St. George Shoots the Dragon

St. George Shoots the Dragon(2009)
Director: Srdjan Dragojević
Country: Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria
Runtime: 120 min



The movie starts with a battle against the Turks during the First Balkan War in 1912 and ends with the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and the crucial Battle of Cer, the first allied victory in WW1. It is largely set in and around a small village by the Sava river at Serbia's border with Austria-Hungary.
The village is divided between able-bodied men that are potential army recruits and the many invalid veterans from the previous Balkan wars, and there is bitter animosity between the two groups, which don't intermingle much with each other even though they live in the same village.
The central theme of the movie is a love triangle between the village gendarme Đorđe, his wife Katarina and the young war cripple Gavrilo who once had a love affair with Katarina before he went to war and lost his arm in battle, and with the arm partly also his lust for life. Even though Katarina in the meantime married Đorđe, she still has affection for Gavrilo, which is a source of friction between them two.
On the onset of World War I, all able-bodied men in the village are recruited for combat. Left in the village are only women, children and invalids from previous Balkan wars. Rumours start circulating that the invalids in the village are trying to take advantage of the situation by making their moves on the women in the village - the wives and sisters of the recruited men. These rumours reach the villagers at the frontlines, and in order to prevent mutiny the army staff decides to recruit the invalids as well and send them to the front line.

St. George Shoots the Dragon (Serbian Свети Георгије убива аждаху) is an Serbian WW1 war drama. The movie premiere was slated for March 11, 2009. The movie's director is Srđan Dragojević and the screenplay writer is Dušan Kovačević. With a budget of around €5 million, it was one of the most expensive Serbian movie productions to date. Some of the funds have been donated by the governments of Serbia (€1.55 million) and Republika Srpska (€750,000) who deemed the movie to be of national importance. Kovačević script had already been made into a theater play that was staged to great success in Belgrade's Atelje 212 and Novi Sad's Serbian National Theatre.

Made in Hungária (2009)

Made in Hungária (2009)
Directed By: Gergely Fonyo
Country:Hungary
Runtime:109 min



Following a brief expatriation to America, a Hungarian teen returns to his homeland and establishes himself as a white-hot rock star, in this biopic of Eastern European pop idol Miklos "Miki" Fenyo. The drama opens in the spring of 1963, with the Fenyo family preparing for a return to Budapest after nearly a half-decade away. Caught up in the throes of adolescence and obsessed with American pop culture, singer-guitarist Miki dreams of establishing himself as the Jerry Lee Lewis of Hungary. Yet complications best the family upon its return to Budapest: without a job, Mr. Fenyo draws the suspicion of various extremist political elements (and begins to lose his once-stellar reputation), while Miki's onetime friends treat him as an outcast and his old girlfriend, Vera (Tunde Kiss) reveals that she has a new beau. Never one to be daunted, Miki enters a talent competition and vows to restore his father's reputation, win back his love, and regain the respect of his friends, while establishing his own professional identity as a recording star. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

Susa (2010)

Susa (2010)
Director: Rusudan Pirveli
Country: Georgia
Runtime: 1 hour, 15 minutes




Susa is a twelve-year-old boy growing up in a shabby neighborhood in post-Soviet Georgia. Susa's mother works for a gang of bootleggers who make and sell illegal home-brewed vodka, and Susa has been drafted into serving as a delivery boy. Susa's work is hard, his hours are long and he regularly visits the ugliest and most dangerous parts of the city. The one thing that gives Susa hope is his mother's frequent promises that some day his father will return, and he'll put the family back on a solid footing. To Susa's surprise, one day his father does come back, but the man he meets is a frail, emotionally devastated character who can't do much for himself, let alone his wife and son. Susa soon realizes he can only count on himself, but the youngster wonders how long he can deal with such a bleak existence.

Drei (2010)

Drei (2010)
Director:Tom Tykwer
Country: Germany
Runtime: 118




Three is already being described as a “relationship-movie”, about love, morals and the sexes in a late-modernist German society at the mercy of its mixed feelings, or if you prefer the official synopsis part:

“A love story Hanna and Simon, a couple in their early forties, live together in Berlin. Unknown to each other they both become acquainted with Adam – and fall in love with him. When Hanna becomes pregnant, their whistle is blown – and the question arises: Who is the father?”

My Afternoons with Margueritte (2010)

My Afternoons with Margueritte (2010)
Director: Jean Becker
Country:France
Runtime:82 min

Based on the novel by Marie-Sabine Roger tells the story of Germain Chazes (Gérard Depardieu), a man of 110kg, which distrusts the words and lives in a caravan in the back garden of his mother. He spends his time between coffee and the public park and is considered by most to be a happy idiot. But one day, Margueritte (Gisèle Casadesus), a very cultured alone makes you discover the world of books and words. Your relationship with others and with itself will change. (PRO)

Making Plans for Lena

Making Plans for Lena(2009)
Director:Christophe Honoré
Country: France
Runtime: 104 min


When a young, independent-minded woman decides to go home for the holidays you know you’re in for festering family resentment served up cold. When the woman in question is a bourgeois Parisian, add a dash of ennui, alienation and random acts of madness.

Christophe Honore provides all this and more in his latest feature, Making Plans for Lena, which sees Chiara Mastroianni thrown to the mercy of her pervasive mother, ailing father, petulant sister, blasé brother and former partner. Neither comedy nor tragedy, Honore’s latest feature is a slow-paced, handsome family psychodrama which is just about held together by a robust female cast.

Well received at home in France where it opened on September 2 (marking a record for an Honore film with almost 400,000 admissions to date), this could play to Honore’s small but loyal art house fan base internationally, where it will inevitably be compared to Arnaud Desplechin’s 2008 hit A Christmas Tale (both star Mastroianni).

