1990s

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A struggling actress forges an unusual family unit with two separate boyfriends in this romantic comedy from indie auteur Gregg Araki. Veronica (Kathleen Robertson) hasn’t had a decent date for a year, but one Halloween she meets not one but two perfect guys: Zed (Matt Keeslar), a rock drummer who does her on the floor of a club bathroom after his show, and Abel (Johnathon Schaech), an affable rock critic and would-be novelist, who seems more interested in connecting with her soul than her private parts. Unable to lie to either guy about her attraction to both of them, Veronica soon convinces them to share her. Eventually, the unemployed Zed and the underemployed Abel even move in with her, resulting in kinky sex and domestic bliss. Trouble comes calling, however, in the form of an unplanned pregnancy — and in the person of Ernest (Eric Mabius), an aptly named TV director, who gives Veronica her big break and the chance to play house and raise her child in a monied, more normal environment. Read More »

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Henryk Goldszmit – aka, Janusz Korczak – was born in 1878 to a prosperous, assimilated Jewish family in Warsaw. Convinced from an early age that the rights of children needed defending, he studied pediatrics and organized a number of institutions for children, including a famous orphanage that he was forced to move into the Jewish ghetto after the Nazis invaded Poland. Yet he remained convinced that even the Nazis would not harm his children. Wajda’s moving, wrenching and highly controversial portrait of Korczak ponders the fate of a kind of modern saint in a world in which evil has become the rule. Brilliantly incarnated by Wojciech Pszoniak from a script by Agnieszka Holland, Korczak both fascinates and repulses. The man’s complete, unquestionable dedication to his children is set against a refusal to understand – or perhaps accept – the reality all around him. A thoughtful, provocative work that was clearly a key influence on Schindler’s List.Read More »

Feature film version of Mani Kaul’s film on Dostoevski’s masterpiece that was shown at NYFF.

Synopsis:
Mani Kaul’s adaptation of Dostoevski’s Idiot is his most profoundly affecting film and a “tour de force” (Rajadhyaksha) that co-ordinates actors, settings and situations to a multiplicity. It his most realized attempt at making formalist film by moving the camera,without looking through the viewfinder to make Gilles Deleuze’s reading of cinema as an any-instant-whatever or equidistant instant to an any-space-whatever or any equispatial instant. This equispatial instant is created by destroying the dialectic between required and not-required, sacral and profane. Mani Kaul, analyzing his own films would state that, whereas his earlier works engaged a rarefaction of information, Idiot was the first to encounter a saturation of events.Read More »

After a ten-year-old girl is raped and murdered in a small Brittany town suspicion soon falls on René Sterne, an art teacher who was the last person to see the girl alive. Sterne was once a celebrated artist but he has fallen on hard times and lives with his wife, a nurse whose outgoing personality is the opposite to his own. The only person who is convinced that Sterne is not the killer is Vivianne, the local doctor. Frédérique Lesage, the police officer leading the murder investigation, thinks otherwise. The sudden arrival of a self-loving television journalist, Germain-Roland Desmot, stirs things up even more. It isn’t long before Sterne begins to doubt his own sanity…Read More »

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Martin Scorsese describes his initial and growing obsession with films from the 1940s and 50s as the art form developed and grew with clips from classics and cult classics.Read More »

After a dreadful incident coupled with an ungovernable paroxysm of violence, a butcher will fall into a downward spiral that will burn to the ground whatever dignity still remained in him.Read More »

When novelist Alessandro Battavia commits suicide, a taxi driver named Evangile and her brother Nord believe they are characters imagined in a novel, probably one written by God. Because they see their lives as “merde,” they go in search of God to get their story rewritten. Along the way, believing everything is imaginary anyway, they shoot people, rob pharmacies, and tie up the residents of places they squat. They also gather a taxi full of eccentrics, including a priest, Battavia’s suicidal widow, and a policewoman; various couples pair off. Soon life imitates art: the events and ellipses seem lifted from modern fiction as the group’s quest for God continues. What’s real?Read More »

Beautiful violin virtuoso Camille has two obsessions: the music of Ravel, and a friend of her husband’s who crafts violins. But his heart seems to be as cold as her playing is passionate.Read More »

An anxious young tailor dominated by his father, a master of the craft, is eager to do well with his clients; but his inadequacy in measuring leaves him frustrated and humiliated. His younger sister – an expert seamstress – arrives back in town, discovers his measuring weakness and begins a cruel reign of terror over him, humiliating him endlessly in front of customers. Pushed to the edge, the young tailor heads down the nightmarish road to insanity and murder.Read More »