2000s

The life, laughters, and luck of one of the most famous and beloved child stars, Shirley Temple.Read More »

Young Lateef works on a construction site in Tehran with some Turks and a few illegal Afghan workers. When Lateef is given heavier tasks to compensate for new Afghan worker Rahmat, he resents his displacement and treats Rahmat cruelly. After one of his pranks, however, Lateef discovers Rahmat’s secret–he is a girl named Baran. Latif’s heart softens towards Baran and he shows his new affection for her by doing what he can to ease the hardships she suffers at work. When government inspectors force all Afghans to be fired from the site, Lateef discovers he cannot bear to be without her. Jeopardizing social standing and endangering his own well being, Lateef stops at nothing to save his love.Read More »

An young priest commits a crime when he falls in love with a beautiful and troubled woman.Read More »

That’s all I’ll ‘spoil’ if you haven’t seen this before :

…how and why the CIA and the NASA hired Stanley Kubrick in 1969 just before Apollo hits the moon…

IMDB:
This hard-hitting mockumentary exposes how Stanley Kubrick faked the 1969 moon landing, with seeming-endorsements from many key players in NASA and the US government.Read More »

Quote:
Dog Days is an incredible film, though what it has to offer will certainly not be appreciated by every viewer. This is not to be meant as condescending – I simply mean not everyone will enjoy Ulrich Seidl’s aesthetics which have more than a little in common with Von Trier’s Domga 95 movement. Though Seidl doesn’t explicitly articulate his aesthetics the way Von Trier does, it features the same sense of realism. The characters are mostly non-actors wearing their own clothes and without makeup (except where diegetically necessary). The acting is very raw with many scenes calling for displays of intense emotional pain. There is no non-diegetic music. The film is shot entirely with hand-held DV. The film is, however, very aesthetically appealing. There are many beautiful, sun-drenched compositions, even if all the characters are sweating!Read More »

A handful of idealistic twenty-somethings discover love and trust isn’t always enough in this period drama from writer and director Gudny Halldorsdottir. It’s the early Seventies, and law student Selma wants to do more than simply defend people in court; she’s eager to make a difference in the lives of others, and when her boyfriend Bloffi joins the staff of Vedramot, a home for delinquent teenagers with emotional issues, she leaves school to work beside him. Selma, Bloffi and their friends believe that an open environment where the young inmates have the opportunity to discuss their feelings and the circumstances that led them into a life of crime will do more good than traditional disciplinary techniques. However, not all the youngsters at Vedramot respond to this laid-back approach, and Disa, a product of a severely abusive home, openly encourages the other teens to flout the few rules they’re asked to follow. In time, conflicts between the staff and the students escalate into violence, leading to tragedy and bloodshed. Vedramot (aka The Quiet Storm) was inspired in part by Halldorsdottir’s own experiences working at a home for underage offenders in the Seventies.Read More »

Quote:
From acclaimed director Douglas Buck comes an unflinching, disturbingly beautiful look at the underbelly of American family. Three separate narratives (including the shocking film festival favorite “Cutting Moments” as well as “Home” and “Prologue”) combine to create a unique trilogy of life today that will leave you devastating… and begging for more.Read More »

Synopsis:
The charmed life of a successful young engineer is thrown into chaos following a decidedly uncomfortable dinner with his powerful boss and the man’s socially scabrous wife in With a Friend Like Harry director Dominik Moll’s twisted, semi-supernatural thriller. Upon relocating to an ultra-modern community in the south of France with the promise of a lucrative position at powerful Richard Pollock’s (André Dussollier) hi-tech firm, Alain Getty (Laurent Lucas) and his wife, Benedicte (Charlotte Gainsbourg), find their life together going better than they ever imagined. Happy in his work and deeply in love with his beautiful wife, Alain relishes his newfound success before a fateful dinner with Richard and his venomously eccentric wife, Alice (Charlotte Rampling), casts a dark thunderhead over Alain’s azure skies. Read More »

From Allmovie:
With Laurent Cantet’s Time Out (L’Emploi du Temps) as an inspiration, actress-turned-director Nicole Garcia’s fourth feature film, L’Adversaire, is a fictionalized account of what may have gone through the mind of real-life serial killer Jean-Claude Romand. Daniel Auteuil portrays Jean-Marc Faure, who, like Romand, had fooled his friends, family, and the bank for 18 years. Though those who knew Faure believed he was a physician employed by the World Health Organization in Geneva, he actually had no qualifications for the position, and had never held a real job. As part of the façade, Faure commuted to Switzerland daily, and obviously knew his way around the WHO. However, he had no job to perform there. Though he acquired an enormous overdraft at the bank, they believed he was a well-known doctor, and incorrectly assumed he would repay them shortly. Nearly two decades after his original untruth, Faure is nearly found out. Rather than enduring the shame of his long-time fraud, Faure opts to murder his wife, children, and parents. — Tracie CooperRead More »