Film Reviews

S.No. 1 . 2 . 3 . 4 . 5 . 6 . 7 . 8 . 9 . 1 0 . 1 1 . 1 2 . 1 3 . 1 4 . 1 5 . 1 6 . 1 7 . 1

Film Name Last Tango in Paris (1972) The Dreamers (2003) Stealing Beauty (1996) The Sheltering Sky (1990) Nine 1/2 Weeks (1986) Lolita (1997) Eyes Wide Shut – 1999 A Clockwork Orange [1971] Poison Ivy (1992) Irréversible (2002)

Genre Dramas

Director Bernardo Bertolucci Bernardo Bertolucci

H1.M I1.M

Bernardo Bertolucci Bernardo Bertolucci Adrian Lyne Stanley Kubrick

H1.M

Stanley Kubrick Stanley Kubrick Katt Shea Ruben, Andy Ruben Gaspar Noe

Emmanuelle (1974)

Just Jaeckin

Latitude Zero (2000)

Toni Venturi

Killing Me Softly (2002)

Chen Kaige

The Hurt Locker (2008)

Kathryn Bigelow

Double Jeopardy (1999)

H1.M

Bruce Beresford

Blame It on Rio (1984)

H1.M

Stanley Donen

It's Complicated (2009)

Nancy Meyers

Anna Karenina (1997)
Page 1 of 303

Bernard Rose

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Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1964)

Russ Meyer

Vixen! By Russ Meyer (1975)

By Russ Meyer

Deep Throat (1972)

Fenton Bailey, Randy Barbato

A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (1951)

Elia Kazan

Pandora Peaks (2001)

Russ Meyer

The Lover (L'amant) 1992

Jean-Jacques Annaud

Damage (1992)

Louis Malle

Close My Eyes (1991)

Stephen Poliakoff

Casablanca 1942

H1.M

Michael Curtiz

Duel in the Sun (film) (1946)

I1.M

King Vidor

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

H1.M

David Lean

Caligula (1979)

Tinto Brass

CHINATOWN (1974)

H1.M

Roman Polanski

Bitter Moon (1994)

Roman Polanski

Apocalypse Now (1979)

H1.M

Francis Ford Coppola

Page 2 of 303

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10 Things I Hate About You (1999)

H1.M

Gil Junger

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

H1.M

Michel Gondry

TITANIC 1997

James Cameron

The Bridges Of Madison County[1995]

Clint Eastwood

NOTTING HILL 1999

Roger Michell

Love actually (2003)

H1.M

Richard Curtis

GHOST 1990

H1.M

Jerry Zucker

Valentine's Day (2010)

Garry Marshall

Runaway Bride (1999)

H1.M

Garry Marshall

The Notebook (2004)

H1.M

Nick Cassavetes

Shakespeare in Love – 1998

John Madden

Wall – E

Andrew Stanton

The Player (1992)

H1.M

Robert Altman

The Seven Year Itch (1955)

Billy Wilder

The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

Frank Darabont

Page 3 of 303

5 0 . 5 1 . 5 2 . 5 3 . 5 4 . 5 5 . 5 6 . 5 7 . 5 8 . 5 9 . 6 0 . 6 1 . 6 2 . 6 3 . 6 4 . The Last Song (film) Julie Ann Robinson

It Happened One Night

Frank Capra

Sweet Smell of Success

H1.M

Alexander Mackendrick

The Apartment (1960)

H1.M

Billy Wilder

The Graduate

H1.M

Mike Nichols

Death In Love 2008

Boaz Yakin

City of Motherly Love

Natalie Paige Bentley

The Quiet Man (1952)

John Ford

Woman In Berlin 2009

Max Faerberboeck

Antaheen (Bengali with English subtitles)

Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury

Dosar (Dir: Rituparno Ghosh)

H1.M

Rituparno Ghosh

Double Indemnity (1944)

Billy Wilder

Abahoman

H1.M

Rituparno Ghosh

Shob Charitro Kalponik

H1.M

Rituparno Ghosh

Page 4 of 303

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Antarmahal

Rituparno Ghosh

Rashomon (1950)

Akira Kurosawa

Raajneeti

H1.M

Prakash Jha

The Seven Samurai (Shichinin no Samurai) (1954)

Akira Kurosawa

High and Low (Tengoku to jigoku) (Heaven and Hell) (1962) Ran (1985)

Akira Kurosawa

Akira Kurosawa

(Throne of Blood) (Macbeth) (1957)

Akira Kurosawa`

Intimacy (2001)

H1.M

Lukas Moodysson

Drag Me to Hell (2009)

Sam Raimi

Show Me Love (Fucking Amal) (1998)

H1.M

Patrice Chéreau

The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover (1989)

H1.M

Peter Greenaway

Creation (2009)

H1.M

Jon Amiel

In.the.City.of.Sylvia.2007

H1.M

José Luis Guerín

EROS

H1.M

Kar Wai Wong , Michelangelo Antonioni

Indecent Proposal (1993)

Adrian Lyne

OUT OF AFRICA

H1.M
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Sydney Pollack

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Beyond the Clouds (1995 film)

H1.M

Michelangelo Antonioni , Wim Wenders

Brief Crossing) (2001)

H1.M

Catherine Breillat

Roger Dodger[2002]

H1.M

Dylan Kidd

Ricordati di me (2003) Remember Me, My Love

H1.M

Gabriele Muccino

Malena 2000

Giuseppe Tornatore

Brokeback Mountain (2005)

H1.M

Ang Lee

Dracula (1992)

Francis Ford Coppola

Doctor Zhivago (1965)

H1.M

David Lean

Twilight (2008/I)

Catherine Hardwicke

Remember Me (2010)

H1.M

Allen Coulter

Couples Retreat (2009)

H1.M

Peter Billingsley

The Virginity Hit (2010)

H1.M

Huck Botko , Andrew Gurland

Pride & Prejudice (2005)

H1.M

Joe Wright

Nine (2009)

H1.M

Rob Marshall

L'Avventura (The Adventure) (1960)

H1.M

Michelangelo Antonioni

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L'Eclisse (1962), aka The Eclipse

H1.M

Michelangelo Antonioni

Michelangelo Antonioni - La Notte (1961)

H1.M

Michelangelo Antonioni

Luis Bunuel - Tristana (1970)

Luis Buñuel

Mujeres al Borde de un Ataque de Nervios (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown) (1988) The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972)

H1.M

Pedro Almodóvar

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Black Book (2006) Zwartboek (original title)

Paul Verhoeven

A Cool Dry Place (1999)

H1.M

John N. Smith

Abohoman

H1.M

Rituparno Ghosh

A Short Film About Love (1988)

H1.M

Krzysztof Kieslowski

Wicker Park

H1.M

Paul McGuigan

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

H1.M

David Fincher

A Walk To Remember

H1.M

Adam Shankman

Serendipity

H1.M

Peter Chelsom

Page 7 of 303

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Truly Madly Deeply (1990)

H1.M

Anthony Minghella

P.S. I Love You (2007)

H1.M

Richard LaGravenese

You've Got Mail[1998]

H1.M

Nora Ephron

Dying Young (1991)

H1.M

Joel Schumacher

Sleeping with the Enemy 1991

H1.M

Joseph Ruben

Dirty Dancing (1987)

H1.M

EMILE ARDOLINO

The Pursuit of Happyness (2006)

H1.M

Gabriele Muccino

Last Chance Harvey (2008)

H1.M

The Green Mile (1999)

H1.M

Frank Darabont

Beaches Special Edition 1988

Garry Marshall

Saviour (1998)

H1.M

Predrag Antonijevic

My Sister's Keeper (2009)

H1.M

Nick Cassavetes

Marley & Me[2008]

H1.M
Page 8 of 303

David Frankel

1 2 2 . 1 2 3 . 1 2 4 . 1 2 5 . 1 2 6 . 1 2 7 . 1 2 8 . 1 2 9 . 1 3 0 . 1 3 1 . 1 3 2 . 1 3 3 .

I am Sam (2001)

H1.M

Jessie Nelson

The Boy In The Striped Pajamas [2008]

H1.M

Mark Herman

Grease (1978)

H1.M

Randal Kleiser

Finding Neverland (2004)

H1.M

Marc Forster

While You Were Sleeping (1995)

H1.M

Jon Turteltaub

Up In The Air (2009)

H1.M

Jason Reitman

C'era una volta il West (1968) Once Upon a Time in the West

Sergio Leone

It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

H1.M

Frank Capra

Lost Horizon (1937)

H1.M

Frank Capra

Utsab (2000)

H1.M

Rituparno Ghosh

Before Sunrise (1995)

H1.M

Richard Linklater

Before Sunset (2004)

H1.M

Richard Linklater

Page 9 of 303

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Smultronstället (1957)Wild Strawberries

Ingmar Bergman

Los abrazos rotos (2009) Broken Embraces

H1.M

Pedro Almodóvar

En Passion (A Passion) (The Passion of Anna) (1970)

H1.M

Ingmar Bergman

Casanova[2005]

H1.M

Lasse Hallström

Scenes from a Marriage - Scener ur ett Äktenskap (1973)

H1.M

Ingmar Bergman

(Autumn Sonata) (1978)

H1.M

Ingrid Bergman

Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949)

Busby Berkeley

Luis Bunuel - The Diary of a Chambermaid (1964) Le journal d'une femme de chambre

H1.M

Luis Buñuel

Volver 2006

H1.M

Pedro Almodóvar

Central do Brasil (Central Station) (1998)

H1.M

Walter Salles Jr.

Rules of the Game

Jean Renoir

Read My Lips (Sur mes lèvres) (2002)

H1.M

Jacques Audiard

Préparez vos Mouchoirs (Get Out Your
Page 10 of 303

Bertrand Blier

1 4 7 . 1 4 8 . 1 4 9 . 1 5 0 . 1 5 1 . 1 5 2 . 1 5 3 . 1 5 4 . 1 5 5 . 1 5 6 . 1 5 7 . 1 5 8 .

Handkerchiefs) (1978) Baby Doll (1956)

H1.M

D. Elia Kazan

Boys Don't Cry (1999)

H1.M

Baise Moi (2000, Fr.)

Virginie Despentes, Coralie

Bloodsucking Freaks (1976)

Joel M. Reed

Blue Velvet (1986)

David Lynch

Like Water For Chocolate 1992

Alfonso Arau

The Horseman on the Roof 1995

Jean-Paul Rappeneau

Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)

Jacques Demy

Cyrano de Bergerac (1990)

Jean-Paul Rappeneau

Cinema Paradiso (Nuovo Cinema Paradiso) (1988)

Giuseppe Tornatore

The Way We Were

Sydney Pollack

On Golden Pond (1981)

Mark Rydell

Page 11 of 303

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The End of the Affair (1999)

H1.M

Neil Jordan

Bridget Jones's Diary [2001]

H1.M

Sharon Maguire

A Man and a Woman_ Un Homme Et Une Femme 1966

H1.M

Claude Lelouch

Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (1975)

Pier Paolo Pasolini

Mamma Roma (1962)

Pier Paolo Pasolini

8½ (1963)

Federico Fellini

Le Scaphandre et le Papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) (2007)

Julian Schnabel

Brief Encounter

David Lean

My Big Fat Greek Wedding

Joel Zwick

Nowhere in Africa (Nirgendwo in Afrika) (2001)

Caroline Link

Hannah and Her Sisters

Woody Allen

An Affair to Remember

Leo McCarey

Roman Holiday
Page 12 of 303

William Wyler

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That Obscure Object of Desire

Luis Buñuel

Le Boucher

Claude Chabrol

Contempt

Jean-Luc Godard

Open Your Eyes

Alejandro Amenábar

La Nina santa (The Holy Girl) [2004] DvDrip-paTon

Lucrecia Martel

Y Tu Mamá También/ And Your Mother Too

Alfonso Cuarón

Gregory's Girl

Bill Forsyth

Pedro Almodovar - Carne Tremula (Live Flesh, 1997)

I1.M

Pedro Almodovar

Pelle erobreren AKA Pelle the Conqueror (1987)

Billie August

Inland Empire

David Lynch

Welcome to the Rileys.

Jake Scott

The Social Network 2010

David Fincher

Page 13 of 303

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Les Choses de la vie (The Little Things in Life) (These Things Happen) (1970)

Claude Sautet

Nelly & Monsieur Arnaud (1995)

I1.M

Claude Sautet

A Heart in Winter (Un coeur en hiver) (A Heart of Stone) (1992)

Claude Sautet

Les égarés (Strayed)

Andre Techine

Les choristes

Christophe Barratier

Knafayim Shvurot aka Broken Wings 2002

Nir Bergman

Letter From An Unknown Woman (1948) Joan Fontaine

I1.M

Max Ophüls

Citizen Kane

Orson Welles

Dangerous Liaisons

Stephen Frears

Cinderella Man

I1.M

Ron Howard

The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen)

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

Gate of Hell

Teinosuke Kinugasa

The Virgin Spring
Page 14 of 303

Ingmar Bergman

1 9 7 . 1 9 8 . 1 9 9 . 2 0 0 . 2 0 1 . 2 0 2 . 2 0 3 . 2 0 4 . 2 0 5 . 2 0 6 . 2 0 7 . 2 0 8 .

Babette’s Feast

Gabriel Axel

Burnt By the Sun Utomlyonnye solntsem (1994)

H2.M

Nikita Mikhalkov

Life is Beautiful La vita è bella (1997)

H1.M

Roberto Benigni

Todo Sobre Mi Madre (All About My Mother) (1999)

H2.M H1.M

Pedro Almodóvar

The Body Heat 1981

Lawrence Kasdan

Schindler's List (1993)

Steven Spielberg

Through a Glass Darkly

Ingmar Bergman

Winter Light

Ingmar Bergman

The Silence(Tystnaden) (1963)

Ingmar Bergman

THE GREAT GATSBY

Jack Clayton

Teenage Bride

Gary Troy

L'uomo che guarda (The Voyeur)

Tinto Brass

Page 15 of 303

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THE CONSTANT GARDENER 2005

H2.M

Fernando Meirelles

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Woody Allen

Taken 2008

Pierre Morel

Remember Me

Allen Coulter

Kill Kill Faster Faster

Gareth Maxwell Roberts

Aastha In the Prison of Spring (1997)

Basu Bhattacharya

The Switch (I) (2010)

Josh Gordon, Will Speck

Un long Dimanche De Fiancailles ( A Very Long Engagement)

Jean-Pierre Jeunet

The Eiger Sanction (1975)

Clint Eastwood

The Rain People (1969)

Francis Ford Coppola

Kannathil Muthamittal : A Peck on the Cheek (2002)

Mani Ratnam

Bengali Night La nuit Bengali (1988)

H2.M

Nicolas Klotz

Adieu l'ami (Farewell, Friend) (Honor Among
Page 16 of 303

Jean Herman

2 2 2 . 2 2 3 . 2 2 4 . 2 2 5 . 2 2 6 . 2 2 7 . 2 2 8 . 2 2 9 . 2 3 0 . 2 3 1 . 2 3 2 . 2 3 3 .

Thieves) (1968) L' Homme qui Aimait les Femmes (The Man Who Loved Women) (1977)

François Truffaut

"L' enfant sauvage (The Wild Child) [1970] dir Francois Truffau"

François Truffaut

L' Argent de Poche (Pocket Money) (Small Change) (1976)

François Truffaut

The Woman Next Door (La femme d'à côté) (1981)

François Truffaut

Day for Night (La Nuit Américaine) (The American Night) (1973)

François Truffaut

Jules and Jim (1962)

H2.M

François Truffaut

La Mariée était en Noir (The Bride Wore Black) (1968)

François Truffaut

La Peau douce (The Soft Skin) (1964)

François Truffaut

The 400 Blows (Les Quatre cents coups) (1959)

François Truffaut

Alice in den Städten (1974)

Wim Wenders

Fanny och Alexander (1982)

Ingmar Bergman

12 Angry Men

Sidney Lumet

Page 17 of 303

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Pulp Fiction

Quentin Tarantino

Black Swan

Darren Aronofsky

Into the Wild

Sean Penn

Forrest Gump (1994)

Robert Zemeckis

Three Colors: Red (Trois couleurs: Rouge) (1994)

Krzysztof Kieslowski

Three Colors: Blue (Trois Couleurs: Bleu) (1993)

Krzysztof Kieslowski

Three Colors: White (Trzy kolory: Bialy) (Trois Couleurs: Blanc) (1994)

Krzysztof Kieslowski

Once Upon a Time in the West (C'era una volta il West) (1968)

Sergio Leone

Repulsion (1965)

Roman Polanski

Cet Obscur Objet du Désir (That Obscure Object of Desire) (1977)

Luis Buñuel

For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)

Sam Wood

Lean on Me (1989)

John G. Avildsen

Freedom Writers (2007)
Page 18 of 303

Richard LaGravenese

2 4 7 . 2 4 8 . 2 4 9 . 2 5 0 . 2 5 1 . 2 5 2 . 2 5 3 . 2 5 4 . 2 5 5 . 2 5 6 . 2 5 7 . 2 5 8 .

Stand and Deliver (1988)

Ramón Menéndez

Rudy (1994)

David Anspaugh

Good Will Hunting (1997)

Gus Van Sant

To Sir, With Love (1967)

James Clavell

Secondhand Lions (2003)

Tim McCanlies

Coach Carter (2005)

Thomas Carter (II)

The Ultimate Gift (2007)

Michael O. Sajbel

Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002)

Phillip Noyce

Dancer in the Dark (2000)

Lars von Trier

My Life Without Me (2003)

Isabel Coixet

Breaking the Waves (1996)

Lars von Trier

21 Grams (2003)

Alejandro González Iñárritu

Page 19 of 303

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Hable con Ella (Talk to Her) (2002)

Pedro Almodóvar

True Grit (1969)

Henry Hathaway

True Grit (2010)

Ethan Coen , Joel Coen

Lilja 4-ever

Lukas Moodysson

American Beauty (1999)

Sam Mendes

Last Train Home (2009)

Lixin Fan

3-Iron (Bin-jip) (Empty Houses) (2004)

Ki-duk Kim

Belle de Jour (1967) Beauty of the Day

H1.M

Luis Buñuel

Fa Yeung Nin Wa (In the Mood for Love) (2000)

Kar Wai Wong

Memento (2000)

Christopher Nolan

Viridiana (1961)

Luis Buñuel

Zerkalo (The Mirror) (1974)

Andrei Tarkovsky

The Secret in Their Eyes (El Secreto de Sus Ojos)
Page 20 of 303

Juan José Campanella

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(2009) The Consequences of Love (Le Conseguenze dell'amore) (2004)

Paolo Sorrentino

El Ángel Exterminador (The Exterminating Angel) (1962)

Luis Buñuel

Two Lovers (2008)

James Gray

Flesh and the Devil (1926)

Clarence Brown

Eugénie (1974)

Jesus Franco

Venus in Furs [1969]

Jesus Franco

Taste of Cherry (Ta'm e Guilass) (1998)

Abbas Kiarostami

Raise the Red Lantern (Da hong deng long gao gao gua) (1991)

Yimou Zhang

The Celebration (Festen) (1998)

H2.M

Thomas Vinterberg

Leave Her to Heaven(1946)

John M. Stahl

Tokyo Story (Tôkyô monogatari) (1953)

Yasujiro Ozu

Love and Other Drugs (2010)

Edward Zwick

Page 21 of 303

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Tre Fratelli (Three Brothers) (1980)

Francesco Rosi

Les héroïnes du mal (Immoral Women) (1979)

Walerian Borowczyk

Wuthering Heights (Abismos de pasión) (1953)

Luis Buñuel

Léon (The Professional) (1994)

Luc Besson

Penelope (2006)

Mark Palansky

Moulin Rouge! (2001)

I1.M

Baz Luhrmann

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970)

I1.M

Jaromil Jires

Suna no Onna (Woman in the Dunes) (1964)

Hiroshi Teshigahara

Contes Immoraux (Immoral Tales) (1974)

I1.M

Walerian Borowczyk

2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle) 1967

I1.M

Jean-Luc Godard

L'année dernière à Marienbad (1961) Last Year at Marienbad

I1.M

Alain Resnais

Hiroshima mon amour (1959)

I1.M

Alain Resnais

Fotografando Patrizia (1985) The Dark Side of Love

H1.M

Salvatore Samperi

Page 22 of 303

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La Mujer de Mi Hermano (A Beautiful Wife) (2005)

I1.M

Ricardo de Montreuil

Naked (1993)

H1.M

Mike Leigh

Máncora (2008)

H1.M

Ricardo de Montreuil

The Little Rascals (1994)

I1.M

Penelope Spheeris

Ne le Dis à Personne (Tell No One) (2006)

I1.M

Guillaume Canet

Shaun of the Dead (2004)

Edgar Wright

Secret Sunshine (2007) Milyang

I1.M

Chang-dong Lee

Samaria (Samaritan Girl) (2004)

I1.M

Ki-duk Kim

Gone With the Wind (1939)

H1.M

George Cukor , Sam Wood

Ôdishon (1999) Audition (1999)

H2.M

Takashi Miike

AWAY FROM HER

I1.M

Sarah Polley

Elegy (I) (2008)

I1.M

Isabel Coixet

Page 23 of 303

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A Single Man (2009)

I1.M

Tom Ford

Yeh saali Zindagi

I1.M

The Mother and the Whore 1973

Jean Eustache

El lado oscuro del corazón (1992) The Dark Side of the Heart

I1.M

Eliseo Subiela

Blue Valentine (2010)

I1.M

Derek Cianfrance

Sophie's Choice (1982)

I1.M

Alan J. Pakula

Bo (2010)

I1.M

Hans Herbots

Biutiful (2010)

I1.M

Alejandro González Iñárritu

Hope Springs (2003)

I1.M

Mark Herman

Consenting Adults (1992)

I1.M

Alan J. Pakula

Much Ado About Nothing (1993)

I1.M

Kenneth Branagh

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

I1.M

Milos Forman

Waitress (2007)

I1.M
Page 24 of 303

Adrienne Shelly

3 2 2 . 3 2 3 . 3 2 4 . 3 2 5 . 3 2 6 . 3 2 7 . 3 2 8 . 3 2 9 . 3 3 0 . 3 3 1 . 3 3 2 . 3 3 3 .

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (2006)

Marc Rothemund

The White Ribbon (Das weisse Band) (2009)

Michael Haneke

The Milk of Sorrow (2009)

Claudia Llosa

The Sea Inside (I) (2004)

I1.M

Alejandro Amenábar

Edge of Darkness

I1.M

Martin Campbell

Papillon (1973)

I1.M

Franklin J. Schaffner

Splendor in the Grass (1961)

I1.M

Elia Kazan

Fish Tank 2009

I1.CNF

Andrea Arnold

A Swedish Love Story En kärlekshistoria 1970

I1.M

Roy Andersson

Ordinary People (1980)

I1.M

Robert Redford

In the Bedroom (2001)

I1.M

Todd Field

The Deer Hunter 1978

I1.M

MICHAEL CIMINO

Page 25 of 303

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Half Nelson (2006)

I1.M

Ryan Fleck

An Education 2009

I1.M

Lone Scherfig

House of Sand and Fog 2003

I1.M

Vadim Perelman

The Return (2003)

Vozvrashchenie

I1.M

Andrei Zvyagintsev

Things We Lost in the Fire (2007)

I1.M

Susanne Bier

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring 2003 aka Bom yeoreum gaeul gyeoul geurigo bom

I1.M

Ki-duk Kim

Nobody Knows 2004 aka Dare mo shiranai

I1.M

Hirokazu Koreeda

Tokyo Sonata 2008

I1.M

Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Sling Blade 1996

I1.M

Billy Bob Thornton

Into the Wild 2007

I1.M

Sean Penn

Ed Wood 1994

I1.M

Tim Burton

Rescue Dawn 2006

I1.M

Werner Herzog

Constantinen 2005

I1.M
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Francis Lawrence

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Eagle Eye 2008

I1.M

D.J. Caruso

Breathless (À bout de souffle) (By a Tether) (1960)

I1.M

Jean-Luc Godard

Manon des sources

I1.M

Claude Berri

Jean de Florette

I1.M

Claude Berri

The Seventh Seal (Det Sjunde inseglet) (1957)

I1.M

Ingmar Bergman

Room In Rome (habitacion En Roma) (2010)

I1.CNF

Julio Medem

La Haine (Hate) (1995)

Mathieu Kassovitz

Sex and Lucia (2001)

I1.CNF

Julio Medem

Shortbus AKA The Sex Film Project

I1.CNF

John Cameron Mitchell

Lie With Me (2005)

I1.CNF

Clément Virgo

Diary of a Nymphomaniac

I1.CNF

Christian Molina

Head-On (Gegen die Wand) (2004)

Fatih Akin

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Little Children (2006)

I1.M

Todd Field

Il Postino (The Postman) (1994)

I1.M

Michael Radford

Cashback (2006)

I1.M

Sean Ellis

Young People Fucking (2007)

I1.M

Martin Gero

Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008)

I1.M

Kevin Smith

Beautiful Girls (1996)

I1.M

Ted Demme

In Good Company (2004)

I1.M

Paul Weitz

The Other Side of the Bed (El.Otro.Lado.De.La.Cama) 2002

I1.CNF

Emilio Martínez Lázaro

Girl in Captivity Psycho Torture Chamber 2008

I1.CNF

Daisuke Got

A Lonely Cow Weeps at Dawn 2003

I1.CNF

Daisuke Gotô

The Strange Saga of Hiroshi the Freeloading Sex Machine 2005

I1.CNF

Yûji Tajiri

The Japanese Wife Next Door 2004

I1.CNF

Yutaka Ikejima

Auto Focus 2002

I1.CNF
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Paul Schrader

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Filme de Amor (2003) Bressane

I1.CNF

Júlio Bressane

No te mueras sin decirme adonde vas (Don't Die Without Telling Me Where You're Going) 1995

I1.M

Eliseo Subiela

Te doy mis ojos (Take My Eyes) 2003

I1.M

Icíar Bollaín

Cross of Iron 1977

I1.M

Sam Peckinpah

Titash Ekti Nadir Naam (1973)

I1.M

Ritwik Ghatak

The Wild Bunch 1969

I1.M

Sam Peckinpah

Midaq Alley 1995

I1.M

Jorge Fons

Ae Fond Kiss 2004

I1.M

Ken Loach

Sweet Sixteen 2002

I1.M

Ken Loach

City of God 2002

I1.M

Fernando Meirelles, Kátia Lund

Definitely, Maybe 2008

I1.M

Adam Brooks

My Life to Live (It's My Life) (Vivre sa vie: Film en douze tableaux) (1962)

I1.M

Jean-Luc Godard

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Pierrot le Fou (Pierrot Goes Wild) (Crazy Pete) (1969)

I1.M

Jean-Luc Godard

Los Olvidados (The Young and the Damned) (1950)

I1.M

Luis Buñuel

Music and Lyrics (2007)

I1.M

Marc Lawrence

The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie (Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie) (1972)

I1.M

Luis Buñuel

L'Amour en fuite (Love on the Run) (1979)

I1.M

François Truffaut

The Young One (Island of Shame) (White Trash) (La Joven) (1960)

I1.M

Luis Buñuel

The Holiday (2006)

I1.M H1.M

Nancy Meyers

Head On (1998)

I1.M

Ana Kokkinos

Stolen Kisses (1968)

I1.M

François Truffaut

L'Amour en fuite (Love on the Run) (1979)

I1.M

François Truffaut

Simon of the Desert (1965)

I1.M

Luis Buñuel

The Arrangement (1969)

I1.M

Elia Kazan

The Thin Red Line (1998)

I1.M
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Terrence Malick

3 9 7 . 3 9 8 . 3 9 9 . 4 0 0 . 4 0 1 . 4 0 2 . 4 0 3 . 4 0 4 . 4 0 5 . 4 0 6 . 4 0 7 . 4 0 8 .

Days of Heaven (1978)

I1.M

Terrence Malick

The Longest Day (1962)

I1.M

Andrew Marton , Ken Annakin

Karen Cries on the Bus (Karen llora en un bus) (2011)

I1.M

Gabriel Rojas Vera

A Woman Without Love (1952)

I1.M

Luis Buñuel

A Good Old Fashioned Orgy (2011)

I1.M

Alex Gregory, Peter Huyck

I Never Sang for My Father (1970)

I1.M

Gilbert Cates

In the Land of Women (2007)

I1.M

Jon Kasdan

What Women Want (2000)

I1.M

Nancy Meyers

Something to Talk About (1995)

I1.M

Lasse Hallström

Some Like It Hot (1959)

I1.M

Billy Wilder

In the Heat of the Night (1967)

I1.M

Norman Jewison

Driving Miss Daisy (1989)

I1.M

Bruce Beresford

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The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

I1.M

William Wyler

From Here to Eternity (1953)

I1.M

Fred Zinnemann

Gigi (1958)

I1.M

Vincente Minnelli , Charles Walters

West Side Story (1961)

I1.M

Jerome Robbins , Robert Wise

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)

I1.M

Richard Brooks I

A Place in the Sun (1951)

I1.M

George Stevens

My Fair Lady (1964)

I1.M

George Cukor

A Man for All Seasons (1966)

I1.M

Fred Zinnemann

The Godfather (1972)

I1.M

Francis Ford Coppola

The Godfather, Part II (1974)

I1.M

Francis Ford Coppola

Chariots of Fire (1981)

I1.M

Hugh Hudson

Terms of Endearment (1983)

I1.M

James L. Brooks

Chicago (2002)

I1.M
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Rob Marshall

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Dances With Wolves (1990)

I1.M

Kevin Costner

No Country for Old Men (2007)

I1.M

Ethan Coen , Joel Coen

Vertigo (1958)

I2.M

Alfred Hitchcock

Psycho (1960)

I2.M

Alfred Hitchcock

Awakenings (1990)

I2.M

Penny Marshall

Black Narcissus (1947)

I2.M

Michael Powell , Emeric Pressburger

Cactus Flower (1969)

I2.M

Gene Saks

Gilda (1946)

I2.M

Charles Vidor

O Melissokomos (The Beekeeper) (1986)

I2.M

Theodoros Angelopoulos

The Spirit of the Beehive (El Espíritu de la colmena) (1973)

I2.M

Victor Erice

The Lady from Shanghai (1948)

I2.M

Orson Welles

The Strawberry Blonde (1941)

I2.M

Raoul Walsh

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Separate Tables (1958)

I2.M

Delbert Mann

Laura (1944)

I2.M

Otto Preminger

Cover Girl (1944)

I2.M

Charles Vidor

You yi tian (One Day) (2010)

I2.M

Chi-Jan Hou

One Day in September (1999)

I2.M

Kevin Macdonald

One Day (2011)

I2.M

Lone Scherfig

Becoming Jane (2007)

I2.M

Julian Jarrold

Rachel Getting Married (2008)

I2.M

Jonathan Demme

The Devil Wears Prada (2006)

I2.M

David Frankel

Man on Wire (2008)

I2.M

James Marsh

Aruitemo Aruitemo (Still Walking) (2008)

I2.M

Hirokazu Koreeda

Le Gout Des Autres (The Taste of Others) (It Takes All Kinds) (2000)

I2.M

Agnès Jaoui

Oldboy (Oldeuboi) (2003)

I2.M
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Chan Wook Park

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Maria Full of Grace (2003)

I2.M

Joshua Marston

Orgasm, Inc. (2009)

I2.M

Elizabeth Canner , Liz Canner

L'Ultimo capodanno (Humanity's Last New Year's Eve) (1998)

I2.M

Marco Risi

La riffa (1993)

I2.M

Francesco Laudadio

A Tale of Two Cities (1958)

I2.M

Ralph Thomas

Shock Corridor (1963)

I2.M

Samuel Fuller

Cape Fear (1962)

I2.M

J. Lee Thompson

Straw Dogs (1971)

I2.M

Sam Peckinpah

Watcher in the Attic (Edogawa Rampo ryoki-kan: Yaneura no sanpo sha) (1976)

I2.M

Noboru Tanaka

Animal Instincts (1992)

Gregory Hippolyte

Animal Instincts 3: The Seductress (1995)

Gregory Hippolyte

Animal Instincts 2 (1994)

Gregory Hippolyte

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4 5 9 . 4 6 0 . 4 6 1 . 4 6 2 . 4 6 3 . 4 6 4 . 4 6 5 . 4 6 6 . 4 6 7 . 4 6 8 . 4 6 9 . 4 7 0 . 4

Do Fish Do It? (2002) Fickende Fische

Almut Getto

Rita’s Legends (2000) Die Stille nach dem Schuss

Volker Schlöndorff

Women Without Men (2009) Zanan-e bedun-e mardan

Shirin Neshat | Shoja Azari

Downfall (Der Untergang) (2004)

Oliver Hirschbiegel

Four Minutes (Vier Minuten) (2008)

Chris Kraus

Auf der Anderen Seite (The Edge of Heaven) (On the Other Side) (2007)

Fatih Akin

When We Leave (2010)

Feo Aladag

The Marriage of Maria Braun (Die Ehe der Maria Braun) (1979)

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Triumph des Willens (Triumph Of The Will) (1934)

Leni Riefenstahl

Yesterday Girl (1966) Abschied von gestern

Alexander Kluge

Mother and Child (2009)

Rodrigo García

Vincere (2009)

Marco Bellocchio

Albert Nobbs (2011)
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Rodrigo García

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Notorious (1946)

Alfred Hitchcock

Spellbound (1945)

Alfred Hitchcock

The Philadelphia Story (1940)

George Cukor

My Favorite Wife (1940)

Garson Kanin

Pillow Talk (1959)

Michael Gordon

Le Jour se lève (Daybreak) (1939)

Marcel Carné

Design for Living (1933)

Ernst Lubitsch

La Strada (The Road) (1954)

Federico Fellini

Lo sceicco bianco (The White Sheik) (1952)

Federico Fellini

Le Notti di Cabiria (Nights of Cabiria) (1957)

Federico Fellini

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4 8 4 . 4 8 5 . 4 8 6 .

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Last Tango in Paris
Runtime: 2 hrs 9 mins Genre: Dramas Synopsis: Originally famed for its sexual frankness, Bernardo Bertolucci's LAST TANGO IN PARIS has managed to endure due to its sophisticated storytelling and brave lead performances. Marlon Brando incorporated details from his own life into the character of Paul, the globetrotting American who finally settled into a marriage and proprietorship of a fleabag hotel in Paris. But when his wife commits suicide, Paul goes into an existential tailspin. One day, while wandering through an apartment that is available for rent, he encounters Jeanne (Maria Schneider), a lovely Parisian girl (she's 20 to Paul's 45) who is also viewing the apartment. The two become intimate and have a heated affair, carried on without names, in the apartment where they first met. While Paul clearly hopes to forget about his wife, Jeanne is simply overwhelmed by her fiancé (Jean-Pierre Leaud, in a somewhat Bertolucci-satirizing role), a filmmaker who wants her to be his subject and inspiration. Nothing is taboo in their relationship, but confrontation comes when Paul breaks the spell of impersonality. Brando's monologue beside his dead wife has sent many a film student into a paroxysm of pleasure in this groundbreaking erotic drama from acclaimed director Bertolucci (THE CONFORMIST, THE LAST EMPEROR). [Less] Starring: Marlon Brando, Maria Schneider, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Darling Legitimus Director: Bernardo Bertolucci Paul (Marlon Brando), a middle-aged American hotel owner mourning the suicide of his wife, meets a young engaged Parisian woman named Jeanne (Maria Schneider) in an apartment both are interested in renting. Paul and Jeanne proceed to have an anonymous sexual relationship in the apartment, and Paul demands that neither of them share any personal information, not even their names. The affair goes on until one day Jeanne comes to the apartment to find that Paul has, without warning, packed up and left. Paul later meets Jeanne on the street and says that he wants to start anew with their relationship. He takes Jeanne to a Tango bar and begins telling her about himself. This loss of anonymity disillusions Jeanne about the relationship and she tells Paul she doesn't want to see him again. Paul, not wanting to let Jeanne go, chases her back to her apartment and tells her that he loves her and wants to know her name. Unbeknownst to Paul, Jeanne is holding a gun belonging to her late father she had pulled from a drawer. She tells him her name and the gun goes off inexplicably. Paul makes his way out of the room, sticks his gum under the railing and falls dead onto her balcony. The audience then sees Jeanne, dazed- muttering to herself that he was just a stranger who tried to rape her, reassuring herself that she did not know who he was in a rehearsal for questioning by the police.

The Dreamers (2003)
Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci Paris, spring 1968. While most students take the lead in the May 'revolution', a French poet's twin son Theo and daughter Isabelle enjoy the good life in his grand Paris home. As film buffs they meet and 'adopt' modest, conservatively educated Californian student Matthew. With their parents away for a month, they drag him into an orgy of indulgence of all senses, losing all of his and the last of their innocence. A sexual threesome shakes their rapport, yet only the outside reality will break it up. Paris, spring 1968. While most students take the lead in the May 'revolution', a French poet's twin son Theo and daughter Isabelle enjoy the good life in his grand Paris home. As film buffs they meet and 'adopt' modest, conservatively educated Californian student Matthew. With their parents away for a month, they drag him into an orgy of indulgence of all senses, losing all of his and the last of their innocence. A sexual threesome shakes their rapport, yet only the outside reality will break it up. Written by KGF Vissers The tumultuous political landscape of Paris in 1968 serves as the backdrop for a tale about three young cineastes who are drawn together through their passion for film. Matthew, an American exchange student, pursuing his education abroad in Paris, becomes friends with a French brother and sister duo, named Theo and Isabelle, who share a common love of the cinema. While the May 1968 Paris student riots--which eventually shut down most of the French government--are happening around them, the three friends develop a relationship unlike anything Matthew has ever experienced, or will ever encounter again. Written by Sujit R. Varma

Stealing Beauty (1996)
Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci
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Synopsis: After her mother commits suicide, nineteen year old Lucy Harmon travels to Italy to have her picture painted. However, she has other reasons for... After her mother commits suicide, nineteen year old Lucy Harmon travels to Italy to have her picture painted. However, she has other reasons for wanting to go. She wants to renew her acquaintance with Nicolo Donati, a young boy with whom she fell in love on her last visit four years ago. She also is trying tosolve the riddle left in a diary written by her dead mother, Sara.

The Sheltering Sky (1990)
Directed By: Bernardo Bertolucci Synopsis: Master filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci applies his considerable talent to this haunting adaptation of the Paul Bowles novel. John Malkovich and Debra... Master filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci applies his considerable talent to this haunting adaptation of the Paul Bowles novel. John Malkovich and Debra Winger play Port and Kit Moresby, characters loosely based on Bowles and his wife Jane, who flee New York for North Africa, where they hope to find mystical truths that will reignite the spark of their marriage. But instead they lose their moral bearings (with help from a friend, played by Campbell Scott, who has an affair with Kit) while traveling deeper and deeper into the Sahara. Before long, what started as a vacation at exotic lodgings has descended into a tour of hell, as they stumble farther and farther into an unknowable spiritual territory. Though long and at times slow-moving, the film features marvelously nuanced acting by Malkovich and Winger and visionary filmmaking that makes the landscape at once picturesque and threatening. The American artist couple Port and Kit Moresby travels aimless through Africa, searching for new experiences that could give new sense to their relationship. But the flight to distant regions leads both only deeper into despair. Please do not read this review if you have not yet seen the film, because I find it necessary to discuss elements of the film which reveal the plot. The whole film was for me a long introduction into the silence of myself. I like the desert a lot, am not afraid of the void, when the mind can finally be still. Port also actually came home to Africa. He was ready to die, ready to leave behind his intellectuality, to get rid of the inner mess that was himself. Although he seemed unconscious of it, his inner soul brought him by force to his own roots. When in delirium his hands dance happily, demanding the music to continue, to push him through and out of this existence, Kit is left aside and alone, madness kissing her forehead for the first time, unable to stop the approaching avalanche which will sweep over both of their lives, leaving one dead. Kit, ...how one must feel going to a foreign country to mate again with the mate with whom you, through so many silly, careless incidents, have lost essential contact - and to suddenly find him dead and silent lying in front of you in the vastness of an indifferent desert. The desert we all live in unawares. "Oh, God, what have I done, how could I have allowed this to go so far?" Suddenly she wakes up to notice the immense impact of nothingness. Her mind broken, she goes off with a Bedouin, and this is actually what I like most about the film. It allows me to let my mind break too, traveling with her through the desert, mostly listening to the silent sound of camels and bells and voices crying out in a strange unknown language. Some of the professional critics didn't to go down that path. They need their thoughts to run incessantly, .. for them it must have certainly been a threatening movie, or so their comments would suggest.

Nine 1/2 Weeks
Starring: Mickey Rourke, Kim Basinger, Margaret Whitton, David Margulies Director: Adrian Lyne In the often impersonal city of New York, a city that never sleeps, a city filled with the shadows and secrets of its citizens, a man and a woman conduct a highly sensual sexual affair. John (Mickey Rourke), a wealthy businessman, seduces a beautiful art assistant, Elizabeth (Kim Basinger), who is recently divorced after a three-year marriage. He first comes across as funny and adventurous, but it soon becomes clear that's not all John is into. He plays strange sexual games with Liz, blindfolding her and putting ice on her body, making her crawl on the floor to him, and "hypnotizing" her with the sound of a watch he gave her, suggesting that every day at twelve o'clock she think of him touching her. Elizabeth's world is thrown into chaos as she hungers for John sexually, wanting to know who he really is. However, John is unwilling to give her any kind of hint as to his background. She tries to introduce him to her circle of friends, but he flat out refuses, telling her all he wants is the nights with her--she can have the days with her friends.

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Slowly Elizabeth becomes increasingly dependent on John--he feeds her in the morning, bathes her, takes care of her, and makes love to her in ways she's never experienced. She finally realizes that their relationhip is unhealthy and is driven to the edge when John starts to have sex with a prostitute in front of her in a dingy motel room. She can't think straight anymore, and is desperately unhappy. She becomes even more confused and upset when her best friend begins a relationship with her ex-husband. In the end she leaves John, telling him it's too little too late when he tries to tell her about himself. When she walks out the door into the apartment complex courtyard, he whispers to himself that he loves her and that she had better come back in 50 seconds. She doesn't though, and the movie ends with her walking down the lonely streets of the city, crying and thinking about the fact that for nine and a half weeks she had an erotic affair with a perfect stranger.

Lolita (1997 film)
Starring: James Mason, Shelley Winters, Peter Sellers, Sue Lyon Director: Stanley Kubrick Synopsis: Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's controversial LOLITA is a wicked satire of sexual obsession, sadomasochism, and fetishism. When mild-mannered professor Humbert Humbert (James Mason) arrives in the small town of Ramsdale, New Hampshire, he is immediately set upon by his landlady, Charlotte Haze (Shelley Winters), and her adolescent daughter, Lolita (Sue Lyon). Although Humbert gets involved with Charlotte, it is Lolita with whom he becomes obsessed. When Charlotte sends her daughter away to summer camp (the aptly named Camp Climax), Humbert becomes consumed with jealousy. He finally takes Lolita out of camp and heads out alone with her. He is pestered along the way by Clare Quilty (played magnificently by Peter Sellers), who threatens to expose him. But nothing can break the hold Lolita has over Humbert. From the opening credits sequence--a close-up of a man's hand (with a wedding ring) carefully polishing a young girl's toenails--Kubrick's biting, darkly comic LOLITA burns with sexual energy as it follows the debasement of an intelligent, worldly man in a series of carefully choreographed long takes that boil over with psychosexual tension. Although little physical contact is shown, Kubrick hints at it beautifully, especially in the drive-in scene in which both Charlotte and Lolita grab on to Humbert's hands. And yet given the serious nature of the subject matter, Kubrick pauses long enough to include a riotous slapstick scene of Humbert and a bellhop struggling over a cot as Lolita sleeps quietly on the bed, as well as Quilty playing Ping-Pong with a seemingly endless supply of balls. Stanley Kubrick's highly controversial masterwork is a fascinating look at pedophilia and sexual taboos that lead to obsession and murder. [Less] In 1947 Humbert Humbert, a European professor of French literature, travels to New Hampshire, in the United States, to take a teaching position. He rents a room in the home of widow Charlotte Haze, largely because he sees her adolescent daughter, Dolores (aged 12 in Nabokov's novel but seemingly slightly older in the film and variously called "Dolly" or "Lo"), while touring the house. Obsessed from boyhood with young girls of this age, whom he calls nymphets, partly because of an early sexual experience and tragic loss, Humbert marries Charlotte for the sake of access to her daughter. Charlotte's untimely death, shortly after she discovers his preference for her daughter, frees Humbert to pursue a sexual and emotional relationship with Dolores, whom he nicknames 'Lolita'. The two travel the country for a few years, staying in various motels but eventually settling in a college town where Humbert takes a teaching job. However, Lolita's increasing boredom with Humbert, as well as her growing desire for independence, fuels a constant tension between them. Humbert's desperate affections for Lo are also rivaled by another pedophile, the playwright Clare Quilty, who has been pursuing Lo from the beginning. Quilty's name and identity are at first unknown to Humbert, and when Lolita runs away to him, Humbert's search for her is unsuccessful. Three years later, after a receiving a letter asking for financial help, Humbert visits the now 17-year-old Lolita, married to another man and pregnant. Humbert, who still loves her, asks her to run away with him, but she refuses. He relents and gives her a substantial amount of money and information about her inheritance from her mother. He also discovers the name of his nemesis, Quilty, whom he hunts down and murders. After being arrested, Humbert dies in prison in November 1950. Lolita dies in childbirth a month later, on Christmas Day.

Eyes Wide Shut – 1999
Director: Stanley Kubrick Writers: Arthur Schnitzler (novel) Stanley Kubrick (screenplay) Tom Cruise ... Dr. William 'Bill' Harford Nicole Kidman ... Alice Harford Madison Eginton ... Helena Harford Jackie Sawiris ... Roz Sydney Pollack ... Victor Ziegler Leslie Lowe ... Illona Ziegler Description Sexual jolts disrupt Manhattan physician Bill Harford's equilibrium. At an elegant Christmas party, two "models" hit on him, he watches a Lothario try to pick up his tipsy wife, he aids a woman sprawled naked in a bathroom after an overdose. The next night, his wife reveals sexual fantasies with a stranger; a dead patient's daughter throws herself at him; as he walks, brooding, six teen boys hurl homophobic insults at him; a streetwalker takes him to her flat; he interrupts men having a sex party with a girl
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barely in her teens. His odyssey, which next takes him into a world of wealthy sex play at a masked ball of hedonism, threatens his life, his self-respect, and his marriage. Synopsis: Stanley Kubrick's final film is a mature, highly intelligent, thrilling masterpiece of sexual obsession and marital (in)fidelity. Tom Cruise stars as Bill Harford, a doctor who becomes obsessed with a sexual fantasy that his wife, Alice (Nicole Kidman), confesses to him. Although the fantasy (involving a naval officer) occurred only in Alice's mind, Bill can't get it out of his own head; his obsession leads him through a series of potential sexual encounters, each one surrounded by the specter of death. His whole world threatens to unravel as he falls deeper and deeper into a web of mystery, lies, and deceit. Kubrick's film breathes with vivid blues, reds, and blacks, the threat of illicit sex and death lurking around every corner. Cruise and Kidman, who are married in real life, are utterly convincing as a happy couple suddenly forced to reexamine their faith in each other. Sidney Pollack, Todd Field, Julienne Davis, Marie Richardson, and Vinessa Shaw sparkle in minor roles. Based on the novella TRAUMNOVELLE by Arthur Schnitzler, EYES WIDE SHUT is a brilliant examination of the psychological nature of sex and marriage, of faith and faithlessness, of obsession and desire. Kubrick said that his last film (he died shortly before the film opened) was "my best film ever;" while that is debatable, there is no doubting that the film is a splendid finale to a glorious career. [Less]

A Clockwork Orange [Stanley Kubrick, 1971]
Director: Stanley Kubrick The Story: In a futuristic Britain, a gang of teenagers go on the rampage every night, beating and raping helpless victims. After one of the boys quells an uprising in the gang, they knock him out and leave him for the police to find. He agrees to try “aversion therapy” to shorten his jail sentence. When he is eventually let out, he hates violence, but the rest of his gang members are still after him. The Controversy: That the movie first landed an X rating and was deemed pornographic across the U.S. was nothing compared with its reception in the U.K.: Social uproar and reports of copycat crimes led Kubrick to withdraw Clockwork from distribution in his adopted country. It wasn’t officially available there again — in theaters or on video — until 2000, a year after his death.

Poison Ivy (film)
Starring: Drew Barrymore, Cheryl Ladd, Tom Skerritt, Sara Gilbert Director: Katt Shea Ruben, Andy Ruben Sylvie Cooper (Sara Gilbert) is a misanthropic student at a private high school for the privileged in Beverly Hills, California. She befriends "Ivy" (Drew Barrymore), a poor but intelligent and seductive girl attending the school on a scholarship, and Ivy quickly becomes close with Sylvie's family, to the point of moving in with them. Ivy begins to have a sexual relationship with Sylvie's father, Darryl (Tom Skerritt), as Sylvie's mother Georgie (Cheryl Ladd) becomes increasingly withdrawn from the family. Eventually, Ivy murders Georgie, making it look like a suicide. Several weeks later, when Ivy and Sylvie are driving in Georgie's old car, Sylvie asks Ivy if she had known anything about Georgie's "suicide". To avoid the question, Ivy crashes the car, knocking Sylvie unconscious. After the crash, Ivy moves Sylvie into the driver's seat to make it look as if Sylvie had been driving. When Sylvie wakes up in the hospital, she realizes that Ivy is dangerous and hurries home, where she finds Ivy and Darryl having sex. She runs away from them and Ivy follows her, confronting her on the balcony where Georgie had died. After an argument, the two girls fight at the edge of the balcony, and ultimately Sylvie pushes Ivy off edge, and Ivy falls to her death.

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Irréversible
Starring: Monica Bellucci, Vincent Cassel, Albert Dupontel, Philippe Nahon Director: Gaspar Noe Synopsis: Irreversible is a demanding and audacious but thoroughly rewarding cinematic experience that has been thrilling audiences since its world premiere in Cannes and its North American debut screenings at the Telluride and Toronto film festivals earlier this year. The film will be released by Lions Gate Films on March 7, 2003. Even for a director that has been known to invite controversy in films such as Sodomites (1998), Seul contre tous (I Stand Alone) (1998), and Carne (1991), Noé’s Irreversible can still be considered the ultimate in bravura filmmaking. An emotional odyssey that unspools in reverse from gutwrenching violence to sweetly observed moments of sublime tenderness, the film stars Monica Bellucci and real-life husband Vincent Cassel as a couple whose story is told over the course of a fateful evening in a series of long takes. The film features two unsettling and graphic scenes of violence and sexuality that are difficult to watch. However, these grim sights are nestled within a carefully constructed -- although unconventional -- narrative which serves as a counterpoint to moments of striking tenderness, and the film is in some ways a study of darkness and light. -- © Lions Gate Films [Less] ## The film opens with two men talking in an apartment building. One of the characters is from another film by Gaspar Noe, "Carne". The camera pans out the window to a gay club called "The Rectum". The police have arrived and they are wheeling out one man on a stretcher, and another man is being arrested. In the next scene, the same two men frantically searching in "The Rectum" for a man whose name is La Tenia. One of the men keeps asking the patrons of the club, but they will only ask him to perform sexual acts on them. The second man seems to be trying to stop the first man from what ever it is he's trying to do. Eventually, the first man finds who he believes is La Tenia. The man picks a fight with La Tenia and loses. La Tenia is about to rape him, but the second man smashes La Tenia's head in with a fire extinguisher. Then, we see the two men in a car. The first man is driving the car, the second is in the back seat. They pull over and the first man goes into a bar to ask where The Rectum is, and someone tells him. The scene changes again, and the two men in the car, but both in the back seat. There's an Asian man driving, and we learn they are in a taxi. The driver pulls over and gets out of the car, and the first man jumps in the driver's seat and drives away. Next, we see the two men, whose names are revealed to be Marcus and Pierre, with two other men, and they are all walking down a street lined with prostitutes. They're looking for a man named Guillermo Nunez. One of the prostitutes points out another, named Concha, who is actually Nunez, a transvestite. They threaten Concha, and she reveals that La Tenia is in The Rectum. The other prostitutes then come to the aid of Concha and chase all four of the men away, and Marcus and Pierre get in a taxi and drive away. The film then flashes back to Pierre and Marcus leaving a party. The walk outside and the police are wheeling a body out of a subway. Marcus identifies the woman as his girlfriend, Alex. She has been brutally beaten and is in a coma. A man approaches Marcus and asks him if he wants revenge, and Marcus says yes. The man tells Marcus a purse was found at the scene of the crime, which contained an identification for a man named Guilermo Nunez. The film flashes back again, this time to a beautiful woman, Alex, exiting a building. She want to cross the street, but the traffic is too heavy. A prostitute recommends that she take the underground walkways because they are safer. She enters the walkway and sees La Tenia threatening Guillermo/Concha with a knife. La Tenia sees Alex, lets go of Guillermo/Concha, and grabs Alex. He rapes her, and then beats her brutally. The scene lasts for nine minutes, and is one continuous camera shot (most of the scenes are). Another flash back - this time to a party. Alex, Marcus, and Pierre socialize with friends. Marcus is drunk, and sniffing cocaine. Alex gets mad at him and leaves. Back further in time, Alex, Pierre, and Marcus take the subway to get to the party. It is revealed that Pierre was Alex's previous boyfriend, but Marcus "stole" her. Flashing back again to a couple hours before, where it's revealed that Alex and Marcus had sex before the party. After they have sex, Marcus leaves to go to the store. While he is gone, Alex learns that she is pregnant. In the final scene, Alex sits in a park reading a book while children play. She is completely unaware of her coming fate. The scene fades into flashing strobe lights and shows a final slide saying LE TEMPS DETRUIT TOUT (time destroys all things).

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Emmanuelle (1974)
Starring: Sylvia Kristel, Alain Cuny, Marika Green Director: Just Jaeckin Synopsis: Emmanuelle, a svelte, naive young woman, is en route to Bangkok where she'll join her new husband. He works for the French Embassy and has a lovely home, several dedicated servants, and an expensive car at his disposal. Once Emmanuelle arrives, her husband and a few friends introduce her to a realm of sexual ecstasy she'd never imagined. I remember seeing this film on Skinemax and Showslime about two dozen times as a teenager. I'd stay up as late as it took. It's amazing how little sleep I got on a school night just for a few seconds of titillation. I recently re-watched this film as an adult out of sheer nostalgia value (nudge nudge), but sometimes one should let fond memories be. Whether I enjoyed seeing this as a teen through rose-colored glasses, or merely just a rosy palm, the film just hasn't lasted the test of time with so much more sexier and more explicit films that have been released since. Jean (Sarsky, The Pelican) marries Emmanuelle (Kristel, Private Lessons) and takes her to his home in Bangkok. He loves her because she's great in the sack, but wants to open her up to explore her sexuality without inhibitions. At first she is awkwardly shy, but later gives in, and when she goes off for a couple of days with a female archaeologist, Jean doesn't know how to feel. Can love and sex be separate in a relationship? Can a couple have extramarital affairs and still claim to love each other? Can someone love more than one person at a time? These are the questions the film tries to deal with. Emmanuelle caused quite a stir when it was released back in 1974. It's pretty tame by today's standards. It's sort of a cult classic for breaking many taboos, such as lesbianism, threesomes, and fairly rough sex. It usually gets favorable reviews due to being so-called groundbreaking, but if you examine it with a critical eye, it is fairly obvious this is a poor film. The story is anemic, with every scene just a set-up to show another sexual act. The directing is horrible, with the sloppiest editing imaginable, and more padding than a typical episode of "CHiPs". The film stock is of very low quality, and the cinematography, well, let's just say they try to make their environs look exotic but they only succeed in making the armpit look less sweaty. The film is less than erotic, unless you feel rape and women kissing each others shoulders is hot stuff, and with the exception of a scene where a young Asian girl smokes a cigarette with her womanhood, you've probably seen it all done better by later films.

Latitude Zero (2000)
Lena owns a forgotten bar next to a highway where the trucks zip by but rarely stop. She is eight months pregnant and has been abandoned by her former lover, Colonel Mattos, of the São Paulo police. One day, she meets Vilela, a former policeman wanted for a crime he committed in São Paulo. Colonel Mattos was Vilela's superior, and his presence is continually felt by the pair. Two further elements add texture to the plot - the inhospitable landscape and the new baby's crying, which slowly makes life unbearable for the couple. Based on an original stage play by Fernando Bonassi, the film delves into the souls of two Brazilians isolated in one of the country's nameless reaches. A love story and a metaphor taken to extremes: a glimpse at an unequal society which excludes many of its citizens, pushing them into violent adventures of love and death. Written by Anonymous

Killing Me Softly (2002)
Starring: Heather Graham, Joseph Fiennes, Natascha McElhone, Ulrich Thomsen Director: Chen Kaige Synopsis: A happy marriage and a comfortable job become meaningless diversions to Alice Loudon (Heather Graham) when a seductive stranger (Joseph Fiennes) enters her life. With smoldering good looks and an element of danger surrounding her, this stranger provides Alice with a sexual satisfaction she has never experienced before. When word of a serial killer reaches Alice, she suspects her mysterious lover of holding the knife. This elliptical, steamy thriller is directed by Chen Kaige (FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE) and boasts bold love scenes between the two leads. [Less] Chen Kaige has been responsible for some of the most notable Chinese films of his generation. Farewell my Concubine (1993) was one of the most stunning films of the past decade and, whilst slightly flawed, Temptress Moon (1996) is a well-made examination of the modernization of China. Could someone explain to me, then, how he has managed to create such a pile of old cobblers in Killing Me Softly? Bad acting, worse script and ludicrous sex scenes: suddenly Body of Evidence (1992) doesn't look all that bad. Alice (Heather Graham) is a web-site designer languishing in a dull relationship. After a chance sexual encounter she falls for Adam (Joseph Fiennes). As she gradually loses her inhibitions -and their sex becomes more violent- Alice receives notes from a mysterious stranger warning her away from Adam. Ignoring the advice, she and Adam marry. But Alice begins to hear disturbing
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things about her husband's past. Is he really the romantic that she had him pegged as, or is he something a lot more dangerous? It's quite incredible how stupid the characters are throughout this film. Hmm, let's see. Alice goes off for a fling for a man she meets at a pedestrian crossing (yes, it really is that dull) and has rampant sex without knowing anything about the man she's screwing. She then marries him, despite the fact that he is an obvious psycho (Fiennes has the obligatory 'I'm ever so evil' sneer throughout the film). As the 'truth' begins to be revealed, we're not worried about her. In fact, we hope she gets bumped off as anybody who is that dumb deserves it. The actors seem to have realised that they are making an utter turkey: everyone phones in their performances with the two leads exuding the charisma and sexual chemistry of a carrot. The ending completely negates everything that has gone. The direction is no better. Set in a flat and featureless London, the film avoids any glamour whatsoever. The supposed shocks are pedestrian and can be seen from a mile away, while some of the mountaineering scenes seem to be tacked on to give a bit more grandeur to the proceedings. Needless to say, it doesn't work. Hopefully everyone involved will let this one slide to the bottom of their CV. It would probably do quite well on video with the dirty mac brigade hoping to see Graham in the buff. But she does the same in Boogie Nights (1997). Get that instead. Contrary to the bad review, the charisma and sexual chemistry is the best i've seen in any film to date. There are no teasers or "art" shots, instead the director did the best thing by showcasing the sex scenes in the manner that he did. Even though it seems that they seem to be the only thing that ties the whole movie together, that isn't necessarily a bad thing as you actually are abled to grasp the foundation of their relationship instead of being left with cheap "huh? when the hell did that happen?" scenes. What should be noted for are the subtleties in the characters. These are surprising perfomances by joseph fiennes and especially heather graham. Instead of going through the deer-caught-in-headlights route that most actresses go for in dangerous plots (ie. Nicole Kidman in Dead Calm), heather graham actually brings personality to her character. The scenes which showcase this best are...basically every scene. For joseph fiennes it's the part in the taxi cab when they first meet, as Alice puts her hand on the car door, Adam gives a sly know-it-all look, a subtlety that most actors aren't able to pull-off. It's hard to not want to believe that Alice must be a crazy and paranoid little girl and that the two should get a happy ever after in the end. Plot-wise, this is certainly different from almost every script out there. The suspense is chilling emotionally and visually without resorting to cliche shots even though it tends to make you believe that it will. I found myself actually giving serious thought to the storyline and the characters when my first intent was just to watch joseph fiennes' rippling pecs and heather graham's perfect set of ti*cough* legs. The acting is lavish without being overacting. Reviewer Laurence Boyce obviously does not see the importance of the mounteering and it's connections and basis with Adam's controlling behaviour and sexual perversities in their relationship. However, i have the strong feeling that people who have not been in slightly similar situations (in general; ie. swept away by lust/love, or even slight afflictions with bd/sm) will not be able to connect as much with the characters or even understand the underlying genius in the film as a whole. And comparing Boogie Nights and with Killing Me Softly, Paul Thomas Anderson doesn't have as much professionalism/creativity to handle the sex scenes as Chen Kaige did. Instead using them as a shock tool more than anything else. In Boogie Nights, PTA was selfish in using the actors just as hangers (cardboard actors) instead of letting the characters speak for themselves. And with such a such a great line-up it all went to waste. Actually that could've been the problem, in most of his movies there's too much talking that goes on for 3 straight hours and the "artistic" silences in between. This Laurence Boyce person is exactly the type of audience that Chen Kaige would pay to not see his films as they do not realise the difference between hyped-up/cool-as-Starbucks/cliched "art" films and a damn good movie that deserves to be preserved till the cows come home so that all so-called cliched "art" directors can be slapped at the side of their heads with the DVD cover years from now. This is the kind of movie not meant for old dinasours who still think sex is supposed to be shocking in this information age. This caters for the more younger open-minded movie-goers who know the beauty of a sex scene when they see one. The ones who survive on movies and're able to weed out great films from the spoon-fed art variety. Not meant for pessimists who try to make themselves look or feel better by putting down a movie just because she/he still covers his/her eyes when people start getting naked.

