Now Showing
These films are currently showing on the television in the lounge area of the LRC.
Arabic |
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Title: Ali Zaoua Description: Ali, Kwita, Omar, and Boukber are a group of street urchins living on the hard streets of Casablanca. Their everyday lives are filled with violence, begging, and indifference. In order to survive they create a bond of friendship and family between then. The bond is cut short when Ali is senselessly killed at the beginning of the film by a blow to the head; his life taken by a single act of a rival gang. Ali’s friends decide not to report his death to the police, who would have the boy buried in a potter’s field. Instead they decide to give him a worthy burial, to bury Ali on the private island he so often dreamed of. Ali Zaoua captures the power of dreams and presence of hope in the harshest of circumstances. |
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Title: Paradise Now Description: |
Chinese |
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Title: Electric Shadows Description: From one of China’s newest cinematic voices comes a charming tale set into motion by a disastrous encounter: delivery man Dabing crashes his bike into the mysterious Ling Ling. From her hospital bed, Ling Ling asks Dabing to go to her home and feed her fish; while there, Dabing discovers an astonishing diary. In its pages he reads stories of a little girl’s passion for the movies, which re-ignites his own longing for the days when the cinema enchanted China’s masses, and audiences breathed and dreamed as one. |
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Title: Kung Fu Hustle (Axe-Kickin’ Edition) Description: Stephen Chow (director and star of Shaolin Soccer) is at it again with his newest action-packed and comedic martial-arts adventure, Kung Fu Hustle. From wildly imaginative kung fu showdowns to dance sequences featuring tuxedoed mobsters, you’ve never seen action this outrageous and characters this zany! With jaw-dropping fight sequences by Yuen Wo Ping (famed action choreographer of <i>Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon</i> and <i>The Matrix</i>), <i>Kung Fu Hustle</i> will blow you away! In a town ruled by the Axe Gang, Sing (Stephen Chow) desperately wants to become a member. He stumbles into a slum ruled by eccentric landlords who turn out to be kung fu masters in disguise. Sing’s actions eventually cause the Axe Gang and the slumlords to engage in an explosive kung fu battle. Only one side will win and only one hero will emerge as the greatest kung fu master of all.</p> |
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Title: Mountain Patrol (Kekelixi) Description: When Beijing journalist Ga Yu arrives in a remote Tibetan village, he immediately finds himself embedded in a relentless manhunt across the barren wastelands of Kekexili. Acting without the Chinese government’s approval, this ragtag group of impoverished vigilantes has sworn to capture or kill the poachers responsible for decimating the sacred antelope of Kekexili. As the harsh landscape overcomes them and the ruthless poachers begin picking them off, Ga Yu realizes that it isn’t merely a manhunt he is chronicling, but a profound journey of survival and death. Inspired by a people’s remarkable mission, award winning director Lu Chuan has created a masterful tale that stirs within long after it’s ended. |
French |
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Title: Amelie Description: Amelie is looking for love, and perhaps for the meaning of life in general. We see her grow up in an original if slightly dysfunctional family. Now a waitress in central Paris, she interacts curiously with her neighbors and customers, as well as a mysterious Photomaton-image collector and one of his even more mysterious photo subjects. Little by little, Amelie realizes that the way to happiness (and yet more subtle humor) requires here to take her own initiative and reach out to others. |
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Title: Asterix et Obelix – Mission Cleopatre Description: The Egyptian Queen Cleopatra bets against the Roman Emperor, Julius Caesar, that her people are still great, even if the times of the Pharaohs has long passed. She bets (against all logic) to be able to build a new palace for Caesar within three months. Since all her architects are either busy otherwise or too conservative in style, this ambivalent honour falls to Numerobis. He is to build the palace and be covered in gold, if not, his fate is to be eaten by crocodiles. Numerobis calls upon an old friend to help him out: The fabulous Druid Panoramix (Miraculix in other language versions) from Gallia, who brews a fantastic potion that gives supernatural strength. In order to help and protect, Asterix and Obelix accompany the old Druid on his journey to Egypt. When Julius Caesar gets wind of the project succeeding, he has the building site attacked by his troops in order to win the bet and not lose his face. But he hasn’t counted on Asterix and Obelix. |
