Chair courtesy of 29 Armstrong – www.29armstrong.com

I have included a sample which I found online:

If you ask me, Futura is far more interesting.

Great lens.

Thanks for stopping by

Directed by Louis Malle

Synopsis from the Criterion website:

“After garnering international acclaim for such seminal crowd-pleasers as The Lovers and Zazie dans le métro,Louis Malle gave his fans a shock with The Fire Within (Le feu follet), a penetrating study of individual and social inertia. Maurice Ronet (Elevator to the Gallows), in an implosive, haunted performance, plays Alain Leroy, a self-destructive writer who resolves to kill himself and spends the next twenty-four hours trying to reconnect with a host of wayward friends. Unsparing in its portrait of Alain’s inner turmoil and shot with remarkable clarity, The Fire Within is one of Malle’s darkest and most personal films.”

The Fire Within is poetic, it’s vibrant, it’s shocking.  Louis Malle takes you through the few last days of a man who has dealt with alcoholism and depression.  After being “cured” for the former, the latter becomes much more prevalent.  Beautiful black and white images and introspective dialogue stand out as strengths of this 60′s masterpiece. 

7/10

Directed by Sam Mendes, based on the novel by Richard Yates

Synopsis from IMDB:

“April and Frank Wheeler are a young, thriving couple living with their two children in a Connecticut suburb in the mid-1950s. Their self-assured exterior masks a creeping frustration at their inability to feel fulfilled in their relationships or careers. Frank is mired in a well-paying but boring office job, and April is a housewife still mourning the demise of her hoped-for acting career. Determined to identify themselves as superior to the mediocre sprawl of suburbanites who surround them, they decide to move to France where they will be better able to develop their true artistic sensibilities, free of the consumerist demands of capitalist America. As their relationship deteriorates into an endless cycle of squabbling, jealousy and recriminations, their trip and their dreams of self-fulfillment are thrown into jeopardy.”

Great movie, all I can say is WHERE ARE THE NOMINATIONS!

7.8/10

 By Aki Kaurismaki

Synopsis from IMDB:

Koistenin is a sad sack, a man without affect or friends. He’s a night-watchman in Helsinki with ideas of starting his own business, but nothing to go with those intentions. He sometimes talks a bit with a woman who runs a snack trailer near his work. Out of the blue, a young sophisticated blonde woman attaches herself to Koistenin. He thinks of her as his girlfriend, he takes her on her rounds. She’s in league with a crook who’s planning a jewel robbery, and Koistenin is their patsy. Will he ever wise up?

This is the story of a working man who ambitiously yearns for something more, something to call his own.  He is the victim of a criminal business man, who uses a woman to infiltrate his simple life.  The movie is filled with an existentialist vibe that leaves alot of interpretation up to the viewer. 

Engaging, sometimes charming, thought provoking and definitely impacting, Lights in the Dusk is most certainly worth a watch

7/10

By Aki Kaurismaki

Synopsis from IMDB:

The second part of Aki Kaurismäki’s “Finland” trilogy, the film follows a man who arrives in Helsinki and gets beaten up so severely he develops amnesia. Unable to remember his name or anything from his past life, he cannot get a job or an apartment, so he starts living on the outskirts of the city and slowly starts putting his life back on track

The Man Without a Past was quite a delightful surprise.  I picked it up from the library, after having read about finnish filmaker Aki Kaurismaki in a Jim Jarmusch interview.  The movie was great – a simple store well executed.  The very minimalistic approach to the characters was intriguing, allowing your mind to explore the scenarios and environment freely.  As the man starts to put his life back together we find out more and more about the mans past, and his future both.

7.5/10