Laura spent the happiest years of her childhood growing up in an orphanage by the seaside, cared for by the staff and fellow orphans whom she loved as brothers and sisters. Now, thirty years later, she returns with her husband Carlos and Simon, their 7-year-old son, with a dream of restoring and reopening the long-abandoned orphanage as a home for disabled children. The new home and mysterious surroundings awaken Simon's imagination and the boy starts to spin a web of fantastic tales and not-so-innocent games...
A troubling web that begins to disturb Laura, drawing her into the child's strange universe which resonates with echoes of long-forgotten, deeply unsettling memories of her own childhood. As the opening day draws near, tension builds within the family. Carlos remains sceptical, believing that Simon is making everything up in a desperate bid for attention. But Laura slowly becomes convinced that something long-hidden and terrible is lurking in the old house, something waiting to emerge and inflict appalling damage on her family.
Cast: Belén Rueda, Fernando Cayo, Geraldine Chaplin, Montserrat Carulla, Mabel Rivera
Directed by Juan Antonio Bayona
Tells the story of two sets of parents who decide to have a cordial meeting after their sons are involved in a schoolyard brawl.
Cast: Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz, John C. Reilly
Directed by: Roman Polanski
A sixteen-year-old boy insinuates himself into the house of a fellow student from his literature class and writes about it in essays for his French teacher. Faced with this gifted and unusual pupil, the teacher rediscovers his enthusiasm for his work, but the boy's intrusion will unleash a series of uncontrollable events.
Two young women have a very unusual after-school job in this dark-hued comedy-drama. Teenagers Violet (Alexis Bledel) and Daisy (Saoirse Ronan) are best friends and share a passion for dresses from Barbie Sunday (Cody Horn), a well-known designer with a youthful style. Paying for those dresses can be expensive, so Violet and Daisy work to make some pocket money -- they're hired killers for Russ (Danny Trejo), who doles out assignments requiring their impressive skills with firearms and the "internal-bleeding dance" (which involves jumping up and down on their victims). Russ has instructed Violet and Daisy to knock off Michael (James Gandolfini), and gives them the location of his apartment and the time he should be home. However, though the gals arrive at the expected time, Michael does not, and while waiting for him to show up, they fall asleep. When they awake, they discover Michael is a seemingly nice guy who treats his unexpected guests with courtesy and kindness, and they're soon caught up in divided loyalties between their boss and their target. Violet & Daisy is the first directorial effort from Geoffrey Fletcher, who won an Academy Award for his screenplay for the film Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire.
With martial arts getting more popular in the Thirties, more people seek to learn them via the professionals at Foshan in Southern China. Some of the experienced masters like to challenge their counterparts and undergoing battles. To have their whole concentration, it is their practice to lock up the venues and no one is allowed to leave during battles. No food and no rest before reaching any results.
Ip Man is a young rich man extremely talented in martial arts, but he chooses to keep a low profile. Yet this doesn't keep him out of these troubles ahead. One day he is trapped in this battleground so he has to use every means in order to get out of there. The masters are amazed by his abilities. Master Kung and his daughter Kung Yi are amongst, and the latter is attracted to this newcomer.
A high warlord is assassinated by his own guard Yi Xian Tian. All masters in Foshan vow to take Tian down no matter what...
Cast: Ziyi Zhang, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Chen Chang, Hye-kyo Song, Cung Le, Woo-ping Yuen
Directed by Kar Wai Wong
‘Blue is the Warmest Color’ centers on a 15-year-old girl named Adèle who is climbing to adulthood and dreams of experiencing her first love. A handsome male classmate falls for her hard, but an unsettling erotic reverie upsets the romance before it begins. Adèle imagines that the mysterious, blue-haired girl she encountered in the street slips into her bed and possesses her with an overwhelming pleasure. That blue-haired girl is a confident older art student named Emma, who will soon enter Adèle’s life for real, making way for an intense and complicated love story that spans a decade and is touchingly universal in its depiction.
New York, 1974, fifty-year-old Chris (Clive Owen) has just been released on good behavior after several years in prison following a gangland murder. Reluctantly waiting for him outside the gates is his younger brother, Frank (Billy Crudup), a cop with a bright future. Chris and Frank have always been different, and their father, Leon (James Caan), who raised them alone, seems to favor Chris despite all his troubles. Yet blood ties are the ones that bind, and Frank, hoping that his brother has changed, is willing to give him a chance -- he shares his home, finds him a job, and helps him reconnect with his children and his ex-wife, Monica (Marion Cotillard). But Chris' inevitable descent back into a life of crime proves to be the last in a long line of betrayals, and after his brother's latest transgressions, Frank banishes him from his life. But it's already too late, as the brothers' destiny is bound together, forever.
