Synopsis: Cockney cat burglar Harry Dean needs Hong Kong dancer Nicole Chang’s help to pull off the perfect heist. With a simple makeover and a new wardrobe; Nicole’s resemblance to wealthy recluse Mr. Shahbandar’s late wife is uncanny. While Shahbandar is distracted by the mesmerizing Nicole, Harry takes steps to swipe a priceless artifact from under the tycoon’s nose. But even the most foolproof schemes have a way of backfiring.
A harsh wintery scene on the Turkish Black Sea coast. Denise, a foreign botanist, has ended up here for research purposes. She stoically trudges through water knee-deep to get to the remote site where she cultivates her plants. With the same resolve and fearlessness, she also makes her way through the night to the secluded cabin where she meets her lover Hamit. He is a have-not who has only remained in this desolate region following a failed attempt to set up a livelihood abroad. And because of his relationship with Denise. It’s a dilemma, since Hamit cannot let her know that he works as a human trafficker, making a living by helping others flee to Europe. But Denise is tired of his mysterious behaviour. When she is called back to her home country and one of Hamit’s jobs spirals out of control, he makes a decision that ends in catastrophe.
A man and a woman in Rome evoke a civilization and an ancient love.
Quote: “The subject of this film is the conversation between a man and a woman. A couple, maybe lovers, maybe married, it doesn’t matter. (…) During this conversation, we do not see but the city of Rome. I wanted to transmit that what Rome provokes in me, the feeling of an intrinsic matter, indissoluble, in difference with Paris, made of small parks and open spaces, crossed by the sky and the wind. Hand in hand with the film, the difficulty of the two lovers assumes a clearer, more explicit form. But as much as, in my opinion, it is impossible to describe and film Rome, the difficulty in the love of a couple can never be totally understood.” Marguerite Duras, Venice film festival catalogue, 1982.
Synopsis Director Alexander Nanau follows a crack team of investigators at the Romanian newspaper Gazeta Sporturilor as they try to uncover a vast health-care fraud that enriched moguls and politicians and led to the deaths of innocent citizens.
Korean filmmaker Kim Ki-duk bares his tortured, inebriated soul in “Arirang,” and it’s not a pretty sight. An experience that can be likened only to being stuck next to a drunk in a bar who keeps reminding you he used to be famous, all his friends are bastards and he now understands the meaning of life, pic might have proved therapeutic to make, but it’s a grind to watch, even for fans of the maverick writer-director’s work. Kim’s rep will inevitably ensure further fest bookings for what is essentially one long whine, but theatrical distribution anywhere looks highly unlikely. Further evidence, as if it were needed, that digital is both the liberation of low-budget filmmaking and the enabler of self-indulgence, the pic was made entirely by Kim, according to credits culled from the production notes. (Indeed, the only word onscreen, apart from subtitles on the version shown in Cannes, was the title.) And like some other films that have cropped up recently (notably Joaquin Phoenix meltdown movie “I’m Still Here”), “Arirang” takes advantage of the verite connotations associated with digital to deliberately blur the line between docu and drama.
The action, such as it is, mostly consists of footage of Kim going about his daily routines — chopping wood, making food, voiding his bowels in the snow outside — in and around the mountaintop shack he’s been holed up in for some time, ever since he had a nervous breakdown precipitated by a near-fatal accident that happened on the set of his previous feature, “Dream,” in 2008. In between these quotidian tasks, he knocks back the soju (the Korean equivalent of vodka) and interviews himself via some crude crosscutting about where it all went wrong.
Like many barroom bores, he’s not shy about crowing over his own talent, little in evidence here, although supporters know he’s capable of greatness. One example of his former glory is “Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter … and Spring,” his international breakthrough, which, in one of “Arirang’s” most piteous scenes, Kim watches tearfully on DVD, a shadow of the former self seen in “Spring,” climbing a mountain while dragging a concrete anchor behind him.
Kim partly blames his miserable state on former friends, such as his one-time protege Jang Hun (who helmed “Rough Cut” from a script by Kim), for abandoning him. But to his credit, he also blames himself a bit, and goes over how he’s always been an outsider, even when he was a machinist and street artist. In tones more bemused than wounded, he wonders if the countrymen who gave him medals of honor when he won awards at international film festivals even saw his dark films, particular those, like “Address Unknown” and “Time,” that lambast Korean society.
