Vuelve 2013 1080p

Vuelve 2013 1080p
1h 28min | Thriller |
Storyline:
A visual incursion into the troubles psyche of a young boy whose unstable and manipulative mother committed suicide in front of him.
User review:

Another masterpiece from the amazing writer/director etc. Iván Noel. Wonderfully yet beautifully written and filmed. After viewing Ivan's other films Brecha, En tu ausencia, and ¡Primaria! I fell in love with his work. His films are so astonishing and written to a point that you'll watch them non-stop. Tremendous characters, story, and above all tremendous picture and actors.
Vuelve is a Fascinating tale some dramatic events and some special moments, but very full of emotion and intense moments. Renzo Sabelli, the bright young boy actor who starred as Gabriel brought on a beautiful yet joyful performance. It was amazing discovering a new boy actor like himself on screen he did fabulous job.
Director: Iván Noel
Writer: Iván Noel
Stars: Juan Carrasco, Romina Pinto, Renzo Sabelli

A Little Closer 2011

A Little Closer 2011
1h 12min | Drama , Romance | 25 July 2012 (France)
Storyline:
In the forgotten corners of rural Virginia, Sheryl struggles to balance her work as a housekeeper and raising her two sons, fifteen year-old Marc and eleven year-old Stephen. Hoping to meet the love of her life and bring home a father for her boys, she frequents a depressing, weekly mixer for the towns aging singles set. Meanwhile, Marc is desperate to lose his virginity, and spends his days working at a used car lot. And his brother Stephen, in the throes of sexual discovery, becomes infatuated with his school teacher while hoping to win the approval of a group of peers who adamantly detest her.
User review:
The movie is a little rural drama, which focuses on Sheryl, a single mother, and her two teenage sons, Marc and Stephen. They love each other and are apparently happy, but they are too terribly bored with the lack of what to do.
The action is quite rarefied. Marc tries to convince his girlfriend to have sex, Sheryl goes to parties to seek company, and Stephen goes out with friends to break abandoned cars.

Une saison dans la vie d’Emmanuel 1973

Une saison dans la vie d'Emmanuel 1973
1h 37min | Drama | 1973
Storyline:
A Season in the Life of Emmanuel, a newborn who witnesses the drastic changes a French family experiences in a brief period of time.
User review:
French Canadian arthouse at its most pointlessly miserable. This tells the tale of an extended poor and miserable family with 16 kids led by a miserable matriarch grandmother who blames everyone for everything. One kid is an intellectual poet seemingly inspired by Rimbaud whose world goes out of control, there is incest and homosexuality, a girl with mystical aspirations abused by nuns who then finds herself suddenly working as a prostitute, there's suicide, boorish angry illiteracy, a homosexual abusive pervert caregiver in charge of the young boys, death, arson, accidental mutilation, abusive religion, juvenile jail, and other pointless acts of misery and violence. All of this is told in an unusually poetic, artistic and non-linear cinematic style peppered with provocative, wild and deranged poetry as well as surreal imagery during a death scene that make the movie only a little more interesting than it really is
Director: Claude Weisz
Writers: Marie-Claire Blais (novel), Claude Weisz (adaptation)
Stars: Germaine Montero, Claude Richard, Hélène Darche
Country: France
Language: French

Ellos Volvieron 2015

Ellos Volvieron 2015
1h 34min | Crime , Drama , Horror | 1 January 2015 (Argentina)
Storyline:
They Returned is a beautifully touching and unnerving story about the unexplained disappearance of three children, two boys and one girl, and their reappearance three days later in a semi-autistic state. Not even the children themselves are able to help anyone understand what happened. No clues or signs are left, other than the fact that, as we discover later, two of them were mutilated. As the police carry out their investigation, and the town slowly sinks into a deep state of suspiciousness, small community of children – classroom colleagues of the missing three – run their own parallel search. Only one person is a potential suspect: the children's own classroom teacher, recently arrived from another town. He does not help his case when he attempts to make the school psychologist understand that the children were in fact murdered.
User review:
This is the sixth movie by fearless director Ivan Noel, and the most extreme. In each of his movies, Ivan explores deeply adult themes from a child's perspective. In En Tu Ausencia, he examined the idea of emotional need, set against the background of a boy's burgeoning sexuality. In Vuelve, he considered the idea of unhealthy emotional co-dependency between mother and son, and of stifling jealousy. In this movie, he explores the way that sins of the past can ripple down to the present.
I really wanted to like this movie more than I did, but I felt it was laboured, tried faaar too hard to be meaningful, and went out of its way to clutter the terrain with pointless red herrings.

