Distant Lights (2003)
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This Ken Loach film tells the story of a man devoted to his family and his religion. Proud, though poor, Bob wants his little girl to have a beautiful (and costly) brand-new dress for her First Communion. His stubbornness and determination get him into trouble as he turns to more and more questionable measures, in his desperation to raise the needed money. This tragic flaw leads him to risk all that he loves and values, his beloved family, indeed even his immortal soul and salvation, in blind pursuit of that goal. Written by Tad Dibbern
An uncompromising, visionary architect struggles to maintain his integrity and individualism despite personal, professional and economic pressures to conform to popular standards.
Jeb Maynard is a patrolman guarding the U.S.-Mexican border, whose partner and buddy Scooter has just been murdered. Maynard knows that a smuggler of illegal aliens is responsible for Scooter's death, but the feds insist that drug dealers committed the crime.
Two lost souls visiting Tokyo -- the young, neglected wife of a photographer and a washed-up movie star shooting a TV commercial -- find an odd solace and pensive freedom to be real in each other's company, away from their lives in America.
Two Texas border guards find a jeep buried for 20 years in the desert, with a skeleton, a scoped rifle, and a box with $800,000 in cash. They decide to keep the money, but quietly check up on the info they find. Soon the Feds are running all over the place, and it looks like jeep maybe linked to the JFK assassination. But the Feds are trying to cover it up, and eliminate anyone involved with the jeep.
When brash Texas border officer Mike Norton (Barry Pepper) wrongfully kills and buries the friend and ranch hand of Pete Perkins (Tommy Lee Jones), the latter is reminded of a promise he made to bury his friend, Melquiades Estrada (Julio Cesar Cedillo), in his Mexican home town. He kidnaps Norton and exhumes Estrada's corpse, and the odd caravan sets out on horseback for Mexico. As Estrada's body begins to rot, Norton begins to unravel, but Perkins remains determined to honor his vow.
Ben Sanderson, an alcoholic Hollywood screenwriter who lost everything because of his drinking, arrives in Las Vegas to drink himself to death. There, he meets and forms an uneasy friendship and non-interference pact with prostitute Sera.
Wounded Civil War soldier John Dunbar tries to commit suicide -- and becomes a hero instead. As a reward, he's assigned to his dream post, a remote junction on the Western frontier, and soon makes unlikely friends with the local Sioux tribe.
Cigarette smugglers in Naples run into problems with cocaine operations being set up by a rival smuggler. Full of violence, including a women's face being burned off with a blow torch and a graphic rape scene.
Sven arrives in nowadays Auschwitz to do his civil service at the memorial. He encounters unfriendliness, especially by Stanislaw Krzeminski, the 85 year old KZ-survivor, and Krzysztof Lanuszewski, brother of his early love affair Ania. Even his boss Herold, the places manager, does little to help Sven familiarize. But when problems accumulate Sven realises that he already has become involved.
Jean-Luc Godard's poetic meditation on war, violence and defeat. The film is structured in three parts. The three segments are "Hell", "Purgatory", and "Heaven". The first segment is a montage of war images from documentary and fictional sources. The second concerns two young Jewish women attending a European arts conference in Sarajevo. The final segment concerns the after life.
In the Mexican state of Michoacán, Dr. Jose Mireles, a small-town physician known as "El Doctor," shepherds a citizen uprising against the Knights Templar, the violent drug cartel that has wreaked havoc on the region for years. Meanwhile, in Arizona's Altar Valleyâa narrow, 52-mile-long desert corridor known as Cocaine AlleyâTim "Nailer" Foley, an American veteran, heads a small paramilitary group called Arizona Border Recon, whose goal is to halt Mexicoâs drug wars from seeping across our border.
Academy Award Winner Cuba Gooding, Jr. is a Border Patrol Officer in the New Mexico desert with a secret past that is about to catch up with him. When his old gang leader tracks him down and forces him to smuggle drugs across the border, he must choose between the life he swore to leave behind and saving his family at any cost.
