Film Reviews

Two young professional soccer players share a hotel room the night before their first big game. Out of nowhere, one kisses the other. The impact of this 'pass' reverberates through the next ten years of their lives - a decade of fame and failure, secrets and lies, in a sporting world where image is everything.

Elle France editor Jean-Dominique Bauby, who, in 1995 at the age of 43, suffered a stroke that paralyzed his entire body, except his left eye. Using that eye to blink out his memoir, Bauby eloquently described the aspects of his interior world, from the psychological torment of being trapped inside his body to his imagined stories from lands he'd only visited in his mind.

A financial struggle between owners of a go-go club threatens its future.

Polish artist Jan Lenica (1928–2001) was an animator as well as a celebrated poster designer. Die Nashörner (1964) is an 11-minute condensation of Eugène Ionesco’s Rhinoceros that no doubt works best if you’re familiar with the play but which nevertheless contains some funny moments, especially when “Rhinocerosism” starts to spread. The film is free to download at the Internet Archive.

Napoleon's tumultuous relations with Russia including his disastrous 1812 invasion serve as the backdrop for the tangled personal lives of two aristocratic families.

In March of 1701, Asano, a young provincial lord invited to attend formal ceremonies at the Shogun’s castle, receives special instructions in etiquette for the occasion, but neglects to pay the customary gratuity to his instructor, Kira. Kira insults Asano publicly for the slight, prompting the outraged Asano to draw his sward against the older man within the castle, a capital offense. Asano is then forced to commit seppuku and his fief is confiscated, his retainers dispersed. Twenty-one months later, after making elaborate plans, forty-seven of Asano’s loyal retainers attack Kira’s mansion on a snowy night and take their revenge. Though their vendetta was criminal, the forty-seven attract the sympathies of the public and government alike and are allowed the privilege of dying honourably at their own hands.

A surreal, virtually plotless series of dreams centered around six middle-class people and their consistently interrupted attempts to have a meal together.

Midler is the rock-and-roll singer Mary Rose Foster (known as the Rose to her legions of fans), whose romantic relationships and mental health are continuously imperiled by the demands of life on the road.

Based on a short story by Bengali writer Prafulla Roy, the central idea developed by director Dasgupta, tells the story of a girl, Lati, whose mother Rajani is a prostitute living and working in a brothel in rural India. Rajani plans to offer her daughter to an older man, a rich husband and protector to her daughter. Lati, however, wants to return to school and finish her studies. Unwilling to pay such a price for material success, she runs away to Calcutta. The discovery of this new world is described parallel to other stories of emancipation, such as that of three young prostitutes, of an aged couple going nowhere and man's n landing on the moon. In a surrealistic approach typical of the director, a clumsy cat and an intelligent donkey are also present in the film.

Peter Winter is a young schizophrenic who is desperately trying to get his daughter back from her adoptive family. He attempts to function in a world that, for him, is filled with strange voices, electrical noise, disconcerting images, and jarringly sudden emotional shifts. During his quest, he runs afoul of the law and an ongoing murder investigation.

Ben Campbell is a young, highly intelligent, student at M.I.T. in Boston who strives to succeed. Wanting a scholarship to transfer to Harvard School of Medicine with the desire to become a doctor, Ben learns that he cannot afford the $300,000 for the four to five years of schooling as he comes from a poor, working-class background. But one evening, Ben is introduced by his unorthodox math professor Micky Rosa into a small but secretive club of five. Students Jill, Choi, Kianna, and Fisher, who are being trained by Professor Rosa of the skill of card counting at blackjack.

In India, about 260 BC in the Empire of Magadha, the Prince Asoka (Shah Rukh Khan) survives to many betrayals of his brothers, leaded by the evil Susima (Ajit Kumar), who wants to kill him to inherit the throne. His mothers orders Asoka to leave Magadha, and while traveling, he meets Princess Kaurwaki (Karriena Kapoor) and her brother, Prince Aryan (Sooraj Balaji) from Kalinga, who are undercover and protected by General Bheema (Rahul Dev). Asoka and Kaurwaki falls in love for each other, but the mother of Asoka calls him back to Magadha. When he returns, he does not find Kaurwaki, who was attacked by traitors of Kalinga. When Asoka's mother is killed by a man of Susima, Asoka becomes mad, kills all his evil brothers but Sugatra, who escapes to Kalinga. Asoka decides to conquer Kalinga, but in the end, he concludes that he has not built an empire, but conquered only corpses and destroyed everything, and he decides to spread love and the Buddhism.

In this animated follow-up to Fairytopia, Elina (played by Barbie) enlists the help of a mermaid, Nori, to save her friend Nalu, a merman prince who has been captured by the wicked Laverna.

Internationally Sweden is seen as a perfect society, a raw model and a symbol of the highest achievements of human progress. The Swedish Theory of Love digs into the true nature of Swedish life style, explores the existential black holes of a society that has created the most autonomous people in the world.

Begone Dull Care shines with his masterful use of scratching and painting on film stock. In Begone Dull Care, McLaren adds complexity to Lye’s compositions, emphasising sound/visual synchronisation and generating depth on his mobile canvas. The film gives warmth and movement to compositions resembling a constantly morphing Jackson Pollock painting, yet never fails to remind us of its very calculated aesthetics when it suddenly adapts to the score’s slower movements and shifts from expressionistic and oversaturated explosions to minimalist vertical lines that vibrate accordingly to Oscar Peterson’s piano. (cont. http://sensesofcinema.com/2005/cteq/begone_dull_care/)