Doogtooth, the official Greek entry to the 2011 Academy Awards, is nominated for Best Foreign Film. Released in 2009, and directed by Giorgos Lanthimos, Dogtooth is a strikingly original film that captures a world that is at once like nothing you’ve ever seen, but oddly familiar at the same time. The story is about a family of five who live in a beautiful walled villa in Greece. It’s more like a compound because the patriarch (Christos Stergioglou) is the only one who ever gets to venture into the world beyond the tall fences that surround the property. His wife (Michele Valley) and three teenaged children live in a world that at first seems oddly Edenic. The film opens with the children listening to an instructional cassette. They learn that the word “sea” means a leather armchair, “motorway” means a strong wind, and “excursion” means a strong, resilient material. Anything that hints at the world outside the walls of their home is obscured. Even the airplanes that fly in the air are construed to be toys, and when one is spotted, one of the parents will run into the house and through a toy plane out into the garden so the children will believe the lie. The only outsider allowed into the compound is a woman named Christina (Anna Kalaitzidou), a security guard at the father’s place of employment who moonlights as a kind of private prostitute whom the father hires to satisfy his son’s budding sexual urges. Christina is brought to the compound blindfolded, but on the rides to and from the family home, the father tries to engage her in small talk, which amounts to questions about her hygiene, and whether she wears the perfume he has bought her as a gift. Much time is devoted to daily routine of the family. We see the father at work, where he has created yet another elaborate ruse to get out of having his boss over for dinner (he says that his wife, a former handball champion, is confined to a wheel chair – the result of a tragic accident). He’s such a cipher of a man that the boss, along with the children, buys into the lie without a hint of suspicion. Life at home, though, is where the film really shines. We see the kids at play. The eldest child is the son (Hristos Passalis), who looks to be 18 or 19. Two sisters (Angelika Papoulia and Mary Toni) look to be 18 and 17. Though they are on the verge of adulthood, the behavior of the children is more pre-adolescent. There is an innocence about them that is both sad and endearing. The actors playing the kids beautifully capture the behavior and mental territory of young kids that comes through in the games they play and the way they bicker with one another and depend on their parents for all their information about the world – a world they will only be ready to experience when either their left or right dogtooth falls out. What is a dogtooth? Exactly. When the son asks the mother what a zombie is, she asks where he heard the word. He lies and says that he thinks he heard the father say the word. The mother pauses, then tells him a zombie is a small yellow flower. Later, the joke is paid off when the son stops in the middle of his play in the garden and yells for the mother to come and see two zombies he’s found. Tricking children is one thing, but as they grow, certain fantasies and myths that parents create are found out to be lies. Of course, this often happens when our kids come home with conflicting information from the outside world, which is what happens to make the artificial world of the father begin to unravel. Christina, the prostitute, wants oral sex, which the son doesn’t like, so she bribes the oldest daughter into satisfying her by bringing videos, like Rocky and Flashdance, that give the daughter a notion of what goes on in the world her father has taught her to fear. These videos are like the bite from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and even though the father finds out about them and banishes both them and Christina from their lives, the damage has been done. Things will never be the same again. The acting in Dogtooth is beautifully realized. Stergioglou doesn’t play the father as a tyrant, but as a kind, loving, but firm parent, with only the best interests of his family – as he sees them – in mind. This father, despite what happens in the movie, never comes across as a villain, which is to Stergioglou’s great credit. The children, especially Papoulia and Tsoni, capture a prolonged innocence that doesn’t rely on tricks or costuming, but on finely observed performances. What’s weird is that these are very damaged people, but until they are told so or try to live in the outside world, they’re just kids. Because of how perfectly Lanthimos sets up this alternate world, I never once questioned anything that went on there. It all made sense. Dogtooth is a well constructed escape that takes a long, hard look at family and parenting and the choices we sometimes make as parents to both lock out the world and lock in our kids – and the toll those decisions sometimes take. Sometimes sad, sometimes funny, Dogtooth is a film deserving of its nomination – and your attention.
Kristen, a troubled young woman, is captured by the police after burning down a farmhouse and is locked in the North Bend Psychiatric Hospital. Soon, she begins to suspect that the place has a dark secret at its core and she's determined to find out what it is.
Movie Star Rating : 5.8 Read More
Alan and Wendy Barnet have been married just long enough for the excitement to have gone out of their relationship, and they're looking for a way to put some spice back in their lives. After placing a personal ad looking for another couple interested in swapping mates, the Barnets are led to the Zebra Lounge, where they meet Jack and Louise Bauer, a pair of seasoned erotic adventurers. While the Barnets find the swinging scene exciting at first, they soon decide it may be doing more harm than good to their marriage. But easing the Bauers out of their lives proves to be neither simple nor safe.
Movie Star Rating : 3.9 Read More
This film is a series of letters, photos and video cassettes which women often send in to certain newspapers. By visualizing their story-telling (the name given by the psychologists to their fantasies) the film portrays the confessions, the secret longings, the adventures, recollections, dreams, desires and fantasies of these women. It is an open secret that most women dream of forbidden affairs, secret lovers and hasty encounters but when it comes down to it they lack the courage to pursue their dreams.