Set in a blighted, inner-city neighbourhood of London, Breaking and Entering examines an affair which unfolds between a successful British landscape architect and Amira, a Bosnian woman â the mother of a troubled teen son â who was widowed by the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The film revolves around five individual characters and the events in their life, that, on the one hand, changes everything in their respective lives, which the film's title refers to, and, on the other hand, also brings together these people. It is an anthology film, that contains two parallel moving stories, which are connected by a freak accident in Chennai. A young architect, falls in love with a young beautiful pediatric doctor, runs after her and tries to convince her to marry her, while, simultaneously, a morose ex-football coach troubles a software engineer by vowing to kill his eight-year-old son. How these characters get connected and confronted through the accident forms the crux of the story.
This is the hard and shocking story of life in a British Borstal for young offenders. The brutal regime made no attempt to reform or improve the inmates and actively encouraged a power struggle between the 'tough' new inmate and the 'old hands'. The film was originally made as a BBC play but it was banned before ever being shown.
In 1917, three shepherd children living just outside Fatima, Portugal have visions of a lovely lady in a cloud. The anticlerical government wishes to squelch the Church; reports of religious experiences are cause for serious concern. Yet the children stand by their story, and the message of peace and hope the Lady brings. In the last vision, attended by thousands of people, the Lady proves her reality with a spectacular miracle that is seen by everyone present. Based on actual events at Fatima in the summer of 1917.
An eighteen year old high school drop out and his twenty-seven year old friend start trafficking marijuana across the border of Canada in order to make money and their lives are changed forever.
Adrift begins with the wedding of Duyen and Hai. Duyen is a beautiful tourist guide and translator who marries Hai, a taxi driver who is two years her junior. Duyen thinks the marriage will make her happy but it turns out more difficult, especially since her childlike husband is uninterested in her efforts of intimacy and the marriage remains unconsummated. Cam, secretly in love with Duyen, is bitter about the marriage. Cam has Duyen deliver a letter to Tho, a handsome lothario and tourist guide who physically hurls himself on Duyen when she visits his home to deliver the letter. After Tho reports back to Cam that Duyen is sexually inexperienced, Cam diabolically persuades Duyen to take a temporary job as a translator on one of Thoâs beach tours, knowing what will happen. Duyen's time at the beach with Tho results in an affair leading to Duyen's sexual awakening but continued uncertainty about herself, marriage, and life.
Viennese doctor Josef Bruer meets with philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche to help him deal with his despair.
A group of Italian villagers struggle to survive during a tumultuous time in 1943, debating how much assistance to give the partisans with the impending arrival of the Germans. Based on True Events.
Itâs 1974 and Sam Bicke has lost everything. His wife leaves him with his three kids, his boss fires him, his brother turns away from him, and the bank wonât give him any money to start anew. He tries to find someone to blame for his misfortunes and comes up with the President of the United States who he plans to murder.
Based on real events, Canada's most notorious serial killers, Paul Bernardo and wife Karla Homolka kidnap, sexually abuse, and murder three young girls.
A story about a fictional South African police base on the border between Angola and the former South West Africa. While patrolling, a mail convoy is ambushed and most of the soldiers are shot. The captain is rescued, but one of his constables is taken prisoner. The constableâs sister is also the captainâs girlfriend. GRENSBASIS 13 (Border Post 13) tells the story of the captainâs suspenseful and action-filled rescue attempt in order to bring his sweetheartâs brother home.
The Department of Emotional Integrity (DEI) documents all relationship activity. A 'relationship score' is given to keep people accountable for their choices. The score is public for all to see, and affects various aspects of daily life. Two couples, teenagers and early 30s, face different but intersecting challenges in their relationships within the rules of the DEI.
Das Experiment is a shocking psycho thriller about the potential for brutality that humans hide. Even more shocking is the fact that itâs based on an actual occurrenceâa 1971 psychological experiment at Stanford University that was aborted prematurely when the experimenters lost control.
When porn director Pablo reluctantly breaks up with his boyfriend, Juan, he encourages him to stay in touch. Juan moves away to live in a lighthouse and eventually writes his ex, but in the interim Pablo has taken up a psychotic new lover, Antonio (Antonio Banderas). Antonio intercepts their correspondence and flies into a towering rage, terrifying Pablo but inspiring him creatively as he works on a play about his transsexual sister.
