Tag Archives: 2000s

Veronika wa shinu koto ni shita / Veronika Decides to Die (2005) Kei Horie, Yôko Maki, Wan Lee, Jun Fubuki, Drama

Veronika wa shinu koto ni shita (2005)
Towa lives in a peculiar sanatorium after committing suicide. Convalescing in sanatorium, she is informed that she has only 7 days to live. Isolated within their worlds, strange people live in this sanatorium and try to avoid making any contact with her. However, Claude a man who lost his power of speech feels sympathetic towards her and their every lovable things give true colors to the life and inspire Towa’s honest desire for the life.
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Hatuna Meuheret / Late Marriage (2001) Dover Koshashvili, Lior Ashkenazi, Ronit Elkabetz, Moni Moshonov, Comedy, Drama, Romance

Hatuna Meuheret (2001)
Zaza is a 31-year old Israeli bachelor, handsome and intelligent, and his family wants to see him married. But tradition dictates that Zaza has to choose a young virgin. She must be beautiful and from a good family, preferably rich. Zaza’s parents, Yasha and Lily drag Zaza to meet potential brides and their families. Zaza has no choice. He plays along with his family, advocates of the suffocating traditions of their Georgian Jewish heritage. But Zaza always manages to somehow get out of being engaged. What his parents don’t know is that Zaza is already in love. Judith is sensuous, strong and intriguing. She’s also a divorcée with a 6-year-old daughter. So Zaza has kept Judith a secret from his family. He will have to choose between respect of the strict confines of family and tradition, or the love of his life.
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Amida-do dayori / Letter from the Mountain (2002) Takashi Koizumi, Akira Terao, Kanako Higuchi, Shoji Arano, Drama

Amida-do dayori (2002)
As the film begins, Takao (Akira Terao) and Michiko (Kanako Higuchi) have already pulled up their Tokyo roots and moved to a village that is Takao’s ancestral home. They visit a thatched cottage that serves as a memorial shrine (amidado) for the village dead and chat with the attendant, the spry 96-year-old Oume (Tanie Kitabayashi). Together they admire the view — from an inspiring distance. Oume, it turns out, is a kind of sage, whose thoughts and observations are a popular feature in a column in a local newsletter. Her amanuensis is a mute, sweetly smiling young woman named Sayuri (Manami Konishi), who is as devoted to Oume as Oume is to the souls of her beloved dead.
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Die Unberührbare / No Place to Go (2000) Oskar Roehler, Hannelore Elsner, Vadim Glowna, Jasmin Tabatabai, Drama

Die Unberuhrbare (2000)
Flanders, a famous female author, travels 1989 after the fall of the Berlin wall into the German capitol. She is deeply depressed of the events because she saw the communistic states as a very good thing that has now ended. In the joy of these days she finds no person to understand her, so she has to travel back to Munich. After meeting several people, known and unknown, it seems as if there will be no way to go.
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Freakonomics (2010) Heidi Ewing, Alex Gibney, James Ransone, Tempestt Bledsoe, Bill Gates, Documentary

Freakonomics (2010)
The field of economics can study more than the workings of economies or businesses, it can also help explore human behavior in how it reacts to incentives. Economist Steven D. Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner host an anthology of documentaries that examines how people react to opportunities to gain, wittingly or otherwise. The subjects include the possible role a person’s name has for their success in life, why there is so much cheating in an honor bound sport like sumo wrestling, what helped reduce crime in the USA in the 1990s onward and we follow an school experiment to see if cash prizes can encourage struggling students to improve academically.
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La femme du Vème / The Woman in the Fifth (2011) Pawel Pawlikowski, Ethan Hawke, Kristin Scott Thomas, Joanna Kulig, Drama, Mystery, Thriller

La femme du Veme (2011)
American writer Tom Ricks comes to Paris desperate to put his life together again and win back the love of his estranged wife and daughter. When things don’t go according to plan, he ends up in a shady hotel in the suburbs, having to work as a night guard to make ends meet. Then Margit, a beautiful, mysterious stranger walks into his life and things start looking up. Their passionate and intense relationship triggers a string of inexplicable events… as if an obscure power was taking control of his life.
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Here’s to the Future! (2014) Gina Telaroli, John Budge, Begonia Colomar, Daniel Kasman, Documentary

Here's to the Future! (2014)
On a late-summer Sunday in 2011, a female director gathers a team of filmmakers, writers, musicians, artists, critics, and friends in an apartment to recreate a scene from Michael Curtiz’s Depression-era drama The Cabin in the Cotton. Over plates of pasta and glasses of red wine, a round robin of non-professional actors take turns performing the same scene, again and again, In different permutations. With a freedom Influenced by pre–Code Hollywood, cameras, phones, and laptops are scattered around & set at almost every possible angle, documenting the action both in front of and behind the camera as it unfolds, from rehearsals to equipment adjustments to the banter between takes. An intimate. playful, and spontaneous look Into the collaborative cinematic process emerges. a snapshot of the filmmaker’s perennial struggle to capture fleeting moments before the day (and light) slip away.
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Roberto Succo (2001) Cédric Kahn, Stefano Cassetti, Isild Le Besco, Patrick Dell’Isola, Biography, Crime, Drama

Roberto Succo (2001)
‘Kurt’ claims to be a sales rep. He also claims to be English in spite of his heavy Italian accent. Kurt is an habitual liar and a dangerous driver, at the very least. In the south of France he meets Léa, age 16. Between his increasingly strange dates with Léa, Kurt engages in a number of armed robberies, some successful, some not… The police are perplexed by a series of crimes including disappearances and a murder. They conclude that they are dealing with a madman… After he proposes, Léa breaks up with Kurt. The attempt to find a new girlfriend leads to a shooting by Kurt, now calling himself André. Léa’s information identifies Kurt/André as Roberto Succo, psychiatric patient and parental murderer. The police hunt for Roberto covers three countries.
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Walk on Water (2004) Eytan Fox, Lior Ashkenazi, Knut Berger, Caroline Peters, Drama, Mystery, Thriller

Walk on Water (2004)
Eyal, an Israeli Mossad agent, is given the mission to track down and kill the very old Alfred Himmelman, an ex-Nazi officer, who might still be alive. Pretending to be a tourist guide, he befriends his grandson Axel, in Israel to visit his sister Pia. The two men set out on a tour of the country during which, Axel challenges Eyal’s values.
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