Hector (Simon Pegg) is a quirky psychiatrist who has become increasingly tired of his humdrum life. As he tells his girlfriend, Clara (Rosamund Pike), he feels like a fraud: he hasn't really tasted life, and yet he's offering advice to patients who are just not getting any happier. So Hector decides to break out of his deluded and routine driven life. Armed with buckets of courage and child-like curiosity, he embarks on a global quest in hopes of uncovering the elusive secret formula for true happiness. And so begins a larger than life adventure with riotously funny results.
Based on the world-wide best-selling novel of the same name, Hector and the Search for Happiness is a rich, exhilarating, and hilarious tale from director Peter Chelsom, starring Simon Pegg, Toni Collette, Rosamund Pike, Stellan Skarsgard, Jean Reno and Christopher Plummer.
Although it opens with the caveat that the story was "inspired by a court case" yet is "entirely fictional" we all know by now that Abel Ferrara is referring to the former head of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and his wife at the time, Anne Sinclair, and the scandal and ramifications of an alleged assault on a New York hotel maid.
Mr. Devero is a toxic mix of desire, power and arrogance. High powered person who controls global finances and shapes people's future, is not capable to deal with his own instincts. He is guided by an unrestrained sexual hunger and he is unable to resist. He, who cares to save the world, is unable to save himself...
Set in the insular world of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, TWO LOVERS is a classic romantic drama, with Joaquin Phoenix giving a raw and vulnerable performance as Leonard, a charismatic but troubled young man who moves back into his childhood home following a recent heartbreak. While recovering under the watchful eye of his parents (Isabella Rossellini and Moni Monoshov), Leonard meets two women in quick succession: Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow), a mysterious and beautiful neighbor who is exotic and out-of-place in Leonard’s staid world, and Sandra, the lovely and caring daughter of a businessman who is buying out his family’s dry-cleaning business.
Leonard becomes deeply infatuated by Michelle, who seems poised to fall for him, but is having a self-destructive affair with a married man. At the same time, mounting pressure from his family pushes him towards committing to Sandra.
Leonard is forced to make an impossible decision - between the impetuousness of desire and the comfort of love - or risk falling back into the darkness that nearly killed him.
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Gwyneth Paltrow, Vinessa Shaw, Moni Moshonov, Isabella Rossellini
Directed by James Gray
Script: James Gray, Ric Menello
Producer: Donna Gigliotti, James Gray, Anthony Katagas
Billionaire Nerio Winch is found dead, drowned. An obviously suspicious death as Nerio is the founder and majority shareholder of the powerful and sprawling W Group. Who will inherit this financial empire? Officially, Nerio had no family. But he had a secret he kept well-hidden: a son, Largo, adopted nearly thirty years before from a Bosnian orphanage. The only problem is this young heir has just been thrown in prison deep in the Amazon. Accused of drug trafficking, he claims he's innocent. Nerio murdered. Largo in prison. What if these two events were part of a plot to take control of the Winch empire?
Cast: Tomer Sisley, Kristin Scott Thomas, Karel Roden
Directed by Jérôme Salle
Script: Philippe Francq, Julien Rappeneau
POTICHE is a free adaptation of the 1970s eponymous hit comic play. Catherine Deneuve is Suzanne Pujol, a submissive, housebound 'trophy housewife' (or "potiche,") who steps in to manage her wealthy and tyrannical husband (Fabrice Lucchini)'s umbrella factory after the workers go on strike and take him hostage. To everyone's surprise, Suzanne proves herself a competent and assertive woman of action. But when her husband returns from a restful cruise in top form, things get complicated. Gérard Depardieu plays a former union leader and Suzanne's ex-beau who still holds a flame for her. Acclaimed writer-director Francois Ozon who had previously directed Ms. Deneuve in "8 Women," twists the original play on its head to create his own satirical and hilarious take on the war between the sexes and classes.
Casting: Catherine Deneuve, Gérard Depardieu, Fabrice Luchini, Karin Viard
Directed by: François Ozon