After a one-night stand with a military officer, a cabaret singer is imprisoned by the secret police, without ever being informed of her alleged crime. For the next five years, she is subjected to harrowing torture and harassment, which she doggedly withstands in a struggle to maintain her dignity and sanity. Interrogation was banned by the Polish government for being 'inflammatory and dangerous'. Years later director Bugjaski smuggled a copy out of the country where it debuted at Cannes in 1990
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LAST DAYS (2005)
Certification15 Our Rating
Gus Van Sant's latest masterpiece is very much in a similar vein to his previous two films (Elephant and Gerry). Meditative, ambivalent and beautifully shot, Last Days is a loose retelling of the Kurt Cobain suicide. The dialogue is made up of mumbled non sequiturs and directionless enquiries. The cinematography, as in Elephant, is a mixture of pristine framing, expert use of natural light and patient static observation. Though the pace of the movie is arguably too testing for some viewers, the
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MIDNIGHT EXPRESS (1978)
Certification18 Our Rating
The frightening story of a naive young American caught smuggling hashish out of Turkey and sentenced to years inside a particularly vicious prison regime. The despair and desolation are brought home brutally. John Hurt is magnificent as the eccentric British prison veteran.
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MURDER IN THE FIRST (1995)
Certification15 Our Rating
Alcatraz, 1938; after 3 years in solitary, a hellish hole in the ground with no heat, light or human contact, petty crook Henri Young emerges as a madman. When he kills another inmate there is only one man - attorney James Stamphill - willing to challenge the barbarity of Alcatraz. Moving and riveting with great performances from all three leads.
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OUT OF THE BLUE (2006)
Certification15 Our Rating
On November 13th 1990 the small New Zealand town of Aramoana was taken hostage by one of its own residents, the angry and embittered David Gray, a socially and emotionally crippled man who felt ostracized and jeered at by those he lived amongst. On that fateful day Gray murdered 13 men, women and children, and was prevented from further slaughter only by the dogged, but ill-prepared, local police. "Out Of The Blue" is a harrowing and powerful observation of events, stunningly filmed with a gritt
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PARADISE LOST 2: REVELATIONS (1996)
Certification15 Our Rating
The follow-up to the astounding ‘Paradise Lost’. More and more, especially forensic, evidence comes to light that the non-existent case against the 3 is just that. Much of the film focuses on the prime alternative suspect, the step-father of one of the murdered children, a dangerously barking Church-going redneck, but the rightwing local state bureaucracy don't want to know, they've already got their man (sorry children). Damien, Jason and Jessie have matured visibly in prison, with Damien perha
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REQUIEM (2006)
Certification12 Our Rating
An epileptic girl suffers a breakdown during her first year at university, and decides to seek help from a priest in battling the troubles associated with her strict upbringing. Based on the tragic true story of Anneliese Michel, a 23-year-old student, who endured an exorcism in Miltenberg, Germany in 1976, Requiem is a powerful and sad dramatisation of a misguided attempt for salvation.
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ROBERTO SUCCO (2001)
Certification15 Our Rating
We start with compulsive liar Roberto picking up a teenage girl in a disco and we follow his affair with her while he carries on robbing and murdering. A powerful adaptation of the real life serial killer that documents more than just his dark achievements but gives a wholly believable insight into the man's damaged world and the chaotic ineptitude of the society upon which he preys. Harsh but utterly hypnotic.
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SERAPHINE (2008)
Certification12 Our Rating
On the eve of WW1 famed German art critic Wilhelm Uhde retreated from the pressures of urban life to stay in a small village just outside Paris. Here he noticed some stunningly vibrant artwork only to discover that it was done by his somewhat cuckoo cleaning lady. Thus began an association that propelled the peasant Seraphine de Senlis to fame as an artist, but not before she'd blown her lid and been permanently incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital.
'Seraphine' deservedly swept the boar
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SHOOTING DOGS (2005)
Certification15 Our Rating
1994, 800,000 killed in 100 days, a Catholic priest and an idealistic young English teacher are caught, both literally and morally, in the midst of the horror. How can they help the thousands of refugees who flee to their school, where the pathetic (Belgian) UN troops are billetted, in the hope of surviving the bloodthirsty Hutu mobs engaged in the wholesale massacre of the Tutsi minority? Like Hotel Rwanda this is a fully engaging and emotionally disturbing account of the horrors that humans ca
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