As with Tale, Making Plans for Lena also gathers up disparate members of a vigorous clan and tosses them like so many ingredients into a potage of simmering affections and recriminations. A harried Lena, eyeballs rolling in panic, is first seen rushing pell-mell through a crowded Parisian train station where she has managed to mislay one of her children. Tracking him down, she finds him nursing an injured bird, which she reluctantly agrees to take with them to Brittany in her handbag. By the time they arrive at the bucolic family home, the bird has suffocated, an ill omen for a family gathering if ever there was one. What’s more, we’ve been signalled that Lena, though well meaning, is achingly unable to keep her world under control.

Lena has recently chucked in her job and husband in a bid for independence: she’s in love with freedom but at a loss as to how to be happy. One by one, her siblings and parents dish out unsolicited advice, and matters are further complicated by the arrival of her ex-husband, invited to the gathering by her mother. You can understand their frustration with Lena. She’s indecisive, she throws fickle tantrums, packs her bags to go and then comes back for more, and takes offence at the slightest comeback.

Honore picks up the action later in a wintry Paris to follow up on the emotional fallout of the Breton weekend.

Mastroianni brings a taut, restrained energy to her role. She’s joined by a breezy Marie Christine Barrault as the meddling matriarch and Marina Fois as her jaded pregnant sister. But the male characters - Lena’s ex-husband, her brother, brother-in-law and her new love interest - are mere outlines, roughly blocked out and endowed with little emotional depth.

Honore’s direction and Laurent Brunet’s photography are deft enough. But this is not a particularly rambunctious gathering. For the most part, characters speak in ambivalent half tones, leaving much unsaid, much to be surmised. Indeed, it feels like a cop out when the director fills in the gaps by resorting to not one, but two Breton folktales, including a 15-minute setpiece complete with colourfully costumed characters and wailing music. Both fables involve women who pact with the devil, overplay their hands and who suffer dire consequences. By the film’s end, it’s clear that for Lena at least, one can’t make a deal with the comfortable bourgeois world without paying a price in personal freedom as well.

(screendaily.com)

Kaboom (2010)

Kaboom (2010)
Director:Gregg Araki
Country: USA
Runtime: 86



Gregg Araki’s “Kaboom” is the winner of the first Queer Palm at the Cannes Film Festival 2010.
Completely bonkers in the best possible way, it adheres to the shock-the-rubes spirit of Araki's early comedies but is executed with far more skill.
It features a set of unbelievably beautiful college students (played by Thomas Dekker, Haley Bennett, Chris Zylka, and Juno Temple, among others) who are drawn into a science-fiction cyber-thriller.

The film begins as a wacky, self-aware teen sex comedy, then gets progressively crazier and crazier as Araki pushes as many elements as he can well past the point of absurdity (including but in no way limited to: conspiracy theories, mysterious eschatological cults, men in animal masks, a long-haired hippy called Messiah, and lots and lots of bi-curious sexcapades).

It's a deliriously anarchist cinematic cherry-bomb, executed by Araki with a level of control that is simply staggering for this type of material. He knows exactly what he's doing, and on its own terms, Kaboom is something very close to perfect." ---IndieWire

Hadewijch (2009)

Hadewijch (2009)
Director:Bruno Dumont
Country:France
Runtime: 102 minutes



Shocked by the blind, ecstatic faith of Hadewijch, a young novice, the mother superior sends her packing from the convent. Hadewijch once again becomes Céline, 20, the daughter of a French minister. Her passionate love of God, her rage and her encounter with Yassine and Nassir lead her, between grace and madness, off along dangerous paths...

Surviving Life (Theory and Practice) 2010

Surviving Life (Theory and Practice) 2010

Director:Jan Svankmajer
Country: Czech Republic
Runtime: 104

One morning I was woken up by a dream and I said to myself:
It looked like the opening scene of a film.
So I wrote the other scenes.
- Jan Svankmajer

Eugene, an aging man, leads a double life: one real - the waking life he spends in the company of his wife of many years, Milana - and the other in his dreams, his sleeping hours being devoted to a recurring evolving dream of a beautiful young woman, Evgenia. Seeking to perpetuate his dream life, he goes to see a psychoanalyst, who attempts to provide an ongoing interpretation of his experiences. On the wall there are portraits of Freud and Jung, which become animated, alternately applauding, disapproving or fighting over her interpretations.

The latest film from practising surrealist animator Jan Svankmajer is a mix of cut-out animation from photographs and live action segments, combining real actors with their animated photographs, against black and white backdrops of photographed Czech buildings. This stylistic approach which, Svankmajer jokes during the films introduction, was due to lack of funds and saved on catering, provides freedom for imaginative collages, and humorous nods in the direction of some of surrealism's familiar practitioners (Dalí, Ernst, Buñuel). Drawn directly from Svankmajer's own dreams, the film is a complex, multilayered story about aging, love, sex, childhood, trauma and dreams, steeped in Freudian and Jungian analysis and injected with a healthy dose of perversity. As Eugene labors in different versions of reality, Svankmajer's own deeply curious take on reality manifests in all its surrealist splendo

- Rottentomatoes

Sarah's Key (2010)

Sarah's Key (2010)
Director:Gilles Paquet-Brenner
Country:France
Runtime: 111 min






When journalist Julia Jesmond is commissioned to write an article about the notorious 1942 Val dhal Round Up, she stumbles on an appalling family secret. The apartment she and her French husband plan to move into was once occupied by the Jewish Starzynski family who were sent to the camps in the Round Up. As Julia investigates their fate she begins searching for their daughter Sarah and also for her own place in the world.