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Title: Au Revoir Les Enfants – Criterion Collection Description: Based on events from writer-director Louis Malle’s own childhood, Au revoir les enfants is the tragic story of friendship and devastating loss between two boys at a Catholic board-school in Nazi-occupied France. Julien befriends Jean, and the two precocious youths enjoy true camaraderie until Jean’s secret—that he is a Jew being hid by sympathetic priests—is revealed. Subtly and precisely observed, the film is a tale of cowardice and courage and ultimately heartbreaking awakening into adulthood. |
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Title: Band of Outsiders Description: Two restless young men (Sami Frey and Claude Brasseur) enlist the object of their desire (Anna Karina) to help them commit a robbery–in her own home. French New Wave pioneer Jean-Luc Godard takes to the streets of Paris to re-imagine the gangster genre, spinning an audacious yarn that’s at once sentimental and insouciant, romantic and melancholy. |
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Title: City of Lost Children, The Description: The evil Krank and his henchmen have been made by a mad scientist. Krank’s problem is that he is tormented by his inability to dream. He finds it necessary to try to steal the dreams of children, but since they fear him, he only gets their nightmares. When a circus strongman’s little brother is kidnapped, the strongman (One) tracks him down and, with the help of some other eccentric characters, tries to put an end to the evil reign of Krank and his Cyclops army. |
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Title: Days of Glory (Indigenes) Description: (War/Action) Set during WWII, North African soldiers enlist in the French army and battle their way across Europe to liberate the "fatherland" and confront discrimination. |
German |
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Title: Advertising Rules! Description: Edward Kaminsky, an aging ad man, wants a golden parachute from his agency; he must first land the Opel auto contract. Rosa, a youth with wealthy parents, wants to establish herself as an artist. The clumsy and enthusiastic Viktor, not quite honest, wants work. When he wanders into Kaminsky’s meeting with Opel and says something about irony, the Opel director wants him in on the campaign. Then he steals an idea from Rosa that the Opel director loves. Before Rosa discovers he’s expropriated her idea, Rosa and Viktor become lovers. Father-son feelings materialize between Kaminsky and Viktor. |
Italian |
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Title: Il Postino Description: Pablo Neruda, the famous Chilean poet, is exiled to a small island for political reasons. On the island, the unemployed son of a poor fisherman is hired as an extra postman due to the huge increase in mail that this causes. Il Postino is to hand-deliver the celebrity’s mail to him. Though poorly educated, the postman learns to love poetry and eventually befriends Neruda. Struggling to grow and express himself more fully, he suddenly falls in love and needs Neruda’s help and guidance more than ever. |
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Title: La Dolce Vita Description: Marcello is a society gossip columnist. During one of his rounds, he meets again Maddalena and spends the night with her in a whore’s bedroom. When he comes back home the next morning, he discovers that his girlfriend Emma poisoned herself because of him. Later, he is at the airport where the famous star Sylvia is arriving : he will go with her a few days… A chronicle of a decadent society where there is no more values except alcohol and sex, and no solutions but suicide. |
Japanese |
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Title: Gojira / Godzilla Deluxe Collector’s Edition (Gojira/Godzilla [1954] / Godzilla, King of the Monsters [1956]) Description: This package contains: <P>* Godzilla (1954 Japanese Edition-english subtitles)<BR> * King of the Monsters (1956 U.S. Release Edtion-english v/o dub) <P>Featuring:<BR> * Audio commentaries<BR> * Original trailers<BR> *"Making of the Suite" Featurette<br> *"Godzilla: Story Development" featurette<br> |
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Title: Howl’s Moving Castle Description: A love story between an 18-year-old girl named Sofî, cursed by a witch into an old woman’s body, and a magician named Hauru. Under the curse, Sofî sets out to seek her fortune, which takes her to Hauru’s strange moving castle. In the castle, Sophie meets Hauru’s fire demon, named Karishifâ. Seeing that she is under a curse, the demon makes a deal with Sophie–if she breaks the contract he is under with Hauru, then Karushifâ will lift the curse that Sophie is under, and she will return to her 18-year-old shape. |