Just when auds might be thinking this is an actual video diary, Kim puts his machinist skills to use on a firearm and goes out to take revenge, a swerve into pure fantasy (one hopes) that reps the cinematic equivalent of saying, “I was just kidding, this isn’t for real.” Altogether, the whole shooting match is sordid and tacky; to discuss or program it further starts to feel like some kind of enabling in itself. Fans can only hope that having gotten this out of his system, Kim will go back to making proper films, which, as he self-aggrandizingly points out, many are eagerly awaiting after this uncharacteristic three-year hiatus.
This is a satirical look at Mexican contemporary life. It makes fun of its culture in many ways. Even though it has many dramatic and serious moments, it’s a very effective comedy. The movie is simply about two families from Mexico City that go camping to the mountains outside the city overnight to see the conclusion of a cross country car race. Most of the movie takes place the night before the race. There is a lot of drinking, dancing, and many other things that happen in a big party. And there’s like two hundred vehicles camping waiting for the race the next day. The results are quite funny, specially the climax of the movie, that’s a sequence you won’t want to miss. It shows the conflict of Latin American principles and traditions against the American/European influence of the car race, and you may be amused when you see which influence is winning. And the very popular Mexican mariachi song played at the end of the movie is very effective at being cynical.
Synopsis wrote: The Other Side of Sunday, also known in Norwegian as “Søndagsengler”, is a movie that criticizes the small, and often tight, church community. We follow the Preacher’s Daughter, Maria, on her journey to liberate herself from the stiff church community and her father.
A short documentary about the life and craft of a French cooper. The main focus is on the two-day process of creating a wine barrel, from nada to completion. Interspersed throughout are little snippets concerning the life of the cooper whose work we follow, like mentioning his daughter’s marriage and his being involved in WWI.
Harada is a successful scenario writer, and his best buddy has just announced an intention to propose to Harada’s ex-wife. Recovering from the shock, Harada indulges in melancholy, mainly on his failure as a husband and father, and goes to a ‘Rakugo’ (sit-down comedy) show, where a friendly man in the audience invites him home. Harada is puzzled at the strong resemblance of this man and his wife to his own parents, who were killed nearly 30 years ago when he was twelve. He visits the couple repeatedly, and greatly enjoys the happy atmosphere there, which was much like his childhood, and such a contrast to his current existence, which is lonely and tortured. But he is no longer alone.
Quote: Kyoko met Tetsu during her trip to San Francisco. Soon they fell in love but getting married was not in his mind. They were to meet again back in Tokyo but Tetsu didn’t turn up.
Synopsis: This is the final movie from Okamoto Kihachi, the filmmaker who directed such great movies as “Sword Of Doom”, “Kill”, and “Red Lion”. With an equal mix of violence and humor he has forged a career that spanned over 4 decades and created some of the most memorable films to ever come out of Japan. This is no exception, and the hand of a master is evident in his treatment of this highly entertaining story. In a world where vendettas are officially sanctioned, the people sometimes needed help in carrying out their vengeance. Sanada Hiroyuki stars as Sukeroku the Helper, a ‘cool and rambling yakuza’ that has made a business out of helping victims carry out their revenge. When he returns to his hometown to pay a visit to his mother’s grave he meets a deadly ronin who carries a secret which eventually leads him into a vendetta of his own. With terrific performances by Sanada and Nakadai Tatsuya as the mysterious old ronin, this film brings back the golden era of Japanese cinema!
Quote: A corrupt cop with access to all the money and drugs he needs suddenly finds his comfortable way of life turned upside down by the arrival of ruthless Albanian gangsters in his patch of London. Crime thriller, starring Peter Ferdinando, Stephen Graham and Neil Maskell.
