#310 – Local Hero, 1983, Bill Forsyth
An American oil company sends a man to Scotland to buy up an entire village where they want to build a refinery. But things don’t go as expected.
Author: Jumbo Cactuar
#311: The Royal Tenenbaums
#311 – The Royal Tenenbaums, 2001, Wes Anderson
Royal Tenenbaum and his wife Etheline had three children and then they separated. All three children are extraordinary — all geniuses. Virtually all memory of the brilliance of the young Tenenbaums was subsequently erased by two decades of betrayal, failure, and disaster. Most of this was generally considered to be their father’s fault. “The Royal Tenenbaums” is the story of the family’s sudden, unexpected reunion one recent winter.
#312: The Ballad of Narayama
#312 – The Ballad of Narayama, (楢山節考), 1958, Keisuke Kinoshita
In Kabuki style, the film tells the story of a remote mountain village where the scarcity of food leads to a voluntary but socially-enforced policy in which relatives carry 70-year-old family members up Narayama mountain to die. Granny Orin is approaching 70, content to embrace her fate. Her widowed son Tatsuhei cannot bear losing his mother, even as she arranges his marriage to a widow his age. Her grandson Kesa, who’s girlfriend is pregnant, is selfishly happy to see Orin die. Around them, a family of thieves are dealt with severely, and an old man, past 70, whose son has cast him out, scrounges for food. Will Orin’s loving and accepting spirit teach and ennoble her family?
#313: Secrets & Lies
#313 – Secrets & Lies, 1996, Mike Leigh
A middle-aged London factory worker is shocked when the mixed-race daughter she gave up at birth decides to track her down. At first she denies she is her mother. All family members become emotional, as everyone’s secrets are exposed.
#314: Persepolis
#314 – Persepolis, 2007, Vincent Paronnaud & Marjane Satrapi
In 1970s Iran, Marjane ‘Marji’ Statrapi watches events through her young eyes and her idealistic family of a long dream being fulfilled of the hated Shah’s defeat in the Iranian Revolution of 1979. However as Marji grows up, she witnesses first hand how the new Iran, now ruled by Islamic fundamentalists, has become a repressive tyranny on its own.
JUMBO CACTUAR APPROVED FILM
#315: Magnolia
#315 – Magnolia, 1999, Paul Thomas Anderson
An epic mosaic of many interrelated characters in search of happiness, forgiveness, and meaning in the San Fernando Valley.
#316: Call Me by Your Name
#316 – Call Me by Your Name, 2017, Luca Guadagnino
In 1980s Italy, a relationship begins between seventeen-year-old teenage Elio and the older adult man hired as his father’s research assistant.
#317: The 39 Steps
#317 – The 39 Steps, 1935, Alfred Hitchcock
Richard Hannay stumbles upon a conspiracy that thrusts him into a hectic chase across the Scottish moors—a chase in which he is both the pursuer and the pursued—as well as into an unexpected romance with the cool Pamela.
#318: The Ascent
#318 – The Ascent, (Восхождение), 1977, Larisa Shepitko
Two Soviet partisans leave their starving band to get supplies from a nearby farm. The Germans have reached the farm first, so the pair must go on a journey deep into occupied territory, a voyage that will also take them deep into their souls.
#319: Marketa Lazarová
#319 – Marketa Lazarová, 1967, František Vláčil
Mikolás and his brother Adam rob travelers for their tyrannical father Kozlík. During one of their “jobs” they end up with a young German hostage whose father escapes to return news of the kidnapping and robbery to the King. Kozlik prepares for the wrath of the King, and sends Mikolás to pressure his neighbor Lazar to join him in war. Persuasion fails, and in vengeance Mikolás abducts Lazar’s daughter Marketa, just as she was about to join a convent. The King, meantime, dispatches an army and the religious Lazar will be called upon to join hands against Kozlik. Stripped-down, surreal, and relentlessly grimy account of the shift from Paganism to Christianity.
Jumbo Cactuar Film Index 