Tehilim (2007)

Tehilim (2007)

Director: Raphaël Nadjari
Country: France | Israel
Runtime;   96min









In contemporary Jerusalem, a small Jewish family leads an ordinary life until following a car accident, the father mysteriously disappears. They all deal with his absence and the difficulties of everyday life as best they can. While the adults take refuge in silence or traditions, the two children, Menachem and David, seek their own way to find their father... Written by NMH  

So Much for Justice!(2010)

So Much for Justice!

Director: Miklós Jancsó
Country: Hungary
Runtime: 86






Managed to get onto the second party of the Mátyás [*Matthias] era, the peak of his power for a king's reign, and through this for Hungary's hey-day short one and a half of his decades concentrates. In the centre Mátyás [*Matthias] king (László Gálffi) his marriage, the troubles of the succession, the life of the Renaissance yard and the relations of inside are at a standstill, i mean mostly the happenings of the privacy, which manage national significance and political weight in a ruler's case however,.
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In Miklós Jancsó's film the three separable eras of Mátyás [*Matthias] king's life come up: youthful Mátyás king's fights for the throne; aged Mátyás king and the succession to the throne; and the fate of the royal crown and the royal heir after Mátyás king's death.

Whoever Says the Truth Shall Die (1981)

Whoever Says the Truth Shall Die (1981)

Directors: Philo Bregstein
Country: Netherlands
Runtime: 58 minutes





Philo Bregstein tells us this film looks at Pasolini's life and art to explain why he died. The film traces Pasolini's life chronologically - family roots, hiding during World War II, teaching, moving to Rome, being arrested and acquitted many times, publishing poems, getting into film, being provocative, and being murdered. Interviews with Alberto Moravia, Laura Betti, Maria Antonietta Macciocch, and Bernard Bertolucci are inter-cut with readings of Pasolini's poems and with clips from four films - primarily the Gospel According to St. Matthew - to illustrate his changing ideas and points of view. Bregstein makes a case for Pasolini's being lynched. 

imbd review by Michael_Elliott (Louisville, KY)
Strange documentary from the Netherlands, which talks of the life, poetry and films of the controversial Pier Paolo Pasolini who was brutally murdered in 1975. The official cause of death is that the director took a 17-year-old boy for a walk, made sexual advances towards him and then the boy killed him. The conspiracy theory on display here is that the government and Christians had something to do with the murder due to the director's Salo and some poems he wrote towards the end of his life. For the most part this documentary is a complete bore that really doesn't come to life until the final ten minutes when the murder is looked at. The best piece of evidence given are the photos of Pasolini's body, which was beaten to a pulp and then driven over by a car. This is the evidence, which claims the boy didn't do the killings even though those being interviewed admit that Pasolini was the sexually aggressive type. The documentary never talks to anyone on the opposite side so we never really get any clear answers to what really happened. The stuff discussing his poems and films isn't very well done and doesn't really shine a light on anything because all the film really does is remind us that he was a homosexual every ten minutes.

Young Goethe in Love (2010)

Young Goethe in Love (2010)

 Director: Philipp Stölzl
Country: Germany
Runtime: 1 hour, 40 minutes





In 1772, we find the young German poet Johann Wolfgang Goethe flunking out of law school and getting drunk with his friends. He's a free spirit trapped in a stringent world where class is everything. All Goethe wants to do is write poems and get them published. But his stern father sends him away to a small town where he is accepted to work at a provincial law firm. There he befriends fellow law student Wilhelm Jerusalem. Goethe also meets, and falls in love with, the beautiful Lotte Buff. She in turn falls for the hopelessly romantic Goethe but, unbeknownst to him, is promised to marry Albert Kestner, Goethe's superior at the law firm. It all adds up to anguished love, as his friend Jerusalem also suffers a failed love affair with a married woman. Goethe transforms their travails into a grand masterpiece, the novel The Sorrows of Young Werther.

Of Love and Other Demons (2009)

Of Love and Other Demons (2009)

Director: Hilda Hidalgo
Country: Costa Rica | Colombia
Runtime: 95 min









Based on Gabriel García Márquez's novel, this is the unsettling story of 13-year-old noble Sierva and the dog bite that changes her life forever. Abandoned, displaced, in the midst of a sexual awakening and finally exorcised, Sierva finds an unlikely ally in a young priest and together they discover passion. Written by Pusan International Film Festival

Punk's Not Dead (2011)

Punk's Not Dead (2011)
Directors: Vladimir Blazevski
Country: Republic of Macedonia

Runtime: 1 hour 40 minutes








Macedonia's official submission to the Best Foreign Language Film category of the 84th Academy Awards 2012.