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Quote: Aleksei German’s singular, multithreaded drama My Friend Ivan Lapshin offers a uniquely stylized look at life in Russia as the flaws of Communism were just beginning to show. Set in a provincial Russian village during the 1930s, the film at times recalls the autobiographical work of Terence Davies or Woody Allen’s Radio Days. Like the work of those directors, German’s film filters most experiences through the eyes of a child, although the child/narrator in this particular movie is not present in the majority of the scenes. Instead, German turns his roving camera into a surrogate for the child, usually having it track behind characters or wander curiously throughout the scenes. This gives the film a unique feel, as narrative incident is scarcely privileged over background detail. As with many of our memories, most things here only begin make sense in retrospect, as they are mulled over in the mind. So, while Ivan Lapshin offers a story about a small town police officer who seems precariously perched on the abuse of his power, an investigation of memory itself begins to feel like the film’s prime attraction.
In the opening scene of Ivan Lapshin, a narrator explains that his story is a “declaration of love for the people I lived with as a child, just five minutes’ walk from here and a half a century ago.” As fifty years and five blocks would imply, memory is viewed here as something slippery; almost tangible yet just out of reach. Outright realism often gives way to clearly staged pictorial beauty, reminding us that we are viewing a subjective memory. German switches, almost at random, between scenes shot in color and black and white. A voiceover occasionally intrudes upon the action, to further emphasize the constructedness of all memory. The resulting film, which revels in the past even as it seems soberly aware of the disappointment to come, would likely be probably intensely nostalgic for anyone who lived under Communism.
For the rest of us, My Friend Ivan Lapshin offers a distinctive, yet mildly uninvolving mélange. The indirectness of the film’s point of view makes it somewhat difficult to interpret precisely what it is trying to communicate about Communist Russia. Throughout the movie we are shown the optimism of the people, yet at the same time, whether through the agony caused by a spilt canister of petrol or the way that the characters’ cramped living spaces squelch privacy, we are made aware of the costs of collectivism. Characters talk hopefully about the future but we, like the narrator, know of the disappointment to come. Perhaps the most potent message, though, is found in the brief sequences that return us to the 1980s, from which the story is being told. Little in the physical environment in the fictional town in which the film takes place seems to have been changed in the fifty years since Ivan’s story unfolded, but it’s made quite clear that a way of life has died.
After saving a Black Panther from some racist cops, a black prostitute goes on the run from “the man” with the help of the ghetto community and some disillusioned Hells Angels.
“Run, motherfucker.”
Quote: “Sweetback was politically unacceptable on the one hand, but it made a lot of money on the other. And I thought it was a stroke of genius to suppress the political aspects and highlight the cartoonish aspects, and there you’ve got your blaxploitation. In essence, blaxploitation ushered in a bunch of counterrevolutionary films….The upside was that because the films were so markedly “urban”–and I’m using the code word–they had to use minorities in central roles. So a lot of people got to learn a craft that had always been denied them.”
Michael Brooke, imdb wrote: A communist soldier is sent to a remote region of China in order to collect folk songs. Staying with a peasant family (a widower with two small children), he discovers a community whose way of life is completely alien to him, but he gradually wins their trust…
As some of you are aware, Stanley Kubrick personally re-edited The Shining after the initial US release, shortening it some 20 minutes. The original version, clocked at 144 min is only available in the US (and is available here on worldscinema) but everywhere else, there is this 119 min version, which according to some sources, was Kubrick’s preferred version.
Personally I prefer the longer version, but it’s uncanny how organic this cut is, since you don’t feel like you’re watching a shortened version at all.
This rip is made from the Special Edition 16:9 DVD, with the commentary track on second track – the commentary is shortened too!
Synopsis: ‘Three years after its incendiary run on the London stage, director Tony Richardson’s film version of John Osborne’s play Look Back in Anger (1959) became one of the precursors to the British “kitchen sink” dramas of the 1960s. Enhancing the aim to show British life as it really was through the hopeless existence of enraged working class stiff Jimmy Porter and his put-upon, better-born wife Allison, Richardson unstintingly reveals the grunginess of their industrial city residential milieu with its drab row houses and unkempt children. Shot in stark black and white to match the dreariness of their lives, Richardson’s close-ups intensify the already fraught emotions of Richard Burton’s quintessential “angry young man” as he vents Porter’s frustrations in Osborne’s sharp, incisive dialogue. Mary Ure’s Allison and Claire Bloom’s neighbor-turned-mistress Helena are as emotionally caught as Jimmy, despite their different attempts at resistance.’ – Lucia Bozzola