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The Hurt Locker
The title is slang for being injured in an explosion, as in "they sent him to the hurt locker",[7] or for "a place of ultimate pain."[8] It dates back to the Vietnam War, where it was one of several phrases meaning "in trouble or at a disadvantage; in bad shape."[9] The Hurt Locker opens with a quotation from War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, a best-selling 2002 book by New York Times war correspondent and journalist Chris Hedges: "The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug."[10] [11] During the early stages of the post-invasion period in Iraq in 2004,[12][13] Sergeant First Class William James, a battle tested veteran, becomes the team leader of a U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit, replacing Staff Sergeant Thompson, who was killed by a remote-detonated 155mm improvised explosive device (IED) in Baghdad. He joins Sergeant J.T. Sanborn and Specialist Owen Eldridge, whose jobs are to communicate with their team leader via radio inside his bombsuit, and provide him with rifle cover while he examines IEDs. During their missions of disarming IEDs and engaging insurgents together, James's unorthodox methods lead Sanborn and Eldridge to consider him reckless. Tensions mount between James and the other two team members. During a raid on a warehouse that contains a large amount of explosives, James discovers the mutilated body of a young boy. He has been carved up and planted with an unexploded bomb. James is upset, as he believes the boy to be "Beckham," a young Iraqi selling DVDs whom he had befriended. In the aftermath of a large car bomb, James leads the EOD team to look for the perpetrators among the alleys of a village. After they separate and try to shoot the insurgents, Eldridge is captured. The other two track down and kill two insurgents who detonated the bomb and who are dragging Eldridge. He was accidentally shot in the leg during the action. He is airlifted to a hospital in Germany to have surgery to repair his shattered leg. Eldridge blames James for his injury, referring to Sanborn's suggestion that the mission, which James had ordered, would have been better suited for an infantry platoon. The next morning, James is approached by Beckham. The young boy tries to converse with James, who walks by without saying a word. After James fails to remove and disarm a time-bomb strapped to an Iraqi civilian's chest because he ran out of time, the Iraqi dies in the explosion. Sanborn later becomes emotional and confesses to James that he can no longer cope with the pressure of being in EOD. He looks forward to finally leaving Iraq and starting a family. James returns home to his wife and child, and is seen quietly performing routine tasks of civilian life. One night he speaks to his infant son, telling him that there is only "one thing" that he knows he loves. He is next seen back in Iraq, ready to serve another year as part of an EOD team with Delta Company. Cast Jeremy Renner as Sergeant First Class William James, the leader of the EOD squad. An Army Ranger, he is the most experienced of the squad, having served in the War in Afghanistan. Although he is a good leader and courageous, SFC James is at times reckless. Unlike his fellow soldiers, he wears outdated M81 Woodland camouflage equipment. Anthony Mackie as Sergeant J. T. Sanborn, one of the members of the EOD squad. A soldier who insists on doing things by the book, Sanborn is frequently critical of SFC James' apparent recklessness. Towards the end of Bravo's rotation Sanborn confesses that he is not ready to die and wants to start a family. Brian Geraghty as Specialist Owen Eldridge, the youngest member of the EOD squad. Although he is outwardly tough, he suffers mental anguish and believes he is responsible for the death of his original squad leader, SSG Thompson, having not fired at the insurgent responsible. Eldridge seeks counsel in LTC Cambridge, the base psychiatrist. Christian Camargo as Lieutenant Colonel John Cambridge. LTC Cambridge is the head psychiatrist at Camp Victory. He helps SPC Eldridge recover from the death of SSG Thompson, although he sometimes seems oblivious to the soldiers' pressures. Originally from New York, Cambridge is a graduate of Yale University. David Morse as Colonel Reed, the commander of the American soldiers at the United Nations building. He is fascinated by the EOD squad and questions SFC James about his job. Evangeline Lilly as Connie James, the wife of SFC James. Despite what he initially says, James loves her but feels more comfortable in a warzone. When he goes home to the United States, James discusses the need for more bomb defusers in Iraq. Christopher Sayegh as "Beckham", a 12-year-old Iraqi boy who sells DVDs and various electronic items outside the base. When James discovers a boy's body planted with a bomb, he believes it is Beckham's.

Double Jeopardy (1999)
Starring: Ashley Judd, Tommy Lee Jones, Bruce Greenwood, Annabeth Gish Director: Bruce Beresford Synopsis: Director Bruce Beresford's thriller stars Ashley Judd as Libby Parsons, a young woman with a seemingly happy marriage and a prosperous life. While on a weekend sailing trip, she wakes up in the middle of the night to find the boat covered in blood and her husband, Nick (Bruce Greenwood), missing. Since she's found holding a knife covered in her husband's blood, Libby's quickly indicted and convicted of murder. Her lawyer suggests that she give up her son, and he's soon adopted by her friend, Angie (Annabeth Gish), who promptly disappears with the child. Although Libby's angry enough to break out of prison, her lawyer-cellmate advises her to wait for parole and take advantage of double jeopardy protection, a legal loophole that prevents her from being tried for the same crime twice. Six years later, Libby's paroled into a halfway house under the care of hard-bitten probation officer Travis Lehman (Tommy Lee Jones). She escapes immediately, taking off to find her son and exact revenge on those who framed her. Lehman, expecting as much, is fast on her trail. [Less]

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Blame It on Rio (1984)
Director: Stanley Donen Starring: Michael Caine, Joseph Bologna, Michelle Johnson, Valerie Harper Synopsis: A much-planned two-family vacation to Rio begins with disaster as one husband, Victor (Joseph Bologna), deals with divorce papers while Matthew's (Michael Caine) wife decides to vacation alone somewhere else instead, leaving the two men on vacation with only their charming and adventurous teenage daughters. Confronted by so much bare young skin, confused about the state of his marriage, and swept up in the moment, Matthew lets Victor's daughter, Jennifer (Michelle Johnson), seduce him on the beach. But Jennifer's constant declarations of love and lust make keeping the affair from Victor difficult and twists Matthew into guilty knots. The surprise appearance of Matthew's wife (Valerie Harper, magnificent in a rage) reveals another hidden affair and unravels the romantic web crisscrossing between the families. [Less]

It's Complicated (2009)
Starring: Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, Steve Martin, John Krasinski Director: Nancy Meyers Synopsis: Writer/director Nancy Meyers (What Women Want, Something's Gotta Give, The Holiday) directs Meryl Streep, Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin in It's Complicated, a comedy about love, divorce and everything in between. Jane (Streep) is the mother of three grown kids, owns a thriving Santa Barbara bakery/restaurant and has--after a decade of divorce--an amicable relationship with her ex-husband, attorney Jake (Baldwin). But when Jane and Jake find themselves out of town for their son's college graduation, things start to get complicated. An innocent meal together turns into the unimaginable-an affair. With Jake remarried to the much younger Agness (Lake Bell), Jane is now, of all things, the other woman. Caught in the middle of their renewed romance is Adam (Martin), an architect hired to remodel Jane's kitchen. Healing from a divorce of his own, Adam starts to fall for Jane, but soon realizes he's become part of a love triangle. Should Jane and Jake move on with their lives, or is love truly lovelier the second time around? It's...complicated. --© Universal [Less]

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Anna Karenina
Starring: Sophie Marceau, Sean Bean, Alfred Molina, Mia Kirshner Director: Bernard Rose Plot summary The novel is divided into eight parts. The novel begins with one of its most quoted lines:“ unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. ” Part 1 The novel opens with a scene introducing Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch Oblonsky, "Stiva", a Moscow aristocrat and civil servant who has been unfaithful to his wife Darya Alexandrovna, nicknamed "Dolly". Dolly has discovered his affair - with the family's governess - and the house and family are in turmoil. Stiva's affair and his reaction to his wife's distress shows an amorous personality that he cannot seem to suppress. In the midst of the turmoil, Stiva reminds the household that his married sister, Anna Arkadyevna Karenina is coming to visit from Saint Petersburg. Meanwhile, Stiva's childhood friend Konstantin Dmitrievich Levin ("Kostya") arrives in Moscow with the aim of proposing to Dolly's youngest sister Princess Katerina Alexandrovna Shcherbatskaya, "Kitty". Levin is a passionate, restless but shy aristocratic landowner who, unlike his Moscow friends, chooses to live in the country on his large estate. He discovers that Kitty is also being pursued by Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky, an army officer. At the railway station to meet Anna, Stiva bumps into Vronsky. Vronsky is there to meet his mother. Anna and the Countess Vronskaya have travelled together in the same carriage and talked together. As the family members are reunited, and Vronsky sees Anna for the first time, a railway worker accidentally falls in front of a train and is killed. Anna interprets this as an "evil omen." Vronsky is infatuated with Anna. Anna, who is uneasy about leaving her young son, Seryozha, alone for the first time, talks openly and emotionally to Dolly about Stiva's affair and convinces Dolly that her husband still loves her, despite his infidelity. Dolly is moved by Anna's speeches and decides to forgive Stiva. Dolly's youngest sister, Kitty, comes to visit her sister and Anna. Kitty, just 18, is in her first season as a debutante and is expected to make an excellent match with a man of her social standing. Vronsky has been paying her considerable attention, and she expects to dance with him at a ball that evening. Kitty is very struck by Anna's beauty and personality and is infatuated with her. When Levin proposes to Kitty at her home, she clumsily turns him down, because she believes she is in love with Vronsky and that he will propose to her. At the ball, Vronsky pays Anna considerable attention, and dances with her, choosing her as a partner instead of Kitty, who is shocked and heartbroken. Kitty realises that Vronsky has fallen in love with Anna, and that despite his overt flirtations with her he has no intention of marrying her and in fact views his attentions to her as mere amusement, believing that she does the same. Anna, shaken by her emotional and physical response to Vronsky, returns at once to Saint Petersburg. Vronsky travels on the same train. During the overnight journey, the two meet and Vronsky confesses his love. Anna refuses him, although she is deeply affected by his attentions to her. Levin, crushed by Kitty's refusal, returns to his estate farm, abandoning any hope of marriage, and Anna returns to her husband Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin, a senior government official, and their son Sergei ("Seryozha") in Petersburg. On seeing her husband for the first time since her encounter with Vronsky, Anna realises that she finds him repulsive, noting the odd way that his ears press against his hat. Part 2 The Shcherbatskys consult doctors over Kitty's health which has been failing since she realizes that Vronsky did not love her and that he did not intend to propose marriage to her, and that she refused and hurt Levin, whom she cares for, in vain. A specialist doctor advises that Kitty should go abroad to a health spa to recover. Dolly speaks to Kitty and understands that she is suffering because of Vronsky and Levin. Kitty, humiliated by Vronsky and tormented by her rejection of Levin, upsets her sister by referring to Stiva's infidelity and says she could never love a man who betrayed her. Stiva stays with Levin on his country estate when he makes a sale of a plot of land, to provide funds for his expensive city lifestyle. Levin is upset at the poor deal he makes with the buyer and his lack of understanding of the rural lifestyle. In St. Petersburg, Anna begins to spend more time with the fashionable socialite and gossip Princess Betsy and her circle, in order to meet Vronsky, Betsy's cousin. Vronsky continues to pursue Anna. Although Anna initially tries to reject him, she eventually succumbs to his attentions. Karenin warns Anna of the impropriety of paying too much attention to Vronsky in public, which is becoming a subject of society gossip. He is concerned about his and his wife's public image, although he believes that Anna is above suspicion. Vronsky, a keen horseman, takes part in a steeplechase event, during which he rides his mare Frou-Frou too hard and she falls and breaks her back. Vronsky escapes with minimal injuries but is devastated that his mare must be shot. Anna tells him that she is pregnant with his child, and is unable to hide her distress when Vronsky falls from the racehorse. Karenin is also present at the races and remarks to her that her behaviour is improper. Anna, in a state of extreme distress and emotion, confesses her
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Happy families are all alike; every

affair to her husband. Karenin asks her to break off the affair to avoid society gossip and believes that their relationship can then continue as previously. Kitty goes with her mother to a resort at a German spa to recover from her ill health. There they meet the Pietist Madame Stahl and the saintly Varenka, her adopted daughter. Influenced by Varenka, Kitty becomes extremely pious, but is disillusioned by her father`s criticism. She then returns to Moscow. Part 3 Levin continues his work on his large country estate, a setting closely tied to his spiritual thoughts and struggles. Levin wrestles with the idea of falseness, wondering how he should go about ridding himself of it, and criticising what he feels is falseness in others. He develops ideas relating to agriculture and the unique relationship between the agricultural labourer and his native land and culture. He believes that the agricultural reforms of Europe will not work in Russia because of the unique culture and personality of the Russian peasant. Levin pays Dolly a visit, and she attempts to understand what happened between him and Kitty and to explain Kitty's behaviour to him. Levin is very agitated by Dolly's talk about Kitty, and he begins to feel distant from her as he perceives her behaviour towards her children as false. Levin resolves to forget Kitty and contemplates the possibility of marriage to a peasant woman. However, a chance sighting of Kitty in her carriage as she travels to Dolly's house makes Levin realise he still loves her. In St. Petersburg, Karenin crushes Anna by refusing to separate from her. He insists that their relationship remain as it was and threatens to take away their son Seryozha if she continues to pursue her affair with Vronsky. Part 4 Anna continues to pursue her affair with Vronsky. Karenin begins to find the situation intolerable. He talks with a lawyer about obtaining a divorce. In Russia at that time, divorce could only be requested by the innocent party in an affair, and required either that the guilty party confessed (which would ruin Anna's position in society) or that the guilty party was discovered in the act. Karenin forces Anna to give him some letters written to her by Vronsky as proof of the affair. However, Anna's brother Stiva argues against it and persuades Karenin to speak with Dolly first. Dolly broaches the subject with Karenin and asks him to reconsider his plans to divorce Anna. She seems to be unsuccessful, but Karenin changes his plans after hearing that Anna is dying after a difficult childbirth. At her bedside, Karenin forgives Vronsky. Vronsky, embarrassed by Karenin's magnanimity, attempts suicide by shooting himself. He fails in his attempt but wounds himself badly. Anna recovers, having given birth to a daughter, Anna ("Annie"). Although her husband has forgiven her, and has become attached to the new baby, Anna cannot bear living with him. She hears that Vronsky is about to leave for a military posting in Tashkent and becomes desperate. Stiva finds himself pleading to Karenin on her behalf to free her by giving her a divorce. Vronsky is intent on leaving for Tashkent, but changes his mind after seeing Anna. The couple leave for Europe - leaving behind Anna's son Seryozha - without obtaining a divorce. Much more straightforward is Stiva's matchmaking with Levin: a meeting he arranges between Levin and Kitty results in their reconciliation and betrothal. Part 5 Levin and Kitty marry and immediately go to start their new life together on Levin's country estate. The couple are happy but do not have a very smooth start to their married life and take some time to get used to each other. Levin feels some dissatisfaction at the amount of time Kitty wants to spend with him and is slightly scornful of her preoccupation with domestic matters, which he feels are too prosaic and not compatible with his romantic ideas of love. A few months later, Levin learns that his brother Nikolai is dying of consumption. Levin wants to go to him, and is initially angry and put out that Kitty wishes to accompany him. Levin feels that Kitty, whom he has placed on a pedestal, should not come down to earth and should not mix with people from a lower class. Levin assumes her insistence on coming must relate to a fear of boredom from being left alone, despite her true desire to support her husband in a difficult time. Kitty persuades him to take her with him after much discussion, where she proves a great help nursing Nikolai for weeks over his slow death. She also discovers she is pregnant. In Europe, Vronsky and Anna struggle to find friends who will accept their situation. Whilst Anna is happy to be finally alone with Vronsky, he feels suffocated. They cannot socialize with Russians of their own social set and find it difficult to amuse themselves. Vronsky, who believed that being with Anna in freedom was the key to his happiness, finds himself increasingly bored and unsatisfied. He takes up painting, and makes an attempt to patronize an émigré Russian artist of genius. Vronsky cannot see that his own art lacks talent and passion, and that his clever conversation about art is an empty shell. Bored and restless, Anna and Vronsky decide to return to Russia. In Petersburg, Anna and Vronsky stay in one of the best hotels but take separate suites. It becomes clear that whilst Vronsky is able to move in Society, Anna is barred from it. Even her old friend, Princess Betsy - who has had affairs herself - evades her company. Anna starts to become very jealous and anxious that Vronsky no longer loves her. Karenin is comforted – and influenced – by the strong-willed Countess Lidia Ivanovna, an enthusiast of religious and mystic ideas fashionable with the upper classes. She counsels him to keep Seryozha away from Anna and to make him believe that his mother is dead. However, Seryozha refuses to believe that this is true. Anna manages to visit Seryozha unannounced and uninvited on his ninth birthday, but is discovered by Karenin. Anna, desperate to resume at least in part her former position in Society, attends a show at the theatre at which all of Petersburg's high society are present. Vronsky begs her not to go, but is unable to bring himself to explain to her why she cannot go. At the theatre, Anna is openly snubbed by her former friends, one of whom makes a deliberate scene and leaves the theatre. Anna is devastated.
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Unable to find a place for themselves in Petersburg, Anna and Vronsky leave for Vronsky's country estate. Part 6 Dolly, her mother the Princess Scherbatskaya, and Dolly's children spend the summer with Levin and Kitty on the Levins' country estate. The Levins' life is simple and unaffected, although Levin is uneasy at the "invasion" of so many Scherbatskys. He is able to cope until he is consumed with an intense jealousy when one of the visitors, Veslovsky, flirts openly with the pregnant Kitty. Levin tries to overcome his jealousy but eventually succumbs to it and in an embarrassing scene evicts Veslovsky from his house. Veslovsky immediately goes to stay with Anna and Vronsky, whose estate is close by. Dolly also pays a short visit to Anna at Vronsky's estate. The difference between the Levins' aristocratic but simple home life and Vronsky's overtly luxurious and lavish country home strikes Dolly, who is unable to keep pace with Anna's fashionable dresses or Vronsky's extravagant spending on the hospital he is building. However, all is not quite well with Anna and Vronsky. Dolly is also struck by Anna's anxious behaviour and new habit of half closing her eyes when she alludes to her difficult position. When Veslovsky flirts openly with Anna, she plays along with him even though she clearly feels uncomfortable. Vronsky makes an emotional request to Dolly, asking her to convince Anna to divorce her husband so that the two might marry and live normally. Dolly broaches the subject with Anna, who appears not to be convinced. However, Anna is becoming intensely jealous of Vronsky, and cannot bear it when he leaves her for short excursions. The two have started to quarrel about this and when Vronsky leaves for several days of provincial elections, a combination of boredom and suspicion convinces Anna she must marry him in order to prevent him from leaving her. She writes to Karenin, and she and Vronsky leave the countryside for Moscow. Part 7 The Levins are in Moscow for Kitty's confinement. Despite initial reservations, Levin quickly gets used to the fast-paced, expensive and frivolous Moscow society life. He starts to accompany Stiva to his Moscow gentleman's club, where drinking and gambling are popular pastimes. At the club, Levin meets Vronsky and Stiva introduces them. Levin and Stiva pay a visit to Anna, who is occupying her empty days by being a patroness to an orphaned English girl. Levin is uneasy about the visit and not sure it is the proper thing to do, and Anna easily makes Levin fall in love with her. When he confesses to Kitty where he has been, she accuses him of falling in love with Anna. The couple are reconciled, realising that Moscow life has had a negative, corrupting effect on Levin. Anna, who has made a habit of inducing the young men who visit her to fall in love with her, cannot understand why she can attract a man like Levin, who has a young and beautiful new wife, but cannot attract Vronsky in the way she wants to. Anna's relationship with Vronsky is under increasing strain, as whilst he can move freely in Society - and continues to spend considerable time doing so to stress to Anna his independence as a man - she is excluded from all her previous social connections. She is estranged from baby Annie, her child with Vronsky. and her increasing bitterness, boredom, jealousy and emotional strain cause the couple to argue. Anna uses morphine to help her sleep, a habit we learned she had begun during her time living with Vronsky at his country estate. Now she has become dependent on it. After a long and difficult labour, Kitty gives birth to a son, Mitya. Levin is both extremely moved and horrified by the sight of the tiny, helpless baby. Stiva visits Karenin to encourage his commendation for a new post he is seeking. During the visit he asks him to grant Anna a divorce, but Karenin's decisions are now governed by a French "clairvoyant" – recommended by Lidia Ivanovna – who apparently has a vision in his sleep during Stiva's visit, and gives Karenin a cryptic message that is interpreted as meaning that he must decline the request for divorce. Anna becomes increasingly jealous and irrational towards Vronsky, whom she suspects of having love affairs with other women, and of giving in to his mother's plans to marry him off to a rich Society woman. There is a bitter row, and Anna believes that the relationship is over. She starts to think of suicide as an escape from her torments. In her mental and emotional confusion, she sends a telegram to Vronsky asking him to come home to her, and pays a visit to Dolly and Kitty. Anna's confusion overcomes her, and in a parallel to the railway worker's accidental death in part 1, she commits suicide by throwing herself in the path of a train. Part 8 Stiva gets the job he desired so much, and Karenin takes custody of baby Annie. A group of Russian volunteers, including Vronsky, who does not plan to return alive, depart from Russia to fight in the Orthodox Serbian revolt that has broken out against the Turks. Meanwhile, amid the joys and fears of fatherhood, Levin no longer feels he lacks Christian faith; he decides to give his life its own meaning through acts of goodness.

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Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure
Key Cast: Miriam Hopkins, Leticia Roman, Walter Giller, Alex D'Arcy, Helmut Weiss, Chris Howland, Ulli Lommel, Albert Zugsmith, Full Credits Director: Russ Meyer Russ Meyer's sex films of the 1960s invariably promised more than they delivered. To be sure, there were bosoms and bottoms aplenty, but seldom if ever any full nudity or orgasmic activity (simulated or otherwise). Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, based on a dull, overwritten 18th century "bawdy" novel, was filmed in West Germany by exploitation producer Albert Zugsmith. Miriam Hopkins, old enough to know better, is the one "name" star of this messy romp, playing the mentor of the titular (in every sense of the word) Fanny Hill (Laetitia Roman), who after being cast aside by the world at large is given shelter in a brothel. His acute self-promotional skills aside, Russ Meyer never really learned how to direct; his "style" consisted of seconds-lasting closeups wedged into badly composed long shots, substituting speed and energy for skill. But he certainly knew his audience, as proven by the enormous worldwide box office take for Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. by Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide This version, or at least, my copy, has been censored, I am sure about it. Despite this, it contains so much nudity, especially from the very sexy Lisa Foster, that it should have come with a health warning, in a positive manner, mind you. My heart rate increased every time Lisa undresses, or suggest that she would undress. I read the book some months back in my book club, probably because of its notorious reputation, but mainly because we needed controversial material for discussion. I enjoyed it immensely, both from the literature perspective and an erotic perspective. And then I watched the movie, again with my book club. My apprehension that movies generally don't live up to books (apart from Lord of the Rings), especially an adaptation of an erotic novel, soon evaporated. OK, much 'entertainement license' was taken when making the movie. OK, some of the acting, especially from the established stars were much exaggerated for their characters. See beyond these, and you will see a rather good movie, with a nice story line, sets, scenery, plots and some excellent acting from Lisa Foster, the lead and real star. There are a few things that needs to be said about Lisa Forster, and this are not what I feel, but what my club member also thought and agreed. First, she is a very good actress. She is not just about taking her clothes off, which she does very often. This girl can act, emotion, laughter, naughtiness, deviousness. I think those of her fans are surprised that she did not go on to do more, a little stereotyping going on perhaps? Second, she is extremely beautiful, very pretty face, very sexy body that has nothing out of place, and everything in great proportion. She does does show off her body, completely nude or just topless, a lot in the movie, but never out of context. The nudity, and not just from Lisa, are all necessary and tasteful, nothing pornographic, and the amount is not overwhelming. For all of my fellow members, the movie made the book so much more interesting and, put things into perspective, or bring a book to life. Wonderful stuff! Please do also see my review for the earlier version of this movie staring Lisa Foster as Fanny Hill. The background to my interest in the Fanny Hill movies is because of the book by John Cleland which I recently read, followed by watching the movie starring Lisa Foster, and now this version with Cheryl Dempsey. This is a very different version, or interpretation of an excellent book. In this version, Cheryl Dempsey provides the narration for the whole movie, well, actually, I don't know if it is actually her voice, but we hear no other actors' voice. It is very well done, considering the book itself was written in narration format, the narrator being Fanny Hill. It is well filmed, and has some very beautiful scenery and sets. The acting is average, but Cheryl clearly stood out, she is actually rather good, with out without her clothes. This Cheryl Dempsey version is somewhat different from the Lisa Foster version. While this version is bright, cheery and colorful, the Lisa Foster version is darker and, dare I say it, more sinister. The nudity is mild in comparison to the earlier version, and although Cheryl Dempsey takes her clothes off quite often, she is not as frequently fully nude as Lisa Foster in the earlier version. They are both very good and beautiful actresses. Both movies, though different, are clearly enjoyable, and I have rated both 10 out of 10.

Vixen! By Russ Meyer
In the heart of the Canadian wilderness, sultry and sexually assertive Vixen becomes quickly bored when her husband Tom, wilderness guide/pilot (Garth Pillsbury) leaves for the mountains. The hypersexual Vixen vents her frustration by attempting to seduce anyone within reach, including a client's wife, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and eventually her own brother (Jon Evans). After witnessing Vixen's exploits throughout the film, it ends by veering into surprising political satire as Vixen's racism and the creeping threat of communism are discussed at length among the characters as the film draws to its end.

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Deep Throat (1972)
Starring: Gerard Damiano, Harry Reems, Linda Lovelace, John Waters Director: Fenton Bailey, Randy Barbato Synopsis: After focusing on the decadent club scene of the 1980s with their film PARTY MONSTER, filmmakers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato travel further back in time for this documentary on the cultural impact of the '72 movie DEEP THROAT. When director Gerard Damiano unleashed the film--a witty, yet explicit X-Rated movie starring Linda Lovelace as a fellatiocrazed woman with a clitoris located in her throat--audiences flocked to it in droves. The film was a cut above standard adult fare, and attracted an unusually high percentage of female viewers who reveled in seeing a female character attain sexual satisfaction in the male-dominated world of adult films. With the public's interest piqued, controversy followed, and a court case against the movie prompted the government to try to ban the film outright. This only drew more people to it, and its combined box office is estimated at $600 million--an incredible return on the original $25,000 investment. Or was it? Damiano never made a cent from the film, while Lovelace and co-star Harry Reems made $1450 between them. Lovelace complained bitterly about her treatment on the set in her memoir--the appropriately titled ORDEAL--and Reems had to go through his own obscenity trial, during which he succumbed to the temptations of alcohol and narcotics. Damiano and Reems return to talk about their experiences here (Lovelace passed away in 2002), while the indelible impression the film left on a shocked early-'70s society is fleshed out by comments from Hugh Hefner, Germaine Greer, Camille Paglia, and many others. A truly arresting film, INSIDE DEEP THROAT offers a fascinating lesson about how little the world has changed in regard to pornography and censorship in the 33 years that have passed between Damiano's movie and this documentary. [Less]

A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE
Starring: Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter, Karl Malden Director: Elia Kazan Synopsis: Tennessee Williams based his screenplay on Oscar Saul's adaptation of Williams' Pulitzer Prize-winning play set in a grimy New Orleans project. The story of the fragile sentimentalism of a former prostitute who visits her sister only to be taunted mercilessly by her childish brother-in-law. Academy Award Nominations: 12, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Marlon Brando), and Best Screeplay. Academy Awards: 4, including Best Actress (Vivien Leigh), Best Supporting Actress (Kim Hunter), and Best Supporting Actor (Karl Malden). The director's cut contains three minutes of previously censored footage. [Less] Blanche is in real need of a protector at this stage in her life when circumstances lead her into paying a visit to her younger sister Stella in New Orleans. She doesn't understand how Stella, who is expecting her first child, could have picked a husband so lacking in refinement. Stanley Kowalski's buddies come over to the house to play cards and one of them, Mitch, finds Blanche attractive until Stanley tells him about what kind of a woman Blanche really is. What will happen when Stella goes to the hospital to have her baby and just Blanche and her brother-in-law are in the house? Written by Dale O'Connor {[email protected]} Set in the French Quarter of New Orleans during the restless years following World War Two, A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE is the story of Blanche DuBois, a fragile and neurotic woman on a desperate prowl for someplace in the world to call her own. After being exiled from her hometown of Laurel, Mississippi, for seducing a seventeen-year-old boy at the school where she taught English, Blanche explains her unexpected appearance on Stanley and Stella's (Blanche's sister) doorstep as nervous exhaustion. This, she claims, is the result of a series of financial calamities which have recently claimed the family plantation, Belle Reve. Suspicious, Stanley points out that "under Louisiana's Napoleonic code what belongs to the wife belongs to the husband." Stanley, a sinewy and brutish man, is as territorial as a panther. He tells Blanche he doesn't like to be swindled and demands to see the bill of sale. This encounter defines Stanley and Blanche's relationship. They are opposing camps and Stella is caught in no-man's-land. But Stanley and Stella are deeply in love. Blanche's efforts to impose herself between them only enrages the animal inside Stanley. When Mitch -- a card-playing buddy of Stanley's -- arrives on the scene, Blanche begins to see a way out of her predicament. Mitch, himself alone in the world, reveres Blanche as a beautiful and refined woman. Yet, as rumors of Blanche's past in Auriol begin to catch up to her, her circumstances become unbearable. Written by Mark Fleetwood {[email protected]} Blanche Dubois goes to visit her pregnant sister and husband Stanley in New Orleans. Stanley doesn't like her, and starts pushing her for information on some property he know was left to the sisters. He discovers she has mortgaged the place and spent all the money, and wants to find out all he can about her. Even more friction develops between the two while they are in the apartment together... Written by Colin Tinto {[email protected]}

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Pandora Peaks (2001)
Director: Russ Meyer for the Meyer purist, this is a double-edged sword. All the classic elements are there- the fast cuts, the great camera angles, the sharp focus, and of course the HUGE BOOBS! But on the down-side, there's no story, no characters, none of the exploitation/sleaze elements, or heavy-handed dialog, and quite frankly no plot line really at all. It's merely a collage of Meyerstuff, like he threw a bunch of left-over stuff in a blender and out this came. Shame too as I'd have loved to have seen what he could have done with Pandora as a real character in a real story in a real film. it would have been a true swan-song. I'm guessing it was him being too old and lacking of resources, along with his Alzeimer's perhaps that kept him from fully realizing this. Hell, there's not really much of Pandora in this, which is odd considering her name is the title of the film. I think Russ must've really lost it towards the end(as it appears from reading the very excellent and informative Meyer book bio). it's nice to watch but i wish it was more an actual movie. Pandora is indeed one of the most stunning women in the world(long since retired and sadly reduced breast-wise) and she was at her peak(sic) about the time Russ shot her. Shame they didn't take it further as perhaps then Russ would've gone out with a BANG! instead of a fizzle. I own it nonetheless and any true Meyer fanatic should. Great shots as usual, and Pandora will make your heart pound.

"L\'amant The Lover ENG DVDrip"
Directed By: Jean-Jacques Annaud
It is French Colonial Vietnam in 1929. A young French girl from a family that is having some monetary difficulties is returning to boarding school. She is alone on public transportation when she catches the eye of a wealthy Chinese businessman. He offers her a ride into town in the back of his chauffeured sedan, and sparks fly. Can the torrid affair that ensues between them overcome the class restrictions and social mores of that time? Based on the semi-autobiographical novel by Maugerite Duras. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101316/

Damage (1992)
Director: Louis Malle A member of Parliament (Irons) falls passionately in love with his son's fiancée. They pursue their affair with obsessive abandon despite the dangers of discovery and what it would do to his complacent life and his son. Completely obsessed, he wants to give up his current lifestyle to be with her. She has no intention of allowing him to do this, preferring to have her marriage to the son as a cover. They are eventually discovered, and must deal with the damage. Based on the novel by Josephine Hart. Written by Ed Sutton {[email protected]}

Close My Eyes (1991)
Starring: Alan Rickman, Clive Owen, Saskia Reeves Director: Stephen Poliakoff Description After some years of tension, Richard (Clive Owen) begins a sexual relationship with his sister Natalie (Saskia Reeves). Natalie, now married, the relationship proves dangerously obsessional. Their private intensity (& working class origins) contrast with the middle-class, inhibited, stuffy public scenes we see in the Richmond world into which Natalie has moved with her marriage. As the guilt and intensity of the siblings increases we seem to be heading for disaster, a forboding which increases when Natalie's husband Sinclair finds out.It took me over a year to find this movie and believe me it was worth the search. I didn't encode it, I'm just transferring it to Pirate Bay because I'm sure thousands of people will want to see it. This movie is so damn hot.For those of you who don't know how to watch it: you have to download a bittorent client like utorrent fromand install it. Once it's installed, you just download this torrent from this site. Once it's finished downloading, find it in your computer (usually it's under C:UserDownloads) and watch it with a program like Windows Media Player or VLC player. Synopsis: A woman, Natalie (Saskia Reeves), becomes reaquainted with her younger brother, Richard (Clive Owen), from whom she was separated as a child. They meet on and off, intermittently for the next few years, until the sister gets married to Sinclair (Alan Rickman), a wealthy businessman. Once married, the siblings become attracted to each other physically and start a sexual relationship which blossoms into love, especially on the part of the brother. Everything comes to a head when Sinclair suspects Natalie is having an affair, but does not know with whom. He arranges for them to move to America and, at their going away party, the truth comes out. [Less]

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Casablanca
A Film Review by James Berardinelli United States, 1942 U.S. Release Date: 1/23/43 (wide) MPAA Classification: NR (Mature themes) Running Length: 1:42 Theatrical Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1

Cast: Humphrey Bogard, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Dooley Wilson Director: Michael Curtiz Producer: Hal B. Wallis Screenplay: Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, and Howard Koch based on the play "Everybody Comes to Rick's" by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison Cinematography: Arthur Edeson Music: Max Steiner U.S. Distributor: Warner Brothers It's probably no stretch to say that Casablanca, arguably America's best-loved movie, has had more words written about it than any other motion picture. Over the years since its 1943 release, the legends and rumors surrounding the making of the film have generated almost as much attention as the finished product. Some of the best-known and most often repeated anecdotes include producer Hal B. Wallis' near-casting of Ronald Reagan and Ann Sheridan as Rick and Ilsa, the existence of two scripts for the last day of shooting (one version had the ending as filmed; the other, unproduced version kept Rick and Ilsa together), and the reported backstage tension between several of the principal actors. Ultimately, however, while it's fascinating to examine and dissect all that went into the making of Casablanca, the greatest pleasure anyone can derive from this movie comes through simply watching it. Aside from some basic knowledge of recent world history, little background is needed to appreciate the strength and power of the film. Casablanca accomplishes that which only a truly great film can: enveloping the viewer in the story, forging an unbreakable link with the characters, and only letting go with the end credits. Unlike many films that later became classics, Casablanca was popular in its day, although a cadre of officials at Warner Brothers were convinced that it would be a box-office failure. The movie earned 8 Academy Award nominations, leading to three Oscars (Best Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture). The picture went on to have a long, healthy life in re-releases, television, and (eventually) video. It contains a slew of recognizable lines ("Here's looking at you, kid", "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine", "Round up the usual suspects", "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship", "We'll always have Paris", "The problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world"). Ironically, however, the best-known bit of dialogue from Casablanca, "Play it again, Sam," isn't even in the movie. Like Captain Kirk's "Beam me up, Scotty," it's an apocryphal line. The closest the movie gets is either "Play it" or "Play 'As Time Goes By.'" The first time I saw Casablanca, I remember remarking how "modern" it seemed. While many movies from the '30s and '40s appear horribly dated when viewed today, Casablanca stands up markedly well. The themes of valor, sacrifice, and heroism still ring true. The dialogue has lost none of its wit or cleverness. The atmosphere (enhanced by the sterling black-and-white cinematography), that of encroaching gloom, is as palpable as ever. And the characters are still as perfectly-acted and threedimensional as they were more than fifty years ago. Just about everyone knows the story, which takes place about a year after the Germans invaded France. Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) and her husband, Czech freedom fighter Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid), wander into Rick's Cafe in Casablanca. The two are on the run from the Nazis, and have come to the American-owned nightspot to lie low. But the German-controlled local government, headed by Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), is on the move, and Laszlo has to act quickly to get the letters of transit he came for, then escape. Little does Ilsa know that the cafe is run by Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), the one true love of her life. When the two see each other, sparks fly, and memories of an enchanted time in Paris come flooding back. Bogart and Bergman. When anyone mentions Casablanca, these are the two names that come to mind. The actors are both so perfectly cast, and create such a palpable level of romantic tension, that it's impossible to envision anyone else in their parts (and inconceivable to consider that they possibly weren't the producer's first choices). Bogart is at his best here as the tough cynic who hides a broken heart beneath a fractured layer of sarcasm. Ilsa's arrival in Casablanca rips open the fissures in Rick's shield, revealing a complex personality that demands Bogart's full range of acting. As Ilsa, Bergman lights up the screen. What man in the audience wouldn't give up everything to run away with her? Less known is Paul Henreid, a romantic lead who was on loan to Warner Brothers for this project. Most viewers know Henreid as "the other guy" in the romantic triangle, and, while his performance isn't on the same level as that of his better-known costars, Henreid nevertheless does a respectable job. Casablanca features some other well-known faces. Conrad Veidt plays the Nazi commander on Laszlo's trail, Peter Lorre is the man who steals the letters of transit, and Sydney Greenstreet is the city's black market overlord. But the best performance in the film belongs to Claude Rains, who is magnificent. Bogart and Bergman are great, but Rains is better. This is the top role in an impressive career, and it's a shame that the actor didn't win the Best Supporting Oscar for which he was deservedly nominated. Rains is a standout in nearly his every scene, but, like the consummate professional, he constantly cedes the spotlight to the higher-profile star. Another curious thing about Casablanca is that hardly anyone ever talks about the director. It isn't as if Michael Curtiz is a journeyman hack who got lucky here. From the '20s to the '50s, Curtiz was one of the hardest working directors in Hollywood, helming over 100 films including White Christmas, Mildred Pierce, and Yankee Doodle Dandy. (Before that, he made nearly 50 movies in Europe, where he began his career in 1912.) Curtiz was a well-respected film maker and his work on Casablanca was first rate, but, for some reason, few non-cineastes associate his name with this picture. It's not much of a stretch to say that Hollywood doesn't make movies like this any more, because the bittersweet ending has gone the way of black-and-white cinematography. If Casablanca was made in today's climate, Rick and Ilsa would escape on the plane after avoiding a hail of gunfire (Rick would probably be doing the two-fisted gun thing that John Woo loves). There would be no beautiful friendship between Louis and Rick. Who knows what would have happened to Victor Laszlo, but he wouldn't have gotten the girl. One of the things that makes Casablanca unique is that it stays true to itself without giving in to
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commonly held perceptions of crowd-pleasing tactics. And because of this, not despite it, Casablanca has become known as one of the greatest movies ever made. Maybe the modern generation of screenwriters should consider this before they tack on the obligatory "happily ever after" ending. From time-to-time, someone tries to remake the film, but even the best re-tread has been less than a pale shadow of the original. The most recent serious attempt was Havana, Sydney Pollack's ill-advised misfire (incidentally, the word "serious" rules out Barb Wire). Despite a good cast (Robert Redford, Lena Olin, Raul Julia) and a change in venue, this is clearly an updated Casablanca, and Casablanca isn't Casablanca without Bogart and Bergman. So, although just about everyone involved with this legendary motion picture has departed this life, the film itself has withstood the test of more than a half-century to rise, like cream, to the top. One can only imagine that, in another fifty years, its position in the hierarchy of all-time greats will be even higher. © 1998 James Berardinelli Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) is a bitter, cynical American expatriate living in Casablanca. He owns and runs "Rick's Café Américain", an upscale nightclub and gambling den that attracts a mixed clientele: Vichy French, Italian, and Nazi officials; refugees desperately seeking to reach the United States, as yet uninvolved in the war; and those who prey on them. Although Rick professes to be neutral in all matters, it is later revealed that he had run guns to Ethiopia to combat the 1935 Italian invasion, and fought on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War against Francisco Franco's Nationalists. Ugarte (Peter Lorre), a petty criminal, arrives in Rick's club with "letters of transit" obtained through the murder of two German couriers. The papers allow the bearer to travel freely around German-controlled Europe and to neutral Portugal, and from there to America. The letters are almost priceless to any of the continual stream of refugees who end up stranded in Casablanca. Ugarte plans to make his fortune by selling them to the highest bidder, who is due to arrive at the club later that night. However, before the exchange can take place, Ugarte is arrested by the local police under the command of Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), a corrupt opportunist who later says of himself, "I have no convictions... I blow with the wind, and the prevailing wind happens to be from Vichy." Unbeknownst to Renault and the Nazis, Ugarte had entrusted the letters to Rick because "... somehow, just because you despise me, you are the only one I trust." Ugarte dies in police custody without revealing the location of the letters. At this point, the reason for Rick's bitterness re-enters his life. His ex-lover, Norwegian Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) arrives with her husband, Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid), a fugitive Czech Resistance leader long sought by the Nazis. The couple need the letters to leave for America to continue his work. German Major Strasser (Conrad Veidt) arrives to see to it that Laszlo does not succeed. When Laszlo speaks with Signor Ferrari (Sydney Greenstreet), a major figure in the criminal underworld and Rick's friendly business rival, Ferrari divulges his suspicion that Rick has the letters. Laszlo meets with Rick privately, but Rick refuses to part with the documents, telling Laszlo to ask his wife for the reason. They are interrupted when Strasser leads a group of officers in singing "Die Wacht am Rhein", a patriotic German song. In response, Laszlo orders the house band to play "La Marseillaise", the French national anthem. When the band looks to Rick for guidance, he nods his head. Laszlo starts singing, alone at first, then long-suppressed patriotic fervor grips the crowd and everyone joins in, drowning out the Germans. In retaliation, Strasser has Renault shut down the club. That night, Ilsa confronts Rick in the deserted cafe. When he refuses to give her the letters, she threatens him with a gun, but is unable to shoot, confessing that she still loves him. She explains that when she first met and fell in love with him in Paris, she believed that her husband had been killed trying to escape from a Nazi concentration camp. Later, with the German army on the verge of capturing the city, she learned that Laszlo was in fact alive and in hiding. She left Rick without explanation to tend to an ill Laszlo. With the revelation, Rick's bitterness dissolves and the lovers are reconciled. Rick agrees to help, leading her to believe that she will stay behind with him when Laszlo leaves. When Laszlo unexpectedly shows up, after having narrowly escaped a police raid on a Resistance meeting, Rick has waiter Carl (S. Z. Sakall) secretly take Ilsa back to the hotel while the two men talk. Laszlo reveals that he is aware of Rick's love for Ilsa and tries to get Rick to use the letters to at least take her to safety. However, the police arrive and arrest Laszlo on a minor, trumped-up charge. Rick convinces Renault to release Laszlo by promising to set him up for a much more serious crime: possession of the letters of transit. To allay Renault's suspicions about his motives, Rick explains that he and Ilsa will be leaving for America. However, when Renault tries to arrest Laszlo, Rick double crosses Renault, forcing him at gunpoint to assist in their escape. At the last moment, Rick makes Ilsa board the plane to Lisbon with her husband, telling her that she would regret it if she stayed, "Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life." Major Strasser drives up by himself, having been tipped off by Renault, but Rick shoots him when he tries to intervene. When police reinforcements arrive, Renault pauses, then tells his men to "Round up the usual suspects." Once they are alone, Renault suggests to Rick that they leave Casablanca and join the Free French at Brazzaville. They walk off into the fog with one of the most memorable exit lines in movie history: "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

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Duel in the Sun (film)
Cast Jennifer Jones as Pearl Chavez Joseph Cotten as Jesse McCanles Gregory Peck as Lewton "Lewt" McCanles Lionel Barrymore as Sen. Jackson McCanles Herbert Marshall as Scott Chavez Lillian Gish as Laura Belle McCanles Walter Huston as The Sinkiller Charles Bickford as Sam Pierce Harry Carey as Lem Smoot Charles Dingle as Sheriff Hardy Sidney Blackmer as The Lover Butterfly McQueen as Vashti Otto Kruger as Mr. Langford Joan Tetzel as Helen Langford Tilly Losch as Mrs. Chavez Orson Welles as narrator (uncredited) Pearl Chavez (Jennifer Jones) is orphaned after her father Scott Chavez (Herbert Marshall) kills her mother (Tilly Losch), having caught his wife with a lover (Sidney Blackmer). Before his execution, Chavez arranges for Pearl to live with his second cousin and old sweetheart, Laura Belle (Lillian Gish). Arriving by stagecoach, Pearl is met by Jesse McCanles (Joseph Cotten), one of Laura Belle's two grown sons. He takes her to Spanish Bit, their enormous cattle ranch. The gentle and gracious Laura Belle is happy to welcome her to their home, but not so her husband, the wheelchair-using Senator Jackson McCanles (Lionel Barrymore), who calls her "a half-breed" and despises her father. The second son, Lewt (Gregory Peck), is a ladies man with a personality quite unlike that of his gentlemanly brother Jesse. He expresses his interest in Pearl in direct terms and she takes a strong dislike to him. Laura Belle calls in the "Sinkiller" (Walter Huston), a gun-toting preacher, to counsel Pearl on how to avoid the evils of temptation. Pearl is determined to remain "a good girl." When she is overpowered by Lewt in her bedroom one night, Pearl is angry with him and ashamed of her own behavior. But she also cannot help but be flattered by his lust and attentions. Jesse, meanwhile, is ostracized by his father and no longer welcome at the ranch after siding with railroad men, headed by Mr. Langford (Otto Kruger), against the Senator's personal interests. Jesse is in love with Pearl but he leaves to pursue a political career. He eventually becomes engaged to Helen Langford (Joan Tetzel), Langford's daughter. Offended when Lewt reneges on a promise to marry her, Pearl takes up with Sam Pierce (Charles Bickford), a neighboring rancher who is smitten with her. She does not love him but says yes to his proposal. Before they can be married, however, Lewt picks a fight with Pierce in a saloon and guns him down. He insists that Pearl can belong only to him. However, Lewt becomes a wanted man. On the run from the law, Lewt finds time to derail a train and occasionally drop by the ranch late at night and foist his attentions on Pearl. She cannot resist her desire for him and lies for Lewt to the law, hiding him in her room. Laura Belle's health takes a turn for the worse and the Senator admits his love for her before she dies. Jesse returns to visit but is too late; his mother is dead. The Senator continues to shun him, as does Lewt, their family feud finally resulting in a showdown. Lewt tosses a gun to his unarmed brother but before it can be picked up, he shoots Jesse. The Senator's old friend, Lem Smoot (Harry Carey) tells him that Jesse is going to make it and the old man softens up towards his son. A livid Pearl is relieved that Jesse is going to survive. When Helen arrives, she invites Pearl to leave Spanish Bit forever and come live with them in Austin. Pearl agrees, but she is tipped off by one of the Spanish Bit hands, Sid (Scott McKay) that Lewt intends to come after Jesse again. She arms herself and engages in a shootout with Lewt in the desert, where they die in each other's arms.

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
Starring: William Holden, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, Sessue Hayakawa Director: David Lean Two World War II prisoners of war are burying a dead comrade in a Japanese prison camp in western Thailand. One of them is United States Navy Commander Shears (William Holden), who has bribed the guards to get on the sick list to avoid more strenuous labour. He watches as a large contingent of new British prisoners led by Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness) arrives, whistling the "Colonel Bogey March". The Japanese camp commandant, Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa), addresses them, informing them of his rules, which he chooses not to follow. All prisoners, regardless of rank, are to work on the construction of a bridge over the River Kwai for a new railway line. Nicholson reminds Saito that the Geneva Conventions exempt officers from manual labour, but Saito just walks away. On parade the next morning, when Saito orders everyone to work, Nicholson orders his officers to stand fast, as the other ranks march off to work. Though Saito has a machine gun set up and threatens to have the officers shot, Nicholson refuses to back down. Saito is dissuaded from carrying through on his threat by Major Clipton (James Donald), the British medical officer, who warns of witnesses. Instead, Saito leaves the officers standing in the intense tropical heat. One officer collapses as the day
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wears on, but Nicholson and the rest are standing defiantly at attention when the men return from the day's work. The officers are then placed in a punishment hut, while Nicholson is locked into a corrugated iron box by himself to suffer in the heat. Saito tries to negotiate, but Nicholson refuses to compromise at all. Saito discloses to Nicholson that should he fail to meet his deadline, he would be obliged to commit seppuku (ritual suicide). Construction falls far behind schedule, due in part to "accidents" arranged by the prisoners. Finally, using the anniversary of Japan's great victory in the Russo-Japanese War as an excuse, Saito gives in. Nicholson and his officers triumphantly walk through a jubilant reception, while Saito privately breaks down in tears. Meanwhile, Shears and two others attempt to escape. The others are killed, but Shears falls into the river, is carried away, and presumed dead. After many days, Shears stumbles into a Siamese village, whose people help him to escape by a boat. He reaches the Mount Lavinia Hospital at Ceylon. Mount Lavinia Hotel was displayed as the Hospital by changing the name board for a short period. Nicholson conducts an inspection and is shocked by what he finds. Against the protests of some of his officers, he orders Captain Reeves (Peter Williams) and Major Hughes (John Boxer) to design and build a proper bridge, despite its military value to the Japanese, for the sake of his men's morale. The Japanese engineers had chosen a poor site, so the original construction is abandoned and a new bridge is begun 400 yards downstream. Shears is enjoying his recovery in Ceylon when Major Warden (Jack Hawkins) asks him to volunteer for a commando mission to destroy the bridge. Shears is horrified at the idea and reveals that he is not an officer at all, but an enlisted man who switched uniforms with the dead Commander Shears after the sinking of their ship. Despite his expectation, it did not get him any better treatment. However, Warden already knows. Shears has no choice but to join Warden's unit in return for not being charged with impersonating an officer. He is given the "simulated rank of Major". Untested Canadian Lieutenant Joyce (Geoffrey Horne) and Captain Chapman make up the rest of the team. Meanwhile, Nicholson drives his men to complete the bridge on time. He even volunteers his junior officers for physical labour, provided that their Japanese counterparts join in as well. The commandos parachute in, although Chapman is killed in a bad landing. The other three reach the river with the assistance of Siamese women porters and their village chief, Khun Yai. When they encounter a Japanese patrol, Joyce freezes and Warden is wounded in the foot as a result. Nonetheless, the trio get to the bridge, and under cover of darkness, Shears and Joyce plant explosives underwater. The next day, a Japanese train full of soldiers and important officials is scheduled to be the first to use the bridge; Warden waits to blow it up just as the train passes over. As dawn approaches, the trio are horrified to see that the wire to the explosives has been exposed in places by the receding river. Making a final inspection, Nicholson spots the wire and brings it to Saito's attention. As the train is heard approaching, the two colonels hurry down to the riverbank, pulling up and following the wire towards Joyce, who is waiting by the detonator. When they get too close, Joyce breaks cover and stabs Saito to death, but Nicholson yells for help and tries to stop Joyce (who cannot bring himself to kill Nicholson) from getting to the detonator. A firefight erupts. When Joyce is hit, Shears swims across the river, but he too is shot, just before he reaches Nicholson. Recognising the dying Shears, Nicholson suddenly comes to his senses and exclaims, "What have I done?" Warden desperately fires his mortar, mortally wounding Nicholson. The colonel stumbles over to the detonator's plunger and falls on it as he dies, just in time to blow up the bridge and send the train hurtling into the river below. As he witnesses the carnage, Clipton can only shake his head incredulously and utter, "Madness! ... Madness!"

Caligula
Starring: Malcolm McDowell, John Gielgud, Peter O'Toole, Helen Mirren Director: Tinto Brass Caligula, the young heir to throne of the syphilis-ridden, half-mad Emperor Tiberius, thinks he has received a bad omen after a blackbird flies into his room early one morning. Shortly afterward, Macro, the head of the Praetorian Guards, appears to tell the young man that his grandfather (Tiberius) demands that he report at once to the Isle of Capri, where he has been residing for a number of years with close friend Nerva, Claudius a dim-witted relative, and Caligula's younger stepbrother Gemellus, Tiberius' favourite. Fearing assassination, Caligula is afraid to leave, but his beloved sister Drusilla convinces him to go. At Capri, Caligula finds his grandfather has become depraved, showing signs of advanced venereal diseases, and embittered with Rome and politics. Tiberius enjoys watching degrading sexual shows, often including children and various freaks of nature. Caligula observes with a mixture of fascination and horror. Tensions rise when Tiberius jokingly tries to poison Caligula in front of Gemellus. After Nerva commits suicide on the prospect of Caligula's rule, Tiberius collapses from a stroke, leaving Macro and Caligula planning a way to hasten the latter's ascent to the throne. Late one night, Macro escorts all the spectators out of Tiberius' bedchamber to allow Caligula the opportunity to murder his grandfather, but when he fails, Macro finishes the deed himself by strangling Tiberius with a scarf. Caligula triumphantly
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removes the imperial signet from Tiberius' finger and suddenly realizes that Gemellus has witnessed the murder. Tiberius is buried with honours and Caligula is proclaimed the new Emperor, who in turn proclaims Drusilla his equal, to the apparent disgust of the senate. Afterward, Drusilla, fearful of Macro's influence, convinces Caligula to get rid of him. Caligula obliges by setting up a mock trial, in which Gemellus is intimidated into testifying that Macro alone murdered Tiberius. With the powerful Macro gone, Caligula pronounces the docile Senator Chaerea as the new head of the Praetorian Guard. Drusilla endeavors to find Caligula a wife amongst the priestesses of the goddess Isis, the mystery cult they secretly practice. Caligula only wants to marry Drusilla, but when she refuses, he spitefully marries Caesonia, a known courtesan, but only after she bears him an heir. Caligula proves to be a popular, yet eccentric ruler, cutting taxes and overturning all the oppressive laws that Tiberius enacted. The senate begins to dislike the young emperor for his eccentricities and various insults directed towards them. Darker aspects of his personality begin to emerge as well; he rapes a bride and groom on their wedding day due to a minor fit of jealousy and orders the execution of Gemellus merely to provoke a reaction from Drusilla. After he discovers Caesonia is pregnant, Caligula suffers severe fever, but Drusilla nurses him back to health. Right after he fully recovers, Caesonia bears Caligula a daughter, Julia Drusilla, and Caligula marries her on the spot. During the celebration, Drusilla collapses in Caligula's arms from the same fever he'd suffered. Soon afterward, Caligula receives another ill omen in the guise of a black bird. He rushes to Drusilla's side and watches her die. Caligula experiences a nervous breakdown, smashes a statue of Isis and drags Drusilla's body around the palace while screaming hysterically. Now in a deep depression, Caligula walks the Roman streets, disguised as a beggar. After a brief stay in a city jail, Caligula becomes determined to destroy the senatorial class, who he has come to loathe. His reign becomes a series of humiliations against the foundations of Rome; senators' wives are forced to work in the service of the state as prostitutes, estates are confiscated, the old religion is desecrated, and he initiates an absurd war on Britain to humiliate the army. It is obvious to the senators and the military that Caligula must be assassinated. Caligula wanders into his bedroom where a nervous Caesonia awaits him. The black bird makes a final appearance, but only Caesonia is frightened of it. The next morning, after rehearsing an Egyptian play, Caligula and his family are attacked as they leave the stadium in a blitz headed by Chearea. His wife and daughter are brutally murdered and Chaerea himself stabs Caligula in the stomach, to which he defiantly whimpers "I live!" As Caligula and his family's bodies are thrown down the marble steps and their blood is washed off the marble floor, Claudius is proclaimed the new Emperor.

