2001-2010

From modernkoreancinema.com
The burden of expectation can sometimes be a heavy weight to bear and after a little too much of it, many films simply crumble. In 2009, an indie Korean film clocking in at three and a half hours began to make the rounds of the festival circuit and attracted some very positive attention. After a full year screening at various events it was finally accorded a domestic release in late December 2010 but, like the vast majority of independent features, it failed to find an audience in Korea. A number of people (myself included) patiently awaited its DVD release but it never came… until now. After premiering at the Busan Film Festival in October 2009, Café Noir was finally released on DVD in June 2012. While I can’t say exactly why the wait for the disc was so long, I can, to some extent, understand it.Read More »

The film is based on a true story of the 9th company during the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan in 1980s. Young Soviet Army recruits are sent from the boot camp into the middle of the war in Afghanistan. The action is not like the boot camp at all. It is very bloody and dirty. The 9th company is defending the position 3234, and is hopelessly calling for help. But help never comes. “This is war, you kill, or get killed”, says the 9-th company leader Khohol (Bondarchuk). The guys are killed one by one, by the viciously fighting dushman guerrillas. The last guy survives to learn that the war was over, and the 9th company was simply forgotten… They believed that they served their country. But two years later that country seized to exist.Read More »

In a small Korean province in 1986, two detectives struggle with the case of multiple young women being found raped and murdered by an unknown culprit.Read More »

Quote:
“Yoyochu” is the nick name for Tadashi Yoyogi. He is the father of Japanese adult video. Before becoming a pornographer, he was a flower arranger and a member of the mob. Here, we follow Tadashi Yoyogi as he seeks the truth behind love-making.Read More »

Actor-director Hamid Jebelli (Son of Maryam) offers a charming portrait of a mentally challenged man looking for love in a world that largely ignores him. Feeble-minded Reza works at a bridal shop where he transports wedding dresses on his old, rickety bicycle. Reza spends his time communing with his long-dead mother at the cemetery, or with a dress mannequin in the shop window. One day, not long after the mannequin loses its head, Reza’s life changes when a beautiful woman, accompanied by her maid, arrives at the store looking for bridal veils. “A sweet-natured Iranian film of considerable charm and humor” (Los Angeles Times).Read More »

Synopsis :
A young woman, recently released from a mental hospital, gets a job as a secretary to a demanding lawyer, where their employer-employee relationship turns into a sexual, sadomasochistic one.Read More »

Plot : French independent director Paul Vecchiali playfully bites the hand that periodically feeds him (and many of the nation’s other creative filmmakers) in this dark comedy. Writer and director Vecchiali stars as a moviemaker named Paul Vecchiali, who is trying to complete his latest project, a dramatic love story about a young couple whose relationship is complicated by the man’s addiction to drugs. Short on funds, Vecchiali approaches the National Cinema Center, who offer loans and grants to independent filmmakers whom they believe are deserving. The NCC is less than impressed with Vecchiali’s latest script, and they turn him down, just as they have done a number of times in the past. Angry and determined that the NCC will never break the spirit of another director, Vecchiali and his crew block out a plan to assassinate the nine members of the funding board, though the press and public seem more bemused than outraged by the sudden rash of killings. Predictably enough, À Vot’ Bon Coeur received no funding from France’s National Cinema Center, though Vecchiali did have the nerve to submit the script. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie GuideRead More »

Remember that classic 1985 music video for a-ha’s “Take On Me,” the one where that girl in the diner falls into an animated charcoal drawing? Since then, its director, Steve Barron, has had an eclectic career—he helmed the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie and produced While You Were Sleeping—but with Choking Man, his first independent film, he returns to his earliest preoccupations: cartoons and girls in restaurants. Choking Man takes place at a Queens diner randomly owned by none other than Mandy Patinkin, affecting a Greek accent. Jorge (Octavio Gomez Berrios), a sullen, greasy Ecuadorian dishwasher, is a modern-day invisible man who gives himself over to extravagant animated fantasies, but speaks no more than 30 words though the course of the movie. Meanwhile, his charming coworker Amy (Eugenia Yuan) is being courted by the boorish Jerry (Aaron Paul), which pleases him not a bit. Choking Man has a tepid plotline, some stilted dialogue, and way too many pointless shots of the subway rumbling overhead. But the tender and spirited performances of its diverse cast elevate Barron’s portrait of contemporary Queens life.Read More »

A teen runaway falls in love with a fellow heroin junkie. But the two are far too deep in their drug addictions for love to offer any hope.Read More »