Baraka

Directors: Ron Fricke
Year: 1992

BARAKA is a non-verbal cinematic meditation on the earth, an exploration of the natural beauty of places, of human spirituality, of birth, life and death, and man’s own capacity for destruction. Director Ron Fricke states, “BARAKA is a journey of rediscovery that plunges into nature, into history, into the human spirit, and finally into the realm of the infinite.”

Three years in the making, including a 14-month period of intensive location shooting, BARAKA takes the viewer on an unforgettable journey to 24 countries. The imagery is as varied as life itself. From the unspeakable horror of raging oil fires in Kuwait during the final days of the Gulf War to the contemplative beauty of a lone Tibetan Monk deep in meditative prayer. We see the inquisitive gaze of a Kayapo boy peering out of the Amazon jungle and the cold stares of armed Cambodian soldiers guarding a munitions storage area.

Comments: Simply amazing.

Highly Recommended.

51 Birch Street

Directors: Doug Block
Year: 2006

Documentary filmmaker Doug Block had every reason to believe his parents' 54-year marriage was a good one. But when his mother dies unexpectedly and his father swiftly marries his former secretary, he discovers two parents who are far more complex and troubled than he ever imagined. 51 Birch Street is a riveting personal documentary that explores a universal human question: how much about your parents do you really want to know?

Comments: Explores a number of universal human themes with sensitivity and without judgment.

Highly Recommended.

Autumn Moon ("Qiu Yue")

Directors: Clara Law
Starring: Matatoshi Nagase
Year: 1992

Twenty-something Japanese tourist (Tokio) vacations to Hong Kong looking for good restaurants. He meets 15-year-old Chinese girl (Li Pui Wai). Wai, whose family has gone ahead of her to move to Canada, invites Tokio for a meal prepared by her 80-year-old grandmother. Through the platonic relationship that develops, both Tokio and Wai find support and companionship to fill their respective voids. As Tokio regains his taste for life and food and Wai emerges from childhood into womanhood, both confront the sources of their respective alienation.

Comments: Exquisitely shot, the film poses a wonderful contrast between modern vs. old cultures, and Japanese and Hong Kong Chinese cultures. Good performances by Nagase and Wai (her first and only film?) who execute very effectively most of the dialogue in broken, halting English.

Recommended.

The Secret of the Grain (La Graine et le Mulet)

Directors: Abdel Kechiche
Starring: Habib Boufares, Hafsia Herzi
Year: 2007

At the port of Sète, Mr. Slimani, an Algerian immigrant, is forced to retire from a job in a shipyard after 30 years. A divorced father who forces himself to stay close to his family despite tensions and financial difficulties, he seeks to redeem himself by opening a restaurant. However it appears to be an unreachable dream. A family which gradually recompacts around this project which comes to symbolize the means to a better life.

Comments: You'll never look at couscous the same again. Stirring performance by Boufares, a relatively unknown actor.

Recommended.

Dersu

Directors: Akira Kurosawa
Starring: Yuri Solomin, Maxim Munzik
Year: 1975

A Russian army explorer who is rescued in Siberia by a rugged Asiatic hunter renews his friendship with the woodsman years later when he returns at the head of a larger expedition. The hunter finds that all his nature lore is of no help when he accompanies the explorer back to civilization.

Comments: beautifully shot. Poetic, nostalgic view of nature and human nature. Very contemplative set in the circle of seasons in a remote place. Based on a memoir by eminent Russian explorer Vladimir Klavdievich Arseniev.

Recommended.

The Great Match

Directors: Gerardo Olivares
Starring: Atibou Aboubacar
Year: 2006

Three interspersed stories of people in remote parts of Mongolia, Niger and Brazil struggling to get TV reception of the 2002 World Cup final between Germany and Brazil

Comments: Very amusing

Recommended.

Jellyfish (Meduzot)

Directors: Shira Geffen and Etgar Keret
Starring: Sara Adler, Gera Sandler, Noa Knoller, Asi Dayan
Year: 2007

Meduzot (the Hebrew word for Jellyfish) tells the story of three very different Israeli women living in Tel Aviv whose intersecting stories weave an unlikely portrait of modern Israeli life. Batya, a catering waitress, takes in a young child apparently abandoned at a local beach. Batya is one of the servers at the wedding reception of Keren, a young bride who breaks her leg at her own wedding, which ruins her chance at a romantic honeymoon in the Caribbean. One of the guests is Joy, a Philippine woman who works as a private caretaker for the elderly, and who is guilt-ridden after having left her young son behind in the Philippines.

