USA

  • Abel Ferrara – The Funeral (1996)

    1991-2000Abel FerraraCrimeDramaUSA

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Quote:
    Abel Ferrara must be one “happy camper.” Really, I have to wonder when there’s been a happy ending in one of his movies; for him it might come close to being unconventional to have one. A lot of his movies (Ms. 45, Driller Killer, Bad Lieutenant, China Girl) all end pretty badly (I mean that as a compliment), but none as drenched in horror as The Funeral. Perhaps that should have been expected, and indeed I was hoping that a film starting off with teary-eyed Italians looking over a casket of a 23 year old guy with Billy Holiday’s “Gloomy Sunday” would follow through on its dark promise of death and dread. And it does. Mostly. And that ending…Read More »

  • Nick Castle – Tag: The Assassination Game (1982)

    1981-1990ActionNick CastleThrillerUSA

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    IMDB:
    College assassination game turns deadly as someone starts playing for real.Read More »

  • Ed Pincus – Diaries (1982)

    1981-1990ArthouseDocumentaryEd PincusUSA

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    200 minutes of cinema-verite on the life of documentarist Ed Pincus and his immediate family from 1971 to 1976.

    Director of Black Natchez, Ed Pincus now lives with his wife Jane in Vermont and owns a flower farm. He recently returned to filmmaking for a documentary about Katrina, and thinks about new projects.Read More »

  • Abel Ferrara – Cat Chaser (1989)

    1981-1990Abel FerraraActionUSA

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    An American veteran (Weller) of the Dominican Republic intervention (LBJ era) is running a hotel in Miami, and is trying to put the memories of the intervention behind him. He gets involved with a former Dominican Republic general’s wife (McGillis). He then gets duped through a series of intricate plot twists into helping a group of people trying to rip the general off. Based on the novel by Elmore Leonard (IMBD)Read More »

  • Dana Plays – Nuclear Family (2001)

    2001-2010Dana PlaysDocumentaryExperimentalUSA

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    NUCLEAR FAMILY explores institutional and personal representations of memory and behavior through a complex interweaving of scientific documentation, animal behavior experiments and vintage pre-school footage. The approach is formalistic and optically printed material is used throughout. The drama of the nuclear family is played by a series of non-human subjects ranging from mannequins used in 1950s nuclear blast experiments to doves playing ping-pong. The notion of family is experienced as iconic, nostalgic and a recollected remnant of the nuclear age.
    Read More »

  • Amir Naderi – Marathon (2002)

    2001-2010Amir NaderiDramaUSA

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Plot Synopsis from allmovie:
    Iranian expatriate Amir Naderi completes the trilogy he began with Manhattan by Numbers and A, B, C… Manhattan with this unusual drama about a woman obsessed. Gretchen (Sara Paul) is a woman living in Manhattan who is fascinated with crossword puzzles, and has issued a stern challenge to herself — to complete over 77 newspaper crossword puzzles in 24 hours, which would beat the number she did in a similar period the previous year. Gretchen does most of her work riding subways or buses, following the square grid of the city which somehow resembles the puzzles that fascinate her, and when she is at home, she listens to recordings of the noise of the street, unable to separate the urban landscape from her compulsive behavior. Leading actress Sara Paul appeared in a different role in Naderi’s earlier A, B, C… Manhattan.Read More »

  • Alex Gibney – The Human Behavior Experiments (2006)

    2001-2010Alex GibneyDocumentaryUSA

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and right place, they’re capable of anything,” says John Huston’s character, Noah Cross, in the movie Chinatown — dialogue that seems especially apt watching this engrossing docu collaboration to be simulcast by Sundance Channel and Court TV. Following up on their “First Amendment Project,” the cable nets tap filmmaker Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) to craft this thought-provoking examination of three controversial psychological studies whose chilling results still resonate today.Read More »

  • Roy Del Ruth – The Maltese Falcon (1931)

    1931-1940CrimeMysteryRoy Del RuthUSA

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Synopsis:
    Sam Spade is quite the womanizer. When his secretary tells him the new customer waiting outside his office is a knockout, he wastes no time before seeing her. It turns out she’s a knockout with money. And she wants to spend it on his services as a private detective. She has some story about wanting to protect her sister. Neither he nor his partner, Miles Archer, believes it. But with the money she’s paying, who cares? The job proves to be more dangerous than either of them expected. It involves not just the lovely dame with the dangerous lies, but also the sweaty Casper Gutman, the fey Joel Cairo, and the thuggish young Wilmer Cook. Three crooks, and all of them are looking for the statuette of a black bird they call the Maltese Falcon.Read More »

  • Morgan Fisher – Standard Gauge (1984)

    USA1981-1990ExperimentalMorgan Fisher

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Standard Gauge
    1984, 16mm, colour, sound, 35 min

    “While on one level, Standard Gauge is Fisher’s homage to 35mm and to the diverse cinematic world it made possible, the irony of its having been filmed in 16mm reveals a conceptual paradox central to the film, and which unites it with the webs of irony and paradox evident in his earlier work. (…) As Fisher explains in his program notes, the thirty-two minute shot “is virtually the maximum length of a scene in 16mm, and is longer by far than 35mm is capable of.” For all its potentials and accomplishments, standard gauge is limited, and in ways that a non standard gauge-a gauge quite marginal to mainstream film history-is not”. (Scott MacDonald)Read More »

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