The lives of many individuals connected by the desire for happiness, often from sources usually considered dark or evil.
A yellow cab is driving through the vibrant and colourful streets of Tehran. Very diverse passengers enter the taxi, each candidly expressing their views while being interviewed by the driver who is no one else but the director Jafar Panahi himself. His camera placed on the dashboard of his mobile film studio captures the spirit of Iranian society through this comedic and dramatic driveâ¦
In 1862, a young Englishwoman becomes royal tutor in Siam and befriends the King.
Berlin is in Germany is a tragic comedy in which an ex-prisoner from east Berlin must find his place in the newly united city. From Director Hannes Stöhr.
World-weary arthur Fernando has returned to his native Columbia to live out his days in peace. But Fernando's once-quiet hometown has become a hotbed of violence, drugs and corruption. On the brink of despair, Fernando meets Alexis, a beautiful but hardened street kid who lives by the rule of the gun. Together, they forge an unlikely relationship.
Inspired by the real events of the swift--but devastating--five-day war between Russia and Georgia in 2008, 5 Days of War centers around an American journalist (Rupert Friend) and his cameraman (Richard Coyle) caught in the combat zone during the first Russian airstrikes against Georgia. Rescuing Tatia (Emmanuelle Chriqui), a young Georgian schoolteacher separated from her family during the attack, the two reporters agree to help reunite her with her family in exchange for serving as their interpreter. As the three attempt to escape to safety, they witness--and document--the devastation from the full-scale crossfire and cold-blooded murder of innocent civilians.
Tom, now in his 40s, begins to write the memoirs of his 1960s childhood, as the little boy whose mother Rose was a glamorous Shanghai nightclub singer. When Rose meets Aussie sailor Bill, they are quickly married, and she packs up Tom and his older sister May to head for Melbourne. The marriage just as quickly breaks up and Rose moves with the kids to Sydney. After a succession of male friends and little success, in 1971 Rose moves back to Melbourne, in an uncomfortable arrangement living again with Bill â and his mother. With Bill called away to sea, Rose takes up with young Chinese cook Joe, but despair and conflicts over May's relationship with Joe tear the family further apart. Little Tom is deeply hurt, but May's ongoing conflict with her mother takes a respite when Rose tells her daughter about her traumatic teenage years.
Shakespeare's 17th century masterpiece about the "Melancholy Dane" was given one of its best screen treatments by Soviet director Grigori Kozintsev. Kozintsev's Elsinore was a real castle in Estonia, utilized metaphorically as the "stone prison" of the mind wherein Hamlet must confine himself in order to avenge his father's death. Hamlet himself is portrayed (by Innokenti Smoktunovsky) as the sole sensitive intellectual in a world made up of debauchers and revellers. Several of Kozintsev directorial choices seem deliberately calculated to inflame the purists: Hamlet's delivers his "To be or not to be" soliloquy with his back to the camera, allowing the audience to fill in its own interpretations.
Two men of principle face each other. One is backed by a whole, however poor village, the other by the law. It is a conflict that reaches it's climax in the closing shoot-out. Instead of the Wild West, the gunshots go off on the Slovak-Polish border. Michal Docolomansky as the horse smuggler and Radoslav Brzobohaty as the customs officer from Prague meet in Holly's Night Riders in a western-like confrontation set in the insecure years of the newly founded Czechoslovak Republic.
Ivan is old Russia: thick, dour, hard-working, often brutish; he misses Communism. He drives a taxi and one night meets Alexi, a new Russian, a musician, an alcoholic, irresponsible. Alexi stiffs Ivan for the fare, so Ivan tracks him down and a love-hate relationship ensues. When Alexi lets the bath water run over in Ivan's flat and Ivan must pay 500 rubles for repairs, he tries to force Alexi into day labor to repay him. It's hopeless. Then, suddenly, Alexi is discovered, goes on a jazz tour of America, becomes a celebrity, and returns in triumph. Ivan longs to renew the friendship, and it looks as if he may get what he wants.
Victor Bukowski is an out-of-work actor with problems. He's got a lousy agent, he has a habit of falling out with directors and he's still in love with his ex-girlfriend. However, Victor is about to embark on an unexpected emotional journey which will make him confront his future and his past mistakes.
