Maximus Powers' Short Film Collection

[Alpha Blondy]

 

Paranoia grips a bourgeois European family when a series of menacing videotapes begin turning up on their doorstep in Piano Teacher director Michael Haneke's dark drama. From the outside, Georges (Daniel Auteuil), Anne (Juliette Binoche), and son Pierrot (Lester Makedonsky) are the typical middle-class European family, but when a series of mysterious videotapes accompanied by morbid drawings reveal that someone has been monitoring their house, Georges begins to suspect that his past has come back to haunt him. It was during France's occupation of Algeria that Georges wronged a young Algerian boy named Majid (Maurice Bénichou), and as the enraged father and husband begins tracking down his former friend, the line between victim and predator becomes increasingly blurred.

 

9/10

[Carafaat]

 

 

Fantastic movie. a bit bourgeois for Alpha Blody's taste.

[Alpha Blondy]

 

 

Writer/director Stefan Ruzowitzky explores the moral corrosion of Nazi complicity with this tightly wound adaptation of Adolf Burger's fact-based book The Devil's Workshop. Salomon Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics) may be a talented artist at heart, but his desire for wealth has driven him to use his creativity for more nefarious means. Arrested by the police inspector Herzog (Devid Striesow) at the onset of World War II, Sorowitsch is sent to the notorious Mauthausen concentration camp. It's not long before Salomon's thinly veiled opportunism earns him a relatively comfortable position as the camp's resident sketch artist, and five years later he is mysteriously swept away to Sachsenhausen. Upon arriving at the camp, Sorowitsch discovers that Herzog, now a commandant, is attempting to destabilize the economies of the Allies while simultaneously funding the Nazi war machine by assembling a special team of counterfeit artists to create millions in fraudulent pounds and dollars. As the operation gets under way, Sorowitsch finds the efforts of the team continually undermined by unyieldingly idealistic collotype specialist Adolf Burger (August Diehl). In the months that follow, the team wrestles with their consciences as Axis forces are gradually overwhelmed by Allied might. The Counterfeiters won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

 

9/10

[Alpha Blondy]

 

Pray the Devil Back to Hell is the gripping account of a group of brave and visionary women who demanded peace for Liberia, a nation torn to shreds by a decades old civil war. Combining contemporary interviews, archival images, and scenes of present-day Liberia the film recounts the experiences and memories of the women who stood up to their country's tyrannical leader and brutal warlords, in order to bring peace to their tormented country.

 

8/10

[Marksman]

J'Attendrai Le Suivant (I'll Wait for the Next One) was a great one. Thanks Max. I have also seen Life is beautiful. That one is great.

 

These are my favourite short movies. Let me know what you think of it.

 

Validation A movie about the magic of free parking and the effects of complimenting. Short film winner of multiple film festivals

 

 

 

New boy A young African boy with a haunting back story starts school in Ireland, and finds out quickly exactly what it means to be the new kid. Winner of Best Narrative Short at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival and nominated for an Oscar.

 

 

 

Signs A simple movie about communication and making a connection. Short film winner of multiple film festivals.

 

 

[Alpha Blondy]

 

Director Spike Lee dives head-first into a maelstrom of racial and social ills, using as his springboard the hottest day of the year on one block in Brooklyn, NY. Three businesses dominate the block: a storefront radio station, where a smooth-talkin' deejay (Samuel L. Jackson) spins the platters that matter; a convenience store owned by a Korean couple; and Sal's Famous Pizzeria, the only white-operated business in the neighborhood. Sal (Danny Aiello) serves up slices with his two sons, genial Vito (Richard Edson) and angry, racist Pino (John Turturro). Sal has one black employee, Mookie (Spike Lee), who wants to "get paid" but lacks ambition. His sister Jade (Joie Lee, Spike's sister), who has a greater sense of purpose and a "real" job, wants Mookie to start dealing with his responsibilities, most notably his son with girlfriend Tina (Rosie Perez). Two of Mookie's best friends are Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn), a monolith of a man who rarely speaks, preferring to blast Public Enemy's rap song Fight The Power on his massive boom box; and Buggin' Out (Giancarlo Esposito), nicknamed for his coke-bottle glasses and habit of losing his cool. When Buggin' Out notes that Sal's "Wall of Fame," a photo gallery of famous Italian-Americans, includes no people of color, he eventually demands a neighborhood boycott, on a day when tensions are already running high, that incurs tragic consequences.

 

9/10

[Alpha Blondy]

 

Set in the high-stakes world of the financial industry, Margin Call is an entangling thriller involving the key players at an investment firm during one perilous 24-hour period in the early stages of the 2008 financial crisis. When an entry-level analyst unlocks information that could prove to be the downfall of the firm, a roller-coaster ride ensues as decisions both financial and moral catapult the lives of all involved to the brink of disaster.

 

8/10

[Reeyo]

Cloud Atlas.

 

Either you like it or you hate it.