Comments: Skillfully and sensitively weaves through the complexity modern Tel Aviv life

Recommended.

Nanook of the North

Director: Robert Flaherty
Starring: Allakariallak (as Nanook)
Year: 1922

Documents one year in the life of Nanook, an Eskimo (Inuit) and his family. Describes the trading, hunting, fishing and migrations of a group barely touched by industrial technology. Nanook of the North was widely shown and praised as the first full-length, anthropological documentary in cinematographic history.

Comments: Conveys as sense of wonder with the Arctic north. After 87 years, this holds up surprisingly well from a cinematography and story-telling standpoint

Recommended.

La Commare secca ("Grim Reaper")

Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Starring: Carlotta Barrili, Allen Midgette
Year: 1962

Bertolucci's directorial debut at age 21 based on a story by Pasolini. The story follows the investigation of a brutal murder of a prostitute. We then see a series of interrogations of suspects by the police, all of whom are known to have been in a nearby park at the time of the murder. Each suspect recounts his activities during the day and evening, and each narrative serves as a slice of life story. A young man tells the police that he was meeting with priests in order to get a job recommendation, though we see that he and his friends spent the time trying to rob lovers in the park. A gigolo treats both his girlfriends badly. A soldier fails in his attempts at picking up a number of women and falls asleep on a park bench. Two teenage boys share a pleasant afternoon in the company of two teenage girls but end up stealing from a homosexual man in the park. The final flashback depicts the prostitute's murder by a man in clogs who had been interrogated previously and who is finally apprehended at a dance. Each narrative is interrupted by a sudden thunderstorm, which in each case leads to an interlude at the prostitute's apartment as she prepares for her evening.

Comments: The movie grabs you and the time sequences and flashbacks are effective.

Recommended.

Zurek ("White Borsht")

Director: Ryszard Brylski
Starring: Katarzyna Figura, Natalia Ribyka
Year: 2003

Summary: A Christmas story. Shame, promises, and secrets in a border town in Poland. Iwonka, who's 15 and blood simple, has a baby, and her mother Halina has promised her recently-dead husband that she'll learn who the child's father is and have a christening by Christmas. Halina badgers Iwonka who identifies various putative fathers, each of whom proves not to be the one. As we come closer to Iwonka's secret, two men who liked Halina when she was young come to her aid: Wladek, who is her husband's brother, and Matuszek, a somewhat comic former cyclist whose career ended when he ran into a bus. Soldiers are everywhere, as is the cold.

Comments: The film is well done. Zhanna liked it and thought it depicted in a realistic way life in a small Polish town.



Recommendation: Recommended

The Savages

Director: Tamara Jenkins
Starring: Laura Linney, Philip Seymour Hoffman
Year: 2007

Summary: A sister and brother face the realities of familial responsibility as they begin to care for their ailing father.

Comments: The film deals with a difficult subject without being over the top. The emotions seem real, and the humor unforced, to the credit of excellent acting and chemistry of Linney and Hoffman.

Recommendation: Highly Recommended

A Simple Curve

Director: Aubrey Nealon
Starring:
Year: 2005

Summary: Caleb is 27, and was raised in the majestic Kootenays by his bush hippie parents. He loves his father Jim and understands his reverence for wood working, coriander and Soya products, but he just doesn't get Jim's determined effort to achieve economic disaster at every turn. His father is a relentlessly unsuccessful business man, and as the junior partner in their carpentry shop, Caleb is powerless to stop the fiscal self sabotage. When Matthew, an old friend of Jim's, arrives in the valley to develop a high-end fishing lodge, Caleb sees fortune looming, provided he can keep his father distracted long enough. But a small deception leads to colossal betrayal, and soon Caleb must face the fact that he's reached that treasured day when a boy becomes man enough to tell his father get lost.

Comments: Canadian film set in the Canadian Rockies. The theme is reminicent of Turgenev's Father and Sons. Beautiful setting, well shot. A bit naive, though.

Recommendation: Recommended

L'intouchable (The Untouchable)

Director: Benoît Jacquot

Starring: Isild Le Besco

Year: 2006

Summary: On the day she celebrates her birthday, Jeanne, a young actress, is told by her mother her father is an Indian she once met on the banks on the river Ganges. From then on, Jeanne acts with singleness of purpose: she leaves the rehearsal of the the play "Sainte Jeanne des Abattoirs" she had wanted so much to be in, accepts a shameful role in a poor movie just for the money, buys an air ticket and flies to India, where she both hopes and fears to meet her biological father...

Comments: Le Besco is very expressive in a quiet way. The film's street scenes in India are very compelling and draw you in and show a slice of India without making any heavy judgements. The film does end abruptly, and in typical French film style, without many conclusions.

