Sam Taylor Movies
Milcho Manchevski's first feature film is a three-part story of the violence and political chaos tearing apart the newly independent nation of Macedonia (former Yugoslavia). In part one, Kiril (Grégoire Colin), an Orthodox monk, encounters Zamira (Labina Mitevska), a Muslim from Albania. Zamira is frightened and has nowhere to go, so Kiril lets her stay in his cell, knowing that if the authorities find her, his peaceful life will be shattered. The second segment, set in London, concerns Anne (Katrin Cartlidge), married to stable but boring Nick (Jay Villiers) but enjoying an affair with Macedonian photographer Aleksander (Rade Serbedzija); Anne is trying to decide if she should stay with Nick or leave with Aleksander, before unexpected events make the decision for her. The conclusion follows Aleksander back to Macedonia; while he's tired of photographing war, he finds no sanctuary in his home town, as Christians and Muslims wage war and he accidentally causes the death of innocent bystanders. Before the Rain received an 1995 Academy Award nomination as Best Foreign Language Film. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Katrin Cartlidge, Rade Serbedzija, (more)
Based on the true story of Graham Young, a young British psychopath of the 1970s, this is the offbeat feature film debut of writer-director Benjamin Ross. Hugh O'Conor plays Young, who narrates the story in a sullen voice-over. He is an isolated, studious young adolescent who is increasingly absorbed in his chemical research projects and estranged from his annoying family. After his greatest experiment blows up, he seeks revenge on his stepmother, who has falsely accused him of hiding pornographic magazines. The boy poisons her chocolates and then his sister's eye drops, partially blinding her. He next poisons his stepmother's stomach medicine. Graham lets her discover the notebook in which he has documented his work, but she can no longer speak, and she dies unable to communicate the truth. Young then starts to poison his father -- but lets himself be discovered and is sent to an insane asylum. There, he is befriended by a psychologist, Dr. Ziegler (Anthony Sher), an optimist who hopes for a recovery by exploring Young's dreams. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Hugh O'Conor, Antony Sher, (more)
- 1996
Set in the wild forests of Nova Scotia, this Canadian psychodrama deals with the tragic travails of a young Englishman who has come there to find his long-lost father. But instead of a family reunion, he ends up entangled with a beautiful young girl and her mother after the girl sees him bathing in the nude and brings him home to work on their farm. Daughter Rauchine is quite attracted to him, but so is her mother Megan. This creates considerable tension because mentally unstable Megan is the jealous type and is prone to acts of terrifying violence. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
Lost deep in the enemy territory of the western front during World War I, allied soldier Private Charles Shakespeare (Jamie Bell) and eight other British soldiers from the Y Company seek refuge in maze of an abadoned German trench. Winding through the twisting tunnels through piles of corpses and hungry rats, the exhausted soldiers decide to hold thier position and await a rescue team. As the soldiers begin to fall prey to an unseen force, one by one thier numbers dwindle and thier suspicions of one another grow. A young soldier who illegally entered the armed forces at the tender age of sixteen, Private Shakespeare must now summon the courage to face an evil greater than he could ever imagine. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jamie Bell, Ruaidhri Conroy, (more)
- 2002
Fridrik Thor Fridriksson's Falkar (Falcons) is a drama set in Reykjavik, Iceland. Simon (Keith Carradine) is an American who returns to Iceland after 30 years (and a stretch in prison) away. He becomes involved with an artist named Dua (Margret Vilhjalmsdottir) who is illegally keeping a falcon. After she is raped by a police officer (Ingvar E. Sigurdsson), Dua and Simon go on the run. Falcons was screened at the Toronto Film Festival. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Keith Carradine, Margret Vilhjalmsdottir, (more)
Directed by Srdjan Karanovic, Sjaj u Ocima (Loving Glances) is set in 1995 Belgrade. Despite a war raging in the background, young people throughout the country are trying in vain to fall in love and get married, as they feel a normal life would ensconce them. When refugee Labud (Senad Alihodzic), a draft-dodging Serbian student, comes to the city without a job or dime to his name, he turns to a marriage broker (Milena Dravic) to help him find the woman of his dreams. He is paired with Romana (Ivana Bolanca), a pretty Belgrader who, despite a sophisticated facade, is also a penniless refugee. Sjaj u Ocima also features Jelena Dokic. ~ Tracie Cooper, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Senad Alihodzic, Ivana Bolanca, (more)
A sports star's career takes a sudden roller coaster ride when he makes a very unexpected announcement in this comedy from Iceland. Ottar Thor (Bjorn Hlynur Haraldsson) is a well-known soccer player whose life off the field isn't as successful as his career in football. Thor's marriage to a one-time beauty queen ended in a bitter divorce, his 13-year-old son Magnus (Arnmundur Ernst) would rather play video games than talk to his dad, and his obnoxious father and brother have moved in to his home. One day, while talking to a reporter after a game, Thor mentions that he's gay without really thinking about what might happen, and suddenly his world is turned upside down. The owners of Thor's team, as well as his fellow players, turn against him and kick him off the squad, while his family is more than a bit taken aback. Still eager to play, Thor takes up an invitation to join a semi-pro team coached by a friend, which already has a few gay players. Thor's presence on the team, and the media circus over his decision to come out, put a new spotlight on the gay footballers, and several more decide to move out of the closet and onto Thor's team. Suddenly Thor is a sports star again with a winning record (though a few victories come from forfeits, since some clubs are unwilling to take the field with a queer team), and his old team decides to challenge them to a special match...that just so happens to coincide with Gay Pride Day. Meanwhile, Thor decides to act on his attraction toward one of his teammates, but discovers that his dreamboat isn't much of a catch off the field. Eleven Men Out (aka Stratkarnir Okkar) received its North American premier at the 2005 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Björn Hlynur Haraldsson, Lilja Nótt, (more)