CHINATOWN
Starring: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston, John Hillerman Director: Roman Polanski Synopsis: Many films from the 1970s allow even the most gripping narratives to flow with the consequences of real life. CHINATOWN is a classic film whose intrigues and adventures culminate in life-changing moments for its protagonist, Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson). Director Roman Polanski's classic neo-noir detective story is set during a heat wave in 1930s Los Angeles, where residents suffer from a water shortage due to an ongoing drought. With stellar contributions from composer Jerry Goldsmith and screenwriter Robert Towne, whose script recalls the hard-boiled cynicism of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, CHINATOWN is a complex and superbly crafted period drama that has become Polanski's most critically acclaimed film. Private investigator Gittes runs a sleazy detective agency. When a client (Diane Ladd) hires him to spy on her "husband," who is rumored to be having an affair with a younger woman, Jake uncovers a plot against the man--but this is only the tip of the iceberg. Still to emerge are a sex scandal implicating the real wife (Faye Dunaway), with whom Jake is destined to become more closely acquainted, and a real estate swindle of tremendous proportions devised by her tycoon father (John Huston), backed up by a vast network of corrupt city officials and landowners who make life hell for the private eye. This story crystallizes the impact of a chance meeting with the romantic ideals of the early 1970s, when the American urban landscape and economic power structures were in flux. A woman hires private investigator J.J. "Jake" Gittes (Jack Nicholson) to perform surveillance on Hollis Mulwray, the chief engineer for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. The woman (Diane Ladd) claims to be Mulwray's wife Evelyn, who suspects him of adultery. Gittes tails Mulwray. In a public meeting about a proposed bond issue for new dam construction, Mr. Mulwray argues that the proposed dam will be physically unsound and opposes the bond issue, which eventually passes. Following Mulwray to several Water and Power-related sites, they discover the dumping of fresh water into the ocean in spite of the late summer drought. Gittes's associate photographs Mulwray arguing with an elderly man outside the Pig 'n Whistle eatery in Hollywood, and only overhears the words "apple core" over traffic noise (a corruption of the word "albacore"). Gittes's tail finally hits paydirt when he photographs Mulwray with his young mistress. When the photos hit the front page of the paper the next day, Gittes is confronted by the real Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway), who serves him with a lawsuit. Gittes realizes he had been duped by a phony Mrs. Mulwray, and to repair his reputation, he must figure out who was behind the hiring, and why. Gittes convinces Evelyn Mulwray that he was only unwittingly involved in her personal business and she agrees to dismiss her lawsuit. She nervously reveals that her maiden name was "Cross" and that Mulwray used to be her father's business partner. Visiting the Department of Water and Power, Gittes recognizes photographs of the same elderly man Mulwray was photographed quarreling with, and learns his name: Noah Cross (John Huston). Mulwray and Cross once privately owned the water department. Gittes looks for Mulwray at the Oak Pass reservoir but finds police detectives there instead, including Lt. Lou Escobar (Perry Lopez), with whom Gittes used to work as an officer in Chinatown. Escobar and his men are investigating Mulwray's death by
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drowning and are recovering the body. At headquarters, Evelyn falsely tells Escobar that she did hire Gittes at the outset to put an end to rumors about Mulwray's adultery, expecting nothing to come of it. Gittes tells Evelyn that he suspects that Mulwray was murdered. Evelyn hires Gittes to investigate Mulwray's death. Breaking into the reservoir's secured area that night, Gittes nearly drowns in water suddenly being dumped. Soaking wet, he is confronted by water department security chief Claude Mulvihill (a corrupt former county sheriff) with a short henchman (a cameo by director Roman Polanski) who sticks a knife blade up Gittes's nose and slashes through his nostril for being a "very nosy kitty cat." Back at his office, sporting a bandage, Gittes receives a call from Ida Sessions, identifying herself as the "working girl" who pretended to "hire" him as Mrs. Mulwray. She did not realize the seriousness of what she was involved in, she explains, but she is too afraid to identify her employer. Miss Sessions does provide a clue, though: that Gittes can find the name of one of "those people" in that day's obituary column. Gittes joins Noah Cross, a member of the Albacore Club, at his estate for lunch. Cross also offers to hire Gittes to find Katherine, Mulwray's young mistress, who has been missing since Mulwray died. Cross refuses to discuss his argument with Mulwray outside the Pig 'n Whistle in any detail, and deflects Gittes's questions by explaining that the mistress might know how Mulwray was killed. "Just find the girl," he admonishes. Gittes visits the hall of records, comparing recent land grantees with names of deceased persons in the obituary column. Then he drives to an orange grove in the northwest San Fernando Valley, and is shot at, caught, and beaten by the angry landowners. They explain that the water department has been demolishing their water tanks and poisoning wells, before they knock him out. When Gittes wakes up, Evelyn is there to pick him up. They leave and Gittes reviews the obituary column, noticing that a resident of the Mar Vista Inn, a retirement home, died two weeks ago, but "bought" acreage in the Valley only one week ago. "That's unusual," Gittes quips. Growers have been forced off their acreage by drought conditions and harassment by the water department, Gittes explains, depressing value. Unidentified persons are buying tens of thousands of acres "for peanuts" using the names of straw buyers. The public dam bond issue that Mulwray unsuccessfully opposed, Gittes explains, is a "con job" designed to irrigate the rural valley, not to conserve water for city taxpayers. Because he knew about this and other things, Gittes theorizes, Hollis Mulwray was murdered. Evelyn and Jake arrive at the Mar Vista Inn and confirm that its residents have no clue of their wealth; further, the Mar Vista Inn is affiliated with the Albacore Club as "sort of an unofficial charity." Mulvihill soon arrives to "escort" Jake out and they scuffle. With Mulvihill's henchman firing at them, Gittes and Evelyn escape the Mar Vista in her car. Returning to her house, they passionately kiss and wind up in her bed. In intimate conversation, Jake tells Evelyn about his time as a beat cop in L.A.'s Chinatown, where he was instructed to do "as little as possible." Nothing was ever as it seemed, he explains. Gittes's attempt to protect a woman only ensured that she was hurt. Evelyn's phone rings and she quickly hangs up and says that she has to leave. Evelyn asks Jake to wait for her there and to trust her. She adds that Noah Cross owns the Albacore Club. Gittes tails Evelyn to her butler's house; peering through a bedroom window he sees Evelyn comforting Katherine, Mulwray's distraught mistress. Evelyn, when Gittes presses, admits that Mulwray's mistress is her sister. Then Ida Sessions is found murdered in her house. Gittes receives a mysterious call from a homicide detective using Ms. Sessions's phone and arrives there. Escobar explains that the coroner found salt water in Mulwray's lungs, indicating that the body was moved, as it was recovered from a freshwater reservoir. Gittes returns to Evelyn's mansion, where he discovers a pair of men's eyeglasses in her salt water garden pond. Presuming that Evelyn killed Mulwray and that the glasses had been his, Gittes confronts Evelyn. She denies guilt and, under questioning, wavers about whether Katherine is her sister, or her daughter. In a climactic scene, Gittes repeatedly smacks Evelyn on one side of the face, and the other, until Evelyn cries out "She's my sister and my daughter!" whom she bore to Noah Cross when she was 15. Evelyn says that the found eyeglasses could not have been Mulwray's because they are bifocals. Gittes decides to help Evelyn and Katherine escape from Cross and Escobar, who now suspects Evelyn of Mulwray's murder, and accuses Gittes of extortion and of acting as an accessory. Gittes arranges for the two women to flee to Mexico, through a fisherman client of his, and instructs Evelyn to meet him at her butler's home in Chinatown. Evelyn leaves, and Lt. Escobar arrives. Escobar brings Jake along for his arrest of Evelyn. Jake gives the San Pedro address of the fisherman, which Jake pretends belongs to Evelyn's maid. Jake enters the house alone, slips out the back door, and asks his client to take Evelyn and Katherine to Mexico by boat. At Mulwray's home, Gittes arranges for Mr. Cross to meet him, claiming that he's found Mulwray's mistress. After Gittes confronts him, Cross admits he intends to incorporate the Northwest Valley into the City of Los Angeles, which will be irrigated and developed. Gittes then broaches the topic of Cross's incest with Evelyn, and accuses him of Mulwray's drowning. Cross says most people never have to acknowledge that, given the right circumstances, they are "capable of anything." Gittes produces Cross's bifocals, the only physical evidence linking him to Mulwray's murder. Mulvihill appears, holding a gun on Gittes, forcing him to surrender Cross's glasses and to take them to Katherine. When Gittes reaches the hiding place in Chinatown, the police are already there and arrest Gittes for withholding evidence and extortion. Gittes protests that Cross murdered Mulwray, but Escobar orders one of his men to handcuff Gittes to a car. Noah Cross approaches Katherine, explaining that he is her "grandfather." Evelyn backs him off with a small pistol, vowing to protect her daughter. Gittes scolds Evelyn to "Let the police handle this!" Evelyn fires back: "He owns the police!" Cross approaches Katherine again and Evelyn shoots him in the arm. As Evelyn speeds away with Katherine, the police open fire, killing Evelyn; her body falls onto the car horn, followed by Katherine's blood-curdling scream. Cross clutches Katherine and takes her away. After being uncuffed, Gittes mutters to Escobar, "...as little as possible," reminding Escobar of their frustrating years policing corrupt Chinatown. Escobar angrily releases Gittes, confiding that he is doing Gittes "a favor," and ordering Gittes's associates to "Get him out of here!" Gittes is urged, "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown."

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Bitter Moon (1994)
Starring: Hugh Grant, Peter Coyote, Emmanuelle Seigner, Kristin Scott Thomas Director: Roman Polanski Synopsis: On a cruise to Istanbul in celebration of their seventh wedding anniversary, uptight British couple Nigel (Hugh Grant) and Fiona (Kristin Scott Thomas) encounter American expatriate Oscar (Peter Coyote), a wheelchair-bound unpublished novelist traveling with his young French wife, Mimi (Emmanuelle Seigner). Nigel is immediately drawn to the sexy but distant Mimi, and Oscar, sensing the other man's fascination with his wife, takes him aside to recount in exhibitionistic detail the sordid tale of their once-passionate love affair, which gradually deteriorated into a series of increasingly sadistic and degrading sex games. In flashback scenes, it soon becomes clear that the self-serving Oscar represents the corrosive element in the couple's relationship--though the tables will eventually be turned. BITTER MOON provides several jarring twists, the last of which is especially unexpected, and no one escapes unscathed from this titillating yet excruciating menage-à-quatre. Polanski's erotic melodrama received mixed reviews but earned ardent praise from fans who appreciated the filmmaker's return to the themes (first treated in 1962's KNIFE IN THE WATER) of dark sexuality and thinly veiled violence in intimate relationships. A prim and proper British couple, Fiona (Thomas) and Nigel (Grant), are on a Mediterranean cruise ship to Istanbul, en route to India. They encounter another couple on the ship, the seductive Frenchwoman Mimi (Seigner) and her paraplegic American husband Oscar (Coyote), a failed and self-centered writer. The story unfolds as Oscar invites Nigel to his cabin, where he recalls, in a series of episodes, how he and the much younger Mimi met on a bus in Paris and fell in love; and then how their relationship went horribly wrong. During a series of flashbacks, Oscar recounts how his and Mimi's love developed and took a darker turn. They explored bondage, sado-masochism, urolagnia, and voyeurism. Slowly, their self-absorbed relationship decayed, and the bored Oscar tried to break-up with Mimi. She begged him to let her live with him under any conditions, and he took advantage of the opportunity to explore sadistic fantasies at her expense. Oscar increasingly subjected Mimi to public humiliation, until she became pregnant. Oscar persuaded her that he would be a terrible father and that she should have an abortion. While she was recovering, Oscar visited her and was shocked by her condition. He almost relented in his attempts to drive her away but instead promised her a holiday somewhere exotic. On the plane, Oscar pretended that his luggage wouldn't fit in the overhead bin and went to find help from an attendant. He then abandoned the flight, leaving Mimi on board. Oscar's tale continues with him immersing himself in a world of parties and one-night stands for the next two years. This hedonistic lifestyle ended when he drunkenly stepped in front of a vehicle. A much more confident Mimi visited him in hospital, where he was recovering from minor injuries and a broken leg. By manipulating Oscar's traction device, the vengeful Mimi crippled Oscar, so that he became a paraplegic. Mimi then informed Oscar that she would look after him and moved back into the apartment to be his full-time caretaker. She reveled in dominating and humiliating him, to the extent that she seduced friends in front of him. Oscar was filled with selfloathing and, by the time of his meeting with Nigel, seems to believe that he deserves this treatment. Nigel is both shocked and appalled. However, he is intrigued by Mimi and encouraged by Oscar to have an affair with her but lacks the confidence to approach her directly. His wife, Fiona, repeatedly warns him not to stray too far. Anything he can do, she can do better. Later during a shipboard New Year's Eve party, Nigel attempts to dance with Mimi, but she seems only partially interested. Oscar tells him to try harder or risk losing her to another. As Nigel attempts again to woo Mimi, she informs him that Fiona has arrived and that she is watching them. Nigel hurriedly greets Fiona, and learns that Oscar had reminded her to come to the party. Fiona is not impressed with Nigel's behaviour but is with Mimi. The two ladies take to the dance floor and are encouraged by the crowd to dance passionately and to embrace. Together the ladies leave, and Nigel is crestfallen. Oscar's attempts to philosophize serve only to enrage him. He goes outside and screams his frustration into the wind and waves. Later, we see Nigel awaken from a drunken stupor and go looking for Fiona. He finds her in Mimi's cabin, where Oscar claims that he has watched the ladies exhaust themselves sexually. In a moment of rage, Nigel grabs Oscar's throat only to have a gun pointed at him. Oscar is clearly highly distressed and shoots the sleeping Mimi several times as Fiona cowers beside her. Oscar then commits suicide by blowing off the back of his head. At the end, we see the bodies of Oscar and Mimi being stretchered off the ship. Fiona and Nigel are left embracing one another and sobbing as the credits start to roll. In the midst of the intense, sexual narratives and the interactions aboard the ship, Nigel and Fiona also encounter a distinguished Indian gentleman, who is traveling with his very young daughter and who, with his child, represents stability and normality. As Nigel and Fiona collapse at the film's end, the gentleman encourages his little girl to comfort them. The suggestion, which some critics attributed to Polanski's own experience of fatherhood by the time the film was made, is that a stable family life is infinitely superior to the instability of bachelorhood and risky erotic experimentation.

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Apocalypse Now
Starring: Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, Frederic Forrest Director: Francis Ford Coppola Synopsis: Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam epic, loosely based on HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad, tells the story of Captain Willard (Martin Sheen), a special agent sent into Cambodia to assassinate an errant American colonel (Marlon Brando). Willard is assigned a navy patrol boat operated by Chief (Albert Hall) and three hapless soldiers (Frederic Forrest, Sam Bottoms, and Larry Fishburne). They are escorted on part of their journey by an air cavalry unit led by Lt. Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall), a gung-ho commander with a love of Wagner, surfing, and napalm. After witnessing a surreal USO show featuring Playboy playmates and an anarchic battle with the Viet Cong at a bridge, Willard reaches Colonel Kurtz's compound. A crazed photo journalist and Kurtz groupie (Dennis Hopper) welcomes the crew, and Willard begins to question his orders to "terminate the colonel's command." The grueling production and Coppola's insistence on authenticity led to vast budget overruns and physical and emotional breakdowns. Considered to be one of the best war movies of all time, APOCALYPSE NOW features incredible performances and beautifully chaotic visuals that make it an absolute must-see. In August 2001, a new version of the film, title APOCALYPSE NOW REDUX, was released. The new version includes 49 minutes of never-before-seen footage, a Technicolor enhancement, and a six-channel soundtrack. PLOT: Act I The film opens, introducing Captain Benjamin L. Willard (Martin Sheen); a deeply troubled, seasoned special operations veteran. It is 1969. Willard has returned to Saigon from deployment in the field. He drinks excessively and appears to be having difficulty adjusting to life in the rear-area. Two intelligence officers, Lt. General Corman (G. D. Spradlin) and Colonel Lucas (Harrison Ford), and a government man (Jerry Ziesmer) approach him with an assignment: journey up the fictional Nung River into the remote Cambodian jungle to find Colonel Walter E. Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a member of the US Army Special Forces feared to have gone rogue. They tell Willard that Kurtz, once considered a model officer and future general, has gone insane and is commanding a legion of his own Montagnard troops deep inside the forest in neutral Cambodia. Their claims are supported by very disturbing radio broadcasts and recordings made by Kurtz himself. Willard is ordered to undertake a mission to find Kurtz and terminate the Colonel's command "with extreme prejudice." Willard joins the crew of a Navy Patrol Boat, Riverine (PBR), with an eclectic crew composed of QMC George "Chief" Phillips (Albert Hall), the Navy PBR boat commander; GM3 Lance B. Johnson (Sam Bottoms), GM3 Tyrone Miller (Laurence Fishburne), a.k.a. "Mr. Clean", and EN3 Jay "Chef" Hicks (Frederic Forrest). Willard and the PBR crew rendezvous with the 1/9 Air Cavalry, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore (Robert Duvall) for transport to the Nung River. He initially refuses their request for transport until Kilgore, a keen surfer, is told by one of his men that Lance Johnson, a professional surfer, is a member of the boat's crew. Kilgore befriends Johnson, and later learns from one of his men that the beach down the coast which marks the opening to the river is perfect for surfing. This changes Kilgore's mind about transporting Willard and the PBR to the river, but from the map there is a Viet Cong-held village at the mouth of the river and Kilgore decides to capture the village. His men advise him that it's "Charlie's point" and heavily fortified. Dismissing this concern with the explanation that "Charlie don't surf!," Kilgore orders his men to saddle up in the morning to capture the town and the beach. Riding high above the coast in a fleet of Hueys accompanied by OH-6As, Kilgore launches his attack on the beach. The scene, famous for its use of Richard Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries," ends with the soldiers surfing the barely-secured beach amidst skirmishes between infantry and VC. After helicopters swoop over the village and demolish all visible signs of resistance, a giant napalm strike in the nearby jungle dramatically marks the climax of the battle. Kilgore exults to Willard, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning... The smell, you know that gasoline smell... Smells like, victory" as he recalls a battle in which a hill was bombarded with napalm for over twelve hours. The lighting and mood darken as the boat navigates upstream and Willard's silent obsession with Kurtz deepens. Incidents on the journey include a run-in with a tiger while Willard and Chef search for mangoes. The boat continues up river and watches a USO show featuring Playboy Bunnies and a centerfold that degenerates into chaos. Shortly after the Playmate performance, Phillips spots a sampan and orders an inspection over the objections of Willard. Initially reluctant to board the boat, Chef impatiently searches it; one of the civilians makes a sudden movement towards a barrel, prompting Clean to open fire and kill nearly everyone on the sampan. The civilian concerned about the barrel, a young woman, lies dying. Chef discovers that the barrel contained the woman's pet puppy. Phillips insists on taking the woman to receive medical attention; however, Willard ends the debate by shooting her, calmly stating "I told you not to stop," further alienating himself from the PBR's crew. Act II The boat moves up river to the American outpost at the Do Long bridge, the last U.S. Army outpost on the river, passing wreckage of a downed Huey helicopter and a B-52D Stratofortress. The boat arrives during a North Vietnamese attack on the bridge, which is under constant construction. Upon arrival, Willard receives the last piece of the dossier from a lieutenant named Carlson, along with mail for the boat crewmen. Willard goes ashore with Lance, who has taken LSD, and they make their way
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through the trenches where they encounter many panicked, leaderless soldiers. Realizing the situation has devolved into chaos, Willard and Lance return to the boat. The chief tries to convince Willard not to continue on with his mission. In response, Willard snaps at Phillips to continue upriver. As the boat departs, the NVA launch an artillery strike that destroys the bridge. The next day, Willard learns from the information he received at Do Lung that an Army Captain named Colby was sent to find Kurtz a few months prior to Willard's assignment and is now missing. While the crew is busy reading mail, Lance pops open a purple smoke grenade, catching the attention of an unseen enemy hiding in the trees by the river, and prompting an attack on the boat. Clean is killed as he listens to an audio tape from his mother. The chief, who had a close relationship with Clean, becomes increasingly hostile to Willard. Later, Montagnard villagers begin shooting arrows at the boat as it approaches the camp. The crew opens fire until the chief is hit by a spear. Willard attempts to assist the mortally wounded Phillips, who tries to kill Willard by pulling him onto the spear tip protruding from his chest. Willard grapples with Phillips until the man finally dies. Afterwards, Willard confides in Chef and Lance about his mission, and the two surviving crew of the boat reluctantly agree to continue their journey upriver as they are now in Cambodia. As they draw closer, they see the coastline is littered with dead bodies. After arriving at Kurtz' outpost, Willard leaves Chef behind with orders to call in an airstrike on the village if he does not return and takes Johnson with him to the village. They are met by a manic freelance photographer (Dennis Hopper), who explains that Kurtz's greatness and philosophical skills inspire his people to follow him. As they go into the village, there are bodies that are ignored by the villagers, as well as severed heads scattered about the nearby Buddist temple which serves as Kurtz's living quarters. Willard also encounters the missing Captain Colby, who is in a nearly catatonic state. Willard is bound and brought before Kurtz in the darkened temple. Kurtz lectures him on his theories of war, humanity, and civilization. Kurtz explains his motives and philosophy in a haunting monologue in which he praises the ruthlessness of the Viet Cong which he witnessed firsthand after one of his own humanitarian missions. He recalls the incident as leaving him traumatised but also giving him a new and deeper understanding of the complexities of his enemy and the level to which the US would have to commit in order to prevail. The scene changes to Chef attempting to call in the airstrike on the village as ordered by Willard. Chef is attacked before the call is completed, and the scene cuts to Willard bound to a post outside in the pouring rain. Kurtz walks up to him and drops Chef's severed head into his lap. Sometime later, a villager releases Willard's bonds and gives him a machete. Willard enters Kurtz's chamber as Kurtz is making a recording, and attacks him with the machete. This entire sequence is set to "The End" by The Doors and juxtaposed with a ceremonial slaughtering of a water buffalo. Lying bloody and dying on the ground, Kurtz whispers "The horror... the horror..." before expiring. Willard descends the stairs from Kurtz' chamber and drops his weapon. The villagers do so as well. Willard walks through the now-silent crowd of natives and takes the last surviving crewperson, the near-catatonic Lance, by the hand. With his mission accomplished, Willard leads Johnson to the PBR, and the two of them sail away downriver as Kurtz's final words echo and the scene fades to black. In some but not all prints of the film, the closing credits play over footage of Kurtz' temple-base exploding; after the film's original general release Coppola replaced this footage with a plain black screen because some viewers interpreted it as an air strike called in by Willard, which Coppola did not intend.

10 Things I Hate About You
Cameron James, a new student at Padua (Stadium High School in Tacoma, Washington), is given a tour of the school by Michael Eckman, who is an AV geek and former leader of a clique of future MBAs. Michael provides Cameron with information on the school’s various cliques. During the tour, Cameron spots the beautiful and popular Bianca Stratford and is immediately smitten with her. Michael warns that Bianca is shallow, conceited, and worst of all, not allowed to date. Michael does, however, inform Cameron that Bianca is looking for a French tutor. At the Stratford residence, Bianca’s outcast older sister Kat receives a letter of acceptance to Sarah Lawrence College. Her protective father, Walter, is distraught by the news, as he wants Kat to attend college nearby. Kat distracts her father by revealing that Bianca was given a ride home from school by Joey Donner. Bianca begs her father to allow her to date, but to no avail. Kat's aversion to dating prompts the father to come up with a new rule: Bianca can only date if Kat is dating. Cameron starts tutoring Bianca, and she informs him of her father’s rule after Cameron makes many failed attempts to ask her out. This news motivates Cameron and Michael to set out to find a boy who is willing to date Kat. Cameron suggests Patrick Verona, an outcast who is just as ill-tempered as Kat. Cameron tries asking Patrick for his assistance, but Patrick scares him off. Michael then poses the idea to Joey, also attempting to date Bianca, to pay Patrick to take Kat out. Patrick agrees, but Kat, however, wants nothing to do with Patrick. Cameron and Michael finally explain their situation to Patrick and inform him that Bogie Lowenstein is throwing a party (this is actually a plot by Michael to get revenge, as a rumor from Bogie had got him kicked out of their clique). Cameron and Michael spread rumors around school that Bogie's party will have free beer and dancing, although it is actually a small private gathering.
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At the party, Kat tells Joey to stay away from her sister. Joey brags that he cannot guarantee she'll stay away from him. Kat gets upset and begins drinking, leading her to dance drunkenly on a table. Meanwhile, Cameron discovers that Bianca was using him to find a date for Kat so that Bianca could date Joey. Cameron decides to stop trying to date Bianca, but Patrick convinces him to go for it. Bianca asks Cameron for a ride home after discovering Joey’s true character. Cameron drops her off and tells her that he really likes her and was very disappointed in her. At that point Bianca kisses Cameron. Patrick brings Kat home, and she then tries kissing Patrick. He suggests they should do that some other time, hurting Kat’s feelings. The next day at school, Patrick publicly sings "Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You" (with the school's marching band providing backing music) to Kat in front of everyone asking her forgiveness, landing him in detention. Kat gets him out of detention by "flashing" the soccer coach. Kat and Patrick spend the day together, and they both realize that they truly do like each other. Patrick, motivated by Joey's bribe of $300, asks Kat to the prom. However, she is suspicious of his motives and they get into a fight. Bianca tries to convince her father to let her go to the prom, but he refuses, since Kat isn’t going. Bianca confronts Kat. Kat then reveals that she dated Joey and they had sex, mostly because everyone else was doing it. However, when Kat told Joey that she wasn't ready for sex and did not want to do it again, he immediately broke up with her. Even though she forbade Joey to tell anyone of their one time together or else she would tell all the cheerleaders how "tiny" his private thing is, Kat still felt immense rejection, thus spurring her to not do anything ever again just because everyone else was doing it and distanced herself from her peers. Bianca and Kat end up going to the prom with Cameron and Patrick, respectively. Joey is furious to learn that Bianca has gone to the prom with Cameron, and confronts Patrick about the "arrangement" in front of Kat. Kat blows up at Patrick and leaves. Joey subsequently confronts Cameron about manipulating the 'deal' for himself, but after he punches Cameron, Bianca hits Joey three times herself (once for "making [her] date bleed", once for her sister, and once for her), leaving him curled up in pain on the floor with a broken nose and a black eye. The next morning, Bianca thanks Kat for going to prom and the sisters make up. Kat's father allows her to go to Sarah Lawrence. At school, Kat reads a poem which she wrote for English class, titled "10 Things I Hate About You" (although it contains 14 things she hates about Patrick). While reading the poem, she reveals (in front of the entire class) how hurt she was by what Patrick did and how much she really cares about him ("But mostly I hate the way I don't hate you. Not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all"). Patrick is shown to be touched by her revelation. In the parking lot, Kat finds a guitar Patrick bought her with the money Joey paid him, and he admits that he messed up their deal by falling for her. Kat forgives Patrick and the two kiss and make up.

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Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Starring: Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst, Tom Wilkinson, Elijah Wood, Mark Ruffalo, David Cross, Jane Adams, Thomas Jay Ryan Director: Michel Gondry Emotionally unstable Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) and dysfunctional free spirit Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet) strike up a relationship on a Long Island Rail Road train from Montauk. They are inexplicably drawn to each other, despite their radically different personalities. Although they apparently do not realize it at the time, Joel and Clementine are in fact former lovers, now separated after having spent two years together. After a nasty fight, Clementine hired the New York firm Lacuna, Inc. to erase all her memories of their relationship. (The term "lacuna" means a gap or missing part. Lacunar amnesia is a gap in one's memory about a specific event.) Upon discovering this, Joel was devastated and decided to undergo the procedure himself, a process that takes place while he sleeps. Much of the film takes place in Joel's mind. As his memories are erased, Joel finds himself revisiting them in reverse. Upon seeing happier times of his relationship with Clementine from earlier in their relationship, he struggles to preserve at least some memory of her and his love for her. Despite his efforts, the memories are slowly erased, with the last memory of Clementine telling him to "Meet me in Montauk". In separate but related story arcs occurring during Joel's memory erasure, the employees of Lacuna are revealed to be more than peripheral characters. Patrick (Wood), one of the Lacuna technicians performing the erasure, is dating Clementine while viewing Joel's memories, and copying Joel's moves to seduce her. Mary (Dunst) turns out to have had an affair with the married doctor (Wilkinson) who heads the company, a relationship which she agreed to have erased from her memory when it was discovered by his wife. Once Mary learns this, she steals the company's records and sends them to all of its clients. Joel and Clementine come upon their Lacuna records shortly after re-encountering each other on the train. They react with shock and bewilderment, given that they have no clear memory of having known each other, let alone having had a relationship and having had their memories erased. In the end, they reunite despite knowing that the memory of their past relationship had been erased. Synopsis: ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND is an unconventional romance told in the abstract, inventive, and comedic storytelling style of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. Like his scripts for ADAPTATION... ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND is an unconventional romance told in the abstract, inventive, and comedic storytelling style of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. Like his scripts for ADAPTATION and BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, this plot works off of a relatively complex idea that is more easily explained through the language of film than through words. In its most basic description, Joel (Jim Carrey) is undergoing a medical procedure to erase the memory of his ex-girlfriend, Clementine (Kate Winslet). However, while he is unconscious and the procedure is underway, he takes a journey through his mind, reliving moments with Clementine for fear of losing her forever. Using disjointed sound and action, foggy periods indicating Joel's confusion, and flashbacks to childhood where objects appear much bigger than they are to adult eyes, the cinematography communicates Joel's dilemma with visual hilarity. Only occasionally is the film laugh-out-loud funny; instead it is much more deeply and darkly amusing as the absurdity of the situation grows. ETERNAL SUNSHINE is nothing short of brilliant--a credit to director Michel Gondry (who has a topnotch reputation for his aesthetic music videos by artists such as Bjork). Carrey is wonderfully understated in the role of a simpleminded nice guy, and his signature goofiness is used only a handful of times. Winslet lights up the screen with her blue hair and orange sweatshirt, playing a lively free spirit and loose cannon. There are also strong supporting performances by Kirsten Dunst, Elijah Wood, and Mark Ruffalo, along with an excellent score by Jon Brion and a peppy soundtrack including songs by E.L.O. and the Polyphonic Spree. The film's conclusion promises to satisfy viewers; it offers a beautiful metaphor for the end of a love affair that brings perfect closure to this excellent film. [Less]

TITANIC 1997
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Billy Zane, Kathy Bates Director: James Cameron
In 1996, treasure hunter Brock Lovett (Bill Paxton) and his team explore the wreck of the RMS Titanic, searching for a necklace set with a valuable blue diamond called the Heart of the Ocean. They believe the diamond is in Caledon "Cal" Hockley's safe, which they recover. They do not find the diamond, but a sketch of a nude woman wearing the diamond. The drawing is dated April 14, 1912, the night the Titanic hit the iceberg. One-hundred-year-old Rose Dawson Calvert (Gloria Stuart) learns of the drawing and contacts Lovett, informing him that she is the woman in the drawing. She and her granddaughter Elizabeth "Lizzy" Calvert (Suzy Amis) visit Lovett and his team on his salvage ship. When asked if she knew the whereabouts of the necklace, Rose recalls her memories aboard the Titanic, revealing that she is Rose DeWitt Bukater, a passenger believed to have died in the sinking. In 1912, the upper class 17-year-old Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet) boards the ship in Southampton, England with her 30something fiancé Caledon "Cal" Hockley (Billy Zane), the son of a Pittsburgh steel tycoon, and her mother, Ruth DeWitt Bukater (Frances Fisher). Cal and Ruth stress the importance of Rose's engagement, since the marriage will mean the eradication of the Dewitt-Bukater debts; while they appear upper-class, Rose and her mother are experiencing severe financial troubles. Distraught and frustrated by her engagement to the controlling Cal and the pressure her mother is putting on her, Rose considers attempting suicide by jumping off the stern of the ship. Before she leaps, a drifter and artist named Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio) intervenes and persuades her not to. As he helps her up from the stern, her dress catches and she falls. Jack grabs Rose's arm and helps her to pull herself back onto the boat. Cal, his friends and the sailors, overhearing Rose's
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screams, believe Jack attempted to rape her. She explains that Jack saved her life, hiding her suicide attempt by claiming she slipped while trying to see the propellers. Jack supports Rose's story, though Hockley's manservant, former Pinkerton agent Spicer Lovejoy (David Warner), is unconvinced. Jack and Rose develop a tentative friendship. Their bond deepens when they leave a stuffy first-class formal dinner of the rapport-building wealthy for a much livelier gathering in third-class. Lovejoy informs Cal of Rose's partying, and during breakfast the following morning Cal and Ruth forbid her to see Jack again. After witnessing a woman encouraging her young daughter to behave like a "proper lady" at tea, Rose defies them and meets Jack at the bow of the ship. She has decided she would rather be with him than with Cal, and the two share a passionate kiss. They go to Rose's stateroom, where she asks Jack to sketch her wearing nothing but the Heart of the Ocean, an engagement present from Cal. Afterwards, the two run from Lovejoy, going into the ship's cargo hold. They enter William Carter's Renault and make love in the backseat before moving to the ship's forward well deck. After witnessing the ship's collision with an iceberg and overhearing the ship's lookouts discussing how serious it is, Rose tells Jack they should warn her mother and Cal. Cal has discovered Rose's drawing and her taunting note in his safe, so he frames Jack for stealing the Heart of the Ocean by having Lovejoy plant it in Jack's pocket. Jack is arrested, taken down to the Master-at-arms's office and handcuffed to a pipe. Rose runs away from Cal and her mother (who has boarded a lifeboat) to rescue Jack from imprisonment. She frees him with an axe. After much turmoil, Jack and Rose return to the boat deck. Cal and Jack want Rose safe, so they persuade her to board a lifeboat, Cal claiming that he has an arrangement that will allow him and Jack to get off safely. After Rose is out of earshot, Cal admits that there is an arrangement, but he will not use it to help Jack. Realizing that she cannot leave Jack, Rose jumps back on the ship and reunites with him at the ship's first-class staircase. Infuriated, Cal takes Lovejoy's pistol and chases Jack and Rose into the flooding first-class dining saloon. When Cal runs out of ammunition, he sarcastically wishes them well, then realizes he left the Heart of the Ocean in Rose's overcoat. Cal abandons Lovejoy and returns to the boat deck, where he boards a lifeboat by pretending to look after an abandoned child. Jack and Rose go through grueling struggles just to return to the top deck. By the time they do, people everywhere are falling to their deaths and the lifeboats have gone. The ship begins to quickly sink as the first class staircase is destroyed and the ship becomes more steep. Jack and Rose take refuge on the now-vertical stern, which washes them into the Atlantic Ocean. They grab hold of a door that only supports one person. Jack remains in the water, clinging to the door. As Rose accepts their fate, Jack assures her that she will live to have a long, happy life. He says that when she dies it will be in her own bed. As they await rescue, Jack dies from hypothermia. When a lifeboat finally returns to the site of the sinking, Rose is thinking of staying put and dying with Jack, but is then inspired by Jack's words and determined to live. She blows a whistle taken from a nearby frozen crew member, and is taken by the RMS Carpathia to New York, where she gives her name as Rose Dawson. She sees Cal for the last time on Carpathia's deck, looking for her. It is revealed that Cal commits suicide after losing his fortune in the Crash of 1929. Having completed her story, the elderly Rose goes alone to the stern of Lovett's ship. There, she pulls out the Heart of the Ocean, revealing that she had it all along, and drops it into the water. As she sleeps in her bed, around her are pictures of her doing everything she said she would do with Jack throughout her life. The final shot of the film is of young Rose being reunited with Jack at the Grand Staircase of the Titanic, surrounded and applauded by those who perished on the ship; it is deliberately unclear if this is a conscious dream, or if Rose has died in her sleep.[12] Synopsis: Featuring spectacular special effects set amidst the backdrop of one of the most tragic events of the 20th century, James Cameron's award-winning TITANIC stands as one of the greatest Hollywood... Featuring spectacular special effects set amidst the backdrop of one of the most tragic events of the 20th century, James Cameron's award-winning TITANIC stands as one of the greatest Hollywood spectaculars of all time. Beginning with an undersea expedition in the 1990s, in which scuba divers are searching the sunken ship for lost relics, a painting of young Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet) is found. This triggers a flashback to the young woman's story as it happened on the doomed Titanic. Rose is a daughter of privilege on her way to be married to an arrogant but wealthy young man (Billy Zane). Despairing, Rose finds herself falling in love with Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio), a carefree and poor young artist who is also aboard. When the great ship strikes an iceberg and begins to sink, Rose and Jack have only each other as their world falls apart around them. Director James Cameron spared no expense in bringing his simple yet powerful love story to life, building a 90% scale model of the ship, fussing over the tiniest details, and ultimately spending some $200 million dollars. A worldwide smash, TITANIC received fourteen Academy Award nominations and 11 wins, including Best Picture. Despite all the lavish sets and special effects, the film would be nothing without the emotional core provided by stars Winslet and DiCaprio, who give star making performances as the tragic young lovers. [Less]

The Bridges Of Madison County[1995]
Starring: Meryl Streep, Clint Eastwood Director: Clint Eastwood Synopsis: The film adaptation of Robert James Waller's wildly popular, bestselling novel. The story takes place in 1965, in the farmlands of Iowa, where bored, middle-aged Italian housewife Francesca has... The film adaptation of Robert James Waller's wildly popular, bestselling novel. The story takes place in 1965, in the farmlands of Iowa, where bored, middle-aged Italian housewife Francesca has just sent her two kids and husband away to the state fair. Shortly thereafter she encounters Robert Kincaid, a mysterious, rugged, "National Geographic" photographer, on assignment taking pictures of Iowa's covered bridges. The two are immediately attracted to each other, and when Francesca invites Robert back to her home, they begin a romantic, sensual, illicit affair that lasts over the next few days. For Francesca, this is the first time in years that she's experienced passion in her life, and she realizes that maybe she's found her true love. Robert feels the same way, and shortly before her family returns home, asks Francesca to run off with him. Francesca now must make an important decision -- one that will affect the rest of her life and could leave her with many regrets... [Less]
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The film is set in the summer of 1965. It tells the story of Francesca (Meryl Streep), a lonely, insightful Italian housewife in Iowa. While her husband and children are away at the Illinois State Fair, she meets and falls in love with a photographer (Clint Eastwood) who has come to Madison County, Iowa to create a photographic essay for National Geographic on the covered bridges in the area. The four days they spend together are a turning point in her life and she writes of her experience in a diary which is discovered by her children after her death. The path of Francesca Johnson's future seems destined when an unexpected fork in the road causes her to question everything she had come to expect from life. While her husband and children are away at the Illinois state fair in the summer of 1965, Robert Kincaid happens turn into the Johnson farm and asks Francesca for directions to Roseman Bridge. Francesca later learns that he was in Iowa on assignment from National Geographic magazine. She is reluctant seeing that he's a complete stranger and then she agrees to show him to the bridges and gradually she talks about her life from being a war-bride from Italy which sets the pace for this bittersweet and all-too-brief romance of her life. Through the pain of separation from her secret love and the stark isolation she feels as the details of her life consume her, she writes her thoughts of the four-day love affair which took up three journals. The journals are found by her children after the lawyer was going over Francesca's will and all the contents which produces a key to her hope chest in the bedroom which contained some of hers and Robert's things. The message they take from the diaries is to what you what you have to do to be happy in life. After learning that Robert Kincaid's cremated remains were scattered off Roseman Bridge and that their mother requested that she too be cremated and her ashes to be scattered off Roseman Bridge, the children must decide whether to honor their mother's final wishes or bury her alongside their father as the family had planned. Adapted from the novel by Robert James Waller, this is the story of a special love that happens just once in a lifetime -- if you're lucky. Written by Mark Fleetwood <[email protected]> Photographer Robert Kincaid wanders into the life of housewife Francesca Johnson, for four days in the 1960s. They fall in love, but she's married with children. Written by Rob Hartill

NOTTING HILL 1999
Starring: Julia Roberts, Hugh Grant, Hugh Bonneville, Emma Chambers, Rhys Ifans, Tim McInnerny, Gina McKee, James Dreyfus Director: Roger Michell William Thacker (Hugh Grant) owns an independent bookstore in Notting Hill that specialises in travel writing. He has not been coping with divorce after his wife left him "for a man who looks exactly like Harrison Ford". He shares his house with a Welsh eccentric named Spike (Rhys Ifans). Thacker encounters Hollywood actress Anna Scott (Julia Roberts) when she enters his shop to buy a book. The pair later collide in the street, causing William to spill his orange juice on both of them. He offers his house across the road for Anna to change. She accepts and, having changed, surprises William with a kiss and starts their mutual attraction. Days later, William asks Spike if he has any messages. Spike has trouble writing or remembering messages but does recall "Some American girl called Anna". Anna is at the Ritz, under the name "Flintstone", and asks William to visit. Anna's room has become the centre for a press day and William is mistaken for a journalist. In panic he claims he works for Horse & Hound. He has to interview all the cast of Anna's film, Helix, even though he has not seen the film. William invites Anna to his sister Honey's birthday party. There, at Max (Tim McInnerny) and Bella's (Gina McKee) house, Anna feels at home with William's friends, putting up a good case for the "last brownie" to be awarded to the most pathetic of them. Afterwards they trespass in a London square. They go on more dates, to the cinema and to a restaurant. Anna invites William to her room, only to find her American boyfriend, Jeff King (an uncredited cameo by Alec Baldwin), already there. Anna apologises while the boyfriend is out of the room, and William, pretending to be a waiter, realises he must leave. Anna goes to William's house hoping to stay after she and Jeff broke up. Images of her that look like a porn film have been leaked to the press. Newspapers have started ridiculing her, calling her "Scott of Pantarctica" and "Wotta Lotta Scott", and she needs to hide. The pair sleep together for the first time. In the morning, William is stunned to see reporters at the doorstep, careless talk by Spike at the pub having alerted them. Angry at what she views as his betrayal, she leaves and William decides to forget her. One year later, Anna returns to London to make a Henry James film, which William had suggested. William approaches the set of the film, and Anna invites him in to watch. He listens to the sound recording while Anna is between scenes and overhears her telling her co-star that William is "just some guy". Disappointed, William leaves. The next day, Anna comes to the bookshop again, hoping to resume their affair, but William turns her down. She gives him an original Marc Chagall painting, La Mariée, that she saw a print of in William's home. Anna says: "I'm also just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her"; but William stays firm to his decision. Afterwards, William's friends make him realise he has made "the biggest mistake of his life". He and friends search for Anna, racing across London in Max's car. They reach Anna's press conference and William persuades her to stay in England with him. Anna and William marry, the film concluding with a shot of William and a pregnant Anna on a park bench in Notting Hill. Every man's dream comes true for William Thacker, an unsuccessful Notting Hill bookstore owner, when Anna Scott, the world's most beautiful woman and best-liked actress, enters his shop. A little later, he still can't believe it himself, William runs into her again - this time spilling orange juice over her. Anna accepts his offer to change in his nearby apartment, and thanks him with a kiss, which seems to surprise her even more than him. Eventually, Anna and William get to know each other better over the months, but being together with the world's most wanted woman is not easy - neither around your closest friends, nor in front of the all-devouring press. Written by Julian Reischl <[email protected]>
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A leading American actress accidentally meets an attractive, but unassuming British travel book seller and love immediately blossoms. However, fame and her American actor boyfriend gets in the way. Written by John Sacksteder <[email protected]> William Thacker, a travel bookstore owner working and living in Notting Hill, is barely making ends meet. He needs to rent out part of his house, his lodger whom he considers the "stupidest git" in the world. His personal life is equally in shambles as although he has a small group of dear friends, who are on the most part as equally unsuccessful professionally as him, he is divorced - she left him - with no prospect of love on the horizon. His life changes when into his bookstore walks American Anna Scott, arguably the most famous and attractive movie actress in the world. Against the odds, Anna and William become friends with the possibility of romance between the two on the horizon. But the odds of moving their relationship to that final stage are still stacked against them as they live in two different worlds, Anna's under constant public scrutiny of the gossip hungry press, who, along with the public at large, know that Anna is already in a personal relationship with equally famous movie actor, Jeff King. Written by Huggo

Love actually (2003)
Starring: Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson, Colin Firth, Keira Knightley, Laura Linney, Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Bill Nighy, Rowan Atkinson, Martine McCutcheon, Shannon Elizabeth Director: Richard Curtis Synopsis: General opinion’s starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed – but I don’t see that – seems to me that love is everywhere. Igniting laughter, wreaking havoc, breaking... General opinion’s starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed – but I don’t see that – seems to me that love is everywhere. Igniting laughter, wreaking havoc, breaking hearts, daring commitments, forcing choices, catapulting spirits, forging inroads, creating risks—ecstatic, exciting, unexpected, unwelcome, inconvenient, inexplicable, inelegant, unequalled. Love actually is all around. From the new bachelor Prime Minister (HUGH GRANT) instantly falling in love with a refreshingly real member of the staff (MARTINE McCUTCHEON) moments after entering 10 Downing Street… To a writer (COLIN FIRTH) escaping to the south of France to nurse his re-broken heart who finds love in a lake… From a comfortably married woman (EMMA THOMPSON) suspecting that her husband (ALAN RICKMAN) is slipping away… To a new bride (KEIRA KNIGHTLEY) mistaking the distance of her husband’s best friend for something it’s not… From a schoolboy seeking to win the attention of the most unattainable girl in school… To a widowed stepfather (LIAM NEESON) trying to connect with a son he suddenly barely knows… From a lovelorn junior manager (LAURA LINNEY) seizing a chance with her long-tended, unspoken office crush… To an aging “seen it all, remember very little of it” rock star (BILL NIGHY) jonesing for an end-of-career comeback in his own uncompromising way… Love, the equal-opportunity mischief-maker, is causing chaos for all. These London lives and loves collide, mingle and climax on Christmas Eve—again and again and again—with romantic, hilarious and bittersweet consequences for anyone lucky (or unlucky) enough to be under love’s spell. Acclaimed screenwriter RICHARD CURTIS (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, Bridget Jones’s Diary) now steps behind the camera for his directorial debut on his latest project, Love Actually—the ultimate romantic comedy that weaves together a spectacular number of love affairs into one amazing story. Curtis is re-teamed with producers DUNCAN KENWORTHY and Working Title’s TIM BEVAN and ERIC FELLNER—the filmmakers responsible for some of the most popular looks at modern love in all its guises, including Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and Bridget Jones’s Diary. The powerhouse cast brought together for this look at love and laughter also includes ROWAN ATKINSON, ANDREW LINCOLN, MARTIN FREEMAN, KRIS MARSHALL, THOMAS SANGSTER, JOANNA PAGE, LUCIA MONIZ, BILLY BOB THORNTON and many others. Joining Curtis and producers Kenworthy, Bevan and Fellner are an esteemed group of behind-the-camera talent, including director of photography MICHAEL COULTER, B.S.C. (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, Sense and Sensibility), production designer JIM CLAY (Captain Corelli’s Mandolin), editor NICK MOORE (Notting Hill, The Full Monty, About a Boy), costumer JOANNA JOHNSTON (The Sixth Sense, Contact), composer CRAIG ARMSTRONG (William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge!, The Quiet American) and casting director MARY SELWAY, C.D.G. (Notting Hill, Gosford Park). [Less]

The characters are falling in love, falling out of love, some are with right people, some are with the wrong people, some are looking to have an affair, some are in the period of mourning; a capsule summary of reality. Love begins and love ends. They flirt a lot. They are all flirting with love. At all ages and social levels, love is the theme. Romantic love and brotherly love is the hotchpotch through out the movie. Most of the movie is filmed in London, during Christmas and the characters all ended up at Heathrow airport a very uplifting note. Written by Rosemea D.S. MacPherson Christmas time in England, and unusual things going on round. Some people are falling in love, then breaking up or some people just desperately lonely and still looking for that someone special. This is a story about 8 people who follow their hearts and show love or anger. If you look carefully around 'Love Actually' is all around you... Written by Kritika Singh Love is all around us. And that's certainly true for all of these people. John and Just Judy have fallen in love with each other while on the set of an erotically charged film. David has just become the new Prime Minister. The second he steps into his office/home, he is smitten with Natalie, his catering manager who had already screwed up at the first minute. David's sister is Karen, who's married to Harry, who runs a local magazine. Harry is somewhat smitten by his secretary, Mia, who is constantly hitting on him. Harry's best editor is Sarah, who has a brother in the asylum and a not-so-hidden crush on Karl, who has a thing for her as well. Karen is friends with both Daniel, who has just lost his wife and has discovered that his stepson is in love with a
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young American girl, and Jamie, whose girlfriend has just left him for his younger and more attractive brother, forcing him to move to France to continue writing his novel while falling for Aurelia, a young Portuguese woman who can't speak a lick of English or French. Juliet has just married Peter, not realizing that his best friend Mark has loved her since they first met. Colin is desperate to have sex and believes that in order to do that, he should travel to Wisconsin because he thinks that American women will dig him for being British. And Billy Mack, an old rocker who is climbing back up the charts after battling his old heroin addiction, is on the radio and TV shows either bad-mouthing his new CD, insulting his manager, Joe, or a hot new boy band, or calling Britney Spears the worst sex he's ever had. Are you still following along? Written by Will Set almost entirely in London, England during five frantic weeks before Christmas follows a web-like pattern of inter-related, loosely related and unrelated stories of a dozen or more various individuals with their love lives, or lack of them. The central character is the new bachelor prime minister David who cannot express his growing feelings for his new personal assistant Natalie. The prime minister's older sister Karen slowly grows aware of her husband Harry's flirtation with an office worker named Mia. Karen's friend Daniel is a recently widowed writer whose 11-year-old son asks for love advice about a girl he has a crush on. Meanwhile, Jamie is another writer who leaves his girlfriend after catching her cheating on him and travels to France to write a novel where he pursues a possible romance with his non-English speaking Portuguese maid Aurelia. Also, Harry's American secretary Sarah questions a romance she pursues with the office hunk Karl, but her personal family problems get in the way. Other secondary characters involve a photographer who pursues his best friend's new wife Juliet; a pair of movie stand-ins, named John and Judy, who grow closer after their simulated love scenes; a libidinous chum who wants to travel to Wisconsin, USA to score with women; and a burned-out former rock star named Billy Mack who is the main connection between all stories involved. Written by Matt Patay

GHOST 1990
Starring: Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore, Whoopi Goldberg, Tony Goldwyn, Rick Aviles, Vincent Schiavelli Director: Jerry Zucker Synopsis: After renovating their expensive loft in the TriBeCa section of Manhattan, Molly (Demi Moore) and Sam (Patrick Swayze), a young successful yuppie couple, are walking home one evening when Sam is... After renovating their expensive loft in the TriBeCa section of Manhattan, Molly (Demi Moore) and Sam (Patrick Swayze), a young successful yuppie couple, are walking home one evening when Sam is tragically gunned down by a street mugger. Molly goes into a deep depression, but, unknown to her, Sam has come back as a ghost in order to protect her from danger--although he isn't yet aware who or what means her harm, and he has a lot of learning to do in order to make himself known to her. He teams up with an unwilling psychic, Oda Mae Brown (Whoopi Goldberg), and together they try to convince a very skeptical Molly that Sam was actually murdered and has returned spectrally to complete some unfinished business. Moore and Swayze and are excellent as the couple, and Goldberg won an Oscar for her portrayal of the wild and wacky psychic. GHOST is considered by many to be one of the most romantic films of the 1990s. [Less]

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Valentine's Day
Starring: Julia Roberts, Emma Roberts, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Alba Director: Garry Marshall Synopsis: An all-star ensemble cast comes together in "Valentine's Day," which follows the intertwining storylines of a diverse group of Los Angelenos as they navigate their way through romance and heartbreak over the course of one Valentine's Day. Couples and singles experience the pinnacles and pitfalls of finding, keeping or ending relationships in a day in the life of love. Directed by veteran filmmaker Garry Marshall, the film stars Jessica Alba ("Fantastic Four"), Academy Award® winner Kathy Bates ("Misery"), Jessica Biel ("I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry"), Bradley Cooper ("The Hangover"), Eric Dane (TV's "Grey's Anatomy"), Patrick Dempsey ("Enchanted"), Hector Elizondo (the "Princess Diaries" films), Academy Award® winner Jamie Foxx ("Ray"), Jennifer Garner ("Juno"), Topher Grace ("Spider-Man 3"), Academy Award® nominee Anne Hathaway ("Rachel Getting Married"), Ashton Kutcher ("What Happens in Vegas"), Academy Award® nominee Queen Latifah ("Chicago"), Taylor Lautner ("The Twilight Saga: New Moon"), George Lopez ("Beverly Hills Chihuahua"), Academy Award® winner Shirley MacLaine ("Terms of Endearment"), Emma Roberts ("Hotel for Dogs"), Academy Award® winner Julia Roberts ("Erin Brockovich") and award-winning singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, in her feature film debut. Marshall directed "Valentine's Day" from a screenplay by Katherine Fugate, story by Fugate and Abby Kohn & Marc Silverstein. The film is produced by Mike Karz and Wayne Rice, with Toby Emmerich, Samuel J. Brown, Michael Disco, Diana Pokorny and Josie Rosen serving as executive producers. The behind-the-scenes team includes director of photography Charles Minsky, production designer Albert Brenner, editor Bruce Green, costume designer Gary Jones and composer John Debney. New Line Cinema presents, a Wayne Rice/Karz Entertainment Production, a Garry Marshall Film, "Valentine's Day," to be distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company. --© Warner Bros [Less] #### On an airplane to Los Angeles, Kate Hazeltine (Julia Roberts), a captain in the U.S. Army on a one-day leave, meets newly single Holden Bristow (Bradley Cooper). On the flight Holden and Kate become good friends, playing a board game and making jokes. Later when Kate is unable to get a taxi to go to her house, Holden offers his limousine. She returns home to her son Edison. In Los Angeles, florist Reed Bennett (Ashton Kutcher) eagerly proposes to his girlfriend Morley (Jessica Alba), much to the surprise of Reed’s friends Alfonso (George Lopez) and Julia Fitzpatrick (Jennifer Garner). Morley changes her mind and leaves Reed later in the day. Julia, a primary school teacher, has recently fallen in love with Dr. Harrison Copeland (Patrick Dempsey), but does not know that he is married. Reed finds out when Harrison orders flowers for both his wife and for Julia. Reed warns Julia, and she refuses to believe it but does not get on the plane. Instead, she goes to the hospital at which he works, and inquires after him. The nurses at the counter reveal to her that he is married and tell her the name of the restaurant where he and his wife will be dining that evening. Dressed as a waitress, Julia makes a scene at the restaurant. Julia ends the scene with giving back the toy Harrison gave her that morning. Harrison's wife, Pamela, recognizes the toy. One of Julia’s students, Edison (Bryce Robinson), orders flowers from Reed, to be sent to his valentine. There is a delay in the delivery, but Edison insists that Reed delivers the flowers the same day. They are for Julia; however, Julia suggests to Edison to give the flowers to a girl in the class, which he does. Edison's babysitter Grace (Emma Roberts) is planning her first sexual encounter with boyfriend Alex (Carter Jenkins). The planned encounter goes awry when Grace's mom discovers a naked Alex in Grace's room. Meanwhile Edison’s grandparents, Edgar (Hector Elizondo) and Estelle (Shirley MacLaine) are facing the troubles of a long marriage. Grace explains to them that she wants to have sex with Alex, and says, "It's not like I am going to sleep with one person for the rest of my life." This upsets Estelle and leads to her telling Edgar about an affair she had with one of his business partners while he was away a long time ago. Grace’s high-school friends, Willy (Taylor Lautner) and Felicia (Taylor Swift), are experiencing the freshness of new love, and have agreed to wait to have sex. Sean Jackson (Eric Dane), a closeted gay professional football player, is contemplating the end of his career together with his publicist Kara (Jessica Biel) and his agent Paula (Queen Latifah). Kara, a close friend of Julia’s, is organizing her annual ‘I Hate Valentine’s Day’ party but is becoming interested in sports reporter Kelvin Moore (Jamie Foxx) who has been sent out by his producer Susan (Kathy Bates) to cover Valentine’s Day because of a lack of sports news, and shares the mutual feeling of dislike for Valentines Day. Paula has recently hired a new receptionist named Liz (Anne Hathaway) who has recently started dating mailroom clerk Jason (Topher Grace). Jason is first shocked when Liz turns out to also be a phone sex worker (operating her mobile phone at random places; surprising people around her), and not telling him, assumes she is cheating and leaves her, but eventually comes back to the relationship.

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In conclusion to Valentine's Day, Sean reveals he is gay to the public, and Holden (who is Sean's lover) goes back to him because he finally came out. Kate goes home to greet her son Edison, Willy drops Felicia off at home after a date and they kiss goodnight, Kelvin and Kara hang out at Kelvin's new station where they later kiss, Dr. Copeland's wife leaves him, Alfonso dines with his wife, Grace and Alex wait to have sex, Edgar and Estelle retell each other their marriage vows and kiss in the theater, Morely is shown walking her Border collie while trying to call Reed and the movie closes with Julia and Reed beginning a relationship and kissing romantically.

Runaway Bride (1999)
Starring: Julia Roberts, Richard Gere, Joan Cusack, Hector Elizondo Director: Garry Marshall Synopsis: Ike Graham (Richard Gere) is a New York newspaper columnist with a problem - his deadline is an hour away, his ex-wife is his boss and his writer's block is working overtime. Retreating to his favorite watering hole to "brainstorm," Ike hears about a young woman in rural Maryland named Maggie (Julia Roberts) who, apparently, loves being engaged, but who has very cold feet about getting married. Intrigued, Ike composes a column about Maggie, beginning a chain of events which leads him to Hale, Maryland, her hometown. Maggie Carpenter also has a problem - Ike Graham. Furious with the column and its author, she plans to even the score with him. Ike eventually discovers there is much more to Maggie than just a problem with commitment; and he ends up with the story of a lifetime. [Less] #### Ike Graham, New York columnist, writes his text always at the last minute. This time, a drunken man in his favourite bar tells Ike about Maggie Carpenter, a woman who always flees from her grooms in the last possible moment. Ike, who does not have the best opinion about females anyway, writes an offensive column without researching the subject thoroughly. The next day, Ike gets fired by his publisher (and former wife), because he went too far and faked the facts, which real journalists don't do. Ike's only way back into the business now is to do a fact-based report on Maggie and her upcoming fourth wedding attempt, which Ike predicts to fail again. So, as he circles her like a vulture his prey-to-be, Maggie's opinion of Ike sinks below zero. Not only is Ike waiting for her to fail again but the whole town is poking fun at Maggie about her mistakes. But that is a point which Ike doesn't like.