Recommendation: Highly recommend

Fires on the Plains "Nobi"

Director: Kon Ichikawa
Starring: Eiji Funikoshi
Year: 1959

Summary: In February, 1945, during last days of the Battle of Leyte, elements of the Imperial Japanese army have been abandoned by their leaders and deprived of food and supplies. Command and control has disintegrated, leaving individuals and small groups to their own devices in order to survive the rapidly deteriorating situation. Shuttled between his unit and a field hospital, a tubercular Private Tamura is forced to strike out on his own, hoping to avoid starvation and the tightening siege by American forces. Seeing his fellow soldiers slaughtered while trying to escape or surrender, the increasingly desperate Tamura bonds with Yasuda and Nagamatsu, two opportunists who barter tobacco for food and other provisions. While they live on "monkey meat," Tamura is confronted with the price he must pay in order to survive.

Comments: This film is the consummate anti-war movie. What is remarkable is that this film was even allowed to made in post-war Japan. There are no heroes, no patriotic causes, no moralistic overhang - just the reality of what men do to survive in extreme circumstances. Excellent movie that haunts you for a long time.

Recommendation: Highly Recommended

Strangers ("Zarim")

Directors: Guy Nattiv and Erez Tadmor
Starring: Leron Levo, Lubna Azabal
Year: 2007

6 days in the lives of Eyal , an Israeli living in a kibbutz, and Rana, a Palestinian living in Paris, which starts with an accidental meeting in the Berlin Subway during the World cup finals, will change them completely. Eyal, who came to meet his accidental girlfriend, and Rana who came to cheer the French team, are forced to share as apartment and spend three intensive days together. As the final match approaches, their relationship tightens and they fall in love. Towards the final game, Rana is forced to leave Eyal who remains in Berlin on his own. Things get complicated as the Israel-Lebanon war breaks, and Eyal full of hope, decides to search for Rana, in spite of it all. An intimate encounter of two strangers in a strange city during World Cup and the second Israel-Lebanon war. A Story that touch's the profound wounds, created by years of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, of a young generation asking to reconnect and even reconcile.

Comments: The most interesting part of the movie is how it was made. The directors had no script, only a general outline of a plot. The actors first actual meeting was during the first take on the first day of shooting. At the start of each day of shooting, the actors were separately given bits of background on the characters, which they worked into the dialogue for that day's shooting. The two lead actors actually had a relationship offscreen -- which was evident from their obvious chemistry on screen. Shown at the 2008 Boston Jewish Film Festival.

Recommended.

Surfwise

Director: Doug Pray
Starring: Dorian Paskowitz
Year: 2007

Summary: The inspiring and tumultuous story of 85-year old surfer, health advocate and sex guru, Dr. Dorian "Doc" Paskowitz, his wife Juliette, and their nine children who were all home-schooled and raised in a small camper on the beach, where they surfed and had to adhere to the strict diet and lifestyle of animals in the wild.

Comments: The story is extraordinary on its own -- an 11-member family living in camper on the beach in the 1960s and 1970s. But is more than that. The film is very revealing about the relationships between a father and his children, and raises some interesting and fundamental questions about child rearing. At the end of the film, whether you think Doc is a hero or a tyrant, you have to respect him for following his own path. The film does have a Jewish angle. Doc Paskowitz, who was raised in a religious Jewish home, insisted that his children share his own brand of jewish identity. Interesting fact: Doc Paskowitz is considered to the father of surfing in Israel, after introducing the sport there in the early 1960s.




Recommendation: Highly Recommended

Mon Uncle Antoine

Director: Claude Jutra
Starring: Jacques Gagnon
Year: 1971

Summary: Young Benoit learns about life very quickly from his uncle Antoine who serves as everything from notary and shopkeeper to undertaker in a depressed region of Canada's backwoods. Set in 1940s in cold rural Quebec at Christmas time, MON ONCLE ANTOINE is an alternately tender and haunting coming-of-age film that came to be recognized as one of Canadian cinema's greatest works.

Comments: On its own, this is a powerful film and well worth watching. For us, it had held some additional interest. The film was shot in a small mining town called Thetford Mines, about an hour and a half from Quebec City. Thetford Mines is known as the asbestos capital of Canada, since its primary mining product is asbestos. Zhanna and I stumbled upon this town by accident on a recent trip to Canada.