Movie Star Rating : 5.4 Read More
A hotel room in the center of Rome serves as the setting for Alba and Natasha, two young and recently acquainted women, to have a physical adventure that touches their very souls.
Movie Star Rating : 6.4 Read More
When paleontologist Kate Lloyd travels to an isolated outpost in Antarctica for the expedition of a lifetime, she joins an international team that unearths a remarkable discovery. Their elation quickly turns to fear as they realize that their experiment has freed a mysterious being from its frozen prison. Paranoia spreads like an epidemic as a creature that can mimic anything it touches will pit human against human as it tries to survive and flourish in this spine-tingling thriller.
Movie Star Rating : 6.2 Read More
Three vixens have meditated for 1,000 years to able to shed their animal natures and become human. For the final month of their rigors, they have moved near a village where women pray to a god of fertility. One sister visits the god's temple and thinks lustful thoughts. As she leaves, a priest confronts her, warning of dire consequences and of demons that will try to stop the vixens' transformation. Soon, the youngest sister saves a poor scholar from bandits and becomes enamored of him. Each sister visits him, and before long, the youth has made love to all three. After they invite him to stay with them, the playfulness takes a scary turn. Where can they turn for help?
Movie Star Rating : 5.5 Read More
French drama based on the 1996 kidnapping and killing of seven monks in Algeria. A group of Trappist monks reside in the monastery of Tibhirine in Algeria, where they live in harmony with the largely muslim population. When a bloody conflict between Algeria's army and Muslim Jihadi insurgents disrupts the peace, they are forced to consider fleeing the monastery and deserting the villagers they have ministered to. In the face of deadly violence the monks wrestle with their faith and their convictions, eventually deciding to stay and help their neighbours keep the army and the insurgents at bay.
Movie Star Rating : 6.6 Read More
Three episodes. In the first episode Valerio is mistaken for a notorious criminal. Very beautiful journalists succeed to bring him to her house for an exclusive interview. She tries to seduce him. In the second episode Giuseppe, an unlucky and ugly man, gets a job as a maid. His mistress falls in love for him. In the third episode, Plinio is a taxi driver who loves his cab above all. But at one point he is involved with the kidnapping of a woman.
Movie Star Rating : 5.8 Read More
Based on a shocking true story, Killer Elite pits two of the world’s most elite operatives—Danny, an ex-special ops agent and Hunter, his longtime mentor—against the cunning leader of a secret military society. Covering the globe from Australia to Paris, London and the Middle East, Danny and Hunter are plunged into a highly dangerous game of cat and mouse—where the predators become the prey.
Movie Star Rating : 6.3 Read More
Following the death of District Attorney Harvey Dent, Batman assumes responsibility for Dent's crimes to protect the late attorney's reputation and is subsequently hunted by the Gotham City Police Department. Eight years later, Batman encounters the mysterious Selina Kyle and the villainous Bane, a new terrorist leader who overwhelms Gotham's finest. The Dark Knight resurfaces to protect a city that has branded him an enemy.
Movie Star Rating : 7.8 Read More
A restaurant owner leads a double life.
Movie Star Rating : 5.8 Read More
Stowaway 2022 - Movies (Feb 6th)
For All Humankind 2023 - Movies (Feb 5th)
Knock at the Cabin 2023 - Movies (Feb 5th)
Gwen Shamblin Starving for Salvation 2023 - Movies (Feb 5th)
Signs of Love 2022 - Movies (Feb 5th)
Rob Beckett Wallop 2022 - Movies (Feb 5th)
Strange World 2022 - Movies (Feb 5th)
Little Dixie 2023 - Movies (Feb 5th)
Alan Partridge - Stratagem 2023 - Movies (Feb 4th)
Baby Ruby 2022 - Movies (Feb 4th)
Secrets In the Marriage 2023 - Movies (Feb 4th)
Condors Nest 2023 - Movies (Feb 4th)
The Locksmith 2023 - Movies (Feb 4th)
First Blood 2022 - Movies (Feb 4th)
Crimson Point 2022 - Movies (Feb 3rd)
Taurus 2022 - Movies (Feb 3rd)
Mindcage 2022 - Movies (Feb 3rd)
True Spirit 2023 - Movies (Feb 3rd)
Stromboli 2022 - Movies (Feb 3rd)
Stand 2023 - Movies (Feb 3rd)
Clean 2022 - Movies (Feb 3rd)
Family Karma - (Feb 6th)
The Real Housewives of Potomac - (Feb 6th)
YOLO - (Feb 6th)
60 Minutes - (Feb 6th)
The Warship- Tour of Duty - (Feb 6th)
The Last of Us - (Feb 6th)
Murf the Surf- Jewels, Jesus, and Mayhem in the USA - (Feb 6th)
22 Kids and Counting - (Feb 6th)
Dancing on Ice - (Feb 6th)
The Cruise - (Feb 6th)
Love Island- Aftersun - (Feb 6th)
Love Island - (Feb 6th)
The Great Pottery Throw Down - (Feb 6th)
Match of the Day 2 - (Feb 5th)
Vera - (Feb 5th)
All 4 Adventure - (Feb 5th)
MILF Manor - (Feb 5th)
Happy Valley - (Feb 5th)
Magic of Disneys Animal Kingdom - (Feb 5th)
Call the Midwife - (Feb 5th)