The Notebook (2004)
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Rachel McAdams, James Garner, Gena Rowlands Director: Nick Cassavetes Synopsis: A young woman comes to the coastal town of Seabrook, North Carolina in the 1940's to spend the summer with her family. Still in her teens, Allie Hamilton (Rachel McAdams) meets local boy Noah Calhoun (Ryan Gosling) at a Carnival. On the spot, Noah senses that he and Allie are meant to be together. Though she is a wealthy debutante and he a mill worker, over the course of one passionate and carefree summer in the South, the two fall deeply in love. Circumstances - and the sudden outbreak of World War II - drive them apart, but both continue to be haunted by memories of each other. When Noah returns home from the war years later, Allie is irrevocably gone from his life, but not from his heart. Though Noah doesn't yet know it, Allie has come back to Seabrook, where they first fell in love. But now Allie is engaged to marry Lon (James Marsden), a wealthy soldier she met while volunteering in a GI hospital. Decades later, a man (James Garner) reads from a faded notebook to a woman (Gena Rowlands) he regularly visits at her nursing home. Though her memory has faded, she becomes caught up in the fiery story of Allie and Noah - and for a few moments, she is able to relive the passionate, turbulent time when they swore they'd be together always. New Line Cinema presents The Notebook, a story of lost chances, growing up and the power of enduring love. A Gran Via Production, the film is directed by Nick Cassavetes from a screenplay by Jeremy Leven, adaptation by Jan Sardi, based on the best-selling novel by Nicholas Sparks. Academy Award winner Mark Johnson (Rain Man) and Lynn Harris are the producers. The executive producers are Toby Emmerich and Avram Butch Kaplan. The film stars Ryan Gosling (The Believer), Rachel McAdams (Mean Girls), Academy Award nominees James Garner (Murphy's Romance, TV's "Eight Simple Rules") and Gena Rowlands (Gloria, A Woman Under the Influence), James Marsden (X-Men series) and Kevin Connolly (John Q.), with Academy Award nominees Sam Shepard (The Right Stuff, Black Hawk Down) and Joan Allen (The Contender, Nixon). The creative behind-the-scenes team is led by director of photography Robert Fraisse AFC (Enemy at the Gates, Vatel), editor Alan Heim A.C.E. (American History X, All That Jazz), production designer Sarah Knowles and costume designer Karyn Wagner (The Lone Ranger, The Salton Sea, The Majestic). Aaron Zigman (John Q., Fighting For Care) composed the score. Casting is by Matthew Barry, C.S.A. and Nancy Green-Keyes, C.S.A. New Line Cinema will release The Notebook (rated PG-13 by the M.P.A.A. for "some sexuality") nationwide on June 25th, 2004. [Less] #### The movie focuses on an old man reading a story to an old woman in a nursing home. The story he reads follows two young lovers named Allie Hamilton and Noah Calhoun, who meet one evening at a carnival. But they are separated by Allie's parents who dissaprove of Noah's unwealthy family, and move Allie away. After waiting for Noah to write her for several years, Allie meets and gets engaged to a handsome young soldier named Lon. Allie, then, with her love for Noah still alive, stops by Noah's 200-year-old home that he restored for her, "to see if he's okay". It is evident that they still have feelings for each other, and Allie has to choose between her fiancé and her first love. Written by Jessica Cymerman

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The movie starts in a nursing home with Duke reading to an older woman, whose memory is slipping from her more and more everyday. Duke reads the story of two lovers who meet in the south at a carnival. Allie was 17. A city girl from money, and Noah was a country boy. The two spend the whole summer together but Allie is forced to move and go to college although she was willing to give it up for Noah. Noah writes Allie 365 letters and she never gets them. So he restores the house him and ALlie went to one night out of 'labor of love'. Seven years pass and Allie meets and falls in love with a wealthy soldier Lon. When seeing Noah's picture in the paper, Allie is drawn back to him. They spent a few days together and she doesn't want to leave. Allie has to chose between her fiancé and Noah. Written by Stephanie An old man in a nursing home reads a story to an old woman each day. The story he reads follows two young lovers named Allie Hamilton and Noah Calhoun. They met one evening at a carnival many years ago. Allie's parents separate Noah and Allie. They disapprove of Noah's lack of wealth, and move Allie away. After waiting for Noah to write her for several years, Allie meets and becomes engaged to a handsome young soldier named Lon. In a local newspaper, Noah's picture catches Allie's eye. He is standing in front of a fully restored, 200 year old home. The article is filled with praise for his accomplishments. Allie's heart nearly bursts. The last time she saw this house it was a rotted decaying shamble. She stood enfolded in Noah's arms in the great entryway and listened to his plans to buy and restore this house. Just the way she wanted it. With her love for Noah still alive, the picture pulls at her heart. She has to go back, see if Noah is okay, and tell him about her marriage. They both think the echo deep in their hearts, the one that has lasted all these years, is not shared by the other. The cry they could not stifle. It wasn't over for me. Written by Dontee

Shakespeare in Love – 1998
Starring: Gwyneth Paltrow, Joseph Fiennes, Geoffrey Rush, Ben Affleck Director: John Madden Synopsis: In this well-conceived Elizabethan comedy, writers Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman ask the question: Who was William Shakespeare's muse? The answer: Viola de Lesseps, a young noblewoman who dreams of acting on a man's stage. The screenwriters deliver a cleverly crafted scenario which beautifully illustrates both the early aspirations of the playwright, and a glimpse into the culture of Elizabethan theater. Colorful characters, like the Globe theater owner Henslow (played by Geoffrey Rush), the lead player in the troupe (Ben Affleck), and the Queen herself (Judi Dench), give the cast charm, wit, and feasibility. The young playwright who at the start of the film is experiencing writer's block bursts forth with a lyrical text inspired by the lovely and passionate Viola. Ultimately this film is about the making of a great play, but most importantly it is about the power of words. [Less] #### The film centres around the forbidden love of William Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) and Viola de Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow), the daughter of a wealthy merchant. As the film begins, theatre manager Philip Henslowe (Geoffrey Rush) finds himself in debt to loan shark Hugh Fennyman (Tom Wilkinson). Henslowe offers Fennyman a partnership in the upcoming production of Shakespeare's newest comedy — Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter — promising that it will be a hit. However, after learning that his love was cheating on him with his patron, Shakespeare burns the original play and tries to start anew. This play will later be renamed Romeo and Juliet and be reworked into a tragedy (but with some comical undertones with a few characters, like the Nurse). Suffering from writer's block, Will Shakespeare is unable to complete the play, but begins auditions for Romeo. A boy named Thomas Kent is cast in the role after impressing Shakespeare with his performance and his love of Shakespeare's previous work. Unknown to Shakespeare and the rest of the theatre company, Kent is young Viola de Lesseps, who desires to act, but, as women are barred from the stage, she must disguise herself as a young man to fulfill her dream. After Shakespeare discovers his star's true identity, he and Viola begin a passionate secret affair. There are strong parallels between the pair's romance and the one in Romeo and Juliet, including the ballroom scene from Act 2 and the balcony scene immediately following it. The element of forbidden love forms the basis of Shakespeare's inspiration, and many of their conversations later show up as some of the most famous quotes in the play. Inspired by Viola, Shakespeare begins writing feverishly. His work in progress also benefits from the off-hand advice of playwright and friendly rival Christopher 'Kit' Marlowe (Rupert Everett). Yet Shakespeare and de Lesseps know that their romance is doomed. Shakespeare is married, albeit long separated from his wife, and Viola’s parents would never permit her to marry a commoner such as Shakespeare. In fact, Viola's father has privately arranged her betrothal to Lord Wessex (Colin Firth), a poor aristocrat. When Viola is summoned to the court of Queen Elizabeth I (Judi Dench), Shakespeare dons a woman's disguise to accompany her as her country cousin. At court, Shakespeare goads Wessex into betting fifty pounds that a play cannot capture the nature of true love. If Romeo and Juliet is a success, Shakespeare as playwright will win the money. The Queen, who enjoys Shakespeare's plays, agrees to witness the wager. The meeting's true purpose is revealed when Wessex announces his intent to marry Viola. The Master of the Revels (Simon Callow), the Queen's official in charge of the theatres, learns that there is a woman in the theatre company at the Rose playhouse. He orders the theatre closed for violating morality and the law. Left without a stage or
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lead actor, it seems that Romeo and Juliet must close before it even opens, until the owner of a competing theatre, the Curtain, offers his stage to Shakespeare. Shakespeare assumes the lead role of Romeo, with a boy actor playing Juliet. Viola learns the play will be performed on her wedding day. After the ceremony, Viola's loyal nurse (Imelda Staunton) helps her slip away to the theatre. In a final twist, shortly before the play begins, the boy playing Juliet starts experiencing the voice change of puberty. Viola takes the stage to replace him and plays Juliet to Shakespeare's Romeo. Their passionate portrayal of two lovers inspires the entire audience. Mr. Tilney, the Master of the Revels, arrives at the theatre with Wessex, who has deduced his new bride's whereabouts. Tilney invokes the Queen's name to arrest all there for indecency. Suddenly, Elizabeth I's voice rings out from the back of the theatre: "Mr. Tilney! Have a care with my name; you will wear it out." The Queen had decided to attend the play in disguise, and says that she will handle this matter herself. Although she recognizes Viola in her disguise as Thomas Kent, the Queen does not unmask Viola, instead declaring that the role of Juliet is being performed by the boy Thomas Kent. However, even a Queen is powerless to break a lawful marriage. Queen Elizabeth orders "Thomas Kent" to fetch Viola so that she may sail to America. She also states that Romeo and Juliet has accurately portrayed true love and so Wessex is forced to pay Shakespeare the fifty pounds, the exact amount Shakespeare requires to buy a share in the Chamberlain's Men. The Queen then directs "Kent" to tell Shakespeare to write something "a little more cheerful next time, for Twelfth Night". Viola and Shakespeare part, never to meet again: she must accompany Wessex to a colonial settlement in Virginia. Shakespeare immortalizes her by making the main character of his new play, Twelfth Night, Or What You Will, a strong young woman named Viola who disguises herself as a boy. The final image of the film has Viola walking away down a beach, with a voice over by Shakespeare discussing his plans to write Twelfth Night and musing of its main character, "For she will be my heroine for all time, and her name will be... Viola."

Wall – E
Starring: Fred Willard, Jeff Garlin, Ben Burtt, Sigourney Weaver Director: Andrew Stanton Synopsis: Even for Pixar, this might be a first: an animated film that contains not only a fully realized world as photorealistic as it is teeming with wonder, but also the Gargantuan themes and visuals of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, the kind of stripped-down sad-clown pathos reserved for classic Buster Keaton comedies, and one of the most moving love stories in a long time. Director Andrew Stanton kicked up the visual acuity of an already-stellar Pixar Studios in 2003 with his reflective, refractive, colorshimmery realization of FINDING NEMO's oceanic world, which genuinely felt as though it spanned the entire earth. Now, with WALL-E, Stanton replaces an estranged journeyer of an apprehensively fishy disposition with a curious and love-struck robotic one, allowing the quest for eternal love to extend from a desolate, dust-covered, palpably polluted future Earth and into an even more mysterious abyss: the far reaches of outer space. With virtually no dialogue, WALL-E's neatly contained, eerily vaudevillian first act introduces the tragic robot of the title. Whirring amid dilapidated skyscrapers and equally tall compacted trash heaps, he's the last living thing on Earth (aside from a little cockroach friend). WALL-E has developed a tender and inquisitive personality doing what he was built to do--allocate and dispose of human waste--day in and day out for the past 700 years simply because no one turned him off when the human race left the now-hostile planet. Soon though, the directive-oriented automaton Eve comes crashing into WALL-E's life from above, immediately becoming the object of his infatuation. At the drop of a hat, the little guy follows her back into the dangerous unknown, where the sight of two robots gliding through the cosmic ether, dancing via fire-extinguisher propulsion, joins the many memorable moments of a deceptively simple, expansively romantic story. [Less] #### In a distant, but not so unrealistic future, where mankind has abandoned earth because it has become covered with trash from products sold by the powerful multi-national Buy N Large corporation, WALL-E, a garbage collecting robot has been left to clean up the mess. Mesmerized with trinkets of Earth's history and show tunes, WALL-E is alone on Earth except for a sprightly pet cockroach. One day, Eve, a sleek (and dangerous) reconnaissance robot, is sent to Earth to find proof that life is once again sustainable. WALL-E falls in love with Eve. WALL-E rescues Eve from a dust storm and shows her a living plant he found amongst the rubble. Consistent with her "directive" Eve takes the plant and automatically enters a deactivated state except for a blinking green beacon. WALL-E, doesn't understand what has happened to his new friend, but true to his love, he protects her from wind, rain, and lightning, even as she is unresponsive. One day a massive ship comes to reclaim Eve, but WALL-E, out of love or loneliness hitches a ride on the outside of the ship to rescue Eve. The ship arrives back at a large space cruise ship, which is carrying all of the humans who evacuated Earth 700 years earlier. The people of Earth ride around this space resort on hovering chairs which give them a constant feed of TV and video chatting. They drink all of their meals through a straw out of laziness and/or bone loss, and are all so fat that they can barely move. When the auto-pilot computer, acting on hastily given instructions sent many centuries before, tries to prevent the people of Earth from returning, by stealing the plant, WALL-E, Eve, the portly captain, and a band of broken robots stage a mutiny. Written by Anonymous

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The Player (1992)
Starring: Tim Robbins, Greta Scacchi, Whoopi Goldberg, Fred Ward Director: Robert Altman Synopsis: Robert Altman's adaptation of Michael Tolkin's novel gives the notorious director a chance to address perhaps his greatest nemesis: the Hollywood studio system. Disguised as a thriller, the film assembles virtually every famous actor in Hollywood to create an exhilarating blend of real life and fiction. Tim Robbins plays Griffin Mill, a studio executive who begins to fear for his job when upstart Larry Levy's (Peter Gallagher) name becomes a hot topic on the lot. After receiving threatening postcards from an unidentified writer, Griffin tracks down David Kahane (Vincent D'Onofrio), who he thinks is the guilty party. The two argue, with disastrous results. Later, as Griffin struggles to keep his job while trying to distance himself from the law, he finds himself falling in love with Kahane's mysterious girlfriend (Greta Scacchi). THE PLAYER is a vicious satire that exposes the Hollywood industry as fraudulent, weak, and shallow. Altman's film also sends up both the noir genre and filmmaking technique, the latter notably in an extended opening shot which is a sprawling one-take that covers the studio's entire lot and features a series of hysterical pitches by actual screenwriters, including Buck Henry offering forth on his concept for THE GRADUATE 2. Bitter and electric, THE PLAYER ends on an ironic upbeat note that perfectly concludes a stellar picture. [Less] #### A studio script screener gets on the bad side of a writer by not accepting his script. The writer is sending him threatening postcards. The screener tries to identify the writer in order to pay him off so he'll be left alone, and then in a case of mistaken identity gone awry, he accidentally gives the writer solid ammunition for blackmail. This plot is written on a backdrop of sleazy Hollywood deals and several subplots involving the politics of the industry. Written by Ed Sutton <[email protected]> Griffin Mill is a studio executive who is responsible for accepting or rejecting the pitches for potential feature films. With his career on the line and the impending possibility that he might be replaced by a rival upstart. Griffin now finds his life threatened by an anonymous screenwriter whose pitch he rejected long ago. Drawn into a web of blackmail and murder, Griffin must evade the police investigation that he caused. But he must also watch his back, because in Hollywood, there's always another person to take your place. Written by monkeykingma

The Seven Year Itch (1955)
Directed By: Billy Wilder Like thousands of other Manhattanites, Tom Ewell annually packs his wife (Evelyn Keyes) and children off to summer vacation, staying behind to work at the office. This particular summer, the lonely Ewell begins fantasizing about the many women he'd foresworn upon getting married (in one of the fantasies, Ewell and Marguerite Chapman parody the beach rendezvous in From Here to Eternity). He is jolted back to reality when he meets his new neighbor--luscious model Marilyn Monroe. Inviting Monroe to dinner, Ewell intends to sweep her off her feet and into the boudoir. Things don't quite work out that way, thanks to Ewell's clumsiness (and essential decency) and Monroe's naivete. Still, Ewell becomes convinced that his impure thoughts will somehow be transmitted to his vacationing wife and to the rest of the world, leaving him wide open for scandal and ruination. In the original play, the husband and the next-door neighbor did have an affair, but both play and film arrived at the same happy ending, with Ewell and his missus contentedly reunited at summer's end. Featured in the cast of The Seven Year Itch are Robert Strauss as a lascivious handyman, Sonny Tufts as Evelyn Keye's former beau, Donald MacBride as Ewell's glad-handing boss, and veteran Broadway funny man Victor Moore in a cameo as a nervous plumber.

The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Directed By: Frank Darabont In 1946, a banker named Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) is convicted of a double murder, even though he stubbornly proclaims his innocence. He's sentenced to a life term at the Shawshank State Prison in Maine, where another lifer, Ellis "Red" Redding (Morgan Freeman), picks him as the new recruit most likely to crack under the pressure. The ugly realities of prison life are quickly introduced to Andy: a corrupt warden (Bob Gunton), sadistic guards led by Capt. Byron Hadley (Clancy Brown), and inmates who are little better than animals, willing to use rape or beatings to insure their dominance. But Andy does not crack: he has the hope of the truly innocent, which (together with his smarts) allow him to prevail behind bars. He uses his banking skills to win favor with the warden and the guards, doing the books for Norton's illegal business schemes and keeping an eye on the investments of most of the prison staff. In exchange, he is able to improve the prison library and bring some dignity and respect back to many of the inmates, including Red. Based on a story by Stephen King, The Shawshank Redemption was the directorial debut of screenwriter Frank Darabont. ####### Misery and Stand By Me were the best adaptations up until this one, now you can add Shawshank to that list. This is simply one of the best films ever made and I know I am not the first to say that and I certainly won't be the last. The standing on the IMDb is a true barometer of that. #3 as of this date and I'm sure it could be number 1. So I'll just skip all the normal praise of the film because we all know how great it is. But let me perhaps add that what I find so fascinating about Shawshank is that Stephen King wrote it. King is one of the best writers in the world. Books like IT and the Castle Rock series are some of the greatest stories ever told. But his best adaptations are always done by the best directors. The Shining was brilliantly interpreted by Kubrick and of course
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the aforementioned Misery and Stand By Me are both by Rob Reiner. Now Frank Darabont comes onto the scene and makes arguably the best King film ever. He seems to understand what King wants to say and he conveys that beautifully. What makes this film one of the best ever made is the message it conveys. It is one of eternal hope. Andy Dufresne, played by Tim Robbins, has been sent to prison for a crime he did not commit. But he never loses hope. He never gives up his quest to become a free man again. His years of tenacity, patience and wits keep him not only sane, but it gives his mind and a spirit a will to live. This film has a different feel to it. There has never been anything like it before and I don't know if there will again. I'm not going to say any more about this film, it has already been said, but just suffice to say that I am glad that Forrest Gump won best picture in 94. I would have been equally glad if Pulp Fiction or Shawshank would have won. It is that good of a movie and one that will be appreciated for years to come.

The Sound of Music (1965)
Directed By: Robert Wise One of the most popular movie musicals of all time, The Sound of Music is based on the true story of the Trapp Family Singers. Julie Andrews stars as Maria, a young nun in an Austrian convent who regularly misses her morning prayers because she enjoys going to the hills to sing the title song. Deciding that Maria needs to learn something about the real world before she can take her vows, the Mother Superior (Peggy Wood) sends her off to be governess for the children of the widowed Captain Von Trapp (Christopher Plummer). Arriving at the Trapp home, Maria discovers that her new boss is cold and aloof, and his seven children virtual automatons-at least, whenever the Captain is around. Otherwise, the kids are holy terrors, as evidenced by the fact that Maria is the latest in a long line of governesses. But Maria soon ingratiates herself with the children, especially oldest daughter Liesl (Charmian Carr), who is in love with teenaged messenger boy Rolf. As Maria herself begins to fall in love with the Captain, she rushes back to the Abbey so as not to complicate his impending marriage to a glamorous baroness (Eleanor Parker). But the children insist that Maria return, the Baroness steps out of the picture, and Maria and the Captain confirm their love in the song "Something Good." Unhappily, they return home from their honeymoon shortly after the Nazis march into Austria. Already, swastikas have been hung on the Von Trapp ancestral home, and Liesl's boyfriend Rolf has been indoctrinated in the "glories" of the Third Reich. The biggest blow occurs when Von Trapp is called back to active duty in the service of the Fuhrer. The Captain wants nothing to do with Nazism, and he begins making plans to take himself and his family out of Austria.

The Last Song (film)
Starring: Miley Cyrus, Greg Kinnear, Kelly Preston, Bobby Coleman Director: Julie Ann Robinson Synopsis: Based on best-selling novelist Nicholas Sparks’ (“A Walk to Remember,” “The Notebook”) forthcoming novel, THE LAST SONG is set in a small Southern beach town where an estranged father (GREG KINNEAR) gets a chance to spend the summer with his reluctant teenaged daughter (MILEY CYRUS), who’d rather be home in New York. He tries to reconnect with her through the only thing they have in common—music—in a story of family, friendship, secrets and salvation, along with first loves and second chances. --© Walt Disney Pictures [Less] At seventeen, Veronica "Ronnie" Miller (Miley Cyrus) remains as rebellious as she was the day after her parents' ugly divorce and father's subsequent relocation to Georgia three years ago. Once a classical piano child prodigy under the tutelage of her father, Steve Miller (Greg Kinnear), Ronnie now rejects the instrument and has not spoken to her father since he left. While Juilliard School has been interested in her since she was young, Ronnie refuses to attend. Now, Steve is given the chance to reconnect with his estranged daughter when her mother, Kim (Kelly Preston) sends the rebellious teen and her younger brother, Jonah (Bobby Coleman), to spend the summer with him. Steve, a former Juilliard School professor and concert pianist, now lives a quiet life in Tybee Island, the small Georgia beach town where he grew up, working on a stained glass window for the local church to replace the one the church lost in a fire. Upon arrival, Ronnie is miserable, hostile and defensive toward all those around her, including handsome, popular Will Blakelee (Liam Hemsworth) – until, after both she and Will become involved in protecting a Loggerhead Sea Turtle nest, she discovers he is deeper than she believed. As Ronnie falls in love with Will, she also manages to bond with her father Steve through the one thing they have in common- music.

It Happened One Night
Starring: Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Walter Connolly, Alan Hale Director: Frank Capra\ Plot Synopsis: Ellie Andrews has just tied the knot with society aviator King Westley when she is whisked away to her father's yacht and out of King's clutches. Ellie jumps ship and eventually winds up on a bus headed back to her husband. Reluctantly she must accept the help of out-of- work reporter Peter Warne. Actually, Warne doesn't give her any choice: either she sticks with him until he gets her back to her husband, or he'll blow the whistle on Ellie to her father. Either way, Peter gets what (he thinks!) he wants .... a really juicy newspaper story.
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Synopsis: Director Frank Capra and his two stars, Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, stole hearts and a quintet of Oscars with this sparkling, legendary romantic comedy. IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT is based on the story "Night Bus" by Samuel Hopkins Adams, and it follows a news reporter and a runaway heiress who fall in love while traveling cross country on a bus. But as with any classic, the film is more than the sum of its parts, and special attention should be paid to the fizzy chemistry between the two leads and the witty script from Robert Riskin. This screwball comedy was the first to take home all five major Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor--Clark Gable, Best Actress--Claudette Colbert, and Best Adapted Screenplay. [Less]

Sweet Smell of Success
Starring: Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Martin Milner, Samm Levine Director: Alexander Mackendrick Synopsis: Director Alexander Mackendrick breaks away from black comedy (THE LADYKILLERS) and goes for full-fledged noir in this spectacular hard-boiled tale of greed, corruption, and brutality. In the flashing neon nighttime of NYC, grasping press agent Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) trawls the city's toniest nightspots--21,the Elysian--searching for the king of celebrity columnists, J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster). Falco is on the outs with Hunsecker because he hasn't successfully broken up the romance between Hunsecker's sister, Susie (Susan Harrison), and straitlaced jazz guitarist Steve Dallas (Martin Milner). The allpowerful Hunsecker is punishing Falco's failure by not printing any of the publicist's items. Desperate to make a living, Falco reveals a dirty plan to separate weak-willed Susie from her beau. While disgusted by Falco's slimy trade, the threatening, malicious columnist is determined to keep Susie for himself, so he agrees. In this jazzily scored, seamy nocturnal world, everyone is expendable as Hunsecker pushes for his twisted desires and Falco grasps for success. With their machine-gun dialogue and despicable behavior, Hunsecker and Falco are as dangerous as gangsters. The person who comes out on top when the sun rises, however, is a true surprise. [Less]

The Apartment (1960)
Directed By: Billy Wilder Widely regarded as a comedy in 1960, The Apartment seems more melancholy with each passing year. Jack Lemmon plays C.C. Baxter, a go-getting office worker who loans his tiny apartment to his philandering superiors for their romantic trysts. He runs into trouble when he finds himself sharing a girlfriend (Shirley MacLaine) with his callous boss (Fred MacMurray). Director/co-writer Billy Wilder claimed that the idea for The Apartment stemmed from a short scene in the 1945 romantic drama Brief Encounter in which the illicit lovers (Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson) arrange a rendezvous in a third person's apartment. Wilder was intrigued about what sort of person would willingly vacate his residence to allow virtual strangers a playing field for hanky panky. His answer to that question wound up winning 6 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay. The Apartment was adapted by Neil Simon and Burt Bacharach into the 1969 Broadway musical Promises, Promises.

The Graduate
Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft, Katharine Ross, Murray Hamilton Director: Mike Nichols Synopsis: Director Mike Nichols's THE GRADUATE is the satirical coming-of-age comedy that became an emotional touchstone for an entire generation. In the mid-1960s, Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman), a confused college graduate, is pulled in myriad directions by family, friends, and associates just days after receiving his degree. Seduced by Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), an older friend of the family, Ben carries on an affair with the married woman even as he falls for her daughter, Elaine (Katharine Ross). However, Ben and Elaine's attempts at romance are threatened by the spiteful rage of Mrs. Robinson, who proceeds to hastily arrange Elaine's marriage to someone else, leading up to one of the most memorable endings in cinema history. With its striking photography and clever editing, THE GRADUATE established Nichols as a major director. The film also made a star out of young Hoffman, who gives an understated portrayal of the perplexed Ben--the actor's first role in a Hollywood film, which he almost didn't get because he wasn't Waspy enough. Outstanding performances by the rest of the cast are highlighted by Bancroft's sexy, embittered turn as Mrs. Robinson and Ross's endearing presence as the gorgeous yet innocent Elaine. The film's impact on popular culture is immeasurable: "Plastics" will live on eternally as depressing but solid career advice, and older women will never eye younger men without fear of becoming a "Mrs. Robinson." Buck Henry (who appears briefly in the film) cowrote the influential screenplay, based on the novel by Charles Webb, and the soundtrack by Simon and Garfunkel remains a movie classic. [Less] ###### The soon-to-be 21 Benjamin Braddock flies back to his parents house in Pasadena LA for his graduation party. At the party, all his parents' friends want to know about what he is going to do next, something Benjamin is clearly uncomfortable and anxious about. His parents ignore this and are only interested in talking up his academic and track successes and their plans for him to go to grad school. Mrs. Robinson, the wife of his father's business partner, asks him for a ride home from the party. She invites the nervous Benjamin in and attempts to seduce him, removing her clothing. Mr. Robinson arrives home but does not see or suspect
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anything. A few days later Benjamin contacts her and clumsily organizes a tryst at a hotel beginning their affair. A now confident and relaxed Benjamin spends the summer drifting around in the pool by day and seeing Mrs. Robinson at the hotel by night. Benjamin discovers that they have nothing to talk about but he does learn that Mrs. Robinson was forced to give up college and marry someone she didn't love when she became pregnant with Elaine. Mr. Robinson tells Benjamin he should relax and enjoy himself while he is young. Benjamin's parents however are keen for him to get on with his life. Both they and Mr. Robinson keep trying to set Benjamin up with Elaine, while Mrs. Robinson makes it clear that she wants him to stay away from Elaine. Benjamin eventually gives into the pressure from his parents and takes Elaine out but is intentionally mean to her. After making her cry he relents and explains he was mean only because his parents forced him to ask her out. He awkwardly kisses her to try and cheer her up and they go and get a burger at a drive-in. Benjamin discovers that Elaine is someone he is comfortable with and that he can talk to her about his worries. Mrs. Robinson threatens to reveal their affair to destroy any chance Benjamin has with Elaine so Benjamin rashly decides he has to tell Elaine first. Upset Elaine returns to Berkeley refusing to speak with Benjamin. Benjamin decides he is going to marry Elaine and goes to Berkeley and stalks her. He contrives a meeting on a bus while she is on her way to a date with her classmate Carl. An angry Elaine later demands to know what he is doing in Berkeley after he raped her mother by taking advantage of her while she was drunk. Benjamin tells her it was her mother who seduced him, something Elaine doesn't want to hear, so Benjamin says he will go somewhere else. Elaine tells Benjamin not to leave until he has a definite plan. The next day Elaine comes into Ben's apartment in the middle of the night and asks him to kiss her. The two hang out in Berkeley while Benjamin keeps pressing her to get blood tests so that they can get married. Elaine is unsure about this and says she had told Carl she might marry him. Mr. Robinson, who has found out everything about Benjamin and his wife's affair, goes to Ben's apartment in Berkeley where he threatens Benjamin and forces Elaine to drop out of school and takes her away to marry Carl. Benjamin is left with just a note from Elaine saying that she loves him but that her father is really angry and it can never work out. Benjamin races back to Pasadena looking for Elaine but finds Mrs. Robinson instead. She tells him he won't be able stop the wedding and calls the police. Benjamin heads back to Berkeley and finds out from Carl's friends that the shotgun wedding is in Santa Barbara and speeds off stopping at a gas station for directions to the church, but rushes off without refueling. Consequently Ben runs out of gas and must sprint the last few blocks. He arrives at the church just as the bride and groom are about to kiss. Thinking he is too late he bangs on the glass at the back of the church and screams out "Elaine!" repeatedly. Elaine turns around, hesitates, but then screams out "Ben!" and starts towards him. A brawl breaks out as everyone tries to stop her and Benjamin leaving. Elaine breaks free from her mother yelling, "It's not too late for me!" Benjamin holds everybody off by swinging a cross ripped from the wall and the pair escape. They run down the road and flag down a bus. The elated and smiling couple take the back seat. But Benjamin's smile gradually fades to an enigmatic, neutral expression as he gazes forward down the bus, not looking at Elaine. Elaine seems unsure, looks lovingly across at Ben but notices his expression and turns away with a similar expression as the bus drives away.

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Death In Love 2008
Starring: Adam Brody, Joshua Lucas, Lukas Haas, Jackie Bisset, Emma Bell Director: Boaz Yakin Synopsis: From writer-director Boaz Yakin (FRESH, REMEMBER THE TITANS) comes a provocative psychosexual tale set at the crossroads where family, history and sexuality collide. This shockingly visceral and... From writer-director Boaz Yakin (FRESH, REMEMBER THE TITANS) comes a provocative psychosexual tale set at the crossroads where family, history and sexuality collide. This shockingly visceral and explicit portrait of a family on the verge of destruction exposes the ties that can so dangerously bind us – erotically, psychologically and emotionally. The story follows the tale of two brothers (Josh Lucas and Lukas Haas) who are trying to climb out of the shadows of their Holocaust survivor mother’s (Jacqueline Bissset) dark past – and the love affair she conducted with a Nazi doctor while in the camps. Decades after their mother’s experience, which left her blurring the lines between pleasure and pain, the sons’ lives still reverberate with the damage. One (Lucas) is a sharp, charming, intensely sexual but loveless con artist working in an exploitive modeling agency, while carrying on a carnally extreme relationship with his boss (Vanessa Kai). The other (Haas) is a brilliant but reclusive pianist unable to venture from the house. But change has come upon the family. The reclusive brother is moving out of his parents’ home for the first time; the ambitious brother is about to make a deal with an alluring new business partner (Adam Brody) who promises to jump-start a new life; and their mother finds herself pursued by a treacherous figure from long ago. As duplicity, moral compromise and the ghosts of the past haunt their vivid sexual and emotional relationships, the family careens towards a shattering catharsis. DEATH IN LOVE is written and directed by Boaz Yakin and produced by Yakin and Joseph Zolfo. The co-producer is Alma Ha’rel. The behind-the-scenes team includes Danish cinematographer Frederik Jacob (GHOSTS OF CITE SOLEIL, AFGHAN MUSCLE), editor John F. Lyons (SAVAGE GRACE), production designer Dara Wishingrad (STARTING OUT IN THE EVENING), costume designer Sue Gandy (DECEPTION) and composer Lesley Barber (A THOUSAND YEARS OF GOOD PRAYERS, MANSFIELD PARK). --© Screen Media A young woman in a Nazi concentration camp saves her life by seducing the young doctor who performs medical experiments on prisoners. Decades later, that same woman (Bisset) is living in New York City and married with two grown sons. The two siblings have developed differently under a mother with a long history of erratic behavior. The younger one can’t cope at all, and the older one copes too well. Portrayed by Josh Lucas, he is now 40 years old and hides out in psychosexual escapades and a job at a fraudulent modeling agency scamming the young and hopeful. He is good at them both--too good but he grows increasingly frightened as his sexual prowess and intellectual diatribes no longer make him feel better.[2] Writer/director Boaz Yakin explores the burdens carried by the descendants of those who survived with this family drama about a woman (Jacqueline Bisset) who managed to live through her harrowing stint in a Nazi concentration camp, and her two dysfunctional sons. Having managed to survive in a Nazi concentration camp by seducing the doctor who carried out experimental surgeries on the prisoners, a young Jewish woman moves to New York and starts a family. Years later, her two grown sons seem poised to become casualties of their mother's desperate past. Her eldest son (Josh Lucas) works at a fraudulent modeling agency that profits off the dreams of fame seekers. His psychosexual escapades and intellectual diatribes act as a barrier to the outside world, yet just when it seems that his life has lost all meaning, a charming young co-worker (Adam Brody) helps him to realize that in order to survive, he will have to embrace change. Meanwhile, the highly erratic mother and her younger son (Lukas Haas) have become locked in a compulsive, co-dependent cycle that now threatens to consume them both. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

City of Motherly Love
Young overworked, underpaid, Ashley Freeman, caught in a struggle against time, faces the hardships of being a single parent to her son, Davie. In a tragic turn of events her son is killed leaving her left with nothing more then what she had previously desired most, time. But time now is filled with the torments of the abandonment of her son's father, the sudden and violent death of her only child, and a shattered past, which ultimately becomes a twisted race she must endure to rescue her own life

The Quiet Man (1952)
Starring: John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara, Barry Fitzgerald, Ward Bond, Victor McLaglen, Mildred Natwick, Francis Ford, Arthur Shields Director: John Ford Synopsis: One of John Ford's most cherished projects, THE QUIET MAN took years to finance but became one of his greatest box-office successes and an enduringly beloved classic. John Wayne stars as Sean... One of John Ford's most cherished projects, THE QUIET MAN took years to finance but became one of his greatest box-office successes and an enduringly beloved classic. John Wayne stars as Sean Thornton, a retired American boxing champion trying to put tragedy behind him by returning to Innisfree, the bucolic Irish village of his birth. He purchases his birthplace from its current owner, enraging the wealthy and bellicose Red Will Danaher (Victor McLaglen), who had designs on the property. On arriving at his cottage,
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Thornton finds it being swept out by Mary Kate Danaher (Maureen O'Hara), a redheaded vision from whom he steals a not completely unwelcome kiss. After engaging in a subterfuge involving a horse race, some of the locals manage to get the disgruntled Red Will to allow his sister to be courted by the American. But the courtship ritual of the village is only the first of many local practices that the bewildered Thornton must endure if he is to have Mary Kate. Wayne gives a surprisingly nuanced performance as the fish out of water, and he is perfectly matched with the radiantly rambunctious O'Hara. The rest of the cast is splendid as well, and the lush color photography garnered an Academy Award for Winston Hoch. John Ford also won an Oscar for his directing, and it's impossible not to be charmed by the artistry with which he weaves his rollicking, robust tale. [Less]

Woman In Berlin 2009
Starring: Nina Hoss, Evgeny Sidikhin, Irm Hermann, Rudiger Vogler, Ulrike Krumbiegel, Rolf Kanies, Jordis Triebel, Roman Gribkov, Juliane Koehler, Samvel Muzhikyan Director: Max Faerberboeck Synopsis: AIMEE & JAGUAR’s Max Faerberboeck directs this gripping drama set in the days after Russia’s invasion of Berlin in 1945. Anonyma (Nina Hoss, YELLA) is surrounded by women, children, and men too... AIMEE & JAGUAR’s Max Faerberboeck directs this gripping drama set in the days after Russia’s invasion of Berlin in 1945. Anonyma (Nina Hoss, YELLA) is surrounded by women, children, and men too weak or old to fight in the war, and there is no one to defend her from the ravenous appetites of the invading army. After she and many of the women around her are raped, Anonyma picks Russian soldier Andrej (Evgeny Sidikhin) to be her protector, and they come to a compromise: if she has sex with him, he will keep her from his fellow men. Anonyma and Andrej embark on a strange relationship, and despite the appearance of affection, there is never any doubt of their positions in the world and the war. Based on an international bestseller, A WOMAN IN BERLIN also stars Irm Hermann, Rudiger Vogler, and Juliane Koehler. [Less]

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"Antaheen (Bengali with English subtitles)"
Directed by Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury Produced by Jeet Banerjee Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury Written by Shyamal Sengupta Starring * Radhika Apte as Brinda * Biswajit Chakraborty as Mr. Saha * Kaushik Ganguly as Mrinmoy * Shauvik Kundagrami as Mr. Mehra * Kalyan Ray as Ranjan * Arindam Sil as Sabya * Parmeet Sethi as Kuljeet Singh Music by Shantanu Moitra Indrani Mukerjee * Rahul Bose as Abhik * Barun Chanda as Dibakar * Rudranil Ghosh as Tanmoy * Kunal Padhy as Mr. Mukherjee * Aparna Sen as Paro * Sharmila Tagore as Abhik's aunt * Mita Vasisht as Mrs. Mehra Abhik Mukhopadhyay

Cinematography

Plot: Chowdhury is an IPS officer with a heart - honest, upright, yet laidback. Having lost faith in the real relationships that he sees around him, Abhik seeks solace in the virtual world. While navigating through this virtual world, Abhik develops an online relationship with a young woman, without knowing anything about her. She is Brinda - a young, dynamic television journalist. She comes from a conventional middle-class home, and her parents live in Jamshedpur. For both Abhik and Brinda, who do not know each others' real names and whereabouts, this online communication soon becomes an increasingly intense relationship, more real than virtual. While this relationship blossoms within the confines of two computer screens, Abhik gets his six minutes of fame on national television, when he successfully masterminds a raid on a consignment of illegal arms. Brinda telephones him to ask for an on-camera interview, but Abhik declines, stating that did not want to sensationalize the event any further. Ironically the virtual lovers, Abhik and Brinda have an acrimonious first meeting in the real world. It happens at the launch of a controversial mega project of the big-time real estate entrepreneur, Vijay Ketan Mehra. Unaware that she knows Abhik so well on the Internet, Brinda, still smarting from Abhik's refusal, gets into a bitter exchange of words with him. The argument veers to issues like sensationalism and soon enough, it is clear that Brinda and Abhik's real-life interaction has started off on a sour note. Before leaving in a huff, Brinda overhears a piece of conversation between two men about Mehra's project. This gives her a lead to a potentially big scoop. Ranjan and Paromita, an estranged couple, become the bridge between Brinda and Abhik. Ranjan is Abhik's cousin, but he is more of a friend, philosopher and guide. Ranjan is now a stockmarket addict and leads a lonely life after having separated from Paromita a few years ago. Ranjan is as acutely sensitive and perceptive as he is bitter and cynical on the surface. Paromita (Paro to friends and colleagues), is a senior marketing executive with the channel where Brinda works. For Brinda and Abhik, things take a different turn – from hostility to a grudging interest in each other – when they bump into each other at Ranjan's birthday party, which is secretly organized as a surprise by Paro. At the party, Brinda and Abhik get to know each other a little better. The mood of the party turns romantic yet poignant with Paro singing Ranjan's favourite song at his insistence. She has never sung that song ever since she left Ranjan's home. In the virtual world of the Internet, Brinda and Abhik's online chatting continues unabated, even though their identities remain undisclosed. Abhik confides in Ranjan that he is probably falling in love, although he does not know with whom. Ranjan warns Abhik with his usual cynicism and reminds him of the perils and pains that often define love. Behind his sardonic comments Abhik gets a glimpse of Ranjan's sensitivity and loneliness. After hearing his cousin's advice, Abhik leaves feeling confused yet still not convinced enough to stop falling further in love.Paro gets a rather lucrative offer from Mumbai. But she is in two minds between upgrading her career and staying back for lost love. As the crisis deepens in her mind, she seeks Ranjan's advice. Although it is bound to intensify his loneliness, Ranjan encourages her to shift to Mumbai. Paro gets confused by Ranjan's pragmatic, wellmeaning advice, as she had hoped and expected him to want her to stay back in the city. Meanwhile, a series of upsetting events, including Paro's talk about moving to Mumbai and her final break up with her boyfriend, weigh Brinda down. She feels torn between opposite poles of love and friendship. The only thing she can find solace is with her virtual friend, who seems to be her only source of comfort. At work, Brinda hits a stumbling block while doing an investigative story on V.K Mehra's El Dorado project. At this point, she turns to Abhik for help. Brinda notices some uncanny similarities between Abhik and her anonymous chat friend, in the way they talk, and in their choice of phrase. Something about Abhik reminds her of her online friend. As she follows the leads given by Abhik, she manages to get an important interview lined up which can give her the proof she needs to wrap up her story. The night before her interview, a particular phone conversation with Abhik strikes her. She gets onto the net, and tells her chat friend that they should meet. But this is a meeting which is not destined to happen as things take an unexpected turn. During reaching office for night shift Brinda died in a massive car accident and the meeting never happens. That's the thing is 'Endless waiting for love'. Paro leaves for Mumbai. The film ends with the song 'Bhindesi Tara'. Release date(s) 23 January 2009 (2009-01-23) Running time 120 minutes Country This Movie won 4 National Awards this year!! India Language Bengali

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"Dosar (Dir: Rituparno Ghosh)"
Directed by Rituparno Ghosh Written by Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay

* Prasenjit Chatterjee as ... Kaushik Chatterjee * Chandrayee Ghosh as ... Mita Ray * Shankar Chakraborty as ... Mita Ray's husband * Pallavi Chatterjee as ... Brinda * Parambrata Chatterjee as ... Bobby * Saswata Chatterjee as Kaushik's younger brother * Tota Roy Chowdhury as Kaushik's colleague Distributed by Planman Motion Pictures Synopsis: Rituparno Ghosh's latest Bengali venture "Dosar" (The Companion)" is a poignant film that takes a different approach to the much-dealt with subject of infidelity. The film starts with the male protagonist Kaushik, played by Prosenjit Chatterjee, enjoying a weekend getaway with his colleague-cum-lady love. The sojourn ends with a car accident, leaving her dead and him in a critical condition while exposing their extra-marital affair. His wife Kaberi (beautifully portrayed by Konkana Sensharma) rushes to the hospital and is overcome with agony and anger combined with grief. The storyline seems simple but what sets it apart is the treatment and screenplay. The attempt to capture a 21st century setting in black and white film is definitely a bold step - a positive risk taken by both the director and the producer - Planman Motion Pictures. This textural treatment also enables the wonderful interplay of light and shade and highlights the grey shades of all human relations and emotions. While the wife in Kaberi wants to see Kaushik healthy again, the strong feminist in her hates the idea of nursing the man who has betrayed her. Ghosh looks at Kaberi's struggle both outside and inside herself. It is as though her whole world has fallen apart in front of her eyes. She often threatens divorce but ultimately is overpowered by the wife in her and cannot desist fulfilling her duties towards her husband at the time of crisis. On the other hand, Kaushik too is caught in his own predicament. The physical and mental trauma caused by the accident are portrayed with great skill and subtlety by Prosenjit. He has to not only come to terms with the loss of a loved one but is faced with the daunting task of winning back his wife's trust. The lilting background score and the extensive use of Bengali poetry enhances the depiction of the complex human emotions. What mars the sensitivity of the film are the unnecessary, almost-crass sex scenes. These could very well have been avoided. And finally, despite a fresh approach to the subject, the film fails to break socio-familial stereotypes. Release date(s) 14 April,2006

Double Indemnity (1944)
Starring: Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray, Edward G. Robinson, Porter Hall Director: Billy Wilder Synopsis: Billy Wilder's classic noir, a familiar brew of lust, larceny, and lethal intentions, stars Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck as a hot-blooded couple. Framed in flashback, the story is told by the dying Walter Neff (MacMurray), beginning with his first meeting with the seductive Phyllis Dietrichson (Stanwyck) during a routine renewal of her husband's car insurance. After some flirtation she arranges a meeting without her husband, where she asks about an accident policy to be bought without her husband's knowledge. Although repulsed by the implications of her suggestions, his obsession with Phyllis leads Neff to contemplate the possibility of finding a way to kill her husband while making his death look like an accident. After she comes to his apartment, the insurance salesman finally agrees to become involved in the murder, and the two of them begin methodically working out the details. After they dispose of Dietrichson, Neff learns more than he wanted about Phyllis' unsavory past, but realizes he's now too involved to extricate himself. He's also concerned about his a boss, Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson), an omniscient insurance investigator who has taken over the case. DOUBLE INDEMNITY is brilliant noir, among the best of the genre, with a byzantine yet utterly plausible plot, stylized hard-boiled dialogue by Wilder and Raymond Chandler, and three terrific performances by Stanwyck, MacMurray, and Robinson. ##### Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) is a successful insurance salesman for Pacific All-Risk. We see him returning to his office building in downtown Los Angeles late one night. Neff, clearly in pain, sits down at his desk and tells the whole story into a Dictaphone for his colleague Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson), a claims adjuster.

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He first meets the sultry Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) during a routine house call to renew an automobile insurance policy for her husband. A flirtation develops, at least until Neff hears Phyllis wonder how she could take out a policy on her husband's life without him knowing it. Neff realises she intends to murder her husband and wants no part of it. Phyllis pursues Neff to his own home, and persuades him that the two of them, together, should kill her husband. Neff knows all the tricks of his trade and comes up with a plan in which Phyllis's husband will die an unlikely death, in this case falling from a moving train. Pacific All-Risk will therefore be required, by the 'double indemnity' clause in the insurance policy, to pay the widow twice the normal amount. Keyes, a tenacious investigator, does not suspect foul play at first, but eventually concludes that the Dietrichson woman and an unknown accomplice must be behind the husband's death. He has no reason to be suspicious of Neff; someone he has worked with for quite some time and views with great affection. Neff is not only worried about Keyes. The victim's daughter, Lola (Jean Heather), comes to him convinced that her stepmother Phyllis is behind her father's death because Lola's mother also died under suspicious circumstances when Phyllis was her nurse. Neff begins to care about what might happen to Lola, both of whose parents have been murdered. Then he learns Phyllis is seeing Lola's boyfriend behind her back. Trying to save himself and no longer caring about the money, Neff believes the only way out is to make the police think Phyllis and Lola's boyfriend did the murder, which is what Keyes now believes anyway. When Neff and Phyllis meet, she tells him she has been seeing Lola's boyfriend only to provoke him into killing the suspicious Lola in a jealous rage. Neff, now wholly disgusted, is about to kill Phyllis when she shoots him first. Neff is badly wounded but still standing and walks towards her, telling her to shoot again. Phyllis does not shoot and he takes the gun from her. She says she never loved him "until a minute ago, when I couldn't fire that second shot" and had been using him all along. Neff coldly says he does not believe this new ploy. Phyllis hugs him tightly but then pulls away and looks pleadingly at him when she feels the gun pressed against her side. Neff says "Goodbye, baby," then shoots twice and kills her. Neff flees from the scene and hides in the bushes near Phyllis' house. As he watches, Lola's boyfriend approaches the house, ostensibly to visit his lover, Phyllis. Neff advises him to not enter the house, but to leave and contact "the woman who truly loves you" - Lola. The boyfriend agrees and never enters Phyllis' house, thus avoiding what would have been damning evidence against him if he'd entered the murder scene. Neff drives to his office where he dictates his full confession to Keyes, who arrives and hears enough of the confession to understand everything. Neff tells Keyes he is going to Mexico rather than face a death sentence but collapses to the floor before he can reach the elevator.

Abahoman
Abahoman ("The Eternal") (2010) , is a Bengali film by Rituparno Ghosh.[1] The film stars Deepankar De, Mamata Shankar, Jisshu Sengupta, Riya Sen and is produced by Big Pictures.. Aniket (Deepankar De) is one of the finest filmmakers of Bengal, Deepti (Mamata Shankar), an actress, with whom he had fallen in love while casting in one of his films, had sacrificed her career for love and marriage. Apratim (Jisshu Sengupta) is their only son. They had been a perfect family. The plot thickens when Aniket auditions a young actress, Shikha (Ananya Chatterjee), who bares an uncanny resemblance to his wife when she was younger. Deepti enthusiastically begins to coach Shikha for her husband's film - so much so that Shikha becomes even more like the girl Deepti used to be and as a result the aging Aniket falls in love with Shikha, a woman as young as his son, despite the sadness and trouble it brings to his family.

Shob Charitro Kalponik
Non-resident Bengali Radhika (Bipasha Basu) marries the thespian poet Indranil Mitra (Prasenjit Chatterjee) to settle in Kolkata. While Indranil continues his surveillance of the surreal world of words, rhythms, rhymes and imaginations Radhika single handedly pulls out the private and public aspects of conjugal life. Radhika gets wholesome support from their housemaid Priyobala Das. While the apparently irresponsible and introvert Indranil does one menace after other, (like quilting his job after getting an award etc.) Radhika stands like a rock to make the family exist materially. But all these reluctancy and indifference from Indranil, makes Radhika’s heart oscillate towards Shekhar, her office colleague and Indranil’s biggest admirer. Radhika gets attracted towards Shekhar (Jisshu Sengupta), but can’t abandon the unpredictability and histrionics of her spouse. The benevolent woman remains awe struck when she hears about her husband’s demise while she was aiding her ailing mother during the Durga Pujas. Life never becomes the same again for Radhika. She begins to discover the dead poet through a mystic and subtle journey. She discovers Indranil’s woman of fantasy, Kajori Roy (Paoli Dam). Through the journey Indranil becomes more real to Radhika than what he was as a living entity. Radhika’s relation with Shekhar dies premature. She discovers that Indranil had lifted some of her own poems but through his she feels that the man was not indifferent to her. Radhika remains intertwined with the unknown galaxy of imagination within which she invents Indranil in an entirely unexplainable phenomena.

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Antarmahal
The story takes place towards the end of the 19th century in Bengal. Bhubaneswar Chowdhury (Jackie Shroff) is a rich and oppressive Zamindar(Landlord). He is planning to please the British so that they bestow on him the Raibahadur title. There are quite a few contenders and so something unique has to be done, so he decide's to put Queen Victoria's face on the body of the Goddess Durga who's murti is made every year for Durga Pooja On the other hand he also wants an heir and since he blames the failure on wife Mahamaya (Rupa Ganguly) he marries again, the much younger Jashomati (Soha Ali Khan). Both the wives compete against each other in an ego struggle. IN his pursuit for a son, Bhubaneswar tries everything from trying to force himself on Jashomati while a priest reads hymns for conception near the bed, to sending Mahamaya, in a drugged state, to fulfill the carnal desires of five sexually deprived brahmin priests, who's excuse to sleep with her is a distorted version of the rites of the Ashwamedha yagna. The Younger wife Jashomati in her traumatised and lonely state gets physically drawn towards young sculptor played by (Abhishek Bachchan) . It's in this centre of all this that the sculpor makes his masterpeice, his tribute, and seals Jashmoati's ultimate fate. [

Rashomon (1950)
In ancient Japan, a woman is raped and her husband killed. The film gives us four viewpoints of the incident - one for each defendant - each revealing a little more detail. Which version, if any, is the real truth about what happened ? Written by Colin Tinto <[email protected]> In 12th century Japan, a samurai and his wife are attacked by the notorious bandit Tajomaru, and the samurai ends up dead. Tajomaru is captured shortly afterward and is put on trial, but his story and the wife's are so completely different that a psychic is brought in to allow the murdered man to give his own testimony. He tells yet another completely different story. Finally, a woodcutter who found the body reveals that he saw the whole thing, and his version is again completely different from the others. Written by rmlohner Rashomon (1950) is a Japanese crime drama, that is produced with both philosophical and psychological overtones. An episode (rape and murder) in a forest is reported by four witnesses, each from their own point of view. - Who is telling the truth? What is truth? The film depicts the rape of a woman and the apparent murder of her husband through the widely differing accounts of four witnesses, including the rapist and, through a medium (Fumiko Honma), the dead man. The stories are mutually contradictory, leaving the viewer to determine which, if any, is the truth. The story unfolds in flashback as the four characters - the bandit Tajmaru (Toshir Mifune), the murdered samurai (Masayuki Mori), his wife (Machiko Ky), and the nameless woodcutter (Takashi Shimura) - recount the events of one afternoon in a grove. But it is also a flashback within a flashback, because the accounts of the witnesses are being retold by a woodcutter and a priest (Minoru Chiaki) to a ribald commoner (Kichijiro Ueda) as they wait out a rainstorm in a ruined gatehouse identified by a sign as Rashmon. The woodcutter Takashi Shimura as woodcutter is sitting, Kichijiro Ueda as commoner on the left and Minoru Chiaki as priest on the right. An unnamed Woodcutter ( Kikori) claims he found the body of the victim (the samurai) three days previously while looking for wood in the forest. Upon discovering the body the woodcutter flees in a panic to search for the authorities. The priest Minoru Chiaki as priest. A traveling Buddhist priest ( Tabi Hshi) claims that he saw the samurai and the woman the same day the murder happened. The bandit Toshir Mifune as bandit Tajmaru. Tajmaru (), a notorious brigand ( nusubito), claims that he tricked the samurai to step off the mountain trail with him and look at a cache of ancient swords he discovered. In the grove he tied the samurai to a tree, then returned to fetch the woman. He planned to rape the woman, who initially tried to defend herself. When caught, she submitted in view of her husband and was "seduced" by the bandit. The woman, filled with shame, then begged him to duel to the death with her husband, to save her from the guilt and shame of having two men know her dishonor. He honorably set the samurai free so they could duel. In Tajmaru's recollection they fought skillfully and fiercely, but in the end Tajmaru was the victor and the woman ran away. At the end of the story, he is asked about an expensive dagger owned by the samurai's wife: he says that, in the confusion, he forgot all about it, and that it was foolish of him to leave behind such a valuable object. The samurai's wife Machiko Ky as samurai's wife at the court. The samurai's wife claims that after she was raped by Tajmaru, who left her to weep, she begged her husband to forgive her; he simply looked at her coldly. She then freed him and begged him to kill her so that she would be at peace. He continued to stare at her with a look of loathing. His expression ripped at her soul and she begged him to kill her, to no avail, and then she fainted with dagger in hand. She awakened to find her husband dead with the dagger in his chest. She recalls attempting to kill herself, including attempting to drown herself some time later by a nearby lake, but failed in all her efforts. The samurai Masayuki Mori as samurai.
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Through a medium ( miko), the deceased samurai, claims that after he was captured by Tajmaru, and after the bandit raped his wife, Tajmaru asked her to travel with him. She accepted and asked Tajmaru to kill her husband so that she would not feel the guilt of belonging to two men. Tajmaru, shocked by this request, grabbed her, and gave the samurai a choice of letting the woman go or killing her. ("At this", the dead samurai recounted, "I almost forgave the bandit.") The woman fled, and Tajmaru, after attempting to recapture her, gave up and set the samurai free. The samurai then killed himself with his own dagger. The ghost then mentions that somebody removed the dagger from his chest; upon hearing this (or more precisely, in the frame sequence after this part of the trial flashback is recounted), the woodcutter is startled, and claims that the dead man must be lying, because he was killed by a sword. The woodcutter again The woodcutter then says his earlier view was a lie, claiming he did not want to get too involved. He confesses he did in fact witness the rape and murder. He says that Tajmaru raped the samurai's wife, and then begged the weeping woman to marry him. She instead said it was not for her to decide, freed her husband, then continued weeping. The samurai said that he was unwilling to die for a woman such as her, and that he would mourn the loss of his horse more than the loss of his wife. After hearing these words, Tajmaru lost interest in the samurai's wife and began as if to leave. The samurai's wife continued to weep, more forcefully now, which prompted her husband to demand that she stop crying. Tajmaru retorted that the samurai's remarks were "unmanly" of him since, according to Tajmaru, "women are weak" and cannot help crying. At this, the woman was provoked into an embittered rage about both her husband's reluctance to protect his wife and Tajmaru's half-heartedness, whose passionate affection had all too soon turned into mere pity. In a fit of mad fury she spurred the men to fight for her, which she seemed to regret as soon the men actually started a pitiful fight, apparently more for the sake of keeping their face in front of each other than because of any true affection for the woman. After a pathetic struggle, Tajmaru won the duel, more by luck than through skill, and killed the samurai as he was attempting to scamper away in the bushes. At the sight of her husband's death, the woman screamed in horror and ran from Tajmaru who tried to approach her. Tajmaru, unable to follow her, took the samurai's sword and left the scene limping. Climax At the temple, the woodcutter, priest, and commoner are interrupted from their discussion of the woodcutter's account by the sound of a crying baby. They find the baby abandoned, and the commoner takes the kimono as well as a ruby that is protection for the baby in the basket. The woodcutter reproaches the commoner for stealing from the abandoned baby, but the commoner questions him about the woman's dagger; the woodcutter does not reply and thus the commoner puts two and two together and figures out the truth: that the woodcutter, too, is a thief, having stolen the dagger used in the murder of the samurai. The commoner, smiling and snickering at his own purportedly trenchant observations, claims that all men are selfish, and all men are looking out for themselves in the end. These deceptions and lies shake the priest's faith in humanity. He is brought back to his senses when the woodcutter reaches for the baby in the priest's arms. After initially snapping at the woodcutter ("Are you trying to take all that he has left?") he relents when the woodcutter explains that he has six other children at home, and that the addition of one more (the baby) would not make life any more difficult. This simple revelation recasts the woodcutter's story and the subsequent theft of the dagger in a new light. The priest gives the baby to the woodcutter, saying that the woodcutter has given him reason to continue having hope in humanity. The film closes on the woodcutter, walking home with the baby. The rain has stopped and the clouds have opened revealing the sun in contrast to the beginning where it was downcast.

Raajneeti
The film begins with a flashback into the life of Bharti Rai (Nikhila Trikha), the daughter of Chief Minister Ramnath Rai (Darshan Jariwala). Influenced by leftist ideology, she rebels against her father and joins the rival party of leftist leader Bhaskar Sanyal (Naseeruddin Shah). Bharti develops an illicit relationship with Bhaskar, who, guilt-ridden over taking advantage of the younger woman, leaves for parts unknown, having unwittingly gotten Bharti pregnant. Upon the child's birth, he is abandoned in a boat by Brij Gopal (Nana Patekar), Bharti's brother. Bharti later marries Chandra Pratap (Chetan Pandit), the younger brother of Bhanu Pratap. Bhanu leads the Rashtrawadi political party. The government in the state collapses and Bhanu suffers a stroke. In the hospital, he hands over power to his younger brother Chandra and to Chandra's son, Prithvi Pratap (Arjun Rampal) — sidelining his own son, Veerendra Pratap (Manoj Bajpai). Veerendra, who believes power is his birthright, demands his uncle's position, and after being rebuffed, enlists support from a Dalit leader, Sooraj (Ajay Devgan) — who, unknown to both, is Bharti's abandoned son. Veerendra has his uncle Chandra assassinated in Chandra's car while Chandra is returning from the airport after seeing off his younger son, Samar Pratap (Ranbir Kapoor). In an ensuing drama, Prithvi is arrested by police under the influence of Veerendra and had been on trial for a case of seducing a woman party worker (Shruti Seth). Samar comes to the rescue and promises that if all charges upon his brother are dropped, he is ready to move with his family to the U.S. Veerendra agrees but the newly released Prithvi openly contests the election by splitting from the party under a new party with Brij Gopal as his mentor and Samar as the executive. Meanwhile Samar's American girlfriend Sarah (Sarah Thompson) arrives in India to see the situation. To raise funds for the new party, Samar shrewdly ensures Prithvi's marriage to their childhood friend Indu (Katrina Kaif), the daughter of a powerful businessman. The film gets murkier with both sides trying every trick to ensure their victory in coming elections. Allegations and counterallegations are made. Subsequently, Samar uncovers that the real murderer of his father is Sooraj and Veerendra, and decides
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to take revenge. On the other hand, Prithvi executes the former police officer, who had arrested him and the woman worker at a farmhouse. This infuriates Veerendra and he hatches a plot to assassinate Prithvi. A car bomb kills both Prithvi and Sarah, who was to be dropped at the airport in that car. Devastated by the loss of his brother and girlfriend, Samar decides to retaliate. He suggests Indu to take the reins of the party and arranges the election campaign single-handedly. Meanwhile, Sooraj is revealed to be the first child of Bharti, who implores him to join his younger brother Samar. Sooraj refuses to part ways with Veerendra and asks his mother to leave. Exit polls predict a victory for Indu's Party and on the counting day, Samar lures Veerendra and Sooraj to an unused factory by spreading a rumor about electronic voting machine being hacked. Veerendra and Sooraj fall in the trap and Veerendra gets shot by Samar and his men. Sooraj requests Samar to leave him and Veerendra till they reach the hospital, but Veerendra dies on the way. Brij Gopal prompts Samar to shoot Sooraj who questions the morality of the act. But Gopal convinces him to take the revenge. Samar shoots Sooraj and takes the revenge for the destruction of his family. Later the election results are declared, and Indu Pratap emerges with majority and is made Chief Minister. She is also revealed to be pregnant with Prithvi's child, while Samar leaves India to look after Sarah's mother.