Le silence des eglises 2013

Le silence des eglises 2013
1h 40min | Drama | TV Movie 10 April 2013
User review:
After the pope's apologies ,this made-for-TV work could not have come at a better time.
In his car,a young man (Robinson Stevenin) hears a church choir he was formerly part of ,and it brings back memories,harrowing memories;when he was about 12 ,he had an angel voice which helped him join a secondary school where the elite studies ;the principal was a pleasant middle age man who fell in love with the boy and abused him.
The story features numerous flashbacks ,which depicts the relationship with a great sense of decency ,from a "pure friendship" to "sexual relations".Robin Renucci gives a superlative performance of a nice-looking priest ,all-smile,who passes for a saint to some parents' eyes. In an interview he insists he did not want to portray his character as a monster but as a priest committed to his work;the way he seduces (and in a way blackmails)his victim is terrifying ("it will be our secret ,only God will know; you should not betray me,remember what Judas Iscariote did to our Lord;our love is sacred ").Mister Renucci gives a subdued performance,but a very effective one:even a smile or a look can be scary.Robinson Stevenin,playing opposite such a veteran ,manages quite well in his portrayal of a young man whose past comes back to haunt him :we feel his shame when he confesses:" I took pleasure when he fondled me".Anyway ,he was not the priest's first victim and one of the boys took his own life at 12.The movie insists that the bishop (who knew about his priest's tendencies)is also responsible for these horrors;hence the title "the silence of the churches".
A must-see.
Director: Edwin Baily
Writer: Thierry Debroux
Stars: Robin Renucci, Robinson Stévenin, Matilda Ancora

Élève libre 2008

Élève libre 2008
1h 45min | Drama | 21 January 2009 (Belgium)
Storyline:
An aspiring tennis player is taken under the wing of an established player as his family life falls apart.
User review:
It is said (and I have noted to be true) that people see in other people, in works of Art etc. or anything subjective, what THEY actually are. They project their own being, or shortcomings or fears or hidden secrets. That the author of the review below attack this sensitive film is such a disproportionately virulent (and plainly erroneous) way has said much more about him as a person than he probably intended to express. And to call a 17 year-old a 'child' (and who is in his full legal right to consent to any relationship he wishes to pursue, protected by the law itself) is so absurd as to suggest the author had a North American education. To see rape, to see perverted seduction in what is most obviously all but that, would be an alarm calm for anyone reading his review on this subtle film. What is sure is that with such a serious imbalance within him to feel the need to explode in this way, I would make sure no one below 18 walk near him. We have many recent examples of those who shouted far above the rest, and ended up being caught with their pants down, and I don't mean figuratively. His review reads like an open book of serious personal issues, as yet unresolved, and if his review serves any purpose it would be to help him seek assistance. More to do with the film now; it is of course slow and bleak like many European films, but like many European films dare to recount real life, real subtleties, real complexities of relationships that much cinema avoids – and that many like the author mentioned above would like to push so deep into (their subconscious) perversion as to …create a perversion in itself, quite aside from the what the filmmaker made. It somehow makes them feel they have crushed their demon for a while – little to do with a review.
Director: Joachim Lafosse
Writers: Joachim Lafosse (screenplay), François Pirot (screenplay)
Stars: Jonas Bloquet, Jonathan Zaccaï, Claire Bodson

