2000s

Plot : Catherine Breillat puts a new spin on an ancient story in this multi-leveled drama. In France in the mid-1950s, Catherine (Lola Creton) enjoys toying with her younger sister Marie-Anne (Daphne Baiwir) by reading her the story of the murderous and oft-married Bluebeard, embellishing the story with plenty of gore and scaring the child out of her wits. As Catherine rereads the story, we’re taken back to the year 1697, as Lord Bluebeard (Dominique Thomas) prepares to make Marie-Catherine (also played by Creton) his seventh wife. Marie-Catherine’s youth and innocence make her an especially attractive quarry to Bluebeard, and rather than murder her right away, he decides to wait a while in order to savor the terrible joy of claiming her life. Read More »

A man rescues a woman from a suicide attempt in a gay nightclub. Walking the streets together, she propositions him: She’ll pay him to visit her at her isolated house for four consecutive nights. There he will silently watch her. He’s reluctant, but agrees. As the four nights progress, they become more intimate with each other, and a mutual fascination/revulsion develops. By the end of the four-day “contract”, these two total strangers will have had a profound impact on each other.Read More »

The achingly hip I LOVE YOUR WORK arrives with trappings familiar to any keen-eyed independent film fan. With a cast that includes Giovanni Ribisi (LOST IN TRANSLATION) and Franke Potente (RUN LOLA RUN), a big-star-in-a-cameo-role appearance (in this case, Vince Vaughn), and the by now obligatory roles for people you wouldn’t expect to see in such a movie (Jason Lee, Elvis Costello), Adam Goldberg’s debut feature is positively dripping in cool, and he seems to have looked up every contact in his Rolodex for I LOVE YOUR WORK–even calling on the Flaming Lips’ Steven Drozd to carve out a few songs for the soundtrack.Read More »

MARY AND MAX is the claymation feature film from Adam Elliot who won an Oscar for his short film Harvey Krumpet.
It was invited to open the Sundance Film Festival this year, an auspicious start for this very individual film which covers 20 years of a pen-pal friendship between Mary Daisy Dinkle – voiced by BETHANY WHITMORE as a child and TONI COLLETTE as an adult and Max, (PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN) a large sized New Yorker who has problems relating to people. This odd couple friendship has loneliness at its core.Read More »

Koji Shiraishi is interested in strange indiscriminate murder at a sightseeing resort. He goes behind the camera to investigate the circumstances surrounding strange occurrences and interview the survivors.Read More »

An excellent documentary on the great Zbig Rybczynski, spanning his entire career, from Kwadrat to his most recent Hi-Def works. It’s not an overstatement to say that Zbig is one of the great pioneers of the moving image; a true visionary whose influence and ideas can be found everywhere in contemporary filmmaking and advertising.

Fascinating and moving in equal parts, Zbig discusses his life and experiences and how they have shaped his work. An incredibly eloquent and engaging narrator and storyteller, the man is as interesting as his creations – a beautiful mind, an extraordinary artist and a remarkable man.Read More »

“I was interested in whether it was possible to tell the inner life of a relationship, the things you can’t express to a third person. When Gitti and Chris come home after the holiday, and someone asks her, “How was it?” she probably wouldn’t be able to tell what happened.” Maren Ade.Read More »

Quote:
Have you ever wanted to relive your childhood and do things differently? Guy Maddin (THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD) casts B-movie icon Ann Savage as his domineering mother in attempt to answer that question in MY WINNPEG, a hilariously wacky and profoundly touching goodbye letter to his childhood hometown. A documentary (or “docu-fantasia” as Maddin proclaims) that inventively blends local and personal history with surrealist images and metaphorical myths, the film covers everything from the fire at the local park which lead to a frozen lake of distressed horse heads to pivotal and factually heightened scenes from Maddin’s own childhood, all laced with a startling emotional honesty.Read More »

Glorious (2009, Canada, 12 min.)
Glorious tells the story of an aging crime family patriarch, holed up in a derelict apartment block. Maddin pulls out all the stops as the film unfolds into an orgy of paranoia, bursting ammo shells, rackety disarmaments and oral gratification from beyond the grave. Featuring the music of British/Dutch composer Richard Ayres.Read More »