In the style of a documentary this tragic comedy tells the story of a relationship crisis between two married couples and their longing to break out of their miserable daily lives. In this East German post-wall movie Andreas Dresen introduces the sad everyday life of two couples from Frankfurt an der Oder in a honest and tolerable manner.
A nurse from the Ukraine searches for a better life in the West, while an unemployed security guard from Austria heads East for the same reason. Both are looking for work, a new beginning, an existence, struggling to believe in themselves, to find a meaning in life..
Robert De Niro stars as Travis Bickle in this oppressive psychodrama about a Vietnam veteran who rebels against the decadence and immorality of big city life in New York while working the nightshift as a taxi driver.
As for the film, Cameraman Ganga Tho Rambabu is another story of corrupt Indian politics brought to its knees by a single man, in this case Pawan Kalyan's Rambabu. When Rambabu is spotted defusing a potential riot he becomes something of a folk hero in Andhra Pradesh, and Cameraman Ganga (Tamannah), a newswoman eager to climb the corporate ladder, decides to take advantage of his new celebrity by bringing him on as an investigative reporter of sorts at her TV station. There is tension, suspense, a love triangle, murder, and numerous fights and songs, and it all adds up to what seems to be an above average masala film, and a return to form for director Puri Jagannadh.
Torn straight from the headlines, Michael Winterbottom's compelling and prescient 'In This World' follows young Afghan Jamal and his older cousin Enayat as they embark on a hazardous overland trip from their refugee camp at Peshawar, north-west Pakistan. Entering Turkey on foot through a snowy, Kurdish-controlled pass, the pair again take their lives into their hands and face suffocation when they are locked in a freight container on a ship bound for Italy. From there they plan to travel on to Paris, the Sangatte refuge centre and ultimately asylum in London.
For the last thirteen years AJ (Triple H) has been behind bars, convicted of manslaughter for killing a man who intended to kill his best friend, Jack (Michael Rapaport). Now released, AJ wants nothing more than to start a small business and live a crime-free life. Unfortunately, within hours of leaving prison, his oldest and best friend, Jack (Michael Rapaport) involves AJ in an accidental shooting in which a man is killed, forcing Jack to skip town.
A spy thriller telling a historically based story of a man who alone dares to challenge Soviets being in the middle of the communistic system himself. Planning the maneuvers of Warsaw Pact forces he discovers that the American plans of nuclear counterattack against Soviet forces is planned to be executed on Polish territory. Thanks to his determination he starts a long, lonely and psychologically exhausting cooperation with CIA. From that moment the life of his and his family is in danger as one careless move can lead to tragedy.
A morality tale of xenophobia, religious prejudice, mob violence, poverty, and their effect on two children in Liverpool during the Depression. When a shipyard closes, Liam and Teresa's dad loses his job. Liam, who's about 8, making his first Holy Communion, gets a regular dose of fire and brimstone at church. Teresa, about 13, has a job as a maid to the Jewish family that owns the closed shipyard. The lady of that house is having an affair, and Teresa becomes an accomplice. Liam stutters terribly, especially when troubled. Dad comes under the sway of the Fascists, who blame cheap Irish labor and Jewish owners. A Molotov cocktail brings things to a head.
Inspired by author Eric Schlosser's New York Times best-seller of the same name, director Richard Linklater's ensemble drama examines the health issues and social consequences of America's love affair with fast food and features an all-star cast that includes Greg Kinnear, Ethan Hawke, Kris Kristofferson, Patricia Arquette, and Luis Guzman.
A boy named George Jung grows up in a struggling family in the 1950's. His mother nags at her husband as he is trying to make a living for the family. It is finally revealed that George's father cannot make a living and the family goes bankrupt. George does not want the same thing to happen to him, and his friend Tuna, in the 1960's, suggests that he deal marijuana. He is a big hit in California in the 1960's, yet he goes to jail, where he finds out about the wonders of cocaine. As a result, when released, he gets rich by bringing cocaine to America. However, he soon pays the price.