[Saxansaxo]

Alpha Blondy;320071 wrote:

 

The year is 1989, and East Berlin is celebrating 40 years of socialist rule by the German Democratic Republic. However, these are tumultuous times, and East Germany is on the brink of dramatic political and cultural change. Christiane Kerner is a dedicated socialist activist helping to improve the lives of those around her. But after seeing her son Alex getting arrested in a protest rally she suffers a heart attack and falls into a coma. Months pass, all the while the Germany she once knew is being transformed from the relentless triumph of capitalism after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany. Knowing that the slightest shock could prove fatal when his mothers awakens, Alex strives to keep the fall of the GDR a secret for as long as possible from his bed-ridden mother. We follow Alex through his often comical yet sincere attempts to keep a pre-Wall façade; but when his game takes on a life of its own, long buried family secrets surface as East Germans around them experience freedoms for the first time.

 

 

Goodbye Lenin on Youtube

 

A great movie about collective memory in society, sense of place (and loss of it) and individuals will and power to construct competing memories. The last part was very moving especially when he said "the GDR i created for her was the GDR I wanted " and "that it was a country that did not exist". His efforts to construct a reality he could only long for was truly commendable. Highly recommended movie.

[Alpha Blondy]

Saxansaxo;922444 wrote:

A great movie about collective memory in society, sense of place (and loss of it) and individuals will and power to construct competing memories. The last part was very moving especially when he said "the GDR i created for her was the GDR I wanted " and "that it was a country that did not exist". His efforts to construct a reality he could only long for was truly commendable. Highly recommended movie.

saxansaxo,

 

i'm very glad you liked the movie. i'll post more movies.

 

if you have any recommendations..... please also post.

 

Al.

[Alpha Blondy]

 

A small-time entrepreneur hatches a scheme to hoist himself up the ladder of success in this satirical comedy. Mihram (Tayanc Ayaydin) is a maverick peddler who will buy and sell anything that will turn a profit, legal or otherwise, and he roams the Turkish countryside in his truck looking for his latest score. Mihram can support himself and his wife Elif (Senay Aydin) well enough through his efforts, but he wants to move on to something more stable and respectable, and he would like to get black market kingpin Mustafa (Hakan Sahin) off his back. When Mihram gets a line on someone selling their business distributing cell phones, he's convinced his golden opportunity has arrived. However, Mihram doesn't have the cash to buy in right away until he hears about a local doctor whose order of life-saving drugs has been stolen by gangsters. Mihram is able to arrange a deal that puts the medicine in the hands of the doctor and leaves a wad of cash in his pocket, and he thinks he's on his way to a new business until his next fast-money scheme takes him to Kazakhstan. The Market: A Tale Of Trade was an official selection at the 2008 Locarno Film Festival.

 

9/10

[Alpha Blondy]

 

Director Rachid Bouchareb teams with screenwriter Olivier Morelle to offer a revealing look at the brave contributions made by North African soldiers who fought for France during World War II in this emotionally-charged war drama starring Jamel Debbouze, Samy Naceri, Sami Bouajila, and Bernard Blancan. The year was 1943 and France had been bending to the will of Nazi Germany for three long years. In order to break Hitler's powerful grip, the first French Army was recruited in Africa. Comprised of 130,000 North Africans who were willing to put their lives on the line in order to defeat the Nazi death machine, the fearless fighters were contemptuously dubbed indigènes (natives) by many French, despite their remarkable sacrifice. From the noble Abdelkader (Bouajila), who is fighting strictly for the cause; to the money motivated Yassir (Naceri); the impoverished Saïd (Debbouze); and die-hard romantic Messaoud (Roschdy Zem), who longs to finally visit the country he has dreamt about from afar, the selfless efforts of these remarkable men ultimately transcend their superiors' contemptuous disregard for their service by providing invaluable aid during one of the world's darkest hours

 

8/10

[Alpha Blondy]

 

Harvey Pekar (Paul Giamatti) is a comic book writer inspired by the work of his friend Robert Crumb (James Urbaniak). Pekar writes his comics about the sad monotony of everyday life, based on his own life in Cleveland, OH, working as a file clerk at a veteran's hospital and spending his time reading books and listening to jazz. He meets up with Joyce Brabner (Hope Davis) and they enjoy a depressive relationship together. The filmmakers employ a combination of live-action film, video, and animation, including narration and commentary from the real-life Harvey Pekar. The screenplay was based on Pekar's comic book series American Splendor, which he has been writing since 1976 on Dark Horse Comics, and the 1994 book-length comic Our Cancer Year, written by Pekar and Brabner. American Splendor won the Grand Jury Prize in the Dramatic Competition at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival.

 

9/10

[Alpha Blondy]

 

From its arresting opening to its shattering conclusion, the Canadian film Incendies is muscular, emotional film-making of the highest order, self-confident in its delivery yet always respectful of its characters' plight. A bona fide masterpiece. As simple as that. It is ironic that one of the best films about the Middle East conflict, and specifically the tragic civil war in Lebanon, should be made by a Canadian film maker. Incendies is based on a play but it feels as though it has been adapted from a great literary work. In fact there is no specific mention of any country in the film but no one can be in any doubt that the unnamed country is Lebanon.

 

There are extremely powerful and unforgettable images and scenes in Incendies. The result is a staggeringly powerful film whose story is so well revealed by a cast of sterling actors that telling too much of the plot would be a disservice to those who come to this experience for the first time. Incendies is simply one of the finest films of the decade and it bound to become a permanent part of the cinematic library.

 

10/10

 

Dedicated to Oba. To whom, I'll forever be grateful for recommending one of the greatest films I've ever seen. Thanks inaar. Al.

[oba hiloowlow]

Thanks Inaar