Directed by Lars von Trier 1988 Starring: Henning Jensen, Udo Kier, Baard Owe
Cinematic genius Lars von Tier explores the dark passions of a woman scorned in this shocking and powerful film adapted from a screenplay by the great Carl-Theodore Dreyer.
The drama unfolds in shimmering marshlands and gloomy subterranean passageways. Medea is a foreign sorceress, abandoned by Jason, her lover. In a fit of mad, jealous rage, she plots a vicious revenge and murders her own children.
Medea is a revelation - the discovery of a rarely-seen, legendary film from the director of Dancer in the Dark, Breaking the Waves, and Dogville.
Arghh! I wanted to hate it but loved it anyway! For a family man like me, you will surely hate writer and director Lars von Trier for having a movie like this. But, ok.. for the sake of art, go ahead! watch this, people!
This film is about the relationship between a sick mother and her son. Surely, this isn't for the average viewer: narrative is slow, events nonexistent; the film consists mostly of painting-like "still-lives" with very little dialogue. The mother and son walk along the beautiful sceneries (the film is done on the island of Rügen, by the coast of Germany), approach each other, take contact by embracing and hugging.
Nick Cave, the rock singer, said somewhere that this film is the most beautiful he has ever seen. I agree that it is maybe Sokurov's best: the twisted images of the landscapes, great camera work and almost meditative feeling are something I love to see in the cinema - if nothing else, just as an attempt this is a great film, instead of all the run-of-the-mill "narratives" we come across.
Awards: 1997 Moscow International Film Festival Andrei Tarkovsky Award Russian Film Critics Award Special Jury Prize
Director: Mike van Diem Main Cast: Jonathan Maxwell Reeves, Fedja van Huêt, Jan Decleir, Betty Schuurman, Hans Kesting, Victor Löw 1997
This dark drama from the Netherlands won the 1998 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Dreverhaven (Jan Decleir), the most ruthless and intimidating bailiff in Rotterdam, is brutally murdered, and a young attorney, Katadreuffe (Fedja Van Huet), is arrested in connection with the crime. Under questioning, the angry young lawyer reveals a hidden motive for the killing -- he is Dreverhaven's illegitimate son.
The complicated relationship between Katadreuffe and Dreverhaven lies at the center of this film. Viewers are left wondering whether Dreverhaven was really acting in his son's best interest, by being harsh with him, or taking revenge, either on an unwanted child or the boy's mother, who refused to marry him.
This fantasy tale tells of Totò, who is found in a cabbage patch and adopted by an old women named Lolotta. He later moves to an orphanage because Lolotta passes away.
The film moves forward to when he's eighteen years of age and Totò (Francesco Golisano) leaves the orphanage and begins to live in a shantytown in Milan.
Totò's organizational skills, learned at the orphanage and from Lolotta, brings structure to the colony and brings a sense of small happiness and well being among the depressed folk.
When Totò is given a magic dove by the ghost of his adoptive mother, he uses its powers to grant wishes to those who ask. The dove, however, is taken back by two angels who object to a mortal having possession of it.
The land where Totò's and his friends live is taken over by capitalists after oil is found there and they're all taken away to prison in horse-drawn paddy wagons. On the way to prison, however, a dove is returned to Totò and his wish for the freedom of his friends is granted. In a historical cinematic scene they escape into the sky, arguably to heaven, on brooms pinched from street sweepers in a town square.
Awards:
1951 Cannes Film Festival: Grand Prize of the Festival, Vittorio De Sica; 1951 Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists: Silver Ribbon; Best Production Design, Guido Fiorini 1951 New York Film Critics Circle Awards: NYFCC Award; Best Foreign Language Film, Italy; 1951 National Board of Review: National Board of Review Awards 1951, Best Foreign Films
La Luna (credited Luna) is a 1979 Italian film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci and starring Jill Clayburgh. The film concerns the troubled life of a teenage boy and his relationship with his parents. Joe (Matthew Barry) is the son of famous opera singer Caterina Silveri (Jill Clayburgh). While Joe believes that Caterina's husband, Douglas Winter (Fred Gwynne), is his biological father, the truth is that he was sired by Caterina's former lover, who is now living in Italy and working as a schoolteacher. Joe is moody and rebellious and needs a strong father figure to guide him and keep him in line, but Douglas is ineffectual and emotionally weak, and when Joe witnesses Douglas committing suicide, it sends him over the edge. In hopes of boosting her singing career, which has fallen into a rut, Caterina decides to move to Italy with her son. There, Joe falls in with a dangerous crowd and becomes addicted to heroin, while Caterina, hoping to lure her son back to a safer and more healthy lifestyle, tries to become closer to him, which leads to a flirtation with incest.
