Pg mpaa in Foreign DVDs & Videos

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Acclaimed Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki adapts British writer Diana Wynne Jones's popular fantasy tale for this animated feature, adding his own unique and celebrated dreamlike spin. A young hat-maker named Sophie (voiced by Emily Mortimer) is turned into an old woman by the dreaded Witch of the Waste (Lauren Bacall) when she attracts the notice of Howl (Christian Bale), a young wizard whom the witch desires for herself. As the old woman, (voiced by Jean Simmons), Sophie finds refuge as a cleaning lady in Howl's magical castle, an impressively realized mishmash of anthropomorphic shafts and gears, where she meets, among other wonders, a cantankerous fire demon named Calcifer (Billy Crystal). Howl's courage inspires her to seek a cure for her curse, and vice versa, and the two work together to prevent a major war as the castle roams the countryside on its mechanical legs. There's lots of magic afoot as well, including travel through barriers of space and time, and shape-shifting, requiring full viewer attention to keep track of who, where, and when, but this how dreams really are and the film engages on that same subconscious level. As with Miyazaki's previous work (SPIRITED AWAY, KIKI'S DELIVERY SERVICE), the emphasis here is on creating a beautiful alternate reality, where anything can happen, and every frame is a breathtaking work of art. See it on the big screen if the chance presents itself; the elaborate intricacies and patiently realized alternate realities of Miyazaki's work makes him a true treasure.

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Hong Kong satirist Stephen Chow wrote, directed, and stars in this hilarious spoof of sports and kung fu movie cliches. Chow plays "Mighty Steel Leg" Sing, who can kick soda cans through walls, and is a natural soccer star in the eyes of crippled coach Fung (Patrick Se Yin), who is looking to challenge his arch rival Hung, the captain of the aptly named Evil Team. Recruiting Sing and his goofy brothers who all have names like Steel Head, Hook Kick Leg, and Weight Vest (with qualities to match), Hung's team soon rises through the ranks via their supernatural Kung Fu soccer skills. There's also a love interest in the form of a shy girl (Vicki Zhao Wei) who uses martial arts magic in making steamed bread. MATRIX-style digital effects elevate the actor's martial arts skills to ludicrous heights, giving the clichéd story such a giddy, high-octane boost it soars into a comic class by itself. Soccer balls ripple through the air like slo-mo bullets, smashing through walls, and flying thousands of feet in the air. A box office smash in the East, SHAOLIN SOCCER should prove irresistible to open-minded Westerners looking for a laugh-out-loud experience.

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Bollywood and Hollywood entwine for this mix of romance, singing, comedy, dancing, and melodrama, directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali (DEVDAS) and produced in tandem with Sony/Columbia. The achingly beautiful Rani Mukherjee narrates and appears as Gulab, a streetcorner princess haunting the red light district in an expressionistic melange of Venice, Vegas, and Amsterdam. The irrepressibly callow musician Raj (Ranbir Kapoor) catches her eye, but Raj thinks he's in love with Sakina (Sonam Kapoor) who prefers to pine away for her absent lover, Imaan (Salman Kahn). All this longing (it's based on Dostoyevsky's WHITE NIGHTS) is stunningly captured through bizarre and elaborate backdrops, winding staircases, torrents of rain, and a color scheme heavy on the blues. Fans of Baz Luhrman's MOULIN ROUGE will want to live inside this film: there may not a whole lot of weight to all the tomfoolery, but the pain of youthful romantic idealism is part of the message. The music is always the thing with Bollywood films and SAAWARIYA packs in its share of rousing numbers. Western viewers entering the realm of Bollywood for the first time will find SAAWARIYA ("beloved" in Hindi) to be a crossover film that's ready to welcome them with open arms into a jubilant world of high-spirited song and dance, over-the-top goofiness, anguished melodrama, gyrating hips (with very sexy exposed belly buttons), and PG-rated romance.

