Spring Breakers (2012)

Spring Breakers (2012)

Director:Harmony Korine
Coutry:USA
Runtime: 94 min

Brit, Candy, Cotty, and Faith have been best friends since grade school. They live together in a boring college dorm and are hungry for adventure. All they have to do is save enough money for spring break to get their shot at having some real fun. A serendipitous encounter with rapper "Alien" promises to provide the girls with all the thrill and excitement they could hope for. With the encouragement of their new friend, it soon becomes unclear how far the girls are willing to go to experience a spring break they will never forget.

It is actually quite artistic with great colors (lots of neon and saturated colors) and beautiful photography, and yet goes often against the classic movie making rules. Just watch the scene of the girls dancing with guns, wearing sweat pants, bikini tops, and neon pink ski masks. Why is it in there? Any normal movie would not have that kind of out of the blue scene, unrelated to the storyline. The way the story unravels without filling in a lot of blanks or multiple repeats people's statements (a common complaint in the IMDB reviews) is another reason why I don't believe it's part of what you call mainstream. In mainstream movies you follow the rules, you show something standard, a story which is easy to follow with enough drama, action, sex, and you try to avoid anything likely to alienate the viewer. And finally just take a look at the ratings, it's almost evenly spread out from 1 to 10, as if nobody could agree on what it deserves.

Cinema Komunisto (2010)

Cinema Komunisto (2010)

Director: Mila Turajlic
Country: Serbia
Runtime: 100 min





When history has a different script from the one in your films, who wouldn't invent a country to fool themselves? The collapsing sets of Tito's Hollywood of the East take us on a journey through the rise and fall of the illusion called Yugoslavia. Exploring the ruins of the forgotten film sets and talking to directors, producers, policemen and Tito's projectionist about the state run film studios and Tito's personal love for cinema and it's stars, 'Cinema Komunisto' uses film clips to go back to the film when 'His story' became the official history.

Buenas noches, España (2011)

Buenas noches, España (2011)

Director: Raya Martin
Country: Spain | Philippines
Runtime: 81min

In another lifetime, a Spanish couple takes drugs and teleports through their television set. A troubled young man travels through the countryside and meets a lost woman. During the trip, they discover a museum housing the expatriated paintings of the most important Filipino artist of the revolution. Eventually, the Spanish couple disappears toward their colony. Inspired by one of the earliest teleportation accounts, which happened between the Philippines and Mexico during the colonial period.

 Martin replicates the experience of being under the influence of drugs. He also replicates the feeling of being lost in time, seeing scenes played a few moments ago played again and again with various details changed, and listening to sounds that evoke reminiscence of carefree childhood. Being in the influence of drugs and time travel, although at first glance are two very different experiences, are actually interchangeable, giving Martin's proposition logical sense, and very personal sense, too, since drug influence and time travel are both panacea to heartache, allowing a person an option to forget and to make what has been made permanent by the movement of time more or less malleable. Thus, the lovers seem to be in incomparable bliss being in that state of temporal randomness, oblivious of where they are and where they are going.

The Best Offer (2013)

The Best Offer (2013)

Director: Giuseppe Tornatore
Country: Italy
Runtime: 124 min 

A story about an art expert who has some issues (he doesn't seem to like people much, he doesn't have a cell phone, he always wears gloves not to touch other people) and on top of that he uses his job as auctionner, and an accomplish, to get hold of precious paintings and other masterpiece he claims to be not really worth when instead they're expensives. The peculiar thing is, he seems to be really fond of women's portraits and he has a whole security chamber filled with this kind of paintings all over the walls.
One days he's been called by Claire Ibeson, daughter of a rich couple died in a car accident: she wants to sell all the stuff in the house she's been living in for her entire life, literally since she suffers agoraphobia and never leaves her secret room hidden behind a wall.
 

Inch'Allah (2012)

Inch'Allah (2012)

Director: Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette
Country: Canada | France
Runtime: 102 min

Chloe is a young Canadian doctor who divides her time between Ramallah, where she works with the Red Crescent, and Jerusalem, where she lives next door to her friend Ava, a young Israeli soldier. Increasingly sensitive to the conflict, Chloe goes daily through the checkpoint between the two cities to get to the refugee camp where she monitors the pregnancies of young women.

As she becomes friends with Rand, one of her patients, Chloe learns more about life in the occupied territories and gets to spend some time with Rand's family. Torn between the two sides of the conflict, Chloe tries as best she can to build bridges between her friends but suffers from remaining a perpetual foreigner to both sides.

Following up her acclaimed debut-feature Le ring, filmmaker Anais Barbeau-Lavalette delivers with Inch'Allah the moving tale a young woman's encounter with war and its everyday life. Avoiding any political agenda, Chloe's story questions how one can internalize a foreign conflict without ...

