Monthly Archives: November 2015

Hateshinaki yokubô / Endless Desire (1958) Shôhei Imamura, Reiji Akitsu, Shinsuke Ashida, Takeshi Katô, Comedy

Hateshinaki yokubo (1958)
On August 15, ten years after the Pacific War, five people meet at a station. Their purpose is to dig out a cache of morphine — now worth sixty million yen — that HASHIMOTO, an army medical officer, buried in an air-raid shelter in this city on the day the war ended. The five are: SHIMA, a beautiful woman who claims that she is HASHIMOTO’s younger sister and that her brother is dead; NAKADA, a pharmacist; ONUMA, who owns a Chinese restaurant; YAMAMOTO, a thug; and SAWAI, who says he is a junior high school teacher. But HASHIMOTO originally had only three accomplices — and hid the morphine late at night, so they did not know each other’s identities. There is one person too many in the group, but they do not know whom. A butcher shop now stands over the old air-raid shelter. The five decide to rent a vacant house across the street, and dig a tunnel to the butcher shop.
Read More »

En familie / A Family (2010) Pernille Fischer Christensen, Jesper Christensen, Lene Maria Christensen, Pilou Asbæk, Drama

En familie (2010)
Ditte (Lene Maria Christensen) owns a gallery, has a loving boyfriend (Pilou Asbæk) and her dream job in New York is within reach. But Ditte is also the youngest generation of the famous bakery dynasty, Rheinwald, and when her beloved, but dominating father (Jesper Christensen) comes down with a serious illness, Ditte is faced with the grueling decision: To pursue her own dreams, or to continue the legacy of her family. A Family is a moving and modern story about complicated family ties, the new wife, the new kids – and about following your dreams to find your own place in history.
Read More »

Toto le héros / Toto the Hero (1991) Jaco Van Dormael, Michel Bouquet, Mireille Perrier, Jo De Backer, Comedy, Drama

Toto le heros (1991)
Thomas and Alfred were born around the same time; a fire in the nursery had nurses scrambling to save the newborns. Because he felt that he deserved Alfred’s good fortune at being born into a wealthy family, Thomas conceives the idea that he and Alfred were switched at birth, and he can’t help seeing that his unhappiness should be Alfred’s, from the loss of his sister to his inability to have a relationship with the woman Evelyne. So, as his life is ending, he formulates a plan of revenge against his bitter enemy, his lifetime adversary, the man who stole his existence.
Read More »

Veronika wa shinu koto ni shita / Veronika Decides to Die (2005) Kei Horie, Yôko Maki, Wan Lee, Jun Fubuki, Drama

Veronika wa shinu koto ni shita (2005)
Towa lives in a peculiar sanatorium after committing suicide. Convalescing in sanatorium, she is informed that she has only 7 days to live. Isolated within their worlds, strange people live in this sanatorium and try to avoid making any contact with her. However, Claude a man who lost his power of speech feels sympathetic towards her and their every lovable things give true colors to the life and inspire Towa’s honest desire for the life.
Read More »

A Man Alone (1955) Ray Milland, Mary Murphy, Ward Bond, Western

A Man Alone (1955)
A gunfighter, stranded in the desert, comes across the aftermath of a stage robbery, in which all the passengers were killed. He takes one of the horses to ride to town to report the massacre, but finds himself accused of it. He also finds himself accused of the murder of the local banker, and winds up hiding in the basement of a house where the local sheriff, who is very sick, lives with his daughter.
Read More »

Hatuna Meuheret / Late Marriage (2001) Dover Koshashvili, Lior Ashkenazi, Ronit Elkabetz, Moni Moshonov, Comedy, Drama, Romance

Hatuna Meuheret (2001)
Zaza is a 31-year old Israeli bachelor, handsome and intelligent, and his family wants to see him married. But tradition dictates that Zaza has to choose a young virgin. She must be beautiful and from a good family, preferably rich. Zaza’s parents, Yasha and Lily drag Zaza to meet potential brides and their families. Zaza has no choice. He plays along with his family, advocates of the suffocating traditions of their Georgian Jewish heritage. But Zaza always manages to somehow get out of being engaged. What his parents don’t know is that Zaza is already in love. Judith is sensuous, strong and intriguing. She’s also a divorcée with a 6-year-old daughter. So Zaza has kept Judith a secret from his family. He will have to choose between respect of the strict confines of family and tradition, or the love of his life.
Read More »

