Orem Library

The French call it amour fou. Van Sant called it "Death in Venice on Skid Row." Based on an autobiographical story by maverick writer Walt Curtis, set in the seamy backstreets of Portland, Oregon, the film is about Walt, Johnny, and Pepper. Walt is a liquor-store clerk and aspiring writer, Johnny and Pepper are illegal Mexican immigrants. Walt pines for Johnny, who keeps him at arm's length, while Pepper eventually proves not so picky. Walt is a kind...

Willie, a disenchanted loner, is visited by his sixteen-year old Hungarian cousin Eva. Willie's equally slacker best friend Eddie also meets Eva, and the three become loose friends, until Eva decides to leave to visit Willie and Eva's Aunt Lottie in Cleveland. After a while Willie and Eddie are surprised to find that they miss Eva's companionship and take off for Cleveland in an old car. Finding Cleveland in winter to be disappointingly cold and unattractive,...

Director Claude Berri's introduction on the title screens reads "This film is a true story but seen through the imagination a child particularly sensitive to the tragic events which surrounded him in occupied France. The warm affection of this family of good people who took him in nevertheless leaves him with a certain poetic nostalgia for this time and a deep gratitude toward them." This film is his re-telling and re-creation of the life of a small...

Exiled from France for his exploits, underworld kingpin Abel Davos has been living for nearly a decade in Milan, even acquiring a family. In spite of the death sentence hanging over his head, Davos wants to return with them to France. His old mob cronies have gone bourgeois and affluent, reluctant to help, sending just one young thief, Eric Stark, to his aid. An exploration of the importance of loyalty and honor among thieves, this film shows exactly...

As the title screens explain, in gangster slang, 'doulos' means 'hat.' In the slang shared by criminal and police, 'doulos' also designates the person who wears it: the informer. Through shadowy back streets on the edge of Paris, an ingenious cat and mouse game is played as two underworld characters, seemingly working against each other, find themselves in a deadly entanglement of their own making but infinitely larger than both of them. Faugel, a...

Alain Leroy is a self-destructive writer who is enduring a treatment in a private hospital because of his alcoholism. The doctor only sees the surface problem and declares it time for Alain to leave the hospital. Alain resolves to commit suicide, but first he goes to Paris and tries to reconnect with some old friends.

El norte: Enrique and Rosa are brother and sister Mayan Indian peasants, living in the mountains of Guatemala. When the village attempts to organize for better treatment, Enrique and Rosa are forced to flee as the Guatemalan army is sent in to punish the townspeople. Receiving clandestine help from friends and humorous advice from a veteran immigrant, they make their way to Los Angeles, hoping to make a new life as young, uneducated, and illegal immigrants. The...

Cardinal Mazarin dies in 1661. The young Louis asserts his intention to govern as well as rule. Mazarin's fiscal advisor, Colbert, warns against Fouquet, who wants to be prime minister and is looting the treasury. Fouquet believes Louis will soon tire of exercizing power and overplays his hand. Louis' mistress reports this to the king who arrests Fouquet. Louis and Colbert design a brilliant strategy to keep merchants making money, nobles in debt,...

"With Vampyr, Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyser's brilliance of achieving mesmerizing atmosphere and austere, profoundly unsettling imagery was for once applied to the horror genre. Yet the result--concerning an occult student assailed by various supernatural haunts and local evildoers in a village outside Paris--is nearly unclassifiable, a host of stunning camera and editing tricks and densely layered sounds creating a mood of dreamlike terror....

Juliette, a bourgeois housewife, is a loving wife and mother whose domestic moments alternate with her days and nights as a call girl.