Tag Archives: 2000s

The Big Swindle / Beomjweui jaeguseong (2004) Dong-hoon Choi, Shin-yang Park, Jung-ah Yum, Yun-shik Baek, Action, Crime

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After being convicted for fraud, one month has passed since CHOI Chang-Hyuk’s release from jail. But this time around he’s got an elaborate plan cooked up. It’s the biggest bank heist in history. The best five thieves come together to form a team. Starting with CHOI Chang-Hyuk, the brain behind the perfect plan : Master KIM, the godfather of Master KIM, the godfather of swindlers; Big Mouth, a guy who can talk people into anything; Swallow, a remarkable lady-killer; and Gasoline, who has a gift for counterfeiting. But the only drawback is that they all can’t trust each other. They have only one goal – to hit a bank for 5 billion won ($5 million)- but each one of them has their own plan in mind.
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Betty Fisher and Other Stories / Betty Fisher et autres histoires (2001) Claude Miller, Sandrine Kiberlain, Nicole Garcia, Mathilde Seigner, Comedy, Crime, Drama

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Grieving after the death of her young son Joseph, novelist Betty Fisher enters a dark depression. Hoping to bring her out of it, her mother Margot arranges to kidnap another child, Jose, to replace the son Betty lost. Although she knows it’s wrong, Betty accepts Jose as her new son. Meanwhile, Jose’s mother Carole is looking for her son with the help of her boyfriend Francois and some of his criminal cohorts.
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Winter in the Blood (2013) Alex Smith, Andrew J. Smith, Chaske Spencer, David Morse, Gary Farmer, Drama

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Virgil First Raise wakes with a shiner and a hangover in a roadside ditch on the stark but beautiful plains of Montana. As he rises to face the day he sees a vision of his father lying dead at his feet. Impossible– his father froze to death in a snowdrift years earlier. Virgil returns home to find that his wife, Agnes, has left him. Worse, she’s taken his electric razor and his beloved rifle. Virgil sets out to find her– beginning a hi-line odyssey of inebriated encounters, sexual skirmishes, and improbable cloak-and-dagger intrigues with the mysterious ‘Airplane Man’.
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Eurocrime! The Italian Cop and Gangster Films That Ruled the ’70s (2012) Mike Malloy, Franco Nero, John Saxon, Henry Silva, Documentary, Action, Crime

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A documentary concerning the violent Italian ‘poliziotteschi’ cinematic movement of the 1970s which, at first glance, seem to be rip-offs of American crime films like DIRTY HARRY or THE GODFATHER, but which really address Italian issues like the Sicilian Mafia and red terrorism. Perhaps even more interesting than the films themselves were the rushed methods of production (stars performing their own stunts, stealing shots, no live sound) and the bleed-over between real-life crime and movie crime.
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Snivaj, zlato moje / Sleep Sweet, My Darling (2005) Neven Hitrec, Ljubomir Kerekes, Ivan Glowatzky, Ines Bojanic, Comedy, Drama

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This sentimental comedy, in turn delightfully amusing and tragicomical, tells a tale of a working-class neighborhood in Zagreb during a ten-year period after the end of the Second World War. It is a story of people who rely on humor and song to survive their anxious times, preserving their traditions and their way of life despite the tumultuous upheavals that surround them. A range of colorful characters create a unique microcosm of an old-fashioned way of life, in which it is as natural to burst into song as it is to talk, creating a film which at times resembles a musical.
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Presque rien avec Luc Ferrari (2005) Jacqueline Caux, Olivier Pascal, Documentary

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Documenting the work of one of the most groundbreaking and seductive composers of the Twentieth Century, this film also shows Luc Ferrari’s “extremely libertarian personality: his spontaneity, his inclination towards hedonism and sensuality, his curious and open character, his rejection of all kind of power and of all stable position within institutions, his pronounced taste for jeux, his sense of self-derision and his ferocious refusal of all dogmatism”.
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Afterschool (2008) Antonio Campos, Ezra Miller, Jeremy Allen White, Emory Cohen, Drama, Mystery

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Having joined a recently created video club, a lowly prep-school sophomore – desensitized from reality by frequently viewed Internet imagery – accidentally captures on video the final moments of admired twin senior classmates dying from poisoned drugs. Rather than galvanize the school or this lad’s life in any profound or meaningful way, the tragedy causes barely a ripple in the already emotionally diminished and out-of-touch lives of everyone around.
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Abad va yek rooz / Life+1Day (2016) Saeed Roustayi, Peyman Moaadi, Navid Mohammadzadeh, Parinaz Izadyar, Drama

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The graphic account of a poverty-stricken family living in Tehran through the days before the youngest daughter of the family, Somaieh, is departing to start her marriage to a supposedly rich Afghan. While all members of the family have their worries about the wholeness of the marriage, she is struggling with her madly debilitating troubles including a silly mother who is gravely ill, a drug abusing brother, an obsessively compulsive sister, a considerably smart teenage brother who is being ruined in the environment, and a cunning oldest brother in need of money.
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Dobra zena / A Good Wife (2016) Mirjana Karanovic, Boris Isakovic, Jasna Djuricic, Drama

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Milena is a middle-aged wife and mother ensconced comfortably behind a gate in an upscale suburb of Belgrade. She quietly tends to her looks, dutifully cooks and entertains, and meets her friends for choir practice. She makes love with her husband and they socialize jauntily with a group of old friends. But unsettling realities are beginning to seep into Milena’s consciousness and disrupt her ordered world. One day while cleaning, she happens upon a videotape that incriminates her husband in horrific war crimes. A Good Wife is the story of how this secret reverberates in Milena’s life and eventually changes her.
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La sagrada familia / The Sacred Family (2005) Sebastián Lelio, Patricia López, Néstor Cantillana, Sergio Hernández, Drama

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It’s Easter in the beach house of a Chilean well-to-do and nowadays family. A self-centered and successful father, a disoriented mother and a son overshadowed by his successful father. The three of them, wait for the arrival of the son’s first official girlfriend; a disturbing and rebellious young lady who will invade the house with her powerful sexual load and other “gifts”, breaking loose an emotional cataclysm with no stepping back.
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Kraftidioten / In Order of Disappearance (2014) Hans Petter Moland, Stellan Skarsgård, Bruno Ganz, Pål Sverre Hagen, Action, Crime, Thriller

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Nils ploughs snow in the wild winter mountains of Norway, and is recently awarded a Citizen of the Year Award. When his son is murdered for something he did not do, Nils wants revenge. And justice. His actions ignite a war between the vegan gangster “the Count” and the Serbian mafia boss “Papa”. Winning a blood feud isn’t easy, especially not in a welfare state. But Nils has something going for him: Heavy machinery and beginners luck.
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