Tom Noonan’s play-turned-film What Happened Was… won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for Best Dramatic Feature in 1994. 20 years later, Noonan returned to his roots with The Shape of Somethng Squashed, an independent film developed from his latest theatrical hit. It tells the story of an older ‘has been’ actor who is asked to participate in a read-through of a play at a legendary theater company. The production depends on the success of the read-through, but unbeknownst to the actor he is only standing in for a star playing hard to get.
Category: Drama
A deliciously perverse rendition of Madame Bovary, The Stationmaster’s Wife is one of Fassbinder’s most entertaining films. Set in a small Bavarian town in pre-Hitler Germany, the film features Kurt Raab as the Stationmaster Bolwieser, a man sexually enslaved by his beautiful wife Hanni, a woman of uncontrollable passion. Soon bored with both her husband and life at the train station, Hanni embarks on a series of adulterous affairs, while the deluded Bolwieser grows progressively sullen and glum. The Stationmaster’s Wife is a haunting exploration of desire and betrayal, with a radiantly lusty performance by Elisabeth Trissenaar.
A biopic based on the life of one of the pioneer argentine rock stars ‘Tanguito’. The movie tells the story of his rise and fall from grace, encompassed in violent times of a military regime.
A road movie that begins when a man tries to rob a bank and the bank’s clerk, a yuppie, pretends the thief has kidnapped him to help him run away. While they’re running away, they meet a girl who becomes part of the team.
Maren, a young girl, is the sole survivor of the Black Death in her Norwegian village. Using instincts, folklore, luck, and the clairvoyant powers granted her by being born with a “Victory Cap,” Maren survives on her own, waiting for other people to discover her plight. Painstaking recreations of medieval customs and settings dominate the film.
A day in the life of Monika, an ordinary, modern (ca.1975) Swedish woman. Her surroundings are a lot sleeker than her daily existence, though; she’s unemployed, her husband is gone, and she’s alone in the midst of what ought to be the good life.
Beshkempir takes its title from the name of the boy whose story it tells. His life is sunny and carefree, spent in childhood games, until the day he hears terrible news from his playmates: he is not his parents’ biological child. Overnight, his best friend becomes his rival and the young girl of his dreams starts going bicycling with somebody else. His pleasant and peaceful existence is over: if his parents are not his own, Beshkempir feels he has lost his whole identity. He tries to gradually overcome the problems that arise from this new situation. Aktan Abdykalykov’s first feature was also the first independent film to be produced and directed in Kyrgyzstan.
The story focuses on an ambitious young executive, Amanda, who inherits a lovely B&B on a remote island in Maine when her grandmother dies. She arrives with every intent of selling it all off and going back to her busy career, but in going through her grandmother’s belongings, she discovers much about her family’s past which ultimately makes her re-evaluate her life and values. Amanda is faced with making right decisions amidst trying circumstances.