0746 – The Island (2005)

timespace coordinates: 2019 Arizona > Los Angeles

The Island is a 2005 American science fiction thriller film directed and co-produced by Michael Bay. It stars Ewan McGregor, Scarlett Johansson, Djimon Hounsou, Sean Bean, Michael Clarke Duncan and Steve Buscemi.

In the story, Lincoln Six Echo (McGregor) struggles to fit into the highly structured world he lives in, isolated in a compound, and the series of events that unfold when he questions how truthful that world is. After Lincoln learns the compound inhabitants are clones used for organ harvesting as well as surrogates for wealthy people in the outside world, he attempts to escape with Jordan Two Delta (Johansson) and expose the illegal cloning movement.

The Island has been described as a pastiche of “escape-from-dystopia” science fiction films of the 1960s and 1970s, such as Fahrenheit 451, THX 1138, Parts: The Clonus Horror, and Logan’s Run. (wiki)

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745 – Aferim! (2015)

timespace coordinates: 1835 Wallachia

Aferim! (English: Bravo!) is a 2015 Romanian drama/western film directed by Radu Jude. The film is set in Wallachia in the early 19th century, when a local gendarme, Costandin, is hired by Iordache, a boyar, to find Carfin, a Gypsy slave who had run away from the boyar’s estate after having an affair with his wife, Sultana. Aferim! (2015) is only the second Romanian film to address the Roma slavery, which existed in Wallachia for almost 500 years until 1856. (The first one was the silent film Fata tigani in dormitor (1923). It has apparently been lost, with only a few stills surviving.)

The story is fictional, but director Radu Jude said in the NY Times (Sept. 8, 2015) that he drew on the historical record. Before shooting began, he held a script reading with 20 historians and made adjustments in response to their input.Publication The Hollywood Reporter describes Radu Jude’s film as “a harsh lesson of history, relieved by overlooked humor and classic Western elements”. Variety magazine writes that Aferim! is “an exceptional and extremely intelligent insight into a crucial period of history, a film equally inspired and furious” (wiki)

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744 – Scarred Hearts / Inimi cicatrizate (2016)

timespace coordinates: 1937  Tekirghiol  Romania

“Scarred Hearts” is inspired by Romanian author Max Blecher‘s novel, which is set in 1937. It centers on Emanuel, a man in his early 20s, who spends his days at a sanatorium on the Black Sea coast, suffering from bone tuberculosis. Falling in love with another patient, he narrates his and his fellow patients’ attempts to live life to the full as their bodies slowly wither but their minds refuse to give in. Blecher wrote the text, hailed as a masterpiece on publication in Romania in 1939, as autobiographical notes before he died, after 10 years of suffering, at the age of 29.

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0743 – A Viszkis / The Whisky Robber (2017)

timespace coordinates: 80’s Transylvania, Romania > 1988 – 1999 Budapest, Hungary

‘A Viszkis’/’The Whiskey Robber’ is a biographical crime-thriller written and directed by Nimród Antal and stars Bence Szalay as the notorious 1990s folk hero of Hungary, Attila Ambrus, who committed 27 bank and post office robberies from 1993 to 1999 until his eventual capture. The estimated amount of money stolen is more than 100 million HUF (approx. half a million USD) at the time.

For the release in Hungary, a giant promotional billboard was placed above a bank in Budapest.

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0742 – LAST LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE / Ruang rak noi nid mahasan (2003)

timespace coordinates: 2000’s Thailand

Thai filmmaker Pen-ek Ratanaruang directs the character-driven drama Last Life in the Universe, co-written by first-time screenwriter Prabda Yoon. Kenji (Tadanobu Asano) is a Japanese man living in Bangkok. He lives a tidy, silent lifestyle fueled by the detached desire to kill himself. Meanwhile, Noi (Sinitta Boonyasak) is a pot-smoking call girl who lives in a  shabby beachside home outside the city. She tries to teach herself to speak Japanese with hopes of moving to Osaka. One day, Kenji walks into his apartment as his brother Yukio (Yutaka Matsushige) is involved in a gun fight with gangster (yakuza) Takashi (Riki Takeuchi). Then Kenji accidentally witnesses the death of Noi’s lovely sister, Nid (Laila Boonyasak), with whom he first became smitten at the library. Having nowhere to go, Kenji goes to live with Noi for a few days, leading to the development of a strange and sensitive relationship. With cinematography by Hong Kong-based photographer Christopher Doyle. Last Life in the Universe won an Upstream Prize at the 2003 Venice Film Festival. (rottentomatoes)

Last Life in the Universe OST – Untitled [Are you alone? Are you lonely?]

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741 – Dealer (2004)

timespace coordinates: 2000’s Budapest

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0740 – Mary Magdalene (2018)

timespace coordinates: Judea, 33 AD.

Mary Magdalene is a 2018 biblical drama film about the woman of the same name, written by Helen Edmundson and Philippa Goslett and directed by Garth Davis. It stars Rooney Mara, Joaquin Phoenix, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Tahar Rahim. It is the last film score completed by composer Jóhann Jóhannsson before his death.

Mary Magdalene, starring Rooney Mara as the titular character, sought to reverse the centuries-old portrayal of Mary Magdalene as a repentant prostitute, while also combating the conspiracy claims of her being Jesus’s wife or sexual partner. Instead, the film portrays her as Jesus’s closest disciple and the only one who truly understands his teachings. This portrayal is partially based on the Gnostic Gospel of Mary Magdalene. The film, which described as having a “strongly feminist bent”, was praised for its music score and cinematography, its surprising faithfulness to the Biblical narrative, and its acting, but was criticized as slow-moving, overwritten, and too solemn to be believable. 

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