Tag Archives: 2000s

L’insurgée / Restless (2009) Laurent Perreau, Michel Piccoli, Pauline Etienne, Éric Caravaca, Drama

L'insurgee AKA Restless (2009)
Maurice (Michel Piccoli) is a composer, and a longtime member of the resistance. By chance, he shares a house with his teenager granddaughter. Claire, at 17, is eager to experience all sorts of things and the sooner the better, and rebels against anyone who wants to stop him. Between the swimming and the first encounters with the boys, she spends her life, hosted by his grandfather after being orphaned. But this interaction is difficult: both avoid themselves in their large house, escaping through the windows if necessary, living in mutual incomprehension. Yet, they have something in common: both are insurgents in their own way.
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En familie / A Family (2010) Pernille Fischer Christensen, Jesper Christensen, Lene Maria Christensen, Pilou Asbæk, Drama

En familie (2010)
Ditte (Lene Maria Christensen) owns a gallery, has a loving boyfriend (Pilou Asbæk) and her dream job in New York is within reach. But Ditte is also the youngest generation of the famous bakery dynasty, Rheinwald, and when her beloved, but dominating father (Jesper Christensen) comes down with a serious illness, Ditte is faced with the grueling decision: To pursue her own dreams, or to continue the legacy of her family. A Family is a moving and modern story about complicated family ties, the new wife, the new kids – and about following your dreams to find your own place in history.
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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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La chambre des morts / Room of Death (2007) Alfred Lot, Mélanie Laurent, Éric Caravaca, Gilles Lellouche, Crime, Mystery, Thriller

La chambre des morts (2007)
Two unemployed computer technicians discover 2 million euros next to a dead body in a field of windmills. The money that they find deepens their pre-existing dominator-dominated relationship. The next day, a young blind girl is found dead near the site of the dicovery and it seems that the stolen money had been intended to pay her ransom. Another child is then kidnapped and the police carry out an investigation, in particular a young sergeant who is fascinated by the tragic event.
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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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