Love can be a terrible thing. Sharing a life with someone, building a home together, getting married, having children and merging identities to near incongruous levels are all part of the sacrificing and lifetime decision-making one does when finding "the one." Imagine being so entwined with your better half for years, only to suddenly lose them forever. The waves of shock and horror must be overwhelming because you didn't just lose the love of your life, your partner and your lover. You've also lost a big part of yourself and you somehow have to find the courage to pick up the pieces, move on and decide how to lock up your memories in the dusty drawers of your mind without throwing away the key. Arie Posin's "The Face Of Love" starring Annette Bening, Ed Harris and Robin Williams dives into the psychological consequences of this harsh side of love, and while the concept is full of deep potential, more often than not, this attempt fails torise to the occasion.
In the first few minutes of THE FACE OF LOVE you are given the background to Nikki and Garrett. They are a middle aged married couple who are still in love with one another. On a holiday in Mexico Garrett accidentally drowns and Niiki is inconsolable. Five years later on a visit to a Los Angeles art gallery she spies a man who bears a remarkable resemblance to her dead husband. He's Tom, an artist and art teacher. She virtually stalks him and sets up a meeting.
Although it's full of stylistic hallmarks we've come to expect from Gilliam — layered realities, overbearing technology, institutional paranoia and of course, quirky romance – it feels like a personal journey into his beliefs, as it stares into the divide between reason and faith.
Living in an Orwellian corporate world where "mancams" serve as the eyes of a shadowy figure known only as Management, Leth works on a solution to the strange theorem while living as a virtual cloistered monk in his home—the shattered interior of a fire-damaged chapel. His isolation and work are interrupted now and then by surprise visits from Bainsley, a flamboyantly lusty love interest who tempts him with "tantric biotelemetric interfacing" (virtual sex) and Bob. Latter is the rebellious whiz-kid teenage son of Management who, with a combination of insult-comedy and an evolving true friendship, spurs on Qohen’s efforts at solving the theorem. … Bob creates a virtual reality "inner-space" suit that will carry Qohen on an inward voyage, a close encounter with the hidden dimensions and truth of his own soul, wherein lie the answers both he and Management are seeking. The suit and supporting computer technology will perform an inventory of Qohen’s soul, either proving or disproving the Zero Theorem.
Like most life lessons, the answers to Qohen's problems are hidden in plain sight. But the fact that they're there at all marks the difference between a film with a nihilistic attitude about human existence, and one that believes in the idea that there are many reasons to live, both great and small. Like a great professor who makes complicated ideas easy to understand, and more importantly, fun to think about, Gilliam boils down basic questions about human existence to a series of weirdly relatable physical conflicts, which is why "The Zero Theorem" dances on the edge of nothingness, and manages to find something incredibly powerful to say.
1970s in French Riviera. Leaving behind her unsuccessful marriage, Agnes Le Roux comes back to her mother, the host of the Palais de la Mediterranee casino in Nice. Meanwhile, Cote d'-Azur goes through tough time because of back-room "casino war", property redistribution among criminal groupings, which escalates as it was tensions in family. With the casino losing money and mob rivals closing in, Agnes' mother Renee doesn't want Agnes' stake to go outside the family. But nor does she have the liquid cash to buy her daughter out. Next, Renee increasingly turns for advice to ambitious lawyer Maurice Agnelet, who helps maneuver the old-guard administration out and install Renee as board president. Unexpectedly, Agnes falls in love that carries into smithereens her fragile world by powerful explosion of outstanding passion. The man she fell in love with is not free in his own desires. Suddenly, her mysterious disappearance in the heat of these events rises a lot of questions, but does not provide any answers...
"Palm d’Or" award nomination at Cannes Film Festival.
In the opening scenes, Maria is en route to collect an award on behalf of a good friend, Wilhelm Melchior. Melchior is the writer of a play named Maloja Snake, which was then made into a film starring Maria.
Maria is joined on this journey by her personal assistant and confident Val. The relationship between these two women is the focus throughout, and it’s expertly established for us in these opening sequences.
Dialogue between the pair overlaps, is interrupted by calls and sometime even hangs in the air as the topics up for discussion change and segue. There is an incredibly natural feel to their interchanges that comes from a great script performed by two fine actresses.
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...
Who is he – Borgman, the iconoclast? Is he a real human being, or a fusion of fears and anger, hiding behind layers of respectability, prosperity and carelessness? Is he a demon from nightmares, or an allegory, or an embodiment of all human fears come alive—like an evil spirit on the loose.
Disturbed and exiled from his shelter, he arises from nowhere, and a steady life of an ordinary family will never be the same...Apocalypses is a recurrent dream, that one can forget about, but cannot get recovered from.
"Borgman" is like a complex puzzle, a maze constructed from passion, nightmares and exposed horrors, put in a frame of a surreal thriller.