Vermist: Season 4, Episode 6: Jona

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Concrete Night 2013

Concrete Night 2013
Betoniyö (original title)
1h 36min | Drama | 1 November 2013 (Finland)
Storyline:
Concrete Night opens in a cramped, concrete-jungle home. The elder of the two brothers is getting ready to go and serve his prison sentence. During his last 24 hours of freedom, his little brother follows the brother he admires through the fateful sights of that night.
User review:
Even that I'm a big fan of unknown movies, this one couldn't convince me at all. This story about two brothers and their mother living in a city somewhere. One committed a crime and has to pay for it. The younger brother soon to be left alone with their mother, who lives in some sort of fantasy and has a drinking problem. The younger brother coming of age and wanting to have his brother's approval.
The biggest problem I had with this movie is the way the director wanted to make it look sad. The black and white filming, the sad buildings where they live, skies being dark all the time, sparse lighting at night. The lighting coming from aside instead of from above. A rabbit walking on the city streets at night. A toad being near one of the characters. Water or rain falling down nice visible in the light, like in slow motion. Very little talk. It was all too much for me. The story could have been told in a other way, making the same points.

Cuatro lunas 2014

Cuatro lunas 2014
1h 50min | Drama , Romance | 12 February 2015 (Mexico)
Storyline:
Four stories about love and self-acceptance: An eleven year-old boy struggles to keep secret the attraction he feels towards his male cousin. Two former childhood friends reunite and start a relationship that gets complicated due to one of them's fear of getting caught. A gay long lasting relationship is in jeopardy when a third man comes along. An old family man is obsessed with a young male prostitute and tries to raise the money to afford the experience.
User review:
We are treated to four different yet interwoven stories; the common denominator being that they deal with being gay and gay relationships.
In one story we meet an elderly closeted gay poet, Joaquín (Alonso Echánove); he is married, with a seemingly happy wife and daughters. He is smitten by a young male prostitute, Gilberto (Alejandro Belmonte) he meets in a bath-house.

Teenagers 2009

Teenagers 2009
Drama | 1 May 2009 (France)
Storyline:
The story of Lucas and how he helps others as an angel. This is an innovative, educational drama that resembles a documentary.
User review:
The plot, as the title suggests, revolves around the teenage experiences of Lucas and his acquaintances. The avant-garde manner of conveying those experiences to the audience may appeal to some cinema-goers. Personally, while appreciating the good intentions of the story — the morale lessons it tries to teach – I felt boredom, confusion, and a general lack of involvement with the characters on screen and their fate (however dramatic that turned out to be).
Director: Paul Verhoeven
Writer: Paul de Métairy (script)
Stars: Cyril Butaeye, Robert Castel, Alexis Clau
Country: France
Language: French
Release Date: 1 May 2016 (France)

Före stormen 2000

Före stormen 2000
1h 46min | Crime , Drama | 22 September 2000 (Sweden)
Storyline:
This is a story of a disturbed normal life. In other words, it is a story that fear transforms the lives of the characters almost to destroy them. Ali is a man who comes from the Middle East. Lives in Sweden, is a taxi driver and has two daughters. Leo is an unassuming boy classmate of one of his daughters. Both will live in parallel a descent into hell when fear is installed in their lives and consumes them from within. In the case of Ali, through a message that sends memories to a distant past as a terrorist he thought he had finally escaped; in the case of Leo, when a series of unfortunate coincidences lead him to shoot another boy who constantly torments him. Both characters have to face their fears or succumb to it.
User review:
This film is truly a piece of art. The acting is superb. Especially I want to mention the young actors Emil Odepark (Leo, the outsider teenager) and Martin Wallström (Danne, the school bully). They both provide a lot to the heart and soul of the story. The message of the movie deals with choices we are forced to make in life, especially when all alternatives we have are bad, and the consequences we have to live with after the choices are made. This sounds very "deep", and indeed the storyline has several bottoms. Many questions are asked, and very few are answered. This movie makes you think.
In spite of the heavy subjects and the intellectual challenges, this film is never boring. In fact, I found it exciting from the first frame to the last. I can recommend this one to anyone who wants to see an exciting, well played, and well directed thriller that features more than good versus evil, hero versus villain. There are no heroes, and no villains, in this film.