Those who know Japanese cult director Takashi Miike only through his shock and gore films – Ichi the Killer and Audition are both absolute classics of the genre – will be in for a surprise with The Bird People of China. Bird People stands as absolute proof that, although Miike will likely always be best known for his more extreme films, the man has a surprising degree of depth to him and is more than capable of turning out world class serious film.Read More »
Aber den Sinn des Lebens hab’ ich immer noch nicht rausgefunden / … but I Still Haven’t Figured Out the Meaning of Life (OmeU)
Every year on his birthday, Jan Peters filmed one reel of Super-8 material; later on he turned to video. In these few minutes of film he reveals something from and about himself. Maybe it is exhibitionism – the way he chatters on, until the blotches on the film indicate the end of the reel. Enthusiastic, sometimes tired, often doubtful, he, like everyone else, quarrels with what has come about from his own actions. On top of this, Peters, the filmmaker, blurs the individual of the same name with his dense texts and images to create something quite different: Jan Peters, the fictional character.Read More »
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A man’s coerced confession to an I.R.A. bombing he did not commit results in the imprisonment of his father as well. An English lawyer fights to free them.
Roger Ebert wrote:
The Guildford Four were framed; there seems to be no doubt about that. A feckless young Irishman named Gerry Conlon and three others were charged by the British police with being the IRA terrorists who bombed a pub in Guildford, England, in 1974, and a year later they were convicted and sentenced to life.
But great doubts grew up about their guilt, it was proven that evidence in their favor had been withheld, and in 1989 their convictions were overturned.Read More »
Comedy/Crime
“Upon his release from a mental hospital following a breakdown, the directionless Anthony joins his friend Dignan (who seems far less sane than Anthony.) Dignan has hatched a hair brained scheme for an as-yet unspecified crime spree that somehow involves his former boss, the (supposedly) legendary Mr. Henry. With the help of their pathetic neighbor and pal Bob, Anthony and Dignan pull a job and hit the road, where Anthony finds love with motel maid Inez. When our boys finally hook up with Mr. Henry, the ensuing escapade turns out to be far from what anyone expected.”Read More »
Jad and David Fair are Half Japanese, “The World’s Greatest Underground Band” and the most unlikely pair of rock heroes as can be imagined. Half Japanese play their hearts out on rooftops and nursing home back porches while overzealous fans and rock critics plot the next Beatlemania that never comes. A conspiracy of the Corporate Rock world? Perhaps.Read More »
The Herlihys are a working class family from Chicago whose three children take wildly divergent paths: Brian joins the Marines right out of High School and goes to Vietnam, Michael becomes involved in the civil rights movement and after campaigning for Bobby Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy becomes involved in radical politics, and Katie gets pregnant, moves to San Francisco and joins a hippie commune. Meanwhile, the Taylors are an African-American family living in the deep South. When Willie Taylor, a minister and civil rights organizer, is shot to death, his son Emmet moves to the city and eventually joins the Black Panthers, serving as a bodyguard for Fred Hampton.Read More »
Kemal is a plainclothes policeman investigating a suicide whose face has been obliterated. He becomes obsessed with the real appearance of the dead man.Read More »
She was 18, they were in love, lived together 10 years. 20 years letter she
sends him a letter. She’s sick, does not talk much about her, but asks him
a question “When will you make a good movie ?”. He then takes his camera and
tries to speak of other things, about cinéma, their early political combats
and what became of them. Through his hesitations, his interrogations, he
draws the bitter image of an era. Moscow, Gaza, Berlin, Belgrade, Sarajevo,
Paris, Sarajavo again. A way to stay with her, to retail life.Read More »
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Adapted from director Collard’s own novel, Les Nuits fauves won the filmmaker a French César for Best Debut Director just days after he died of AIDS-related illness (the film took four Césars, including Best FIlm, in 1993).