The Seven Samurai (Shichinin no Samurai) (1954)
Starring: Takashi Shimura, Toshiro Mifune, Yoshio Inaba, Seiji MiyaguchiStarring: Takashi Shimura, Toshiro Mifune, Yoshio Inaba, Seiji Miyaguchi, Minoru Chiaki, Daisuke Katô, K.O., Kuninori Kodo, Ichiro Chiba, Kamatari Fujiwara, Bokuzen Hidari, Fumiko Homma, Yoshio Kosugi, Haruo Nakajima, Senkichi Omura, Keiji Sakakida, Noriko Sengoku, Gen Shimizu, Eijirô Tono, Yoshio Tsuchiya, Kichijiro Ueda, Atsushi Watanabe, Isao Yamagata, Toranosuke Ogawa, Sojin Jr., Isao Kimura, Keiko Tsushima Director: Akira Kurosawa A veteran samurai, who has fallen on hard times, answers a village's request for protection from bandits. He gathers 6 other samurai to help him, and they teach the townspeople how to defend themselves, and they supply the samurai with three small meals a day. The film culminates in a giant battle when 40 bandits attack the village. Written by Colin Tinto <[email protected]> In the Sixteenth Century, in Japan, a poor village is frequently looted by armed bandits losing their crop of rice. Their patriarch Grandpa advises the villagers to hire a Ronin to defend their village. Four farmers head to town to seek out their possible protectors, but they just can offer three meals of rice per day and lodging for the samurai. They succeed in hiring the warminghearted veteran Kambei Shimada that advises that they need six other samurai to protect their lands. Kambei recruits the necessary five samurai and the brave jester Kikuchiyo and move to the village. After a feared reception, Kambei plots a defense strategy and the samurai start training the farmers how to defend their lands and families for the battle that approaches. Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil A village is constantly attacked by well armed bandits. One day after an attack they seek the wisdom of an elder who tells them they cannot afford weapons, but they can find men with weapons, samurai, who will fight for them, if they find samurai who are in down on their luck and wondering where their next meal will come from. They find a very experienced samurai with a good heart who agrees to recruit their party for them. He selects five genuine samurai and one who is suspect but the seven return to the village to protect it from the forty plus bandits. Written by John Vogel <[email protected]> In 16th century Japan, farmers in a small village face the prospect of again losing their crops to a band of roving thieves. Their solution is to go to the nearest city and see if they can hire samurai to protect them. The farmers are poor and can only offer food and lodging but they soon recruit Kambei Shimada who determines that they will need a total of seven samurai to properly guard the village. Slowly, he recruits other samurai for their task and once complete, move tho the village. There they teach the farmers basic self defense and fortify the village itself. When the bandits attack, they are prepared but suffer many losses.

High and Low (Tengoku to jigoku) (Heaven and Hell) (1962)
Starring: Toshiro Mifune, Kyoko Kagawa, Tatsuya Nakadai, Yutaka Sada Director: Akira Kurosawa An executive mortgages all he owns to stage a coup and gain control of the National Shoe Company, with the intent of keeping the company out of the hands of incompetent and greedy executives. He needs the same money, though, to pay the ransom that will possibly save a child's life. His resolution of that dilemma -- the certain loss of the company vs. the probable loss of the child -- makes for one distinct drama, and an ensuing elaborate police procedure makes for a second. Written by levin <[email protected]> At a crucial point in his business life, executive Gondo learns that his son has been kidnapped and that the ransom demanded is near the amount Gondo has raised for a critical business deal. Gondo is prepared to pay the ransom - that is, until he learns that the kidnappers have mistakenly abducted not Gondo's son, but the child of Gondo's chauffeur. Now Gondo must decide whether the other man's child is equally worth saving.

Ran (1985)
Starring: Tatsuya Nakadai, Akira Terao, Jinpachi Nezu, Daisuke Ryu, Mieko Harada, Yoshiko Miyazaki, Hisashi Igawa, Masayuki Yui, Kazuo Kato, Takeshi Katô, Kenji Kodama, Norio Matsui, Takeshi Nomura, Daisuke Oka, Jun Tazaki, Hitoshi Ueki, Toshiya Ito Director: Akira Kurosawa

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A story of greed, a lust for power, and ultimate revenge. The Great Lord Hidetora Ichimonji has decided to step aside to make room for the younger blood of his three sons, Taro, Jiro, and Saburo, the Lord's only wish now being to live out his years as an honored guest in the castle of each of his sons in turn. While the older two sons flatter their father, the youngest son attempts to warn him of the folly of expecting the three sons to remain united; enraged at the younger son's attempt to point out the danger, the father banishes him. True to the younger son's warning, however, the oldest Son soon conspires with the second son to strip The Great Lord of everything, even his title.

(Throne of Blood) (Macbeth) (1957)
Starring: Toshiro Mifune, Isuzu Yamada, Takashi Shimura, Akira Kubo, Minoru Chiaki, Takamaru Sasaki, Yoichi Tachikawa, Chieko Naniwa, Eiko Miyoshi, Hiroshi Tachikawa, Kichijiro Ueda, Kokuten Kodo Director: Akira Kurosawa Synopsis: Macbeth is reimagined as a samurai in feudal Japan in director Akira Kurosawa's classic adaptation of the Shakespearean tragedy. Familiar with Orson... Macbeth is reimagined as a samurai in feudal Japan in director Akira Kurosawa's classic adaptation of the Shakespearean tragedy. Familiar with Orson Welles's more faithful adaptation, Kurosawa chose to place a more personal stamp on his version by translating the events and characters to historical Japan. The equivalent of the tragic Scottish lord is Taketoki Washizu (Toshiro Mifune), a valiant warrior whose life is transformed by an encounter with a ghostly female spirit. The spirit offers several predictions, finally stating that Washizu will rise to power over the current warlord. When these predictions begin coming true, he and his ambitious wife decide to ensure his ascendancy to power by murdering the current ruler. As with Macbeth, Washizu achieves his goal, but his guilt and the suspicions of others soon bring about his downfall. The shift to Japanese settings is seamless, creating a historically accurate and resonant work with a culturally distinct visual style. The supporting performances also recall Japanese tradition, particularly Isuzu Yamada's creepily unemotional take on Lady Macbeth, while Mifune proves consistently gripping in the sheer intensity of his performance. The intelligence of Kurosawa's alterations retains the drama's tragic impact, especially during the conclusion, in which Washizu makes a memorable final stand against an advancing army. Impressive in every regard, Throne of Blood seems secure in the pantheon of superior film adaptations of William Shakespeare.~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide [Less]

Intimacy (2001)
Director: Patrice Chéreau Synopsis: She comes to his bed-sit every Wednesday afternoon. They don't speak. They don't even know each other's name. But something passes between them as... She comes to his bed-sit every Wednesday afternoon. They don't speak. They don't even know each other's name. But something passes between them as their bodies converge and passion ignites in the dim, carpeted silence of his basement bedroom. He has left his wife and family. Her story: a mystery, a puzzle waiting to be penetrated and unraveled. Their union: rife with longing and desire, an impermanent compulsion coiled in a fundamental need to reach out and connect with another person, another body. Starring: Mark Rylance, Kerry Fox, Timothy Spall, Alistair Galbraith Starring: Mark Rylance, Kerry Fox, Timothy Spall, Alistair Galbraith, Marianne Faithfull, Susannah Harker, Rebecca R. Palmer, Alastair Galbraith, Phillipe Calvario, Fraser Ayres, Philippe Calvario

Drag Me to Hell (2009)

Director: Sam Raimi Evil Dead director Sam Raimi takes the helm for this "spook-a-blast" shocker about an ambitious L.A. loan officer who incurs the wrath of a malevolent gypsy by refusing to grant her an extension on her home loan. Determined to impress her boss and get a much-needed promotion at work, Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) lays down the law when mysterious Mrs. Ganush (Lorna Raver) literally comes begging for mercy at her feet. In retaliation for being publicly shamed, Mrs. Ganush places the dreaded curse of the Lamia on her unfortunate target, transforming Christine's life into a waking nightmare. Her skeptical boyfriend, Clay (Justin Long), casually brushing off her disturbing encounters as mere coincidence, Christine attempts to escape eternal damnation by seeking out the aid of seer Rham Jas (Dileep Rao ). But Christine's time is fast running out, and unless she's able to break the curse, she'll be tormented by a demon for three days before literally being dragged to hell. ####### Christine Brown is a loans officer at a bank but is worried about her lot in life. She's in competition with a competent colleague for an assistant manager position and isn't too sure about her status with a boyfriend. Worried that her boss will think less of her if she shows weakness, she refuses a time extension on a loan to an old woman, Mrs. Ganush, who now faces foreclosure and the loss of her house. In retaliation, the old woman place a curse on her which, she subsequently learns, will result in her being taken to hell in a few days time. With the help of a psychic, she tries to rid herself of the demon, but faces several hurdles in the attempt.

Show Me Love (Fucking Amal) (1998)
Synopsis: 15-year-old Elin lives in a boring Swedish town - 'fucking Amal' - and is looking for some excitement. Everyone expects her to find a boyfriend and be... 15-year-old Elin lives in a boring Swedish town - 'fucking Amal' - and is looking for some
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excitement. Everyone expects her to find a boyfriend and be settled while still a teenager. Agnes is in love with Elin and though Elin first mocks her devotion, soon the two become an item. But Elin's big sister pushes her to go out with, and ultimately to sleep with, the more suitable Johan. Agnes feels betrayed and lets out rumours of Elin's behaviour. Soon, Elin must choose between convention and a more daring life. Starring: Rebecka Liljeberg, Erica Carlson, Mathias Rust, Alexandra Dahlstrom, Ralph Carlsson, Rebecca Liljeberg, Stefan Hörberg Director: Lukas Moodysson

The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover (1989)
The film opens with a London gangster, Albert Spica, arriving at his posh restaurant, La Hollandaise, with his entourage of thugs and a man who owes him money. While his thugs hold the man down, Albert smears dog excrement on the him and forces some into his mouth. He leaves the man behind and enters the restaurant's kitchen, where he berates and bullies some of the staff, much to the annoyance of the restaurant's manager and head chef, Richard. Albert has also brought his long-suffering wife, Georgina, with him, whom he also subjects to continual verbal abuse. Meanwhile, Albert's victim is brought into the restaurant and tended to by some of the staff. Albert comes to the restaurant each night and holds court with his entourage and Georgina, while criticizing Richard's menu choices. Georgina notices a quiet regular customer, Michael, who is always reading. The two being a clandestine affair with most encounters occurring in the restaurant itself. Georgina believes that if she engages in her affair in Albert's place of business, that it will be easier to keep hidden from her husband. One night, Albert becomes furious when Georgina doesn't return to dinner - she and Michael are having sex in a back room of the kitchen while Richard hides their tryst from Albert. Albert rushes into the kitchen looking for her and Richard hides them in the freezer. He returns for them a few minutes later, after Albert has left the kitchen and offers them a way to sneak out of the restaurant together; they're both hidden in the back of a truck full of rotting meat and driven to Michael's home. Once there, they are cleaned off by one of the restaurant staff and remain, hiding from Albert. However, back at the restaurant, Albert is correctly suspicious that Georgina is having an affair and, after ransacking the kitchen, vows to find the mystery lover and eat him. One of Albert's henchmen, Cory, catches sight of a young boy, Pup, leaving the restaurant with a basket full of food (it is for the hiding lovers). Cory reports to Albert, who orders his men to capture Pup. He tortures the young boy, hospitalizing him. Georgina rushes to the hospital to visit Pup, which was ruse to lure her away from Michael. Albert finds Michael at home and kills him by having pages of his books stuffed down his throat. Georgina discovers that Albert has murdered Michael. She goes to Richard and asks him to cook Richard and serve his body to Albert. Richard is initially reluctant but Georgina is able to convince him, considering Albert's deplorable treatment of everyone around him, including herself and Richard. Albert is invited to the restaurant, which announces a private party for him. When he arrives, Georgina greets him and a procession enters from the kitchen made up of everyone whom Albert has offended. The procession is carrying a long, covered tray, which is placed in front of Albert. Georgina removes the cover and Albert is horrified to see the roasted body of Michael on the tray. Albert's assistant, Mitchell, grabs a knife but is easily subdued by a few of the guests. Michael attempts to draw his pistol but is easily unarmed. The gun is passed around a few of the guests and is finally given to Georgina, who points it at Albert and orders him to eat from Michael's body. Very reluctantly and thoroughly sickened, Albert takes a forkful of flesh and eats. After a few moments, Georgina shoots and kills Albert who falls backwards. Her last word is "Cannibal."

Creation (2009)
Director: Jon Amiel Synopsis: What happens when a world-renowned scientist, crushed by the loss of his eldest daughter, conceives a book which will prove the non-existence of God.... What happens when a world-renowned scientist, crushed by the loss of his eldest daughter, conceives a book which will prove the non-existence of God. This is the story of Charles Darwin and his master-work "The Origin of Species". It tells of a global revolution played out the confines of a small English village; a passionate marriage torn apart by the most dangerous idea in history; and a theory saved from extinction by the logic of a child. [Less] Starring: Paul Bettany, Jennifer Connelly, Jeremy Northam, Toby Jones Starring: Paul Bettany, Jennifer Connelly, Jeremy Northam, Toby Jones, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jim Carter, Bill Paterson, Martha West, Ian Kelly, Guy Henry, Anabolena Rodriguez, Paul Campbell VIII, Zak Davies, Teresa Churcher, Freya Parks, Christopher Dunkin, Gene Goodman, Harrison Sansostri, Ellie Haddington, Richard Ridings, Ian Mercer, Robert Glenister, Catherine Terris, Ken Drury, Nigel Bowden

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In.the.City.of.Sylvia.2007
Almost entirely devoid of dialogue, the film follows a young man credited only as 'El'[1] (English:'Him') as he scours suburban Strasbourg in search of Sylvia, a woman he asked for directions in a bar several years before. Plot Synopsis by Jason Buchanan A youthful foreigner sits sketching the diners of an outdoor café in hopes of finding the women he met there years before in director José Luis Guerín's languid, sun-soaked tale of longing. It was a long time ago that the artist met a mysterious beauty named Sylvia, and the memory of the girl has lingered in his mind ever since. Perhaps if he can capture the movements of the patrons in this quaint European café he can recognize the woman he seeks. Then, at once, the artist believes he has found Sylvia. Setting out into the streets in pursuit of a fading memory, he vows that this time he won't let love slip through his fingers.

EROS
A three-part anthology film about love and sexuality: a menage-a-trois between a couple and a young woman on the coast of Tuscany; an advertising executive under enormous pressure at work, who, during visits to his psychiatrist, is pulled to delve into the possible reasons why his stress seems to manifest itself in a recurring erotic dream; and a story of unrequited love about a beautiful, 1960s high-end call girl in an impossible affair with her young tailor. In North America, critical response for Eros was very mixed. [1] American critics were almost unanimous in their praise of Wong Kar Wai's segment, and almost unanimous in their disapproval of the Michelangelo Antonioni piece. Steven Soderbergh's contribution drew mixed notices. Roger Ebert gave Wong's segment four stars (out of a possible four), Soderbergh's three stars, and Antonioni's a mere one star. [2] On the syndicated television show Ebert & Roeper, he gave the film a "thumbs up" rating. In his Chicago Sun-Times review, he wrote: "Are the three films in Eros intended to be (a) erotic, (b) about eroticism or (c) both? The directors respond in three different ways. Wong Kar-Wai chooses (c), Steven Soderbergh chooses (b) and Michelangelo Antonioni, alas, arrives at None of the Above...The Antonioni film is an embarrassment. Regina Nemni acts all of her scenes wearing a perfectly transparent blouse for no other reason, I am afraid, than so we can see her breasts. Luisa Ranieri acts mostly in the nude. The result is soft-core porn of the most banal variety, and when the second woman begins to gambol on the beach one yearns for Russ Meyer to come to the rescue. When you see a woman gamboling in the nude in a Meyer film, you stay gamboled with...I return to Wong Kar-Wai's The Hand. It stays with me. The characters expand in my memory and imagination. I feel empathy for both of them: Miss Hua, sadly accepting the fading of her beauty, the disappearance of her clients, the loss of her health, and Mr. Zhang, who will always be in her thrall. "I became a tailor because of you," he says. It is the greatest compliment it is within his power to give, and she knows it. Knows it, and is touched by it as none of the countless words of her countless clients have ever, could ever, touch her."[3]

Indecent Proposal (1993)
Directed By: Adrian Lyne Adrian Lyne buffs the premise of Honeymoon in Vegas to a fine gloss in this yuppie melodrama that poses the conundrum of whether the loving husband of an equally loving wife will accept $1 million to allow his wife to spend one night with a billionaire who looks like Robert Redford. All the cynics please take a number and form a line at the right. Demi Moore and Woody Harrelson play Diana and David Murphy, high-school sweethearts who marry and who are doing very well -- Diana is a successful real-estate agent, and David is an idealistic architect who has built a dream house by the ocean -- until the recession hits. Suddenly, David loses his job, and they can't make the mortgage payments. Dead broke, they borrow $5000 from David's father and head to Las Vegas to try to win money to pay the mortgage on their house. At first, they get $25,000 ahead -- but inevitably the house always wins, and they end up losing it all. While Diana is in the fancy casino boutique trying to lift some candy, she is spotted by billionaire John Gage (Robert Redford), who is immediately attracted to her. John invites Diana and David to an opulent party, and it is there that John offers David $1 million for a night with his wife. David is wracked by this moral dilemma, but Diana finally makes the decision on her own, with ensuing consequences for their ideal marriage and their bank account. ######### A young couple very much in love are married and have started their respective careers, she as a real estate broker, he as an architect. She finds the perfect spot to build his dream house, and they get loans to finance it. When the recession hits, they stand to lose everything they own, so they go to Vegas to have one shot at winning the money they need. After losing at the tables, they are approached by a millionaire who offers them a million dollars for a night with the wife. Though the couple agrees that this is a way out of their financial dilemma, it threatens to destroy their relationship.

OUT OF AFRICA
Follows the life of Karen Blixen, who establishes a plantation in Africa. Her life is Complicated by a husband of convenience (Bror Blixen), a true love (Denys), troubles on the plantation, schooling of the natives, war, and catching VD from her husband. Written by Tony Bridges <[email protected]>
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Karen Blixen, a Danish woman, marries a friend for the title of Baroness and they move to Africa and start a coffee plantation. Things unfold when her husband begins cheating on her and is away on business often, so she's at home alone, working on the farm and bonding with two men she met in her first day in Africa. She eventually falls in love with the one, Denys Finch-Hatton and goes on safari and whatnot with him. Later, she begins to want more from him than the simple friendship/relationship they have and pushes marriage, but Denys still wants his freedom. By the end, she's gained a much better understanding and respect for the African culture than when she came. Written by KKaliforniApril22 A study of the life of Danish noblewoman and storyteller Karen ('Isak') Dinesen Blixen, from her marriage and departure for Kenya in 1913 until her return to Denmark in 1931. As she struggles to maintain a coffee farm through various struggles and disasters, and strives to improve relations with the local natives, her marriage of convenience to a titled aristocrat gradually gives way to an enduring romance with the noted hunter and adventurer Denys Finch Hatton. Written by scgary66

Beyond the Clouds (1995 film)
Director: Michelangelo Antonioni , Wim Wenders Made of four short tales, linked by a story filmed by Wim Wenders. Taking place in Ferrara, Portofino, Aix en Provence and Paris, each story, which always a woman as the crux of the story, invites to an inner travel, as Antonioni says "towards the true image of that absolute and mysterious reality that nobody will ever see". Synopsis: A mosaic of four stories about love and desire tied together by the story of a filmmaker who observes the relationships of young couples. The first... A mosaic of four stories about love and desire tied together by the story of a filmmaker who observes the relationships of young couples. The first episode, "Chronicle of a Love That Never Was," follows a young traveler to Ferrara who falls in love with a woman he meets, but falls asleep in his room and leaves her waiting in vain. Two years later they meet again, but he chooses to leave rather than consummate his desire for his ideal love. The second episode, "The Girl, the Crime," has the filmmaker wandering through Portofino and sleeping with a pretty young boutique owner who confesses that she has killed her father. The third episode, "Don't Try to See Me Again," takes place in Paris as two jilted lovers become attracted to one another. The final episode, "This Body of Mud," takes place in Aix-en-Provence and tells the story of a young man who falls in love with a young woman who has devoted her life to God and views her body as nothing more than a vessel to transcend. Starring: John Malkovich, Kim Rossi Stuart, Inés Sastre, Sophie Marceau, Fanny Ardant, Peter Weller, Chiara Caselli, Irène Jacob, Veronica Lazar, Marcello Mastroianni, Vincent Perez, Jean Reno, Jeanne Moreau, Giula Urso, Enrica Antonioni, Carine Angeli, Alessandra Bonarota, Laurence Calabrese, Tracey Caligiuri, Herve Decalion, John-Emmanuel Gartmann, Sherman Green, Suzy Lorraine, Cesare Luciani, Muriel Mottais, Bertrand Peillard, Sara Ricci, Sophie Semin, Sabry Tchal Gadjieff, JeanPhilippe Revel, Frere Daniel Bourgeois Director: Michelangelo Antonioni , Wim Wenders

Brief Crossing) (2001)
Starring: Sarah Pratt, Gilles Guillain, Marc Filippi, Laetitia Lopez, Marc Filipi Director: Catherine Breillat Synopsis: A most unusual, short-lived romance unfolds in this touching film directed by Catherine Breillat about a seemingly knowing French teenager (Gilles... A most unusual, short-lived romance unfolds in this touching film directed by Catherine Breillat about a seemingly knowing French teenager (Gilles Guillan) and an older, apparently embittered British woman, Alice (Sarah Pratt), who meet on a ferry. The two start out as curious strangers who attempt to find common ground through idle conversation, but are quickly enveloped in a teasing push-pull that reeks of sexual tension and power shifts.

Roger Dodger[2002]
Synopsis: After breaking up with his lover and boss, a smooth-talking man takes his teenaged nephew out on the town in search of sex. After breaking up with his lover and boss, a smooth-talking man takes his teenaged nephew out on the town in search of sex. Starring: Campbell Scott, Jesse Eisenberg, Isabella Rossellini, Elizabeth Berkley, Jennifer Beals, Ben Shenkman, Mina Badie, Chris Stack, Morena Baccarin, Colin Fickes, Gabriel Millman Director: Dylan Kidd Set against the bright lights of Manhattan, a tale which takes a comic, urbane look at the modern male ego at war in the singles scene trenches. Roger Swanson is a hopelessly cynical advertising copywriter with a razor-sharp wit who believes he has mastered the art of manipulating women. But Roger\\\'s seemingly foolproof world of smooth talk and casual sex begins to unravel when he is paid a surprise visit by his teenager nephew, Nick. Hoping to settle, once and for all, the issue of his virginity, Nick begs Roger to school him in the art of seducing women. Welcoming the challenge, Roger guides Nick through the city\\\'s wild nightlife for an all-night crash course, only to realize that he--the adult--still has something to learn about what women, and men, really want.

Remember Me, My Love: Ricordati di me (2003)
Directed By: Gabriele Muccino In the dysfunctional Italian middle-class family Ristuccia, the middle-aged executive Carlo has a stalled life without passion, bored in his work and having a monotonous life with his wife Giulia. Giulia is a frustrated and hysterical woman because she
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gave up of being an actress in her youth to dedicate to the family. Their needy son Paolo feels lost and rejected, trying to find who he is and flirting with a schoolmate. Their seventeen years old daughter Valentina is decided to work in a television show, and is fighting to have an audition. When Carlo meets his former sweetheart Alessia in a class reunion, they confess to each other that their marriages are in crisis and both feel passion arising again. Meanwhile Giulia is invited to an audition in a stage production and to participate of a play. Paolo tries to make friends using marijuana in his birthday party, and Valentina has sex with different guys trying to be a dancer of the famous TV show 'Ali Babbi'. Their relationships change when Carlo has an accident. Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil The story of a normal Italian family in which come out the dreams of those who have lost their possibilities and of those who want to realize them. Carlo and Giulia are a married couple who have each given up their aspirations in order to live an average life. Their 19-year-old son, Paolo, is having trouble finding an identity, while their 18-year-old daughter, Valentina, has already figured out how to use sex to her advantage. The family goes through a crisis when Carlo begins having an affair, Giulia attempt to seduce the director of a local stage production she is in, and Valentina does what she does best to land an audition for a TV show.

Malena
Directed By: Giuseppe Tornatore On the day in 1940 that Italy enters the war, two things happen to the 12-year-old Renato: he gets his first bike, and he gets his first look at Malèna. She is a beautiful, silent outsider who's moved to this Sicilian town to be with her husband, Nico. He promptly goes off to war, leaving her to the lustful eyes of the men and the sharp tongues of the women. During the next few years, as Renato grows toward manhood, he watches Malèna suffer and prove her mettle. He sees her loneliness, then grief when Nico is reported dead, the effects of slander on her relationship with her father, her poverty and search for work, and final humiliations. Will Renato learn courage from Malèna and stand up for her? Written by <[email protected]> The film is set in 1940 during World War II just as Italy enters the war. Malena's husband, Nino Scordia, leaves to serve in the military. Malena feels sad and tries to cope with her loss, as the town she has just moved to tries to deal with this beautiful woman who gets the attention and lustful stares of all the local men, including the 12-year-old Renato. However, in spite of the villagers' gossip, she continues to be faithful to her husband. Renato becomes obsessed with Malena and starts fantasizing about her while masturbating. The silent, distractingly beautiful outsider learns one day that her husband has been killed. Renato continues to watch as she suffers from loneliness and grief. Malena is shunned by the townspeople and the unattractive, jealous women of the Italian village, who begin to believe the worst about her, simply because of her beauty. She visits her father, an almost deaf professor of Latin, regularly and helps him with his household chores. When a slanderous letter about her sexual morals reaches his hands, their relationship suffers a catastrophic blow. In the meanwhile, the war worsens. The village is bombed and Malena's father is killed. She falls on hard times and eventually has no money. The wife of the local dentist takes her to court, but Malena is acquitted. The only man Malena does have an innocent romance with, an army officer, is sent away because of the trial. Malena's poverty finally forces her to succumb to the greed and malice of the town and she becomes a prostitute, making the wives' fantasies about her a reality. When the German army comes to town, Malena gives herself to Germans as well. Renato sees her in the company of two German officers and faints. His mother and the older ladies of the town think that he has been possessed by the devil and take him to church to exorcise the "demons." His father however understands that he is suffering from sexual hunger and takes him to a brothel; Renato has sex with one of the prostitutes while fantasizing that she is Malena. When the war ends, the women of the village gather and, out of jealousy and hatred, publicly beat and humiliate Malena, who shortly after leaves for Messina. A few days later, Nino Scordia returns to town, to the shock of all the residents. He finds his house occupied by people displaced by the war. Renato tells him through an anonymous letter about Malena's whereabouts. Nino goes to Messina to find her. A year later, they return. The villagers, especially the women, astonished at her courage, begin to talk to "Signora Scordia" with respect. Though still beautiful, they think of her as no threat claiming that she had wrinkles near her eyes and put on some weight. In the last scene near the beach, Renato helps her pick up some oranges that had dropped from her shopping bag. Afterwards he wishes her "Buona fortuna, Signora Malena" (good luck, Mrs. Malena) and rides off on his bicycle, looking back at her for a final time, as she walks away, with the retrospective thought that he has not forgotten her, even after a few years. He said, "Of all the girls who asked me if I remember them, the only one I remembered is the one who did not ask." The audience is left not knowing if Malena ever realizes Renato's feelings for her.

Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Director: Ang Lee A raw, powerful story of two young men, a Wyoming ranch hand and a rodeo cowboy, who meet in the summer of 1963 sheepherding in the harsh, high grasslands of contemporary Wyoming and form an unorthodox yet life-long bond--by turns ecstatic, bitter and conflicted. Written by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana In 1963,two young men hire on as ranch hands in the Wyoming mountains.During the long months of isolation,an unusual bond starts to develop between them, one which they are only vaguely aware of--until one night when it rises to the surface in a passionate encounter.When the season ends,they part ways,only to realize the true depth of their feelings.Thus begins a decades-long affair that the two of them desperately try to hide from those around them--one which will prove simultaneously beautiful and devastating. Written by LOTUS73 In the Summer of 1963 Wyoming, two young men, Ennis a ranch hand and Jack an aspiring rodeo bull rider, are sent to work together herding sheep on Brokeback Mountain, and what had otherwise been anticipated to be a rather uneventful venture, will soon turn into an affair of love, of lust, and complications that will spand through 19 years of their lives. Through marriage,
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through children, and through the mighty grip of societal confines and the expectations of what it is to be a man. Written by JamaicaSugar Set against the sweeping vistas of Alberta's Rocky Mountains, this film tells the story of two young men - a ranch-hand and a rodeo cowboy - who meet in the summer of 1963 and unexpectedly forge a lifelong connection, one whose complications, joys and tragedies provide a testament to the endurance and power of love. Written by focus features

Dracula (1992)
Synopsis: Based on the Victorian horror novel written by Bram Stoker in 1897, about the vampire Dracula, who is on a quest to be eternally reunited with the one... Based on the Victorian horror novel written by Bram Stoker in 1897, about the vampire Dracula, who is on a quest to be eternally reunited with the one woman he ever loved. Dracula travels from Transylvania to London to find the young woman who is the double image of the love he lost centuries earlier. [Less] Starring: Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins, Keanu Reeves, Richard E. Grant, Cary Elwes, Bill Campbell, Sadie Frost, Tom Waits, Monica Bellucci, Jay Robinson, Robert Buckingham, Robert Getz, I.M. Hobson, James Murray, Daniel Newman, Tatiana von Furstenberg, Maud Winchester, Laurie Frank, Don Lewis, Cully Fredricksen, Hubert Wells, Victoria Thomas, Jules Sylvester, Fred Spencer, Michaela Bercu, Florina Kendrick Director: Francis Ford Coppola It is the year 1462. Constantinople has fallen. Prince Dracula [Gary Oldman] must leave his bride Elizabeta [Winona Ryder] to do battle against the invading Turks. Elizabeta, believing her husband to be dead, flings herself into the river below. Because she committed suicide, the Bishop [Anthony Hopkins] proclaims her soul damned. Consequently, Dracula renounces God and the Church. March 1897, England. Law clerk Jonathan Harker [Keanu Reeves] must travel to Transylvania to close the sale of 10 London properties being purchased by Count Dracula. Upon his return, Jonathan and fiancee Mina Murray [Winona Ryder] intend to be married. In Jonathan's absence, Mina goes to stay with her rich friend Lucy Westenra [Sadie Frost], who has just recently received three marriage proposals -- from Texan Quincey Morris [Bill Campbell], Dr Jack Seward [Richard E Grant], and Lord Arthur Holmwood [Cary Elwes] -- and she has decided to marry Arthur. Meanwhile, Jonathan has arrived at Castle Dracula following a strange carriage ride past blue flames and wolves. Even stranger is the Count himself. He never eats, sleeps all day, lives alone in a large castle in which most of the doors are locked, and crawls down the castle walls like a reptile. Jonathan has begun to have strange dreams about three women who try to seduce him. To Jonathan's further unease, the Count seems to be fascinated with a picture of Mina and has forced Jonathan to write letters saying that he will be staying with the Count for another month. Meanwhile, the Count is preparing for his trip to England by filling large boxes with dirt. July, 1897. Jonathan has been gone for over three months, and Mina is sick with worry, while Lucy is involved with planning for her wedding. But Lucy is not without worries either. A particularly violent summer storm has recently washed a ship of dead sailors upon the beach, and shortly thereafter Lucy has begun her old habit of sleepwalking. Each time she sleepwalks, she returns bewildered and pale. Dr Seward, who has his hands full treating the flyeating lunatic R M Renfield [Tom Waits] , has taken on Lucy as his patient. She shows all the signs of anemia, but Dr Seward can find no cause for it. Consequently, he has decided to send for a metaphysician, philosopher, and specialist in rare blood disorders, his old mentor Professor Abraham Van Helsing [Anthony Hopkins]. Upon his arrival, Van Helsing immediately begins a blood transfusion on Lucy and places garlic near her bed. Meanwhile, Mina has begun occupying herself with a man she met near the cinematograph. He introduced himself as Prince Vlad of Szekely, and Mina is strangely drawn to him, as though she knows him. When she finally receives news that Jonathan has suffered a violent brain fever and is being cared for by the sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, who bid her to come to Romania and be married to Jonathan, she realizes that she can no longer see her prince again. Mina says goodbye to Lucy, writes a note to Dracula, and sets sail for Romania. Dracula, heartbroken at losing Mina to Jonathan, takes Lucy as his bride instead. Lucy is dead, although Van Helsing knows that the correct term is 'undead,' for he can see the fangs in her mouth and knows that she is nosferatu. He explains to Arthur, Jack, and Quincey that, to give Lucy's soul peace, they must cut off her head and take out her heart. They are horrified and think that Van Helsing is just a sick old coot, until they spend a night in Lucy's tomb and find her returning with a child in her arms. When the deed is done, they band together to seek out the vampyre and destroy it. Mina and Jonathan have returned to London, only to hear that Lucy has died. One night, they have dinner with Van Helsing, and Jonathan realizes that he knows Count Dracula and that he sleeps in Carfax Abbey. After securing Mina at Dr Seward's sanitarium, the five of them -- Van Helsing, Jonathan, Quincey, Jack, and Arthur -- pay a visit
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to the abbey in order to sterilize Dracula's earthboxes. Meanwhile Dracula is paying a visit to Mina. When she learns that her prince is actually the vampyre who killed Lucy, she becomes extremely upset, but not enough to resist wanting to be with him, to live how he lives. Dracula drinks from Mina, then opens a vein in his chest and bids her drink. However, he stops short after she has taken but a bit. 'I love you too much to condemn you,' he explains. Suddenly, Van Helsing et al burst in the room. They attempt to destroy Dracula, but he changes into hundreds of rats and scurries away. Dracula knows that he cannot stay in England any longer and books passage back to Transylvania via Varna. Mina and the men follow close behind. As Dracula is in mind contact with Mina, Van Helsing knows Dracula's plans but Dracula also seems to know theirs. Instead of sailing into Varna, Dracula diverts the ship 200 miles north and lands at Galatz, causing a change in plans such that Van Helsing and Mina take a carriage directly from Varna to the Borgo Pass while Jonathan, Quincey, Arthur, and Jack continue by train to Galanz where they secure horses and ride for the Borgo Pass, hoping to cut off Dracula. They are unsuccessful. Dracula's gypsies picked up his earthbox at Galanz and are now speeding down the Borgo Pass road. It's going to be a close race. Mina and Van Helsing are almost to the castle but decide to stop for the night. Van Helsing casts a circle around Mina and protects her by burning her forehead with a blessed communion wafer. In the circle they stay through the night while Dracula's three brides tempt Mina to join them. The next morning, as Mina sleeps in the circle, Van Helsing visits the castle and beheads the vampiresses. It is near sundown. The gypsy wagon bearing Dracula in his earthbox approaches the castle. Jonathan, Arthur, Quincey, and Jack are riding hard to catch up. Mina and Van Helsing wait inside the castle courtyard. Mina calls up a blue flame to protect Dracula. As the gypsy wagon enters the courtyard, a gypsy stabs Quincey in the back. Jonathan attempts to open Dracula's earthbox, but the sun has set and Dracula rises. At that very moment, however, Jonathan slits Dracula's neck and Quincey stabs Dracula through the heart with a sword. Mina screams. As Arthur races forward to finish Dracula, Harker stops him. 'Let them go,' he says. 'Our work is finished here; hers is just begun.' As Quincey dies, Mina sits with Dracula on the chapel floor inside the castle. She kisses him, and he begs her to give him peace. Then, out of love, she pushes the sword the rest of the way through Dracula's heart. The burn on her forehead disappears, Dracula dies, and Mina releases him by cutting off his head. [Original Synopsis by bj_kuehl]

Doctor Zhivago (1965)
Director: David Lean Starring: Omar Sharif, Julie Christie, Tom Courtenay, Geraldine Chaplin, Rod Steiger, Alec Guinness, Siobhan McKenna, Ralph Richardson, Rita Tushingham, Jeffrey Rockland, Bernard Kay, Klaus Kinski, Gérard Tichy, Noel Willman, Geoffrey Keen, Adrienne Corri, Jack MacGowran, Mark Eden, Erik Chitty, Roger Maxwell, Lucy Westmore, Lili Murati, Peter Madden, José María Caffarel, Inigo Jackson, María Martín, Gwen Nelson, Tarek Sharif, Jose Nieto, Wolf Frees, Luana Alcaniz, Emilio Carrer, Katherine Ellison, Maria Vico A high ranking Russian General has arrived at an industrial project office. It is night and this man is there on personal business: He is looking for his niece. Somehow, in the past decade, he has managed to find her, or at least someone who appears to be the daughter of his half brother . The would-be niece is skeptical, and afraid. General Yevgraf Zhivago tells her the details of the life of his half brother as he knows it. This is the movie. Yuri Zhivago is a boy, only 8 years old, when his mother dies, somewhere in central Asia, not far from Mongolia. Yuri is adopted by very close friends of his mother, the Gromykos, an upper class family with a home in Moscow and a country estate near the Ural Mountains. The Gromykos have a daughter, Tonya, who is the same age as Yuri. Yuri, now a young man, becomes a doctor, preferring to see "life" in General Practice rather than be a researcher. He is also an accomplished and published poet. Late one winter evening, a lonely group of socialist demonstrators is slaughtered by a Czar Cavalry Unit. Yuri witnesses the entire event from his balcony and attempts to care for the wounded. He is forced back into his home by the soldiers. He is shaken by the event. The following winter, at a music recital, Yuri's mentor is summoned to treat a woman who has attempted suicide, possibly by drinking Iodine. Yuri accompanies his mentor and sees "life" first hand. It is at this woman's home where he first sees Lara, the daughter of the woman. He is smitten. Shortly thereafter, at a Christmas party, the
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engagement announcement of Yuri and Tonya is interrupted by Lara shooting Komarovsky, Lara's sometime lover and companion. Komarovsky is only slightly wounded and Lara is escorted out of the party by her fiancé, Pasha. World War I erupts and Yuri is posted to a field unit far to southwest near Ukraine. Lara is a volunteer nurse in the same area. Her husband (Pasha), disappears during a battle, and is presumed dead. As the summer of 1917 ends, the October Russian Revolution occurs, changing the entire political landscape. World War I for the Russians had begun to wind down the previous summer, ending in the winter. Yuri and Lara, having worked together in an old country estate converted to a hospital, are the last to leave the now empty facility. They are clearly in love with each other, but have managed to keep their passions suppressed. Yuri returns to his Moscow home to find his step-mother deceased, and his home (his step father's home) occupied by 13 additional families. The Bolsheviks are now in full control of the large cities, and collectivization has begun. But Moscow is in trouble; with virtually no food supplies or heating fuel (wood), the impending Russian winter will be deadly. One night, Yuri decides to steal some fence boards that can be burned. He is observed by Yevgraf (now a policeman and party official) and is followed home. Yevgraf knows this man is his half brother and rather than arrest Yuri, the two connect for the first time. But the works of Yuri Zhivago, the published poet, has fallen out of favor with the authorities putting the lives of Yuri, his wife Tonya, his son Shasha, and his step-father Alexander, in danger. Yevgraf arranges all the necessary travel papers and the family of 4 departs Moscow eastbound in a crowed boxcar. Their destination is Yuriatin, the small town near the family's country estate at Varykino. Enroute, the train stops due to civil war activity in the area. Yuri wanders away from his train, only to stumble into the military train of a communist general. The general turns out to be the husband of Lara, Pasha. But Pasha has taken on a new name, People's Commander Strelnikov. He has become a renegade, and uses his army to fight the remaining White Russians however he can. Strelnikov and Zhivago discover they have seen each other before, at the party where Komarovsky was shot. Suspicions that Yuri is an assassin or spy are determined to be groundless and Strelnikov uncharacteristically releases Yuri. Yuri and family reach their distant estate. It is early spring. The main house has been sealed by the local communist authorities, but the gardener's cottage remains available. The family gets the vegetable garden back in shape, and settles in for what is expected to be a multi-year stay. The family thrives, and remains in the cottage, living almost invisibly. That summer, the czar and his family are executed. The family remains in the cottage through the winter. Finally, the next summer, Yuri takes the short trip into Yuriatin. Lara has lived in Yuriatin for about a year, having returned there in search of her husband, Pasha (Strelnikov). Yuri and Lara meet in the local library, and an affair between the two begins. But Yuri cannot live with the conflict of the affair. His pregnant wife loves him deeply, and the so does Lara. Yuri rides into Yuriatin to break off the affair. On the way home, Yuri is kidnapped by a Red Partisan unit and is drafted to be their medical officer. A year and a half later, in the dead of winter, Yuri wanders away from the Red Guard Unit, deserting. Yuri makes his way back to Yuriatin, discovering that his family has left Varykino for Moscow. He goes to the only other place he knows, Lara's small apartment. Starving and nearly dead, Lara brings him back to health. Lara gives Yuri a letter from Tonya, addressed to him care of Lara. The letter is dated 6 months earlier. Tonya had known of Yuri's affair, and Tonya and Lara had met. Yuri's family has escaped back to Moscow, and is being deported from Russia. Shortly thereafter, Komarovsky unexpectedly appears at Lara's apartment. He brings news that Lara's husband Strelnikov is "gone", Yuri is considered a deserter, and their days are numbered. Komarovsky offers help by way of transportation to the far east of Russia, Vladavastok, from which they can go anywhere in the world. Lara and Yuri refuse the offer, but know Komarovsky is right, their days are numbered. Lara and Yuri move themselves to Varykino, and occupy a small portion of the main house. They stay there through most of the remaining winter. Again, Komarovsky finds them and tells them that Strelnikov has been arrested just 5 miles from Varykino. Lara and Yuri must now move quickly to survive. They accept Komarovsky's offer of protection and transportation to Manchuria, and leave Varykino immediately. But Yuri remains behind, ostensibly to bring his own sledge to the train station. Lara and Komarovsky wait for Yuri on the train at the Yuriatin train station, but Yuri does not arrive. The train leaves, and Lara announces to Komarovsky that she is pregnant with Yuri's child. Eight years pass. Yuri is found in Moscow by Yevgraf, in poor health, malnourished and jobless. Yevgraf arranges for Yuri to get his old job back at the hospital and sees him off at the street car stop on his first day. On the ride, Yuri thinks he sees Lara walking in the direction of the street car. He attempts to get off the car, succeeds and collapses in the street. He dies of a heart attack. At the memorial, huge numbers of people pay their respects, much to Yevgraf's amazement. One of those people is Lara, and Lara is searching for her daughter Tonya, lost somewhere near Mongolia during the far east civil war.
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Yevgraf and Lara search Moscow's orphanages, but Tonya is not found. Speaking of Lara, Yevgraf narrates: "One day she went away and didn't come back. She died or vanished somewhere in one of the labor camps; a nameless number on a list that was after-wards...mislaid. That was quite common in those days." The story his been told, and the scene returns to the project office. Although Tonya, now a young woman of about 18, wants to believe who were her parents, but only if the fact is true. Morning has come, and Yevgraf makes a final request, that Tonya think about establishing with Yevgraf a family relationship. Neither have any relatives, and Tonya promises to think about it. Tonya and Yevgraf part on what promises to be a beautiful day.

Twilight (2008/I)
Synopsis: A teenage girl risks everything when she falls in love with a vampire. A teenage girl risks everything when she falls in love with a vampire Starring: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Billy Burke, Peter Facinelli, Elizabeth Reaser, Cam Gigandet, Nikki Reed, Jackson Rathbone, Ashley Greene, Kellan Lutz, Sarah Clarke, Justin Chon, Christian Serratos, Michael Welch, Jose Zuniga, Gil Birmingham, Ned Bellamy, Matt Bushell, Gregory Tyree Boyce, Anna Kendrick, Taylor Lautner, Edi Gathegi, Rachelle Lefevre Director: Catherine Hardwicke Seventeen-year-old Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) has decided to leave sunny Phoenix, Arizona, to spend some time with her father Charlie Swan (Billy Burke), the chief of police in the perpetually cloudy and rainy city of Forks, Washington, on the west coast of the Olympic Peninsula, so that her mother Renée (Sarah Clarke) and her minor league baseball-playing stepfather Phil Dwyer (Matt Bushell) can go on the road together for spring training and perhaps even move to Jacksonville, Florida. Bella's relationship with her father is cool, even though she hasn't seen him in several years. When she arrives in Forks, he surprises her with the gift of a red pickup truck he purchased from his best friend, Billy Black (Gil Birmingham). Bella remembers making mudpies with Billy's son Jacob (Taylor Lautner) and looks forward to having at least one friend at Forks High School, until Jacob reminds her that he is a Quileute Indian and goes to school on the Reservation. Not to worry. On her first day of school, Bella is befriended by Eric Yorkie (Justin Chon), the school's "eyes and ears", and he introduces her to some of the other students. Everything is looking cool so far. Cool, that is, until she meets Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson). Edward is one of five foster kids adopted by Dr Carlisle Cullen (Peter Facinelli) and his wife Esme (Elizabeth Reaser). There's also Alice (Ashley Greene) and Emmett (Kellan Lutz) Cullen and the twins, Rosalie (Nikki Reed) and Jasper (Jackson Rathbone) Hale. From the moment Edward lays eyes on Bella, he can't stop scowling at her. When Bella is assigned as Edward's lab partner in Biology and he storms out the door when the bell rings, Bella is puzzled as to what she could have done to anger him. When she overhears him in the office attempting to transfer out of Biology, she decides to confront him and ask him what is his problem. However, she doesn't get the chance because Edward is absent for the next several days. When Edward does return to school, he seems changed. He introduces himself to Bella and asks her about herself, her family, and whether or not she likes the cold, rainy climate in Forks. Bella notices that his eyes seem a different color than previously, and he answers awkwardly before walking away. Later that day, as Bella is about to get into her truck, another car careens out of control in the school parking lot. Within seconds, Edward has crossed the lot, pulled Bella out of the way, and seemingly stopped the car with his bare hand, leaving Bella more puzzled than before. When she tries to ask Edward how he did it, he simply chalks it up to an "adrenalin rush" and refuses to talk about it. Further, he says that they probably shouldn't even be friends. That doesn't stop Bella from asking Edward to be her date when the kids decide to go surfing at La Push Beach on the Indian Reservation, but Edward doesn't show. When the kids are joined on the beach by Jacob Black and two of his friends from the Reservation and they learn that Edward Cullen was supposed to be Bella's date, one of Jacob's friends remarks, "The Cullens don't come here." Later, Bella asks Jacob what was meant by that remark, and Jacob tells her of a Quileute legend that says the Quileutes are descended from wolves whereas the Cullens are descended from an enemy clan. The legend also goes that the Quileutes and the Cullens made a pact that required the Cullens to stay off Quileute land in exchange for the Quileutes keeping it secret what the Cullens really were. Bella googles Quileute legends and notices that there is a bookstore in Port Angeles that sells several books on Quileute legends, so she goes along with her new friends, Jessica Stanley (Anna Kendrick) and Angela Weber (Christian Serratos), when they decide to go shopping in Port Angeles for their prom dresses.
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After purchasing her books, Bella heads to the restaurant where she planned to meet Jessica and Angela for dinner before heading back to Forks. Along the way, however, she is stopped by four guys with no good on their minds. Suddenly, Edward drives up, forces the guys to back off, and orders Bella to get into the car. When Edward and Bella finally join Jessica and Angela, the girls have already eaten. Edward offers to see that Bella gets some dinner and then to drive her back to Forks, so Jessica and Angela take off, giving Bella and Edward a chance to talk privately. Edward reveals that he was following Bella because he has developed very protective feelings towards her. He also lets it slip that he could read what was in the minds of those low-lifes and that he can read just about anyone's mind...except for hers. On the drive back to Forks, Bella accidentally touches Edward's hand and is amazed at how cold it is. As they pass the Forks Police Department, they see several police cars, including that of Bella's father, with their lights flashing. Dr Cullen's car is also there, so Bella and Edward stop to see what's happening. They learn from Carlisle that the body of Waylon Forge, a good friend of her father, was just found lying in a boat, dead from what looks like an animal attack, this being the second animal attack to happen near Forks. Later, after Bella has returned home with her father, she starts paging through the books she purchased and comes across a Quileute legend about "The Cold One." Googling it, she learns that "The Cold One", aka Apotamkin, is a fanged creature, described as undead, immortal, possessing incredible speed, strength, and cold skin. It is said to drink human blood and variously equated with other legends about vampires. The next day, Bella confronts Edward with her findings. He doesn't deny it. He takes her to the top of a mountain, out of the cloud bank, and shows her how a vampire's skin sparkles in the sunlight. He explains how the Cullen family has learned to live on animal blood and consider themselves "vegetarian vampires." Still, I am a killer, he says, and admits that he's never wanted a human's blood as much as he wants hers. I don't care, Bella replies. Edward goes on to explain that Carlisle turned him in 1918 when he was dying of Spanish influenza and that Waylon was killed by some other vampires...not the Cullens. The relationship between Bella and Edward progresses to the point where Edward decides to take Bella home to meet his family. All of the Cullens are superwelcoming to Bella...except for Rosalie, who is concerned that the relationship between Edward and Bella may end badly (i.e., Edward will end up harming Bella), implicating the entire family and forcing them to move again. However, Edward is super careful not to lose control when he's around Bella, and the relationship continues to grow. One rainy afternoon, Edward takes Bella out to play baseball with his family. In the middle of the game, three figures come walking out of the mist. Fearfully, the Cullens regroup, hiding Bella behind him. The intruders are the rogue vampires who have been feasting on humans, including Waylon Forge. They introduce themselves as Laurent (Edi Gathegi), Victoria (Rachelle Lefevre), and James (Cam Gigandet) and ask whether they can join the Cullens for a game. Thinking quickly, Carlisle agrees, saying that some of the family were leaving, and Laurent and the others can take their places-- a cue for Edward to get Bella safely away before she is detected. Everyone moves back into the field to take their places. But suddenly, the wind shifts so that James catches Bella's scent and realizes that there is a human in their midst. "You brought a snack," he sneers and heads toward Bella. Edward jumps between them. Laurent backs off and agrees to leave, taking James and Victoria with him. "Get Bella out of here," Carlisle warns Edward. As they quickly drive away, Edward explains to Bella that James is a tracker. Now that he's got her scent, he won't give up until he has her. Bella's only salvation is, if they can get to James first, rip him apart, and burn the pieces. Edward's plan is to catch a ferry to Vancouver, B.C.; but Bella insists on going home first, against Edward's better judgement. They plan a ruse to get Bella quickly in and out of the house without her father knowing what's happening. When Bella gets home, she runs into the house and slams the front door, shouting, "It's over!" at Edward. She then informs her father that she's got to get away from here...now! She packs a nightbag and, against her father's protests, gets in the truck (where Edward is waiting), and they drive away. Unfortunately, James has already tracked Bella to Charlie's house and is on their trail. First, they stop at the Cullens' house, where Laurent has shown up to warn them about James and Victoria. The plan now is for Alice and Jasper to drive Bella south, while the others, including Rosalie and Esme dressed in Bella's clothes, attempt to create a false trail through the woods. It doesn't take long, however, for James to realize that he's been duped. When James changes his course, Alice senses the change and has a vision of James heading to a ballet studio in Phoenix where Bella once took lessons. While Jasper and Alice check them into a hotel in Phoenix, Bella gets a call on her cellphone from her mother, frantically worried about her. Suddenly, James comes on the line and informs Bella that he got her Phoenix address from Forks High School and arrived there just as her worried mother also got there. If Bella wants to save Renée's life, she must ditch Jasper and Alice and meet James in her old ballet studio. Bella takes a taxi to the studio; but, when she gets there, she finds that it was a trick. James got an old movie from her house, and it was only Renée's voice Bella was hearing. James then taunts her further by
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threatening to film their "time together" to break Edward's heart. As the camera rolls, James bats Bella around the room, then breaks her leg. Suddenly, Edward shows up, having gotten there faster than the others because of his greater speed. With their vampire strength, James and Edward toss each other around the room, breaking mirrors and windows with the impact of their bodies. At one point, James manages to swoop down in Bella and bite her arm. Just then, Carlisle, Alice, Emmett, and Jasper show up. Alice races to Bella's side, while Carlisle pulls Edward off James, telling him that Bella needs him more. Overpowered by the smell of Bella's blood, Alice asks Carlisle to take over for her. While Carlisle bends over Bella, Alice breaks James' neck; and she, Jasper, and Emmett start a fire to burn his body. Carlisle says that Bella's femoral artery is severed and she's losing a lot of blood...but even more important is the fact that she's been bitten, and the vampire venom has begun to affect her. Edward has a decision to make...either let the change happen or suck out the venom. Edward refuses to allow the change, so he decides to suck out the venom even though it means that he might not be able to stop. When Bella awakens, she is in the hospital, her mother at her side and Edward asleep in a chair. Bella claims not to remember anything that happened, so Renée tells her how Edward and his father came down from Forks to persuade her to return; and, when Bella went to see them at their hotel, she tripped, fell down two flights of stairs, broke her leg, went through a window, and lost a lot of blood. When Renée leaves to get Charlie, who's waiting in the hospital cafeteria, Edward "wakes up". He tells Bella that they took care of James and that Victoria ran off. Then he lowers the boom. He wants Bella to move to Jacksonville with her mother so that she can't be hurt anymore by her association with him. Bella refuses. Bella moves back to Forks with her dad. With her leg still in a cast, Bella attends the prom with Edward. When Edward goes off to park the car, Jacob sits down next to Bella. He tells her that his father wants her to break up with Edward and that he sent a warning: "We'll be watching you." Bella laughs. Later, as Bella and Edward dance in the gazebo, she asks him why he didn't let her turn. "If you just let the venom spread," she says, "I could be like you by now." She informs him that she's made the decision to be with him forever and offers him her neck. Edward bends over to bite her neck but ends up simply kissing it. "Is it not enough just to have a long and happy life with me?" he asks. "For now," Bella replies. From a window overlooking the gazebo, Victoria watches Bella and Edward kiss. She turns away, lets down her hair, and smiles to herself.

Remember Me (2010)
Synopsis: In the romantic drama Remember Me, Robert Pattinson plays Tyler, a rebellious young man in New York City who has had a strained relationship with his... In the romantic drama Remember Me, Robert Pattinson plays Tyler, a rebellious young man in New York City who has had a strained relationship with his father (Pierce Brosnan) ever since tragedy separated their family. Tyler doesn't think anyone can possibly understand what he is going through, until the day he meets Ally (Emilie de Ravin) through an unusual twist of fate. Love was the last thing on his mind, but as her spirit unexpectedly heals and inspires him, he begins to fall for her. Through their love, he begins to find happiness and meaning in his life. But soon, hidden secrets are revealed, and the circumstances that brought them together slowly threaten to tear them apart. Remember Me is an unforgettable story about the power of love, the strength of family, and the importance of living passionately and treasuring every day of one's life. Starring: Robert Pattinson, Emilie De Ravin, Chris Cooper, Pierce Brosnan, Lena Olin, Tate Ellington, Ruby Jerins, Gregory Jbara, Meghan Markle, Chris McKinney, Kate Burton, Caitlyn Paige Rund, Chris Clawson, Kevin P. McCarthy, Moises Acevedo, Noel Rodriguez, Athena Currey, Angela Pietropinto, Lee Brock, Emily Wickersham, Kelli Barrett, Jon Trotsky, Drew Leary, Bob Coletti, Scott Burik, William Cote Kruschwitz, Douglas Crosby, Scott Nicholson, Tricia Paoluccio, Peyton Roi List, Morgan Turner, Olga Merediz, Ebrahim Abe Jaffer, David Anzuelo, Sandor Tecsy, Justin Grace, Michael Hobbs, David Wilson Barnes, Emily Godshall, Jane Harnick, Andrea Navedo, Bill Burns, Leno Olin Director: Allen Coulter Tyler, a rebellious young man in New York City, has a strained relationship with his father ever since tragedy separated their family. Tyler didn't think anyone could possibly understand what he was going through until the day he met Ally through an unusual twist of fate. Love was the last thing on his mind, but as her spirit unexpectedly heals and inspires him, he begins to fall for her. Through their love, he begins to find happiness and meaning in his life. But soon, hidden secrets are revealed, and the circumstances that brought them together slowly threaten to tear them apart. Remember Me is an unforgettable story about the power of love, the strength of family, and the importance of living passionately and treasuring every day of one's life.
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In the romantic drama Remember Me, Robert Pattinson plays Tyler, a rebellious young man in New York City who has a strained relationship with his father (Pierce Brosnan) ever since tragedy separated their family. Tyler didn't think anyone could possibly understand what he was going through until the day he met Ally (Emilie de Ravin) through an unusual twist of fate. Love was the last thing on his mind, but as her spirit unexpectedly heals and inspires him, he begins to fall for her. Through their love, he begins to find happiness and meaning in his life. Soon, hidden secrets are revealed, tragedy lingers in the air, as the circumstances that brought them together threaten to tear them apart. Set in the summer of 2001, Remember Me is a story about the power of love, the strength of family, and the importance of living passionately and treasuring every day of one's life.

