2000s

Summer of 1922.
Photographer Norman Harris and Niki are sailing to America aboard the same ship. Norman in first class and Niki in third, together with some 700 other brides. They all carry the photograph of a bridegroom they have never met in their little trunks as well as their bridal gown. Norman is touched when he sees the brides in third class. Niki is the one who makes the greatest impression on him. Gradually they get to know each other and fall in love. Brides is a story about strong emotions, about dilemmas, about conscience, about a responsible attitude. It is about the little moments, the glances, the touches, the “yeses” an the “nos” that count in life.

Executive producer: Martin ScorseseRead More »

Anna (Ann Eleonora Jørgensen) is a newly graduated theologian who has given up trying to have a baby with her husband Frank (Lars Ranthe). After accepting a temporary post as chaplain in a women’s prison, she soon hears stories about a new inmate called Kate (Trine Dyrholm) and her magical touch that can cure prisoners suffering from heroin withdrawal. Even though Kate detects that Anna is pregnant even before Anna knows it herself, Anna remains sceptical of the inmate’s powers, and horrified by the crime that got her convicted in the first place – but then an awful moral dilemma arises that requires Anna to believe in miracles.Read More »

“For the first decades of their existence, movies were seen not as works of art deserving preservation but as disposable commodities. The notion that they might be preserved, collected and studied was in the air by the mid-1930’s, but it took the pluck and persistence of a single eccentric Frenchman to make the idea a reality. The name of Henri Langlois — subject of “Henri Langlois: Phantom of the Cinémathèque,” a long, affectionate documentary directed by Jacques Richard — is not as well known as those of some directors whose work and reputations he saved from oblivion. Still, Mr. Richard’s film makes a persuasive case for Langlois as one of the most important figures in the history of film and therefore in the history of 20th-century art. And he was, after his own fashion, an artist — a collector and curator with the temperament of a poet. A shabbily dressed, chain-smoking walrus of a man, Langlois emerges in the course of this fascinating film as a maddening, inspiring figure, afire with intelligence and passion.”Read More »

College buddies Ben (Mark Duplass) and Andrew (Justin Leonard) are reunited in Seattle when the latter comes crashing into his pal’s marital bliss, in more ways than one. As a kind of bet – Andrew is involved in a porn-themed art project – they agree it would be pretty far out if two straight men were to have sex on camera. While drunk, they volunteer and set a date.
In the cold light of day, neither wants to be the one to back down: the funniest idea in Lynn Shelton’s bracing, superbly-acted low-budget comedy is how this now-or-never challenge becomes a clinching test of machismo. Ben knows his wife (Alycia Delmore) is never going to be cool with it, and bottles out of asking. To be fair, the film does a fair amount of squirming itself, but not before giving honest and hilarious thought to the carnal intricacies of the whole project.Read More »

A young couple, passionately in love, in a mutual giving action, exchange their sexual identity.Read More »

A 48-hour leave from reform school brings life lessons for the teenage protagonist of “7 Virgins,” a street-kids piece that combines energy and delicacy to striking and subtle effect. The best Spanish movie of its type since Fernando Leon’s 1998 “Barrio,” pic rises above genre standard with scrupulous attention to detail and an engaging central tandem. Downsides are lapses into sentimentality and visual deja vu, and an occasional inability to exploit the emotional potential. “Virgins” should snuggle up in plenty of fest beds, with arthouse interest a certainty in Spain-friendly territories.Read More »

Quote:
As soon as Los was completed I added Sogobi to make it a trilogy, the urban and rural portraits needed the Californian wilderness to put them in perspective. Following the same structure Sogobi would look and listen to that wilderness. The first shot of Sogobi would relate to the last shot of Los, and the last shot of Sogobi would return to the first shot of El Valley Centro, revealing its mystery. The entire trilogy would become an interrelated puzzle.

James Benning, December 2001

Coming after the spectacular El Valley Centro and Los, Sogobi is a colossal disappointment. James Benning is the most methodical, careful and mathematically precise of film-makers, so it’s baffling that he should abandon the logical progression established in the first two parts of his California trilogy. Centro examined California’s farming heartland. Los explored the greater LA county, and skirted around the edge of the city itself. Surely the next step should have been to tackle Los Angeles in all its garish, terrible splendour, providing a filmic counterpart to Mike Davis’ books of dystopian polemicism, ‘Ecology of Fear’ and ‘City of Quartz.’Read More »

synopsis – AMG:
Last Resort opens as Tanya (Dina Korzun), a young Russian traveling to England with her son Artiom (Artiom Strelnikov), is questioned at a British airport’s passport control. Tanya tells the official she is visiting England on a vacation, but then switches her story and says that her English fiancי is meeting her, and finally, out of desperation, asks for political asylum. She and Artiom are duly packed off to an immigrants’ center in a grim coastal town, where they are given a small apartment and informed that their application for asylum will take over a year to process. After Tanya’s fiancי dumps her over the phone, she gradually befriends Alfie (Paddy Considine), who runs an arcade. Alfie wins the trust of Tanya and her street-smart son, and soon Tanya must decide how far she wants to carry her relationship with this new friend. Last Resort was screened at the 2000 Edinburgh International Film Festival. — Rebecca Flint MarxRead More »

Four friends/fledgling entrepreneurs, knowing that there’s something bigger and more innovative than the different error-checking devices they’ve built, wrestle over their new invention.Read More »