Drama

  • Maggie Greenwald – The Ballad of Little Jo (1993)

    Drama1991-2000Maggie GreenwaldUSAWestern

    Plot (from AMG):
    The Ballad of Little Jo is based on a true story — several true stories, in fact. Suzy Amis plays demure young Josephine Monagan, who in 1866 is run out of her home town after bearing an illegitimate child. Fleeing westward, Josephine is terrified by stories of how treacherous the frontier can be for a woman alone. As a result, upon arriving in the muddy burg of Ruby City, she disguises herself as a man, going so far as to scar her face to suggest that she’s been in a few scrapes. In this guise, “Little Jo” does just fine by herself for nearly 30 years! Almost as good as Suzy Amis is Bo Hopkins as gunslinger Frank Badger, Little Jo’s best buddy (if only he knew….) Written and directed by Maggie Greenwald, The Ballad of Little Jo does a marvelous job conveying the people and places of its period; and, unlike Bad Girls (which was released around the same time), we aren’t bludgeoned to death by feminist revisionism. Unfortunately ignored when it went out to theatres in the fall of 1993, The Ballad of Little Jo has fared rather better on video.Read More »

  • Elisa Fuksas – Nina (2012)

    2011-2020DramaElisa FuksasItaly

    Quote:
    The contemporary architecture of Rome – rather than the traditionally seen Roman viaducts and amphitheatres – are at the heart of the beautifully shot and winsomely appealing Nina, which charts the oddball escapades of a young woman in a depopulated Rome during one hot summer.

    The film is a playfully familiar story of a young woman drifting through life as she tries to find some sort of direction, but debut director Elisa Fuksas – a trained architect and daughter of famed Italian architects Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas – shoots with a real eye for structure and shape, making this Roman holiday interlude an enjoyable and often heart-warming tale. The film had its world premiere in competition at the Tokyo International Film Festival.Read More »

  • Kim Nguyen – Rebelle (2012)

    2011-2020CanadaDramaKim Nguyen

    Somewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa, Komona a 14-year-old girl tells her unborn child growing inside her the story of her life since she has been at war. Everything started when she was abducted by the rebel army at the age of 12.Read More »

  • Alan Clarke – Scum (1979)

    1971-1980Alan ClarkeCrimeDramaQueer Cinema(s)United Kingdom

    Quote:
    Alan Clarke first released Scum in 1977 as a BBC TV-film, yet the BBC disapproved of the film due to the amount of raw, harrowing realism which had been packed into a short running-time. Therefore the BBC banned the version, and it was not until fifteen years later that the TV-version was aired on the UK’s Channel 4. Though, to get around not being able to release the TV version of Scum Alan Clarke opted in for developing a remade, feature-length version to be aired at cinemas, this was released in 1979. The film sent shockwaves through cinemas across Britain, causing huge controversy from the media, government and British public. Some people saw the film as a “visceral image of a flawed system”, while others saw the film as “exploitive trash in the form of a documentary”.Read More »

  • Thomas Arslan – Geschwister – Kardesler (1997)

    1991-2000DramaGermanyThomas ArslanTurkey

    Thomas Arslan’s second feature film and part of his Berlin-trilogy is a slow-paced milieu study of German-Turkish youth in Berlin-Kreuzberg. The film depicts the every day life, domestic conflicts, dreams and disappointments of three siblings and their aimless, meandering strolls through the Kreuzberg district. The family itself encapsulates the culture clash that is at the centre of many German-Turkish films. In Arslan’s film, the mother is German, the father is Turkish and the children have to make up their own minds about their cultural allegiances. Seventeen-year-old Leyla tries to escape from her family by spending most of her time with her best friend Sevim. Read More »

  • Séverine Cornamusaz – Coeur animal (2009)

    2001-2010DramaSéverine CornamusazSwitzerland

    Paul and Rosine live deep and isolated in the craggy, breathtaking Swiss Alps where they have a small dairy farm. The day-to-day work attendant on this rustic if somewhat modernized two-person operation is punishing and relentless. Life is made no easier by the fact that Paul is an emotionally stunted brute. While treating his cows as tenderly as a family pet, he bullies Rosine mercilessly, both physically and verbally. She finds a few moments of pleasure when left alone to milk the cows or shimmy to the radio while making goat cheese—reveries more often than not interrupted by Paul’s crude appetites.Read More »

  • Arnaud Desplechin – Un conte de Noël aka A Christmas Tale (2008)

    2001-2010Arnaud DesplechinComedyDramaFrance

    Criterion wrote:
    In Arnaud Desplechin’s beguiling A Christmas Tale (Un conte de Noël), Catherine Deneuve brings her legendary poise to the role of Junon, matriarch of the troubled Vuillard family, who come together at Christmas after she learns she needs a bone marrow transplant from a blood relative. That simple family reunion setup, however, can’t begin to describe the unpredictable, emotionally volatile experience of this film, an inventive, magical drama that’s equal parts merriment and melancholy. Unrequited childhood loves and blinding grudges, brutal outbursts and sudden slapstick, music, movies, and poetry, A Christmas Tale ties it all together in a marvelously messy package.
    Read More »

  • Bostjan Hladnik – Maskarada aka Masquerade (1971)

    Drama1971-1980Bostjan HladnikEroticaYugoslaviaYugoslavian Cinema under Tito

    Quote:
    An erotic drama about complicated love affairs and blackmailing. Dina, the young wife of elderly manager Gantar meets attractive student Luka and falls in love with him. All her further activity is submitted to one and only goal: to get Luka for herself.

    Banned for over a decade because of its explicit sexual situations, when this film was released in Yugoslavia in 1983 the explicit scenes had become tame. Other than the notoriety it obtained through censorship, the film has an undistinguished story about the forbidden love affair between the older wife of a sports director and a young athlete.
    ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie GuideRead More »

  • Kang-sheng Lee – Bang bang wo ai shen AKA Help Me Eros (2007)

    Drama2001-2010ArthouseKang-sheng LeeTaiwan

    Quote:

    The literal translation of the Taiwanese title is ‘Help Me, God of Love’, since Eros is an artifact of Greece-Roman mythology. The exclamation is a wry reference to the film’s comically cynical perspective on human relationships, in which a wide variety of unlikely subjects – food, marijuana and live eels, amongst others – become substitute objects of comfort and affection for the protagonists. The plea for help is also a strong theme in the form of the suicide hotline.Read More »

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