Couples Retreat (2009)
Director: Peter Billingsley Synopsis: Four couples settle into a tropical-island resort for a vacation. While one of the couples is there to work on the marriage, the others fail to... Four couples settle into a tropical-island resort for a vacation. While one of the couples is there to work on the marriage, the others fail to realize that participation in the resort's therapy sessions is not optional. Starring: Vince Vaughn, Jason Bateman, Faizon Love, Jon Favreau, Malin Akerman, Kristen Bell, Kristin Davis, Kali Hawk, Tasha Smith, Carlos Ponce, Peter Serafinowicz, Jean Reno, Temuera Morrison, Jonna Walsh, Gattlin Griffith, Colin Baiocchi, Vernon Vaughn, Jersey Jim, Paul Boese, Phillip Jordan, Daniel Theodore, John Michael Higgins, Charlotte Cornwell, Ken Jeong, Amy Hill, Karen Shenaz David, Alyssa Julya Smith, Alexis Knapp, Joy Bisco, Janna Fassaert, Xavier Tournaud, Dana Fox, Justin Deeley, Scott Burn, Micah Mason, Yann Marequa, Sacha Perreault, Christophe Santoro, Zofia Moreno, Steve Byrne, Brendan Wayne, David Merhab, Bily Loa, Chu Vang, Jeremy Olson, Bronx Style Bob, J-Ray Hochfield, Hanna Brophy, Lyndsay Magellan, Marketta Janska, Chantelle Barry, James Ferris, Jordann Kimley, Jon Fleming This movie focuses on 4 couples: * The married with two young kids Dave & Ronnie (Vince Vaughn & Malin Akerman). * The hyper-organized couple who cannot conceive Jason & Cynthia (Jason Bateman & Kristen Bell). * The married since they were in high school couple Joey & Lucy (Jon Favreau & Kristin Davis). * The recently divorced Shane (Faizon Love) and his new 20 year old girl friend, Trudy (Kali Hawk). We see each of these couples go through their trials Ronnie is trying to remodel the house while Dave, who sells Guitar Hero, is uninterested. Lucy and Joey cheat on one another and seem to be waiting for the day their daughter goes off to college so they no longer have to pretend their marriage is real (though they do give good parenting advice to their daughter). Shane wants to buy a motorcycle to keep up with his new girlfriend. Jason and Cynthia are preparing a PowerPoint to show their friends, and Jason insists on checking Cynthias work. They set up their presentation at Ronnie & Daves house during one of the kids birthday party. The friends (minus Trudy, shes downstairs watching the magician with the kids) are all afraid theyre going to see another video about ball cancer but instead they see an island getaway. This paradise offers marital problem-solving, which the others are less keen on, but Jason and Cynthia drop the bomb that they are thinking of divorce, and ask their friends to please take the trip with them, because if four couples sign up, they can get the discounted group rate. Shane, Joey and Lucy seem to like the idea, but Dave and Ronnie argue that they simply cannot drop out of their lives right now, with all theyve got going on. Later on, Jason sneaks into Dave and Ronnies house, waking up everyone to plead with him to help him save his marriage. The kids say they overheard and they dont want their parents to get divorced, so they called Grandpa and he will come watch them. The couples are off. They take a boat out to the Eden resort, and find out that their destination is Eden West, a couples skill-building retreat. Eden East, the other side of the island, is a singles bacchanalia with all the pleasures the flesh could want. Joey and Lucy are both intrigued by this other side of the island. They get to their cabins, marvel at the scenery and agree that this could be nice. The couples join at dinner and are told by Sctanley (with-a-c) that they can either have all the activities of the island (including the couples therapy) or none of it at all. After eating a delicious dinner, they decide it cant hurt to talk to a therapist for a little bit and then get on some jet-skis. They go back to their rooms and Joey tries to pleasure himself to a picture of a girl from the Eden East brochure, but is interrupted by a room service waiter. The next morning, the couples meet Marcel, who has a plan for each of them. They will come to better understand each other in their marriage and find their spirit animal. They face each other and remove their masks, stripping down to their underwear (or in Shanes case, absolutely nothing) and telling each other that they love their bodies. Then it is time for therapy. One of the therapists is Ken Jeong, and he gets the pleasure of seeing Jason and
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Cynthia. Jason asks him if they have a better or worse chance of making it than other couples hes seen. He even pulls out his fingers in the shape of a gun and tries to get the therapist to give them a number from 1 to 10, but the therapist tells him to holster it. Dave and Ronnie go into their session feeling pretty good about themselves, but the therapist makes them think that maybe theyre just surviving instead of living and being happy together (a theme that goes on for the rest of the movie). Next is a visit with the sharks, where Jason spills the bucket of chum on Dave and Dave receives a minor scratch. Meanwhile, Trudy and Shane went on a bike ride, and Shane is struggling to keep up, which makes him start to realize his limitations in keeping up with her. Lucy and Joey go to get a couples massage, but they end up in different rooms, with masseurs of the opposite sex. Lucys masseuse is gay, and Joeys masseuse turns him on but tells him hes not getting a Happy Ending so he asks her to leave so he can calm himself. That night at dinner, Trudy is mad at Shane, saying he promised her a fun vacation and they havent partied or anything. He consoles her by saying theyre going to have sex in the room, and they leave. Ronnie wants to hike to a waterfall she heard about, a place thats supposed to be really romantic, but Dave is too busy being a baby about his shark attack and heads to bed alone. The next day starts with Yoga, with an instructor who is very touchy feely, and all about encouragement by patting on the rear (men and women). Lucy obviously finds him attractive, asking him to help her go into a deep stretch that involves a sexual looking position. Later at the spa, Ronnie ask Lucy what she thought she was doing, and how would she feel if Joey cheated on her. At Jason and Cynthias therapy session, we learn that Jason blames Cynthia for the fact that she cannot get pregnant. Jason talks to the guys about how sex is so routine and how it is frustrating. Marcel tells the group that they must gather at the beach before sunrise the next morning, and not to eat or drink anything too late. Back at the cabins, Shane discovers that Trudy is missing. They decide she must have gone to Eden East to have some fun. Joey, whos been trying to figure out a way to get to Eden East since they got here, decides theyll take the canoes to try and rescue Trudy. Jason is against the idea, since hes a very follow the rules kind of guy, but they remind him that Marcel said they must all be there, so without Trudy theyd be breaking the rules anyway. Jason goes along, and criticizes Cynthias rowing. A storm suddenly comes up and Jason and Cynthia capsize, which of course was Cynthias fault as well. Finally, Cynthia jumps out of their canoe and swims the rest of the way to shore. She tells Jason that she is sick of being blamed for everything, and that shes done. She runs off into the woods, and the other girls follow her, telling the boys theyll meet up at the giant party. They boys go off and start discussing one anothers problems. Jason is too controlling, and blames Cynthia for everything. Shane should never have tried to be with someone so young, he should have made his marriage work. Joey wants a wife who will listen to all his stories and problems but he doesnt want to listen to anything she says. They do a very funny bit about going to Applebees all by yourself and having no one to talk to. Daves wife loves him, and just wants him to be involved, and he cant seem to find the energy or the attention. Kids and work and the remodel have gotten in the way of their being happy with one another. Meanwhile, theyve stumbled upon what they think to be an empty cabin The girls talk about how at least Cynthia tries to make it work, while it seems like Lucy has just given up completely. They come to a clearing, where we see the waterfall Ronnie was talking about, and she laments that she cant be here with Dave. The Yoga instructor swims up from the other side of the island (naked) and offers them some island made sweet rum. Lucy and Cynthia want to cut loose and party, while Ronnie just wants to find Trudy and the boys and get back to the other side. The boys discover that the cabin is not abandoned; it is actually the staff quarters, where Sctanley is playing Guitar Hero while the other guys watch. Sctanley threatens to call Marcel on the boys, but Dave makes a bet if Sctanley can beat him at Guitar Hero, he can call Marcel or take Daves bribe. If Dave wins, he gets to keep his money and Sctanley will help them get to Eden East. Dave of course wins and Sctanley gives them directions. A few things happen at this party. Joey goes off with some young hot girls, saying that since he got married right after high school he never got to be young and have fun. Shane finds Trudy, and tells her that hes sorry, and she should go off and enjoy being 20. He is then found by his ex-wife, who says that she thought she wanted more out of life than just being with Shane. She tells him that she loves him, and wants to be with him again. Ronnie gets tired of the partying, and finds Dave, who takes her to the waterfall, and they talk about the fact that theyve stopped paying attention to each other. Cynthia and Jason reconcile, and Joey sees Lucy dancing with the yoga instructor and gets jealous, realizing he still loves her. He punches the yogi out (saying Encouragement) and tells his wife he cheated on her. She yells that she cheated on him, and they yell at each other about going to Applebees and kiss and make up. The couples return to Eden West, after sun-up, and Marcel is angry that they did not follow the rules. Dave tells
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Marcel that they worked out all their problems and they dont need him to give them anymore couples skill-building, and Marcel smiles and agrees. He gives them woodcarvings of their spirit animals (Rabbit, wolf, honeybee, and donkey) and they go jet skiing.

The Virginity Hit (2010)
Synopsis: Four guys, one camera, and their experience chronicling the exhilarating and terrifying rite of passage: losing your virginity. As these guys help... Four guys, one camera, and their experience chronicling the exhilarating and terrifying rite of passage: losing your virginity. As these guys help their buddy get laid, they'll have to survive friends with benefits, Internet hookups, even porn stars during an adventure that proves why you will always remember your first. Starring: Matt Bennett, Jacob Davich, Zack Pearlman Director: Huck Botko , Andrew Gurland

Pride & Prejudice (2005)
Synopsis: The classic tale of love and values unfolds in the class-conscious England of the late 18th century. The five Bennet sisters -- including... The classic tale of love and values unfolds in the class-conscious England of the late 18th century. The five Bennet sisters -- including strong-willed Elizabeth and young Lydia -- have all been raised by their mother with one purpose in life: finding a husband. When a wealthy bachelor takes up residence in a nearby mansion, the Bennets are abuzz. Amongst the man's sophisticated circle of friends, surely there will be no shortage of suitors for the Bennet sisters. But when Elizabeth meets up with the handsome and -- it would seem -snobbish Mr. Darcy, the battle of the sexes is joined. Starring: Keira Knightley, Matthew MacFadyen, Brenda Blethyn, Donald Sutherland, Tom Hollander, Rosamund Pike, Jena Malone, Judi Dench, Kelly Reilly, Claudie Blakley, Peter Wight, Rupert Friend, Tamzin Merchant, Cornelius Booth, Sylvester Morand, Rosamund Stephen, Janet Whiteside, Sinead Matthews, Roy Holder, Megan Owen, Samantha Bloom, Moya Brady, Pip Torrens, Jay Simpson, Penelope Wilton, Carey Mulligan, Talulah Riley, Simon Woods Director: Joe Wright In class-conscious England near the close of the 18th century, the five Bennet sisters--Elizabeth, or Lizzie, Jane, Lydia, Mary, and Kitty--have been raised well aware of their mother's fixation on finding them husbands and securing set futures. The spirited and intelligent Elizabeth, however, strives to live her life with a broader perspective, as encouraged by her doting father. When wealthy bachelor Mr. Bingley takes up residence in a nearby mansion, the Bennets are abuzz. Amongst the man's sophisticated circle of London friends and the influx of young militia officers, surely there will be no shortage of suitors for the Bennet sisters. Eldest daughter Jane, serene and beautiful, seems poised to win Mr. Bingley's heart. For her part, Lizzie meets with the handsome and--it would seem--snobbish Mr. Darcy, and the battle of the sexes is joined. Their encounters are frequent and spirited yet far from encouraging. Lizzie finds herself even less inclined to accept a marriage proposal from a distant cousin, Mr. Collins, and--supported by her father--stuns her mother and Mr. Collins by declining. When the heretofore goodnatured Mr. Bingley abruptly departs for London, devastating Jane, Lizzie holds Mr. Darcy culpable for contributing to the heartbreak. But a crisis involving youngest sister Lydia soon opens Lizzie's eyes to the true nature of her relationship with Mr. Darcy.

Nine (2009)
Synopsis: "Nine" is a vibrant and provocative musical that follows the life of world famous film director Guido Contini as he reaches a creative and personal... "Nine" is a vibrant and provocative musical that follows the life of world famous film director Guido Contini as he reaches a creative and personal crisis of epic proportion, while balancing the numerous women in his life including his wife, his mistress, his film star muse, his confidant and costume designer, an American fashion journalist, the whore from his youth and his mother. Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Marion Cotillard, Penelope Cruz, Kate Hudson, Nicole Kidman, Judi Dench, Sophia Loren, Fergie, Ricky Tognazzi, Giuseppe Cederna, Valerio Mastandrea, Elio Germano, Martina Stella, Roberto Nobile, Andrea Di Stefano, Roberto Citran, Roberta Mastromichele, Francesca Fanti, Enzo Cilenti, Marcello Magni, Anna-Maria Everett, Francesco De Vito, Remo Remotti, Michele Alhaique, Giuseppe Spitaleri, Damiano Bisozzi, Mario Vernazza, Vincent Riotta, Simone Cappotto, Alessia Piovan, Anna Safroncik, Giacomo Valdameri, Eleonora Scopelliti, Ilaria Cavola, Shannon Belcastro, Jean Martin, Joey Pizzi,
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Director: Rob Marshall Nine tells the story of Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis), a world famous film director as he confronts an epic midlife crisis with both creative and personal problems. He must balance the many women of his life, including his wife (Marion Cotillard), his mistress (Penelope Cruz), his film star muse (Nicole Kidman), his confidant and costume designer (Judi Dench), an American fashion journalist (Kate Hudson), the whore from his youth (Fergie) and his mother (Sophia Loren). The original 1982 Broadway production of NINE, with music and lyrics by Maury Yeston, won five Tony Awards including Best Musical. Rob Marshall's "Chicago" won 6 Academy Awards. This film is Rob's latest foray into the world of Hollywood and perhaps his best to date. Based on the Fellini film 8 1/2 (which describes the number of films Guido has directed to date... he co-directed one for the 1/2)... this version simply is magical as it transforms reality into fantasy. Marshall is incredibly gifted in his wonderful choreography and the musical numbers are magical. Marshall himself said the most difficult part of translating a show into a film is that you have to weave the singing and dancing in seamlessly. It is breathtaking to watch that achievement in this musical on the screen. Marshall's use of black and white versus color and back are well conceived and executed tastefully. You never ask yourself why they are now singing and dancing. You sit back and watch the dance numbers take shape in what is now bigger than life. The sand number in particular was spectacular and you wonder how the dancers ever could get through the number with the sand swirling around the set. This is simply a wonderfully conceived musical which will take you into the mind of the "maestro" director Guido and transport you into a wonderful state of mind for nearly two hours. To have Dame Judy Dench, Penelope Cruz, Fergie, Kate Hudson (yes, she can sing and dance), Nicole Kidman, the still beautiful Sophia Loren (so they used filters!), and Academy Award winner Marion Cotillard, in one cast is a visual treat. Each and every one of the ladies adds to Guido's enigma... and how to put the pieces back together so he can direct yet another movie is what keeps this movie so enticing. Really brilliant job by Rob Marshall who shares the praise with the late Anthony Minghella, who Marshall said handed him the script just before Minghella entered the hospital. Marshall is effusive in his praise of Minghella's contribution to this movie.

L'Avventura (The Adventure) (1960)
Synopsis: Considered by many to be his masterpiece, L’Avventura positioned Michelangelo Antonioni as an international talent. What appears to be a search for a... Considered by many to be his masterpiece, L’Avventura positioned Michelangelo Antonioni as an international talent. What appears to be a search for a missing person is actually an examination of alienation and self-discovery found along a voyage through the morally decadent world of the idle rich. Less concerned with a smooth plotline, Antonioni tells his story through the use of symbolic images and flawless character development. Using 'real time’ camera shots and rich, landscape imagery, Michelangelo Antonioni creates an unpredictable world where nothing is ever resolved. Ironically, what makes L’Avventura so unpredictable is the high level of realism portrayed by each character and their environments. This isn’t your packaged, formulaic film with a happy ending. A tough one to watch but well worth it...and it gets better and better with repeat viewings. L’Avventura is quintessential Antonioini. Not to be missed. --Rob Bracco Starring: Gabriele Ferzetti, Monica Vitti, Lea Massari, Dominique Blanchar, Renzo Ricci, Dorothy de Poliolo, James Addams, Lelio Luttazzi, Giovanni Petrucci, Renato Pinciroli, Esmeralda Ruspoli Director: Michelangelo Antonioni A group of rich Italians head out on a yachting trip to a deserted volcanic island in the Mediterranean. When they are about to leave the island, they find Anna, the main character up to this point, has gone missing. Sandro, Anna's boyfriend, and Claudia, Anna's friend, try without success to find her. While looking for the missing friend, Claudia and Sandro develop an attraction for each other. When they get back to land, they continue the search with no success. Sandro and Claudia proceed to become lovers, and all but forget about the missing Anna. Written by Dork <[email protected]> The wealthy Anna is not sure about her feelings with her lover Sandro. While in a yacht trip with her upper class friends including her best friend Claudia in the Sicily coast, the group decides to visit a desert volcanic island. When the weather changes and they have to leave the island, they note that Anna has vanished. Claudia, Sandro and another friend stay in the island during the night trying to find Anna, while the rest of the group returns. On the next morning, they bring the coast guard and Anna is not found. Along the next days, Sandro and Claudia search Anna in the most different places in Italy and develop an attraction for each other, becoming lovers.

L'Eclisse (1962), aka The Eclipse
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Plot synopsis The conclusion of Michelangelo Antonioni?s informal trilogy on modern malaise, L?eclisse (The Eclipse) tells the story of a young woman (Monica Vitti) who leaves one lover (Francisco Rabal) only to drift into a relationship with another (Alain Delon). Using the architecture of Rome as a backdrop for the couple?s doomed affair, Antonioni reaches the apotheosis of his modernist style, returning to his favorite themes: alienation and the difficulty of finding connections in an increasingly mechanized world. In the suburb of Rome, the translator Vittoria breaks her engagement with her boyfriend, the writer Ricardo, after a troubled night. Vittoria goes to downtown to meet her mother, who is addicted in Stock Market, and she meets the broker Piero in a day of crash in the Stock Market. The materialist Piero and the absent Vittoria begins a monosyllabic relationship.

Michelangelo Antonioni - La Notte (1961)
Synopsis: La Notte is another of Michelangelo Antonioni's cinematic interrupted journeys. Just as no one solved the central mystery in Antonioni's L'Avventura,... La Notte is another of Michelangelo Antonioni's cinematic interrupted journeys. Just as no one solved the central mystery in Antonioni's L'Avventura, neither does anyone truly enjoy the literary party that is La Notte's centerpiece. The party is being thrown to celebrate the publication of author Marcello Mastrioanni's new novel. But before he even reaches the door of the house, Mastrioanni's evening is ruined when his wife Jeanne Moreau announces suddenly she is disgusted with him--this reaction evidently triggered by an earlier visit to a dying friend. Moreau skips out on the party to wander the streets, searching for...for what? Meanwhile, Mastrioanni tries to inaugurate an empty affair with Monica Vitti, the daughter of a wealthy industrialist. The very elements that drive Mastrioanni and Moreau apart at the beginning of the film reunite them at the end. Maybe. L'Avventura and La Notte were the first two chapters in Antonioni's barreness and alienation trilogy; the third, L'Eclisse, was released two years later.~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide Starring: Marcello Mastroianni, Jeanne Moreau, Monica Vitti, Bernhard Wicki, Maria Pia Luzi, Rosy Mazzacurati, Vincenzo Corbella, Ugo Fortunati, Gitt Magrini, Guido A. Marsan, Giorgio Negro, Roberta Speroni Director: Michelangelo Antonioni Description: A day in the lifes of a writer and his wife. They attend a party where they mingle with the rich and powerful. He is offered a job, to write the history of a firm and in this way "educate" the workers. The workers of a constructing firm described by its owner as his own "work of art". Both get enamored by strangers and see the opportunity to end their marriage. Their partaking in the dolce vita and silly games of the burgeoise and their attempt to reassert themsleves in the world of the rich leads to a deep crisis in their relationship that forces them to confront the emptiness in their lifes, the detrimental effect of their monotonous urban habits and the loss of true sentiments in a world overrun by material values. An exquisite work of art by Michelangelo Antonioni. In Milan, after visiting dear friend Tommaso Garani that is terminal in a hospital, the writer Giovanni Pontano goes to a party for the release of his last book, and his wife Lydia Pontano visits the place where she lived many years ago. In the night, they go to a night-club, and later to a party in the mansion of the tycoon Mr. Gherardini. Along the night, Giovanni flirts with Valentina Gherardini, the daughter of the host, and then he receives a proposal to work for him in the area of communication and write the history of his company. Meanwhile, Lydia flirts with the playboy Roberto. Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Giovanni, a successful writer, and his wife Lydia visit their friend Tommaso who is dying in hospital. After their visit Giovanni goes to a promotion party for his new book, Lydia visits their old living area of Milano. They meet back at home and decide to visit the party of a billionaire, who wants Giovanni to write a book about the history of his company. Both have flirts, and they both notice this fact as events take them into the morning.

Luis Bunuel - Tristana (1970)
Description Spain, in the 1920s. After the death of her mother, a beautiful young woman, Tristana, becomes the ward of a respectable but impecunious aristocrat, Don Lope. The latter refuses to work for a living, deeming this to be beneath his dignity, and spends most of his time voicing his socialist and anti-religious opinions, often with a large dose of hypocrisy. He secretly takes advantage of his ward whilst publicly making great virtue of his self-restraint. A rift quickly develops between Tristana and Don Lope when the young woman meets and falls in love with an artist, Horacio. Tristana is driven by Lope?s jealousy to elope with the artist, but returns a few years later, grievously ill, begging to stay in Lope?s house?

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When the young woman Tristana's mother dies, she is entrusted to the guardianship of the well-respected though old Don Lope. Don Lope is well-liked and well-known because of his honorable nature, despite his socialistic views about business and religion. But Don Lope's one weakness is women, and he falls for the innocent girl in his charge, seduces her, makes her his lover, though all the while explaining to her that she is as free as he. But when she acts on this freedom, Don Lope must deal with the consequences of his world-view.

Mujeres al Borde de un Ataque de Nervios (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown) (1988)
Synopsis: A wickedly amusing look at modern love through the relationships of several neurotic women. A wickedly amusing look at modern love through the relationships of several neurotic women Starring: Carmen Maura, Antonio Banderas, Fernando Guillén Cuervo, Julieta Serrano, María Barranco, Rossy de Palma, Kiti Manver, Chus Lampreave, Yayo Calvo, Loles Leon, Ángel de Andrés López, Agustin Almodovar, Lupe Barrado, José Marco, Imanol Uribe, Guillermo Montesinos, Gabriel Latorre, Fernando Guillen Director: Pedro Almodóvar A woman's lover leaves her, and she tries to contact him to find out why he's left. She confronts his wife and son, who are as clueless as she. Meanwhile her girlfriend is afraid the police are looking for her because of her boyfriend's criminal activities. They talk to a female lawyer, who turns out to be the lover's new lover, and everyone's path keeps crossing each other's in a very complicated and confusing manner.

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972)
Synopsis: Petra von Kant is a successful fashion designer -- arrogant, caustic, and self-satisfied. She mistreats Marlene (her secretary, maid, and... Petra von Kant is a successful fashion designer -- arrogant, caustic, and selfsatisfied. She mistreats Marlene (her secretary, maid, and co-designer). Enter Karin, a 23-year-old beauty who wants to be a model. Petra falls in love with Karin and invites her to move in. The rest of the film deals with the emotions of this affair and its aftermath. Fassbinder tells his story in a series of 5 or 6 long scenes with extended uses of a single camera shot and deep focus. Starring: Margit Carstensen, Irm Hermann, Eva Mattes, Hanna Schygulla, Gisela Fackelday, Katrin Schaake, Gisela Fackeldey, Gosta Winbergh Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder Petra von Kant is a successful fashion designer -- arrogant, caustic, and self-satisfied. She mistreats Marlene (her secretary, maid, and co-designer). Enter Karin, a 23-year-old beauty who wants to be a model. Petra falls in love with Karin and invites her to move in. The rest of the film deals with the emotions of this affair and its aftermath. Fassbinder tells his story in a series of 5 or 6 long scenes with extended uses of a single camera shot and deep focus.

Black Book (2006) Zwartboek (original title)
Israel 1956. Rachel, a Jew, rather unexpectedly meets an old friend at the kibbutz where is she working as a teacher. It brings back memories of her experiences in The Netherlands during the war, memories of betrayal. September 1944. Rachel is in trouble when her hiding place is bombed by allied troops. She gets in contact with a man from the resistance and joins a group of Jews who are to be smuggled across the Biesbosch by boat to the freed South Netherlands. Germans from a patrol boat murder them all however. Only Rachel is able to escape. She is rescued by a resistance group under the leadership of Gerben Kuipers. When Kuipers' son is captured after trying to smuggle weapons, he asks Rachel to seduce SS-hauptsturmführer Ludwig Müntze. Soon she will find out the attack in the Biesbosch wasn't a coincidence. Written by Arnoud Tiele ([email protected]) A young Jewish girl is hiding from the Nazi's during the second world war in The Netherlands. After her hiding place is literally blown, she escapes with her rescuer, a young sailer. Thesame night, as she is hiding with the sailer, she is warned by the dutch resistance that their hiding place is located by the Germans and they're on their way. They run the next day with this man to cross over to liberated areas. That night the boat sails onto a trap of the Germans and they kill every person on it. Rachel escapes and joins the resistance. Under the false name Ellis de Vries she meets a SS-official Ludwig Muntze on a train smuggling weapons. After the son of the resistance leader is captured the meeting comes in handy. She goes to the head quarters to meet him again and gain his trust. He soons falls for her and joins his office as a spy. But when someone within the resistance betrays her she is now seen as the bad
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guy from both sides. All that's left to do is run with the man she learned to love and find a way to prove her innocence by finding the real betrayer. Written by Marieke van Lith Set during the end of WWII, Black Book is the story of a Dutch Jewish girl who narrowly survives the war in Holland. She joins the resistance to find out who betrayed her family after all of them were killed in an attempt to reach the liberated south. Written by Clockwork Pictures In 1944, in the occupied Holland, the Jewish Rachel Stein is hiding from the Nazis in a house of a Christian family. When her hiding place is bombed, Rachel escapes by chance, but she is found by a stranger called Van Gein that invites her to join a group of Jews in a boat to escape to Belgium on the next night. He advises her to bring money and jewels for her survival and very few luggage. Rachel visits lawyer and friend of her family Wim Small that gives her a large amount for her travel. When she meets the refugees, she finds that her family is in the group. While crossing the swamp, a Nazi patrol boat arrives and kills the fugitives, but Rachel is the only one to survive. Later she joins a cell of resistance leaded by the Dutch Gerben Kuipers under the identity of Ellis de Vries; after meeting the Nazi Officer Ludwig Müntze in a train, Kuipers proposes Ellis to work as a spy seducing Müntze. During her assignment, Rachel recognizes Günther Franken as the commander of the attack to the boat of refugees and later she discovers that the murders are part of a scheme with a traitor in the resistance team. Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

A Cool Dry Place (1999)
Synopsis: It's Kramer vs. Kramer for a new generation when struggling lawyer Russell (Vince Vaughn) gets dumped by his wife, Kate (Monica Potter). Russell... It's Kramer vs. Kramer for a new generation when struggling lawyer Russell (Vince Vaughn) gets dumped by his wife, Kate (Monica Potter). Russell promptly packs it up (his baggage includes a 4-year-old son) and hikes it to Kansas, where he soon falls in love with a corn-fed "natural girl," Beth (Joey Lauren Adams). But things get stickier than a hayfield in August when Kate turns up wanting custody of her son. Directed By: John N. Smith This is one of the best movies ever made about the realities of commitment. The characters in this movie reveal complex layers and committed lives. We love it that the dad lives out the job loss and child-care issues that usually appear in the woman’s role. We love it that the characters are intelligent and that we can learn something about deep bonding from a film that is so entertaining. We also love seeing a soft, caring relationship between a father and son. Vince Vaughn gives a stunning performance here, the best work we’ve seen from him.

Abohoman
Aniket (Deepankar De) is one of the finest filmmakers of Bengal, Deepti (Mamata Shankar), an actress, with whom he had fallen in love while casting in one of his films, had sacrificed her career for love and marriage. Apratim (Jisshu Sengupta) is their only son. They had been a perfect family. The plot thickens when Aniket auditions a young actress, Shikha (Ananya Chatterjee), who bears an uncanny resemblance to his wife when she was younger. Deepti enthusiastically begins to coach Shikha for her husband's film - so much so that Shikha becomes even more like the girl Deepti used to be and as a result the aging Aniket falls in love with Shikha, a woman as young as his son, despite the sadness and trouble it brings to his family. Synopsis: Abohomaan (or eternal) is the story of Aniket (Dipankar Dey), a great film director, who, early in his career had found the woman to play the lead role in his magnum opus film on Nati Binodini. Instead of making the film, he married her. His wife Deepti (Mamata Shankar), decides to forego her career and instead devotes herself to Aniket and his son Apratim (Jishu Sengupta). Then late in his career, Aniket comes across Shikha (Ananya Chatterjee), a young woman from a deprived backgroud, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Deepti when she was young and starts thinking of making Binodini again. Deepti too is struck by the resemblance and throws herself uninhibitedly into grooming Shikha, even coining her screen name (Srimati). But Aniket finds himself increasingly drawn to Shikha/Srimati and their affair causes immense stress to the family and in interpersonal relations in which no one remains untouched... Comments: The synopsis does not even begin to to explain the underlying theme of the film. The film has a very complex structure. When we start the film, Aniket has passed away and a good part of the film is devoted to his last days. Another section deals with the time Aniket meets Shikha and the third when thrir relationship tears apart the fabric of Aniket's home. Rituparno tells his story through a series of flashbacks, in which scenes are interwoven, not in a timed sequence, but as raw emotions overtake the protagonists. It is a complex interweave, a bit like a patchwork quilt, and the lay viewer will find it difficult to cut through the individual scenes and concentrate on the big picture. At the same time, the film is a study of how each character copes with the circumstances that he faces. It is also Rituparno's interpretation of the life of Nati Binodini and her relations with her teacher and muse Girish Chandra Ghosh. Rituparno's Binodini is not the heroic woman who sacrifices herself for the sake of theater, but also a cruel scheming woman, who seeks to establish herself above everything else. I did
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say the film is complex didn't I? I thought the screenplay overreached itself at times. It is replete with unnatural reactions and at times the detail work falters. Take for example two scenes. In his dying moments Deepti goes to Aniket - he had asked for Srimati and everyone thought it was Shikha, but Deepti who knows him better than anyone else, understands that it is really her that Aniket is referring to. In a brilliant sequence of wordplay, Aniket, in his dying moments, tells Deepti that their life together has been "Apratim" or incomparable and she understands. Yet she is shown as the embittered wife just after his death. The two sequences are not quite in synch. The complexity of the screenplay creates such discordant notes more than once. At other times, the reactions of the protagonists are a bit unnatural. I was particularly struck by the unrestrained behaviour of Tiya, Apratim's wife (Riya Sen). People in those circumstances do not behave hysterically and threaten to walk out even while the body of the deceased has not been taken to the cremation ground. They might do it a day or so later, but not just then. Acting is brilliant. I have never seen such nuanced acting from Dipankar De. Mamata Shankar is also brilliant. It must be one of her greatest roles. For me the revelation was Jishu Sengupta. His quiet restrained acting brings out the complex father-son realtionship with amazing clarity. Editing by Arghyakamal is superb. Camraworkis very good, if a trifle predictable. The music is great, complimenting the screenplay. Overall a brilliantly crafted film, in which the structure of the film has become a little more important than the story it seeks to tell. I don't think this is Rituparno's best. I liked Dosar more, for example. Nevertheless a very watchable film and one which makes you think at every stage.

A Short Film About Love (1988)
Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski In this ironic Polish seriocomedy, Tomek (Olaf Lubaszenko), a young shy postal worker, worships Magda (Grazyna Szapolowska) from afar -- literally, peering at her through spyglasses. She shatters his illusions about pure, ideal love by stating matter-of-factly that she believes only in sex. Despondent, he tries to forget her, and when this fails, he attempts to kill himself. Upon recovering from his botched suicide, Tomek is amazed to learn that Magda has become hopelessly infatuated with him. ######## 19-year-old Tomek whiles away his lonely life by spying on his opposite neighbour Magda through binoculars. She's an artist in her mid-thirties, and appears to have everything - not least a constant stream of men at her beck and call. But when the two finally meet, they discover that they have a lot more in common than appeared at first sight..

Wicker Park
Director: Paul McGuigan A love triangle has created and someone is going to feel the pain for sure. In the whole movie, you will go with suspense and excitement “what will be the next”. I would say: Best romantic suspense movie with lots of excitement.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)
Director: David Fincher David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, an adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's story, re-teams the director with Brad Pitt, who takes on the title role. What makes Button such a curious case is that when he is born in New Orleans just after World War I, he is already in his eighties, and proceeds to live his life aging in reverse. This sweeping film follows the character's unusual life into the 21st century as he experiences joy and sadness, loves lost and found, and the meaning of timelessness. Cate Blanchett co-stars along with Tilda Swinton, Elias Koteas, and Julia Ormond. ######### On the day that Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans, elderly Daisy Williams (nee Fuller) is on her deathbed in a New Orleans hospital. At her side is her adult daughter, Caroline. Daisy asks Caroline to read to her aloud the diary of Daisy's lifelong friend, Benjamin Button. Benjamin's diary recounts his entire extraordinary life, the primary unusual aspect of which was his aging backwards, being diagnosed with several aging diseases at birth and thus given little chance of survival, but who does survive and gets younger with time. Abandoned by his biological father, Thomas Button, after Benjamin's biological mother died in childbirth, Benjamin was raised by Queenie, a black woman and caregiver at a seniors home. Daisy's grandmother was a resident at that home, which is where she first met Benjamin. Although separated through the years, Daisy and Benjamin remain in contact throughout their lives...

A Walk To Remember:
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Director: Adam Shankman A love story about two North Carolina teens who are completely different but made the most beautiful romantic move in this movie. You must feel and enjoy each and every dialogue and line of this movie. Landon Carter was just like a normal teen who loves fun and care-free life until he met Jamie Sullivan. She completely changed his life and the last part of the movie when Landon started loving her and taking care of every single moment of Jamie is really an element to feel.

Serendipity:
Director: Peter Chelsom About a couple who met for the first time on a Christmas eve, fall in love and then separated. They believe that one day they will meet again and end up together and it happens. But many crazy moments in this movie about the crazy love and the fantasy make the movie more exciting. Jonathan Trager and Sara Thomas met while shopping for gloves in New York. Though buying for their respective lovers, the magic was right and a night of Christmas shopping turned into romance. Jon wanted to explore things further but Sara wasn't sure their love was meant to be. They decided to test fate by splitting up and seeing if destiny brought them back together... Many years later, having lost each other that night, both are engaged to be married. Still, neither can shake the need to give fate one last chance to reunite them. Jon enlists the help of his best man to track down the girl he can't forget starting at the store where they met. Sara asks her new age musician fiance for a break before the wedding and, with her best friend in tow, flies from California to New York hoping destiny will bring her soulmate back. Near-misses and classic Shakespearean confusion bring the two close to meeting a number of times but fate will have the final word on whether it was meant to be.

Truly Madly Deeply (1990)
Director: Anthony Minghella Once upon a time there were two people in love, their names were Nina and Jamie. They were even happy enough to be able to live happily ever after, (not often the case) and then Jamie died. Nina is left with a house full of rats and handymen, a job teaching foreigners English and an ache that fills the night sky. Once upon a time there were two people in love, their names were Nina and Jamie. They were even happy enough to be able to live happily ever after, (not often the case) and then Jamie died. Nina is left with a house full of rats and handymen, a job teaching foreigners English and an ache that fills the night sky. Written by Anonymous Nina is totally heartbroken at the death of her boyfriend Jamie, but is even more unprepared for his return as a ghost. At first it's almost as good as it used to be - hey, even the rats that infested her house have disappeared. But Jamie starts bringing ghostly friends home and behaving more and more oddly.

P.S. I Love You
Director: Richard LaGravenese Holly Kennedy is beautiful, smart and married to the love of her life - a passionate, funny, and impetuous Irishman named Gerry. So when Gerry's life is taken by an illness, it takes the life out of Holly. The only one who can help her is the person who is no longer there. Nobody knows Holly better than Gerry. So it's a good thing he planned ahead. Before he died, Gerry wrote Holly a series of letters that will guide her, not only through her grief, but in rediscovering herself. The first message arrives on Holly's 30th birthday in the form of a cake, and to her utter shock, a tape recording from Gerry, who proceeds to tell her to get out and "celebrate herself". In the weeks and months that follow, more letters from Gerry are delivered in surprising ways, each sending her on a new adventure and each signing off in the same way; P.S. I Love You. Holly's mother and best friends begin to worry that Gerry's letters are keeping Holly tied to the past... Written by Orange On a country road in Ireland over ten years ago, it was love at first sight for Holly, a lost young tourist (Academy Award® winner, Hilary Swank), and Gerry, a charming local lad (Gerard Butler). Hollys formidable mother, (Kathy Bates), disapproved of the couple, concerned that her spirited daughter was too young for marriage. In the years since, the once fearless Holly has become unsure of her own identity. When Gerry dies with a brain tumor and leaves Holly a widow just shy of her thirtieth birthday, her family and best friends (Lisa Kudrow, Gina Gershon) are concerned that she will never emerge from her takeout container-strewn Manhattan apartment. After weeks holed up watching old movies, a birthday cake and tape recording message from Gerry mysteriously arrives, marking the beginning of a series of letters instructing her to perform unusual requests. With the help of her girlfriends, Holly
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begins a year of wild adventures and a life journey that Gerry has planned for her, helping her to discover who she is without him and reminding her - p.s. I Love You. P.S. I Love You is based on the best-selling novel by Cecelia Ahern.

You've Got Mail[1998]
Director: Nora Ephron The owner of a large bookstore chain starts putting the owner of a small local bookstore out of business. Meanwhile they have been corresponding over the internet without knowing who either of them are. They can't stand each other in person but over the internet they are very attracted. He finds out who she is but she doesn't know. He starts to like her more but she still hates him. He has to fix it.

Dying Young (1991)
Director: EMILE ARDOLINO After she discovers that her boyfriend has betrayed her, Hilary O'Neil is looking for a new start and a new job. She begins to work as a private nurse for a young man suffering from blood cancer. Slowly, they fall in love, but they always know their love cannot last because he is destined to die. Written by Harald Mayr <[email protected]>

Sleeping with the Enemy (1991)
Director: Joseph Ruben Plot: Laura and Martin have been married for four years. They seem to be the perfect, happiest and most successful couple. The reality of their house- hold, however, is very different. Martin is an abusive and brutally obsessed husband. Laura is living her life in constant fear and waits for a chance to escape. She finally stages her own death, and flees to a new town and new identity. But when Martin finds out that his wife is not dead he will stop at nothing to find and kill her.

Dirty Dancing (1987)
DIRECTOR........ EMILE ARDOLINO STARRING........ JENNIFER GREY,PATRICK SWAYZE,JERRY ORBACH,CYNTHIA RHODES,JACK WESTON,JANE BRUCKER,KELLY BISHOP,LONNY PRICE,MAX CANTOR,CHARLES HONI COLES ... In the 1960s, Frances "Baby" Houseman, a sweet daddy's girl, goes with her family to a resort in upstate New York's Catskill Mountains. Baby has grown up in privileged surroundings and all expect her to go on to college, join the Peace Corps and save the world before marrying a doctor, just like her father. Unexpectedly, Baby becomes infatuated with the camp's dance instructor, Johnny, a man whose background is vastly different from her own. Baby lies to her father to get money to pay for an illegal abortion for Johnny's dance partner (Johnny is not the father). She then fills in as Johnny's dance partner and it is as he is teaching her the dance routine that they fall in love. It all comes apart when Johnny's friend falls seriously ill after her abortion and Baby gets her father, who saves the girl's life. He then learns what Baby has been up to, who with and worse - that he funded the illegal abortion. He bans his daughter from any further association with "those people". In the first deliberately willful action of her life, Baby later sneaks out to see Johnny - ostensibly to apologize for her father's rudeness - and ends up consummating her relationship with Johnny. A jealous fellow vacationer sees Baby sneaking out of Johnny's bungalow the next morning and in an act of retribution, tells management that he is responsible for a theft the evening before, knowing he would not furnish his real whereabouts. In an act of bravery, Baby states that Johnny is innocent, and alibis him by confessing that they were together all night. This revelation causes a huge rift in the family and Baby makes an impassioned speech to her angry and bereft father. At the closing night performances, and although he has been fired and banned from attending, Johnny returns and takes the stage to tell everyone about the woman whose faith in him and whose courage changed his life. They do one final show-stopping dance together. Baby's father learns that Johnny was not responsible for his partner's pregnancy and learns to accept that although his beloved daughter is transitioning to womanhood, she will always love him.

The Pursuit of Happyness
Will Smith stars in the inspirational true story of Chris Gardner, a San Francisco salesman who's struggling to make ends meet. When his girlfriend Linda (Thandie Newton) walks out, Chris is left to raise their 5-year-old son Christopher (Jaden Smith) on his own. Chris' determination finally pays off when he lands an unpaid internship in a
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brutally competitive stockbroker-training program, where only one in twenty interns will make the cut. But without a salary, Chris and his son are evicted from their apartment and are forced to sleep on the street, in homeless shelters and even behind the locked doors of a metro station bathroom. With self- confidence and the love and trust of his son, Chris Gardner rises above his obstacles to become a Wall Street legend.

Last Chance Harvey (2008)
Directed By: Joel Hopkins A disastrous trip to London proves to have a silver lining for a middle-aged American jingle writer in this romantic slice-of-life drama starring Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson. Harvey (Hoffman) is about to lose his unfulfilling dead-end job writing jingles when he boards a plane to attend his daughter's wedding in London. He hasn't turned out a memorable tune in some time, and should Harvey fail to come up with something catchy during his trip overseas, he knows that his boss (Richard Schiff) is ready and willing to let him go. Upon arriving in London, Harvey is devastated to learn that his daughter (Liane Balaban) has opted to have her stepfather (James Brolin) walk her down the aisle instead of him. And things are about to get worse, too. Harvey realizes that he won't be able to suppress his sadness through the whole reception, and makes a quick getaway in hopes of catching a plane back home. Perhaps if he can attend an important meeting on Monday morning, his boss will have some sympathy and grant him a momentary reprieve. No such luck, however, because when Harvey misses the flight and calls his boss to explain, he is fired over the phone. Later, at the airport bar, Harvey is drowning his sorrows when he strikes up a conversation with no-nonsense Office of National Statistics employee Kate (Thompson). Kate doesn't have much of a social life; most of her time outside of work is spent suffocating under the love of her smothering mother (Eileen Atkins). She's just gotten through a humiliating string of blind dates, and something about Harvey's situation and demeanor strikes a sympathetic chord in the lonely civil servant. Likewise, Kate's intelligence and compassion prove unexpectedly invigorating to Harvey. Both Harvey and Kate had always assumed that love had passed them by -- could this middle-aged romance be the glimmer of a new beginning?

The Green Mile
Director: Frank Darabont Miracles happen in unexpected places, even on death row at Cold Mountain Penitentiary. There John Coffey, a prisoner with supernatural powers, brings a sense of spirit and humanity to his guards and fellow inmates. Tom Hanks leads a stellar cast (including Michael Clarke Duncan as Coffey) in this emotional, uplifting story of guards and captives; husbands and wives; prisoners and a remarkable mouse named Mr. Jingles; and, on another level, of a moviemaker and his source. Frank Darabont returns after his 1994 directorial debut The Shawshank Redemption to adapt another Stephen King tale into a crowd-pleasing entertainment nominated for four Academy Awards?, including Best Picture.

Beaches Special Edition 1988 DvDrip[Eng]-greenbud1969
PLOT: When the New York child performer CC Bloom and San Fransisco rich kid Hillary meet in a holiday resort in Atlantic City, it marks the start of a lifetime friendship between them. The two keep in touch through letters for a number of years until Hillary, now a successful lawyer moves to New York to stay with struggling singer CC. The movie shows the various stages of their friendship and their romances including their love for the same man.

Saviour (1998)
Director: Predrag Antonijevic It all rotates around a hardened mercenary and a women he met and saved from his colleague. rest all is the outpour of human emotions, responsibilities and infatuation which let the story to an intertwined tragic end in the realistic aspiration. After producer Oliver Stone saw Serbian director Peter Antonijevic's political drama The Little One (1992), he sent him Robert Orr's screenplay, which Orr based on the true story of an American mercenary in Bosnia. Orr had been a photographer's assistant during the war. Thus, Antonijevic directed the first 100% American-funded film about the Yugoslav conflict, beginning with a Paris prologue: Former U.S. military official Joshua (Dennis Quaid) entered the Foreign Legion after his wife (Nastassja Kinski) was killed in Paris by Muslim fundamentalists. Six years later, in Bosnia during 1993, Joshua and his pal Peter (Stellan Skarsgard), fight together on the Serbian side. After Peter dies from a grenade tossed by a young girl, Joshua shoots another youth on the side of the enemy. In a prisoner exchange, psycho Serb Goran (Sergej Trifunovic), a Muslim-hater, and Joshua wind up with pregnant Vera (Natasa Ninkovic), victim of a Muslim rape. When Goran threatens to shoot her baby, Joshua kills Goran. After Vera rejects the child, her family turns against her, and Joshua drives mother and child to a refugee center. Eventually, Joshua attempts to get Vera and her baby out of the country, but they encounter death-dealing Croatian marauders. Filmed in Montenegro, Savior was shown at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival and the 1998 Sochi Film Festival.
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1993, Bosnia. Having seen his wife and son murdered by Muslim terrorists, Guy has become bitter and hard and is fighting as a mercenary for the Serbs. When a prisoner exchange sees his partner take a girl he knows and try to kill her and her unborn mixed child, Guy is forced to kill him to protect them. However he then finds himself in a bitter war with a woman and child that no one wants. I have seen this movie twice now and can find little to dislike about it, but also realise that it is not for a fun evening in with friends. The film is unrelentingly bleak and depressing as it is a look at the bitter and cruel war fought in Bosnia. The subject matter is framed around Guy, as a man who has been turned hard by the horror he has seen and it works well for this reason. We see it through the eyes of a man who has seen it all and has no more hurt left to feel. The film doesn't simply act out atrocities for us to watch but frames them within this story – however we know that nothing is made up or exaggerated in terms of the bigger picture. The film lacks any sort of traditional American cop-out (it's no spoiler to say that Guys wife and child don't turn out to be alive after all!), only the opening `this is why he's like this' 10 minutes are a little too neat and could have been dispensed with – I didn't need it to explain why he was dead inside, only that he had become it due to war – which was partly true. However this doesn't really take away from the film, only slightly weaken the character. The cast are pretty good but the film is 99% Quaid's. He gives a great performance which is subtle and very downbeat. His eyes are where most of the acting occurs and he does it very well – his character is very unsympathetic and has only a marginal redemption to look forward to but yet Quaid mixes it very well. Kinski is out of the film before her name has even appeared on screen, while Ninkovic does a good job, again despite a unsympathetic character. The rest of the cast are OK but hard to judge as much of the dialogue is in SerboCroatian and their performances are hard to judge. Faces such as Skarsgård add interest, but I did wonder why he had bothered for such a short time on screen. Overall this is not a fun film to rent on Friday night but a bleak anti-war film that will leave you in no doubt that the conflict in Bosnia (and perhaps everywhere else) is of no value when compared to the enormous cost in terms of human life and suffering.

My Sister's Keeper (2009)
Director: Nick Cassavetes In Los Angeles, the eleven year old Anna Fitzgerald seeks the successful lawyer Campbell Alexander trying to hire him to earn medical emancipation from her mother Sara that wants Anna to donate her kidney to her sister. She tells the lawyer the story of her family after the discovery that her older sister Kate has had leukemia; how she was conceived by in vitro fertilization to become a donor; and the medical procedures she has been submitted since she was five years old to donate to her sister. Campbell accepts to work pro bono and the obsessed Sara decides to go to court to force Anna to help her sister. ###### Director Nick Cassavetes collaborates with screenwriter Jeremy Leven (The Notebook) for this drama about a pair of parents who resort to unorthodox methods in order to save their young daughter's life, only to find their decision coming back to haunt them in a manner neither could have ever foreseen. Sara (Cameron Diaz) and Brian (Jason Patric) are coasting through life with their young son and daughter when tragedy threatens to tear the family apart. Suddenly, their baby girl falls ill, and her only hope for survival rests in her parents' ability to find a compatible bone marrow donor. Desperate to save their daughter's life at any cost, Sara and Brian conceive another child in hopes that the baby will be a genetic match. But that decision raises a series of moral and ethical questions that rapidly begin to erode the foundation of the once-happy couple's relationship. Incensed upon learning that she was brought into this world for the singular purpose of prolonging the life of her ailing older sister, the young girl (Abigail Breslin) ultimately decides to sue her parents for the rights to her own body. Alec Baldwin, Sofia Vassilieva, and Joan Cusack co-star.

Marley & Me[2008]
After their wedding, newspaper writers John and Jennifer Grogan move to Florida. In an attempt to stall Jennifer's "biological clock", John gives her a puppy. While the puppy Marley grows into a 100 pound dog, he loses none of his puppy energy or rambunctiousness. Meanwhile, Marley gains no self-discipline. Marley's antics give John rich material for his newspaper column. As the Grogans mature and have children of their own, Marley continues to test everyone's patience by acting like the world's most impulsive dog.
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Soon after their wedding, John and Jenny Grogan escape the brutal Michigan winters and relocate to a cottage in southern Florida, where they are hired as reporters for competing newspapers. At The Palm Beach Post, Jenny immediately receives prominent front-page assignments, while at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, John finds himself writing obituaries and two-paragraph articles about mundane news like a fire at the local garbage dump. When John senses Jenny is contemplating motherhood, his friend and co-worker Sebastian Tunney suggests the couple adopt a dog to see if they're ready to raise a family. From a litter of newborn yellow labrador retrievers they select Marley (named after reggae singer Bob Marley), who immediately proves to be incorrigible. They bring him to Ms. Kornblut (Kathleen Turner), who firmly believes any dog can be trained, but when Marley refuses to obey commands, she expels him from her class. Editor Arnie Klein offers John a twice-weekly column in which he can discuss the fun and foibles of everyday living. At first stumped for material, John realizes the misadventures of Marley might be the perfect topic for his first piece. Arnie agrees, and John settles into his new position. Marley continues to wreak havoc on the household, providing John with a wealth of material for his column, which becomes a hit with readers and helps increase the newspaper's circulation. Jenny becomes pregnant, but loses the baby early in her first trimester. She and John travel to Ireland for a belated honeymoon, leaving the rambunctious dog in the care of a young woman who finds him impossible to control, especially during the frequent thunderstorms that plague the area. Soon after returning from their vacation, Jenny discovers she is pregnant again, and this time she delivers a healthy boy, Patrick. When she has a second son, Connor, she opts to give up her job and become a stay-at-home mom, and the couple decides to move to a larger house in the safer neighborhood of Boca Raton, where Marley delights in swimming in the backyard pool. John and Jenny welcome a daughter, Colleen, to their family. Although she denies she is experiencing postpartum depression, Jenny exhibits all the symptoms, including a growing impatience with Marley and John, who asks Sebastian to care for the dog when Jenny insists they give him away. She quickly comes to realize he has become an indispensable part of the family and agrees he can stay. John celebrates his 40th birthday. Increasingly disenchanted with his job, he decides to accept a position as a reporter with The Philadelphia Inquirer with Jenny's blessing, and the family moves to a farm in rural Pennsylvania. Life is idyllic until the aging Marley begins to show signs of arthritis and deafness. An attack of gastric dilatation volvulus almost kills him, but he recovers. When a second attack occurs, it becomes clear surgery will not help him, and Marley is euthanised with John at his side. The family pay their last respects to their beloved pet as they bury him beneath a tree in their front yard.

I am Sam
Sam Dawson has the mental capacity of a 7-year-old. He works at a Starbucks and is obsessed with the Beatles. He has a daughter with a homeless woman; she abandons them as soon as they leave the hospital. He names his daughter Lucy Diamond (after the Beatles song), and raises her. But as she reaches age 7 herself, Sam's limitations start to become a problem at school; she's intentionally holding back to avoid looking smarter than him. The authorities take her away, and Sam shames high-priced lawyer Rita Harrison into taking his case pro bono. In the process, he teaches her a great deal about love, and whether it's really all you need. Sam Dawson (Sean Penn), a mentally challenged man with a mind of a child, is living in Los Angeles and is singlehandedly raising his daughter Lucy (Dakota Fanning), whom he fathered from a homeless woman who wanted nothing to do with Lucy and left him the day of her birth. Although Sam provides a loving and caring environment for the 7-year-old Lucy, she soon surpasses her father's mental capacity. Questions arise about Sams ability to care for Lucy and a custody case is brought to court. Sam is a man with a mental age of 7 who is well adjusted and has a great support system consisting of four similarly developmentally disabled men. His neighbor Annie (Dianne Wiest), a piano-player and agoraphobe, befriends Sam and takes care of Lucy when Sam can't. Sam works at Starbucks bussing tables. Sam is popular with the customers, whom he addresses by name and favorite coffee. His job gets difficult when Lucy starts grabbing objects, making a woman spill iced coffee down her shirt. In a humorous, but innocent exchange, Sam tries to remove an ice cube from the startled woman's cleavage. Sam then brings Lucy to his neighbor and baby Lucy croons, "Annie!" Sam says, "Her first word was Annie." Flustered but flattered, she retorts, "And people worry you aren't smart," and agrees to function as Lucy's babysitter.
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Lucy is as precocious as Sam is backwards. Sam loves reading Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss to her, but when she starts reading "real hard" books like Stellaluna, she balks at reading the word "different" because she doesn't want to be smarter than her dad. She knows he's different, "not like other dads", but that's all right with her because he is loving, taking her to the park and to International House of Pancakes (every Wednesday, because "Wednesday is IHOP night"). When they decide to go to Big Boy for a change, Sam causes a disturbance because he cannot get the kind of French pancakes he is accustomed to. At the school Halloween party, he dresses as Paul McCartney but embarrasses his daughter by drawing undue attention. Other kids tease her, calling her dad a "retard". She tells one boy that she is adopted. This causes a crisis at her birthday party, which results in an unexpected visit from a social worker who takes Lucy away. A judge allows him only two supervised, 2-hour visits per week. Sam's friends recommend that he hire Rita (Michelle Pfeiffer), a lawyer. He shows up at her office and starts spelling out his situation while she juggles coffee orders to her assistant, Patricia. Socially, Sam is rather highfunctioningmore together in many ways than his high-class, respected lawyer whose marriage is falling apart and whose son hates her. Sam surprises Rita at a party. Stunned, she announces that she's taking his case pro bono, because others see her as cold and heartless. Rita begrudgingly works with Sam to help him keep his parental rights, but chaos arises when Lucy convinces Sam to help her run away from the foster home she is being kept in during the trial. Over the course of the trial, Sam gets a new job at Pizza Hut and Annie leaves her apartment for the first time in years. Sam also helps Rita with her family problems, and helps her to realize how much her son really means to her. Sam also convinces her to leave her husband, because Rita told him that he cheated on her. During the trial, however, Sam breaks down, after being convinced that he is not capable of taking care of Lucy. Meanwhile, Lucy is placed with a foster family who plan to adopt her. Lucy often runs away from her foster parents in the middle of the night to go see Sam, who moved into a larger apartment closer to her. In the end, the foster family who planned on adopting Lucy lets Sam have custody of her. Sam says that Lucy still needs a mother and asks if the foster mother would like to help raise Lucy. The movie ends with Lucy's soccer game where Sam is the referee. In attendance are Lucy's former foster family, the newly divorced Rita and her son with whom Rita has renewed her relationship, along with Annie and Sam's other friends.

The Boy In The Striped Pajamas [2008]
Synopsis: "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" is a fictional story that offers a unique perspective on how prejudice, hatred and violence affect innocent people,... "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" is a fictional story that offers a unique perspective on how prejudice, hatred and violence affect innocent people, particularly children, during wartime. Through the lens of an eight-year-old boy largely shielded from the reality of World War II, we witness a forbidden friendship that forms between Bruno, the son of Nazi commandant, and Shmuel, a Jewish boy held captive in a concentration camp. Though the two are separated physically by a barbed wire fence, their lives become inescapably intertwined. The imagined story of Bruno and Shmuel sheds light on the brutality, senselessness and devastating consequences of war from an unusual point of view. Together, their tragic journey helps recall the millions of innocent victims of the Holocaust. [Less] SS officer Ralf (David Thewlis) and his wife Elsa (Vera Farmiga) have a twelve-year-old daughter, Gretel (Amber Beattie), and an eight-year-old son, Bruno (Asa Butterfield). The well-to-do family must move to the "countryside" when the father is promoted (to Obersturmbannführer). Unknown to Bruno, the new house is near a Nazi concentration camp, and Ralf is the new commandant. Bruno initially dislikes the new house as he always has to stay in the house or the garden; also there are no other children to play with, apart from his sister. From his bedroom window, Bruno spots a barbed wire fence with people in "striped pyjamas" behind it. Though he thinks it is a farm, it is the camp with Jewish people in their camp clothing. Bruno is forbidden to go there, because according to Ralf, "they're not really people"; it is agreed that at least they are a bit weird, as demonstrated by their clothing. Bruno goes there anyway, secretly, and becomes friends with a Jewish boy, named Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), whom he meets at the fence, and who is the same age. Shmuel tells Bruno that he is a Jew and that the Jewish people have been imprisoned here by soldiers, who also took their clothes and gave them the striped camp clothing, and that he is hungry. Bruno is confused and starts having doubts about his father being a good person. Later, he is relieved after seeing a propaganda film about the camp (that is a parody of Theresienstadt). Bruno often returns to the fence. He brings Shmuel food and plays draughts (checkers) with him through the fence.
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An elderly Jewish man named Pavel (David Hayman) is a servant in the family home; he is treated rudely by Ralf's adjutant, Obersturmführer Kotler (Rupert Friend). Formerly a doctor, Pavel mends Bruno's cuts when he falls off his homemade tire swing. Ralf hires Herr Liszt (Jim Norton) to tutor Gretel and Bruno, although in reality he is brainwashing them with antiSemitic Nazi propaganda. Gretel is very responsive to this and becomes an even more fanatical Nazi than she already was, also because she likes Kotler. However, Bruno is bored and also confused, since Shmuel and Pavel are friendly. In the meantime, Elsa notices a strange smell that she keeps noticing outside their house just as Lieutenant Kotler walks past. Kotler, thinking Elsa knows what really goes on in the camp, says to her "They smell even worse when they burn," Elsa, who thought that the camp was a labour camp and not a death camp, is shocked and quarrels with Ralf about it, and ultimately breaks down. Kotler is blamed by Ralf and Ralf's visiting father (who is also a firm Nazi) that he failed to report that his father emigrated to Switzerland some time ago, as opposed to contributing to the "national revival". Frustrated, Kotler responds to a small accident by Pavel of spilling some wine by beating him up severely; Pavel is not seen in the house any more. Later in the film, Maria, the maid, is shown cleaning up blood from where Pavel was beaten up. Shmuel appears in the house as a new servant and, in his joy, Bruno gives him a cake to eat. However, Kotler starts yelling at Shmuel for speaking with Bruno and stealing food. Shmuel tells the officer that Bruno is his friend and that he gave him the cake. Frightened, Bruno denies, adding that he does not know Shmuel. The soldier tells Shmuel that they will later have "a little chat about what happens with rats who steal". Shmuel is not seen in the house anymore, and at first not at the fence either. Finally, Shmuel is at the fence again, with an injured right eye. Bruno apologizes. Shmuel soon forgives Bruno and they become friends again. Kotler is later sent to the front for not advising his superiors of his father's opposition to the Nazi regime. Elsa decides to move away with the children; Ralf agrees, and tells Bruno that Elsa does not feel that the area is a good place for children to grow up. Bruno does not want to leave anymore, because of his friend Shmuel. Shmuel tells Bruno that his father is missing. Bruno gives him the bad news that he will be moving away for good the next day after lunch. Wanting to make up for letting Shmuel down and unaware that his father has likely been murdered, Bruno agrees to help Shmuel to find his father, and returns the next day with a shovel to dig a hole under the fence to get into the camp, while Shmuel will bring an extra set of camp clothing; Shmuel's suggestion that he could leave the camp through the hole is rejected by Bruno, who focuses on the target of finding the father. Bruno changes his clothes and wiggles under the fence, and is now in the camp with Shmuel. Bruno comes to realize that the camp is completely the opposite of what he saw in the propaganda film and wants to return, but Shmuel encourages him to continue helping to find his father. While they look in Shmuel's hut a group of guards and Kapos arrive and march all those inside (including Bruno and Shmuel) to a low concrete building. The men and boys are made to undress, supposedly for a shower, packed together into a gas chamber, and killed. In the meantime, Elsa warns Ralf (who is in a meeting about increasing the capacity of the crematorium) that Bruno is missing. With Gretel, they run to the camp and try to find him. They find Bruno's clothes next to the hole under the fence. Ralf runs throughout the camp and discovers an empty hut, and, reaching the gas chamber, concludes that Bruno has been brought to the gas chamber with a group of Jews. Pavel is also seen undressing near the boys and he looks at them and then turns away. When Ralf arrives, the boys are already dead and he is devastated. Upon hearing Ralf's cry of "Bruno!" Elsa and Gretel realise what has happened and are equally devastated. A last shot showing the undressing room with many camp uniforms reminds the viewer that the tragedy is not just Bruno, Shmuel and Pavel's deaths, but that of many other Jewish people during the holocaust of World War II.

Grease (1978)
Director: Randal Kleiser A musical about teens in love in the 50's! It's California, 1959 and greaser Danny Zuko and Australian Sandy Olsson are in love. They spend time at the beach, but when they go back to school, what either of them don't know is that they both now attend Rydell High. Danny's the leader of the T-Birds, a group of black-jacket greasers while Sandy hangs with the Pink Ladies, a group of pink-wearing girls led by Rizzo. When they clash at Rydell's first pep rally, Danny isn't the same Danny at the beach. They try to be like each other so they can be together.

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Finding Neverland (2004)
The story focuses on Scottish writer J. M. Barrie, his platonic relationship with Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, and his close friendship with her sons, who inspire the classic play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up. Following the dismal reception to his latest play, Little Mary, Barrie meets the widowed Sylvia and her four young sons in Kensington Gardens, and a strong friendship develops between them. He proves to be a great playmate and surrogate father figure for the boys, and their imaginative antics give him ideas which he incorporates into a play about boys who do not want to grow up, especially one named after troubled young Peter Llewelyn Davies. His wife Mary, who eventually divorces him, and Sylvia's mother Emma du Maurier, object to the amount of time Barrie spends with the Llewelyn Davies family. Emma also seeks to control her daughter and grandsons, especially as Sylvia becomes increasingly weak from an unidentified illness. Producer Charles Frohman skeptically agrees to mount Peter Pan despite his belief it holds no appeal for upperclass theatergoers. Barrie peppers the opening night audience with children from a nearby orphanage, and the adults present react to their infectious delight with an appreciation of their own. The play proves to be a huge success. Because Sylvia is too ill to attend the production, Barrie arranges to have an abridged production of it performed in her home. She dies shortly afterward, and Barrie finds that her will is to have him and her mother to look after the boys; an arrangement agreeable to both.

