Mindwalk

Language: English
IMDB Rating: 7.4/ 10

Plot: A US politician (Sam Waterston) visits his poet friend (John Heard) in Mont. St. Michael, France. While walking through the medeival island discussing their philosophies of life they happen upon Sonja (Liv Ullman), a scientist in recluse, who joins in their conversation. The two men listen to the ideas of this brilliant woman and discuss how her ideas can work in their own politician and poet lives (IMDB).

ChungKing Express

Language: Cantonese/ English subtitles
IMDB Rating: 8.0/ 10

Plot: 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 (IMDB).

Bomb the System

Language: English
IMDB Rating: 6.3/ 10

Plot: A tribute to graffiti art and the city where it all began. Blest, a 19-year-old graffiti writer, has just graduated from high school. With no ambition toward mainstream goals of work and family, he spends his time bombing the city with graffiti messages until he and his crew become the most wanted bombers by the corrupt NYPD Vandal Squad. He even attracts major media and gallery attention for his tags. Also part of Blest's crew are Buk 50 and his younger brother Lune, whose arrest and beating by the NYPD causes the crew to wage a full-on graffiti war against the city. As they fight with their spray cans and their tags, Blest meets a political activist, Alexandra. Soon after, Blest's relationship with Buk 50 and the crew fragments as Blest ponders his position in life (IMDB).

Rocket Science

Language: English
IMDB Rating: 6.8/ 10

Plot: Coming of age in Plainsboro, New Jersey. High school student Hal Hefner stutters. On the evening his parents stop arguing and separate, 43 miles away at the state tournament, his school's legendary debater, Ben Wekselbaum, goes blank mid-sentence, Ben's teammate Ginny Ryerson doesn't get a first-place trophy, and the world changes. That fall, to Hal's amazement, Ginny recruits him for the debate team, mentors him, and will be his partner. He still has his stutter, but he works hard and he falls in love with Ginny. On the day of the first debate of the season, the world changes again. From then until the day of the state tournament, Hal has a lot to sort out. Is love rocket science (IMDB)?

Quiet City

Language: English
IMDB Rating: 6.5/ 10

Plot: Jamie is 21. She's from Atlanta. She's come to Brooklyn to visit her friend Samantha, but she can't find her. Jamie tries calling, but Samantha's phone is dead. Jamie meets Charlie when she asks him for directions. Nothing to do and nothing but time leads them to bowls of coleslaw, footraces in the park, art shows, and after parties (IMDB).

Sicko

Language: English
IMDB Rating: 8.4/ 10

Plot:Documentary look at health care in the United States as provided by profit-oriented health maintenance organizations (HMOs) compared to free, universal care in Canada, the U.K., and France. Moore contrasts U.S. media reports on Canadian care with the experiences of Canadians in hospitals and clinics there. He interviews patients and doctors in the U.K. about cost, quality, and salaries. He examines why Nixon promoted HMOs in 1971, and why the Clintons' reform effort failed in the 1990s. He talks to U.S. ex-pats in Paris about French services, and he takes three 9/11 clean-up volunteers, who developed respiratory problems, to Cuba for care. He asks of Americans, "Who are we?" (IMDB).

Roshomon

Akira Kurosawa's Roshomon (1950) is considered to be one of the best movies ever made. It certainly is a historic masterpiece, produced with both philosophical and psychological overtones.

Plot: In 12th century Japan, a samurai and his wife are attacked by the notorious bandit Tajomaru, and the samurai ends up dead. Tajomaru is captured shortly afterward and is put on trial, but his story and the wife's are so completely different that a psychic is brought in to allow the murdered man to give his own testimony. He tells yet another completely different story. Finally, a woodcutter who found the body reveals that he saw the whole thing, and his version is again completely different from the others.

Smoking Aces

Language: English/ Dutch subtitles
IMDB Rating: 6.6/ 10

Plot: Mob boss Primo Sparazza has taken out a hefty contract on Buddy "Aces" Israel, a sleazy magician who has agreed to turn state's evidence against the Vegas mob. The FBI, sensing a chance to use this small-time con to bring down big-target Sparazza, places Aces into protective custody-under the supervision of two agents dispatched to Aces' Lake Tahoe hideout. When the word of the price on Aces' head spreads into the community of ex-cons and cons-to-be, it entices bounty hunters, thugs-for-hire, deadly vixens and double-crossing mobsters to join in the hunt. With all eyes on Tahoe, this rogues' gallery collides in a comic race to hit the jackpot and rub out Aces (IMDB).

Part I

Part II

Genesis

Language: French (though little text)

IMDB Rating: 6.9/ 10

Plot: This film boldly undertakes to tell the story of life from the Big Bang to the variety of species that we know today. And the history lesson becomes a fairy tale.

Genesis asks that you leave aside everything you know about yourself, and think of your body as the substance that makes up the universe, your life as the energy that sparkled up the Big Bang, your projects as a shape, a limited space of organized chaos, resisting the deterioration of time.

The film is breath-taking and captivating from the opening sequence to the last shot. Every image of the film is carefully selected and placed in a sequence: swirling dirt becomes a galaxy; rings of water float on the sound of the mating dance. The technological prowess of the filming is staggering, but does not surpass the ingenuity of the editing, and camera movements: shot in his apparent loneliness, the insect looks like a genius, solving obstacles one after the other. Human meaning is attached to all images shown, from the fish pretending to be daydreaming while baiting its prey, to the crawling crab signaling to a rival. The story of the earth is told by the reality of those jungles and tropical beaches, that we know so little about: swimming frogs start to hop; the giant tortoise becomes a dinosaur (IMDB).