- 2005
The story of the life and death of Jesus Christ gets a new (and strongly politicized) retelling in a powerful drama from Africa. Mary (Pauline Malefane) is seeking shelter in a schoolhouse during a skirmish in the midst of a bloody civil war when she is visited by an angel of the Lord, who tells her that she will give birth to the son of God. Mary raises Jesus (Andile Kosi) until he grows to adulthood; he then sets out on his own, preaching a new faith which embraces compassion and non-violence while rejecting the corruption and brutality of the current political leadership. Jesus' teachings attract a handful of disciples ranging in age, background, and gender, but as a military occupation force takes over the land, the actions of those who oppose their authority are monitored closely by the new government, and Jesus and his associates are no exception. While intelligence agents regard Jesus as subversive but harmless, one of his disciples, Judas (Jim Hgxabaze), secretly meets with the authorities and convinces them the mysterious miracle worker is up to no good. Son of Man received its North American premiere at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Andile Kosi, Andries Mbali, (more)
This loose update of John Griesemer's biting and satirical 2001 anti-war novel No One Thinks of Greenland features American Pie starrer Jason Biggs as Corporal Rudy Spruance, a young man enlisted in the U.S. military in the late 1970s, at the height of the Cold War between the States and the Soviet Union. Though he's supposed to be transferred to Hawaii, Rudy is instead thrown out of a plane on a quasi-vacant airstrip in an unspecified location. He hits his head, loses consciousness, and comes to in a local infirmary - only to have doctors inform him that: A) He isn't in Hawaii, he's on a military base in icy Greenland, and B) His name isn't Rudy Spruance, it is Martin Pederson. The bombastic, ignorant base commander, Corporal Lane Woolwrap (Jeremy Northam) dismisses Rudy's assertions of mistaken identity and hands him his mission: to start a propagandistic newspaper used to generate morale among the troops. Instead of doing this, Rudy happens upon an isolated, top-secret building that houses some long-kept secrets related to government malfeasance - well aware of the implications of his discovery. Natascha McElhone co-stars as Woolwrap's girlfriend. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jason Biggs, Jeremy Northam, (more)
- 2006
Emir Hadzihafisbegovic stars in Croatian writer-director Rajko Grlic's madcap farce Border Post (AKA Karaula) as Lt. Pasic, a soldier in the Yugoslav army stationed on the border between Albania and Macedonia, circa 1987. Constantly drunk and dissatisfied with life, he suddenly feels a shooting pain in his gonads, and consults one of his subordinates, the enlisted medical student Siriscevic (Toni Gojanovic. Siriscevic promptly diagnoses the condition as syphilis, which Pasic, it seems, contracted from a local hooker. Pasic forces the young officer to prescribe an antidote for him, but it will take three weeks. In need of an excuse for his inability to return home and make love to his wife, Mirjana (Verica Nedeska-Trajkova), the lieutenant concocts the story of a militia conflict: an imminent attack from the Albanian army that is forcing all of the troops to remain on guard. He shuttles Siriscevic to Mirjana, to tell the woman this story, but in the interim, Pasic must back up his words by actually declaring a state of emergency - which sends soldiers into a state of near hysteria - scurrying into battle and digging trenches - and thus threatens to ignite a legitimate international crisis. Meanwhile, as Siriscevic embarks on additional errands to Mrs. Pasic, transporting one message after another in-between the woman and her husband, an affair blossoms between them, unbeknownst to the lieutenant. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Toni Gojanovic, Sergej Trifunovic, (more)
- 2008
The colorful subject of the popular underground documentary Dancing Outlaw finds his outlandish life story adapted for the big screen in this biopic penned by Vice Magazine's Shane Smith and Eddy Moretti (Heavy Metal Baghdad), and directed by UK commercial veteran Dominic Murphy. West Virginia native Jesco White was just six years old when he started huffing gasoline and lighter fluid to get high. As a troubled adolescent young Jesco bounced between work camps and reform schools until the day his father, famed mountain dancer D. Ray White, taught him how to tap dance. That skill would prove indispensable in helping Jesco keep his wicked ways in check after his father is murdered and the demons come knocking. Lacing up his father's tap shoes and taking his show on the road, Jesco (Edward Hogg) eventually meets Cilla (Carrie Fisher), the woman he will eventually call his wife. But even true love can't prevent Jesco from being split by the double-edged sword of revenge and redemption, and for the man who craves both there is truly no peace. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ed Hogg, Carrie Fisher, (more)
- 2009
The loggerhead turtle has one of the longest and most difficult migratory patterns of any aquatic animal; sea turtles newly hatched on the East Coast of the United States (usually in Florida) make their way from the sand into the ocean, and then begin a voyage that spans the entire Atlantic Ocean, only to return from where they came. Filmmaker Nick Stringer follows the loggerhead turtle on a adventure of more than 9,000 miles with only instinct as their guide in the documentary Turtle: The Incredible Journey. Stringer and his camera crew spent two years following loggerhead turtles on their trip across the ocean, and have captured on film the remarkable life cycle of a beautiful but endangered creature that struggles to survive in an increasingly unforgiving environment. Turtle: The Incredible Journey was an official selection at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
