6.8
Accompanied by his friend Miyata, Sano returns to Izu, a seaside resort in Japan where five years before he fell in love with his wife Nagi.
7.1
After the death of a septuagenarian woman, her three children deliberate over what to do with her estate.
6
Sibyl, a jaded psychotherapist, returns to her first passion: writing. But her newest patient Margot, a troubled up-and-coming actress, proves to be a source of inspiration that is far too tempting. Fascinated almost to the point of obsession, Sibyl becomes more and more involved in Margot’s tumultuous life, reviving volatile memories that bring her face to face with her past.
6.6
Conjured from the unholy meeting of two iconoclastic queer artists, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s final film audaciously raises Jean Genet’s controversial novel to the level of myth. In an expressionistic soundstage vision of a French seaport town—bathed in fiery hues and complete with phallic spires—a strapping sailor and unrepentant criminal (Brad Davis) comes ashore to arouse passion, rivalry, and violence among the libidinal denizens drawn into his orbit. Enacted with dreamlike stylization by a cast of international stars, including Jeanne Moreau and Franco Nero, QUERELLE finds Fassbinder pushing his taboo-shattering depiction of gay desire to delirious extremes.
3.9
In California, an old man grieves the loss of his wife and on the next day he also dies. However, the space soldier Eros and her mate Tanna use an electric device to resurrect them both and the strong Inspector Clay that was murdered by the couple. Their intention is not to conquest Earth but to stop mankind from developing the powerful bomb “Solobonite” that would threaten the universe. When the population of Hollywood and Washington DC sees flying saucers on the sky, a colonel, a police lieutenant, a commercial pilot, his wife and a policeman try to stop the aliens.
7
Olivier Assayas’s live-wire international breakthrough stars a magnetic Maggie Cheung as a version of herself: a Hong Kong action movie star who arrives in Paris to play the latex-clad lead in a remake of Louis Feuillade’s classic 1915 crime serial LES VAMPIRES. What she finds is a behind-the-scenes tangle of barely controlled chaos as egos clash, romantic attractions simmer, and an obsessive director (a cannily cast Jean-Pierre Léaud) drives himself to the brink to realize his vision. Blending blasts of silent cinema, martial arts flicks, and the music of Sonic Youth and Ali Farka Touré into a hallucinatory swirl of postmodern cool, Assayas composes a witty reflection on the nineties French film industry and the eternal tension between art and commercial entertainment.
6.5
When John returns home to his father after serving time in prison, he is looking forward to starting his life afresh. However, in the local community his crime is neither forgotten nor forgiven.
7.8
The first of the road films that would come to define the career of Wim Wenders, the magnificent ALICE IN THE CITIES is an emotionally generous and luminously shot odyssey. A German journalist (Rüdiger Vogler) is driving across the United States to research an article; it’s a disappointing trip, in which he is unable to truly connect with what he sees. Things change, however, when he has no choice but to take a young girl named Alice (Yella Rottländer) with him on his return trip to Germany, after her mother (Lisa Kreuzer)—whom he has just met—leaves the child in his care. Though they initially find themselves at odds, the pair begin to form an unlikely friendship.
7.6
Though married to the good-natured, beautiful Thérèse (Claire Drouot), young husband and father François (Jean-Claude Drouot) finds himself falling unquestioningly into an affair with an attractive postal worker. One of Agnès Varda’s most provocative films, LE BONHEUR (“Happiness”) examines, with a deceptively cheery palette and the spirited strains of Mozart, the ideas of fidelity and happiness in a modern, self-centered world.
5.9
Claire Denis’s poetic take on the body-horror genre is an atmospheric reverie of blood and lust that lays bare the filmmaker’s core artistic concerns around power, desire, and delirium. Newlyweds Shane (a perfectly cast Vincent Gallo) and June (Tricia Vessey) arrive in Paris for their honeymoon. In the process of trying to find a cure for his strange, bloodthirsty disease, Shane stumbles upon the story of a doctor (Alex Descas) and his flesh-eating wife (Béatrice Dalle). Shimmering with haunting beauty—with seductive cinematography by Agnès Godard and an ethereal score by Tindersticks—TROUBLE EVERY DAY is a mesmerizing blend of gore and sensuality that ranks among Denis’s supreme achievements.