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In Eric Rohmer's CLAIRE'S KNEE, Jerome (Jean-Claude Brialy), a handsome diplomat on vacation in the scenic Alpine village of Talloires, is coaxed into doing a strange favor for his friend Aurora (Aurora Cornu), a novelist working on a new book. Echoing Vladimir Nabokov's novel LOLITA, in which the writer Humbert Humbert falls in love with a budding 13-year-old girl, CLAIRE'S KNEE makes Jerome the researcher for Aurora's novel about an older man who seduces a teenage girl. Jerome and Aurora create mischief together as two friends in their mid-30s who are reminded of their own sexual appetites by watching the teenage sisters Laura (Béatrice Romand) and Claire (Laurence De Monoghan) with their young boyfriends. However, when Aurora challenges Jerome to seduce Laura, he tries but fails. Instead, he develops an obsessive desire to fondle Claire's knee, a notion both ruthlessly perverse and stubbornly innocent. Rohmer's laid-back, pensive style takes in the mountainous lakeside scenery, putting the weight of the film on intimate one-on-one discussions between the characters. With artful camerawork that captures much of the movie from Jerome's motorboat, Rohmer creates one of the cornerstones of his Six Moral Tales series, a pretty film with a naughty undercurrent and a relaxed existential overtone.

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A young postman's world is brightened as he begins delivering letters to poet Pablo Neruda, exiled on an island off the coast of Italy. At first hoping friendship with the poet will improve his reputation with a local barmaid, he ultimately develops a genuine, touching relationship with the laureate. This was the late Massimo Troisi's final film appearance. Academy Award Nominations: 5, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor--Massimo Troisi. Academy Awards: Best Original Dramatic Score.

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Two women of differing backgrounds are looking for the missing men they love in the aftermath of World War I. Along the way they encounter two French officers, one detailed to identify the dead and the other assigned to choose a body to be honored as France's unknown soldier.

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After her 17 year-old son disappears, a resourceful and charming woman named Christine enlists the aid of two of her former lovers by convincing each of them that they are the young man's father. It isn't long before both men, François Pignon and Jean Lucas, are bumbling their way around France, looking for their long lost son. Soon, the two happen to meet by chance, explain to each other that they're looking for their lost son, and decide to team up, forming one of the oddest and most inept partnerships France has ever seen.

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Set in Sweden, Andrei Tarkovsky's last film follows the travails of wealthy patriarch Alexander (Erland Josephson), a former actor and critic who lives in a remote home on the edge of the Baltic Sea. One year on his birthday, a sudden television announcement interrupts the celebration with news of a nuclear holocaust. His family and guests suffer through violent fits of hysteria and emotional turmoil in the ensuing days, but the previously troubled Alexander finds a clearness of mind when he makes a pact with God--offering himself as a sacrifice in order to redeem the fallen earth for his cherished son. Supremely poetic, THE SACRIFICE is filled with achingly beautiful images, expertly shot by Ingmar Bergman's trusted cinematographer Sven Nykvist. As Alexander goes from self-contented ease to crippling animal fear and existential anguish and finally to spiritual abandon, the troubled journey is illustrated with a haunting succession of images, tableaus, objects, dreams, and gestures--all sewn together in a seamlessly elliptical vision. As in all of Tarkovsky's haunting and mystical films, the characters are forced to come to terms with their own physical and spiritual existence, with redemption coming through faith--in this case, Alexander's faith in his love for his young son.

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During the postwar upheaval in a war-torn German town, a tragic love affair develops between an American sergeant and a Polish woman who has lost her husband in the war.

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In this simple family drama from Iran, two children invent an intricate plan to conceal the loss of a pair of shoes. Ali (Amir Farrokh Hashemian) and his sister Zhara (Bahare Seddiqi) are living in a poor neighborhood. Their mother is suffering from illness and their father is overworked and underpaid. When Ali is sent out to pick up his sister's shoes, a blind street peddler accidentally swipes them. Afraid that he will get a beating if his parents find out, he and Zhara concoct a plan by which she will wear Ali's sneakers to school in the morning and he will wear them to school in the afternoon. But the plan has its flaws because Ali is late to school everyday and his principal threatens to expel him. In a final act of determination, Ali enters a race to win the third place prize, a new pair of sneakers. Majidi's acclaimed film is an example of a current trend in Iranian cinema where children are used as central characters in order to circumvent censorship issues. His later film THE COLOR OF PARADISE about a little blind boy received similar international critical attention. CHILDREN OF HEAVEN received an Academy Award Nomination in 1998 for Best Foreign Film.

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Akira Kurosawa's DREAMS consists of eight short films based on actual dreams of the director. The first sequence, "Sunshine Through the Rain," features a young boy sneaking off into the forest on a rainy day to watch a procession of enchanted foxes. In "The Peach Orchard," a slightly older boy witnesses tree spirits performing a delicate dance. Weary travelers in "The Blizzard" face the elemental wrath of a snow enchantress, while "The Tunnel" finds a military officer haunted by the ghosts of his dead regiment. In "Crows," an art aficionado literally walks into the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh (played by Martin Scorsese). "Mount Fuji in Red" and "The Weeping Demon" are both fantastical cautionary tales about the hazards of nuclear power. Finally the gentle "Village of the Watermills" brings the film to a quiet, pastoral end. A highly personal project, DREAMS evinces its labor-of-love atmosphere in every sequence. As with all Kurosawa productions, each short film is meticulously designed and beautifully photographed. While many of the middle sequences are eerie and surreal, the first two films and the finale ("Sunshine Through the Rain," "The Peach Orchard," and "Village of the Watermills") are gorgeously lush and serene.

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Ken Takakura (THE YAKUZA) gives a career-redefining performance as an old fisherman in RIDING ALONE FOR THOUSANDS OF MILES. Estranged from his son for many years, Gou-ichi (Takakura) receives an unexpected call from his daughter-in-law, Rie (Shinobu Terajima), asking him to come to Tokyo to visit his son, Ken-ichi (Kiichi Nakai), who is in the hospital suffering from a stomach ailment. Gou-ichi decides to make the trip against his better judgment, but when he arrives, his son refuses to see him as he is still bearing the scars of the unspoken reasons why they were torn apart. Determined to reunite them, Rie gives Gou-ichi a videotape of an article Ken-ichi wrote about Li Jiamin, a Chinese folk opera master from Yunnan Province. Ken-ichi had promised Li that he would come back and film him performing "Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles," an opera based on one of the stories in the literary classic ROMANCE OF THE THREE KINGDOMS; Gou-ichi makes it his mission to travel to southern China, find Li, and film the performance himself. With the help of tour guides Lingo (Qiu Lin) and Jasmine (Jiang Wen)--and a fabulous interval with young Yang Yang (Yang Zhenbo)--Gou-ichi takes off to the great unknown, trying to do right by the son who still appears to hate him. Takakura plays the old man with a quiet, dignified demeanor, moving slowly and barely speaking at all. Zhang Yimou (HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS, RAISE THE RED LANTERN) directs the film simply and beautifully, allowing the fascinating characters and compelling story to develop at a natural, alluring pace. This very different kind of road picture is sincere and emotional, with a playful sense of humor. Be sure to bring plenty of hankies.

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A drama of a young woman, the daughter of author Victor Hugo, who is obsessed with a soldier who does not return her love. Academy Award Nominations: Best Actress--Isabelle Adjani.

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In THE COLOR OF PARADISE, an eight-year-old boy named Mohammed attends a school for blind children in Tehran. When summer vacation arrives, the parents of the other children arrive to take them home. Mohammed's widowed coal worker father, Hashem, however, arrives hours late, then asks a teacher if Mohammed can stay at the school permanently. When his request is refused, Hashem takes his son on a cross-country journey to their family home in northern Iran. While Hashem is dour and visibly burdened, Mohammed's senses are overloaded with the sounds, scents, and textures of the lush natural surroundings along the way. At the family farm, Mohammed is reunited with his two young sisters and his adoring Granny, with whom the young boy has a spiritual bond. When Hashem is given the chance to marry a young woman from a strict Islamic family, he worries that his son will destroy his chance of approval from her family, so he sends the boy off to a remote part of Iran to be a carpenter's apprentice. Initially, the boy feels abandoned but eventually grows accustomed to his new environment. Back at the family farm, however, Hashem's selfishness destroys the bucolic peace as it touches each member of his family in a different destructive manner. THE COLOR OF PARADISE is an intelligent, moving experience, featuring outstanding direction from Majid Majidi and a terrific cast.

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In this drama written and directed by acclaimed filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, Eva, the meek, seemingly complacent wife of a parson, invites her mother, Charlotte, a world famous pianist, to come for a visit, hoping for a reconciliation after a long period of estrangement and virtually no interaction. Instead, long-repressed feelings of rage toward her mother for repeatedly abandoning her as a child begin to surface and finally culminate in a cathartic confrontation between the two women. Liv Ullmann and Ingrid Bergman (in her final movie role) give excellent and emotionally charged performances as Eva and Charlotte.

