Tag Archives: 2000s

La grande bellezza / The Great Beauty (2013) Paolo Sorrentino, Toni Servillo, Carlo Verdone, Sabrina Ferilli, Drama

La grande bellezza AKA The Great Beauty (2013)
Journalist Jep Gambardella has charmed and seduced his way through the lavish nightlife of Rome for decades. Since the legendary success of his one and only novel, he has been a permanent fixture in the city’s literary and social circles, but when his sixty-fifth birthday coincides with a shock from the past, Jep finds himself unexpectedly taking stock of his life, turning his cutting wit on himself and his contemporaries, and looking past the extravagant nightclubs, parties, and cafés to find Rome in all its glory: a timeless landscape of absurd, exquisite beauty.
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Omaret yakobean / The Yacoubian Building (2006) Marwan Hamed, Adel Imam, Nour El-Sherif, Youssra, Drama

Omaret yakobean AKA The Yacoubian Building (2006)
Cairo: a 70-year-old building of once-luxury flats with tenements on the roof. Zika, an aging libertine, feuds with his sister. Pius Haj Azzam takes a second wife, in secret, to satisfy sexual drive within religious bounds. Bothayna, poor and beautiful, supports her family, wanting to do so with dignity intact. Her former fiancé, Taha, the janitor’s son, humiliated by the police, turns to fundamentalism. Hatem, a gay editor, seduces and corrupts a young man from the sticks. Two brothers, Copts, one a tailor and one Zika’s factotum, connive for property. Allah is on most everyone’s lips, and corruption is in their hearts. European values, both refined and worldly, provide a subtext.
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O Fascínio / The Fascination (2003) José Fonseca e Costa, Vítor Norte, Sylvie Rocha, José Fidalgo, Drama

O Fascinio AKA The Fascination (2003)
A businessman on the verge of bankruptcy receives an unexpected inheritance: a large farm in Portugal’s southern province of Alentejo. But what seems to be his salvation turns out to be his doom. Fascinated by the story of violence committed by his ancestors, the previous owners of the estate, he becomes wrapped up in a hurricane of situations and sensations previously unknown to him.
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Segreti di stato / Secrets of the State (2003) Paolo Benvenuti, Antonio Catania, David Coco, Sergio Graziani, Drama

Segreti di stato (2003)
On the first of May 1947, the bandit Salvatore Giuliano conducted a raid to the mountain pass Portella della Ginestra, with a view to capturing Sicily’s most prominent communist, Giacomo Licausi. What actually happened was a regular massacre, leaving fourteen people dead and more than thirty wounded. In 1951, about a year after Giulano’s violent death, his men are tried in Viterbo. Unconvinced by the official version, Gaspare Pasciotta’s lawyer, decides to travel to Sicily and starts investigating the facts.
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Johan (2005) Nicole van Kilsdonk, Michiel Huisman, Caro Lenssen, Johnny de Mol, Drama, Romance

Johan (2005)
Johan Dros is born as eleventh consecutive son of soccer-obsessed pa Rinus, who raises his boys mainly as the small island Texel’s team. Johan’s rare reprieves from training for a sport he doesn’t care for cease when ma dies. After captain brother Johhny sort of steals his local girl-friend Evy, Johan leaves for Amsterdam, where he becomes a hairdresser and would-be singer. Soccer, a vocal TV talent-hunt and Evy will bring them all together again, but also raise unprecedented strife in the Dros family.
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Self and Others (2001) Makoto Satô, Shigeo Gocho, Hidetoshi Nishijima, Documentary

Self and Others (2001)
In 1983, photographer Gocho Shigeo met an early death at the young age of 36. The view we see reflected in Gocho’s photographic images has become more profound over time since his death and has struck a chord in people’s hearts. While focusing on Gocho’s collection of photographs Self and Others, the film also visits places associated with him, creating a collage with the manuscripts, letters, photographs and voice recordings remaining in an attempt to capture “one more gesture”—a theme pursued by Gocho through photographic expression. This film is neither a critical biography nor a monograph on the photographer. Rather, we are offered a new perception. As if mesmerized, the photographs Gocho left behind captivate us in their gaze.
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The Mosquito Net / La mosquitera (2010) Agustí Vila, Emma Suárez, Eduard Fernández, Martina García, Comedy, Drama, Romance

The Mosquito Net (2010)
Maria suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. Luis, Maria’s fifteen-year-old grandson, doesn’t say very much either; he shuts himself off in his own silent world to escape his parent’s marital crisis, spending time instead picking up stray cats and dogs off the street. His father, Miguel, wants to put a stop to this eccentric behavior, but his protective mother Alice indulges him. Nevertheless, the animals begin to appear at home in increasing numbers, making life complicated for the family in their flat.
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Night Calls: The Movie, Part 2 (2000) Moctezuma Lobato, Doria Rone, Juli Ashton, Alan Stemm, Comedy, Erotic

Night Calls The Movie, Part 2 (2000)
Playboy Channel alums Juli Ashton and Doria Rone round up an ensemble cast of voluptuous playmates for Night Calls: The Movie, Part 2 – an even racier exercise in softcore splendor than their previous excursion. The flimsy and largely unnecessary plot finds the sex-starved vixens on the hunt for a buried treasure at a secluded mountainside resort.
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L’adversaire / The Adversary (2002) Nicole Garcia, Daniel Auteuil, Géraldine Pailhas, François Cluzet, Crime, Drama, Mystery

L'adversaire (2002)
Based on the 2000 book of the same name by Emmanuel Carrère, it is inspired by the real-life story of Jean-Claude Romand. L’Adversaire’s protagonist Jean-Marc Faure (Auteuil) pursues an imaginary career as a doctor of medicine in a plot more closely based on Romand’s life and Carrère’s book than was Laurent Cantet’s 2001 film L’Emploi du Temps. The film was nominated for a Palme d’Or at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival.
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