The American architect Kracklite arrives in Italy, supervising an exhibiton for a French architect, Boullée, famous for his oval structures. Tirelessly dedicated to the project, Kracklite's marriage quickly dissolves along with his health.
Canada 1931: The unsociable trapper Johnson lives for himself in the ice-cold mountains near the Yukon river. During a visit in the town he witnesses a dog-fight. He interrupts the game and buys one of the dogs - almost dead already - for $200 against the owner's will. When the owner Hasel complains to Mountie Sergeant Millen, he refuses to take action. But then the loathing breeder and his friends accuse Johnson of murder. So Millen, although sympathetic, has to try to take him under arrest - but Johnson defends his freedom in every way possible.
A dramatization of the one possibly successful escape from the notorious prison.
An average family is thrust into the spotlight after the father commits a seemingly self-defense murder at his diner.
On a rainy London night in 1946, novelist Maurice Bendrix has a chance meeting with Henry Miles, husband of his ex-mistress Sarah, who abruptly ended their affair two years before. Bendrix's obsession with Sarah is rekindled; he succumbs to his own jealousy and arranges to have her followed.
Jennifer Carpenter, Kristen Connolly and Alexander Poe star in a comedy about three New Yorkers struggling to uncover the truth behind their romantic entanglements. Disheartened by his latest relationship catastrophe, Graham (Poe) attempts to rekindle the spark with his ex-girlfriend, Laura (Connolly). In the attempt to win her back Graham discovers he has a unique problem: Laura and another one his ex-girlfriends (Carpenter) are dating the same guy.
American boy Peter and blind minstrel Ivan are thrown together by fate amidst the turbulent mid-30s Soviet Ukraine.
The story concerns two agents, one Mexican (PJF) and one American, who are tasked to stop the smuggling of Mexican migrant workers across the border to California. The two agents go undercover, one as a poor migrant.
The young and beautiful Sada Abe, the daughter of a rich merchant, is banished for losing her virginity after being raped by a college student. Sada wanders the city, becoming a geisha and eventually meeting Kichizo, a posh restaurateur who falls under her spell. Together, they embark on a week-long sexual escapade filled with dangerous obsessions. Their complete descent into each others desires culminates in a shocking crime of passion which captures the city's headlines. Based on a real event from 1936.
Vaguely inspired to the real story of boss of the Camorra's bosses Raffaele Cutolo, this is the story of the criminal career of "Il professore" (the professor). He is in prison, and by there he is able to build, step by step, an empire founded on murders and drugs. He starts a war to destroy all the old Camorra bosses and becoming the new "boss of the bosses". With his sister's help he manages to evade from prison and escape in New York. Here he starts immediately a new relationship with "Cosa Nostra" (Italian American Mafia). He is going to seat on the peak of the most powerful criminal organization, and the Italian authorities are almost impotent.
The nine-year-old Nikolas has been missing for days. The criminal psychologist Claudia Meinert notices contradictions in her conversation with the parents of the missing child. In particular Nikolas' mother appears to be hiding something. When a video of the missing Nikolas surfaces, showing him tied up in a cellar, the trail leads to his school. The 13-year-old Leon and Mathilda strike the psychologist as conspicuous and provocative. Shortly afterwards, Meinert encounters the children with Nikolas' parents at the local swimming pool and her suspicions are confirmed: the parents are entangled in an insidious father-mother-child game with the possible suspects Leon and Mathilda. Now it is up to the psychologist to resolve the dark mystery of Nikolas' disappearance and save the child.
East-Berlin, 1961, shortly after the erection of the Wall. Konrad, Sophie and three of their friends plan a daring escape to Western Germany. The attempt is successful, except for Konrad, who remains behind. From then on, and for the next 28 years, Konrad and Sophie will attempt to meet again, in spite of the Iron Curtain. Konrad, who has become a reputed Astrophysicist, tries to take advantage of scientific congresses outside Eastern Germany to arrange encounters with Sophie. But in a country where the political police, the Stasi, monitors the moves of all suspicious people (such as Konrad's sister Barbara and her husband Harald), preserving one's privacy, ideals and self-respect becomes an exhausting fight, even as the Eastern block begins its long process of disintegration.
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