Probably writer-director Peter von Bagh’s masterpiece in the documentary genre, a personal love letter to the city of Helsinki as it once was and as it might have been, taking the form of a collage of film clips, photographs, paintings, song and music fragments, quotations from Finnish writers and von Bagh’s own musings, read by himself and the actors Erja Manto and Sulevi Peltola. A real treat, not to be missed by any fan of Finnish cinema or the “city symphony” genre.Read More »
Synopsis:
Ami is a typical college girl. She’s bright, friendly, popular and athletic, with nothing to set her apart from other girls her age other than the fact that she is an orphan, left to care for her younger brother after her father committed suicide after being falsely accused of murder. But while there is tragedy in their past, the siblings’ future looks good, except for one thing. Ami’s brother has racked up a considerable debt to another boy at school, and that boy just happens to be the heir to a clan of vicious ninja-yakuza. Ami’s brother can’t pay, violence breaks out and in the course of trying to avenge her brother, Ami is captured by the clan. They torture her and hack her arm right off. Ami escapes, barely alive, and is taken in by the owners of a machine shop who build her a customized, bullet-spewing arm. From that point, the quest for revenge is on in earnest.Read More »
Synopsis:
Tsuneo is a university student working part-time in a mah-jong parlour. Lately the customers have been talking about an old lady who pushes a baby carriage through the streets. They say she is carrying something for a crime syndicate, and they wonder what it is she has in the carriage. Money? Drugs? One day, the owner of the mah-jong parlour sends Tsuneo out to walk his dog. A baby carriage comes rolling down a hill and crashes into a guard rail. The old lady asks him to look into the carriage, where he finds a young woman clutching a knife. This is how Tsuneo first meets the girl who calls herself Josée.Read More »
Marguerite is a successful dentist with a busy practice and an offbeat hobby, flying small airplanes. One day, Marguerite loses her wallet, and it’s found by Georges, a seemingly happy man with a wife, Suzanne, and two children. As Georges looks through the wallet and examines the photos of Marguerite, he finds he’s fascinated with her and her life, and soon his curiosity about her becomes an obsession.Read More »
The successful novelist Judith Ralitzer is interrogated in the police station about the disappearance of her ghost-writer. A serial-killer escapes from a prison in Paris. A missing school teacher leaves his wife and children. In the road, the annoying and stressed hairdresser Hughette is left in a gas station by her fiancé Paul while driving to the poor farm of her family in the country. A mysterious man offers a ride to her and she invites him to assume the identity of Paul during 24 hours to not disappoint her mother. Who might be the unknown man and what is real and what is fiction?Read More »
In a poor mining town in western China, stories of a father and his two children intertwine. The misfortunes of son and daughter alike unravel to illuminate the complicated relationships masked by their community’s hard exterior.Read More »
Quote:
Tavi, a forty-year-old divorced father, comes to his ex-wife’s home to repair his four-year-old daughter bike, Alexandra. He realizes with amazement that Alexandra does not call him “Daddy” any more. He asks an explanation from his ex-wife…Read More »
Quote:
A famous writer gets visited by a band of retards who heard that he can play drums and need a famous drummer for their band “The Feminists”. The writer joins the band in hope for new material for a book and the ride begins: Violence, bald women, men get raped by huge dicks, 3somes, rocknroll, people living upside down, killing sprees,a baby on drugs and a brief vacation inside a vagina.Read More »
from VARIETY.COM
Nicolas Cage makes an unusual but pleasantly haunting debut behind the camera with “Sonny,” the tale of a young man groomed as a gigolo by his Southern momma from age 12. Distinguished by affecting performances, commercial prospects seem modest but honorable in light of the semi-sordid storyline. However, anyone who gives “Sonny” a spin is unlikely to quickly forget it.Read More »