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Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream That One Calls Human Life (1995)
Filmmaker(s): Stephen Quay, Timothy Quay

Jakob arrives at the Institute Benjamenta (run by brother and sister Johannes and Lisa Benjamenta) to learn to become a servant. With seven other men, he studies under Lisa: absurd lessons of movement, drawing circles, and servility. He asks for a better room. No other students arrive and none leave for employment. Johannes is unhappy, imperious, and detached from the school's operation. Lisa is beautiful, at first tightly controlled, then on the verge of breakdown. There's a whiff of incest. Jakob is drawn to Lisa, and perhaps she to him. As winter sets in, she becomes catatonic. Things get worse; Johannes notes that all this has happened since Jakob came. Is there any cause and effect?

The Cloven is a constant war between the forces of narrative. On one side are the forces of personality: we simply like to think in terms of characters in situations. Few things are as rich as the human face, and nothing as compelling as curiosity...


Published December 4, 2024
| Categorised as Fours, IMDB Comments |
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The Pillow Book (1995)
Filmmaker(s): Peter Greenaway

A woman with a body writing fetish seeks to find a combined lover and calligrapher.

Stop Making Sense think Greenaway makes very smart films, and I'm really glad he's around. His intellect is always tuned to ideas about the visual, so we get a double measure: his images and his commentary on those same images. You should see this film...


Published December 4, 2024
| Categorised as Fours, IMDB Comments |
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Alicia (1994)
Filmmaker(s): Jaume Balagueró

After her first menstruation, Alicia is kidnapped and led by fly-men into a surreal and dirty underworld ruled by a disgusting being.

Stillborn is purely personal, but I have a few wickets through which a film must pass for me to willingly splice it into my imagination. I’m only talking here about films that present themselves as art. — It has to be competent, which for me can...


Published May 21, 2023
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Twos |
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Barcelona (1994)
Americans. Anti Americans. In love.
Filmmaker(s): Whit Stillman

During the 1980s, uptight Ted Boynton is a salesman working in the Barcelona office of a Chicago-based company. He receives an unexpected visit from his cousin Fred, a naval officer who has come to Spain on a public relations mission for a U.S. fleet. Not exactly friends in the past, Ted and Fred strike up relationships with women in the Spanish city and experience conflicts -- Ted with his employer, and Fred with the Barcelona community.

Talk to Him great joy in a life with film is to discover a film that is competent and coherent, that exists cinematically but which on reflection has dynamics worth rejecting. After all, you build your life not so much on absorption but on paring....


Published May 16, 2023
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Ashes of Time (1994)
Filmmaker(s): Wong Kar-wai

Ouyang Feng is a heartbroken and cynical man who spends his days in the desert, connecting expert swordsmen with those seeking revenge and willing to pay for it. Throughout five seasons in exile, Ouyang spins tales of his clients' unrequited loves and unusual acts of bravery.

All Along the Watchtower is one of the three best directors working today. Many feel this is his best work. Surely it is the greatest leap since his previous, but I find the Mood-2046 pair more important, even life-altering. If you come into this expecting a...


Published May 16, 2023
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Threes |
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Amateur (1994)
Accountancy, Murder, Amnesia, Torture, Ecstasy, Understanding, Redemption
Filmmaker(s): Hal Hartley

A man wakes up in an alley, bleeding and with no memory of who he is. He stumbles into a coffee shop and is befriended by a charitable ex-nun who is failing in her attempts to write marketable pornography.

Abstract Porn is one of the most interesting directors working. Many associate him with French auteurs, but I think his experiments are more intellectual, more New York. His films are not only about other films, but exist in a world abstracted from them where almost...


Published March 12, 2023
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Threes |
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Heavenly Creatures (1994)
Not all angels are innocent.
Filmmaker(s): Peter Jackson

Wealthy and precocious teenager Juliet transfers from England to New Zealand with her family, and soon befriends the quiet, brooding Pauline through their shared love of fantasy and literature. When their parents begin to suspect that their increasingly intense and obsessive bond is becoming unhealthy, the girls hatch a dark plan for those who threaten to keep them apart.

The Fourth World of the Third Man the premier concern of modern filmmakers is locating somewhere in the film exactly where the filmmaking process is. This is often incorrectly called irony, self-reference or the odd construction of reflexivity. I call it “folding” and it seems...


Published November 28, 2022
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Art Deco Detective (1994)
Filmmaker(s): Philippe Mora

While investigating the murder of a movie star, a detective finds that he himself is being set up for the crime.

<strong>Scrambled Egg Dialog likely will have already been warned off this amazingly bad production. So many beginner mistakes and production drags will kill your experience. But I have to say that there are two script ideas that are promising. The first is simply that our...


Published October 9, 2022
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Exit to Eden (1994)
To crack this case, these two cops will have to flash more than their badges.
Filmmaker(s): Garry Marshall

Photographer Elliot Slater has inadvertently snapped the only existing photos of elusive jewel thief Omar. When Elliot leaves for a private vacation on an S&M island, he is followed by Omar; Omar's partner, Nina; and police officers Fred and Sheila. Unaware of the number of people chasing him, Elliot enjoys his stay at the resort, and finds himself falling in love with head dominatrix Lisa.

Whipped am particularly attracted to odd genre-crossing experiments that fail. When they work, the reasons why are too tied to the mysteries of perception to tease out. Like explanations of the economy, they are all speculations bound to be bogus. But failures are easier to...


Published May 13, 2022
| Categorised as IMDB Comments, Twos |
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Dansaren (1994)
Filmmaker(s): Donya Feuer

The career of a classical ballet dancer is short and often riddled with injuries, and it takes a special kind of artist to submit to the discipline and strenuous regimen needed to dance with a world-class company. Follows the young and gifted Katja Björner through years of intensive training at the Royal Swedish Ballet School as she develops into an international ballet star.

Balance, Shoes have three impossible challenges. How do you film lovemaking? How do you film dynamics of a group at a table? How do you film dance? This last is particularly interesting from a viewer’s perspective. Because the others are so familiar, you just need a...


Published February 10, 2024
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