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Title: My Neighbor Totoro Description: Two young girls, Satsuke and her younger sister Mei, move into a house in the country with their father to be closer to their hospitalized mother. Satsuke and Mei discover that the nearby forest is inhabited by magical creatures called Totoros (pronounced toe-toe-ro). They soon befriend these Totoros, and have several magical adventures. |
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Title: Nobody Knows Description: Four siblings live happily with their mother in a small apartment in Tokyo. The children all have different fathers and have never been to school. The very existence of three of them has been hidden from the landlord. One day, the mother leaves behind a little money and a note, charging her oldest boy to look after the others. And so begins the children’s odyssey, a journey nobody knows. Though engulfed by the cruel fate of abandonment, the four children do their best to survive in their own little world, devising and following their own set of rules. When they are forced to engage with the world outside their cocooned universe, the fragile balance that has sustained them collapses. Their innocent longing for their mother, their wary fascination toward the outside world, their anxiety over their increasingly desperate situation, their inarticulate cries, their kindness to each other, their determination to survive on wits and courage. |
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Title: Samurai Fiction Description: Heishiro, a noble Samurai, sets out in search of the renegade who stole his clan’s treasure and killed his best friend. Heishiro should be able to hold his own against the villain Rannosuke, who has only killed hundreds of men and fought entire armies while simultaneously defending himself against dozens of deadly ninja assassins. This is Samurai Fiction. Don’t believe everything you see in Chambara movies! |
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Title: Spirited Away Description: Chihiro and her family are on their way to their new house in the suburbs when her father decides to take a shortcut along a lonely-looking dirt road. After getting out of the car and walking along a path for a while, they discover an open-air restaurant filled with food but with no workers or customers present. Mom and Dad don’t hesitate to sit down and dig in, but Chihiro senses danger and refuses. As night falls, she is terrified to see the area fill with faceless spirits, but when she runs to find her parents, she discovers that they have been turned into pigs. She is found by a mysterious boy named Haku, who promises to help her. He gets her a job working in a nearby building, which turns out to be a bathhouse for the thousands of Japan’s gods and spirits. Though the work is hard and the people strange, she does as well as she can. Her parents, however, are still waiting in the hotel’s stockyard, and Chihiro must find a way to break the spell on them before they end up as the main course of some guest’s |
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Title: The Sword of Doom Description: Wandering samurai Ryunosuke lives his life in a maelstrom of violence. A gifted swordsman; plying his trade during the turbulent final days of Shogunate rule; he kills without remorse, without mercy. |
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Title: Machuca Description: In 1973, in Santiago of Chile of the first socialist president democratically elected in a Latin-American country, President Salvador Allende, the principal of the Saint Patrick School, Father McEnroe (Ernesto Malbran) makes a trial of integration between students of the upper and lower classes. The bourgeois boy Gonzalo Infante (Matías Quer) and the boy from the slum Pedro Machuca (Ariel Mateluna) become great friends, while the conflicts on the streets leads Chile to the bloody and repressive military coup of General Augusto Pinochet on 11 September 1973, changing definitely their lives, their relationship and their country. |
Russian |
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Title: Russian Ark Description: Told in one fluid shot, a tale which floats like a dreamlike journey through the majestic spaces of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, engaging real and imagined characters from Russian and European history. The nameless protagonist, a 19th-century French diplomat, guides the audience through a lost, sumptuous dream that was the Enlightenment period. The film, staged among some of the Western Art tradition’s greatest masterpieces, climaxes in a pageant of color, motion, and music. For Sokurov, the Hermitage–home to generations of Romonovs and repository of so much Russian history–is the ark of the Russian soul, guarding it affectionately until the world sees better days. |
Spanish |
