United States
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"Rock and roll is here to stay!" And stay it does in Academy Award-Winning director Murray Lerner's film Message To Love, a film about the famous Isle of Wright concert of 1970, "-- the last and largest event of its kind." Over 600,000 fans arrived on the small island, which can only be reached by boat, to witness what was going to turn out to be the last performance of Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix. The Isle of Wright event proved to also be one of the major episodes in an age of commerce versus art.
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In this stunningly inventive French film, seven vignettes tell the story of twelve minutes in the lives of residents in a Marseilles apartment house. The vignettes move sequentially, one after another, but the twelve minutes in time are the same twelve minutes in each sequence. The film, then, becomes a fascinating study in time and perspective. We are forced not to see the story told as a linear progression, but as a series of pieces that must fit together.
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Good looks and a glamorous name--James Dean Ray--aren't enough to save the tragic hero of this contemporary tale of lost youth and squandered potential. Named after his mother's favorite movie star, young Jimmy finds himself racing down the road of his own destruction, not in a shiny black Porsche, but in the frayed seat of a beat-up old junker. He fills his days as a petty, small-town drug dealer, generally hanging out and buying, selling, as well as using his illegal commodities.
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Imagine you're a police detective put in charge of protecting a prostitute who it turns out has been blackmailing respected lawyers, honorable judges, one of your country's cabinet ministers, and most importantly your superiors. What do you do? That's the rock and the hard place where Detective Gauthier finds himself in Jean-Marc Vallee's noirish powerhouse LISTE NOIRE. After a judge receives death threats, a grisly murder is committed, and the prostitute, Gabrielle, is attacked, detectives Gauthier and Laberge are hot on the case.
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Once the diploma is placed in a college graduate's hand, a new life begins; one full of fulfilled dreams and great successes. Well, actually that's the picture that has been painted for the past four years for housemates Jack, Mickey, Dennis, Rob and Josh. Reality, however, now sets in, and each must face the fact that the real world is not what it's cracked up to be. What do they do? They decide to take a break from reality for a little longer, hang out together in Santa Cruz for another year of fun and throw a final party bash at their infamous house "El Rancho Grande".
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When you tell somebody, "It's a prison movie," a certain connotation seeps into their head. Joe Brewster's feature film debut shatters the mythology of the prison genre film and takes it's audience to a new level of perception, creating not a film about prison, but taking us on an excursion into an area many people are reluctant to accept. A high percentage of the time, brutal acts of violence or abuse upon African-Americans is solely a case of black on black. That's where much of the film's underlying themes rest.
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According to biblical lore, the Hebrew prophet Jonah was cast overboard and swallowed by a big fish. Director Juan Carlos Valdivia's character Jonah, in his film JONAH AND THE PINK WHALE, finds himself in a similar predicament. Jonah's "predator," however, is not a big fish, but his wife's family and his beautiful, sensuous sister-in-law Julia, who desire him to be everything that he is not. To escape his pressures, Jonah retreats into his own world as a photographer, and builds a darkroom in the basement of his in-laws' big, rambling house.
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Takaya and Betsy moved to New York to make movies; he from Japan; she from Oklahoma. It has been three years since they met at the Department of Motor Vehicles when they decide to make a film about themselves. Ken and Meg, two actors, are hired to portray the couple and their relationship's ups and downs. All goes as relationships go until a stranger with a gun invades their house and holds them hostage. What follows is an insightful, witty and poignant drama about life, love and cultural differences.
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We've come a long way from the end of innocence, when the refrain from Bye-Bye Birdie playfully asked, "What's the matter with kids today?" Sadly, it's been a dismal descent in the wrong direction. And no film depicts that depressing state of affairs better than the confrontational Hell Bent. A trio of bored, but otherwise normal appearing fourteen-year-olds wander aimlessly around suburban Winnipeg, looking for trouble. Marty is a sweet-looking little terror with a sewer for a mouth and an insatiable appetite for senseless vandalism.
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In a world brimming with cinematic pabulum, Half Spirit: Voice of the Spider acts as a stunningly effective purgative. After seeing this film, all memories of: hackneyed stories, unnecessary sequels, film-as-marketing-tool and direct-to-video dreck will have been sandblasted away. But - be forewarned - there is a price to pay. Half Spirit is not for the faint of heart. But if you're fascinated by the blind leap into the void, then you've come to the right place. The film opens and closes with the same image: the camera gliding lovingly down the length of an examiner's table in a morgue.