7.6
A roving film projector repairman (Rüdiger Vogler) saves the life of a depressed psychologist (Hanns Zischler) who has driven his Volkswagen into a river, and they end up on the road together, traveling from one rural German movie theater to another. Along the way, the two men, each running from his past, bond over their shared loneliness. KINGS OF THE ROAD, captured in gorgeous compositions by cinematographer Robby Müller and dedicated to Fritz Lang, is a love letter to the cinema, a moving and funny tale of male friendship, and a portrait of a country still haunted by war.
7.7
A profound masterpiece from one of the most revered filmmakers in the history of cinema, Robert Bresson’s AU HASARD BALTHAZAR follows the donkey Balthazar as he is passed from owner to owner, some kind and some cruel but all with motivations beyond his understanding. Balthazar, whose life parallels that of his first keeper, Marie, is truly a beast of burden, suffering the sins of humankind. But despite his powerlessness, he accepts his fate nobly. Through Bresson’s unconventional approach to composition, sound, and narrative, this simple story becomes a moving parable about purity and transcendence.
7
Ouyang Feng is a heartbroken and cynical man who spends his days in the desert, connecting expert swordsmen with those seeking revenge and willing to pay for it. Throughout five seasons in exile, Ouyang spins tales of his clients' unrequited loves and unusual acts of bravery.
7.4
With MASCULIN FÉMININ (“Masculine Feminine”), ruthless stylist and iconoclast Jean-Luc Godard introduces the world to “the children of Marx and Coca-Cola,” through a gang of restless youths engaged in hopeless love affairs with music, revolution, and each other. French new wave icon Jean-Pierre Leaud stars as Paul, an idealistic would-be intellectual struggling to forge a relationship with the adorable pop star Madeleine (real-life yé-yé girl Chantal Goya). Through their tempestuous affair, Godard fashions a candid and wildly funny free-form examination of youth culture in throbbing 1960s Paris, mixing satire and tragedy as only Godard can.
7.5
Kaurismäki took his penchant for despairing character studies to unspeakably grim depths in the shockingly entertaining The Match Factory Girl. Kati Outinen is memorably impenetrable as Iris, whose grinding days as a cog in a factory wheel, and nights as a neglected daughter living with her parents, ultimately send her over the edge. Yet despite her transgressions, Kaurismäki makes Iris a compelling, even sympathetic figure. Bleak yet suffused with comic irony, The Match Factory Girl closes out the "Proletariat Trilogy" with a bang, and a whimper.
The painterly clouds of a Tuscan sky hover above Maremma’s rolling landscape. On a rock sits a handbag. A white Miu Miu Wander bag. Upon close inspection, though, we see it’s dirty, beaten up, weathered with time. What has this handbag been through? And how did it end up here, alone?
8.1
Professor Barbenfouillis and five of his colleagues from the Academy of Astronomy travel to the Moon aboard a rocket propelled by a giant cannon. Once on the lunar surface, the bold explorers face the many perils hidden in the caves of the mysterious planet.
6.1
A Russian woman living in Memphis with a much older rock-n-roll legend experiences a personal awakening when her husband's estranged son comes to visit.
5.6
Four erotic tales from in various historical eras. The first, 'The Tide', is set in the present day, and concerns a student and his young female cousin stranded on the beach by the tide, secluded from prying eyes. 'Therese Philosophe' is set in the nineteenth century, and concerns a girl being locked in her bedroom, where she contemplates the erotic potential of the objects contained within it. 'Erzsebet Bathory' is a portrait of the sixteenth-century countess who allegedly bathed in the blood of virgins, while 'Lucrezia Borgia' concerns an incestuous fifteenth-century orgy involving Lucrezia, her brother, and her father the Pope.