I have always admired the works of Bernardo Bertolluci because of the great "unpredictable" twists of storytelling, uncomparable cinematography. He will always be one of my favorite directors..
Director: Gus Van Sant Starring: Casey Affleck, Matt Damon 2003
Gus Van Sant's Gerry is a very slow and beautiful and compelling movie about a couple of brash dudes, played by Matt Damon and Casey Affleck, who get lost in the stony pink grandeur of the California desert. Casually, they slip off the trail and try to get back, only to discover that Death Valley, in its beckoning vastness, has swallowed them up. The young men, who call each other by the mutual nickname Gerry, keep thinking that they're going to find their way out. They hike up and down rock formations, certain that the highway is over the next crest, but before long it's clear that they aren't getting anywhere.
Gerry is more an experiment than a fully formed movie. It’s a film made for filmmakers and cinematographers. It’s a demo reel that shows what you can do with a small budget and a portable crew. The masses may not be interested, but film afficionados should take notice.
The Passion of the Christ is a 2004 film co-written, co-produced and directed by Mel Gibson. It is based primarily on biblical accounts of the arrest, trial, and crucifixion of Jesus Christ, events commonly known as "The Passion". The film’s dialogue is in Aramaic, Latin, and Hebrew, with subtitles. It was filmed in Matera, Italy and Cinecittà Studios, Rome.
To produce The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson spent some forty to fifty million dollars of his money to finance and advertise it. Aside from being its co-producer and director, he is the co-screenplay writer with Benedict Fitzgerald. Given the heavy Christian message, the very explicit violence, and the polyglot soundtrack (Aramaic, Latin, Hebrew), it was difficult to find an American distribution company; the film was completed before Newmarket Films agreed to release it in the U.S. Equinox Films was the Canadian distributor, and Icon Films the British and Australian distributor.
In The Passion: Photography from the Movie "The Passion of the Christ", Gibson says:
"This is a movie about love, hope, faith, and forgiveness. He [Jesus] died for all mankind, suffered for all of us. It's time to get back to that basic message. The world has gone nuts. We could all use a little more love, faith, hope, and forgiveness.
It was me that put him on the cross. It was my sins [who / that put him there]".
Gibson makes an appearance in the film, in close-up only: his hands nail Jesus to the cross.
Meryll Streep received an Academy Award for her portrayal of Sophie Zaistowska in this drama set in in 1947 post world war II. Kevin Kline plays her lover, Nathan. The story revolves around Sophie's struggle as a Polish-Catholic immigrant in the U. S. who had survived the Nazi concentration camp. The lovers' drama unfolds through the observation of a friend and would-be writer, Stingo (Peter MacNicol). As the trio grows closer, Stingo discovers the hidden truths that they harbor, resulting in a narrative that is both captivating and moving.
Undoubtedly, Meryll was the perfect choice for Sophie. Her performance as Sophie Zawistowska was ranked #3 on Premiere Magazine's 100 Greatest Performances of All Time!
Awards: 1982 Academy Best Actress 1982 LA Film Critics Association Best Actress 1982 National Board of Review of Motion Picture Best Actress 1982 New York Film Critics Circle Best Cinematography 1982 New York Film Critics Circle Best Actress 1983 Golden Globe Best Actress (in Drama)
Director: G.W. Pabst Stars: Louise Brooks, Ritz Rasp, Edith Meinhard 1929 This is a masterwork of the German silent cinema whose reputation has only increased over time. Diary of a Lost Girl (Tagebuch einer Verlorenen) traces the journey of a young woman from the pit of despair to the moment of personal awakening. Directed with virtouso flair by the great G.W. Pabst, Diary of a Lost Girl represents the final pairing of the filmmaker with screen icon Louise Brooks, mere months after their first collaboration in the now-legendary Pandora's Box.
