• Kaizo Hayashi – Harukana jidai no kaidan o AKA The Stairway To The Distant Past [+Extras] (1995)

    1991-2000DramaFilm NoirJapanKaizo Hayashi

    Quote:
    Stairway to the Distant Past is the second film in the Mike Hama Private Investigator Trilogy. If you’ve seen part one The Most Terrible Time in My Life you must seek this out to find out how all your favourite characters are getting on. The films themes are age and family as Mikes mother “Dynamite Sexy Lilly” returns to Yokohama with her strip act many years after deserting Mike and his sister Akane. She reveals who Mikes father is and he sets out to find him. This films DoP deserves an Oscar as the picture is stunningly shot – it reminded me most of the Cinema du Look of Luc Besson and Leos Carax.Read More »

  • João Pedro Rodrigues – Morrer Como Um Homem AKA To Die Like a Man [+Extras] (2009)

    2001-2010ArthouseDramaJoão Pedro RodriguesPortugal

    Once upon a time there was a war In the darkness of the night, a young soldier goes AWOL. Tonia, a veteran transsexual in Lisbons drag shows, watches the world around her crumble. The competition from younger artists threatens her star status. Under pressure from her young boyfriend Rosário to assume her female identity, the sex change operation that will transform her into a woman, Tonia struggles against her deeply-held religious convictions. If, on the one hand, she wants to be the woman that Rosário so desires, on the other, she knows that before God she can never be that woman. And her son, whom she abandoned when he was a child, now a deserter, comes looking for her. Read More »

  • Raja Amari – Corps étranger AKA Foreign Body (2016)

    2011-2020DramaFranceRaja Amari

    In the turbulent aftermath of the Tunisian revolution, young Samia (Sarra Hannachi) flees her homeland. She braves hostile seas in the crossing to France, but once there she finds that her struggles have only just begun. With no friends, no family, and – most crucially – no immigration papers, Samia has to figure out how to make a life and a living in a foreign land.

    She meets a young man, Imed (Salim Kechiouche, Blue is the Warmest Color), and soon finds work in the employ of the elegant Leila (the inimitable Hiam Abbass, subject of an In Conversation With event at the Festival this year). But her presence in Leila’s middle-class household triggers a shift in its dynamics, and soon Samia is enmeshed in a web of sexual tension.Read More »

  • N.C. Heikin – Kimjongilia AKA The Flower of Kim Jong II (2009)

    2001-2010DocumentaryDramaN.C. HeikinUSA

    Synopsis:
    For some, the Korean War was a clear example of American imperialism. For others, it was a valiant effort on the part of the UN and the Koreans to quash the spread of communism. For all Koreans, it was a tragedy. The country was not just divided; it was devastated. The death toll was astronomical, and the destruction profound. Many engage in assigning blame for the war according to their political beliefs, but this is a useless exercise. The point is that the human rights situation in North Korea today is catastrophic. KIMJONGILIA is the first film to let North Korean refugees tell their stories in their own words.Read More »

  • Robert Siodmak – The Spiral Staircase (1946)

    Drama1941-1950Film NoirRobert SiodmakUSA

    Quote:
    The wonderfully suspenseful psychological drama Spiral Staircase is the prototype of the “old dark house, lady in distress” thriller, full of dark corners, flickering candles and featuring a mysterious, menacing killer whose true identity remains hidden until the end. Helen Capel (Dorothy McGuire), mute because of a childhood trauma, cares for the owner of the house, the wealthy Mrs. Warren (Ethel Barrymore), a demanding, widowed invalid. Helen has quietly fallen in love with one of Mrs. Warren’s sons, Dr. Parry (Kent Smith), who she believes to be a gentle and understanding man. Helen’s peaceful life is changed forever when three local women, all with physical handicaps, are found murdered. Read More »

  • Yôji Yamada – Tasogare Seibei AKA The Twilight Samurai (2002)

    2001-2010DramaJapanMartial ArtsYôji Yamada

    Synopsis:
    Seibei Iguchi, a low-ranking samurai, leads a life without glory as a bureaucrat in the mid-XIX century Japan. A widower, he has charge of two daughters (whom he adores) and a senile mother; he must therefore work in the fields and accept piecework to make ends meet. New prospects seem to open up when Tomoe, his long-time love, divorces a brutal husband. However, even as the Japanese feudal system is unraveling, Seibei remains bound by the code of honour of the samurai and by his own sense of social precedences. The consequences are cruel.Read More »

  • Glauber Rocha – A Idade da Terra AKA The Age of the Earth (1980)

    1971-1980ArthouseBrazilExperimentalGlauber Rocha

    Four Third-World Christs try to stop the American industrialist John Brahms in Glauber Rocha’s experimental film inspired by Pier Paolo Pasolini’s murder.

    The day that Pier Paolo Pasolini was killed, Glauber Rocha decided to make this film about the life of Christ in the Third World. Starting from a dialectical synthesis between capitalism and socialism, and a search of interracial relationships in Brazil, Rocha created a work of religious and prophetic tone that results in a kind of bewilderment contemplative, now lyrical, now frantic, soaked in a new messianism. In his last film, the director proposed a tune of sounds and images that build a picture of Brazil and a portrait of himself.Read More »

  • Joanna Hogg – Archipelago (2010)

    2001-2010ArthouseDramaJoanna HoggUnited Kingdom

    Quote:
    Deep fractures within a family dynamic begin to surface during a getaway to the Isles of Scilly.

    …As much as a downbeat comedy of bourgeois mores, Archipelago is a sort of claustrophobic horror story, set in a place of no easy escape. This is Hogg’s Shutter Island, if you like, although the madness is more discreet, in the English style…Read More »

  • Shinsuke Ogawa – 1000-nen kizami no hidokei AKA Magino Village: A Tale (1987)

    1981-1990DocumentaryJapanShinsuke Ogawa

    The movie compiles footage taken by Ogawa Production for a period of more than ten years after the collective moved to Magino village. Unique to this film are fictional reenactments of the history of the village in the sections titled “The Tale of Horikiri Goddess” and “The Origins of Itsutsudomoe Shrine”. Ogawa combines all the techniques that were developed in his previous films to simultaneously express multiple layers of time–the temporality of rice growing and of human life, personal life histories, the history of the village, the time of the Gods, and new time created through theatrical reenactment–bring them into a unified whole. The faces of the Magino villagers appear in numerous roles–sometimes as individuals, sometimes as people who carry the history of the village in their memories, sometimes as storytellers reciting myths, and even as members of the crowd in the fictional sequences–transcending time and space.Read More »

Back to top button