All Recommendations
Good Morning
A lighthearted take on director Yasujiro Ozu’s perennial theme of the challenges of intergenerational relationships, Good Morning tells the story of two young boys who stop speaking in protest after their parents refuse to buy a television set. Ozu weaves a wealth of subtle gags through a family portrait as rich as those of his dramatic films, mocking the foibles of the adult world through the eyes of his child protagonists. Shot in stunning color and set in a suburb of Tokyo where housewives gossip about the neighbors’ new washing machine and unemployed husbands look for work as door-to-door salesmen, this charming comedy refashions Ozu’s own silent classic I Was Born, But . . . to gently satirize consumerism in postwar Japan.
Happiness
A young husband and father, perfectly content with his life, falls in love with another woman.
All the Vermeers in New York
A parable of the missteps of life enacted in the hothouse world of late 1980’s New York, in which the art market and the stock market each boomed, and in process spawned a smorgasbord of “yuppie” delusions which still persist. Anna, a French actress studying in New York, crosses paths with a successful stock-broker, Mark, standing before a Vermeer portrait at the Metropolitan, thence ensues a peculiar romance of missed meanings and connections, with tangential asides to the steaming arts world and stock market, loft-mate conflicts, and, perhaps, love. Wrapped up in their blindered worlds, Anna and Mark deflect away from their chances, leaving at the conclusion the wistful face of Vermeer’s portrait enigmatically asking questions. All the Vermeers in New York is a comedy of manners which, as gently as a Vermeer, looks beneath the skin of this time and place, and of these characters.
Unrest
In 1877, in a watch factory in a valley in north-western Switzerland, Josephine produces balance spindles, tiny parts that ensure the agitation movement (“unrueh") of the mechanical watches. She soon grows uneasy with the organisation of work and possession in the village and its factory and joins the anarchist worker movement of the local watchmakers. There she meets Piotr Kropotkin, a moony Russian traveller. The two of them meet at a time when new technologies such as time measurement, photography, and the telegraph are transforming the social order, and anarchist discourse is addressing emerging nationalism. During a walk in the woods, Josephine and Piotr ask themselves whether time, money, and the government are not all but fictions.
Bergman: A Year in a Life
The year 1957 was one of the most prolific for the Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman: he shot two films, released two of his most celebrated films and produced four plays and a TV movie while juggling with a complicated private life.
Oleanna
Carol, a college student, comes to John's office, her professor, to discuss the grade she has received for one of her papers.
Kung Fu Chefs
Ousted chef Wong Bing-Yi is determined to help Shen Qing at her restaurant "Four Seas". He trains a young chef, Lung Kin-Yat to compete against Chef Tin, the head chef at "Imperial Palace", for the title of "Top Chef".
Falsch
Just before twilight, a small plane lands on the runway of a country airport. One passenger disembarks: Joe, the last survivor of a Jewish family, the Falsches. He has an appointment with them all tonight, forty years after leaving Berlin for New York in 1938. The Falsches are all waiting for him in the arrival lounge: those who perished in the concentration camps; those who left with Joe in 1938; and those who returned to Berlin after the war. Lilli, a young German woman, is there too; she is the daughter of a Nazi official, who was the love of Joe's youth, and who died during the bombing of Berlin. For Joe, it is a night of encounters, of celebrations beyond life and death.
Laurence Anyways
The story of an impossible love between a woman named Fred and a transgender woman named Laurence who reveals her inner desire to become her true self.
eXistenZ
A game designer on the run from assassins must play her latest virtual reality creation with a marketing trainee to determine if the game has been damaged.
Mysterious Skin
A teenage hustler and a young man obsessed with alien abductions cross paths, together discovering a horrible, liberating truth.
Persona
A young nurse, Alma, is put in charge of Elisabeth Vogler: an actress who is seemingly healthy in all respects, but will not talk. As they spend time together, Alma speaks to Elisabeth constantly, never receiving any answer.
Perfect Days
Hirayama is content with his life as a toilet cleaner in Tokyo. Outside of his structured routine, he cherishes music on cassette tapes, books, and taking photos of trees. Through unexpected encounters, he reflects on finding beauty in the world.
Extraction
A hardened gun-for-hire's latest mission becomes a soul-searching race to survive when he's sent into Bangladesh to rescue a drug lord's kidnapped son.
Top Gun
For Lieutenant Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell and his friend and co-pilot Nick 'Goose' Bradshaw, being accepted into an elite training school for fighter pilots is a dream come true. But a tragedy, as well as personal demons, will threaten Pete's dreams of becoming an ace pilot.
American Beauty
Lester Burnham, a depressed suburban father in a mid-life crisis, decides to turn his hectic life around after developing an infatuation with his daughter's attractive friend.
Laid to Rest
A young girl wakes up in a casket with a head injury and no memory of her identity. She quickly realizes she was abducted by a serial killer and she must fight to survive.
After Love
Set in the port town of Dover in the South-East of England, Mary Hussain suddenly finds herself a widow following the unexpected death of her husband. A day after the burial, she discovers he has a secret just twenty-one miles across the English Channel in Calais.
Fear of Rain
A teenage girl living with schizophrenia begins to suspect her neighbor has kidnapped a child. Her parents try desperately to help her live a normal life, without exposing their own tragic secrets, and the only person who believes her is Caleb – a boy she isn’t even sure exists.
Joker
During the 1980s, a failed stand-up comedian is driven insane and turns to a life of crime and chaos in Gotham City while becoming an infamous psychopathic crime figure.