

An Iranian couple from the city drive around a remote mountainous region. They hand out bags of money to poor villagers in return for them carrying out unusual requests the couple make of them.


An Iranian couple from the city drive around a remote mountainous region. They hand out bags of money to poor villagers in return for them carrying out unusual requests the couple make of them.
2013-01-02
6.4
6.3A man in his mid-20s, still living at home with his mother and stepfather, puts all his eggs in one basket: the girl who works at his local coffee shop. The problem is, she has a serious boyfriend. As they become closer, the line between friendship and intimacy is blurred, and the situation forces both to examine where they are in their lives.
6.5When a self-destructive teenager is suspended from school and asked to look after his feisty alcoholic grandmother as a punishment, the crazy time they spend together turns his life around.
6.4An improv group deals with several crises, including the loss of their lease and one member hitting the big time.
7.5Thomas is a meek man on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Despite his situation he decides to fake a work trip to go to Vallarta to confront Jero, a taxi driver who is sleeping with his wife.
6.2A group of suburban teenagers try to support each other through the difficult task of becoming adults.
6.2A wheelchair-bound singer and her best friend embark on a roadtrip to Memphis.
6.1Frank Farrelli takes on the job as a middle man in the God-forsaken town of Karmack, USA, a community in a depression so deep that they need a middle man to professionally communicate more of the bad news.
6.8The film tells futurist, architect, and inventor R. Buckminster Fuller's incredible story through two teens hoping to get laid, become punk gods, and survive high school.
6.9When the denizens of Littlehampton – including conservative Edith – begin receiving letters full of hilarious profanities, rowdy Irish migrant Rose is charged with the crime. Suspecting something amiss, the town's women band together to investigate.
6.6Comedians and writers Steve Martin and Martin Short perform a live comedy set with music by The Steep Canyon Rangers and jazz pianist, Jeff Babko, at the Peace Center in Greenville, South Carolina.
6.1A teenager living with her sister and parents in Manhattan during the 1990s discovers that her father is having an affair.
6.2Jon Katz is close to burnout. He's a writer with writer's block; his wife has left for her sister's because he's emotionally distant; he rarely answers his phone. A kennel sends him a border collie that's undisciplined because of abuse. Despite a series of mishaps, Jon decides to keep trying with the dog, and he rents a dilapidated farm house to give the dog room to run. A local handyman refers Jon to a woman who might be able to help him train the dog. Reluctantly, Jon gives her a try. Is the dog the problem, or the owner?
7.1A burned-out paramedic tries to survive his last 24 hours on the job while training a new recruit.
6.3Bailey and Darla embark upon a misguided and mutually deceitful form of therapy, one in which they must drive across the country, re-enacting Darla's colorful history as a sex addict. As their true motivations for the road trip come to light, the unlikely pair force one another to confront their issues, discovering that there might actually be more to love than just sex.
6.1A two-bit promoter tries to take a women's wrestling team to the top.
6.7An aspiring young filmmaker gets involved with an eccentric gangster for the financing of his first film.
6.6When an upwardly mobile couple find themselves unemployed and in debt, they turn to armed robbery in desperation.
6.3A 16-year-old girl takes her parents hostage after they miss her big jump-roping competition.
7.8Brian Cohen is an average young Jewish man, but through a series of ridiculous events, he gains a reputation as the Messiah. When he's not dodging his followers or being scolded by his shrill mother, the hapless Brian has to contend with the pompous Pontius Pilate and acronym-obsessed members of a separatist movement. Rife with Monty Python's signature absurdity, the tale finds Brian's life paralleling Biblical lore, albeit with many more laughs.
7.4In this riot of frantic disguises and mistaken identities, Victor Pivert, a blustering, bigoted French factory owner, finds himself taken hostage by Slimane, an Arab rebel leader. The two dress up as rabbis as they try to elude not only assasins from Slimane's country, but also the police, who think Pivert is a murderer. Pivert ends up posing as Rabbi Jacob, a beloved figure who's returned to France for his first visit after 30 years in the United States. Adding to the confusion are Pivert's dentist-wife, who thinks her husband is leaving her for another woman, their daughter, who's about to get married, and a Parisian neighborhood filled with people eager to celebrate the return of Rabbi Jacob.
7.3The story is about the world of a small family with familiar dreams and not so remarkable problems. The mother is trying to lead everything to save her family, but small events disarrange all her plans.