While You Were Sleeping (1995)
Synopsis: Lucy (Sandra Bullock) is a happy-go-lucky ticket seller, until one day she finds the man of her dreams and also sees him get mugged. After being... Lucy (Sandra Bullock) is a happy-go-lucky ticket seller, until one day she finds the man of her dreams and also sees him get mugged. After being mugged the man, known as Peter (Peter Gallagher), goes into a coma. Lucy goes to visit him at the hospital and the nurse tells Peter's family that Lucy is his fiancee'. Lucy can not get the courage to tell them the truth and his family take her in as a member of their family. While with this family Lucy falls head over heels in love with Peter's brother, Jack (Bill Pullman). Lucy does not know what to do when Peter comes out of a coma and doesn't remember her.

Up In The Air
Ryan Bingham works for Omaha based Career Transition Counseling whose contracts are in corporate downsizing. In other words, they fire people. Ryan is flying around the US over 320 days of the year, which he feels is the best part of his job. He does whatever he can to rack up frequent flyer miles, the goal not to use them but just to accumulate them to a specific number he has in his mind. A secondary job he has is to give motivational speeches on relieving one's life of excess physical and emotional baggage. He truly does believe what he espouses as he lives out of his carry-on suitcase (his apartment in Omaha is really in name only), he is not close to his siblings (although he does do a favor for his sister while on his travels), nor does he have or want a significant person in his life. Ryan's life may change when the company hires Natalie Keener, a young overachieving woman who recommends that the company change the nature of the work by conducting the "firings" via remote computer access. Ryan believes that Natalie does not fully understand the nature of the business, and as such, their boss, Craig Gregory, suggests that she accompany Ryan on a business trip. Ryan is also trying to protect his way of life, which now includes meeting up with a woman named Alex Goran whenever their flight schedules mesh. Like Ryan, Alex, who he met in an airport hotel bar, is constantly traveling for work, and is as equally turned on the by the concepts of "elite status" or "preferred member" as Ryan is. \\

Once Upon a Time in the West (C'era una volta il West) (1968)
Director: Sergio LeoneWriters: Dario Argento (story) &Bernardo Bertolucci Synopsis: A woman returns to her ranch out west to find her husband has been killed by a band of outlaws who want the railroad-valuable land. A brooding, young... A woman returns to her ranch out west to find her husband has been killed by a band of outlaws who want the railroad-valuable land. A brooding, young cowboy steps in to stop them. (story)Sourced from the Special Collector's Edition DVD Henry Fonda Claudia Cardinale Jason Robards Charles BronsonGabriele Ferzetti Paolo Stoppa Woody Strode Jack ElamKeenan Wynn Frank Wolff Lionel StanderEpic story of a mysterious stranger with a harmonica who joins forces with a notorious desperado to protect a beautiful
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widow from a ruthless assassin working for the railroad.Video: 528 x 224 25fps 538Kbps Xvid 1.1.2 0.182 Bits/pixel*frameAudio: V5 Mp3 Monophonic lame 3.97bRuntime: 2:38:34 701Mb (burns to a CD no probs)Subs included:Arabic, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, English CC, French,German, Greek, Norwegian, Portugese, Serbian, Slovenian,Spanish, Swedish, Turkish.Maybe Henry Fonda's best role ever, and I believe his only one as abad guy.

It's a Wonderful Life
Synopsis: George Bailey is a small-town man whose life seems so desperate he contemplates suicide. He had always wanted to leave Bedford Falls to see the world,... George Bailey is a small-town man whose life seems so desperate he contemplates suicide. He had always wanted to leave Bedford Falls to see the world, but circumstances and his own good heart have led him to stay. He sacrificed his education for his brother's, kept the family-run savings and loan afloat, protected the town from the avarice of the greedy banker Mr. Potter, and married his childhood sweetheart. As he prepares to jump from a bridge, his guardian angel intercedes; showing him what life would have become for the residents of Bedford Falls is he had never lived.

Lost Horizon (1937)
Synopsis: It took British author James Hilton six weeks to write his visionary novel Lost Horizon. It took director Frank Capra two years-and half of his home... It took British author James Hilton six weeks to write his visionary novel Lost Horizon. It took director Frank Capra two years-and half of his home studio Columbia's annual budget-to bring it to the screen. After a lengthy preamble, inviting audiences to imagine their own ideas of Utopia, the film opens on a chaotic scene at a Chinese airfield. As hordes of bandits approach, hundreds of refugees scramble to board the last plane out. Only five people make it: Mildly disenchanted Far Eastern diplomat Robert Conway (Ronald Colman), his hotheaded younger brother George (John Howard), embezzler Barnard (Thomas Mitchell), dithery fossil expert Lovett (Edward Everett Horton) and consumptive prostitute Gloria Stone (Isabel Jewell). As the plane flies off towards the Himalayas, Robert realizes that he and his fellow passengers are heading in the wrong direction. They are, in fact, being kidnapped-but why? And where to? The plane crash-lands in the snowy Tibetan interior. The pilot is killed, but the passengers are safe. By and by, a strange caravan approaches, led by an enigmatic Chinese named Chang (H. B. Warner). Joining the caravan, Conway and his party are led through a treacherous mountain pass and into a land of temperate weather and dazzling beauty. This is Shangri-La, the idyllic lamasery presided over by the aged, wizened High Lama (Sam Jaffe). In this fertile valley, people are not encumbered by such exigencies as crime, dictators and hatred; instead, everyone is devoted to the pursuit of wisdom and self-improvement-and best of all, the aging process has been slowed to a walk, allowing people to live well past the two-century mark. Though he still does not know why he was brought here, Conway is quicker to adapt to Shangri-La than his wary fellow passengers. He even falls in love with Sondra (Jane Wyatt), an attractive, intelligent young woman. Finally granted an audience with the High Lama, Conway discovers that the old man is actually Father Perrault, the Belgian missionary who founded Shangri-La-over two hundred years earlier. Dying, the High Lama has selected Conway, whose idealism and even-handedness is world famous, to succeed him-and hopefully spread the love thy neighbor edict of Shangri-La to the rest of the war-torn world. Conway is willing to assume leadership, but younger brother George, his mind poisoned by spiteful Shangri-La resident Maria (Margo), insists upon escaping to the outside world. The older Conway warns that, despite her youthful appearance, Maria is well past sixty and will surely perish once she leaves Shangri-La; but Maria retorts that the high lama is insane, and that everything he has told Conway is a lie. Disillusioned, Conway agrees to leave with Jack and Maria. The trek back to civilization is a grueling one, especially for Maria, who-true to Conway's prediction-shrivels from age and dies. Appalled that he has been misled, George kills himself. Weeks later, and amnesiac Conway stumbles into a Tibetan mission, where he is rescued and brought back to England. When his memory is restored, however, Conway runs back to Shangri-La, and into the arms of Sondra. When Lost Horizon was shown to preview audiences, it ran nearly three hours-and it was a disaster. In his autobiography, Capra claims to have rescued his pet project by merely burning the first two reels and opening the film with the evacuation scene; In fact, while Capra did remove the film's flashback framework, he made most of his cuts in the body of the picture. The release length of Lost Horizon was 132 minutes, pared down to 119 when it when into general distribution. When it was reissued in the 1940s and 1950s, it was rather clumsily pared down to anywhere from 95 to 100 minutes. Only in the mid1980s was Lost Horizon restored to its original length, with stills used to illustrate certain scenes for which only the soundtrack existed. While not the enormous hit Capra and Columbia had hoped it would be, Lost Horizon was popular enough to allow the name Shangri-La enter the household-word category. In 1973, producer Ross Hunter felt the urge to inflict a wretched musical remake onto an unsuspecting public.~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide.

Utsab
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This movie is a very good family drama which is portrayed on a background of Durgapuja, Bangali's biggest "Utsab" (Festival). The story is about a cultured bengali family, different members of which have gathered in native house on the occasion of Durgapuja. This movie remained instrumental in showing different common and complex problems being faced by a middle-class family. Utsab' starts off on a slow and quiet note. In a away it reminded me of 'Gosford Park' in how the characters were introduced. But soon after introduction, the story builds as the quality of the relationship between the characters, their intentions and the secrets of the mansion gradually unveil on screen. Here there's hardly a background score. What the viewer gets to hear are raw sounds within the mansion and surrounding neighborhood. It adds to creating tension within the mansion (where the entire film is set). Rituparno Ghosh doesn't shy away from mentioning the influences of greats like Aparna Sen and Satyajit Ray. 'Utsab' does have a very Ray-like feel to it especially in its subtlety. At the same time it's very poetic and the Ranbindra Sangeets (poems by the late Rabindranath Tagore) add to the depth of the story. The cultural depiction, such as family interaction and religious ceremonies are well displayed. The performances are solid. Madhabi Mukherjee is wonderfully restrained. Pradip Mukherjee, Bodhisattva Mazumdar, Alaknanda Roy, Anuradha Roy, Prasenjit Chatterjee and Ratul Shankar Ghosh are very good in their respective roles. However, the scene stealers are Mamata Shankar and Rituparna Sengupta. Both actresses deliver very subtle and nuanced performances and seem to have no problem owning every one of their scenes. 'Utsab' works on multiple levels. It is atmospheric, it can be viewed as a study of characters or a study of a culture. It may not be everybody's kind of cinema but it is among Ghosh's most underrated films.

Before Sunrise (1995)
Synopsis: While traveling through Europe on a train, a twentysomething American male meets a young French woman. It's his last day before returning to the US,... While traveling through Europe on a train, a twentysomething American male meets a young French woman. It's his last day before returning to the US, but the two impulsively agree to spend his few remaining hours together. The film starts with Jesse meeting Céline on a train from Budapest and striking up a conversation with her. Jesse is going to Vienna to catch a flight back to the United States, whereas Céline is returning to university in Paris after visiting her grandmother. When they reach Vienna, Jesse convinces Céline to disembark with him, saying that 10 or 20 years down the road, she might not be happy with her marriage and might wonder how her life would have been different if she had picked another guy, and this is a chance to realize that he himself is not that different from the rest; in his words, he is "the same boring, unmotivated guy." Jesse has to catch a flight early in the morning and does not have enough money to rent a room for the night, so they decide to roam around in Vienna. After visiting a few landmarks in Vienna, they share a kiss at the top of the Riesenrad ferris wheel at sunset and start to feel a romantic connection. As they continue to roam around the city, they begin to talk more openly with each other, with conversations ranging from topics about love, life, religion, and their observations of the city. Céline tells Jesse that her last boyfriend broke up with her six months ago, claiming that she "loved him too much". When questioned, Jesse reveals he had initially come to Europe to spend time with his girlfriend who was studying in Madrid, but they had broken up when she was avoiding him while he was there. He decided to take a cheap flight out of Europe, out of Vienna, but it didn't leave for two weeks so he bought a Eurail pass and traveled around Europe. When they are walking alongside a canal they are approached by a man who, instead of begging, offers to write them a poem with a word of their choice in it. Jesse and Céline decide on the word "milkshake", and are soon presented with the poem Delusion Angel (written for the film by the poet David Jewell). In a cafe, Jesse and Céline stage fake phone conversations with each other, playing each others' friends they pretend to call. Céline reveals that she was ready to get off the train with Jesse before he convinced her. Jesse reveals that after he broke up with his girlfriend, he bought a flight that really wasn't much cheaper, and all he really wanted was an escape from his life. They admit their attraction to each other and how the night has made them feel, though they understand that they probably won't see each other again when they leave. They simply decide to make the best of what time they have left, ending the night with the implication of a sexual encounter between them. At that point, Jesse explains that if
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given the choice, he'd marry her instead of never seeing her again. The film ends the next day at the train station, where the two hastily agree to meet together at the same place in six months as the train is about to leave.

Before Sunset (2004)
Synopsis: Nine years ago, two strangers met by chance, spent a night together in Vienna, and parted before sunrise. Now, they're about to cross paths again--in... Nine years ago, two strangers met by chance, spent a night together in Vienna, and parted before sunrise. Now, they're about to cross paths again--in Paris--where they will get the chance we all wish we had: to find out what might have been. The only problem is they have just a few hours to figure out if they belong together. [ Nine years have passed since the events of Before Sunrise, when Jesse (Hawke) and Celine (Delpy) had met in Vienna. Since then, Jesse has written a novel, This Time, inspired by his time with Celine, and the book has become an American bestseller. To help sales in Europe, Jesse does a book tour. The last stop of the tour is Paris, and Jesse is doing a reading at the bookstore Shakespeare and Company. As Jesse talks with his audience, flashbacks are shown of him and Celine in Vienna; the memories of their night together have clearly remained with him despite it being nine years later. Three journalists are present at the bookstore, interviewing Jesse: a romantic who is convinced the book's main characters meet again, a cynic who is convinced that they don't, and a third one who, despite wanting them to meet again, remains doubtful they actually do. They represent the three possible ways a viewer might guess what the aftermath of Before Sunrise might be, according to his or her own personality. Celine appears in the audience and sees him, and he, in turn, recognizes her. Jesse has a short time before his plane departs and invites Celine to share it with him. However, once the presentation is over, the bookstore manager reminds him he's got a plane to catch and must leave for the airport in a little more than an hour, and so just like in Before Sunrise, Celine and Jesse's reunion is constrained by time. Just like in the prequel, the characters are thus forced to make the best of what little time they have together, and this makes it easier for their conversations to become ever more personal, starting out with the usual thirty-something's themes of work and politics and then, with ever increasing passion, approaching their love for each other, just as their time together is running out. As they talk, each reveals what has happened since their first meeting. Both are now in their early thirties. Jesse, now a writer, is married and has a son. Celine has become an advocate for the environment, lived in America for a time, and has a boyfriend, a photojournalist. It becomes clear in the course of their talk that both are dissatisfied to varying degrees with their lives. Jesse reveals that he only stays with his wife out of love for his son. Celine says that she does not see her boyfriend very much because he is so often on assignment. Early in their coversation, they broach the subject of why they did not meet as promised, six months after their first encounter. It turns out that Jesse had returned to Vienna, as promised, but Celine did not, because her grandmother had suddenly died before the scheduled date of the meeting. Because Jesse and Celine had never exchanged addresses, there was no way for them to contact each other, which resulted in their missed connection. Their conversation as they traverse Paris places them in various venues, including a café, a garden, a bateau mouche, and Jesse's hired car for his stay in Paris. Their old feelings for each other are slowly rekindled, even with tension and regret over the missed meeting earlier, as they realize that nothing else in their lives has matched their one prior night together in Vienna. Jesse eventually admits that he wrote the book in the distant hope of meeting Celine again one day. She replies that the book brought back painful memories for her. At one point, in the hired car, during a tense moment when Jesse is confessing his loveless, near sexless marriage, Celine reaches her hand out to touch Jesse but pulls back just as he turns to her. In the concluding scene, Celine and Jesse arrive at her apartment. Jesse had learned that Celine plays the guitar and persuades her to play a waltz song for him. The waltz (which was written by Julie Delpy herself) is revealed through the lyrics to be about their brief encounter. Jesse then plays a Nina Simone CD on the stereo system. Celine dances by herself to the song "Just in Time" as Jesse watches her. As Celine imitates Simone, she mutters to Jesse, "Baby ... you are gonna miss that plane." As the camera slowly pans in, Jesse smiles while nervously fidgeting with his wedding ring and ambiguously responds, "I know," leaving the viewer to guess whether he stays or leaves, just like the three journalists who interviewed Jesse at the beginning of the film. Jesse, a writer from the US, and Celine, a Frenchwoman working for an environment protection organization, acquainted nine years ago on the train from Budapest to Vienna, meet again when Jesse arrives in Paris for a
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reading of his new book. As they have only a few hours until his plane leaves, they stroll through Paris, talking about their experiences, views and whether they still love each other, although Jesse is already married with a kid.

Wild Strawberries
Professor of medicine Isak Borg travels to Lund University in order to receive his anniversary title. Along the road he meets strangers and relatives, and in his dreams he is confronted with his own past as well as fear of insufficiency. Written by Anders Andersson <[email protected]> Explores the disillusionment of an elderly physician, Professor Isak Borg, as he reflects upon his life and begins to perceive his mortality. As he travels to Lund to receive an honorary award after 50 years of medical practice, he finds himself repeatedly affected by intrusive dreams and hallucinations that expose his darkest fears. He slowly comes to realize that the choices he made in the past have created a cold and empty life, devoid of real meaning or value. Finally, he achieves redemption and reintegration through forgiveness and the love of his family. The movie opens when 78-year-old Isak Borg, played by Victor Sjöström, is in bed at home. He dreams about being on a city street with no other people present. A clock hanging above the street has no hands. Isak checks his pocket watch; it too has no hands. A figure appears with its back turned. Isak walks up to the figure and touches it. It has no face. The figure collapses onto the pavement. Blood streams out of the figure. Next a hearse drawn by a team of horses turns a corner and enters the street on which the dream-Isak is standing. It approaches Isak and then passes him but its rear wheel gets caught on a lamppost. Although no one is driving the hearse, the horses continue forward. The left rear wheel breaks off at the lamppost. The horses and hearse drive away but the coffin comes loose, and slides out and onto the street. A hand appears on the outside of the coffin. Isak looks at the hand. His hand and the hand outstretched from the coffin touch, with the hand coming out of the coffin holding Isak. The body in the coffin is also Isak. He awakes. The viewer senses the loneliness in Isak. And that Isak's time is running out. These are themes that come up again and again through the day. He leaves his bedroom to waken his maid Agda, played by Jullan Kindahl. Isak asks her to pack his suitcase and prepare breakfast for him. He has decided to drive to Lund, where he will later today receive an honorary doctorate as an award for his contributions to medicine. They squabble because they had previously planned to fly from Stockholm to Lund. While eating breakfast, Marianne, Isak's daughter-in-law, enters the breakfast room. She is played by Ingrid Thulin. Marianne has been staying at Isak's house, and asks if she can accompany Isak on the 300-mile drive from Stockholm to Lund. He agrees. They depart. Marianne tries to smoke but Isak objects. There is some tension in the car almost from the beginning of the trip. They manage to converse. Isak mentions that his son, Evald, owes his father money, and on principle is going to pay it back, a principle both father and son endorse. Marianne talks about her relationship with Evald, who, like his father, is a physician. A good deal is revealed, especially in a flashback that summarizes the conversation in the car. Her marriage to Evald (Gunnar Björnstrand) is tense and unhappy. Evald is as rigid as Isak but Evald dislikes his father. Evald and Marianne quarreled sharply when she revealed to him that she was pregnant. He objected, and said he did not want children. Isak's marriage was also an unhappy one. At this particular juncture, the viewer develops a sense of the film's power of truth-telling. Isak decides to make a detour, and drives to the house where, during his youth, he spent many summers. One could find in the summer house his mother and father and 10 brothers and sisters as well as visiting cousins, uncles, and aunts. Marianne goes off to swim in the lake, leaving Isak alone. He walks up to a patch of wild strawberries (the Swedish title of the film better translates to "wild strawberry patch"). Isak begins remembering his youthful days at the house and the land nearby. Flashbacks with Isak still in the scene show some of what life was like there long ago. His cousin Sara is picking wild strawberries to give to her deaf uncle as a birthday present when Sigfrid (Per Sjöstrand), Isak's brother, arrives. Sigfrid helps her pick strawberries and flirts with her. They kiss. She is at first willing but then breaks away. She is too committed to the young Isak to continue the dalliance. Isak at that moment is away with his father fishing in the lake. At the lunch table, Isak's twin sisters, who are loud and naive, report on the interlude between Sara and Sigfrid, embarrassing Sara. One of the twins is played by director Ingmar Bergman's daughter. The older Isak looks in on the scene. Sara, upset, leaves the table, and is consoled by her aunt, with Isak looking on. Sara describes how she thinks Isak is too good for her. He is too upright. Sigfrid is more playful. The viewer learns that Isak was in love with Sara but ultimately she married his brother Sigfrid. Isak is the last of the 10 Borg children alive. Sara, Sigfrid's widow, is still alive and in her 70s. Near the house, a teenage girl and two boys come into the scene. One is her boyfriend and the other is a kind of
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chaperone. They are hitchhiking. Their ultimate destination is Italy. The girl, whose name is also Sara, is played by Bibi Andersson (Bibi Andersson and Ingrid Thulin have long been part of Bergman's company of players). Andersson also plays the Sara who was Isak's long-ago love. Of course, the present-Sara reminds Isak of his longago, and lost, Sara. The boys, Anders (Folke Sundquist) and Viktor (Björn Bjelfvenstam), argue about the existence of God and other matters, and Sara tries to keep their arguments civil. Although one boy is closer to Sara than the other, the viewer gets the sense that both are interested in her, much the way Sigfrid and Isak were interested in the Sara of long ago but only one will succeed with her. Back on the road, a Volkswagon beetle comes hurtling around a bend, and nearly crashes into Isak's big old Packard. Isak's black car is reminiscent of hearse. The VW turns over but the passengers are unhurt, physically that is. The man (Gunnar Sjöberg) and woman (Gunnel Broström) in the car are a married couple almost out of Strindberg. The accident, the husband admits, was the result of driving while quarreling. Isak agrees to put the two in the car, and drive on toward Lund. The husband and wife are settled into jumper seats but continue to bicker. The husband needles the wife incessantly. She smacks him several times. Marianne, who is driving, stops the car, and orders the two to exit the car for the sake of the young people riding in the back. The car, now reduced to five travelers, stops at a service station that is run by a husband (Max von Sydow) and wife (Ann-Marie Wiman). Here we learn about another side of Isak. The couple is very happy to see Isak. Apparently long ago he worked some wonderful medicine to help the family. They admire him greatly, and absolutely refuse to let him pay for the gas or any of the work they did on the car. She is pregnant, and plans to name her child, if it is a son, Isak, after the doctor. Isak asks them to notify him when the child is born. He would like to be the child's godfather. They soon stop at a restaurant. The group has a delightful lunch at an outdoor terrace overlooking the beautiful Lake Vättern. Isak enjoys the company of the young people. The young people learn about Isak's award. There is another stop on the journey. At Isak's request, Marianne drives to the house of his ancient mother. Her house is en route. Marianne accompanies Isak into the house, and the young people remain in the car. Isak's mother is in her mid-90s and complains that she is always cold and that none of her grandchildren visit her. Mrs. Borg shows them some old artifacts from an earlier era, old toys and a pocket watch with no hands, the same pocket watch that appeared in Isak's dream at the beginning of the film. Later in the car, Marianne tells Isak how she is impressed by the mother's coldness. Marianne senses how that coldness runs through the family down to Evald. Isak falls asleep in the car while Marianne drives. He dreams that he is being given an examination by a professor of medicine. The professor is none other than the man Marianne asked to leave the car earlier that day. The cadaver he is to check is the man's wife but she isn't dead. Isak fails the examination. Perhaps it was not a medical school examination at all but an examination of how a lonely and aloof man lived his life. He awakes. The car has stopped. The young people have gone into a forest glen to gather flowers to make a bouquet for Isak. He is flattered by their attention. They reach Lund. Evald is in his home to greet them. Agda is there too although she was so angry in the morning that there was a chance she would not come. The three young people come. Isak, Marianne, and Evald dress for the ceremony which is an hour away. The young people plant themselves along the route of the processional to cheer Isak. The ceremony expresses great dignity and achievement, with many words uttered in Latin. Afterwards Isak is in Evald and Marianne's house although the viewer has the feeling that it is not going to be Marianne's house much longer. Isak tries to induce Agda to call him by his first name; after all they have known each other for 40 years. She declines. Isak is in bed in a second-floor bedroom. The young people serenade Isak from the garden below. He wishes them well as they got a lift to Hamburg and are closer yet to their goal of reaching Italy. Evald comes in. Isak wants Evald to forget about the debt. Isak also wants Evald and Marianne to reconcile. Marianne enters the room, and she and Isak have an affectionate exchange. The she heads off to party with Evald. The viewer gets a sense that Isak has to some extent broken through his loneliness and reconciled with the important people in his life.

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Broken Embraces
Passion, obsession, wealth, jealousy, family, guilt, and creativity. In Madrid, Harry Caine is a blind screenwriter, assisted by Judit and her son Diego. The past comes rushing in when Harry learns of the death of Ernesto Martel, a wealthy businessman, and Ernesto's son pays Harry a visit. In a series of flashbacks to the 1990s, we see Harry, who was then Mateo Blanco, a director; he falls in love with Ernesto's mistress, Lena, and casts her in a film, which Ernesto finances. Ernesto is jealous and obsessive, sending his son to film the making of the movie, to follow Lena and Mateo, and to give him the daily footage. Judit doesn't like Lena. It's a collision course. Synopsis: A man writes, lives and loves in darkness. Fourteen years before, he was in a brutal car crash on the island of Lanzarote. In the accident, he not... A man writes, lives and loves in darkness. Fourteen years before, he was in a brutal car crash on the island of Lanzarote. In the accident, he not only lost his sight, he also lost Lena, the love of his life. This man uses two names: Harry Caine, a playful pseudonym with which he signs his literary works, stories and scripts, and Mateo Blanco, his real name, with which he lives and signs the film he directs. After the accident, Mateo Blanco reduces himself to his pseudonym, Harry Caine. If he can't direct films he can only survive with the idea that Mateo Blanco died on Lanzarote with his beloved Lena. In the present day, Harry Caine lives thanks to the scripts he writes and to the help he gets from his faithful former production manager, Judit García, and from Diego, her son, his secretary, typist and guide. Since he decided to live and tell stories, Harry is an active, attractive blind man who has developed all his other senses in order to enjoy life, on a basis of irony and self-induced amnesia. He has erased from his biography any trace of his first identity, Mateo Blanco.One night Diego has an accident and Harry takes care of him (his mother, Judit, is out of Madrid and they decide not to tell her anything so as not to alarm her). During the first nights of his convalescence, Diego asks him about the time when he answered to the name of Mateo Blanco, after a moment of astonishment Harry can't refuse and he tells Diego what happened fourteen years before with the idea of entertaining him, just as a father tells his little child a story so that he'll fall asleep. The story of Mateo, Lena, Judit and Ernesto Martel is a story of "amour fou", dominated by fatality, jealously, the abuse of power, treachery and a guilt complex. A moving and terrible story, the most expressive image of which is the photo of two lovers embracing, torn into a thousand pieces.

En Passion (A Passion) (The Passion of Anna) (1970)
Director: Ingmar Bergman Synopsis: Liv Ullmann plays the widowed, crippled Anna Fromm, who while traveling on a remote island calls upon reclusive ex-convict Andreas (Max von Sydow) in... Liv Ullmann plays the widowed, crippled Anna Fromm, who while traveling on a remote island calls upon reclusive ex-convict Andreas (Max von Sydow) in order to use his telephone. After Anna leaves, Andreas discovers she's left her purse behind; he opens it, hoping to find some identification. A letter in the purse details Anna's unhappy marriage and the depths of her loneliness. Eventually, Anna moves in with Andreas, who has become more closely acquainted with her through the intervention of Anna's friends Ellis and Evan Vergerus (Bibi Andersson and Erland Josephson). But tensions and conflicts ensue, and threaten to destroy the burgeoning relationship between Anna and Andreas.~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Casanova[2005]
Synopsis: Heath Ledger plays the fabled romantic as a man who, after failing to win the affection of a particular Venetian woman, strives to discover the real... Heath Ledger plays the fabled romantic as a man who, after failing to win the affection of a particular Venetian woman, strives to discover the real meaning of love.

Scenes from a Marriage - Scener ur ett Äktenskap - Bergman \'7
Synopsis: Widely considered one of Ingmar Bergman's best works, this intense drama follows the marriage of Marianne (Liv Ullmann) and Johan (Erland Josephson)... Widely considered one of Ingmar Bergman's best works, this intense drama follows the marriage of Marianne (Liv Ullmann) and Johan (Erland Josephson) as it deteriorates from seemingly perfect to mutual aggression and cruelty. When Marianne learns of Johan's infatuation with another
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woman, the relationship unravels, yet through it all, a deep, underlying love keeps the couple from breaking off all ties. This is the miniseries version of the film. [Less]

(Autumn Sonata) (1978)
Director: Ingrid Bergman Synopsis: Ingrid Bergman, the Swedish expatriate who became one of Hollywood's greatest stars, and Ingmar Bergman, one of the world's most acclaimed filmmakers... Ingrid Bergman, the Swedish expatriate who became one of Hollywood's greatest stars, and Ingmar Bergman, one of the world's most acclaimed filmmakers and Sweden's most honored director, worked together for the first and only time in this intensely personal drama about the troubled relationship between a mother and daughter. Charlotte (Ingrid Bergman) is an acclaimed concert pianist who is visiting her daughter Eva (Liv Ullmann), the wife of a parson in a rural community, for the first time in seven years. While Charlotte and Eva struggle to be civil, there is a deep emotional gulf between them. Eva resents her mother for not caring enough for her as a child, feeling that Charlotte was more interested in her career and her other daughter, Helena (Lena Nyman), who is severely handicapped and can only communicate through inarticulate noises. Charlotte, on the other hand, is uncomfortable with the fact that Helena now lives with Eva, and she is still coming to terms with the emotional devastation of her husband's recent death. Herbstsonate, released in America as Autumn Sonata, earned Ingrid Bergman some of the most enthusiastic acclaim of her career; she received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress, and she won the same honor from the National Board of Review and the New York Film Critics Circle. It was also her last theatrical release; she would appear in only one more project, a TV movie about the life of Golda Meir, before her death in 1982.~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949)
Synopsis: "From the moment you picked up that grounder and threw it to third, I knew it was love." Baseball and romance make a nifty double play in Take Me Out... "From the moment you picked up that grounder and threw it to third, I knew it was love." Baseball and romance make a nifty double play in Take Me Out to the Ball Game, a bright bauble from the golden age of MGM musicals. The premise is a stretch: two members of a turn-of-the-century baseball team (Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra) are vaudeville performers in the off-season. Their ballclub is inherited by Esther Williams, causing much consternation among the boys and anticipating the plot line of Major League by 40 years. Since swimming star Williams was always seen to best advantage dripping wet, the movie finds a way to get her into a hotel pool. Kelly, mugging mercilessly, executes an extended Irish solo dance (take that, Riverdance), and Sinatra, whose skinny frame is the source of many jokes in the script, is pursued by the irrepressible Betty Garrett and croons the ballad "The Right Girl for Me." None of this is remotely plausible, and the Comden-Green songs don't stand the test of time, but the film is buoyant--and the period costumes and dazzling Technicolor are eye-popping. This was a reunion for Sinatra and Kelly after Anchors Aweigh (1945), and they would quickly team up again in the superior On the Town (1949), alongside Take Me Out costars Garrett and looming Jules Munshin. As in those films, Sinatra and Kelly dancing side-by- side are a delightful spectacle: Kelly effortlessly hitting his marks while Sinatra gamely tries to keep up. Take Me Out to the Ball Game was the last film directed by the legendary director-choreographer Busby Berkeley, who gets just one shot at a huge production number, a pseudo-Rodgers and Hammerstein tune, "Strictly U.S.A." Peanuts and Cracker Jack not included. --Robert Horton

Luis Bunuel - The Diary of a Chambermaid (1964)
Luis Bunuel's Diary of a Chambermaid places a stone-faced Jeanne Moreau in a country house filled with perverts and watches as she drops her moral standards to inconceivable lows. To Moreau's chambermaid, it's better to suppress loathing, keep things neat and support the status quo, even in the face of the worst atrocities in human history, than to take a stand and risk repercussions. Celestine, the chambermaid has new job on the country. The Monteils, who she works for are a group of strange people. The wife is frigid, her husband is always hunting (both animals and women) and her father is a shoefetishist. Joseph, the farm-labourer is a fascist and sexually attracted to Celestine. Celestine settles herself and talks to the neighbour, an ex-officer, who likes damaging his neighbour's things. After the death of the old man, she quits her job, but because of the rape and murder of a child 'Little Claire' she decides to stay, believing that Joseph is the murderer. To get his confession she sleeps with him and promises to merry him. In spite of her engagement
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she fakes evidence to implicate him in the murder. He is arrested, but is released because the evidence is inconclusive. She marries the ex-officer and takes on a housewife role similar to that of Madame Monteil

Volver 2006
Synopsis: Set in Spain, this is a generational story of three women: a good mother who is desperately in love with a man who is far from being a saint; a young... Set in Spain, this is a generational story of three women: a good mother who is desperately in love with a man who is far from being a saint; a young mother carrying a hard life upon her shoulders; and an illegal hairdresser whose shop is the meeting point for all the neighborhood gossips. Directed By: Pedro Almodóvar Volver ("To Return") occurs in Spain in 2006. Raimunda (Penélope Cruz), her sister Sole (Lola Dueñas) and Raimunda's 14-year-old daughter Paula (Yohana Cobo) visit their home village of Alcanfor de las Infantas to clean the tombstones of their dead parents, who died in a fire four years earlier. They also visit the home of their aunt, TÃa Paula (Chus Lampreave). The aunt is living in the past and knows only Raimunda. They stop by to visit a neighbor, Agustina (Blanca Portillo), who looks after TÃa Paula and whose own mother disappeared the day Raimunda's parents died. The women return to Madrid, where they live. Raimunda's husband, Paco (Antonio de la Torre) attempts to molest Paula, who kills him with a knife. He claimed she was not his daughter. Raimunda later confesses this is true and that Paula's real father is dead. Raimunda must hide the crime and dispose of the body. Opportunity knocks; a neighbor is leaving town and asks Raimunda to look after a nearby empty restaurant. TÃa Paula dies and Raimunda cannot go to Alcanfor de las Infantas because she must hide the body of Paco in a freezer in the restaurant. A film crew is looking for meals and Raimunda opens the restaurant and runs the place with help of her neighbors. Sole goes to Alcanfor de las Infantas for TÃa Paula's funeral. Neighbors claim to have seen the ghost of Irene (Carmen Maura), Raimunda and Sole's mother. Sole finds Irene hidden in the trunk of her car and is unsure if she is a ghost. Irene stays with Sole in Madrid, helping to run a hair salon business inside her apartment. Paula also knows the secret; her grandmother has returned from the dead. The secret is kept from Raimunda, since she hated her mother. Irene hides every time Raimunda visits her sister. Agustina has cancer and is dying, shows up in Madrid and visits with Raimunda. Agustina asks Raimunda to find out from Irene if she knows if Agustina's missing mother is alive. Raimunda thinks Agustina is crazy. Raimunda literally buries her past, the freezer containing Paco, by a river near Alcanfor de las Infantas. Raimunda finally is told about her mother's return, but refuses to talk to her. Paula convinces Raimunda to reconcile with Irene. Irene confesses that TÃa Paula told her that Raimunda's father molested Raimunda and Paula is both the daughter and sister of Raimunda. When Irene found out the truth she went to confront her husband and found him in bed, asleep, with Agustina's mother. Irene burned down the hut, killing the pair, and went into hiding. Irene asks for Raimunda's forgiveness for not realizing she was being molested. Raimunda, Irene, Sole and Paula return to Alcanfor de las Infantas, a family once again. Irene is not a ghost, since ghosts can't cry. She will stay to take care of Agustina in her final days, the least she can do for killing Agustina's mother.

Central do Brasil (Central Station) (1998)
Synopsis: Dora is a former school teacher who makes a living by writing letters for illiterate people passing through Rio de Janeiro's main train station,... Dora is a former school teacher who makes a living by writing letters for illiterate people passing through Rio de Janeiro's main train station, Central Station. Among her clients are Ana and her nine-year-old son Josue, who has a fierce desire to meet his father, whom he has never seen. Dora has become stoically indifferent to her charge, choosing arbitrarily to send some letters and discard others with the help of her neighbor Irene. A sudden accident leaves Josue orphaned at the station and this is when Dora's life begins to change dramatically. Swayed by a curiously maternal compassion, Dora commits to returning Josue to his father in Brazil's remote Northeast. Directed By: Walter Salles Jr.
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Rules of the Game
Directed By: Jean Renoir Synopsis: Now often cited as one of the greatest films ever made, Jean Renoir's La Règle du jeu/Rules of the Game was not warmly received on its original... Now often cited as one of the greatest films ever made, Jean Renoir's La Règle du jeu/Rules of the Game was not warmly received on its original release in 1939: audiences at its opening engagements in Paris were openly hostile, responding to the film with shouts of derision, and distributors cut the movie from 113 minutes to a mere 80. It was banned as morally perilous during the German occupation and the original negative was destroyed during WWII. It wasn't until 1956 that Renoir was able to restore the film to its original length. In retrospect, this reaction seems both puzzling and understandable; at its heart, Rules of the Game is a very moral film about frequently amoral people. A comedy of manners whose wit only occasionally betrays its more serious intentions, it contrasts the romantic entanglements of rich and poor during a weekend at a country estate. André Jurieu (Roland Toutain), a French aviation hero, has fallen in love with Christine de la Chesnaye (Nora Gregor), who is married to wealthy aristocrat Marquis Robert de la Chesnaye (Marcel Dalio). Robert, however, has a mistress of his own, whom he invites to a weekend hunting party at his country home, along with André and his friend Octave (played by Jean Renoir himself). Meanwhile, the hired help have their own game of musical beds going on: a poacher is hired to work as a servant at the estate and immediately makes plans to seduce the gamekeeper's wife, while the gamekeeper recognizes him only as the man who's been trying to steal his rabbits. Among the upper classes, infidelity is not merely accepted but expected; codes are breached not by being unfaithful, but by lacking the courtesy to lie about it in public. The weekend ends in a tragedy that suggests that this way of life may soon be coming to an end. Renoir's witty, acidic screenplay makes none of the characters heroes or villains, and his graceful handling of his cast is well served by his visual style. He tells his story with long, uninterrupted takes using deep focus (cinematographer Jean Bachelet proves a worthy collaborator here), following the action with a subtle rhythm that never calls attention to itself. The sharplycut hunting sequence makes clear that Renoir avoided more complex editing schemes by choice, believing that long takes created a more lifelike rhythm and reduced the manipulations of over-editing. Rules of the Game uses WWI as an allegory for WWII, and its representation of a vanishing way of life soon became all too true for Renoir himself, who, within a year of the film's release, was forced to leave Europe for the United States..~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide [Less] One of the great films of all time, a satirical anatomy of polite society, with a mixture of farce and bitterness. Set at a weekend party at the chateau of the rich Marquis de la Chayniest, the story concerns the complicated love intrigues among the aristocrats and the servants. But one guest's refusal to play by society's rules sets off a tragic chain of events. "A single scene gives us more for our senses, emotions, and intellect than most whole movies do" (The New Yorker). In French with English subtitles. The DVD is a Criterion Collection edition - a two-DVD set with an introduction by Jean Renoir; a commentary by film scholar Alexander Sesonske, read by Peter Bogdanovich; select scene commentaries by Renoir historian Christopher Faulkner; the French television program, Jean Renoir le Patron: La Regle et l'Exception (1966), featuring interviews with Renoir and actor Marcel Dalio; a video essay on the production; an interviews with Alain Renoir, Max Douhy; written tributes by Truffaut, Tavernier, Scrader, Wenders, and more; footage of Jean Gaborit and Jacques Durand discussing the film; and more. France, 1939, 106 mins.

Read My Lips (Sur mes lèvres) (2002)
Synopsis: Young secretary Carla is a long-time employee of a property development company. Loyal and hardworking, first to arrive and last to leave, Carla is... Young secretary Carla is a long-time employee of a property development company. Loyal and hardworking, first to arrive and last to leave, Carla is beginning to chafe at the limitations of her career and is looking to move up. But as a 35-five-year-old woman with a hearing deficiency, she is not sure how to climb out of her humdrum life, though she is confident in her own abilities. Into her life comes Paul Angeli, a new trainee she decides to hire. Paul is 25 years old and completely unskilled, but Carla covers for him when the need arises because of his other qualities - he's a thief, fresh out of jail and very good-looking. It's a case of good meeting bad. Directed By: Jacques Audiard A gripping and compelling thriller from director Jacques Audiard. Emmanuelle Devos (Esther Kahn) stars as a lonely, near-deaf, hard-working employee of a property development company. Needing an assistant, she hires a thief (Vincent Cassel, Brotherhood of the Wolf) just out of prison with no business experience. Frustrated and resentful, the two use each other's talents in order to launch a scheme of their own. "A brilliant Hitchcockian thriller" (Stephen Holden, New York Times). In French with English subtitles. France, 2001, 115 mins.
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Préparez vos Mouchoirs (Get Out Your Handkerchiefs) (1978)
Synopsis: When Raoul's wife, Solange, falls into a state of perpetual despondency, he tries anything to cure her -including asking a total stranger to make... When Raoul's wife, Solange, falls into a state of perpetual despondency, he tries anything to cure her -- including asking a total stranger to make love to her. But even with a new lover, her sadness remains. The two men are utterly baffled, until a neighbor offers an invaluable insight: might Solange want a baby? It turns out that she does, but after numerous attempts, neither husband nor lover succeeds in impregnating her. Then, one afternoon, the three head off on a field trip and Solange meets Christian, a precocious 13-year-old whiz kid who manages to get her into bed. Finally, with this boy, Solange finds contentment. But Christian's horrified parents immediately attempt to ship him off to boarding school. Solange, however, has no intention of losing her new-found happiness -- even if she has to resort to kidnapping to keep it. [Less] Directed By: Bertrand Blier Solange is depressed: she's stopped smiling, she eats little, she says less. She has fainting fits. Her husband Raoul seeks to save her by enlisting Stephane, a stranger, to be her lover. Although he listens to Mozart and has every Pocket Book arranged in alphabetical order, Stephane fails to cheer Solange. She knits. She does housework. Everyone, including their neighbor a vegetable vendor, agrees that she needs a child, yet she fails to get pregnant by either lover. The three take a job running a kids' summer camp where they meet Christian, the precocious 13year-old son of the local factory manager. It is Christian who restores Solange to laughter.

Baby Doll (1956)
D. Elia Kazan Elia Kazan's film (based on Tennessee Williams' play) told about a thumb-sucking, white-trash, 19 year-old virginal 'baby doll' child bride (Carroll Baker) who was married (but unconsummated) to Mississippi cotton gin operator Archie Lee Meighan (Karl Malden), and seduced by a competing vengeful Sicilian cotton-gin owner Silva Vacarro (Eli Wallach in his film debut). In the opening scenes, Baby Doll was crib-bound in nursery furniture, spied upon through a wall by her 'peeping tom' husband, and given no privacy while taking a bath. The defiant film was a pot-boiling, condemned, and censored drama (by the Catholic Legion of Decency) - it was viciously condemned for, among other things, a notorious, highly-sexual seduction scene on a swing, of the young 'baby doll' nymphet by Vacarro to get her to sign a letter about Archie's guilt, their game of hide-and-seek in the upstairs (and attic), and later their kissing scene under a turned-off bare bulb in an adjoining room while Baby Doll's sexually-frustrated husband Archie was speaking on the phone nearby. The Oscar-nominated film (with four nominations, but no wins, including Best Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay) was called notorious, salacious, revolting, dirty, steamy, lewd, suggestive, morally repellent and provocative. Time Magazine was noted as stating: "Just possibly the dirtiest American-made motion picture that has ever been legally exhibited..." New York's Cardinal Spellman declared the film "evil in concept... certain to exert an immoral and corrupting influence on those who see it." The stark, controversial, black and white film was so viciously denounced by the Legion of Decency upon its release with a "C" (or condemned) rating that many theaters were forced to cancel their showings, but it still did moderately well at the box office despite the uproar.

Boys Don't Cry (1999)
Director: Kimberly Peirce Based on a true story, this drama was adapted from the life of Brandon Teena, born Teena Brandon, a woman who chose to live her life as a man and suffered tragic consequences as a result. In 1993, 20-year-old Brandon (Hilary Swank) leaves Lincoln, Nebraska for the nearby community of Falls City, where she sports a crew cut, favors jeans and boots, and is regarded as a man by most of the people in town. While Brandon's friend Lonny (Matt McGrath) warns her that sexual outsiders aren't looked upon kindly in Falls City, she develops a reputation for being something of a ladies' man, and is soon living with a single mother named Candace (Alicia Goranson). But when Brandon meets teenage Lana (Chloe Sevigny), the two become romantically involved almost immediately. Brandon makes friends with Lana's mother (Jeanetta Arnette) and a burly ex-con named John (Peter Sarsgaard). John and his buddy Tom (Brendan Sexton) run with a rough group of men who like to drink and carouse, and they accept Brandon as one of their own. However, when Brandon ends up in jail on a traffic violation, her secret comes out, and, while Lana stands by Brandon's side, John and Tom feel betrayed -- and their anger soon boils over into violence. A distinguished feature debut for director Kimberly Peirce, Boys Don't Cry was enthusiastically received in its showings at 1999 film festivals in Venice, Toronto, and New York. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi ######## The most impressive aspect of `Boys Don't Cry' is that it refuses to shy away from the sordid details of much of its protagonist's life, yet manages to convert her (or him if you prefer) into a sympathetic and comprehensible figure. In our most honest moments, we can all acknowledge aspects of our own lives and personalities that we don't understand, that we would love to change and that often make us feel alienated from the `norm' of society at large.
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In the case of Teena Brandon – a young man `trapped' in a woman's body - the anomaly happens to be a more pronounced and certainly less socially acceptable one than most of us are forced to endure in our lives. And she paid the ultimate price society demands from those it fears and does not understand: she was murdered in Nebraska in 1993, simply for being `different.' The film builds a convincing case for compassionate understanding without converting Brandon into a saint-like figure. Not only do we witness the petty criminality of her life, but we see her propensity for duplicity and deception, a personality trait that actually leads in part to many of the troubles she encounters, playing a crucial role to a large extent even in her death itself. Yet, given society's out-of-hand rejection of transgendered people, what real options but a life of dishonesty is Brandon really given? Similarly, Lana, the young woman with whom Brandon falls in love and the one person who has ever accepted Brandon unconditionally for what she is, suffers from a number of her own demons. Credit writer/director Kimberly Pierce and co-writer Andy Bienen for not taking the easy commercial path of reducing the moral complexities of the personalities involved to a black-and-white world where good and evil are displayed in neatly arranged patterns for our easy consumption. There are many times in this film when literally none of the people we are involved with are the slightest bit appealing. The filmmakers, in their faith in our maturity, ask us to go along on a pretty harrowing journey at times, but it is one that leads us to a very rewarding destination. The scenes in which Brandon's companions expose her secret is riveting and terrifying in its dramatic intensity and human sadness. The utter humiliation Brandon is forced to endure at the hands of the hooligans who are tormenting her broadens to become a symbolic representation of every person who has suffered such an injustice at the hands of unreasoning ignorance for whatever reason. It is a chilling reminder of the danger of the mob mentality unrestrained by empathy and enlightenment. Like so many of the best off-Hollywood independent productions, `Boys Don't Cry' finds its truth in two crucial elements: the canny depiction of the bleak sterility and stifling provincialism of its Midwest setting and the uniformly first-rate performances by a largely unknown set of actors. Hilary Swank, in her Oscar-winning turn as Brandon, and Chloe Sevigny as Lana achieve a naturalism in their portrayals that neutralizes any theatricality that might have robbed the film of its indispensable quality of immediacy and believability. They convert what might, in less capable hands, have become little more than a sensationalized freak show into a powerful and understandable drama about real, thoroughly recognizable human beings. For that alone, `Boys Don't Cry' becomes a cinematic experience impossible to forget

Baise Moi (2000, Fr.)
This daring and scandalous, unrated art-house import about heartless and irrational female sexual rage by two hardened and randy females was the first collaboration between French film-maker Virginie Despentes and former porn actress Coralie Trinh Thi. The two main characters were lower class French 'bad girls' named Manu (Raffaela Anderson) and prostitute Nadine (Karine Bach/Karen Lancaume), who were portrayed by French adult film stars. After being pushed around by losers and low-lifes in their seedy, marginal neighborhood, they decided to engage in a shooting spree and sexual romp across France. The French film was a very violent, sensationalist, bold, graphic and hard-core sex-filled version of Natural Born Killers and Thelma & Louise - a nihilistic and self-destructive road picture that ran into extreme protest and controversy. It was banned in France, its native country of release, for its porno-style, animalistic sexuality (fellatio included), explicit and brutal rape scene (of Manu) in a parking lot, and randomly vengeful violence spree on both men and women.

Bloodsucking Freaks (1976)
D. Joel Reed This unredeeming, misogynistic and depraved grindhouse horror exploitation film from Troma Entertainment was originally unrated, due to its controversial and violent nature, but later reduced to an R-rating when cuts were administered. Voted one of the worst films ever, it was also targeted by the feminist group Women Against Pornography for its depictions of violence against women. It was reminiscent of Herschell Gordon Lewis's earlier film The Wizard of Gore (1970). This low-budget nauseating film told about a macabre Grand Guignol-type theatre in New York run by sadomasochistic Master Sardu (Seamus O'Brien) and his obnoxious, deranged midget assistant Ralphus (Luis De Jesus), that held performances mostly of humiliation, gruesome torture and murder - using real victims.
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The performers in the staged productions were discovered to be white slavery female kidnap victims, who were held in cages below stage in the basement. Scenes of horror included human dart boards (a woman's backend was painted with a bullseye), flagellation, dismemberment, cannibalism, and the drilling of a hole in a woman's shaved skull to suck out her brains with a straw by a depraved doctor (Ernie Pysher). Synopsis: The story of Dr. Sardu who turns out to be hiding a prison of horrors in his basement. With the help of his creepy assistant he plans to kidnap a... The story of Dr. Sardu who turns out to be hiding a prison of horrors in his basement. With the help of his creepy assistant he plans to kidnap a prima ballerina in preparation for his greatest Theatre of the Macabre experience. Directed By: Joel M. Reed

Blue Velvet (1986)
D. David Lynch Lynch's polarizing film was an original look at sex, violence, crime and power under the peaceful exterior of smalltown Americana in the mid-80s. Beneath the familiar, peaceful, 'American-dream' cleanliness of the daytime scenes lurked sleaziness, prostitution, unrestrained violence, and perversity - powerful and potentially-dangerous sexual forces that might be unleashed if not contained. It was considered controversial, shocking, and lurid when released. The compelling film was often criticized for its depiction of aberrant sexual behavior, as well as highly ridiculed and disdained as an extreme, dark, vulgar and disgusting film, especially for its cinematic treatment of Isabella Rossellini - director Lynch's wife at the time. Its most repulsive scene was the one in which clean-cut, all-American boy/trekker Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) first voyeuristically watched the fragile nightclub singer named Dorothy (Isabella Rossellini) from her closet -- when she discovered him, she forced him to strip at knifepoint and fondled him -- but they were interrupted by the entry of a monstrous, loathsome, nitrous-oxide sniffing kidnapper - the evil, vile and depraved drug-pusher psycho Frank (Dennis Hopper). Beaumont witnessed the sexually-depraved, blackmailing relationship between the abused/brutalized, sado-machochistic mother and Frank - who used an oxygen inhaler while terrorizing and raping Dorothy as he play-acted being both her Daddy and Baby ("Baby wants to f--k"). After Frank left the scene of victimization, Dorothy pleaded with a consoling Beaumont to further abuse her: "Feel me. Hit me." Later in the film in a scene considered gratuitous and personally degrading, a vulnerable Dorothy appeared naked and battered on the Beaumont's front lawn. Synopsis: This sensual mystery thriller is about strange happenings in a small North Carolina town. A college student stumbles across a bizarre mystery and... This sensual mystery thriller is about strange happenings in a small North Carolina town. A college student stumbles across a bizarre mystery and wants to know more, perhaps too much more. The strange world he's found lurking beneath his hometown's picture-postcard veneer is about to become much stranger. It is also an unforgettably fascinating and foreboding world. [Less] Directed By: David Lynch

Like Water For Chocolate 1992
Genres: Drama, Romance Directed By: Alfonso Arau Tagline: A feast for the senses! Plot Synopsis: This movie is about how life used to be in Mexico. It is a love story between Pedro and Tita, and why they coudn't get married because Tita's mother wanted her oldest daughter to get married first, and have Tita to stay and take care of her. It shows how marriage was imposed on those times, and how a love between two people can change everything. This picture set a new epoch in Mexican movies all over the world. Synopsis: Story of forbidden love that takes place on a ranch in Mexico near the Texas border in 1910, during the Mexican Revolution. Pedro wishes to marry... Story of forbidden love that takes place on a ranch in Mexico near the Texas border in 1910, during the Mexican Revolution. Pedro wishes to marry Tita, the youngest of three daughters of a willful widow on a remote ranch, but tradition dictates that the youngest daughter can never marry--she must cook and care for her mother. To remain near his true love, Pedro marries Tita''s oldest sister, and Tita establishes a highly unusual sensual relationship with Pedro through the food she prepares for him. Tita (Lumi Cavazos) and Pedro (Marco Leonardi) are madly in love but Tita’s Mama is the resolute obstacle. Mama has other plans for Tita. The tradition in Tita’s family is that the youngest daughter in each generation must remain unmarried and devote herself to caring for her parents until their death. Desperate to be at least near Tita, Pedro agrees to the alternative of marrying Tita’s older sister Rosaura. How’s that for a sick arrangement with which no
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one will be happy? Tita, however, has ample opportunity to vent her frustration, since she has acquired the magical capacity to impart her emotions to the food that she prepares for the entire family. Hold onto your intestinal tracts, folks! Awesome movie and the book is just a tad better. Thanks for the RARE upload.

The Horseman on the Roof 1995
Directed By: Jean-Paul Rappeneau Genre: Action & Adventure, Romance, Art House & International, Drama This romantic epic deals with the kind of love known as the “Florence Nightingale syndrome” that develops when one is nursed back to life by a loving caregiver. Angelo Pardi (Olivier Martinez) is an Italian freedom fighter in temporary exile in France. Pauline De Theus (Juliette Binoche) is the young wife of a count who is stranded in France. Both need to travel east but southern France has been thrown into chaos by an attack of the plague. Roads are closed and townspeople are in a panic, lynching strangers for fear of their spreading the plague. Pardi, who is the epitome of gallant heroism, and the somewhat older Pauline get thrown together by circumstances and romantic attraction builds inexorably between the two despite their mutual efforts at denial. When Pauline comes down with the plague, Pardi will do his utmost to try to save her. This film features probably the sexiest non-sex scene in cinema. Synopsis: Olivier Martinez (Unfaithful, The Chambermaid) plays Angelo, an exceptionally gallant, Italian soldier-inexile hiding out from his Austrian enemies... Olivier Martinez (Unfaithful, The Chambermaid) plays Angelo, an exceptionally gallant, Italian soldier-in-exile hiding out from his Austrian enemies in rural France, where a cholera epidemic is sweeping the countryside. Helped in a tough spot by a countess (Juliette Binoche), Angelo swears his unyielding protection to her as she searches for her missing husband. The nobler virtues hold sway as Martinez suppresses his own deepening love and desire for the lady, an admirable posture that has ironic consequences when the countess herself becomes deathly ill. Jean-Paul Rappeneau, maker of the ornamental but empty Cyrano de Bergerac, directs this adventure-romance to a nice pitch of vitality and high drama. The two leads establish a great chemistry (they became offscreen lovers and parents), like watching a pair of thoroughbreds running in the same race. --Tom Keogh

Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)
Directed By: Jacques Demy Genre: Romance, Art House & International, Drama, Musical & Performing Arts Synopsis: A young woman working in an umbrella shop becomes pregnant with the child of a mechanic she fell for. When he joins the military and goes off to war,... A young woman working in an umbrella shop becomes pregnant with the child of a mechanic she fell for. When he joins the military and goes off to war, she marries a wealthier young man to provide security for herself and her child. Jacques Demy's 1964 masterpiece is a pop-art opera, or, to borrow the director's own description, a film in song. This simple romantic tragedy begins in 1957. Guy Foucher (Nino Castelnuovo), a 20-year-old French auto mechanic, has fallen in love with 17-year-old Geneviève Emery (a luminous Catherine Deneuve), an employee in her widowed mother's chic but financially embattled umbrella shop. On the evening before Guy is to leave for a twoyear tour of combat in Algeria, he and Geneviève make love. She becomes pregnant and must choose between waiting for Guy's return or accepting an offer of marriage from a wealthy diamond merchant (Marc Michel, reprising his role from Demy's masterful debut, Lola). A completely sung movie, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is closest in form to a cinematic opera. Composer Michel Legrand composed the score, modeling it around the patterns of everyday conversation. Umbrellas was re-released in 1997.

Cyrano de Bergerac (1990)
Directed By: Jean-Paul Rappeneau Genre: Romance, Art House & International, Drama, Comedy In my opinion, no love story exceeds that of Cyrano de Bergerac for selfless and heroic devotion. Filled with selfloathing because of his hideously large nose, Cyrano hides his deep, passionate love for Roxane and sacrifices his own desires to advance her own passionate love for the handsome Christian, even providing Christian with his own soul to woo and win the incomparable Roxane. This is not only the purest love story but the most poetic. Plot Synopsis by Judd Blaise:
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Edmond Rostand's classic drama of inner and outer beauty is given a lavish treatment in this acclaimed French production. Gérard Depardieu portrays the title character, a brilliant, charismatic swordsman with a generous spirit and a genius for poetry. It would seem that such a man would have no trouble attracting women, but Cyrano considers himself doomed to loneliness by an unattractive face featuring an oversized nose. His feelings of inadequacy are emphasized when Roxane, the beautiful woman he adores, attracts the attention of Christian, a young cadet in Cyrano's service. Christian lacks the poetic gift, however, and he ironically turns to Cyrano for help in winning Roxane's love. What follows is a tale of deception, with Roxane falling in love with the ineloquent Christian thanks to Cyrano's words of love. The underlying narrative has become quite familiar to modern audiences through retellings and variations from the 1950 adaptation starring José Ferrer to Steve Martin's Roxanne. Director Jean-Paul Rappeneau's interpretation stresses the tragic majesty of the original, setting a vigorous performance by Depardieu against a beautifully designed reproduction of the period and an emphasis on the sound and poetry of Rostand's original language; the subtitles for the film's English release were penned by renowned British author Anthony Burgess. This attention to detail creates a particularly faithful cinematic rendering of the original work that met with positive critical responses. Synopsis: Director Jean-Paul Rappeneau and cowriter Jean-Claude Carriere had the brilliant idea of casting France's most lovably vulnerable hunk, the massive... Director Jean-Paul Rappeneau and cowriter Jean-Claude Carriere had the brilliant idea of casting France's most lovably vulnerable hunk, the massive Gerard Depardieu, in one of French literature's meatiest roles: the sword-wielding poet Cyrano. Equipped with a massive nose and a heart to match, Depardieu soars as the heart-broken soldier who must lend his words of love to another man to woo the woman he yearns for. Rappeneau spared no expense in taking this Edmond Rostand play into realistic locations for the battle scenes in the second act, making the film as exciting as it is romantic and funny. Depardieu attacks the role in great gulps, consuming all the oxygen in any room he enters. Macho but sensitive, he creates a larger-than-life Cyrano, whose wrenching sadness at the lack of interest from his lady love will have you reaching for the tissues. --Marshall Fine

Cinema Paradiso (Nuovo Cinema Paradiso) (1988)
Genre: Romance, Art House & International, Drama, Comedy Synopsis: A filmmaker recalls his childhood, when he fell in love with the movies at his village's theater and formed a deep friendship with the theater's... A filmmaker recalls his childhood, when he fell in love with the movies at his village's theater and formed a deep friendship with the theater's projectionist. Directed By: Giuseppe Tornatore Plot: A man receives news from his aging mother in a little town that someone he once knew has passed away. A beautiful story unfolds about the man's childhood friendship with an old man who was the projectionist at the local theater. Their bond was one that contained many highlights and tragedies, and shaped the way for a young boy to grow and move out of his rundown village to pursue a dream.