Punk's not dead is a remarkable black-comedy by Vladimir Blazevski. It is about a reunion of old punk band. Mirsa is a punk who is trying to put up with the struggles of everyday life in Skopje. One day he was offered to play for some multicultural-happening in Debar. Actually, all he ever wants is to play again with his punk band, so he accepts the offer. The next step is to find all former members of the band and make them play again... His ex-girlfriend is coming back to him and she is helping him to find the former members of the band. Punk's not dead gives good message - we should keep on trying to make our dreams come true.
 

White White World (2010)

White White World (2010)

Directors: Oleg Novkovic
Country: Serbia
Runtime: 1 hour 55 minutes





 In the Serbian drama “White White World: The Miner’s Opera” (“Beli Beli Svet”), the characters sing, but never dance. Formulated as a modern day Greek tragedy set in the decrepit southeastern mining town Bor, the movie follows a close group of alienated locals through misguided love affairs and other brash misdeeds. But the songs feature no choreography or other stylish methods of breaking the harsh, downtrodden tableaux. It’s a surprisingly effective strategy. With his sophomore effort, director Oleg Novkovic uses musical expression to frame inner monologues that would never work in spoken form. As a result, a story exclusively populated by damaged people engaged in morally ambiguous, often depraved behavior manages to evoke sympathy for all of them.
At its center is King, a retired boxer now running the neighborhood bar. Years earlier, he had an affair with erstwhile seductress Ruzica, an act that led her to kill her husband and wind up behind bars. The movie begins shortly before Ruzica’s release from jail, when the still-swinging King engages in a similarly ill-fated liaison with Ruzica’s rebellious 18-year-old daughter, Rosa. After a few drinks, two engage in fast, passionless sex, and King rushes out the door without a word…

The Fourth Portrait (2010)

The Fourth Portrait (2010)

Directed by: Mong-Hong Chung
Country: Taiwan
Runtime: 105 min








Ten year-old Xiang faces a lonely future after his father dies. Just when he thinks he's going to spend his life in the orphanage, his estranged mother shows up. And his life changes forever... A loveless mother, a hateful stepfather, a chilly home. Where's Xiang heading to* He finds comfort in drawing and his work reveals his longing for care and affection. Life is full of hope again when he meets the old school janitor who doesn't show his kindness easily and a portly man who has crazy ideas and is haunted with nightmares of his brother. A scary truth is about to be unmasked. Will Xiang be able to depict his own image in the fourth portrait?

Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010)

Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010)

Director: Werner Herzog
Country: Canada | USA | France
Runtime: 90 min


Werner Herzog gains exclusive access to film inside the Chauvet caves of Southern France, capturing the oldest known pictorial creations of humankind in their astonishing natural setting.


In 1994, a group of scientists discovered a cave in Southern France perfectly preserved for over 20,000 years and containing the earliest known human paintings. Knowing the cultural significance that the Chauvet Cave holds, the French government immediately cut-off all access to it, save a few archaeologists and paleontologists. But documentary filmmaker, Werner Herzog, has been given limited access, and now we get to go inside examining beautiful artwork created by our ancient ancestors around 32,000 years ago. He asks questions to various historians and scientists about what these humans would have been like and trying to build a bridge from the past to the present.

Midnight in Paris(2011)

                                                                       Midnight in Paris
                                                                Directed by: Woody Allen
                                                                    Country: Spain, USA
                                                                          Runtime: 94 min 

Gil and Inez travel to Paris as a tag-along vacation on her parents' business trip. Gil is a successful Hollywood writer but is struggling on his first novel. He falls in love with the city and thinks they should move there after they get married, but Inez does not share his romantic notions of the city or the idea that the 1920s was the golden age. When Inez goes off dancing with her friends, Gil takes a walk at midnight and discovers what could be the ultimate source of inspiration for writing. Gil's daily walks at midnight in Paris could take him closer to the heart of the city but further from the woman he's about to marry.

Woody Allen's love affair with France, which goes back decades, finds its finality with "Midnight in Paris," the latest of Allen's Parisian brochures, which recently opened at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday. The good news is that Allen seems to be paying attention in a way he hasn't always done in recent films, and has found a way to channel his often-caustic misanthropy, half-comic fear of death and anti-American bitterness into agreeable comic whimsy. The nominal point of "Midnight in Paris" is that we've all got to make the best of life in our own time while longing for a past that probably never existed. If anything, Allen seems to be rebuking himself, ever so mildly, for his compulsive romanticism, his obsession with the past and his disconnection from contemporary American life. Allen has baked us a sweet, airy Parisian dessert with just a sense of sentimental substance in the finish. One of his better films in his latter years.
IMDB Review