Virgil Bliss is a man obsessed with living a normal life, finding a good job, marrying a decent woman and building a family of his own. The only problem is that he is a recently paroled career thief. After his release from prison after nearly a decade he meets Manny Alvarez who takes naive Virgil under his wing and initiates him in the ways of the world. He introduces him to Ruby, a junkie prostitute, with whom Virgil immediately falls in love. Together they form a kind of damaged family, dogged by mistrust, chemical dependency and the weight of their wasted lives. Everything gets even shakier when the psychotic Manny reappears.
Tag: 2000s
Eleven-year-old petty teen criminal Maroa lives with her violent grandmother Brígida in Caracas. After her boyfriend Carlos is involved in a shooting, Maroa is arrested and sent to a school where Joaquín conducts the youth orchestra, which he asks the naturally talented Maroa to join. Joaquín is immediately interested in the talented young girl who lacks all notion of discipline; as he becomes the only person to offer her hope in the midst of her rejection, he realizes that through Maroa his own world has also changed forever.
Danny, onto his 49th share house and in his mid 30s is probably ready for some privacy and independence but is still attracted to the friends and oddball characters that makes sharing a house so attractively horrible. We travel with Danny as he moves through shared houses in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. Danny’s life is further complicated by the presence of rental goons despatched by landlords in search of unpaid rent and the police chasing him in relation to a credit card debt thanks to a dodgy housemate. Proving he is not responsible is harder than lying about his identity.
A well-worn maxim suggests that it’s always best to create stories about ‘what you know’, and Yousaf Ali Khan’s accomplished short Talking with Angels goes a long way to show why this is advice best followed. Based on Khan’s own childhood and created with the intention of bucking the social ideals of what constitutes a ‘normal’ family, the film tells the story of the struggle faced by a poor family as they make their way through 1970s run-down Salford to a clinic for their schizophrenic mum’s regular injection of Largactil, a drug to dampen the voices and visions that plague her and those around her. Viewed as spacs and weirdos by the people they encounter on the journey, it’s 10- year-old Alan who takes charge and must battle with the shame imposed on him by the outside world for the family he loves and belongs to.
Bob is an aging thief who has seen better days and is battling both an addiction to heroin and a growing gambling problem. But he still thinks he has one more big score in him and plots a massive heist of a Monte Carlo casino. In order to pull off the theft, he’ll need an amazing team of accomplices and will have to outwit his nemesis, the local police chief. The chief knows that Bob is up to something, but can he figure it out before Bob makes off with millions?
Tony Takitani had a solitary childhood. At school he studied art, but while his sketches are accurate and detailed, they lack feeling. Used to being self-sufficient, Tony finds himself becoming more irrational and instinctive. After finding his true vocation as a technical illustrator, he becomes fascinated by Eiko, a client who in turn is fascinated by high end fashion.
The history of the first victim of modern artillery and its moving agony, amidst conspiracies and betrayals of the powerful. Life and death of Giovanni De’ Medici, a young brave captain in the war of Charles V against the Pope, in the first half of 1500.
A cheerful parking attendant considers it his job to do more than validate parking. He wants to validate the customers themselves, delivering compliments about their appearances and the inner qualities behind them. Everyone who comes up to him with a ticket walks away validated as a worthwhile human being. Soon, the parking attendant becomes so popular that people line up for validation. His life hits a roadblock when he goes to the DMV to get his driver’s license photo taken and is met with a beautiful photographer whom he can’t get to smile.