Parking is director Jacques Demy’s homage to Jean Cocteau’s 1948 masterwork Orpheus. As in the Cocteau film, Demy relates the Orpheus and Euridyce legend in a contemporary setting. Now a rock ‘n’ roll sensation (instead of the poet of the Cocteau film) Orpheus falls in love with Eurydice, who in this version is a sculptress rather than a princess. The rest of the film adheres to the familiar story. Euridyce, who is death personified, beckons Orpheus into Hell, ostensibly to revive his dead lover. A shade brighter and more buoyant than its source material, Parking is the usual Jacques Demy brew of beautiful imagery and hokey dialogue.
Category: Fantasy
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A million miles away from ‘Camelot’ or ‘Excalibur’, this film ruthlessly strips the Arthurian legend down to its barest essentials. Arthur’s knights, far from being heroic, are conniving and greedy men who, just before the film starts, have failed miserably to find the Holy Grail. Aimlessly resentful at first, the developing relationship between Lancelot and Queen Guinevere focuses their rage, leading to inevitable tragedy…
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9th-graders Kazuo (boy) and Kazumi (girl) take a tumble at a temple in a small seacoast town in Japan. Through supernatural intervention, their minds and bodies are switched, and the result is a touching and hilarious coming-of-age comedy as they attempt to survive the pressures of junior high school life.
Malpertuis is the name of an old, rambling mansion which is in reality a labyrinth where characters from Greek mythology are imprisoned by the bedridden Cassavius. He manages to keep them (as well as his nephew and niece) prisoners even after his death, through a binding testament. As Jan, the nephew, unravels the mystery, he discovers that he cannot escape the house because Malpertuis is far more significant than he was led to believe.
A young man lives with his attractive female cousin who is a student of the occult. She is at odds with her cousin’s sometime girlfriend who, if anything is an avid student of the same material. He hasn’t the money nor the connections to keep up with his girlfriend’s high style. The man finds a letter from a mysterious ‘Butterfly’ and decides to write back– with dramatic and sometimes terrifying results.
A fun journey through the history of the automobile, this film is about a group of future computer hackers that wire an arcade game to work as a time machine. Among appearances in the movie are Henry Ford, Mercedes Benz, and modern race car driver Niki Lauda, as one of the boys becomes trapped within the newly created game.
Probably the most delightful Cantinflas movie ever made, Cantinflas goes from the streets of Mexico to the fabulous palaces of the Far East. Overnight, he becomes a Caliph, then a magician, then several other fascinating characters, each one providing another facet of Cantinflas’ unique human comedy.