Shot in unique style of the ideologist of the European absurd, this magnetic puzzle became the most obscure, harsh and sophisticated creation of the director, who possesses devilish fantasy and precise, abrupt impulse. He wildly plays with mythology, as well as with pictorial, literary and biblical motives.
Cast: Jan Bijvoet, Hadewych Minis, Jeroen Perceval, Alex van Warmerdam, Tom Dewispelaere, Elve Lijbaart
Directed by Alex van Warmerdam
The film follows a physician who accidentally tells her obnoxious patient that he has a brain aneurysm and has only 90 minutes to live. As the patient races around the city, trying to right his wrongs, the doctor attempts to find him as he tries to find what he must do in the final moments of his life.
With his wife's disappearance having become the focus of an intense media circus, a man sees the spotlight turned on him when it's suspected that he may not be innocent.
Based on the internationally best-selling novel by Jonas Jonasson, the unlikely story of a 100-year-old man who decides it's not too late to start over. For most people it would be the adventure of a lifetime, but Allan Karlsson's unexpected journey is not his first. For a century he's made the world uncertain, and now he is on the loose again.
Allan Karlsson is about to celebrate his hundredth birthday, and a birthday party is planned at his retirement home. Allan is alert despite his age, but not so interested in the party. Instead he steps out the window and disappears. He gets hold of a suitcase of drug money and becomes chased by both drug dealers and the police.
Filled with lots of adventures, Allan's life story is told in parallel to this. He eats dinner with the future President Harry S. Truman, hitchhikes with Winston Churchill, travels on a riverboat with the wife of Mao Zedong and walks across the Himalayas on foot.
The adventure comedy is directed and written by acclaimed Swedish director, writer, producer and actor Felix Herngren and staring acclaimed Swedish actors Robert Gustafsson, Iwar Wiklander and David Wiberg.
Cast: Robert Gustafsson, Iwar Wiklander, David Wiberg
Directed by: Felix Herngren
As a child, Ali Neuman narrowly escaped being murdered by Inkhata, a militant political party at war with Nelson Mandela's African National Congress. Only he and his mother survived the carnage of those years. But as with many survivors, the psychological scars remain. Today, Ali is chief of the homicide branch of the South African police in Cape Town. One of his staff is Brian Epkeen, a free-wheeling white officer whose family was originally involved in the establishment of apartheid but who works well with Neuman. Together they have to deal with crime that inevitably exists in sprawling areas of un -and under- employed people, crime exacerbated by gangs, both local and from other parts of Africa. Their job gets even more difficult when the corpses of two young women are found. A new evil has been introduced in the city and a new drug has been introduced to its residents, including both murder victims. At the chaotic crossroads where brutality and modernization collide, the echoes of apartheid still resound in the shadows of a society struggling toward reconciliation.
"Well, you don’t love life itself. You love places, animals, people, memories, food, literature, music. And sometimes you meet someone...who requires all the love you have to give. And if you lose that someone, you think everything else is going to stop too. But everything else just keeps on going."
Aged American philosophy professor lives a lonely and self-contained life in Paris. Immersed in a deep reverie, he lost that something that he was searching for all his life - the meaning. Surrounded by memories, menacing to turn into hallucinations, he is inevitably moving towards the chasm: struggling against the absurd is even more difficult when you are alone. It seems that everything around is nothing but the decor: that’s how uninteresting the world became to him.
It seems that all that was important stayed in the past. And so it was, until one day he met someone on the bus, and this encounter changed everything.
Magnificent Michal Caine created a little delightful masterpiece on screen that makes you want to watch it again straight after walking out of the theatre.
"Mr. Morgan’s Last Love" - is a certain answer to gloomy "Love" by Michael Haneke.
This touching, heartfelt, beautiful story, filled with light sadness in pale shades, could have been shot only by a woman. The film is not about how one needs to live a life - it’s about the need of living it. And making it bright and saturated, making sure each moment is appreciated.
Fine and elegant reflection on loneliness, forgiveness and love, that give its spectator hope.
Vincentas is the best employee at the emergency services station, whose passion is one – gambling in different games. Whenever he lands in some difficult situation, the medic is forced to grab onto something radical to return the money he is constantly losing. An idea strikes Vincentas to create an illegal game related to his profession. Initially the employees at emergency services are the only ones to be attracted to this macabre engagement. Soon enough, however, the idea kicks off and starts spreading like wildfire. The medic colleagues become betting agents, whereas Vincentas takes control of its bank. As financial matters keep on improving, a coworker Ieva starts objecting to the game. A passionate relationship has just unfolded between her and Vincentas. Soon enough he is going to face making a fateful choice – the game or love.
Cast: Vincentas - Vytautas Kaniušonis, Ieva - Oona Mekas, Bogdanas - Romuald Lavrynovic, Kaziukas - Valerijus Jevsejevas, Poviliukas - Lukas Keršys, Skirutis - Jonas Vaitkus, Antanas - Arturas Šablauska, Liubartas - Simonas Lindešis
Directed by: Ignas Jonynas