Naomi Kawase collaborates with Shinya Arimoto, a Taiyo award-winning photographer she knows from university, to create a photo album of Machiko Ono (who Kawase scouted for her previous feature film Moe no Suzaku) and Mika Mifune (daughter of famous actor Toshiro Mifune) with the idea to contrast these two aspiring actresses, Ono coming from the rural Nara and Mifune from Tokyo. Kawase documents the photo shooting and interviews Arimoto, Ono and Mifune as the work progresses, while the tension between her and Arimoto increases over disagreement on the direction of the project.
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Tag Archives: 1990s
Malina (1991) Werner Schroeter, Isabelle Huppert, Lisa Kreuzer, Mathieu Carrière, Drama, Fantasy, Mystery
A complex and enigmatic plot that evokes the life of Bachmann. The story develops around an unusual triangular relationship, a threesome between a woman of unknown name, a man named Malina and a Hungarian, Ivan, with whom she falls in love. Ivan will be his last great love, but their need for exclusivity in love is so strong that it can not be understood or matched. Malina is a struggle, a confrontation between two worlds strange and hostile.
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Nuit d’été en ville / Summer Night in Town (1990) Michel Deville, Jean-Hugues Anglade, Marie Trintignant, Romance, Erotic
Unable to sleep in the sweltering heat, a young couple bares their bodies –- and their souls –- to each other over one life-changing night. They didn’t know each other when the night began. It got hot, they stayed in. Now they know each other better than most.
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The Thing Called Love (1993) Peter Bogdanovich, River Phoenix, Samantha Mathis, Dermot Mulroney, Drama, Music, Romance
Miranda Presley moves from New York to Nashville to become a song writer. At an unsuccessful audition she meets James Wright a promising newcomer. After only a few days they marry, head over heels, but start to regret it very soon.
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Artemisia (1997) Agnès Merlet, Valentina Cervi, Michel Serrault, Predrag Manojlovic, Biography, Drama, Romance
Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653) was one of the first well-known female painters. The movie tells the story of her youth, when she was guided and protected by her father, the painter Orazio Gentileschi. Her professional curiosity about the male anatomy, forbidden for her eyes, led her to the knowledge of sexual pleasure. But she was also well known because in 1612 she had to appear in a courtroom because her teacher, Agostino Tassi, was suspected of raping her. She tried to protect him, but was put in the thumb screws…
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L’ennui (1998) Cédric Kahn, Charles Berling, Sophie Guillemin, Arielle Dombasle, Romance, Drama
A philosophy teacher restless with the need to do something with his life meets a young woman suspected of driving an artist to his death. He finds the very simple Cecilia irritating but develops a sexual rapport with her. Obsessed with the need to own and tormented by her inability to respond to him, he becomes increasingly violent in a quest he can’t name – a quest that slowly begins to undermine his certainties.
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Full Body Massage (1995) Nicolas Roeg, Mimi Rogers, Bryan Brown, Christopher Burgard, Drama, Erotic
Nina, a successful but world-weary art dealer, is surprised to find that her usual masseur, Douglas, has sent a substitute – Fitch – to provide her with her regular weekly massage at her home. Nina and Fitch find that they are both mutually attracted, and annoy one another a great deal. Their differences of temperament and lifestyle create friction, and they find their similarities nearly as grating. Through flashbacks we learn how Nina and Fitch have arrived at this meeting, and see that perhaps they have enough common ground to learn some important lessons from each other.
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Haut bas fragile / Up, Down, Fragile (1995) Jacques Rivette, Marianne Denicourt, Nathalie Richard, Laurence Côte, Comedy, Musical, Mystery
The film follows the story of three girls in contemporary Paris. One searches for her lost mother since she knows she’s adopted. The other has come out of a coma and needs to have a love relationship aside from his mysterious father. The third one is a crook who redeems herself through love. The action is commented by songs and dance routines.