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Jean-Luc Godard's cynical look at the art of filmmaking follows a screenwriter in his attempts to recount Homer's THE ODYSSEY. Full of insights into the compromises required of filmmakers, as well as autobiographical allusions, especially concerning the failed union of Godard and actress Anna Karina, 1964's CONTEMPT is one of the most widely recognized films about the filmmaking process. It is also considered the film that made Godard realize that lavish productions were not for him, sending him back into a lower-budget world where he could maintain complete control over his films. Shot in glorious CinemaScope by Raoul Coutard, CONTEMPT is a poignant artistic commentary and a dramatic exposé of a dying marriage. Paul Javal (Michel Piccoli) is struggling with Jeremy Prokosch (Jack Palance), the manipulative American producer financing his big-budget venture, and is frustrated by Fritz Lang (playing himself), the film's egotistical director. Concomitantly, his marriage to his gorgeous wife Camille (Brigitte Bardot) founders, and the emotional distance between them weighs heavily upon him.

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After doing several films with screenwriter Rafael Azcona (GARDEN OF DELIGHTS, MY COUSIN AGNELICA) Carlos Saura made CRIA! from his own script. He continued using actors in dual roles, allowing for easily shifting time frames and multiple points of view. In a dreamy opening scene, Ana (Ana Torrent), a wide-eyed child of about ten, comes down the stairs and sees a half-dressed woman run from her father's room. She quietly and without emotion goes into the room where her father lies dead on the bed and removes a half-full glass of milk. In the kitchen, as she washes out the glass, her mother (Geraldine Chaplin) enters and scolds her for being up so late. But her Mother, we learn later, died earlier, and Ana blamed her father for it and put poison in his milk. When Ana is alone her mother appears to her again, but this time she looks right in the camera and explains that she's Ana, now age 29. Some of what came before was a flashback from her adult perspective. With Chaplin playing both parts, the film shifts between the story of Ana and her mother, and Ana's life as an adult, until what actually happened the night her father died is completely revealed. CRIA! is the most complex and ambitious of the many films that Saura and Chaplin made together.

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In this dazzling epic from Akira Kurosawa, a petty thief named Kagemusha (Tatsuya Nakadai) gets saved from a death sentence because he resembles the warlord Shingen Takeda (also Nakadai). The warlord has been fighting two other leaders for control of 16th-century Japan and impersonators often take his place during battles to put him out of harm's way. Because of Kagemusha's strong physical similarities to the warlord, he's a perfect choice for a "shadow warrior." However, the arrangement suddenly changes when Shingen gets fatally wounded while watching a battle. Adhering to Shingen's final wish, the warlord's men keep the death a secret, and Kagemusha struggles to transform himself from a criminal into a leader. KAGEMUSHA marked a welcome return for the legendary director, who had not made a movie since 1974. Nakadai, a supporting player in earlier Kurosawa films, expertly portrays the leading role(s), almost always filled in the past by Toshirô Mifune. KAGEMUSHA also features the final screen appearance of longtime Kurosawa actor, Takashi Shimura. In order to help the film get an international release, Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas served as executive producers.

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A film of breathtaking grandeur based on Leo Tolstoy's novel of 1869. Taking five years of concentrated production to complete, the film cost one hundred million dollars. Academy Award Nominations: Best Art Direction-Set Decoration. Academy Awards: Best Foreign Language Film.

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SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE was originally conceived as a six-part TV mini-series. Since the film features only two principal actors, a limited number of indoor locales, and no musical score (nor any other atmosphere-enhancing devices), the success of this intense drama stems largely from the interaction between leads Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson, who play Marianne and Josef, an upper-middle-class married couple. At first glance, their lives appear to be devoid of marital conflict, but soon after the opening sequence, it becomes clear that tension is mounting just below the surface. The movie consists almost entirely of dramatic exchanges between Marianne and Josef and eventually evolves into an agonizing account of the deterioration of their marriage. But throughout it all, a deep, underlying love keeps the couple from breaking off all ties--in spite of the mutual aggression, cruelty, and even violence that forms part of their relationship. Ingmar Bergman anticipated that SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE would baffle, if not antagonize, viewers who had come to expect more stylistically groundbreaking and aesthetically polished work from him. In fact, however, as a result of his unflinching, straightforward approach, the film proves to be one of the director's most insightful and accessible works.

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A night spent with a suspected terrorist is the catalyst for a smear campaign against the otherwise unimportant life of Katharina Blum (Angelina Winkler). Katharina's life is thrown in the balance as both police and the news media strip her of all her dignity and sanity in this shocking German attack on power abuse and yellow journalism. Directed by Volker Schlondorff and Margarethe von Trotta, the 1975 film is based on an equally menacing novel by Heinrich Boll.