We Were Strangers (1949) John Huston, Jennifer Jones, John Garfield, Pedro Armendáriz, Adventure, Romance, Drama

We Were Strangers (1949)
China Valdes joins the Cuban underground after her brother is killed by the chief of the secret police, Ariete. She meets and falls in love with American expatriate Tony Fenner. Tony develops a plan to tunnel under the city’s cemetery to a plot owned by a high official, assassinate him, and blow up the whole Cuban hierarchy at the ensuing state funeral. Together with a band of dedicated revolutionaries, they begin digging.
Read More »

L’héritier / The Inheritor (1973) Philippe Labro, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Carla Gravina, Jean Rochefort, Action, Drama, Thriller

L'heritier (1973)
When his father, a wealthy industrialist, is killed in aeroplane crash, Bart Cordell returns to France to take up the reins of the empire he has inherited. When a prostitute attempts to frame him for drug smuggling, he begins to suspect is father may have been murdered. Bart’s investigation uncovers a complex web of political intrigue, in which his own family and his stepfather are heavily implicated…
Read More »

Amida-do dayori / Letter from the Mountain (2002) Takashi Koizumi, Akira Terao, Kanako Higuchi, Shoji Arano, Drama

Amida-do dayori (2002)
As the film begins, Takao (Akira Terao) and Michiko (Kanako Higuchi) have already pulled up their Tokyo roots and moved to a village that is Takao’s ancestral home. They visit a thatched cottage that serves as a memorial shrine (amidado) for the village dead and chat with the attendant, the spry 96-year-old Oume (Tanie Kitabayashi). Together they admire the view — from an inspiring distance. Oume, it turns out, is a kind of sage, whose thoughts and observations are a popular feature in a column in a local newsletter. Her amanuensis is a mute, sweetly smiling young woman named Sayuri (Manami Konishi), who is as devoted to Oume as Oume is to the souls of her beloved dead.
Read More »

The Inner Circle (1991) Andrey Konchalovskiy, Tom Hulce, Lolita Davidovich, Bob Hoskins, Drama

The Inner Circle (1991)
The true story of Ivan Sanchin, the KGB officer who was Stalin’s private film projectionist from 1939 until the dictator’s death. Told from Sanchin’s view, the sympathetic but tragically flawed hero maintains unwavering faith in his “Master” despite the arrest of his neighbors and his involvement with their daughter, his wife’s affair with the chilling State Security chief Lavrentii Beria and her tragic decline, and the deadly political machinations within the Kremlin he witnesses firsthand.
Read More »

The Iron Curtain (1948) William A. Wellman, Dana Andrews, Gene Tierney, June Havoc, Biography, Crime, History

The Iron Curtain (1948)
Soviet soldier turned bureaucrat Igor Gouzenko is assigned to his first overseas posting in 1943 to Ottawa, Canada, as a cipher clerk for the military attaché, their offices in a secret wing of the Soviet embassy. Igor is not to tell anyone what he does for a living, he given a cover story which he is to recite even when questioned by his own people. He and his wife Anna Gouzenko are supposed to be cordial to their Canadian neighbors and associates, but not fraternize or befriend them, as they are still considered the enemy, despite both countries being on the same side in the war. Igor follows his instructions to a T, but it is more difficult for Anna, who does not have the distraction of work during the day, and who can see that their neighbors are not their enemies but good people much like themselves. Over the next few years, Igor sees that what is happening around him and the work in which he is involved will not result in a world in which he wants to raise his newborn son, …
Read More »

Musashino fujin / The Lady of Musashino (1951) Kenji Mizoguchi, Kinuyo Tanaka, Yukiko Todoroki, Masayuki Mori, Drama

Musashino fujin (1951)
Set in post-war Japan, The Lady of Musashino tells the story of Michiko, a disillusioned young woman trapped in a loveless marriage. She confides in her younger cousin, Tsutomo, and the two become close, but decide not to consummate their affair. He instead becomes involved with the flirtatious Tomiko, who is also conducting an affair with Michiko’s husband. When Michiko finds that her husband has abandoned her, she decides to take her fate into her own hands.
Read More »