The Shadow Warrior The Double When a 16th-century warlord is killed during a period of civil wars, the warlord's clan settles on the idea of replacing him with a double in order to prevent chaos and ruin. A petty thief is found who bears an astounding resemblance to the fallen leader, and he is groomed for the difficult job of fooling both the enemy and the warlord's own family. Akir…
La Tragedie de la Mine Comradeship Based on an actual 1906 mine disaster, G.W. Pabst's noble Kameradschaft (Comradeship) is set on the German-French border shortly after World War I. An explosion traps French miners, and German workers come to their aid in an emotional demonstration of human kindness, brotherhood, and solidarity. Kameradschaft is a moving and affecting plea fo…
They Loved Life In September of 1944, while Nazis are advancing through Warsaw, a group of Polish partisans must retreat to the city's center by way of the sewers ("kanal"). During their ordeal, the characters' individual stories come into focus, giving a personal, human face to the horrors of war. Kanal's subterranean, claustrophobic visual scheme is an ingeniou…
Chaos The Taviani brothers—Paolo and Vittorio—created this vast mosaic consisting of four stories framed by a prologue and epilogue. The picture isn't well known here, probably because its length was daunting, and because movies comprised of short stories are rarely big at the boxoffice. The stories that the Tavianis tell here are all based on Pirandello tales, and are all set…
The circumstances behind the real Kaspar Hauser—a man who mysteriously appeared in a Nuremberg town square in 1828 without the ability to talk—have been the subject of speculation for more than a century. At the conclusion of Werner Herzog's Every Man for Himself & God Against All, also known as The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser, a functionary at Kaspar's autopsy note…
The problem with being a director who traffics in risky material is that when you fail, your failure will be that much more noticeable. This is the case with Pedro Almodóvar's 1993 Kika, a fog bound “satire” that sinks beneath the waves early on—and takes quite a while to actually hit bottom. The Kika of the title is a wacky makeup artist (Veronica Forque&…
Die Xue Shuang Xiong The ads read: “Guaranteed: Ten Thousand Bullets.” And Hong Kong director John Woo is as good as his word. Hit man Jeffrey Chow (Chow Yun-Fat), better known on the streets as Mickey Mouse, feels responsible for accidentally blinding night club singer Jenny (Sally Yeh) while pulling a job. The demoralized Jeffrey decides to take on one l…
At the turn of the century, young Louis Mazzini (Dennis Price) is appalled at the injustice of his being ninth in line to inherit the dukedom that he believes should be rightfully his. Though there are complicated reasons for Louis's dilemma, he hits upon a simple solution; murder the eight who are in the line of inheritance before him. An even simpler—and more brillian…
British director John Schlesinger's directorial debut is one of the best of the ubiquitous “kitchen-sink,” working-class British melodramas of the 1950s and early 1960s. Alan Bates is Vic, the the kind of young, blustery bloke who likes to boast at the pub over a pint or two about the “birds” he's known and those he plans to know. But Vic's fling wi…
King Kong Tai Godzilla The erroneous but widespread belief that Bogart said “Play it again, Sam” in Casablanca is nothing compared to the ultimate false movie myth: that different endings were filmed for Japan and the United States for King Kong vs. Godzilla. We Americans can chill; on no screens in the world are audiences seeing Kong get his ass kicked. It is true that Kong has an e…
Riget There are some mighty strange things happening at the mammoth Copenhagen hospital known as “The Kingdom.” Spirits seem to be roaming the corridors, while sexual shenanigans, bizarre ritualistic ceremonies, and administrators' meetings that threaten to erupt in violence at any moment are all in a days' work. From Denmark's Lars von Trier, director of Breakin…
Im Lauf der Zeit Bruno (Rüdiger Vogler) is a traveling, freelance movie-projector repairman, whose route takes him along the borderline separating what had been East and West Germany. While parked in his van one day, a VW comes whizzing by and crashes into a nearby river. Out of the river comes Robert (Hanns Zischler), a man who has just fled his family. Bruno ta…
Noz w Wodzie An affluent couple are driving off to spend a weekend on their yacht when they pick up a young hitchhiker. He accepts their invitation to accompany them on their vacation, but once on the water their vicious interpersonal tensions begin to escalate into a day-long series of confrontations that will change all of their lives forever. Roman Polanski's compact, ingenious first fea…
Set in Czechoslovakia in 1988—the final days of its Communist regime—Kolya alarmingly begins like yet another version of Green Card, with middle-aged violinist and confirmed bachelor Frantisek (Zdenek Sverak) agreeing to a sham marriage with a Russian woman. Instead of falling for her, though, he falls for the woman's 10-year-old son, Kolya (Andrej Chalimo…
This visually masterful rendering of four ghostly stories by Lafcadio Hearn remains one of the most beautiful and gently disquieting visions of the supernatural ever committed to film. Japan's Masaki Kobayashi mounted these four stories in a majestic, widescreen, richly colored style, each with a distinctive look. “Black Hair” is the story of a man who returns to his wife afte…