Brooks plays Thymian Henning, an unprepossessing young woman seduced by an unscrupulous and mercenary character employed by her father's pharmacy (played with gusto by Fritz Rasp, the degenerative villain of such Fritz Lang classics as Metropolis, Spione, and Frau im Mond). After Thymian gives birth to his child and rejects her family's expectations for marriage, the baby is stripped from her care, and Thymian enters a purgatorial reform school that seems less an institute of higher learning than a conduit for fulfilling the headmistress's sadistic sexual fantasies.
Diary of a Lost Girl is a moving German social drama, sadly not in the best of condition, but a must-have addition to any silent film collection. Certainly one of the highlights of 1920s cinema!!
Cinema Paradiso offers a nostalgic look at films and the effect they have on a young boy who grows up in and around the title village movie theater in this Italian comedy drama that is based on the life and times of screenwriter/director Giuseppe Tornatore. The story begins in the present as a Sicilian mother pines for her estranged son, Salvatore, who left many years ago and has since become a prominent Roman film director who has taken the advice of his mentor too literally. He finally returns to his home village to attend the funeral of the town's former film projectionist, Alfredo, and, in so doing, embarks upon a journey into his boyhood just after WWII when he became the man's official son. In the dark confines of the Cinema Paradiso, the boy and the other townsfolk try to escape from the grim realities of post-war Italy. The town censor is also there to insure nothing untoward appears onscreen, invariably demanding that all kissing scenes be edited out. One day, Salvatore saves Alfredo's life after a fire, and then becomes the new projectionist. A few years later, Salvatore falls in love with a beautiful girl who breaks his heart after he is inducted into the military. Thirty years later, Salvatore has come to say goodbye to his life-long friend, who has left him a little gift in a film can. In 2002, over a decade after the film's original release, Tornatore brought the original 170-minute director's cut to American screens for the first time. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
Awards: 1991 British Academy Awards Best Score 1990 British Academy Awards Best Original Screenplay 1990 British Academy AwardsBest Actor 1990 British Academy AwardsBest Supporting Actor 1990 British Academy Awards Best Foreign-Language Film 1990 Golden Globe Best Foreign-Language Film 1989 European Film Academy Special Jury Award 1989 Cannes Film Festival Special Jury Prize 1989 Cannes Film Festival Special Jury Grand Prix 1989 Cannes International Film Festival Special Jury Grand Prix 1989 Academy Best Foreign Language Film 1989 Academy Best Foreign Film
Directed by Roberto Rossellini Starring:Edmund Meschke, Ernst Pittschau, Ingetraude Hinze 1947
This is the world of 12-year old Edmund, a child who has known only upheaval and violence. He struggles for survival in the bombed-out-ruins of Berlin. His father is suffering from malnutrition and a fatal illness. His brother is a former Nazi soldier hiding to avoid arrest. And his sister has turned to prostitution. Edmund comes upon a former teacher hwo provides him with records of Hitler's speeches that cn be bartered on the black market and drums into the boy a classic piece of Nazi propaganda about the importance of having the courage to let the weak be destroyed. Under the teacher's influence, the confused young protagonist heads down a tragic path. He murders his father and himself.
Filled with haunting image and unforgettable perforamnces by real citizens, Rossellini suggests the damage which had been done to an entire generation through the relentless brainwashing of fascism.
Directed by Ingmar Bergman Cast: Ake Gronberg, Harriet Andersson, Hasse Ekman, Anders Ek 1953
Ingmar Bergman presents the battle of the sexes as a ramshackle, grotesque carnival in Sawdust and Tinsel, one of the late master's most vivid early works. The story of the charged relationship between a turn-of-the-century traveling circus owner (Ake Grönberg) and his performer girlfriend (Harriet Andersson), the film features dreamlike detours and twisted psychosexual power plays that presage the director's Smiles of a Summer Night and The Seventh Seal, works that would soon change the landscape of art cinema forever.
