
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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Tag Archives: 2000s
Cool! (2004) Theo van Gogh, Fouad Mourigh, Farhane El Hamchaoui, Jones Kruijne, Crime, Drama

Five friends take their hours with petty crimes. Are persuaded by a tough gangster and his seductive girlfriend to rob a bank. When they are caught, they are condemned to spend a year and a half in Glen Mills, an experimental reformatory.
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Johan (2005) Nicole van Kilsdonk, Michiel Huisman, Caro Lenssen, Johnny de Mol, Drama, Romance

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

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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Busty Cops and the Jewel of Denial (2010) Jim Wynorski, Kaylani Lei, Amy Ried, Tanya James, Comedy, Erotic

The Busty Cops are back in action. This time they have to help the quaint, humble island natives who are in danger of losing their sacred statue of perpetual orgasms. They fly to Hawaii so that they can have as much sex as possible before solving the case.
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The Mosquito Net / La mosquitera (2010) Agustí Vila, Emma Suárez, Eduard Fernández, Martina García, Comedy, Drama, Romance

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

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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Villa paranoia (2004) Erik Clausen, Sonja Richter, Frits Helmuth, Art-house, Drama

A satire, psychological drama and comedy rolled into one, director Erik Clausen’s Villa Paranoia adeptly draws upon rich characters, who demonstrate the values and strength of the human heart, to create a portrait of Denmark today.
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0.5 miri / 0.5 mm (2014) Momoko Andô, Sakura Andô, Miyoko Asada, Bengal, Drama

Sawa Yamagishi (Sakura Ando) worked as a nursing-care helper. The family of an old man asked Sawa to sleep with him, which led her to eventually lose her job and house. Now, she has nowhere to go. Sawa finds elderly people in trouble and gets involved in their lives. Meeting them, their lives change and Sawa’s own wounds start to heal.
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Abbas Kiarostami: A Report (2013) Bahman Maghsoudlou, Kurosh Afsharpanah, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Godfrey Cheshire, Documentary, History

An analysis of the style and vision of Abbas Kiarostami, the world’s most iconic Iranian filmmaker, through the lens of his earliest work, including his first short film (Bread & Alley, 1970) and, particularly, his first feature, The Report. This early example of Kiarostami’s work gives insight into his poetic, humanistic tendencies, combining allegorical storytelling with a documentary, neo-realist sensibility, and often exploring the very nature of film as fiction, that have pervaded his work ever since, including such recent international sensations as A Taste of Cherry and Certified Copy. Exclusive interviews with film critics, historians and scholars (including the late great Andrew Sarris) and those directly involved in the making of The Report provide a look at how the career of this master independent auteur began and was shaped.
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