• Lois Weber – Shoes (1916)

    Drama1911-1920Lois WeberSilentUSA

    Quote:
    Eva Meyer is poor shop girl working at a five-and-dime. She is the sole wage earner for three younger sisters, a mother who struggles to hold everything together, and a father who prefers beer and penny dreadfuls to work. Each week, Eva returns to her cold-water flat and dutifully hands over her meager earnings to her mother. But her wages barely cover the grocer’s bill and cannot provide for decent clothing. With only cardboard to patch the holes in the soles of her shoes, Eva’s life becomes harder with each rainy day and every splinter. In constant pain and with no solution in sight, the disheartened girl considers the uninvited advances of Charlie, a cad with clearly dishonorable intentions.
    So begins Lois Weber’s SHOES, perhaps her finest masterpiece and one of the great feminist films in the history of cinema.Read More »

  • Raoul Ruiz – Comédie de l’innocence AKA Comedy of Innocence (2000)

    1991-2000ArthouseDramaFranceRaoul Ruiz

    Quote:

    After Calderón and Proust, Comédie de l’innocence is another literary adaptation, this time from the little-known Italian surrealist Massimo Bontempelli. Updated from the last fin de siècle to this more recent time of uncertainty, Comédie de l’innocence’s plot is small but perfectly formed. With Aristotelian rigour it moves from the opening conundrum (a child torn between two mothers), through the complication (the confrontation between the mothers and Ariane’s brother Serge), to a satisfying conclusion. Ruiz, who takes a co-credit as scriptwriter with Françoise Dumas, keeps up the tension, however, with laconic and enigmatic dialogue. When Ariane visits the empty flat of Isabella, a nosy neighbour remarks: ‘I really don’t want to know.’ Ariane replies: ‘There is nothing to know.’Read More »

  • Joko Anwar – Janji Joni AKA Joni’s Promise (2005)

    2001-2010AdventureComedyIndonesiaJoko Anwar

    Synopsis:
    Joni (Nicholas Saputra) is obsessed with film, and he’s not the only one, as he points out in a pre-credit sequence, in which we hear various Jakarta residents comparing their own lives to the movies that they love. Joni has made the movies his life, even if it’s just as a delivery man, using his motorbike to bring film reels from one theater in the city to the next, so that the canny exhibitors can save money on prints. Joni prides himself on always getting to his destination in time for the reel changes, so the screenings aren’t interrupted. Read More »

  • António-Pedro Vasconcelos – Jaime (1999)

    1991-2000António-Pedro VasconcelosDramaPortugal

    Quote:
    Veteran director Antonio-Pedro Vasconcelos spins this gritty, unsentimental tale about underage street kids in Portugal. The film opens with a teenaged worker at a bakery getting dumped off at a hospital after losing his finger. The boss instructs the youth’s father to tell the doctors that he lost his digit playing with a knife, but fearing an investigation, the boss subsequently dumps his other underage workers, including 13-year old Jaime (Saul Fonseca). Jaime is struggling to mend his tattered family.Read More »

  • Nele Wohlatz – El futuro perfecto (2016)

    2011-2020ArgentinaDramaNele Wohlatz

    A smart and innovative look at the possible futures of a young Chinese immigrant to Buenos Aires, told in the stilted language of an elementary Spanish textbook.Read More »

  • Sion Sono – Tokyo Tribe (2014)

    2011-2020ActionJapanMusicalSion Sono

    Synopsis:
    Five years after the Shibuya riots, the Tribes of Tokyo have been enjoying a period of relative peace, until Kim and two other members of the Musashino Saru intrude on the territory of the Wu-Ronz in Bukuro. Mera, the leader of Wu-Ronz kills the three Saru, under the assumption that they were members of the Shibuya Saru. Two days later, after searching for who killed his friends, Musashino Saru member Kai runs into Mera. Old friends in their high school days, the two get into a confrontation that ends up leaving Tera, the leader of Musashino Saru, dead and setting the stage for violence between the Tribes.Read More »

  • Bette Gordon – Variety (1983)

    1981-1990ArthouseBette GordonUSA

    Quote:The sexually charged tale of a woman’s journey of self-discovery, Bette Gordon’s Variety is a fascinating independent film that challenges common notions about feminism and pornography. Emerging out of the underground NYC arts scene that produced the late 80s boom in American independent cinema, Variety contains the contributions of an impresive array of talent, including cinematographer Tom DiCillo (Living in Oblivion), actor Luis Guzmán (Boogie Nights), a script by the late cult novelist Kathy Acker, and a score by actor and musician John Lurie (Stranger Than Paradise, Down By Law).Read More »

  • Paul Vecchiali – La cérémonie (2014)

    2011-2020FrancePaul VecchialiShort Film

    “La Cérémonie” de 2014, est donné en complément de “Change pas de main” dans l’édition La Traverse. C’est un film tourné en parallèle au dernier long “Nuits blanches sur la Jetée” ; une sorte de rêverie incestueuse construite sur la permutation ludique des deux interprètes, Astrid Adverbe et Pascal Cervo, à nouveau fils et fille de fiction tendrement fantasmés du réalisateur.
    “The Ceremony” (2014), is featured as an extra to “Change pas de main” in the La Traverse release. It is a film shot in parallel with the feature film “Nuits blanches sur la jetée”; a sort of incestuous reverie built on the playful permutation of the two performers, Astrid Adverbe and Pascal Cervo, this time again as fictive son and daughter , tenderly fantasized by the director.Read More »

  • Stuart Rosenberg – WUSA (1970)

    1961-1970DramaPoliticsStuart RosenbergUSA

    The Egyptian Theatre writes:
    COOL HAND LUKE director Stuart Rosenberg reunites with Paul Newman on this overlooked and underrated adaptation of Robert Stone’s Hall of Mirrors (Stone also wrote Dog Soldiers, which was filmed as WHO’LL STOP THE RAIN). Newman is an itinerant, hard-drinking disc jockey who shows up in New Orleans looking for a job. Con man buddy Laurence Harvey, masquerading as a fundamentalist preacher, points Newman to WUSA, a right-wing radio station run by megalomaniac Pat Hingle. Taking a gig reading news, Newman gradually becomes disgusted by the blatant lies spewed by the station.Read More »

Back to top button