The film is also known as "Sunset of a Clown", "The Naked Night", and "Gycklarnas Afton"
Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot Starring: Yves Montand, Charles Vanel, Peter Van Eyck 1953
The Wages of Fear (Le Salaire de la Peur) is among the most suspenseful films of the 1950s, notable for slowly building character development and atmosphere before its dramatic climax. In its original 148-minute version, the story lags in spots as director Henri-Georges Clouzot indulges some anti-United States propaganda. Not surprisingly, the film was re-edited for release in the U.S., and many critics preferred the faster pacing and more focused narrative. International acclaim came quickly, including the Grand Prix at the 1953 Cannes Film Festival. Yves Montand gives one of his best performances, though current-day audiences may find his character's chauvinism and condescension toward women unappealing.
The film is considered as one of the most nerve-wracking and exciting films ever made. It tells the story of an American oil company that enlists four tough drifters for a high-paying suicide mission - transporting explosives across the rough terrain of Central America.
Twenty-Four Eyes is a chronicle of a teacher and her pupils in a small inland sea village beginning in 1928 and carrying through twenty years of their joys and sorrow. The village is quite and peaceful but its harmony is soon broken by the war. The school teacher is forced to resign when books she believes are good for the children are condemned as "Red" literature. Many boys are sent to off to the war. After the war is over, the teacher returns to her job and gathers with some of her old students to reminisce her husband and the boys who died in the war.
Twenty-Four Eyes is a haunting, compassionately realized, and profoundly affecting portrait of humanism, innocence, and the personal toll of war. Filmed from a low camera angle, and using exquisitely composed crane, long, and medium shots, Keisuke Kinoshita visually conveys a sense of distance that, in turn, reflects the innocence of the children's perspective and the seeming insularity of the villagers: the long bicycle commute; the children's outdoor activities singing folksongs; Miss Oishi traversing the empty school yard after being admonished for broaching the subject of communism in class. The lives of the people in the island are presented in a very touching and sincere reserved camera style.
Directed by Sergei Bondarchuck StarringStarring:Sergei Bondarchuk, Zinaida Kirienko, Pavlik Boriskin 1959
This was Sergei Bondarchuck's debut feature which he not only directed but also acted the main part of Andrei Sokolov in the screen adaptation of Nobel Prize winning author Mikhail Sholokov's novel.
Beautifully crafted and acted, the film is a moving account of an ordinary Soviet citizen - Anfrei Sokolov - during the desperate fight to protect the motherland from Nazi invasion during World War II.
In the course of the struggle, Sokolov is captured by the German invaders and dispatched to a concentration camp in which the inmates are mercilessly worked and ill-treated. The only thing that urges him to cling on to his life is the thought of being reunited with his family when the war is over.
Essentialy a morality tale of humanity ultimately winning over evil adversity, the film, on its 1961 release (2 years after it was made), was a great worldwide success and an eye-opener to western audiences who assumed Soviet directors could not break free from their propaganda yokes, and launched Bondarchuk onto further landmark films asuch as They Fought for their Motherland, Waterloo and War and Peace.
Award: 1959 Moscow International Film Festival Grand Prize
Warm Water Under A Red Bridge focuses on the troubles of a Japanese "everyman" who finds a new life with an unusual woman in a small fishing village.
This romantic comedy tells the story of a salary man who has been laid off from his job at an architectural firm in Tokyo and is undergoing marital difficulties. When his old friend dies, he travels to the small fishing town of Tokoyama to find a treasure that the old man had hidden in a house there decades before. He does not find what he expects, but takes a job with local fishermen and becomes romantically involved with a woman with an exaggerated proclivity towards female ejaculation.
Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (赤い橋の下のぬるい水, Akai Hashi no Shita no Nurui Mizu?) was the last feature film by director Shōhei Imamura.
Directed by Roman Polanski Starring: Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann, Frank Finlay, Maureen Lipman, Emilia Fox 2002
An adaptation based on the autobiography of the acclaimed Polish composer, Wladyslaw Szpilman, who detailed his survival during World War II, and narrowly escaped a roundup that sent his family to a death camp. A composer and pianist, Szpilman played the last live music heard over Polish radio airwaves before Nazi artillery hit. There, in Poland, Szpilman struggled to stay alive--even when cast away from those he loved. He spent the duration of the war hiding in the ruins of Warsaw and scavenging for food and shelter. Szpilman eventually reclaimed his artistic gifts, and confronted his fears--with aid from the unlikeliest of sources.
