people: her employer Mrs. Resnick, Freddy, her lover and Father Siego, leader of the church “The True Confessors”. Desirée’s relationship with each one of these characters is at the origin of her falling apart. Freddy is an insecure black man who finishes their love affair with a sad note, Father Siego is the leader of a rigid narrow-minded religious sect and Mrs Resnick is a racist, prejudiced white woman who feels black people are inferior and incapable of living their own live. Rejected by all because of her pregnancy, Desirée blames her child as the source of evil. She is then possessed by evil and wants to exorcise it. The only way is to get rid of her daughter…Read More »
Synopsis by Hal Erickson
The Emerald Forest is based on a true story, as related by Los Angeles Times correspondent Leonard Greenwood. Powers Boothe stars as Bill Markham, a US engineer working on a dam project in the Amazonian jungles. Bill’s young son, Tomme (played by director John Boorman’s son Charley Boorman) is kidnapped in the rain forest by a tribe called “The Invisible People” because of their skills at camouflage – a group that has reportedly never experienced contact with Caucasians. Read More »
Scott B and Beth B, successful makers of short, experimental films made The Vortex an attempt at a “camp” film with a pessimistic “noirish” atmosphere. The detective Lunch (Lydia Lunch, a popular underground musician and poet) investigates a band of corporate businessman who seek government defense contracts through real “corporate wars” and the manipulation of politicians. Though a bit confusing, this film does have an excellent performance by Lunch, as the detective. – AllMovieGudeRead More »
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Hong Kong, 1980. The Vietnam War has been over for five years and the ethnic cleansing of Chinese has begun. As the “boat people”, refugees of Vietnam, flood out of the country, Hong Kong becomes know as “port of first asylum”. Among these boats is Wu Yiet (Chow Yun-Fat), a former South Vietnamese soldier still recovering from the ravages of war. For him, Hong Kong is the first step for life in the United States, and he soon falls for fellow immigrant Sum Ching (Cherie Chung). Yet the promise of a new beginning doesn’t come easy: the refugee camps have been infiltrated by murderous Viet Cong agents, and an act of violence forces Wu Yiet on the run and deeper into a vortex of crime and brutality. Read More »
Plot Synopsis by Robert Firsching
Horror film actor Michele Soavi’s directorial debut was this stylish giallo thriller about an escaped lunatic terrorizing the cast of a stage musical who get locked in a theater after dark. David Brandon, Barbara Cupisti, and perennial victim Giovanni Lombardo Radice (aka “John Morghen”) lead the cast, most of whom spend their time sniping at each other with amusingly typical backstage cruelty. The murder scenes are the film’s primary attraction, artfully handled by Soavi in setpieces such as a blue-lighted stage strewn with feather-covered bodies. Read More »
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A famous psychologist, Margaret Ford, decides to try to help one of her patients get out of a gambling debt. She visits the bar where Mike, to whom the debt is owed, runs poker games. He convinces her to help him in a game: her assignment is to look for “tells”, or give-away body language. What seems easy to her becomes much more complex.Read More »