Browse Movies : Foreign : E

"Eros" is an anthology of three short films on the subject of eroticism and love, from a trio of the world's most extraordinary directors, Wong Kar Wai, Steven Soderbergh, and Michelangelo Antonioni. Wong Kar Wai's "The Hand" is the story of a young tailor's (Chang Chen) long-time unrequited love for a beautiful Hong Kong courtesan (Gong Li). Over many years, he lovingly crafts the clothes that she wears for other men. Over time, the seemingly unattainable fantasy woman loses everything, just as the tailor prospers in his career. Then the unexpected happens... Steven Soderbergh's "Equilibrium" is about a stressed-out 1950's advertising man (Robert Downey, Jr.) who has been suffering from a series of recurring erotic dreams. During his session with psychiatrist Dr. Pearl (Alan Arkin), he describes his dream of a woman who is familiar to him—but he can't recall who she is when he wakes up. Through the course of a very offbeat hour of therapy, we discover why that is. Michelangelo Antonioni's "The Dangerous Thread of Things" follows a fortyish married couple (Christopher Buchholz and Regina Nemni) that no longer have anything to say to one another. At an impasse, the man has a passionate one night stand with a free-spirited young girl (Luisa Ranieri), but this experience also fails to satisfy him. Later on, the wife and the girl meet....

This is the true story of how a Japanese businessman from Los Angeles, Eishy Hayata, built an emerald mining empire in Columbia that is today one of the world's largest and most powerful, starting in the 1970s as an "esmeraldero", an emerald buyer who goes directly to rural areas where emeralds can be procured from locals at bargain prices in their rough form. Central to the film's intrigue are Columbia's more brutal realities, as guerrilla warfare and street kidnappings are quite common. To combat this, Hayata fashions himself as a sort of modern cowboy, armed and dressed to fit the bill, along with a powerful cadre of personal bodyguards.

Nathaniel Brown and Paz de la Huerta star in a visceral journey set against the thumping, neon club scene of Tokyo, which hurls the viewer into an astonishing trip through life, death, and the universally wonderful and horrible moments between.