Teen angst, incest, and… what exactly is buried in the basement? This macabre, compellingly bizarro coming-of-age tale charts the strange goings-on within a family living in an isolated, rubble-strewn no-man’s land. One day, as 15-year-old Jack masturbates, his father drops dead. Mother follows shortly thereafter. Rather than tell anyone, Jack and older sister Julie assume the roles of father and mother to their two younger siblings—but take things to the extreme. Based on Ian McEwan’s gothic novel, this should-be cult classic is a gripping, wonderfully weird portrait of nontraditional family values.
Tag: 1990s
A bank accountant, who moonlights as a high-priced call girl, becomes embroiled in the lives of a money launderer, his seductive wife, and his bodyguard who blackmails her to help the FBI entrap him with his latest money laundering scheme.
Albert is an introverted travel agent living a lonely life in New York. When Louie, his best friend from childhood, appears having just escaped from prison, Albert’s quiet existence is permanently disrupted. what ensues is one long, crazy night in New York that will change both their lives forever.
Father James Harold Flye is best known as the life-long friend and mentor of writer James Agee. In this touching portrait of James Flye, the man to whom the Letters of James Agee to Father Flye were written, Academy Award-nominated documentary filmmaker Ross Spears gives us a record of several visits with Father Flye spanning a ten-year period and culminating with the occasion of Father Flye’s 100th birthday.
Mel Tormé hosts this retrospective of the most prolific period of Frank Sinatra’s career from the beginning to mid-60s. Told through interviews with colleagues and entertainment experts along with clips from live performances, film and TV.
St. Petersburg, early 20th century. The handsome and secretive Johann specializes in shooting erotic pictures depicting the floggings of bare-bottomed women. With the help of his assistants, the photographic creations gradually penetrate the peaceful households of two upper-class Russian families.
Gustavo is a young Havana Communist who believes in the revolution; he hopes for a scholarship to study aeronautical engineering in Prague. But his faith in the new Cuba is tested: his father, a psychiatrist, can make four times as much playing piano at a hotel for foreigners; his sweetheart, Yolanda, wants a career as a dancer and longs for the riches of Miami; his younger brother Bobby simply wants to play rock music, and as a result is in constant trouble with the authorities. When Bobby takes a shocking step of revolt and Gustavo is refused service at a foreigners-only bar, the contradictions in his resolve to become a “new man” push him to the breaking point.
In Pieter Bruegel’s painting, “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus,” the fall of the god, Icarus, passes unnoticed on earth. The farmers continue to work the land and the boats sail on. As William Carlos Williams later wrote in his poem of the same name, “a once mighty god becomes a little splash quite unnoticed.” In Chris Sullivan’s version, Icarus becomes Ray, an aging priest whose congregation is dwindling as fast as his sanity. As Ray’s condition deteriorates, society fails to notice or care.
