2000s

Ostensibly a fast-paced tale about poor people in the Persian Gulf living aboard a sinking oil tanker, “Iron Island” is a galloping fable full of offbeat characters and entertaining moments. At the same time, it doesn’t take much to read this second feature from director Mohammad Rasoulof (“The Twilight”) as a sharp-edged allegory about the country of Iran. Festivals will be happy to sail on its irony and invention, though it may take auxiliary engines to market such a hard-to-classify little gem.Read More »

What could have been just another of the countless coming-of-age tracts churned out on the indie-sector conveyor belt each year becomes a deeply nuanced drama full of original angles in Michael Cuesta’s accomplished feature bow, “L.I.E.”

SYNOPSIS
Central character, adolescent Howie (Paul Franklin Dano), is introduced precariously balancing on the expressway overpass, his voiceover recalling the number of lives claimed on the road, from celebrities like Harry Chapin and Alan J. Pakula to his mother years earlier. He barely communicates with his building contractor father, Marty (Bruce Altman), who’s preoccupied with sleeping with his girlfriend and his mounting legal problems over a fire probe into the use of unsafe materials.Read More »

Meet Rio de Janeiro… through the eyes of Jano!
Jean Leguay, working under the pseudonym Jano, is a pop French visual artist. He teamed up with Bertrand Tramber to create his first comic, ‘Kebra’, for the magazine B.D. in 1978. When the magazine folded, the ‘Kebra’ series was continued other magazines like Métal Hurlant, Charlie Mensuel, Rigolo, L’Echo des Savannes and Zoulou.

In late 2000, he visited Rio de Janeiro in order to make this book. Jano immersed himself completely in the “Rio de Janeiro life style”, going to places that will never be showed on post cards, meeting people from all layers of society, observing, experimenting, interacting.Read More »

Variety.com wrote:
Set in ’69, “A No-Hit, No-Run Summer” gets to first base, at least, with its modest tale of B-team squirts who play in old hockey jerseys but eventually hold their own against the well-named Aristocrats. Third feature by Quebecois helmer Francis Leclerc (“Girl at the Window”) is formulaic and insubstantial, but pleasant and occasionally more as it asserts the sandlot’s rejuvenating power for pint-sizers like 12-year-old Martin (Pier-Luc Funk), whose dad (Patrice Robitaille) takes up coaching duties for the summer. Movie is far milder than either version of “The Bad News Bears,” for better and worse; grosses will follow suit.Read More »

Quote:
A once-promising athlete whose career was cut short due to a tragic injury turns to a life of crime, and receives an unusual gift that leads him to make a series of rash decisions. Lesha Shultes is only twenty-five years old, but his best days are already behind him. He was set to take the world of sports by storm when a serious car accident rendered him unable to compete on the playing field. Now, the only way Lesha can communicate with the outside world is by stealing. In between bouts of picking pockets on the streets, Lesha visits his ailing mother and his brother in the Army. Lesha has been effectively cut off from all human emotion. It’s only when he receives a video from a girl that he previously robbed that Lesha begins to feel something oddly familiar somewhere deep within.Read More »

Plot Synopsis from allmovie.com
Romanian director Cristian Nemescu’s comedy California Dreamin’ unfolds against the backdrop of the Kosovo War, circa 1999. A NATO train rolls through a Romanian hamlet, transporting a plethora of weapons across the country – without official documents, and equipped only with the verbal consent of the Romanian authorities. The transport thus grows intensely vulnerable to the locals – particularly the head of the railway station, who moonlights as a mobster.Read More »

A fiercely active Communard, Louise Michel is condemned for taking arms against Bismarck. Along with thousands of other revolutionaries, she is deported to New Caledonia, whilst, back in Paris, a young parliamentarian Georges Clemenceau campaigns for a truce with the Communards. During her exile, Louise Michel becomes a teacher and wins the admiration of the other deportees, inspiring them to rise up against the colonial order…Read More »

The film follows England fans from Frankfurt to Gelsenkirchen and infiltrates groups of troublemakers.
A record 170,000 England fans travelled to Germany for the cup and the majority were peaceful causing no problems.
But the worst rioting happened the day before the England vs Ecuador game.
Police believe rioters consumed or threw about 17 litres of beer each in Stuttgart and 400 England ‘fans’ were taken into preventative custody.
The motto of World Cup 2006 was ‘a time to make friends’ but undercover cameras reveal England ‘fans’ ‘mobbing up’ and singing songs about World War Two which visibly shock German police officers.Read More »

Quote:
In 2003, a man with a lifelong cannibalistic obsession placed an advertisement on the Internet in search of a victim to eat. Unbelievably he received a replay from a willing victim, whereby the stage was set for one of the most awful and depraved crimes of modern times. The gruesome incident was captured on camcorder and the footage formed part of the evidence at the trail of the world’s most infamous cannibal.Read More »