Talaye sorkh (2003)

Crimson Gold is the first film I have seen of director Jafar Panahi, but the writer is Abbas Kiarostami. This may be blasphemy, but I might be getting tired of movies-without-stories nature of Iranian movies. The movie is well made and the lead actor Hossain Emadeddin is very good. He is supposed to be a very likable chracter, but I didn't find him particularly so. I am not clear why a frail looking rich guy would invite a BIG pizaa delivery man to inside his palatial apartment to share dinner. Maybe these things happen.

Maybe need for a while to see movies that have a beginning, a middle and an end.

Un été inoubliable

AkA An Unforgettable Summer. A young Romanian army captain's wife is, err, approached, by a senior office during a Ball. Her playful ridicule earns her husband duty at the Bulgarian border. Once there, she tries to make friends with Bulgarians peasants captured. The high command orders their execution, which her husband refuses to comply with.

The same senior office visits the post in person, give a last chance offer to the captain. The captain still refuses, but the executions happen anyway. The army captain is called back to the base and given a hard time.

When the same senior office came to the border, I half expected the wife to offer herself so as to save the peasant's lives. Perhaps the initial scene was there to make audience expect that.

Fairly decent movie. Very pretty woman good acting by both her (Kristin Scott Thomas) and her husband Claudiu Bleont). 6.5/10.

Khuda Ke Liye

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1068956. A fairly decent Pakistani movie on religious fanaticism. I thought there were two stories: A musician from wealthy pakistani family goes to Chicago school of music, just before 9/11. He gets picked up, tortured and eventually deported in vegetable condition. The other story is about his brother, who turns jihadi, kidnaps to Afghanistan and marries a cousin from UK at her father's request so she does not marry a "gora" but eventually has to give in because of foreign pressure -- as in apache helicopters. Naseer's role is publicized but he only comes in in the end, as a sensible cleric who speaks on behalf of the woman. 6/10.

Dark Harbor

Now this was a really bad movie. Man gets his boy friend to seduce his wife so they can kill her and live happily ever after. 3/10

La Seconda Moglie

The second wife. A teenage boy's relationship with his father's wife. We recognized Lazar Ristovski, who we saw earlier in Emir Kusturica's Undergroud. Which was surprising, because it is difficult to take your eyes off Maria Grazia Cucinotta.

For an adulterous theme, it is not obnoxious. The subject is, as they say, sensitively handled. And that alone makes it a decent fare. But there's isn't much more going for it. 5/10 for me.

Lakposhtha parvaz mikonand (2004)

Turtles Can Fly. How melancholy can it get? If there is a storyline to the movie, I don't know what it is. Maybe it is the story of the street-smart kid Satellite. Or maybe it's the story of teenage refugee raped and with a child and brother who lost both his arms in a mine blast. Or maybe it is about the boy who could tell future. Anyway, it is such a shock you can't even cry.

But what I would really like to know is how the maker got such great acting out of kids, including a toddler. 7.5/10

Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1045670/. Saw this last night, story of a happy school teacher. She speaks so much I kept thinking she is going to get on my nerves, but she didn't. Probably because she is so funny. Moral of the story: speak a lot only if you know you are funny. 6/10.