Spring 2008
February
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February 29
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The
Rain People - Special 600th BFC Show! See Events.
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"'You look like a total girl,' says one sports fan to his busmate. That’s not so out of the ordinary in this testosterone-laden world—especially on a rowdy bus like this one, headed to a soccer arena with team chants and air horns blaring. But the thing is, she actually is a girl; and while many of the men are also wearing face paint, this is modern Iran, where women are forbidden from attending games. She rides in secret, hoping to sneak in. . .
Offside may be the ultimate Iranian film: It’s both an advance for its director, moving away from his slight political didacticism, and a perfect metaphor for a population that’s more liberated than its stone-age sexism would imply.
Our feisty heroine quickly finds herself apprehended and taken to a holding
tank, where other women (yes, there are other gate-crashers) root and
swear with as much gusto as the men. Police guards hardly function as
figures of evil so much as rubes strapped to work details that even they
find a little silly. Panahi knows where Western sensibilities lie; the
beauty of his film is that it makes you want to see the rest of his country
wise up."
--Joshua Rothkopf (Time
Out New York)
Internet Movie Database
Reviews
The Rain People
Francis Ford Coppola's fourth feature, The Rain People is a fascinating road movie made entirely on location with a minimal crew and a constantly evolving script. Never very popular by comparison with Easy Rider probably because it suggested that dropping out was mere escapism, it has far greater depth and complexity to its curious admixture of feminist tract and pure thriller. Shirley Knight is outstanding (in a superb cast) as the pregnant woman who runs away in quest of the identity she feels she has lost as a Long Island housewife, and finds herself increasingly tangled in the snares of responsibility through her encounters with a football player left mindless by an accident (James Caan) and a darkly amorous traffic cop (Robert Duvall).... --TM (timeout.com)
Internet Movie Database
Reviews
Set against the backdrop of the ongoing war in Afghanistan, Susanne Bier's Brothers examines the relationship between Jannick (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), an alcoholic ne'er-do-well just released from prison, and his brother Michael (Ulrich Thomsen), a career soldier who is as solid a family man as they come. Michael lives a virtually idyllic life with his wife Sarah (Connie Nielsen) and their two daughters, but everything changes when he is deployed to Afghanistan as part of a United Nations peacekeeping mission. His helicopter is shot down, and Michael is presumed dead. At home, Jannick is forced to grow up and help his sister-in-law; a difficult task given Sarah's suspicion of him and his father's withering contempt. Gradually, Jannick and Sarah grow closer, but their connection is complicated by their loyalties to Michael. When Michael returns from the war after several months of hellish imprisonment, he's a broken and embittered man.
Internet Movie Database
Reviews
Official Site
Biography / Drama / Music, France / UK / Czech Republic (2007). 140 min. Rated PG-13. English and French (subtitled).
"Marion Cotillard’s feral portrait of the French singer Édith Piaf as a captive wild animal hurling herself at the bars of her cage is the most astonishing immersion of one performer into the body and soul of another I’ve ever encountered in a film. Her portrayal of Piaf, plucked from the streets of Paris and molded into a music hall legend, ignites Olivier Dahan’s screen biography La Vie en Rose... Piaf, who died in 1963 at 47, a casualty of morphine and alcohol addiction, was a ragamuffin Gallic fusion of Billie Holiday and Judy Garland, but fiercer than either. Ms. Cotillard’s Piaf ages shockingly, from a famished alley cat ravenously slurping up life to a stooped, feeble wreck whose dyed red hair is falling out. It is an entirely convincing portrait of instinctive genius and raw life force wedded to self-destruction."
--Stephen Holden (NY Times)
Internet Movie Database
Reviews
Official Site
("Bom yeoreum gaeul gyeoul geurigo bom")
The exquisitely beautiful and very human drama Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring. . .is entirely set on an around a tree-lined lake where a tiny Buddhist monaastery floats on a raft amidst a breathtaking landscape. The film is divided into five segments with each season representing a stage in a man's life. Under the vigilant eyes of Old Monk, Child Monk learns a hard lesson about the nature of sorrow when some of his childish games turn cruel.
In the intensity and lushness of summer, the monk, now a young man, experiences the power of lust, a desire that will ultimately lead him as an adult to dark deeds. With winter, strikingly set on the ice and snow-covered lake, the man atones for his past actions, and spring starts the cycle anew... Writer/director/editor Kim Ki-duk has crafted a totally original yet universal story about the human spirit, moving from Innocence through Love and Evil to Enlightenment and finally Rebirth.
--Synopsis excerpted from Official Site
Internet Movie Database
Reviews
Official Site
[The film ] this week is a quiet gem, suitable for all ages. "The Cave of the Yellow Dog," from Mongolian filmmaker Byambasuren Davaa (who co-directed the lovely documentary "The Story of the Weeping Camel"), is a simple girl-and-dog story, set in remote Northwest Mongolia. Young Nansaa (the perpetually smiling Nansal Batchuluun), out collecting dung for firewood, finds a small, friendly dog in a cave. She brings it home, but her father (Urjindorj Batchuluun) thinks the dog will attack his sheep and doesn't want her to keep it.
Anyone who's seen a Hollywood dog story knows where this will go: The dog will prove its worth, and Nansaa will have found a true friend. And that, indeed, is where this film goes, but in a manner so gentle and charming, it's irresistible.
--Moira Macdonald (The Seattle Times)
Internet Movie Database
Reviews
Official Site (PCs only!)
In The Secret of Roan Inish, the director John Sayles, who has shown such skill at portraying the interplay of individuals and social structures, makes a rare leap into the realm of fantasy. Examining the obscure Celtic legend of the Selkie, a creature who is half human and half seal, he has created a touching cinematic meditation on people, familial roots and the myths that sustain them. . . "Visually rhapsodic." "A cinematic tone poem in which man and nature, myth and reality flow together in a way that makes them ultimately indivisible." As told through the eyes of an innocent young girl, the legend of the Selkie comes to life in a way that seems at once wondrous and everyday.
--
NY Times
Internet Movie Database
Reviews
"Few documentaries could be as different as 'March of the Penguins' and 'Ghosts of Cite Soleil,' a scary, fascinating documentary about gang life in Haiti's worst slum. The comparison comes to mind because it is difficult to decide which film would have been the more challenging and profoundly discomforting to make. If only due to the access achieved, there has never been anything quite like Asger Leth's film; it's amazing it even exists and that the director is still alive. . .
The United Nations has declared Cite Soleil 'the most dangerous place on Earth;' this slum of Port au Prince, populated by up to 500,000 people, makes the townships of South Africa look like Beverly Hills. As shown in the film, which was lensed in 2004, it's an entirely lawless place presided over by sinister chimeres, or ghosts, violent young men allegedly employed and armed by then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and so named because, in a sense, they're already dead, given their typically brief lifespans."
–-Todd McCarthy, Variety (quoted on Official Site)
Follow the filmmakers down forbidding streets where one would never dare go in real life; even local taxi drivers refuse to venture into Cité Soleil.
Internet Movie Database
Reviews
Official Site