synopsis – AMG:
Director of award-winning short films Ben Hopkins embarked on this ambitious feature project with Robert Jones, the producer of The Usual Suspects. The screenplay is inspired by Central European folklore, spaghetti Westerns and industrial history. But the film, which runs like a fable, has its roots in folktales rather than history. It is the end of the 19th century and progress has arrived in Silesia. Travelers do not stop at the town anymore because the railway track is laid past the small settlement. Incomes have dropped, and so has the number of inhabitants. Noah Taylor plays Simon, a ‘holy fool’ of sorts, persecuted by fellow villagers who hold him responsible for everything from the failure of the crops to the milk going sour. Simon, who resembles a scarecrow, lives in a hut outside the village. He earns his living emptying the sewers, existing on dry bread and the occasional herring or pickle given by the wife of a rabbi. He knows how to entertain the village children with his magic tricks and devilish masks. At the same time, he feels he actually is pursued by the devil, which makes him do all kinds of evil things, only increasing his isolation. There is also the poor but good-looking Jew, Dovid, who keeps proposing to the beautiful widow Leah, who rejects him. Dovid devises a plan to build the village economy, and in the process gain her affection. He pays a visit to the eccentric poet esquire and agrees to a business deal which entails the esquire allowing a new railway station to be built on his property in return for Dovid reading his newly published anthology. Unfortunately, Hase Sean McGinley, a wealthy Christian merchant with more money and little respect for the Jewish villagers, is also interested in the railway project. Simon Magus is the story of a village caught between two worlds — the new industrial order and the old, rural world of tradition and superstition. The camera work of Nic Knowland is outstanding, as is the confident performance by Noah Taylor, the teenage David Helfgott of Shine. The rest of the cast is quite international as well — Irishman Stuart Townsend as Dovid, the merchant; South African-born Embeth Davidtz as Leah, the widow and Dutch star Rutger Hauer cast against type as the gentle poet squire. Various subplots, however, often carry the story in directions which distracts audience attention. Simon Magus competed at the 49th International Berlin Film Festival in 1999.

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https://nitro.download/view/F613EA80DD61B29/Simon.Magus.1999.DVDRIP.H264-CG.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Ben Hopkins – Simon Magus (1999) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
George (Alessandro Nivola) seems easy enough to read. At a Chicago art gallery opening, surrounded by people dressed in sleek black, he spots the owner, Madeleine (Embeth Davidtz). He meets her in front of a simple-seeming painting of deer in snow, exchange shy smiles. “It makes me happy,” he says of the artwork. And with that, the film’s credits begin, as George and Madeline kiss, playfully and earnestly. She laughs. He makes her happy.

“Where did you come from?” she asks. And his answer, “North Carolina,” is not so easy as it might sound. Some six months into their marriage (which occurs off screen), they’re on their way to his boyhood home. She has her own mission, a means to prod George into making this visit, who hasn’t been back for years. Madeleine wants to sign a contract to represent local “outsider artist” David Wark (Frank Hoyt Taylor), who sees his primitivist paintings as expressions of visions direct from God. “My job,” he says, “is to make the invisible visible.” Depicting a violent local and national history (slave revolts) as well as clashes between generations (“I love all the dog heads and computers and scrotums,” murmurs Madeleine), the paintings are objects of desire for gallery scenesters. All the more so for Madeleine once she hears that a New York gallery owner wants to represent Wark; she becomes utterly intent on “winning” him over. “I think I’m in love,” she sighs on first seeing his paintings in person, the sort of comment that makes her seem superficial and earnest at the same time.

While it’s very clear that she adores George, the visit exposes the mysterious fragility of their marriage. In part, this emerges in their recognition of sides of each other they hadn’t quite known or anticipated, reflected in the responses of George’s relatives. The few days they all spend together shows that their superficial differences (of habit and affect) aren’t nearly as profound as their less visible differences (of values and ambitions).

