Robert Boner Movies

One man's inability to understand contemporary cinema leads him into a strange new world in this offbeat comedy drama from Swiss writer and director Lionel Baier. When his girlfriend Christine (Elodie Weber) gets a job teaching school in a small country town, Francois (Robin Harsch) moves with her and finds himself looking for work. Francois stumbles into a job at the tiny local newspaper, and the job of writing movie reviews falls to him. Francois doesn't know the first thing about cinema, and for his first review he plagiarizes a negative review from a highbrow film journal. The venomous notice gets Francois banned from the local movie house, so he begins traveling to Lausanne, where he attends press screenings with a handful of noted Swiss critics. Francois tries to convince the other writers that he's a knowledgeable peer, though his attempts to mimic their academic analysis of current movies are clumsy at best, and his efforts to impress beautiful critic Rosa (Natacha Koutchoumov) lead to a severe public humiliation. However, Rosa finds herself sexually attracted to Francois despite his foolish appearance, and he begins living a double life as an intellectual while still writing inconsequential filler for his small-town journal. Un Autre Homme (aka Another Man) was an official selection at the 2008 Locarno Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Upon discovering that his paternal grandfather was from Poland, a gay Swiss man sets out on a frantic mission to connect with his Polish roots. Lionel (director and co-screenwriter Lionel Bair) has recently unearthed the truth about his distant grandfather, and now he'll stop at nothing to completely immerse himself in Polish culture. From cheering the Polish soccer team to abandoning his longtime boyfriend to shack up with an illegal Polish au pair, Lionel is determined to embrace his Polish heritage. Though his mother and father are entirely supportive of the curious endeavor, Lionel's disapproving sister Lucie (Natacha Koutchoumov) thinks her brother has finally fallen off the deep end. Later, after Lucie drives the pair to Warsaw in order to discover the truth about their family lineage, Lionel becomes hopelessly stranded in Auschwitz and befriends a gay film student named Stan (Michael Rudnicki). In the following days Stan does his best to reacquaint Lionel with his true sexuality, and in the process also helps to bring Lionel and Lucie closer together than ever before. What Lionel discovers as his journey draws to a close will prompt both he and his sister to look back into the past with an open mind and a newfound willingness to embrace the past no matter how strange it may seem in the present. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

With the burgeoning moral and ethical dilemmas surrounding the genetic engineering industry, many nations have drafted legislation to regulate what types of genetic manipulation can and cannot be done. In the fall of 2002, filmmaker Jean-Stephane Bron started attending the negotiations and debates held at Switzerland's Bundeshuus (parliament) and spent the next year tracking five legislators as they fought over the details of one such bill. The result of Bron's labors is Mais im Bundeshuus (Corn in Parliament), which is as much a study of the Swiss political system as it is an analysis of the many differences of opinion in the genetic engineering industry. Tracking representatives from the Green, UDC, Radical, Socialist, and PDC parties, Bron watches the intense jockeying that occurs from the time the policy is being drafted to its final thrilling vote in the full parliament, with most of the intense debate stemming from Green Party representative Maya Graff and her Radical party adversary, Johannes Randegger. Mais im Bundeshuus was selected for inclusion in the 2003 Locarno International Film Festival. ~ Ryan Shriver, All Movie Guide

This French farce chronicles one special day in the lives of a married pair of Parisian architects, Fabienne and Bruno, as they anxiously await the results of an important architectual contest they have entered. Unable to handle the stress of waiting, both turn to sexual liason's to ease their tension. Bruno ends up enacting a dark sexual fantasy with a stranger while Fabienne eventually succumbs to the advances of Bruno's friend Simon, a fortyish Lebanese businessman and part-time drug dealer. The comedy takes on overtones of psycho-drama when the contest winner announced and the couple discovers the truth of each other's actions. A cache of drugs, discovered in an apartment only adds to their troubles. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this "inside look" at French filmmaking, Marechal (Francis Girod) - who is a has-been director - a producer, Vito Catene (Andre Marcon) and Camile Dor (Fabienne Babe), a big-name actress, have agreed to make a film about drugs, but don't have a story, financing, or any of the other elements needed to make it. This doesn't stop them; they cobble together the financing and begin shooting anyway. The producer is very fond of the leading actress, and when she gets hooked on drugs for real in the course of shooting what he feels to be a farcical imitation of a film, he gives up his shares in the film and heads off for the back of beyond (Zanzibar) to lick his wounds. To add insult to injury, the film winds up being a critical and commercial success. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Lola Lane and James Craig play explorers working on behalf of the British government. Lane and Craig have been assigned to venture deep into the wilds of Africa to retrieve the sacred skull of a long-deceased Sultan. Whoever possesses the skull will have total control over the native population--which is why several sinister gentlemen with Teutonic accents (America wasn't in the war yet, so no nationalities, please) also covet the skull. A reactivated volcano provides a rip-roaring climax for this Universal second feature. Zanzibar was based on a pair of short stories written by Maurice Tombragel and Maurice Wright, who collaborated on the screenplay. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide