Marin Karmitz Movies

Gerard Depardieu, Oliver Marchal, and Asia Argento star in this thriller about a Paris police officer who puts his own career on the line to help his lifelong friend, a crooked narcotics cop who does some drug trafficking on the side. Mat works the night beat in the city, and his best friend Franck works in the drug squad. But after busting the local drug dealers, Franck turns a tidy profit by selling their product at cut-rate prices. When Franck gets in over his head, it's up to Mat to help and old friend by taking matters into his own hands. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

A tragic accident opens up a rift between a young teen and his older brother in this introspective tale of familial conflict from Israel. There was a time when 14-year-old Zion would have never questioned his 17-year-old sibling, Meir. Then came the accident, and everything changed. Bottling up the secret until it threatens to consume him from the inside out, Zion finally summons the courage to stand up for himself and take responsibility for his own life. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Fate starts making trouble for a high-spirited young couple in this wildly offbeat French comedy. Dom (Dominique Abel) and Fiona (Fiona Gordon) spend their days as teachers at a grade school in a small town, and by night they motor off to the big city and dazzle the crowds at dance contests with their moves on the floor. After picking up a trophy at a competition one evening, Dom and Fiona are driving home when a man with a death wish dashes into the road. They manage to avoid hitting him, but lose control of their car and end up in a serious accident. The next morning, Fiona discovers she's lost one of her legs, while Dom has suffered brain damage that's causes his powers of memory to go haywire. Plucky Dom and Fiona try to go on with their lives as if nothing has changed, but despite their high spirits and can-do attitude, reality has a habit of getting in the way -- Fiona has a hard time leaning to use crutches and accidentally sets her artificial limb on fire, while Dom's attempts at cooking are hampered by his inability to remember what ingredients he's already put into the mix. Stars Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon also wrote and directed Rumba in collaboration with Bruno Romy. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

South Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo generally tells the same story twice, and his work often involves people working in the film industry. His sixth feature, Tale of Cinema, follows this pattern, but Hong adds a new wrinkle. In the first half, we're introduced to Sang-won (Lee Gi-woo of The Classic), who seems to be a ne'er-do-well, and happens to run into Yong-sil (Eom Ji-weon), whom he had a crush on back when they were in school. While she finishes out her workday, he goes to see a play. The two spend the evening together, getting very drunk. After an abortive effort at lovemaking ("Why insist when it doesn't work?" says Yong-sil), Sang-won tells Yong-sil that he'd like to "end with a flourish." She agrees, and the two forge a suicide pact. Their plan goes awry, and Sang-won is hospitalized. He returns home and has a big argument with his angry mother. We next see a new character, Tong-su (Kim Sang-gyeong of Memories of Murder and Hong's Turning Gate) as he exits a movie theater. It soon becomes clear that the first half of the Tale of Cinema is the short film that Tong-su has just watched, as part of a retrospective of the work of a peer from film school. The filmmaker has fallen ill and his classmates are having a get-together to raise money for his family. Tong-su doesn't seem interested in going until he runs into Yong-sil, the actress from the short film, who has had some success in the intervening years. He stalks her for a while, and eventually introduces himself and explains to Yong-sil that the filmmaker stole the story of the film from Tong-su's stories of his own life. Tale of Cinema was shown at the 2005 New York Film Festival. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide

Two men pursue a woman form their past in this drama from South Korea. Heon-jun (Kim Tae-woo), a struggling filmmaker who has just returned from the United States, runs into his old friend Mun-ho (Yu Ji-tae), now an art professor, and they decide to get a bite to eat. Over dinner, they find themselves talking about Seon-hwa (Seong Hyeon-ah), a beautiful woman they both dated in college. While both men flirt with their waitress, talking about how Seon-hwa has renewed their fascination with their old love, and they individually decide to track her down. They discover Seon-hwa, once an artist, is now working as a bar manager; they learn, in her personal life, the fates have not been kind to her, and in many respects, she's not the women she once was. Yeojaneun Namjaeui Miraeda (aka Woman is the Future of Man) was screened in competition at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

In 1997, when Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami was forced to do some last minute re-shoots for his picture The Taste of Cherry, he used digital video equipment for the first time and was immediately taken by the ease and flexibility of working with the format. Becoming an outspoken advocate of digital filmmaking, for his 2002 project Ten, Kiarostami shot the entire picture with a single camera mounted on the dashboard of a car. Using this notion as a jumping-off point, 10 on Ten is a documentary by Kiarostami in which he discusses his philosophies and ideals pertaining to his methods of filmmaking while driving through the countryside outside Tehran, talking into a camera mounted on the dashboard of his car as the locations where he shot The Taste of Cherry pass by. 10 On Ten premiered at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, where it was screened as part of the "Un Certain Regard" program. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

French filmmaker Philippe Leclerc directs the animated adventure Les Enfants de la Pluie (The Rain Children), based on the book A L'image du Dragon by Serge Brussolo. The fantasy story line involves a civilization split into two factions: the war-like Pyross who worship the sun and the peaceful Hydross who are nurtured by water. Powerful leader Razza sends some of his Pyross men into the Hydross lands to capture their sun stones. A young soldier named Skan is sent on an assignment on which he discovers some truths about the civilization and falls in love with a Hydross girl named Kallisto. French jazz violinist Didier Lockwood provides the original musical score. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

Directed by Raphae Nadjari, Apartment 5C follows several individuals trying to survive within the inner cities of New York. Nicky (Tinkerbell) and Uri (Ori Pfeffer), two Israelis with expired U.S. visas, are making ends meet by robbing local stores at gunpoint. The couple becomes a little overexcited with their gun in their Brooklyn apartment one evening, and Nicky is accidentally shot in the leg. Uri leaves in a panic, never to return. Luckily for Nicky, the building's maintenance person (Richard Epson) takes pity on her, and agrees to care for her while her leg heals. This leads to a relationship between the two; one which Harold's (Epson) wheelchair bound brother-in-law (Jeff Ware) doesn't approve of. Max (Ware) is determined to put a stop to the budding romance, which Nicky and Harold predictably do not take lightly, leading to a violent conclusion for the trio. ~ Tracie Cooper, All Movie Guide

Claude Chabrol directed this well-crafted thriller, which recalls the style and themes of his best-known work of the 1960s. Marie-Claire "Mika" Muller (Isabelle Huppert), who has inherited control of a large and successful Swiss chocolate company, remarries well-known musician André Polonski (Jacques Dutronc), to whom she was briefly wed 18 years ago. After their divorce, André married a woman named Lisabeth and they had a son, Guillaume (Rodolphe Pauly), whom André was left to raise alone after Lisabeth's death in an auto accident. One of André's favorite stories is how Guillaume was almost exchanged for another baby at the hospital shortly after he was born; one day André receives a visit from a young woman named Jeanne (Anna Mouglalis), who claims to be the other child. Jeanne and André soon find they have a remarkable amount in common, and that Jeanne bears a striking resemblance to the late Lisabeth. Jeanne is beginning to wonder if there's something no one has ever told her when Mika gives her a thermos of special hot chocolate as a nightcap, which she then spills all over Jeanne. Jeanne's boyfriend, Axel (Mathieu Simonet), facetiously suggests that the cocoa might be poisoned, and out of curiosity, he tests it, finding that it has indeed been laced with a sedative notorious for its use in cases of date rape. Merci Pour le Chocolat is based on a novel by American crime novelist Charlotte Armstrong. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

German-born filmmaker Michael Haneke continues the bleak, formalist experimentation of his 1994 breakthrough 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance with this similarly fragmented tale of racism, intolerance, and hatred in modern-day Paris. The focus of the narrative is split between three sets of people: the French actress Anne (Juliette Binoche), her husband and in-laws; a Romanian woman, Maria (Luminita Gheorghiu), who struggles to raise money for her family back home; and Amadou (Ona Lu Yenke), a teacher for the deaf who is at odds with his resolute African clan. The catalyst for the stories begins on a streetcorner, where Anne's brother-in-law Jean (Alexandre Hamadi) insults Maria, who is begging for change; incensed, Amadou picks a fight with Jean, resulting in negative repercussions for the triptych of protagonists. Throughout, Haneke punctuates the action with his unique editing and use of sound. After its Cannes debut, Code Inconnu made its North American premiere at the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide

This thriller from veteran director Claude Chabrol is a tense suspense drama, leavened with sly humor, about the fallout from a shocking crime in a small town. Frederique Lesage (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi), the new chief of police in a cozy and fashionable seaside community in Brittany, soon finds her job more eventful than she expected when a ten-year-old girl is found raped and murdered. The last person to see her alive was René Sterne (Jacques Gamblin), a cynical and once-famous artist who has fallen on hard times and gives drawing lessons to children to make ends meet. René, who is passionately devoted to his wife (Sandrine Bonnaire), a nurse whose perpetual good cheer is the polar opposite of his personality, quickly becomes the prime suspect in the absence of any real clues. Meanwhile, Frederique becomes better acquainted with the eccentric residents of the town, including a self-important TV journalist (Antoine de Caunes), a small-time crook who fences stolen goods (Pierre Marlot), and a curious pair of married shopkeepers (Bulle Ogier and Noel Simsolo). Chabrol's son Matthieu Chabrol composed the score for this film. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide