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timespace coordinates: 1983 – 1984 Los Angeles
Billionaire Boys Club is a 2018 American biographical crime drama film directed by James Cox and co-written by Cox and Captain Mauzner. The film stars Ansel Elgort, Taron Egerton, Kevin Spacey, Emma Roberts and Jeremy Irvine. The film is based on the real life Billionaire Boys Club active in Southern California during the early 1980s.
timespace coordinates: 2000’s Spiderwick Estate in New England
The Spiderwick Chronicles is a 2008 American fantasy adventure film based on the bestselling book series of the same name by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi. It was directed by Mark Waters and stars Freddie Highmore, Sarah Bolger, Mary-Louise Parker, Martin Short, Nick Nolte, and Seth Rogen. Set in the Spiderwick Estate in New England, it follows the adventures of Jared Grace and his family as they discover a field guide to fairies while battling goblins, mole trolls, and other magical creatures. (wiki)
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)
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)
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.
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.
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)
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