On his way to dusk prayers at a Parisian mosque, Monsieur Slimani, a devout Muslim, is witness to a brutal murder. Barely escaping with his life, he is chased into the prayer room, where he hides…
1999
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On his way to dusk prayers at a Parisian mosque, Monsieur Slimani, a devout Muslim, is witness to a brutal murder. Barely escaping with his life, he is chased into the prayer room, where he hides among worshippers clad in the same traditional robes. When another witness is murdered, Slimani must decide whether to come forward and risk death or remain silent and live with his conscience. Soon Slimani's son, Alilou, an aspiring journalist, begins to suspect his father's role in the case and takes a dangerous step.
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Next Time has all the ingredients of a quirky love story. Matt is a naive 19-year-old, fresh off the bus from a small town in Ohio. Evelyn, 38, is a street-wise, big city gal. They meet in a downtown laundromat, where Matt pumps Evelyn for advice on detergent and women. With nothing better to do on Saturday nights than fold clothes and engage in soul-searching conversation, they look forward to the next time they meet. As director/writer L. Alan Fraser makes clear, that's all that should matter between these two lonely people. But Evelyn is black; Matt is white.
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Unique among this year's films is Allan Holzman and Cynthia Gates Fujikawa's Old Man River, a remarkable look at a familiar face from TV and film: character actor Jerry Fujikawa (M*A*S*H's Whiplash Wang and the gardener in Chinatown). What makes this film so intriguing is its presentation - a one-woman performance where Ms. Fujikawa learns how much of a stranger her father really was to her. This is a story of her uncovering and discovering a father very different from the one she thought she knew; a man whose life was destroyed and re-made.
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Set during the Christmas season in 1999, Palmer's Pick-Up introduces us to Bruce (Robert Carradine) and Pearl (Richard Hillman), two down and outers in LA trying to make a go of their package delivery business. On Christmas Eve, they get a deal too good to be true: $12k to deliver a crate to Florida. The only stipulations are that they NOT open the crate, and it must be delivered before midnight on New Year's Eve.
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In 1994, a quiet movie about two inner-city basketball players searching for the American dream stole the hearts of audiences around the world. That movie was Hoop Dreams, and it was named to more than 100 "10 Best Movies of the Year" lists, received the Sundance Film Festival Audience Award and garnered director Steve James a Directors Guild Award for Best New Filmmaker. Steve James' newest feature gives us courtside seats again, this time as an idealistic, young black priest uses a basketball game to challenge the social conventions of a segregationist city.
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What do you get when you cross Apartment Zero with Blue Velvet? Answer: a very strange, claustrophobic - in fact just generally phobic - chilling debut feature from Kevin DiNovis. Trevor, a busboy, is insecure in the outer world. He desperately wants, and yet is at the same time totally terrified of, women. Lanh, a young street junkie in trouble, needs a place to stay and to hide. Trevor allows him to stay in his apartment.
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Some men live their lives regretting that they never pursued their dreams. Louis and Frank is a charming and funny film in which the title characters take a shot at realizing their childhood fantasy of becoming singing sensations. Louis (Steven Randazzo) runs a small, inept New York moving company by day. But he spends all his spare time in the basement of his house, microphone in hand, weaving song stylings to an imaginary audience in his fully equipped karaoke studio.
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The Quebec winters can be harsh, but even harsher is the torment 12-year-old Sam has to endure from his schoolmates. Years earlier, Sam's father, a famous Arctic explorer, was lost during an expedition. Only he remains hopeful that his father will return. His mother, however, has long since lost hope and has started a new life with a new husband, country doctor, Asa (acclaimed actor Henry Czerny). Asa is more than willing to be the father that Sam needs, but Sam refuses to let the newcomer get close and is angry at his mother for losing faith.
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Fade in: A rundown New York apartment. We find Adolpho Rollo (Steve Buscemi) and his five hundred-page script. It's obvious to us that Adolpho and the script both need something. Adolpho needs a dose of self confidence, and the script...well, it needs a producer. Tortured by self-doubt, financial ruin, and unrequited passion for his next door neighbor (Jennifer Beals), Adolpho places an ad offering his mammoth screenplay to the highest bidder. In steps Adolpho's "guardian angel," a fast-talking, "shyster" who promises to produce the film but complicates things with his own designs.
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Without dreams, human existence is meaningless. Pepito's dreams, however, are perhaps outside of his means. He yearns for life in the big city, but his mother, Rosa, is determined that Pepito, her only child, will carry on her legacy. Rosa is the only midwife in the whole district, and for years, the skills needed to deliver babies have been handed down from generation to generation. Pepito does not mind learning this talent, but as he grows older, he discovers that midwifery is traditionally reserved for women and begins to feel uncomfortable.