le noir

In small-town Washington state in 1964, Czechoslovakian immigrant Selma Jezková and her preteen son Gene live in a rented trailer owned by Bill and Linda Houston; Bill is the town sheriff. Selma also has a small group of friends, including her co-worker and primary confidante Kathy, and Jeff, who wants to be her boyfriend. Jeff regularly waits outside Selma's workplace to drive her home, although she always refuses, not wishing to lead him on. Her primary job is working on the Anderson Tool factory assembly line, but she does whatever else she can to earn money. What only Kathy knows among Selma's friends is that she is slowly going blind from a genetic medical condition. She can see just enough to be able to do her job. Her primary reason for moving to the USA and working all the time is to earn enough money for an operation for Gene when he turns 13; he knows nothing about his mother's or his own degenerative eyesight. Selma allows only one indulgence in her life: anything to do with musicals which she loves, because they're an escape from her bleak life. Kathy often takes her to the cinema to watch old musicals and must describe to her what's happening on the screen, to the other patrons' annoyance. Selma also has the role of Maria in a community-theatre production of "The Sound of Music." Close to having enough money for the operation, Selma races against time before she loses enough sight to lose her job and her role in the musical. What may also threaten Selma's goal of the operation for Gene is some financial problems facing Bill, who feels pressured to provide Linda with the comforts of life to which she's accustomed.

A young woman, Alex, is raped by a stranger in a tunnel. Her boyfriend Marcus and ex-boyfriend Pierre decide to do justice themselves. In 2002, Gaspar Noé created controversy (and controversy) by presenting his film at the Cannes Film Festival. 17 years later, he returns with a brand new version of his cult film. Initially operated in an anechronological form (the film starts at the end and ends at its beginning), with Irreversible "Full Inversion" (2019), the filmmaker offers us a completely different reading, offering it to us in a chronological order.

The first part of Kieslowski's trilogy on France's national motto: Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. 'Blue' is the story of Julie who loses her husband, an acclaimed composer and her young daughter in a car accident. The film's theme of liberty is manifested in Julie's attempt to start life anew, free of personal commitments, belongings, grief or love. She intends to numb herself by withdrawing from the world and living completely independently, anonymously and in solitude in the Parisian metropolis. Despite her intentions, people from her former and present life intrude with their own needs. However, the reality created by the people who need and care about her, a surprising discovery and the music around which the film revolves heal Julie and draws her back to the land of the living.

Lucas is a Kindergarten teacher who takes great care of his students. Unfortunately for him, young Klara has a run-away imagination and concocts a lie about her teacher. Before Lucas is even able to understand the consequences, he has become the outcast of the town. The hunt is on to prove his innocence before it's taken from him for good.

After his wife, Alice, tells him about her sexual fantasies, William Harford sets out for a night of sexual adventure. After several less than successful encounters, he meets an old friend, Nick Nightingale--now a musician--who tells him of strange sex parties where he is required to play the piano blindfolded. All the men at the party are costumed and wear masks while the women are all young and beautiful. Harford manages to find an appropriate costume and heads out to the party. Once there, however, he is warned by someone who recognizes him, despite the mask, that he is in great danger. He manages to extricate himself, but the threats prove to be quite real and sinister.

1930s Korea, in the period of Japanese occupation, a new girl (Sookee) is hired as a handmaiden to a Japanese heiress (Hideko) who lives a secluded life on a large countryside estate with her domineering Uncle (Kouzuki). But the maid has a secret. She is a pickpocket recruited by a swindler posing as a Japanese Count to help him seduce the Lady to elope with him, rob her of her fortune, and lock her up in a madhouse. The plan seems to proceed according to plan until Sookee and Hideko discover some unexpected emotions.

Erika Kohut is a pianist, teaching music. Schubert and Schumann are her forte, but she's not quite at concert level. She's approaching middle age, living with her mother who is domineering then submissive; Erika is a victim then combative. With her students she is severe. She visits a sex shop to watch DVDs; she walks a drive-in theater to stare at couples having sex. Walter is a self-assured student with some musical talent; he auditions for her class and is forthright in his attraction to her. She responds coldly then demands he let her lead. Next she changes the game with a letter, inviting him into her fantasies. How will he respond; how does sex have power over our other faculties?