7.5This Surrealist film, with a title referencing the Communist Manifesto, strings together short incidents based on the life of director Luis Buñuel. Presented as chance encounters, these loosely related, intersecting situations, all without a consistent protagonist, reach from the 19th century to the 1970s. Touching briefly on subjects such as execution, pedophilia, incest, and sex, the film features an array of characters, including a sick father and incompetent police officers.
7.1In the Swedish city of Lethe, people from different walks of life take part in a series of short, deadpan vignettes that rush past. Some are just seconds long, none longer than a couple of minutes. A young woman remembers a fantasy honeymoon with a rock guitarist. A man awakes from a dream about bomber planes. A businessman boasts about success while being robbed by a pickpocket, and so on. The absurdist collection is accompanied by Dixieland jazz and similar music.
6.0The renovation of a rambling family homestead becomes a metaphor for an unexpected assault on traditional family values when a newly married twenty-something brings her architect husband to draw up the plans for her aunt and uncle’s rehab job.
6.7Two whimsical, aimless thugs harass and assault women, steal, murder, and alternately charm, fight, or sprint their way out of trouble. They take whatever the bourgeoisie holds dear, whether it’s cars, peace of mind, or daughters. Marie-Ange, a jaded, passive hairdresser, joins them as lover, cook, and mother confessor. She’s on her own search for seemingly unattainable sexual pleasure.
7.3An ex-fighter pilot forced to take over the controls of an airliner when the flight crew succumbs to food poisoning.
6.1A faulty computer causes a passenger space shuttle to head straight for the sun, and man-with-a-past Ted Striker must save the day and get the shuttle back on track – again – all the while trying to patch up his relationship with Elaine.
7.7A small-time hustler makes a deal with a notorious gangster to whom he owes money: marry his teenage son to the latter's daughter. However, the young lovers are not as agreeable.
6.0A group of scientists are sent on a mission to destroy unstable planets. Twenty years into their mission, they have to battle their alien mascot as well as a "sensitive" and intelligent bombing device that starts to question the meaning of its existence.
7.8King Arthur, accompanied by his squire, recruits his Knights of the Round Table, including Sir Bedevere the Wise, Sir Lancelot the Brave, Sir Robin the Not-Quite-So-Brave-As-Sir-Lancelot and Sir Galahad the Pure. On the way, Arthur battles the Black Knight who, despite having had all his limbs chopped off, insists he can still fight. They reach Camelot, but Arthur decides not to enter, as "it is a silly place".
7.3Life's questions are 'answered' in a series of outrageous vignettes, beginning with a staid London insurance company which transforms before our eyes into a pirate ship. Then there's the National Health doctors who try to claim a healthy liver from a still-living donor. The world's most voracious glutton brings the art of vomiting to new heights before his spectacular demise.
7.5In Luis Buñuel’s deliciously satiric masterpiece, an upper-class sextet sits down to dinner but never eats, their attempts continually thwarted by a vaudevillian mixture of events both actual and imagined.
THE BRIGHT DAY weaves a story that has its roots in the complexity of Iran’s draconian laws governing capital punishment. A kindergarten teacher hopes to aid the father of one of her young students, a man accused of manslaughter, by convincing each of seven reluctant witnesses to come forward. No one lacks a hidden agenda in this drama in which shades of truth collide with self-interest and the specter of payback. (Gene Siskel Film Center)
5.9Centered on a television station which features a 1950s-style sci-fi movie interspersed with a series of wild commercials, wacky shorts and weird specials, this lampoon of contemporary life and pop culture skewers some of the silliest spectacles ever created in the name of entertainment.
6.9Miles Monroe, a clarinet-playing health food store proprietor, is revived out of cryostasis 200 years into a future world in order to help rebels fight an oppressive government regime.
6.5A collection of seven vignettes, which each address a question concerning human sexuality. From aphrodisiacs to sexual perversion to the mystery of the male orgasm, characters like a court jester, a doctor, a queen and a journalist adventure through lab experiments and game shows, all seeking answers to common questions that many would never ask.
7.5It's the 1940s, and the notorious Axe Gang terrorizes Shanghai. Small-time criminals Sing and Bone hope to join, but they only manage to make lots of very dangerous enemies. Fortunately for them, kung fu masters and hidden strength can be found in unlikely places. Now they just have to take on the entire Axe Gang.
6.7The film is a day in the life of a young artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat, who needs to raise money to reclaim the apartment from which he has been evicted. He wanders the downtown streets carrying a painting he hopes to sell, encountering friends, whose lives (and performances) we peek into.