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Title: Hour of the Star Description: Macabea has just moved to the big city after her aunt, who raised her, died. She gets a job as a typist and moves into a boarding house with three other women. In her spare time she listens to time Radio Station; on Sundays she likes to ride the subways. She describes herself saying, "I am a typist and a virgin, and I like Coca-Cola." Then she meets Olimpico, a north-easterner like herself, who has dreams of becoming a Congressman. |
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Title: Ladron Que Roba A Ladron (To Rob A Thief) Description: A heist movie in the classic Hollywood tradition, LADRON QUE ROBA A LADRON follows two crack thieves, Emilio and Alejandro, who reunite to rob the biggest thief they know – Moctesuma Valdez, a TV infomercial guru who’s made millions selling worthless health products to poor Latino immigrants. Valdez’s empire is next to impossible to infiltrate. But Emilio and Alejandro know if they go undercover as day laborers – chauffeurs, gardeners, maids, and repairmen – they can rob Valdez blind right under his nose. It’s a perfect plan…except that no one on their team wants the job. Refusing to give up, Emilio and Alejandro come up with a solution so insane it might just work – use real day laborers. Within days, they form a team of criminal amateurs with just the right skills. There’s Julio, a TV repair shop employee who’s also an electronics expert, Rafa and Rafaela, a valet and his mechanic daughter in charge of transportation, Miguelito, a Cuban refugee actor and master of disguises, and the metro-sexual ditch digger, Anival, who plays the token heavy. None of them has ever committed a crime in their lives, but this motley crew of underdogs – so often taken for granted – is ready to face impossible odds and "receive 100 years of forgiveness." Full of humor and heart, LADRON QUE ROBA A LADRON proves that being underestimated is sometimes your best advantage. |
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Title: Pan’s Labyrinth Description: Following a bloody civil war, young Ofelia enters a world of unimaginable cruelty when she moves in with her new stepfather, a tyrannical military officer. Armed with only her imagination, Ofelia discovers a mysterious labyrinth and meets a faun who sets her on a path to saving herself and her ailing mother. But soon, the lines between fantasy and reality begin to blur, and before Ofelia can turn back, she finds herself at the center of a ferocious battle between good and evil. |
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Title: Real Women Have Curves Description: This is the story of Ana, a first generation Mexican-American teenager on the verge of becoming a woman. She lives in the predominately Latino community of East Los Angeles. Freshly graduated from high school, Ana receives a full scholarship to Columbia University. Her very traditional, old-world parents feel that now is the time for Ana to help provide for the family, not the time for college. Torn between her mainstream ambitions and her cultural heritage she agrees to work with her mother at her sister’s downtown LA sewing factory. Over the summer she learns to admire the hardworking team of women who teach her solidarity and teamwork. Still at odds with what her mother expects of her, Ana realizes that leaving home to continue her education is essential to finding her place proudly in the world as an American and Chicana. |
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Title: The Motorcycle Diaries (Widescreen Edition) Description: The Motorcycle Diaries is an adaptation of a journal written by Ernesto "Che" Guevara (Bernal) when he was 23 years old. He and his friend, Alberto Granado (de la Serna) are typical college students who, seeking fun and adventure before graduation, decide to travel across Argentina, Chile, Brazil and Peru in order to do their medical residency at a leper colony. Beginning as a buddy/road movie in which Ernesto and Alberto are looking for chicks, fun and adventure before they must grow up and have a more serious life. As is said in the film itself, it’s about "two lives running parallel for a while." The two best friends start off with the same goals and aspirations, but by the time the film is over, it’s clear what each man’s destiny has become. |
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Title: Waiting List Description: A desperate group of people wait at a rundown Cuban transit station for the next bus to arrive. The problem is, it never shows up. While a number of busses pass by the station, and others that are either full or at the end of the line stop by, it soon becomes obvious that the bus everyone was waiting for has left them high and dry. While one of the would-be passengers, Emilio, uses his downtime to win the affections of the beautiful Jacqueline, most of the rest decide that if they’re stuck without anywhere to go, they might as well make the station a better place to wait, and they begin forming a plan to turn the decrepit bus terminal into a showplace that people would look forward to visiting. |