Baraka

Language: None
IMDB Rating: 8/ 10

Plot: Without words, cameras show us the world, with an emphasis not on "where," but on "what's there." It begins with morning, natural landscapes and people at prayer: volcanoes, water falls, veldts, and forests; several hundred monks do a monkey chant. Indigenous peoples apply body paint; whole villages dance. The film moves to destruction of nature via logging, blasting, and strip mining. Images of poverty, rapid urban life, and factories give way to war, concentration camps, and mass graves. Ancient ruins come into view, and then a sacred river where pilgrims bathe and funeral pyres burn. Prayer and nature return. A monk rings a huge bell; stars wheel across the sky (IMDB).

Terror Storm

Language: English/ Danish subtitles
IMDB Rating: 8.1/ 10

Plot: Throughout history, criminal elements inside governments have carried out terror attacks against their own populations as a pretext to enslave them. TerrorStorm reveals how, in the last hundred years, Western leaders have repeatedly murdered their own citizens while posing as their saviors.

Zabriskie Point

Language: English
IMDB rating: 6.8/ 10

Plot: An epic portrait of late Sixties America, as seen through the portrayal of two of its children: anthropology student Daria (who's helping a property developer build a village in the Los Angeles desert) and dropout Mark (who's wanted by the authorities for allegedly killing a policeman during a student riot) (IMDB).

Monty Python's And Now For Something Completely Different

Language: English

IMDB Rating: 7.5/ 10

Plot: A collection of re-filmed sketches from the first and second series of the cult TV comedy show "Monty Python's Flying Circus". Includes such classics as "Nudge, Nudge", "Hell's Grannies", "Killer Cars", "Dead Parrot", "Lumberjack Song", "Blackmail" and "Upper Class Twit of the Year" (IMDB).

American Beauty

"A dark comical masterpiece that single-handedly announces the collapse of the American family infrastructure as it exists on the brink of Y2K (TNT RoughCut)."

"A dynamite comedy-drama that, unless it stiffs big-time at the box office, should be up for multi-Oscar nominations come February" (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)

Language: English
IMDB Rating: 8.6/ 10

Plot:Lester and Carolyn Burnham are on the outside, a perfect husband and wife, in a perfect house, in a perfect neighborhood. But inside, Lester is slipping deeper and deeper into a hopeless depression. He finally snaps when he becomes infatuated with one of his daughter's friends. Meanwhile, his daughter Jane is developing a happy friendship with a shy boy-next-door named Ricky, who lives with a homophobic father (IMDB).

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Super Size Me

Language: English

IMDB rating: 7.6/10

Plot: Why are Americans so fat? Two words: fast food. What would happen if you ate nothing but fast food for an entire month? Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock does just that and embarks on the most perilous journey of his life. The rules? For 30 days he can't eat or drink anything that isn't on McDonald's menu; he must wolf three squares a day; he must consume everything on the menu at least once and supersize his meal if asked. Spurlock treks across the country interviewing a host of experts on fast food and an equal number of regular folk while chowing down at the Golden Arches. Spurlock's grueling drive-through diet spirals him into a physical and emotional metamorphosis that will make you think twice about picking up another Big Mac (IMDB).

Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam

Language: English
IMDB Rating: 7.6/ 10

Plot: Dear America, is most certainly one of the really great war films, and this is because nearly everything is real, all footage and the letters read are real, the only things that aren't authentic are the actors voices, however these are some of Hollywoods finest so believing them to be the actual soldiers, mothers, nurses is easy.

Accompanied by a great soundtrack (has there ever been a Vietnam movie with a bad one) this is one of the most moving and poignent movies you will see, it is through its realness that ones gets a feel of how bad war really is, it is probably one of very few war movies that really makes you fear war, because there is no adventurous sub plot, just some letters from young guys, most of whom just want out (IMDB).

Rocky, Horror, Punk

Language: English
IMDB Rating: 7.0/ 10

Plot:After Janet accepts Brad's marriage proposal, the happy couple drive away from Denton, Ohio, only to get lost in the rain. They stumble upon the castle of Dr. Frank-N-Furter, a transvestite who is holding the annual convention of visitors from the planet Transsexual. Frank-N-Furter unveils his creation, a young man named Rocky Horror, who fears the doctor and rejects his sexual advances. When Frank-N-Furter announces that he is returning to the galaxy Transylvania, Riff Raff the butler and Magenta the maid declare that they have plans of their own. (An audience participation film)(IMDB).

La Teta i la lluna

Post: A child does not stand the idea of having a new brother and dreams about drinking milk from the breasts of his mother again. The child asks the moon to bring him a tit only for him (IMDB).

Language: Catalan/ Spanish/ French - English subtitled
IMDB Rating: 6.6/ 10

Smash Palace

Plot: Al Shaw's life revolves around motor racing and his back country junkyard, the "Smash Palace". His French wife, Jacqui, doesn't appreciate the lack of attention due to Al's obsession with cars. When Al finds her in the arms of another man, he takes his daughter, Georgie and heads for the bush, desperately hoping to hold on to the only family he has left (IMDB).

Language: English
IMDB rating: 7.5/ 10

Les Choristes

Language: French spoken/ English subtitles
Year: 2004
IMDB rating: 7.8/ 10

Plot: Set in 1948, a professor of music, Clement Mathieu, becomes the supervisor at a boarding school for the rehabilitation for minors. What he discovers disconcerts him -- the current situation is repressive. Through the power of song, Clement tries to transform the students (IMDB).

Welcome

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