Recommendation: Highly Recommended

The Bad Sleep Well ("Warui yatsu hodo yoku nemuru")

Directors: Akira Kurosawa
Starring: Toshiru Mifune, Keiko Nishi
Year: 1963

In Kurosawa's HAMLET-like story of corporate scandal in post-war Japan, a young man attempts to use his position at the heart of a corrupt company to expose the men responsible for his father's death, who was was driven to suicide by jumping out of the seventh floor of corporate headquarters. His illegitimate son exchanges identity with an old friend in order to marry the handicapped daughter of the corrupt industrialist he holds responsible.

Comments: The moral clarity of Kurosawa's other films is much more subtle in this film. Very good performance by Mifune.

Recommended.

Fear and Trembling ("Stupeur et tremblements")

Directors: Alain Courneau
Starring: Sylvie Testud, Kaori Tsuji
Year: 2003

Based on a novel by Amelie Nothomb, the movie shows the trials and tribulations of a Belgium-born woman (Testud) raised in Japan as she attempts to enter the Japanese working world.

Comments: Testud plays the role with sublime reserve and bewilderment, as she navigates through the clash between modern-day Japanese and western work place cultures. Note that office scene which depicts the boss's desk positioned facing all the desks of the subordinates in an open floor is shockingly similar to the Tokyo office of Steve's company.

Recommended.

Woman in the Dunes ("砂の女 ,Suna no onna")

Directors: Hiroshi Teshigahara
Starring: Eiji Okada, Kyoko Kishida
Year: 1964

One of the sixties’ great international art-house sensations, Woman in the Dunes was for many the grand unveiling of the surreal, idiosyncratic worldview of Hiroshi Teshigahara. Eija Okada plays an amateur entomologist who has left Tokyo to study an unclassified species of beetle that resides in a remote, vast desert; when he misses his bus back to civilization, he is persuaded to spend the night in the home of a young widow (Kiyoko Kishida) who lives in a hut at the bottom of a sand dune. What results is one of cinema’s most bristling, unnerving, and palpably erotic battles of the sexes, as well as a nightmarish depiction of everyday Sisyphean struggle, for which Teshigahara received an Academy Award nomination for best director.

Comments: One of Steve's all-time favorite films.

Highly Recommended.

Down By Law

Directors: Jim Jarmusch
Starring: Tom Waits, John Lurie, Roberto Benigni,
Year: 1986

Three men, previously unknown to each other, are arrested in New Orleans and placed in the same cell. Both Zack (Waits), a DJ, and Jack (Lurie), a pimp, have been set up, neither having committed the crime for which they have been arrested. Their cellmate Bob (Benigni), an Italian tourist who understands minimal English, was arrested for manslaughter. Zack and Jack soon come to blows and thereafter avoid speaking to each other. Bob has an irrepressible need for conversation. He hatches a plan to escape, and before long the three are on the run through the swamp surrounding the prison. The film discards jailbreak film conventions by focusing on the interaction between the three men rather than on the mechanics of the escape. A key element in the film is Robby Müller's slow-moving camerawork, which captures the architecture of New Orleans and the Louisiana bayou to which the cellmates escape.

Comments: Zhanna and Steve saw this movie on their first date.

Highly Recommended.

Other Films Viewed

Solaris -- Tarkovsky (1972)
Russian Ark -- Alexandr Sokurov (2002
The Passenger ("Professione") - Michaelangelo Antonini (1975)

The Ballad of Narayama -- Shohei Imamura (old people banished to die on top of mountain)

Black Rain -- Shohei Imamura (family's travails in the aftermath of hiroshima bombing)

Before Sunset -- Richard Linklater (couple meets in Vienna)

Diary of a Country Priest -- Robert Bresson (an idealistic priest arrives at his first parish only to face apathetic congregation)

The Hidden Fortress -- Kurusawa

High and Low -- Kurusawa (industrialist family becomes target of kidnapper)

Hiroshima Mon Amour -- Alain Resnais (Japanese Man and french woman meet in Hiroshima after the war)

In the Mood for Love -- Wong Kar-Wai (a man and woman move into neighboring apartments on the same day)

Osaka Elegy -- Kenji Mizoguchi (switchboard operator is entrapped in a ruinous affair with her boss)

Ornamental Hairpin -- Hiroshi Shimuzi (after forced to prolong his stay at a rural spa after accidentally cutting his foot on a hairpin, a soldier tracks down the pin's owner. Features actor Chishu Ryu as a young actor)

Twenty Four -- Keisuke Kinoshita (a chronicle of a young teacher and her unwavering commitment to her students in a rural island community in Japan)

Sword of the Beast -- Hideo Gosha (low-level swordsman betrayed by comrades goes into isolation, but finds motley group illegally mining shogun's gold)