Renoir (2012)

Renoir (2012)

Director: Gilles Bourdos
Country: France
Runtime: 111 min








 Set on the French Riviera in the summer of 1915, Jean Renoir -- son of the Impressionist painter, Pierre-Auguste -- returns home to convalesce after being wounded in World War I. At his side is Andrée, a young woman who rejuvenates, enchants, and inspires both father and son.

Paradise: Faith (2012)

Paradise: Faith (2012)

Director: Ulrich Seidl
Country: Austria
Duration : 1h 48mn

 Put together a subversive filmmaker like Ulrich Seidl with the subject of religious fanaticism and you’re bound to get something provocative. But Paradise: Faith, the second part of the Austrian director’s trilogy about three women from the same family on different quests, is possibly more interesting to think about and discuss afterwards than to sit through. Depending how you look at it, there’s a pitch-black comedy buried in here or a redeeming shred of empathy at the tail end of two grueling hours. Either way, it’s strictly for the faithful.
The film follows Paradise: Love, which premiered in competition at Cannes and dealt with a middle-aged frau on the prowl for romantic fulfillment among the sex tourists of Kenya. Seen briefly in the earlier film, that character’s sister, Anna Maria (Maria Hofstatter), is the key figure in Faith, while her daughter is the center of the forthcoming third part, Paradise: Hope, about a zaftig teen at fat camp. In each freestanding film a vacation forces the protagonist to confront herself and her longing for happiness.

Waste Land (2010)

Waste Land (2010)
Directors: Lucy Walker & Karen Harley & João Jardim
Country: Brazil
Runtime: 99 min

 

Brazilian artist Vik Muniz combines visual beauty with social awareness. Waste Land--a documentary about Muniz collaborating with the trash pickers in a staggeringly huge landfill--achieves the same fusion. Muniz, a remarkably upbeat and earnest fellow, is almost just an excuse for the movie to investigate the lives of the trash pickers, who are amazing people living on the fringes of a highly polarized society. The documentarians capture startlingly open and complex interviews with a handful of men and women striving to maintain some hope and personal dignity in some of the worst circumstances imaginable. Their vibrance and vitality will make you want to live your own life more fully. The tricky ethical issues around the entire project get a substantial discussion; Muniz is aware of the potential for exploitation and capsizing these delicately balanced lives, but proceeds with fervor. The glimpses into his artistic process (and his ability to genuinely collaborate with his subjects) provide a striking mirror to the collective effort of the trash pickers as they fight to form a political association to better their existence. Waste Land will truly make you examine your own life and may well inspire you to live better. --Bret Fetzer

Filmed over nearly three years, WASTE LAND follows renowned artist Vik Muniz as he journeys from his home base in Brooklyn to his native Brazil and the world's largest garbage dump, Jardim Gramacho, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. There he photographs an eclectic band of "catadores" -- or self-designated pickers of recyclable materials. Muniz's initial objective was to "paint" the catadores with garbage. However, his collaboration with these inspiring characters as they recreate photographic images of themselves out of garbage reveals both the dignity and despair of the catadores as they begin to re-imagine their lives. Walker (Devil's Playground, Blindsight, Countdown to Zero) has great access to the entire process and, in the end, offers stirring evidence of the transformative power of art and the alchemy of the human spirit.

Charles Bradley: Soul of America (2012)

Charles Bradley: Soul of America (2012)

Director: Poull Brien
Country: USA
Runtime: 75 min


Starting off on his 62nd birthday, Charles Bradley: Soul of America follows the extraordinary journey of singer Charles Bradley during the electrifying and transformative months leading up to the release of his debut album "No Time for Dreaming." The 74-minute documentary feature will premiere at the SXSW 2012 Film Festival in Austin, Texas. Despite being abandoned as a child, a period of homelessness, the devastating loss of his brother and constant poverty, Charles never gave up on his life long dream to be a professional singer. With the help of producer and Grammy-winner Gabriel Roth (Daptone Records) and musician Tommy Brenneck, Charles moved away from the James Brown covers he'd been performing for nearly half a century and focused on finding his own unique voice. Earning himself an opening spot on tour for Sharon Jones, the biggest artist in the Daptone stable, Charles delivered the most impassioned performances of his life. Coming up during one of the worst economic downturns ... Written by Poull Brien

Días de pesca AKA Gone Fishing (2012)

Días de pesca AKA Gone Fishing (2012)

Director: Carlos Sorin
Country: Argentina
Runtime: 77 min






Marco is a travelling salesman and a recovering alcoholic who decides to change the direction of his life after a stay at a detox centre. His counselor suggests he take up a hobby as part of his treatment and Marco decides to try fishing. He then heads to Puerto Deseado during shark fishing season to find his estranged daughter, Ana.