2002 French Academy of Cinema Best Sound Jean-Marie Blondel 2002 French Academy of Cinema Best Sound Gerard Hardy 2002 French Academy of Cinema Best Sound Dean Humphreys 2002 European Film Academy Best European Cinematographer Pawel Edelman 2002 National Society of Film Critics Best Cinematography (Runner-up)Pawel Edelman 2002 French Academy of Cinema Best Cinematography Pawel Edelman 2002 French Academy of Cinema Best Production Design Allan Starski 2002 Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or 2002 Cannes International Film Festival Palme d'Or 2002 National Society of Film Critics Best Director Roman Polanski 2002 French Academy of Cinema Best Director Roman Polanski 2002 Academy Best Director Roman Polanski 2002 French Academy of Cinema Best Original Score Wojciech Kilar 2002 National Society of Film Critics Best Screenplay Ronald Harwood 2002 Academy Best Adapted Screenplay Ronald Harwood 2002 National Society of Film Critics Best Actor Adrien Brody 2002 French Academy of Cinema Best Actor Adrien Brody 2002 Academy Best Actor Adrien Brody 2002 National Society of Film Critics Best Picture 2002 French Academy of Cinema Best French Film 2002 National Board of Review#7 Film of the Year
Director: Zhang Yimou Starring: Gong Li, Cao Cuifen, He Caifei, Lin Kong, Jungwu Ma, Zhao Qi 1991
Raise the Red Lantern (Simplified Chinese: 大红灯笼高高挂; Traditional Chinese: 大紅燈籠高高掛; pinyin: Dà Hóng Dēnglóng Gāogāo Guà; literally Hang High the Big Red Lantern) is an award-winning 1991 Chinese-Hong Kong-Taiwan film, directed by Zhang Yimou and starring Gong Li.
The film tells the story of a young woman who becomes one of the concubines of a wealthy man during the Warlord Era. It is noted for its opulent visuals and sumptuous use of colors. The film was shot in Qiao's Compound in the ancient city of Pingyao, in Shanxi Province. Although the screenplay was approved by Chinese censors, the final version of the film was banned in China for a period. Some film critics have interpreted the film as a veiled allegory against Chinese communist authoritarianism. The film's popularity has also been attributed to helping Chinese tourism after the what was then recent government response to the Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989.
Director: Petr Václav Starring: Stefan Ferko , Milan Cifra , Terza Zajickova-Grygarova , Ludmila Krokova 1996
22-year old Marian remembered his childhood: At 3, he was taken into care by the state when his mother, a gypsy, was judged by the courtsto be irresponsible and incapable of bringing up a child. Marian does not speak Czech and has no notion of personal hygiene. He was classified as mentally retarded on account of hereditary defects inherent in his race. His prognosis was dismal. Marian grew up wild and rebellious in a hostile world which was indifferent towards him. In orphanages, correctional facilities and on and off in prison. He put his hope in the few people he met along the way but they were unable to develop any durable human relationship.
This movie attempts to show how an abandoned gypsy boy, incarcerated since age 3, grows up to be a criminal because the institutionalized violence and abuse to which he's subjected corrupts his wild spirit and destroys his gypsy heritage.
Can he survive his longings? Can he escape the circle which holds him in its grips?
Director: Aleksandr Sokurov 2004 Starring: Andrey Schetinin, Aleksey Neymyshev, Alexander Razbash, Fedor Lavrov, Marina Zasukhina
Acclaimed filmmaker Alexander Sokurov (RUSSIAN ARK) brings us this sensual study of the bond between a strapping Russian father (Andrey Schetinin) and his soldier son (Aleksey Neymsyshev). The film has a strongly emotional through-line that carries us, building and growing. It's a parable about humanity, lovingly examining how men grow and change in the way they interact, referring intriguingly to the way men coming home from war often seem like different people altogether. There are also some rather unsettling intervals that deal with rivalries, jealousy, dares and even violence. But above and under and through it all, this is a fable about the indescribable love between a father and a son--as close as two men can be and yet constantly diverging. Absolutely beautiful.