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Dollar for the Dead (1998) Gene Quintano, Emilio Estevez, William Forsythe, Jordi Mollà, Western
In this tribute to the old time spaghetti westerns with a liberal dose of modern Hong Kong film-making thrown in, Emilio Estevez assumes Clint Eastwood’s “man with no name” role. Estevez plays a super-quick gunman on the run from a rancher (Long) and his men out to kill him for killing his son. The gunman gets mixed up with a former Confederate soldier (William Forsythe) who has knowledge of hidden gold. The only trouble is he is also pursued by Union soldiers. When they free a man (Ed Lauter) with part of the map to the gold, they then are also pursued by Spanish soldiers. It all leads to a small Mexican town terrorized by soldiers and led a by a good priest (Joaquim De Almeida) who also has knowledge of the gold.
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American Me (1992) Edward James Olmos, William Forsythe, Sal Lopez, Biography, Crime, Drama
This epic depiction of thirty years of Chicano gang life in Los Angeles focuses on a teen named Santana who, with his friends Mundo and the Caucasian-but-acting-Hispanic J.D., form their own gang and are soon arrested for a break-in. Santana gets into trouble again and goes straight from reform school to prison, spending eighteen years there, and becoming leader of a powerful gang, both inside and outside the prison, while there. When he is finally released, he tries to make sense of the violence in his life, in a world much changed from when last he was in it.
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Une femme française / A French Woman (1995) Régis Wargnier, Emmanuelle Béart, Daniel Auteuil, Gabriel Barylli, Drama
Wed just as war breaks out, Jeanne hardly gets to know her military husband, Louis, before the debacle of 1940. While waiting for his return from a POW camp, Jeanne journeys through countless affairs with Louis’ comrades- in-arms. Hopiing to forget these wartime betrayls, Louis takes his wife and the infant twins he didn’t father to Berlin, where she falls for Matthais, a sensitive German industrialist. When the Indochinese war sends Louis to Vietnam, Matthais follows Jeanne back to France. A subsequent move to Damascus where Louis is posted as military attache, fails to break their bond.
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Two Women (1992) Alex de Renzy, Ashlyn Gere, Victoria Paris, Randy Spears, Adult
Akumulátor 1 / Accumulator 1 (1994) Jan Sverák, Petr Forman, Edita Brychta, Zdenek Sverák, Comedy, Fantasy, Sci-Fi
In this movie, TV sets are full of life. If a person is in TV (e.g. because it was filmed on the street) it has a double that’s right in the TV set. This double needs energy from the true character to survive. Each time, the real human watches TV, his Double will pull life energy from him. So there’s a mysterious Death-serial. Many persons die in front of their TV set and nobody knows why. Olda, the main character, is one of the persons, that get more and more weak. He is near death, till Fisarek, the natural healer appears.He teaches Olda how he can resist this magic force and how he can fight it.
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Allemagne 90 neuf zéro / Germany Year 90 Nine Zero (1991) Jean-Luc Godard, Eddie Constantine, Hanns Zischler, Claudia Michelsen, Drama
Characterized by deconstructivism and philosophical references and by briefly exposing the good, bad, and ugly periods of the country’s history, this post-modern film portrays the abstract need for guidance of Germany following the fall of the Berlin Wall.
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The Crucifer of Blood (1991) Fraser Clarke Heston, Charlton Heston, Richard Johnson, Susannah Harker, Crime, Drama, Mystery
Beautiful, young Irne St. Claire enlists Holmes’ and Watson’s help for her father, a former veteran of the Great Indian Mutiny, who has become a hopeless opium addict. His drug dependence is a direct result of guilt and fear arising from a blood pact of secrecy made during the siege of Agra in 1857 in which he was party to the theft of a maharajah’s treasure, murder, and betrayal. When an avaricious co-conspirator dies under mysterious circumstances, St. Clair is certain that the curse will strike him next.
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