Tag Archives: 2000s

‘Three hundred men’ is one long night at Saint Jean de Dieu, in Marseille. The center welcomes and confines three hundred homeless men every night over the winter. This documentary is neither the description nor the chronicle of the life of a shelter. It portrays humanity reduced to its essence, when only remain speech, humor, anger or madness to affirm that one still exists.’
Read More »

Eleven directors from 11 countries each contribute an 11-minute short reflecting on the events of 11 September 2001. A village teacher in Iran tries to explain to her young students what’s happened. City kids in Burkina Faso think they’ve spotted Osama bin Laden. A deaf Frenchwoman in Manhattan writes a Dear John letter to a man who has left that morning for work at the World Trade Center. A Chilean remembers Allende. Events recall other deaths. A mother endures more than her son’s death. And so on. The tone varies, as do the locales. Most stories are about others coming to terms with the events of the day, but at least one confronts the viewer with tragedy and death.
Read More »

Filmmaker Roger Nygard roams the globe to the source of each of the world’s philosophies, religions, and belief systems. He interviews spiritual leaders, scholars, scientists, artists, pizza chefs, and others who have influenced, inspired, or freaked out humanity.
Read More »

Enron dives from the seventh largest US company to bankruptcy in less than a year in this tale told chronologically. The emphasis is on human drama, from suicide to 20,000 people sacked: the personalities of Ken Lay (with Falwellesque rectitude), Jeff Skilling (he of big ideas), Lou Pai (gone with $250 M), and Andy Fastow (the dark prince) dominate. Along the way, we watch Enron game California’s deregulated electricity market, get a free pass from Arthur Andersen (which okays the dubious mark-to-market accounting), use greed to manipulate banks and brokerages (Merrill Lynch fires the analyst who questions Enron’s rise), and hear from both Presidents Bush what great guys these are.
Read More »

Lily and Max have been married for more than 50 years. Now they live together in a nursing home, where Max has been reliant on professional care since his stroke. Lily has been putting her own needs aside and is desperately longing for excitement and intimacy in her life. When a man known as “the Pilot” moves in next door, Lily is immediately charmed by him and his passion for life. But neither her family nor the other residents at the nursing home are fond of her new acquaintance. Misunderstood by her family and trapped in her life with Max, Lily decides to fight to escape the bars of her invisible prison and claim her freedom.
Read More »

On a hot summer night in Brooklyn, singles and couples converge in a brownstone apartment to flirt, fight, hook uo and break up. A dreamy comedy-drama about sex, love and freedom, “Home” packs a lot of stories into just two floors.
Read More »

During the 1950’s, a Tokyo woman from a wealthy family has been pregnant for 20 months while her husband has been missing for a year, apparently after vanishing from inside a locked room. She lives with her mother in a big house that seems to be part of the key for the long delayed delivery. Sekiguchi, a young novelist has a lukewarm interest in the case, sparked by hallucinations or, as they’re called in the film, revelations. The affair is far from private, terrified people ask for police intervention, riot and threaten to break into the house…
Read More »

Five young field-biologists are sent to northern Sweden to investigate effects of a large forest fire. However, what was thought to be some weeks of camping and easy work soon turns into a nightmare as they find the remains of a mysterious creature and take it in for examination…
Read More »

Maurice is a French teenager who escaped France and begins working at a hype club in Brooklyn called BIZARRE. He quickly becomes a sort of ‘mascot’ of this incredible club.The owner and the artists that perform there love him, but Maurice can’t love…because of the past…and his secrets.
Read More »

A story of five teenagers who are setting up an armed gang: a mosaic of love, lost relationships, betrayal and nihilism, that takes place in a declining city, where everything is collapsing within the economic and social crisis.
Read More »

Adam Verver, a US billionaire in London, dotes on daughter Maggie, an innocent abroad. An impecunious Italian, Prince Amerigo, marries her even though her best friend, Charlotte Stant, an alabaster beauty with brains, no money, and a practical and romantic nature, is his lover. She and Amerigo keep it secret from Maggie that they know each other, so Maggie interests her widowed father in Charlotte, who is happy with the match because she wants to be close to Amerigo. Charlotte desires him, the lovers risk discovery, Amerigo longs for Italy, Maggie wants to spare her father pain, and Adam wants to return to America to build a museum. Amidst lies and artifice, what fate awaits adulterers?
Read More »

On the verge of coming of age. Aimie is perhaps 18, a Korean immigrant in Canada. It’s winter, snow crunches beneath her feet. She lives with her mother. She studies English and doesn’t seem to be a particularly good student. Tran is her best friend, and he wouldn’t mind if their relationship becomes sexual. She declines, then worries that he might find a more willing girlfriend. Her mother broaches the subject of remarriage. Aimie misses her father, sending him messages to come and visit. What does she have she can count on?
Read More »

Marco Poloni’s family owns a bakery in the Bronx and it seems that they have fallen on hard times and his family is considering selling the bakery. Marco then decides to enter a baking competition hoping that the money and publicity will help them. But he needs a partner, so he asks Grace Carpenter, the baker of a restaurant, although they started off on the wrong foot, she agrees. So they go to the competition and things seem to be looking good except for a few complications. One of the other contestant Jacques du Jacques is Marco’s former classmate at the Academy, whom he says betrayed him. Emil, one of the judges, is Marco’s former instructor at the Academy whom he did not leave a good impression on. And Marco’s temper, will they be able to pull it off? During this time, Marco also finds himself attracted to her, but she already has a boyfriend.
Read More »

This three-part drama, produced for HBO, examines the changing tides of the lives of lesbians in America, both politically and personally, as we eavesdrop on three stories taking place in the same house over a span of five decades…
Read More »

Lucy is eleven years old. Having been neglected by her estranged mother and father, she is placed in a children’s home. Through her eyes, we follow Lucy’s struggle to cope with the system. Her saving is her self-belief and her certainty that she is being watched over and protected by the holy spirit. Hers is a heroic quest for love, beauty and transcendence.
Read More »