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Harrington s final film before he died in 2007, Usher is a remake of a short he made in high school based on the classic Edgar Allan Poe story The Fall of the House of Usher. He once again expresses his interest in the occult by casting known members of the Church of Satan, Nikolas and Zeena Schreck.Read More »
Kornél Mundruczó’s second feature uses improvisatory techniques and memorable imagery to tell this story of youngsters sweating out one summer in a small Hungarian town.
Péter (Tamás Polgár) is just out of prison and is unenamoured with life on the outside. When he witnesses a woman secretly giving birth on the floor of a laundrette, it sets in motion a tricky emotional triangle composed of himself, the child’s mother Maja (Tóth Orsi) and his sister Marika (Kata Wéber), with whom he seems incestuously close.Read More »
A portrait of a dedicated filmmaker who is a charming yet elusive figure in thrall to cinema and the constant perfection of his craft.Read More »
Two Latina sisters work as cleaners in a downtown office building, and fight for the right to unionize.Read More »
Chris Leavens’ documentary takes as its subject Jack Nance, star of “Eraserhead” and supporting player in many of David Lynch’s other films. Nance’s story is told almost entirely through interviews with his family, friends and colleagues, interspersed with clips from many of his films (some of which are more well-known than others). What emerges is a portrait of a complicated man whose self-destructive tendencies sometimes outweighed his creative gifts. It’s also frequently funny, as the interview subjects recount some of the more outlandish (but still plausible) stories of his life, right up to the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death.Read More »
“A lonely forty one year old still living with his mother in the middle of nowhere sets off for Romania in search of a wife…”
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Erwin, in his forties, runs a petrol station with his mother in a lost corner of Germany. This withdrawn mother-son couple leads a life without surprise. But feeling his end approaching and afraid to leave his son alone.Read More »
A love story in the city of dreams . . .
Blonde Betty Elms (Naomi Watts) has only just arrived in Hollywood to become a movie star when she meets an enigmatic brunette with amnesia (Laura Harring). Meanwhile, as the two set off to solve the second woman’s identity, filmmaker Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux) runs into ominous trouble while casting his latest project. David Lynch’s seductive and scary vision of Los Angeles’s dream factory is one of the true masterpieces of the new millennium, a tale of love, jealousy, and revenge like no other.Read More »
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The brief, but mythical, life and career of film acting legend James Dean is dramatized in this biographical 2001 feature, originally produced for cable television. Dean is portrayed here as a hard worker and wild man, yet a sensitive lost… The brief, but mythical, life and career of film acting legend James Dean is dramatized in this biographical 2001 feature, originally produced for cable television. Dean is portrayed here as a hard worker and wild man, yet a sensitive lost soul whose own turbulent life mirrored the roles he took on his short, but greatly influential career. Dean is played by James Franco under the direction of Hollywood veteran Mark Rydell, a friend of Dean during his life. Rydell’s insights provide an especially insightful look at studio politics and procedure in the 1950s.Read More »
Nick Schager – Lessons of Darkness wrote:
As the new millennium dawns, Vicky (Qi Shu) balances separate love affairs with abusive, drug-smoking Hao-Hao (Chun-hao Tuan) and paternal petty gangster Jack (Jack Kao) in Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s exquisite Millennium Mambo. Narrated (in hindsight) by Vicky from the year 2011, the film’s splintered, flashback-heavy narrative nominally concerns Vicky’s tumultuous two romances, though the storyline is – even more than usual for Hou – largely inconsequential. Supposedly part of a trilogy about Taiwanese youth culture, Millennium Mambo is similar to Hou’s superior Goodbye South, Goodbye in that both chart small-timers’ aimless search for money, love, or, at least, some fleeting feeling of genuine human connection.Read More »