Karol (Polish) marries Dominique (French) and moves to Paris. The marriage breaks down and Dominique divorces Karol, forcing him into the life of a metro beggar and eventually back to Poland. However, he never forgets Dominique and while building a new life for himself in Warsaw he begins to plot.

Set in France, Georges is a TV Literary Reviewer and lives in a small yet modern town house with his wife Ann, a publisher and his young son Pierrot. They begin to receive video tapes through the post of their house and family, along side obscure child-like drawings. They visit the police with hope of aid to find the stalker, but as there is no direct threat, they refuse to help. As the tapes become more personal, Georges takes it upon himself to figure out who is putting through his family through such horror. A true Michael Haneke Classic.

Two seemingly well-educated young men, who call each other Paul and Peter among other names, approach a family on vacation. They are, apparently, friends of the neighbors, and, at the beginning, their true intentions are not known, but soon, the family is imprisoned and tortured in its own house violently, which the viewers are forced mostly to imagine and to share a certain complicity with the criminals. It might be some kind of game with the lives of husband, wife, son, and dog, but why are they doing it?

A love story set in a dystopian near future where single people are arrested and transferred to a creepy hotel. There they are obliged to find a matching mate in 45 days. If they fail, they are transformed into an animal and released into the woods.

On the brink of the new Millennium in the bustling City of Mexico, one horrible car accident intertwines inextricably the lives of three perfect strangers. Octavio, a rebellious adolescent who is secretly in love with his sister-in-law, dreams of escaping his miserable life, and for this reason, he enters reluctantly the obscure world of dog fighting with his lethal dog Cofi. And then unexpectedly, Valeria, a stunning woman and famous supermodel, will cross paths with Octavio, while in the meantime, her pampered little dog Richie manages to vanish into thin air in the confined space of her apartment. Lastly, Chivo, an ex-guerrilla vagabond, after abandoning his little daughter, unable to make up for lost time, he channels his love to the city's strays and a mortally wounded Rottweiler. In the end, even though all the weary characters, men and beasts, wish for a bright future, in this life-changing journey in the pursuit of love, sometimes infidelity, sin and death can get in the way.

On the night of her wedding, Justine (Kirsten Dunst) is struggling to be happy even though it should be the happiest day of her life. It was an extravagant wedding paid for by her sister and brother-in-law who are trying to keep the bride and all the guests in line. Meanwhile, Melancholia, a blue planet, is hurtling towards the Earth. Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), Justine's sister, is struggling to maintain composure with fear of the impending disaster.

From July 1913 to the outbreak of World War I, a series of incidents takes place in a German village: A horse trips on a wire and throws the rider; a woman falls to her death through rotted planks; the local baron's son is hung upside down in a mill; parents slap and bully their children; a man is cruel to his long-suffering lover; another sexually abuses his daughter. People disappear. A callow teacher who courts a nanny in the baron's household narrates the story and tries to investigate the connections among these accidents and crimes. What is foreshadowed? Are the children holy innocents? God may be in His heaven, but all is not right with the world; the center cannot hold.

Tokyo's nasty underside, seen primarily through the eyes of Oscar, a heavy drug user, whose sister Linda is a stripper. Oscar also has flashbacks to his childhood when trauma upends the siblings. Oscar's drug-fed hallucinations alter Tokyo's already-disconcerting nights, and after the police shoot him, he can float above and look down: on his sister's sorrow, on the rooms of a love hotel, and on life at even a molecular level. The spectrum's colors can be beautiful; it's people's colorless lives that can be ugly. And what of afterlife, is there more than a void?

Wong Kar-Wai's movie about two love-struck cops is filmed in impressionistic splashes of motion and color. The first half deals with Cop 223, who has broken up with his girlfriend of five years. He purchases a tin of pineapples with an expiration date of May 1 each day for a month. By the end of that time, he feels that he will either be rejoined with his love or that it too will have expired forever. The second half shows Cop 663 dealing with his breakup with his flight attendant girlfriend. He talks to his apartment furnishings until he meets a new girl at a local lunch counter.

A mother's last wishes send twins Jeanne and Simon on a journey to the Middle East in search of their tangled roots. Adapted from Wajdi Mouawad's acclaimed play, Incendies tells the powerful and moving tale of two young adults' voyage to the core of deep-rooted hatred, never-ending wars and enduring love.

A young Spanish woman who has recently moved to Berlin finds her flirtation with a local guy turn potentially deadly as their night out with his friends reveals a dangerous secret.