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A passionate story of a French mother and her adopted daughter who fall in love with the same soldier during the communist revolution in colonial Vietnam. Academy Award Nominations: Best Actress--Catherine Deneuve. Academy Awards: Best Foreign Film.

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Gerard Depardieu won the Best Actor award at Cannes for his performance as Cyrano in this lavish adaptation of Edmond Rostand's 1897 play. Academy Award Nominations: 4, including Best Actor--Gerard Depardieu. Academy Awards: Best Costume Design.

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Three generations of a Japanese family are moved by awakening memories of a family event involving an American relative.

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A humorous story about the clash of cultures a Chinese-American family experiences on their first visit to meet their relatives on mainland China. Peter Wang wrote, directed, and starred in this first U.S.-Chinese produced film.

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This animated series chronicles the further adventures of the characters from the 1998 U.S. remake of GODZILLA. Godzilla, though dangerous, exists to defend Earth from various monster threats. Godzilla, in conjunction with H.E.A.T. (Humanitarian Ecological Analysis Team), must battle terrible monsters that threaten all civilization. In these episodes they face a gigantic winged lizard in Mexico and also the mystery of the Loch Ness Monster.

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From its dramatic opening shots to its powerfully heart-wrenching climax, Jean Delannoy's spectacle THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME retells Victor Hugo's remarkable novel with gripping theatrical energy. It is 1492, in and around the imposing Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris, where the Festival of Fools has begun. Pierre Gringoire's play entitled "The Quest for Beauty" is being performed; which is ironic because during it, the hideous, hunchback bell-ringer Quasimoto (Anthony Quinn) is tormented and teased by a band of gypsies. Nothing can touch Quasimoto, though, as he is protected by Frollo, the Chief Justice. Frollo has his own problems, the worst being a pious conscience that keeps wrestling with an attraction to sexy gypsy dancer Esmerelda (Gina Lollobridgida). When Frollo sends Quasimoto to fetch Esmerelda for him, the poor hunchback only frightens her and gets arrested, sending Esmerelda into the arms of Phoebus, a confident, though dim-witted and smarmy, army captain. Esmerelda soon pities Quasimoto, attempting to sooth him as he is held in the gallows. But when Phoebus is stabbed to death, there seems to be little any of Esmerelda's admirers can do to prove her innocence. In this film about injustice, prejudice, and obsession, cinematographer Kelber's camerawork finds drama in every crevice, arch, and window of the cathedral itself, and Quinn is heartbreaking as the misunderstood hunchback.

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A charming, deliberately-paced tale about a shy teacher who becomes involved in the complex romantic and emotional machinations of a cast of characters including her young student, the student's amorous father, and the father's much-younger, naive lover.

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A wealthy businessman living on the island of La Reunion orders a bride by mail and receives--instead of his intended--a beautiful, mysterious woman with a flimsy excuse. He marries the imposter anyway, but his dream life is shattered when the woman absconds with his bank account and leads him into a murky drama of missing persons and murder. Ultimately, this strange tale transforms into a surprisingly powerful adult love story, in which both participants find themselves able to forgive each other's failings and transgressions--allowing them to move forward without regret, or undue fear of what the future might hold. In the film's finale, Truffaut returns to the same barren, snowbound cabin that he used to such great effect in SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER, only this time the results are substantially less fatalistic.

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From Iranian director Majid Majidi (CHILDREN OF HEAVEN), BARAN is the story of Lateef, a 17-year-old boy who lives in Teheran and works in the kitchen on a construction site. Hotheaded and always ready for a fight, Lateef resents his boss Memar for holding his wages to send to his father at the end of the year. When Rahmat, a young Afghan boy, replaces Lateef, Lateef's new job is lugging heavy bags of cement up the stairs. Hungry for revenge, Lateef sets out to make Rahmat's life miserable. One day, while spying on Rahmat, Lateef realizes that the boy is actually a girl hiding her gender so she can work to support her family. Lateef falls in love and decides to help her with what little money he has. In the process, he blossoms and changes from a sullen teenager into a generous young man. BARAN is a wonderfully romantic tale about sacrifice and devotion. But underneath this simplistic fable is a political film about 1.5 million Afghani refugees suffering in Iran, and Majidi shows a remarkable talent in making BARAN seem like a romantic love story. BARAN belongs with the best Neorealist films as an example of filmmaking that stares boldly at the pertinacity of the human spirit.