George’s mother Peg (Celia Weston), proud and loving, immediately distrusts Madeleine as an “outsider,” but also because she seems manipulative; “I don’t think anybody taught her how to do [right],” she says, “She’s too pretty and too smart. That’s a dangerous combination.” By contrast, George’s soft-spoken father Eugene (Scott Wilson), quiet and observant, is more generous toward everyone, his wife and sons included. Still living at home, Johnny (Ben McKenzie) resents his older brother’s escape, but feels caught: studying for his GED and working at a kitchenware outlet, he’s married to his high school girlfriend, Ashley (Amy Adams in a charming performance), now about to give birth to their first child, whom she’s already named “Junebug,” as it suits ma boy or a girl.

Ashley — or more precisely, Ashley’s generous nature — serves to connect everyone else, as she’s endlessly open in her thinking about them, and urges them all to share her enthusiasm. She admires the ultra-thin and British-accented Madeline (“You look so pretty,” Ashley gushes, “You smell good too, all baby powdery and shampooey”), values the secretly kind George (even as he’s pulling back from his wife). She also feels devoted to her in-laws and wants more than anything for her husband to be like he used to be in high school — happy, energetic, and confident. But Johnny, fearful and frustrated, feels no such openness. He can’t imagine himself beyond his current life. When Madeleine offers to help Johnny write a paper about Huckleberry Finn, she tries to explain the concepts of slavery, racism, and “freedom,” leading Johnny first to erupt in self-defensive anger (“None of us need shit from you”), and then think she’s trying to seduce him.

Upset that she’s been misunderstood (and that Johnny’s hand is on her but, leaned up against the kitchen counter), Madeline is also beginning to see more into her husband’s background, to comprehend the tensions that make him a great lover and also an emotional puzzle. She’s newly defined, alien wife of the local boy who escaped his past but still solicits reverence from his erstwhile community, and as she watches him sing “Softly and Tenderly Jesus Is Calling” at a church supper, her face reflects her own appreciation: the man is beautiful and unknown.

In recognizing George’s other life, extending before and beyond her, Madeleine also begins to see herself. Junebug portrays such reframings and delimitations, of borders that can’t be crossed, in images at once delicate and acute. Scenes that last only seconds, focused on empty spaces (hallways, doorways), waiting to be changed by a figure’s brief appearance, whether Johnny or Eugene or Madeleine. Each brings his or her own shape to the space, alters it, traces an outside and inside. In these muted, closed compositions, the film takes on a kind of painterly look, as if the action is paused for your reading.

As careful as Madeleine is in when she reads paintings, however, she can’t grasp the full movement around her. So she turns again to art, to expressions she can purchase and sell. Her renewed focus on securing her contract with Wark reveals to George a side of her he hadn’t anticipated. With their new knowledge of one another, they must decide how to move forward, within and across boundaries. – Cynthia Fuchs @ PopMatters

Phil Morrison - (2005) Junebug.mkv

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Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 46 min
Size: 	2.49 GiB
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https://nitro.download/view/F886BD0756972D4/Phil_Morrison_-_(2005)_Junebug.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post Phil Morrison – Junebug (2005) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

As the unfathomable tentacles of evil spread across time and space, Ash finds himself whisked off to another dimension, right after the supernatural events of Evil Dead II (1987). Now, trapped in the distant Middle Ages, circa 1300 AD, battle-scarred Ash must fight tooth and nail against the same old adversary he confronted in The Evil Dead (1981). However, this time, he is neck-deep in trouble: not one, not two demons, but the entire army of darkness is after Ash, thirsting for his soul. And what’s more, there is no turning back. Can the guy with the chainsaw and the 12-gauge double-barrelled shotgun blast evil to smithereens and save both worlds from the curse of the mystical Necronomicon?

Army.of.Darkness.1992.DC.BDRIP.576p.x264.AC3.KJNU.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 36 min
Size: 	2.28 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1024x576 
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	3 000 kb/s
BPP: 	0.212
Audio
#1:  	English 2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 kb/s (Main Audio)
#2:  	English 2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 kb/s (Commentary with Director Sam Raimi, Actor Bruce Campbell, and Co-Writer Ivan Raimi)

https://nitro.download/view/BFEE59841219E38/Army.of.Darkness.1992.DC.BDRIP.576p.x264.AC3.KJNU.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English SDH

The post Sam Raimi – Army of Darkness (1992) first appeared on Cinema of the World.