Beautiful young Oriko (Mariko Okada) has an unhappy marriage. Her husband Takashi (Tadahiko Sugano), owner of a securities company, has been having an affair and comes home only once in a week at most. In a poetry party, Oriko meets sculptor Mitsuharu (Isao Kimura), who was one of the lovers of Oriko’s deceased poetess mother…Read More »
Arthouse
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Yoshishige Yoshida – Jôen aka The Affair (1967)
Yoshishige Yoshida1961-1970ArthouseDramaJapan -
Paul Schrader – The Card Counter (2021)
2021-2030ArthouseDramaPaul SchraderUSAA gambler attempts to give guidance to a young man who is out for revenge against a mutual enemy.Read More »
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Michael Haneke – Drei Wege zum See AKA Three Paths to the Lake (1976)
Drama1971-1980ArthouseAustriaMichael HanekeQuote:
This is Michael Haneke’s first feature film, made for Österreichischer Rundfunk and Südwestfunk and broadcast in 1976. Like many of his later films for television and for the screen, it is an adaptation of a literary work; but viewers will probably notice moments in it that strangely anticipate later films — from The Seventh Continent and 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance, to Code Inconnu and Caché. The film, which is 97 minutes long, is based on a novella by the Austrian author Ingeborg Bachmann, published in 1972, a year before her death following a fire in her Rome apartment.Read More » -
Raoul Ruiz – Días de campo AKA Days in the Country [Rai3] (2004)
Raoul Ruiz2001-2010ArthouseChileDramaWe are in Santiago, Chile, in a bar. Two old men talking and drinking. It seems that one of them is writing a novel. In bizarre conversation, they speak of themselves as if they were already dead while the would-be novelist, Don Federico, dips match sticks with tweezers into his wine glass. A curious strangeness settles in… where are we, exactly? In the kingdom of the dead? Not quite. At most, in a previous life or in memory. For Don Federico begins to evoke the days of his youth back when he lived in the country.Read More »
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Imunga Ivanga – Dôlè AKA Money (2000)
1991-2000African CinemaArthouseDramaGabonImunga IvangaPlot Synopsis:
Dôlè offers a Gabonese perspective on the global crisis facing today’s youth. This film reveals that, whether in Libreville or in our own inner cities and suburbs the underlying causes of youthful disaffection can be remarkably similar.
Dôlè provides one of the most affectionate and affecting portraits of African youth poised precariously on the cusp of modernity. It has already been widely compared to François Truffaut’s iconic coming of age film – a kind of ‘Le quatre cents coups’ in Gabon.Read More » -
António de Macedo – As Horas de Maria AKA Maria’s Hours (1979)
António de Macedo1971-1980ArthouseDramaPortugalA young girl with an undisclosed ailment is comforted by a nun who is her aunt in this symbolic, slow-moving drama. The action takes place in a clinic where the head doctor regards Christ as a subversive and a revolutionary. The victim’s religious faith remains intact, even when she is on the verge of death as her aunt prays for her salvation. ~ Dan Pavlides, RoviRead More »
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Jean-Daniel Pollet – Le sang (1971)
Jean-Daniel Pollet1971-1980ArthouseFranceLe Sang re-enacts the utopia of the Living Theater, a theatrical company founded in 1947 and boasting collective creation, the liberation of bodies (the actors played naked) and the counterculture. But happiness is dangerous and the utopia mortal: Leon drowns in the dance, believing to find freedom. (imdb)Read More »
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Laura Wandel – Un monde AKA Playground (2021)
2021-2030ArthouseBelgiumDramaLaura Wandel7-year-old Nora and her big brother Abel are back to school. When Nora witnesses Abel being bullied by other kids, she rushes to protect him by warning their father. But Abel forces her to remain silent. Caught in a conflict of loyalty, Nora will ultimately try to find her place.Read More »
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Volker Schlöndorff – Der plötzliche Reichtum der armen Leute von Kombach AKA The Sudden Wealth of Poor People of Kombach (1971)
Volker Schlöndorff1971-1980Amos Vogel: Film as a Subversive ArtArthouseDramaGermanyFrom Amos Vogel’s Film as a Subversive Art:
An excellent example of a particularly interesting new genre of young German cinema; bizarre, deadly serious variations on the reactionary German “Heimat” films of yore – those insufferable, sentimental “kitsch” prosodies to Fatherland, Soil, and Family. This fully realized work effectively upsets this tradition by recounting a tale of oppressed 19th-century German peasants who become rebels against the state out of poverty, revealing (instead of romanticizing) the brutal degradation of German rural life at the time. Particularly audacious is the presence of an itinerant Jew peddler as mastermind (!) of the conspiracy, predictably leading to (unfounded) charges of anti-semitism against a young director who has dared to reintroduce the Jew into German dramaturgy.Read More »