griggs's - September 2024 Leftovers List

Another Year is a touching story which follows happily-married couple Tom and Gerri and their friends and family over four seasons. Featuring love and warmth, joy and sadness, hope and despair, companionship and loneliness, a birth and a death...

Show moreShow less

Lionel (Alex Descas), a widower, had lived in easy domesticity with his daughter, but realises the time has come for her to find her own life and leave home. From this simple premise Denis weaves a magical and moving piece of cinema that deals with large subjects with the lightest of touches.

PLEASE NOTE THAT SUBTITLES NEED TO TURNED OFF IN THE DVD MENU IN ORDER TO WORK. THIS IS DUE THE PUBLISHERS ERROR

Show moreShow less

Johan is the head of a family in a Mennonite community in northern Mexico.

However, he goes against the law of both God and men by falling in love with another woman and, although he is honest with his wife about the affair, his actions create conflict in their otherwise serine and tranquil existence.

Show moreShow less

One of the most critically acclaimed films of the year, 'Tabu' is a diptych starting off in present day Lisbon where Teresa Madruga gives a luminous performance as Pilar, a woman concerned about her neighbour Aurora's eccentricities. Finally Pilar meets Gian Luca, a figure from Aurora's past.

He starts his story and the film jumps back in time to colonial Africa, where he and Aurora had a passionate love-affair. This second part is made as a quasi-silent film, with no dialogue, just music and voice-over. Former film critic Miguel Gomes both uses and slyly comments on all the techniques of cinema to make a truly virtuoso film. With a soundtrack that ranges from Lisztian piano music to cover versions of Phil Spector. 'Tabu' is just a delight. Not to mention the sad and melancholy crocodile...

Show moreShow less

In the latest film from the director of the Cannes Palme d'Or winning 'Uncle Boonmee who can Recall his Past Lines', soldiers with a mysterious sleeping sickness are transferred to a temporary clinic in a former school.

The memory-filled space becomes a revelatory world for volunteer Jenjira, as she watches over Itt, a handsome soldier with no family visitors. Jen befriends Keng who uses her psychic powers to help loved ones communicate with the comatose men. Doctors explore ways, including coloured light therapy, to ease the mens' troubled dreams.There may be a connection between the soldiers' enigmatic syndrome and the mythic ancient site that lies beneath the clinic. Magic, healing, romance and dreams are all part of Jen's tender path to a deeper awareness of herself and the world around her.

Show moreShow less

Nocturnal and steeped in sinister chiaroscuro, award-winning director Pedro Costa's latest film follows Ventura, the enigmatic lead of Costa's earlier groundbreaking Colossal Youth, as he traverses a seemingly endless night populated by the ghosts of his past.

From the restless spirits that haunt this decaying urban landscape, Costa conjures a spellbinding cinematic experience. Featured in many Top 5 Films of the Year lists worldwide, Horse Money is a hauntingly beautiful contemplation of Portugal's tumultuous past and uncertain future from a true poet of contemporary European cinema.

Show moreShow less

This playful, profound, and immensely moving docu-fantasia by Kirsten Johnson is a valentine to the director's beloved father, Dick Johnson, made as she is beginning to face the reality of losing him to dementia.

Using the language of cinema both to defy death and to confront it head-on, Johnson mischievously envisions an array of ways in which the man she loves most in the world might die, staging a series of alternately darkly comic and colorfully imaginative tableaux interwoven with raw verite footage capturing the pair's tender but increasingly fragile bond. Tackling taboo questions of aging, mortality, and grief with subversive humor and surprising grace, 'Dick Johnson Is Dead' is ultimately a triumphant celebration of life, and of the gentle, funny, unforgettable man at its center. Long live Dick Johnson.

Show moreShow less

Two best friends who grew up together in an orphanage are emotionally reunited after years apart. Voichita has taken religious orders while Alina wants them to both relocate to a new life of freedom in Germany.

While staying together in Voichita's remote and austere nunnery their relationship and sexuality begin to tear apart the tight-knit fabric of the sect, resulting in a terrifying act that would send a shockwave through the church.

Show moreShow less

Zhenya (Maryana Spivak) and Boris (Aleksey Rozin) are going through a vicious divorce marked by resentment, frustration and recriminations.

Already embarking on new lives, each with a new partner, they are impatient to start again, to turn the page - even if it means threatening to abandon their 12-year-old son Alyosha (Matvey Novikov). Until, after witnessing one of their fights, Alyosha disappears.

Show moreShow less

The film that took last year's Cannes by surprise. Le Quattro Volte explores the cycles of life in a wordless portrait of a Calabrian village that progresses through life-forms from man to animals (goats and a star turn from a dog) to a tree.

It works both as a simple celebration of nature and as an exploration of our place in the world, and an extraordinary piece of pure and often very funny cinema.

Show moreShow less

Cyril (Thomas Doret), almost 12, has only one plan: to find the father (Jeremie Renier) who left him temporarily in a children's home. By chance he meets Samantha (Cecile De France), who runs a hairdressing salon and agrees to let him stay with her at weekends.

Cyril doesn't recognize the love Samantha feels for him, a love he desperately needs to calm his rage.

Show moreShow less

Inspired by four shocking (and true) events in modern-day capitalist China, 'A Touch of Sin' focuses on four people, living in four different provinces, who are driven to violent ends. An angry miner, enraged by the corruption of his village, decides to take justice into his own hands.

A rootless migrant discovers the infinite possibilities of owning a firearm; a receptionist working at a local sauna is pushed to the limit by a wealthy client; and a young factory worker goes from one discouraging job to the next, only to face increasingly degrading circumstances.

Show moreShow less

Multi-award-winning and hailed as one of the finest films of recent years, Pedro Costa's exquisite 'Vitalina Varela' follows the titular Vitalina, a woman left behind in Cape Verde when her husband leaves to find work in Portugal.

Years later, she finally makes the journey to Lisbon herself but arrives three days after his funeral. Alone and isolated in her late husband's home, Vitalina is determined to persevere and confront the ghosts of the past. Haunting, strikingly visualised and marked by a towering central performance, 'Vitalina Varela' is an unforgettable modern masterwork.

Show moreShow less

Modern-day Cornish fisherman Martin (Edward Rowe) is struggling to buy a boat while coping with family rivalry and the influx of London money, Airbnb and stag parties to his harbour village.

The summer season brings simmering tensions between the locals and newcomers to boiling point, with tragic consequences.

Show moreShow less

This clandestine documentary, shot partially on an iPhone and smuggled into France in a cake for a last-minute submission to Cannes, depicts the day-to-day life of acclaimed director Jafar Panahi.

While appealing his sentence - six years in prison and a 20 year ban from filmmaking - Panahi is seen talking to his family and lawyer on the phone, discussing his plight with Mirtahmasb and reflecting on the meaning of the art of filmmaking.