The Way We Were
Directed By: Sydney Pollack I the 1930's, a Jewish American Communist college student, Katie (Streisand) falls in unrequited love with an AllAmerican Boy Hubbell (Redford), only to unexpectedly meet him again several years later and gradually win his heart. She encourages his reticent writing talent, boosting his confidence and helps him fine-tune his style, until he is a successful novelist and Hollywood screenwriter. The star-crossed couple is then challenged by the revelation to Hubbell's studio that Katie was a former Communist, which in turn makes Hubbell, now a rising screenwriter, a target for blacklisting. Starring: Robert Redford, Barbra Streisand, Bradford Dillman, Lois Chiles, Patrick O'Neal. Directed by: Sydney Pollack.

On Golden Pond (1981)
Genre: Drama Synopsis: Old curmudgeon, Norman Thayer and his wife Ethel have spent their summers at their cottage on Golden Pond for many years. But this summer their... Old curmudgeon, Norman Thayer and his wife Ethel have spent their summers at their cottage on Golden Pond for many years. But this summer their daughter, whom they haven't seen in years feels that she must be there for what may be Norman's last birthday. Directed By: Mark Rydell The loons are back again on Golden Pond and so are Norman Thayer, a retired professor, and Ethel who have had a summer cottage there since early in their marriage. This summer their daughter Chelsea -- whom they haven't
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seen for years -- feels she must be there for Norman's birthday. She and her fiance are on their way to Europe the next day but will be back in a couple of weeks to pick up the fiance's son. When she returns Chelsea is married and her stepson has the relationship with her father that she always wanted. Will father and daughter be able to communicate at last?

The End of the Affair (1999)
Genre: Drama, Romance Directed By: Neil Jordan Synopsis: On a rainy London night in 1946, novelist Maurice Bendrix (Ralph Fiennes) has a chance meeting with Henry Miles (Stephen Rea), husband of his... On a rainy London night in 1946, novelist Maurice Bendrix (Ralph Fiennes) has a chance meeting with Henry Miles (Stephen Rea), husband of his ex-mistress Sarah (Julianne Moore), who abruptly ended their affair two years before. Bendrix's obsession with Sarah is rekindled; he succumbs to his own jealousy and arranges to have her followed.

Bridget Jones's Diary [2001]
Genre: Romance, Comedy Directed By: Sharon Maguire Synopsis: At the start of the new year, 32-year-old Bridget decides it's time to take control of her life-and start keeping a diary. Now, the most provocative,... At the start of the new year, 32-year-old Bridget decides it's time to take control of her life-and start keeping a diary. Now, the most provocative, erotic and hysterical book on her bedside table is the one she's writing. With a taste for adventure, and an opinion on every subject-from exercise to men to food to sex and everything in between-she's turning the page on a whole new life. Bridget Jones is an average woman struggling against her age, her weight, her job, her lack of a man, and her many imperfections. As a New Year's Resolution, Bridget decides to take control of her life, starting by keeping a diary in which she will always tell the complete truth. The fireworks begin when her charming though disreputable boss takes an interest in the quirky Miss Jones. Thrown into the mix are Bridget's band of slightly eccentric friends and a rather disagreeable acquaintance who Bridget cannot seem to stop running into or help finding quietly attractive. Bridget Jones (adorably played by Renee Zellweger) is an unattached 30-something who realizes she's got to change her life. After a New Year's Eve, she vows that this new year is the one in which she'll get her act together. She'll lose weight, she'll smoke and drink less, and she'll document it all in a diary. Complicating everything is Bridget's attraction to her boss, Daniel Cleaver (played by Hugh Grant), a man of questionable character. They launch an affair and Bridget falls for him head over heels, only to realize later that her feelings aren't reciprocated, when her boss gets engaged to another woman. Thrown into the mix is barrister Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), who admittedly finds Bridget attractive but whom Bridget finds repulsive. It won't be until Bridget clearly sees the truth about Daniel, that she also clearly sees Mark for the man he is, and her feelings for him for what they really are.

A Man and a Woman_ Un Homme Et Une Femme 1966 DVDRip XviD AR
Genre: Romance, Art House & International, Drama Directed By: Claude Lelouch Synopsis: The ultimate date movie of the mid-1960s, director Claude Lelouch's A Man and a Woman (Un Homme et Une Femme) stars Jean-Louis Trintignant and Anouk... The ultimate date movie of the mid-1960s, director Claude Lelouch's A Man and a Woman (Un Homme et Une Femme) stars Jean-Louis Trintignant and Anouk Aimee in the title roles. The twosome meet at the boarding school where their children are enrolled. Aimee, an actress, misses her train home, and Trintignant, a professional race car driver, offers her a ride. It is the first of several friendly encounters which eventually blossom into love. Both want to commit to each other, but neither can shake the Past. The now-famous climactic scene in a train station was not scripted at the time of shooting, thus Aimee was unaware that director Lelouch had decided upon a tearful reunion between her and Trintignant. This explains the look of utter surprise on the actress' face. Much has been written about the possible motivation behind Lelouch's decision to film some scenes in color, others in black-and-white. None of the more ardent auterists truly want to hear the director's explanation: he'd run short of money halfway through production, and black-and-white film stock was infinitely cheaper. The winner of two Oscars (one for Best Foreign Film), A Man and A Woman also scored on the top ten with its memorable theme music by Francis Lai. A sequel, A Man and a Woman: 20 Years Later appeared....twenty years later.~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
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A man and a woman meet by accident on a Sunday evening at their childrens' boarding school. Slowly they reveal themselves to each other, finding that each is a widow/widower. Each is slow to reveal anything personal so that each revelation is hidden by a misperception. They become friends, then close friends, and then she reveals that she can't have a lover because, for her, her husband's memory is still too strong. Much of the film is told wordlessly in action, or through hearing one of their thoughts as they go about their day.

Salò [Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1975]
Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini The Story: Set in the Nazi-controlled, northern Italian state of Salo in 1944, four dignitaries round up sixteen perfect specimens of youth and take them together with guards, servants and studs to a palace near Marzabotto. In addition, there are four middle-aged women: three of whom recount arousing stories whilst the fourth accompanies on the piano. The story is largely taken up with their recounting the stories of Dante and De Sade: the Circle of Manias, the Circle of Shit and the Circle of Blood. Following this, the youths are executed whilst each libertine takes his turn as voyeur. The Controversy: The film caused outrage throughout the world when it was released in 1975, and has proved a hot potato for film certification boards. In Britain, the first cinema to screen an uncut version of the film in 1977 was raided by police. A heavily cut version was shown until six years ago, when the British Board of Film Classification agreed to reclassify the movie. A brutal film. Nothing can prepare viewers for this, and I don’t mean the gore, which is tame by today’s torture porn standards. No, what makes this film shocking is the manner in which it lays out the logic of human brutality, for it shows the manner in which anyone can become monster, or victim. A terrible lesson we all need to learn. A film that uses our own desires against us, this is a film full of naked bodies, but Pasolini uses this to make what is ultimately a brutally ethical filmic machine. Meticulously filmed, terrifyingly perfect, and all in the service of teaching us a horrific yet essential lesson.

Mamma Roma (1962) - Pier Paolo Pasolini
Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini After many years working in the streets of Roma, the middle-age whore Mamma Roma (Anna Magnani) saves money to buy an upper class apartment, a fruit stand and retires from the prostitution. She brings her teenage son Ettore (Ettore Garofolo), who was raised alone in the country, to live with her, and Ettore becomes her pride and joy. However, the boy that does not want to study or work, joins to idle friends, has a crush on a bitch, and Mamma Roma uses her best but limited efforts to straight Ettore and make him an honest man. However, her past haunts her with tragic consequences.

8½ (1963)
Director: Federico Fellini Pure cinematic joy. Fellini’s masterpiece on the impossibility of making a film is, no matter how many times I see it, pure fun, yet also, important, deep, real, profound, and full of life. This is a film that really captures how memory, fantasy, work, desire, play, boredom, and ambition intertwine in the bittersweet cacophony of voices, images, personae, roles, embraces, joys, failures, and excesses which define us. Filmically gorgeous, simply classic. Synopsis: Guido is a film director, trying to relax after his last big hit. He can't get a moments peace, however, with the people who have worked with him in the past constantly looking for more work. He wrestles with his conscience, but is unable to come up with a new idea. While thinking, he starts to recall major happenings in his life, and all the women he has loved and left. An autobiographical film of Fellini, about the trials and tribulations of film making.

Le Scaphandre et le Papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) (2007)
Directed By: Julian Schnabel Synopsis: "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" is the remarkable true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, a successful and charismatic editor-in-chief of FrenchElle,... "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" is the remarkable true story of
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Jean-Dominique Bauby, a successful and charismatic editor-in-chief of FrenchElle, who believes he is living his life to its absolute fullest when a sudden stroke leaves him in a life-altered state. While the physical challenges of Bauby's fate leave him with little hope for the future, he begins to discover how his life's passions, his rich memories and his newfound imagination can help him achieve a life without boundaries.

Brief Encounter
Director:David Lean Meeting a stranger in a railway station, a woman is tempted to cheat on her husband. Celia Johnson Trevor Howard Stanley Holloway Joyce Carey Cyril Raymond Everley Gregg Synopsis: In this film based on a Noel Coward play, director David Lean explores the thrill and pain of an illicit romance in 1945 Britain. From a chance... In this film based on a Noel Coward play, director David Lean explores the thrill and pain of an illicit romance in 1945 Britain. From a chance meeting on a train platform, a middle-aged doctor (Trevor Howard) and a suburban housewife (Celia Johnson) enter into a quiet yet passionate love affair, knowing there's no possibility for a lasting relationship. The two meet every Thursday at a small café at the station to play out their doomed romance.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding
Directed By: Joel Zwick Synopsis: A young Greek woman falls in love with a non-Greek and struggles to get her family to accept him while she comes to terms with her heritage and... A young Greek woman falls in love with a non-Greek and struggles to get her family to accept him while she comes to terms with her heritage and cultural identity. Everyone in the Portokalos family worries about Toula. Still unmarried at 30 years old, she works at Dancing Zorba's, the Greek restaurant owned by her parents, and smells like garlic bread. Her days are drab and dull, just like her hair, her clothes, and her attitude. Still, Toula wishes for something more. Just when she's wishing she were prettier, she locks eyes on a tall, handsome stranger, in the restaurant. The handsome stranger barely notices her. Toula is ready for a change. Unfortunately, the rest of her family is not. A few computor classes, some contact lenses and a new attitude are all the jump-start Toula's life needs. She takes a job at her aunt's travel agency, where this time the handsome stranger locks eyes on the transformed Toula. He is Ian Miller, a high school teacher and definately not Greek. In no time, he's asked her out on a date and soon they are falling in love and planning to marry. Toula knows that if Ian can pass muster with her crazy relatives and get baptised in the Greek Orthadox Church...their big fat Greek wedding, including one powder blue limosine, two ice sculptures and ten bridesmaids in turquoise dresses, will be a piece of cake, five layers high with a plastic staircase and a fountain of champagne. Starring: Nia Vardalos, Michael Constantine, John Corbett and Lainie Kazan.

Nowhere in Africa (Nirgendwo in Afrika) (2001)
Directed By: Caroline Link Synopsis: A tale, which follows a young Jewish family from Germany to Kenya as they flee the Nazi regime at the onset of World War II. Jettel Redlich, of... A tale, which follows a young Jewish family from Germany to Kenya as they flee the Nazi regime at the onset of World War II. Jettel Redlich, of upper-class upbringing, and her daughter Regina, moves to Kenya to be with her husband Walter. Walter works as a farm manager, while Regina and Jettel are adjusting to their new home. Then Britain declares war on Germany, and the family is again separated. Through Jettel's affair with a British solider, her family is given preferential treatment. Regina is able to attend school and Walter is given a good job. But after the war, the family is too fractured to reunite and Walter contemplates a return to Germany, while Regina and Jettel have never felt more at home.

Hannah and Her Sisters
Directed By: Woody Allen
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Synopsis: Hannah regularly meets with her sisters Holly and Lee to discuss the weeks' events. It's what they don't always tell each other that forms the film's... Hannah regularly meets with her sisters Holly and Lee to discuss the weeks' events. It's what they don't always tell each other that forms the film's various subplots. Hannah is married to rock-star manager Elliot, who carries a torch for Lee, who in turn lives with pompous Soho artist Frederick. Meanwhile, Holly, a neurotic actress and eternal loser in love, dates TV producer Mickey, who used to be married to Hannah and spends most of the film convinced that he's about to die. That Chekhovian title may have promised Woody Allen at his most pretentious, but this 1986 roundelay grossed $40m and became his biggest ever box-office hit. The film shuffles interconnecting storylines concerning three Manhattan sisters: the warm, well-meaning Hannah (Mia Farrow) is married to the bumbling Elliot (Michael Caine), who is in turn attracted to her sister, Lee (Barbara Hershey). As an affair begins between the two, Lee's own relationship with the tormented artist Frederick (Max von Sydow) comes under strain, and light is brought to an otherwise dark canvas by Hannah's ex-husband, fussbudget TV producer Mickey (Allen), who becomes involved with Hannah's other sister, the jittery Holly (Dianne Wiest). So what was it about Hannah that made it so successful? The balance of comedy and drama is deftly maintained, and there's a palatable, soapy aspect to Elliot and Lee's affair. The film, with its chapter headings, aspires to a novelistic structure, each part favouring a different character or storyline. And the performances are uniformly subtle, especially from Caine (who won the Oscar for best supporting actor) and the underrated Farrow, who was then an Allen regular as well as his off-screen partner. Indeed, Farrow brings genuine mystery to a nurturing figure who may not be as saintly as she seems. "Hannah was a character neither Mia nor I understood, at the start, and at the finish," Allen admitted. "We could never figure out whether Hannah was the bulwark of the family and the spine who held everyone together, or whether Hannah was not so nice … Mia looked to me for guidance and I could never give it to her." Typically, the perfectionist director was far from pleased with the movie. "Hannah and Her Sisters is a film I feel I screwed up very badly," he said later. It was the relatively happy ending that was to blame: "That was the part that killed me." But after all the characters have been through in pursuit of love and contentment, you couldn't say they hadn't earned it.

An Affair to Remember
Directed By: Leo McCarey Synopsis: Two people meet on a luxury liner and fall in love, but because they have other lovers waiting for them, they cannot consummate their passion. They... Two people meet on a luxury liner and fall in love, but because they have other lovers waiting for them, they cannot consummate their passion. They vow to find each other again, and if the feelings are mutual, they will be together. But, when a tragedy strikes, it could affect their love. [ For those of us who like to immerse ourselves in sense-assaulting love stories, this 1957 Leo McCarey classic is as good as it gets. A relentlessly heart-tugging tale of two soulmates whose love even great tragedy cannot tear asunder, An Affair to Remember tosses and turns the emotions but never descends into schmaltz; it stays compelling – partly down to its smart, surprisingly sassy script, which often holds back when it could go for the cheap weep, but also because it is brought to us by two of the classiest acts in Hollywood history: Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. Grant in particular is in devastating form as the charismatic womaniser who is struck down by lovesickness for a woman he believes has rejected him. (It's hard to believe George Clooney didn't spend the 90s watching reruns of this.) Even for those who have never seen it, An Affair holds a unique place in the collective memory of American film-goers, comparable perhaps to the place Brief Encounter has in British hearts and minds. But the film that reduced Meg Ryan to a snotty, gibbering wreck in Sleepless in Seattle is no iconic fossil – that final scene retains its powers to enthral and discombobulate to this day.

Roman Holiday
Directed By: William Wyler Synopsis: A princess plays hooky from her royal duties for 24 hours with a reporter. This is one of Hollywood's most sweetly romantic films -- a frothy, modern... A princess plays hooky from her royal duties for 24 hours with a reporter. This is one of Hollywood's most sweetly romantic films -- a frothy, modern telling of the Cinderella story, in reverse. This was the film that debuted the aristo-chic charms of an unknown actress called Audrey Hepburn. Hepburn sparkles – tomboyish, mischievous and queenly – as the runaway princess Ann who, on a dreary state visit to Rome and bored stiff of crusty old majors, slips incognito into the city. Gregory Peck is the spectacularly ungallant hack who shows her the sights – while secretly cooking up the scoop of the century. Of course they fall in love, with
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a fizzy, light-touch wit that is a pure delight to watch. And Hepburn slums it so sweetly: "Is this the elevator?" she enquires, stepping into his apartment. Hepburn became an overnight star and she won her first Oscar, one of four the film picked up. If there existed a category for near-perfect love story endings, it would have got that too: lonely princess ending her affair during a packed press conference with a few tender and coded words to Peck, before returning to her gilded cage. Neither sex kittenish nor a 50s bombshell, Billy Wilder probably described the new Hepburn look best: "This girl, singlehanded, may make bosoms a thing of the past.

That Obscure Object of Desire
Directed By: Luis Buñuel Synopsis: As terrorists bomb Seville, worldly Fernando Rey boards the Paris train, promptly dumping a bucket of water on a young woman trying to board. As his... As terrorists bomb Seville, worldly Fernando Rey boards the Paris train, promptly dumping a bucket of water on a young woman trying to board. As his fellow passengers look on aghast, Rey proceeds to explain why this young woman is the worst of all women because she will never allow him to consumate his passion. Adapted from Pierre Louys\' 1898 novel La Femme et le Pantin, That Obscure Object of Desire is the 30th and final film from the great Luis Bu±uel. Recounted in flashback to a group of railway travellers, the story wryly details the romantic perils of Mathieu (Bu±uel favorite Fernando Rey), a wealthy, middle-aged French sophisticate who falls desperately in love with his 19-year-old former chambermaid Conchita. Thus begins a surreal game of sexual catand-mouse, with Mathieu obsessively attempting to win the girl\'s affections as she manipulates his carnal desires, each vying to gain absolute control of the other. Brimming with the subversive wit which characterizes all of Bu±uel\'s finest work, That Obscure Object of Desire takes satiric aim at a decadent, decaying society riddled by political unrest and moral bankruptcy. The picture is absurdist even in its casting -- Rey\'s dialogue was dubbed by the French actor Michel Piccoli, while the two-faced, hot-and-cold Conchita is played, logically enough, by two different actresses (Carole Bouquet and Angela Molina, respectively), with the character\'s dialogue spoken by yet a third performer. The same Louys novel was also filmed by Josef von Sternberg in 1935 as the Marlene Dietrich vehicle The Devil Is a Woman, and again in 1959 as Julien Duvivier\'s La Femme et le Pantin, starring Brigitte Bardot. It took surrealistic director Luis Bu±uel most of his lifetime to find a wider international audience, and he finally achieved it with his last film, a hilarious story of sexual frustration. The story concerns a rich Spanish gentleman who is continually tricked and humiliated by a beautiful woman, who changes physical appearances and refuses his advances. That Obscure Object of Desire is based on a novel by Pierre Louys, which has been the basis for several other films. None is as richly realized as Bu±uel\'s version, which uses two actresses (Carole Bouquet and Angela Molina) in the identity-switching lead role. And no director can explore sexual frustration as well as Bu±uel, who made a whole career of the topic. The film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Film, a belated tribute to the long, groundbreaking career of the accomplished anarchistic director. Like his penultimate film, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, That Obscure Object of Desire is not as dense or confusing as Bu±uel\'s earlier works, and is more accessible to general audiences. Still, it is full of the director\'s characteristic camera trickery, biting social satire and psychological game-playing.

Le Boucher
Directed By: Claude Chabrol Synopsis: An independent young schoolteacher forms a relationship with the friendly local butcher, whom she slowly begins to suspect is the sadistic... An independent young schoolteacher forms a relationship with the friendly local butcher, whom she slowly begins to suspect is the sadistic serial-killer terrorizing their rural French province. A first rate psychological thriller from Claude Chabrol about the evolving relationship of a beautiful schoolteacher and a serial murderer. "In Chabrol's films, the relationships are plotted with a mathematical precision that does not rule out surprising developments" (Roy Armes). With Stephane Audran, Antonio Passallia, Mario Beccaria and Pasquale Ferone. French with English subtitles. France/Italy, 1969, 90 mins. Sexual frustration is the focus of this Hitchcockian thriller from French director Claude Chabrol. Schoolteacher Hélène (Stéphane Audran) comes to a small Périgord village to begin a new job. She is soon romanced by the local butcher, Popaul (Jean Yanne), but is distracted by her job and memories of a previous ill-fated relationship. A series of brutal murders of young women and a dropped cigarette-lighter raise Hélène's suspicions about her suitor, whose pitiable, depraved compulsions lead to a gruesome conclusion. Audran, who was Chabrol's wife at the time, makes an engaging heroine, and Yanne is simultaneously scary and pathetic as the obsessive butcher.

Contempt
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Directed By: Jean-Luc Godard Synopsis: Paul Javal, a writer, is hired to work out a script for the new movie about Ulisses, directed by Fritz Lang and produced by Prokosch. Because he let... Paul Javal, a writer, is hired to work out a script for the new movie about Ulisses, directed by Fritz Lang and produced by Prokosch. Because he let his wife Camille drive with Prokosch, and he is late, she belives, that he uses her as a sort of "present" for Prokosch to get get a better payment. So the relation breaks up. Contempt is the story of the end of a marriage. Camille (Brigitte Bardot) falls out of love with her husband Paul (Michel Piccoli) while he is rewriting the screenplay Odyssey by American producer Jeremiah Prokosch (Jack Palance). Just as the director of Prokosch's film, Fritz Lang, says that The Odyssey is the story of individuals confronting their situations in a real world, Le Mépris itself is an examination of the position of the filmmaker in the commercial cinema. Godard himself was facing this situation in the production of Le Mépris. Italian producer Carlo Ponti had given him the biggest budget of his career, and he found himself working with a star of Bardot's magnitude for the first time. One of the best "movie movies" ever made, Contempt stars Michel Piccoli as a screenwriter called in to doctor the script of a film version of The Odyssey as his marriage to his stunningly sexy wife (Brigitte Bardot) falls apart. The legendary Fritz Lang plays himself as the movie's director and Jack Palance is hilariously arrogant as the American producer. References to the Homer tale and contemporary movie culture abound in this endlessly fascinating movie shot in Cinemascope and Technicolor. Colin MacCabe went so far as to call it "the greatest work of art produced in post-war Europe," in Sight and Sound. French with English subtitles. The DVD is a Criterion Collection edition. This letterboxed, 2-disc set includes audio commentary by film scholar Robert Stam; The Dinosaur and the Baby, an hour-long conversation between Godard and Fritz Lang from 1967; theatrical trailer; interview with cinematographer Raoul Coutard; and two short 1964 documentaries by Jacques Rozier: Contempt: Bardot et Godard and Paparazzi. France/Italy, 1963, 103 mins.

Open Your Eyes
Directed By: Alejandro Amenábar The handsome and wealthy César is very successful with women and is having difficulties getting rid off Nuria, his last affair. His best friend, Pelayo, is unlucky with women and jealous of César. In his birthday party, César meets the gorgeous and sexy Sofia, currently dating Pelayo, but they are immediately attracted to each other and spend the night together in her apartment. The next morning, César finds Nuria outside of Sofia's building and he accepts her offer of a ride home. However, she commits suicide, crashing her car against a wall but César survives the crash, but with his face completely destroyed. The doctors do not have the technology to restore his face and César is absolutely depressed and missing Sofia. One night, César meets Sofia and Pelayo in a bar but he drinks too much and passes out on the street. However, the next morning, Sofia finds César on the street and kisses him telling that she loves him. Then the doctors tell him that they are able to fix his face. Out of the blue, César's happiness changes and he finds that he is trapped in a nightmare. [QUOTE]What is waking? What is dream? What is reality? What is fantasy? What is sanity? What is madness? Such questions pervade "Open Your Eyes," a psychological thriller directed by Alejandro Amenabar. "Open Your Eyes," which darts among such relative novelties as virtual reality and cryogenics, is at bottom a retelling of the story of Job for a vain, materialistic, selfish age. Handsomely filmed in Madrid with an attractive cast, this Spanish feature is unlikely to satisfy those who insist on linear storytelling and pat endings. But in its deliberately vexing way, "Open Your Eyes" is a film with enough intellectual meat on its stylish bones to give more adventurous moviegoers something to chew on afterward. [/QUOTE] [SPOILER] Its protagonist is Cesar (Eduardo Noriega), a good-looking, 25-year-old successful businessman with a well-appointed apartment, three cars and a reputation for never spending two nights with the same woman. He is about to lose all he values. At the outset of "Open Your Eyes," he would like to rid himself of his latest conquest, Nuria (Najwa Nimri), and when she appears uninvited at his birthday party, Cesar enlists Sofia (Penelope Cruz), the date of his best friend, Pelayo (Fele Martinez), in his effort to avoid her.
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Cesar's attention to the beautiful Sofia is less than innocent. He takes her home; they are mutually attracted, although they do not sleep together. When he leaves the next morning, Nuria is waiting in her car to tempt him. He wavers momentarily, then accepts her invitation. He declines the pills she offers. She downs them, floors the accelerator and sends the speeding car hurtling off the road, down an incline and into a stone wall. Cesar awakes horribly disfigured, behind a mask, under interrogation by a psychiatrist inside a cell where he is imprisoned on a murder charge. From then on "Open Your Eyes" plays games with the minds of Cesar and its audience. Having taken away his looks and Sofia, the woman he might actually have loved, the film, like a fairy tale, brings her back into his life and then, miraculously, restores his ruined face. The film also restores the dead Nuria and turns its attention intermittently to the mysterious Serge Duvernois (Gerard Barray), who appears on television talking about cryogenics and the possibility of life after death. But as the psychiatrist, Antonio (Chete Lera), tries to find out what caused Cesar to commit a murder, there is Cesar speaking behind the mask that conceals his still-ravaged face. The film's framing device is a talking alarm clock that starts Cesar's day with the message "Open Your Eyes."

La Nina santa (The Holy Girl) [2004] DvDrip-paTon
Director: Lucrecia Martel Writers: Juan Pablo Domenech (contributing writer) - Lucrecia Martel (written by) Genre: Drama Plot: ENT physicians gather at a provincial hotel in Salta. The hotel owner, Helena, is subdued, brittle, avoiding the calls of her ex-husband's pregnant wife. Family dysfunction seems everywhere. Helena's daughter, Amalia, about 14, discusses vocations in a Catholic girls group. Their teen imaginations conflate the erotic, the religious, and the lurid. Amalia notices Dr. Jano, and he notices her. She decides to make him her vocation, she follows him, he rubs against her in a public crowd, he's appalled at his actions. Meanwhile, Helena believes Jano is attracted to her even through he's married. Longing, guilt, scandal, and teen sensuality are set to collide.

Y Tu Mamá También/ And Your Mother Too
Directed By: Alfonso Cuarón Synopsis: Abandoned by their girlfriends for the summer, rich teenagers Tenoch and Julio meet older woman Luisa at a wedding. Trying to impress Luisa, the... Abandoned by their girlfriends for the summer, rich teenagers Tenoch and Julio meet older woman Luisa at a wedding. Trying to impress Luisa, the friends tell her they are headed on a road trip to a beautiful, secret beach called Boca del Cielo (Heaven's Mouth). Intrigued with their story and desperate to escape, Luisa asks if she can join them on their trip. Soon the three are headed out of Mexico City, making their way towards the fictional destination. Along the way Luisa seduces the two young men, and they begin to argue over her. As they continue their journey, caught up in their own world, the wealthy trio all but ignores the harsh realities of poverty that surround them. Abandoned by their girlfriends for the summer, teenagers Tenoch and Julio meet the older Luisa at a wedding. Trying to be impressive, the friends tell Luisa they are headed on a road trip to a beautiful, secret beach called Boca del Cielo. Intrigued with their story and desperate to escape, Luisa asks if she can join them on their trip. Soon the three are headed out of Mexico City, making their way toward the fictional destination. Along the way, seduction, argument and the contrast of the trio against the harsh realities of the surrounding poverty ensue.

Gregory's Girl
Directed By: Bill Forsyth Synopsis: The sophomore film of Scottish director Bill Forsyth was his first international hit, a typically quirky comedy set amongst colorful Scottish... The sophomore film of Scottish director Bill Forsyth was his first international hit, a typically quirky comedy set amongst colorful Scottish teenagers. Gregory (John Gordon Sinclair) is a normal, gangly, hormonally-challenged student who, like his pals, has begun to discover the charms of the opposite sex, particularly those of Dorothy (Dee Hepburn), the new girl in school and a talented soccer player. Dorothy joins the team, and Gregory, who's the goalie, instantly becomes smitten with her. Gregory's affections are
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given in spite of the fact that Dorothy is a better player than most of the boys on the hapless team, and her presence inspires a great deal of angst and embarrassment. Despite the humiliating lengths to which Gregory is prepared to go in order to win Dorothy's attention (and the fact that she eventually takes his place as goalie), Dorothy's not interested, and she tries to pass Gregory off to a classmate, Susan (Clare Grogan). The winner of a BAFTA Award for Best Screenplay, Gregory's Girl was followed 18 years later by a sequel, Gregory's Two Girls (1999).

Pedro Almodovar - Carne Tremula (Live Flesh, 1997)
Director: Pedro Almodovar Pizza delivery man Victor is having an argument with Elena, whom he met a few days ago, but she was high then and doesn't want to hear about him. Reacting to the noise, two cops, young David and older Sancho, arrive at the scene, the gun accidentally goes off.. Four years later David is a wheelchair basketball star, he's married to Elena, Victor is released out of prison and their destinies begin to cross again. This Pedro Almod≤var melodrama examines how several lives are changed by a single gunshot. Adapting the novel Live Flesh by British mystery author Ruth Rendell, Almod≤var has given the material a Spanish makeover with added political thrust. Beginning in 1970 in Franco's Madrid, when a prostitute (Penelope Cruz) gives birth to a son, Victor, the story leaps forward to contemporary Madrid. Wealthy diplomat's daughter Elena (Francesca Neri) is watching Luis Bu±uel's The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de La Cruz (1955) while waiting for the arrival of her heroin dealer, and she accidentally buzzes pizza delivery man Victor (Liberto Rabal) into the building. In the confusion that follows, two cops, David (Javier Bardem) and Sancho (Jose Sancho) arrive, and a gun goes off. The story then makes another leap to four years later: Victor is in prison, while Elena, no longer on drugs, runs a disadvantaged children's shelter and is married to wheelchair-bound David. After his release, Victor visits his mother's grave and spots David and Elena at the cemetery -- where David meets philandering wife Clara (Angela Molina). Fate interweaves the tangled interrelationships of all into a complex tapestry of destiny and guilt. Shown at 1997 London and New York film festivals. Bhob Stewart Synopsis: Pedro Almodovar's most mature and restrained film is a superbly structured melodrama about five people whose lives in modern Madrid are inextricably... Pedro Almodovar's most mature and restrained film is a superbly structured melodrama about five people whose lives in modern Madrid are inextricably linked by a bullet fired in a police scuffle. Pizza delivery man Victor is having an argument with Elena, whom he met a few days ago, but she was high then and doesn't want to hear about him. Reacting to the noise, two cops, young David and older Sancho, arrive at the scene, the gun accidentally goes off.. Four years later David is a wheelchair basketball star, he's married to Elena, Victor is released out of prison and their destinies begin to cross again. Review from AMG The second film in the "mature phase" of Pedro Almodovar's career, which began with La Flor de Mi Secreto two years earlier, Carne Tremula borrows chunks of its ornate plot from Ruth Rendell's novel Live Flesh. The film's political subtext and messy humanity, however, bear the distinctive stamp of its celebrated director. A deeply felt exploration of the tension between destiny and chance, human will and involuntary longing, Carne Tremula plays a delicate juggling act with competing subplots that slowly reveal their intimate connections. Unlike Paul Thomas Anderson's similarly themed but deeply flawed Magnolia, Almodovar's film zeroes in on its ideas subtly and precisely. The closest the director gets to his well-known affinity for garish excess and picturesque debilities is a few minutes of the haunted, haunting Francesca Neri in a fright wig, and several straight-faced scenes of stand-up guy Javier Bardem playing wheelchair basketball. Elsewhere, it's all tightly coiled passion and darkly libidinous willto-power -- an urgent directive to get on with life. American audiences might not grasp all the levels of Almodovar's allegory about the legacy of Franco's reign, but most everyone should recognize the contrary passions that propel his characters to desperate acts and unlikely redemptions. Flawlessly acted by Bardem, Neri, Liberto Rabal, and Angela Molina, Carne Tremula offers a darker counterpoint to the tragicomic shadings of 1999's Todo Sobre Mi Madre. Brian J. Dillard

Pelle erobreren AKA Pelle the Conqueror (1987)
Director: Billie August
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The end of the 19th century. A boat filled with Swedish emigrants comes to the Danish island of Bornholm. Among them are Lasse and his son Pelle who move to Denmark to find work. They find employment at a large farm, but are treated as the lowest form of life. Pelle starts to speak Danish but is still harassed as a foreigner. But none of them wants to give up their dream of finding a better life than the life they left in Sweden. Pelle The Conqueror (1987) ranks among the most critically acclaimed non-English language films of the past twenty-five years. It won the prestigious Grand Prix at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival as well as the 1988 Academy Award in the Best Foreign Film category. It is also the most commercially successful Danish film ever made. Small wonder! It is an intelligently made art work featuring magnificent photography and quietly restrained storytelling. There is also a wonderful bit of irony in the casting of this film. The title character, Pelle, is played by Pelle Hvenegaard. While this is certainly not the first time that an actor or actress has had the same given name as the character they play, whatΓΓé¼Γäós special in this instance is that Pelle Hvenegaard was named after the character Pelle in the novel on which this film was later based. Thus, Pelle Hvenegaard plays his namesake in this movie. Pelle The Conqueror was adapted from the first volume of a four part novel by Martin Andersen Nexo set between 1906 and 1910. Volume one was entitled, simply, ΓΓé¼┼ôChildhood.ΓΓé¼┬¥ Later volumes get into social and political issues, but volume one is a basic coming-of-age story, though the maturation occurs in distinctly harsh conditions. The director, Billie August has produced a sprawling epic. Known more as a craftsman than an ΓΓé¼┼ôauteurΓΓé¼┬¥, August takes few chances but delivers a well-structured and visually sumptuous film. AugustΓΓé¼Γäós best known previous work was Twist and Shout (1984), a more traditional coming-of-age story, and his best known subsequent work was, perhaps, Les Miserables (1998). The Story: The story is set in the early years of the 20th century. The film opens with a magnificent shot of the fogladen sea. Soon the outline of a schooner silently emerges from a low dense cloud of vapor. It is packed with impoverished Swedish laborers who are looking for work and a better life in Denmark. One of these is Lasse Karlsson (Max von Sydow), a sixty-ish farmhand from Sweden. His wife has recently passed away and he hopes to find a place where he can spend his old age in relative comfort. At this stage of his life, his dreams have been reduced to a desire to be able to drink his coffee in bed on Sunday mornings and to eat roast pork with raisins for dinner on Sunday evening. Lasse cradles in his broad arms his 10 year-old son, Pelle (Pelle Hvenegaard). Lasse optimistically assures Pelle that jobs are plentiful where they are headed. Everyone has enough to eat and children can play all day rather than work beside their parents in the fields. When the boat docks, Danish farmers examine the workers like so many cattle, picking the healthiest and heartiest. Lasse and Pelle are last to be chosen because, as they are told, Lasse ΓΓé¼┼ôis too old and the boyΓΓé¼Γäós too young.ΓΓé¼┬¥ They climb aboard a cart belonging to Mr. Kongstrup (Axel Strobye) for the trip to Stone Farm, to assume a life of indentured servitude. In exchange for food and lodging, they must work from dawn to dust. After some unspecified number of years, Lasse will be entitled to a payment and status as a ΓΓé¼┼ôfree man.ΓΓé¼┬¥ On Stone Farm, Lasse and Pelle are treated only a bit worse than the farm animals, with which they also share living quarters. They live in a partitioned-off section of the barn next to the chickens and cattle. The harsh existence on the farm is driven by the flow of the seasons. The work is hard and the farm hands are oppressed and cruelly treated by the manager (Erik Paaske) and his trainee. Through the seasons of several years, Pelle slowly matures and observes the lives of the folk in this remote countryside. Their stories become the various threads in the fabric of PelleΓΓé¼Γäós maturing perspective. The colorful cast of subsidiary characters are introduced and interwoven smoothly and it is never difficult to keep track of who is who. Pelle remains the center of the story throughout and all of the subplots are seen from his vantage point and related to his coming-of-age. Mr. Kongstrup, the owner of the farm, is a blatant philanderer, not even taking the trouble to disguise his activities from his wife. He regularly takes up with young wenches but takes no interest when one bears his child, despite the woman periodically visiting the farm to hurl invectives at Kongstrup from the farmyard or the gate, however far she gets before being intercepted. Mrs. Kongstrup (Astrid Villaume) mostly drinks brandy all day long but howls her pain relating to her husbandΓΓé¼Γäós infidelities into the wind at night. These property owners may be more prosperous than their workers but appear no more happy. Another subplot concerns a somewhat proud and rebellious worker named Erik (Bjorn Granath). From time to time, he challenges the authority of the manager. His independent streak serves as a source of inspiration for Pelle. Another subplot relates to a beautiful young local girl involved in a doomed romance with a merchantΓΓé¼Γäós son who is above her station in life. Another touching thread is LasseΓΓé¼Γäós winter of romance with the wife of a long-missing sailor. Pelle is the first to meet her. She lives in a rustic cabin near the sea. Pelle plays matchmaker
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and introduces his father to the woman. There is a delicately balanced development of this relationship that nicely illustrates how practicality is as important to the elderly as romance. They decide that it would be ΓΓé¼┼ôsensibleΓΓé¼┬¥ to live together.

Inland Empire
Director: David Lynch A blonde actress is preparing for her biggest role yet, but when she finds herself falling for her co-star, she realizes that her life is beginning to mimic the fictional film that they're shooting. Adding to her confusion is the revelation that the current film is a remake of a doomed Polish production, 47, which was never finished due to an unspeakable tragedy. Written by Ted After taking the lead in a new movie Hollywood star Nikki Grace learns the script is based on an old polish film, which was abandoned after the two lead roles of the film were murdered, Thinking the film is cursed Nikki's imagination runs riot. Written by ted The actress Nikki Grace is invited to perform the role of Susan Blue as the lead actress of the movie "On High In Blue Tomorrows", directed by Kingsley Stewart. Nikki's husband is a jealous guy and the co-star is the wolf Devon Berk that will perform Billy Side, the husband of Susan. In the rehearsal, Kingsley tells that the movie is a remake of an unfinished and damned Polish production where the two lead stars had been murdered. While shooting the movie, Nikki has daydreams, mixing her real life with the fictional Susan. The film begins with an image of an old vinyl playing "the longest-running radio play in history". Indistinguishable filtered voices can be heard in the recording. Eventually the scene fades into what appears to be a dimly lit hotel hall, where a man and a woman, both of whose faces are blurred beyond any recognition, stumble into a hotel room. Speaking Polish, the man asks the woman to undress, which she does reluctantly. As she does this, the man asks her if she knows what whores do, to which she replies "they f**k". Presumably the woman is herself a prostitute. Next, in another hotel room, a raven-haired woman, known only as the Lost Girl (Karolina Gruszka) sits crying while watching a television. On the television is an eerie sitcom about a family of rabbit-people in a small room who speak in terse, seemingly meaningless sentences, that are occasionally followed by a non-sequitur laugh-track. The female rabbit talks about a "secret" that apparently the male rabbit knows about. A knock at the door transpires. All three rabbits are captivated by it, and the male rabbit goes to answer it, but the knocker is not revealed. He walks out through the door and it closes behind him. The Male Rabbit enters a dimly lit room, which then fades into a lavish golden room where a bald man sits on a couch. Another gruffly-looking Polish man stands talking to him. The seated man talks about seeking an opening, and the standing man juggles variations of the phrase "do you understand"? Hollywood, California. An old woman with bulging eyes (Grace Zabriskie), walks down a suburban neighborhood, looking dizzy. She steps onto the porch of a high-class home and a butler answers. The home is that of Nikki Grace (Laura Dern), a well-known actress, and the old woman is let in, claiming she is a new neighbor and wishes to greet Nikki. She says she heard Nikki got a new part for a film called "On High in Blue Tomorrows". Nikki tells her it isn't for certain since the audition was very recent, but the woman insists she has gotten it. She then talks about a boy who opened a door and saw the end of the world, thus causing evil to be born. She then goes on to talk about a girl who got lost in an alley behind a marketplace, and then remembered something. Nikki is unsure what the woman is talking about. The woman then asks if there's a murder in the movie for which Nikki auditioned. Nikki says no. She continues by talking about the mixing up of time, yesterdays, todays, and tomorrows. She remarks that it may be 9:45 when it is in fact after midnight. She then points to the couch across from them and says that, if it were tomorrow, Nikki would be over there. We then pan to where the woman is pointing, and see Nikki receive her part via phone. A week or two after she hears that she has gotten the part for the film, Nikki is seen with her co-star, Devon Berk (Justin Theroux) on "The Marilyn Levins Show", a program akin to "The View" and other celebrity programs. Marilyn asks both actors whether or not they will have an on-set affair, to which both Nikki and Devin respond negatively. Afterwards, Devin is told by his entourage that Nikki is "hands-off", since Nikki's husband is an extremely influential and powerful figure. Afterwards at a studio, while reading through the script through with Devin, their director, Kingsley (Jeremy Irons) and his assistant Freddie Howard (Harold Dean Stanton) arrive where they tell Nikki and Devin that the film they are making is in fact a remake of an older unfinished Polish film called '47', which was abandoned since it was rumored that it was cursed. However, Kingsley assures them both that nothing will come of it. Later, while they are rehearsing a scene, there is a disturbance somewhere in the set. Devin goes to investigate the noise, but nothing is ever found. They continue running through their lines.
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At this point, the film takes a drastic stylistic turn. Nikki's world begins to blend with that of the film they are making, putting into question whether or not the alleged "curse" is in fact real. A woman with severe stomach wounds (who also plays the wife of Billy Side, a character in Nikki's film) tells a cop she is going to kill someone with a screwdriver. Polish prostitutes confront various pimps while murder permeates their Polish city. A mafia-like organization discusses one of their captives, remarking that the man claimed he was from "Inland Empire". One day off the set, Nikki is shopping for groceries when she sees a door labeled "Axx o Nn", with an arrow pointing to a door. She passes through the door and enters a movie studio. She hears voices and begins running. She looks back: She sees herself seated with Kingsley, watching Devin chase her. She then realizes that SHE was in fact the intruder, and that she had watched herself sneak into the studio. Nikki evades exposure by hiding in a house found on the set, where she stays for most of the movie. When she enters the set house, it miraculously metamorphoses into an actual house somewhere in the suburbs. Nikki sees it is filled with prostitutes who are having a surreal party, and dancing to 60's music. She listens to their stories, smoking and donning their suggestive garb, eventually becoming one herself. It slowly turns out that Nikki is in fact Susan Blue, the character that she portrays in the movie, who lives in a suburban home with her husband Smitty. Nikki (now called Susan) is at a backyard party with her husband where she asks friends to look at me, and tell me if you've seen me before. Susan wanders into a backyard dressed in a business suit and finds a man with a light bulb in his mouth. Frightened, she brandishes a screwdriver at him, and runs away. Susan runs down Sunset Boulevard, attempting to flee a woman with a screwdriver (the same woman from earlier) who is attempting to kill her. Wandering the streets bloody and lost, while attempting to escape the treacherous woman, Susan hides in a nightclub, where she meets in a back room with a fat man with glasses known only as Mr. K (Erik Crary). She begins an epic and foul-mouthed monologue in which she unloads all her childhood scars, including being molested as a girl, where she gouged out the eye of her rapist. Susan leaves the nightclub and runs down the street where the woman stabs her with the screwdriver and leaves her for dead. Susan wonders over to a closed down store where she collapses to the ground, coughing up blood and seeing three homeless people, a black man, a Hispanic woman, and a young Japanese woman starring at her. The Japanese woman, speaking with a very thick, almost inaudible accent, rambles onto Susan and her street friends about her friend Cassie who lives in a house in the Palisades and dealing with her problems. Susan then dies, and.... Kingsley yells "Cut!" The entire event is revealed to be the movie's final scene shot, and the street people are really actors who walk off the set. Susan, now turned back to Nikki, leaves the set and wonders down the Hollywood street to an old hotel where down a dark corridor, she finally confronts the standing man from earlier in the film, known now as "The Phantom". She shoots him, which causes his face to become hideously disfigured, at first becoming a disturbing copy of Nikki's own face, but eventually morphing into something closely resembling a fetus. We next go to the rabbits again, who are once more faced with the opened door. Nikki then goes to the hotel room where the Lost Girl is being held, opens the door and with a bright light and kiss form Nikki, the Lost Girl is freed from her prison and disappears, as does Nikki. The Lost Girl returns to her home in the suburban San Fernando Valley where she is the real Susan Blue and she is reunited with her husband Smitty and her young son whom are happy to be back together at last. The film ends with the group of prostitutes in a hotel lobby dancing to Nina Simone's "Sinnerman" with a beat from two lumbermen sawing a tree.

Welcome to the Rileys.
Director: Jake Scott Screenwriter: Ken Hixon
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Starring: James Gandolfini, Melissa Leo, Kristen Stewart Genre: Drama Summary: "Welcome to the Rileys" is a powerful drama about finding hope in the most unusual of places. Once a happily married and loving couple, Doug and Lois Riley (James Gandolfini and Melissa Leo) have grown apart since losing their teenage daughter eight years prior. Leaving his agoraphobic wife behind to go on a business trip to New Orleans, Doug meets a 17-year-old runaway (Kristen Stewart) and the two form a platonic bond. For Lois and Doug, what initially appears to be the final straw that will derail their relationship, turns out to be the inspiration they need to renew their marriage.

The Social Network 2010
Director: David Fincher
On a fall night in 2003, Harvard undergrad and computer programming genius Mark Zuckerberg sits down at his computer and heatedly begins working on a new idea. In a fury of blogging and programming, what begins in his dorm room soon becomes a global social network and a revolution in communication. A mere six years and 500 million friends later, Mark Zuckerberg is the youngest billionaire in history... but for this entrepreneur, success leads to both personal and legal complications. On a fall night in 2003, Harvard undergrad and computer programming genius Mark Zuckerberg sits down at his computer and heatedly begins working on a new idea. In a fury of blogging and programming, what begins in his dorm room soon becomes a global social network and a revolution in communication. A mere six years and 500 million friends later, Mark Zuckerberg is the youngest billionaire in history...but for this entrepreneur, success leads to both personal and legal complications. (Sony Pictures) THE SOCIAL NETWORK is not about Facebook. It's about Mark Zuckerberg and the people associated with him and the consequences that arise with the evolution of Facebook. In an even broader sense, it's about friends being driven apart due to money and betrayal. Because of this, it's no surprise that many have already compared this to CITIZEN KANE. And it's not just the similarities in themes that are astounding, it's the quality as well. What makes THE SOCIAL NETWORK so good is the masterfully written script by Aaron Sorkin. The film is filled with impeccable dialog that just sucks you in. It would be no surprise if the film won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. Director David Fincher also does a great job keeping the audience captivated through and through with a consistently fast pace. Really, you'll probably be drawn to the film's opening argument between two characters than any other scene this year. All right, I'm exaggerating, but you get the point. It's not Fincher's best work, but it's in the top 3. Jesse Eisenberg and co-star Andrew Garfield are the driving force behind this film. Eisenberg does a terrific job delivering the lines as he did while Garfield brings in an emotional aspect to the film. Although both are quite excellent, Garfield's performance is Oscar worthy. Rooney Mara is quickly getting up the ladder after having last seen her in the remake of A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET in the beginning of the year. She's just in a few scenes, but she's great in them. I would have like to see her more in the film, though. Apparently, Armie Hammer played two characters as twins in the film, which really blew me away when I found out because I thought they were two different actors. He really distinguished the characters really well. Oh, and if you're worried about Justin Timberlake, don't be. He's really good in here. I also loved Rashida Jones in the few scenes she was in. With terrific performances from the cast all around, a brilliant script, some fine directing by Fincher, and an engaging score by Trent Reznor, it should be no surprise that THE SOCIAL NETWORK succeeded the way it did. Although it's a 2-hour dialog driven film, it absolutely engrossing to watch. If anything, this is probably the closest modern version of CITIZEN KANE that we will ever get in a long time. THE SOCIAL NETWORK is easily one of the best films of the year.

Les Choses de la vie (The Little Things in Life) (These Things Happen) (1970)
Directed By: Claude Sautet Synopsis: A sensitive businessman, injured in an automobile accident, reflects on his wife and his mistress, both of whom he dearly loves. A sensitive businessman, injured in an automobile accident, reflects on his wife and his mistress, both of whom he dearly loves.

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After laboring in obscurity for several years, French filmmaker Claude Sautet finally struck a responsive chord with moviegoers in Les Choses de la Vie. The plot isn't much: the hero, businessman Michel Piccoli, must choose between his wife and his mistress, two women whom he loves with equal fervor. It is what Sautet does with the material that lifts the film above the ordinary. The director puts the central character's plight in context with his ongoing concerns over his job, his income, and his relationship with his family. In Choses de la Vie Sautet has nothing but the warmest feelings for his characters, which results in more three-dimensionality that might normally be expected in so banal a plotline

Nelly & Monsieur Arnaud (1995)
Directed By: Claude Sautet Synopsis: When Nelly, a woman being just divorced, meets by chance M. Arnaud, a mature salesman just retired, begins a strange and special relationship between... When Nelly, a woman being just divorced, meets by chance M. Arnaud, a mature salesman just retired, begins a strange and special relationship between the two personalities. Nelly (Béart) is married to Jerôme (Berling), a man who has stopped working or searching for work. Nelly has a part-time job at a printing shop but she has fallen six months behind on the rent for the apartment in which she lives with her husband. Talking with Jacquelline at a coffee shop, she meets Pierre Arnaud, a wealthy, retired businessman. After determining Nelly is encumbered with debt, Arnaud spontaneously decides to give Nelly 30,000 francs as a gift. Nelly reluctantly accepts, pays off her overdue rent and moves out of the apartment. Nelly agrees to type up Arnaud's memoirs, but Arnaud insists this will not be to repay the money he already gave her, he will pay her for this work. Nelly thus learns more about Arnaud's life: he was a judge in a French colony, and later a businessman. Nelly has an affair with Arnaud's editor. Arnaud feels a little jealous.

A Heart in Winter (Un coeur en hiver) (A Heart of Stone) (1992)
Directed By: Claude Sautet Synopsis: Sexual tension flares and fizzles in this subtle French drama set in the confines of a violin shop. Stephane (Daniel Auteuil), the chief instrument... Sexual tension flares and fizzles in this subtle French drama set in the confines of a violin shop. Stephane (Daniel Auteuil), the chief instrument builder, is so committed to his work that he barely notices the beautiful young violinist (Emmanuelle Beart) who's sharing a bed with his business partner, Maxime (Andre Dussollier). Problems arise, however, when she aims her passions at Stephane's cold heart.

Les égarés (Strayed)
Directed By: Andre Techine Synopsis: June 1940. German troops are advancing on Paris. Odile, a widowed teacher, succumbs to the widespread panic and, with her two children, joins the... June 1940. German troops are advancing on Paris. Odile, a widowed teacher, succumbs to the widespread panic and, with her two children, joins the exodus from the city. Philippe is on the cusp of adolescence, Little Cathy knows only that they are going South. After fifty kilometers, a German plane attacks, decimating the helpless refugees. Odile and her children lose everything. A shaven-headed youth appears from nowhere and leads them away from the carnage. His name is Yvan, he's seventeen years old. Cut off from the rest of the world and living in confined quarters, Odile and Yvan find themselves confronted with their own desires.

Les choristes
Directed By: Christophe Barratier Synopsis: Set in 1948, a professor of music, Clement Mathieu, becomes the supervisor at a boarding school for the rehabilitation for minors. What he discovers... Set in 1948, a professor of music, Clement Mathieu, becomes the supervisor at a boarding school for the rehabilitation for minors. What he discovers disconcerts him -- the current situation is repressive. Through the power of song, Clement tries to transform the students. Fond de l'Etang is a boarding school for troubled boys located in the French countryside. In the mid-twentieth century, it is run by the principal M. Rachin, an egotistical disciplinarian whose official unofficial mantra for the school is "action - reaction", meaning that there will be severe consequences for any boy out of line. This approach
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does not seem to be working as the boys as a collective are an unruly bunch. In turn, the teachers don't teach, but are always watching out for the next subversive act from the boys. January 15, 1949 marks the arrival to the school of the new supervisor, M. Clément Mathieu, a middle-aged man who is grasping at finding his place in life after a series of failed endeavors. Although he does find the boys an unruly lot, Mathieu does not believe in the "action reaction" policy, and as such, butts heads with Rachin while secretly undermining the policy... Written by Huggo

Knafayim Shvurot aka Broken Wings 2002
The unexpected death of the family patriarch throws every member of the Ullmann clan off course. Widow Dafna takes to bed for three months and when she finally returns to her job at the maternity hospital, she has little time for her children. Eldest son, Yair drops out of school and adopts a fatalist attitude, shutting out his siblings and girlfriend. His twin sister Maya, a talented musician, feels the most guilt and is forced to act as a family caregiver at the expense of career opportunities. Bullied at school, younger son Ido responds by obsessively filming himself with a video camera and attempting dangerous feats. The baby sister, Bar, is woefully neglected. Preoccupied with their own misery, the family is barely a family anymore. When another tragedy strikes, will they be able to support one another

Letter From An Unknown Woman (1948) Joan Fontaine
Perhaps the finest American film from the famed European director Max Ophüls, the film stars Joan Fontaine as a young woman who falls in love with a concert pianist. Set in Vienna in 1900, the story is told in a complex flashback structure as the pianist, Stefan Brand (Louis Jourdan), comes upon a letter written to him by Lisa Berndl (Fontaine), a girl who has been in love with him for years. Stefan is in the process of fleeing Vienna on the eve of fighting a duel. As he prepares himself for the nocturnal journey, the letter arrives. It begins, "By the time you read this letter, I may be dead." As Stefan sits back in his study to read this letter, it turns out to be a confession of unrequited love from Lisa. The story flashes backs to when Lisa was 14 years old and Stefan was her neighbor. After following Stefan with a girlish obsession, the romance gets much more serious, and they have a brief encounter. Stefan promises to come back to her after a concert tour, but he never does. Meanwhile, Lisa marries another man when she discovers that she is pregnant with Stefan's child. When she runs into Stefan years later, he doesn't remember her and tries to seduce her. After Stefan reads the letter, he wants to rush to her side, but now poor Lisa is dying from typhus.

Citizen Kane
Director: Orson Welles It's 1941, and newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles, who also directed and co-wrote the script) is dead. The opening shots show Xanadu, Kane's vast, elaborate, now unkempt estate in Florida. Interspersed with segments of his newsreel obituary are scenes from his life and death. Most puzzling are his last moments: clutching a snowglobe, he mutters "rosebud." Kane, whose life was news and whose newspapers not only reported but formed public opinion, was central to his time, a larger-than-life figure. The newsreel editor feels that until they know who or what Rosebud is they won't have the whole story on Kane. He assigns a reporter called Thompson (William Alland) to find Rosebud.

Dangerous Liaisons
Director: Stephen Frears Writers (WGA): Christopher Hampton (play) Choderlos de Laclos (novel) Genre: Drama / Romance Plot Outline: Set in France around 1760-1770. The Marquise de Merteuil needs a favour from her ex-lover, Vicomte de Valmont. One Marquise de Merteuil's ex-lover, Gercourt, is planning on marrying a young, virtuos, woman called Cecile de Volanges. The Marquise would like Valmont to seduce Cecile before her wedding day. Meanwhile Valmont has a conquest of his own in mind, Madame de Tourvel, a beautiful, married, and God fearing woman. The Marquise doesn't think that Valmont can do it, she tells him that if he can provide written proof of a sexual encounter with Madame de Tourvel, that she will offer him a reward, one last night with her. But Valmont will find himself falling in love with Mrs. de Tourvel, embrasing the deadly jealousy of the marquise de Merteuil.
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Cinderella Man
Directed By: Ron Howard Synopsis: Based on the true story of fighter Jim Braddock, who in Depression-era New York enters the boxing ring out of desperation to feed his family. He... Based on the true story of fighter Jim Braddock, who in Depression-era New York enters the boxing ring out of desperation to feed his family. He becomes a common folk hero as he battles his way up the ranks, vaulting from broken-down ex-boxer to living legend with a string of amazing upsets to his credit. As word of the scrappy underdog spreads, entire families stay glued to their radios, cheering, praying and experiencing his victories as their own. Their devotion reaches fever pitch when Braddock faces heavyweight champ Max Baer. That night, Braddock's dignity, courage and determination gives hope to a nation and earns him the nickname of Cinderella Man. During the Great Depression, a common-man hero, James J. Braddock--a.k.a. the Cinderella Man--was to become one of the most surprising sports legends in history. By the early 1930s, the impoverished ex-prizefighter was seemingly as broken-down, beaten-up and out-of-luck as much of the rest of the American populace who had hit rock bottom. His career appeared to be finished, he was unable to pay the bills, the only thing that mattered to him-his family--was in danger, and he was even forced to go on Public Relief. But deep inside, Jim Braddock never relinquished his determination. Driven by love, honor and an incredible dose of grit, he willed an impossible dream to come true. In a last-chance bid to help his family, Braddock returned to the ring. No one thought he had a shot. However Braddock, fueled by something beyond mere competition, kept winning. Suddenly, the ordinary working man became the mythic athlete...

The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen)
Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck Synopsis: East Berlin, November 1984: Five years before its downfall, the former East-German government ensured its claim to power with a ruthless system of... East Berlin, November 1984: Five years before its downfall, the former East-German government ensured its claim to power with a ruthless system of control and surveillance. Party-loyalist Captain Gerd Wiesler hopes to boost his career when given the job of collecting evidence against the playwright Georg Dreyman and his girlfriend, the celebrated theater actress Christa-Maria Sieland. After all, the "operation" is backed by the highest political circles. What he didn't anticipate, however, was that submerging oneself into the world of the target also changes the surveillance agent. The immersion in the lives of others--in love, literature, free thinking and speech--makes Wiesler acutely aware of the meagerness of his own existence and opens to him a completely new way of life, which he has ever more trouble resisting. But, the system, once started, cannot be stopped. A dangerous game has begun. "The Lives of Others" is at once a political thriller and a human drama. The film opens in East Berlin, in 1984, with a scene where "Stasi" Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Muehe), code name "HGW XX/7," is demonstrating his interrogation technique to a class of aspiring "Stasi" policemen, using an actual audio of his own interrogation of a suspect. A student asks a question that Wiesler judges to be a bit too compassionate (read "bourgeois"), and the professor marks the student's name on the attendance record: surely this student has just flunked the course, or maybe worse. During the feature's first thirty minutes, von Donnersmarck depicts a portrait of Wiesler that seems to border on caricature: Wiesler is a highly skilled officer of the "Stasi", a proud, zealous, disciplined professional. He is one of the many cogs in the wheel of "the System," working anonymously and tirelessly, convinced that all his efforts are necessary for building a better Socialist society. At the end of the class, Lieutenant-Colonel Anton Grubitz (Ulrich Tukur), Wiesler's old school friend (and probably his only "friend"), who has risen to the position of head of the Culture Department at "Stasi", comes to invite Wiesler to a theatrical premiere. The play is by the celebrated East German playwright, Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), and its leading character is played by Dreyman's lover, Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck), herself an actress of great reputation. Up to now, Dreyman, who writes plays about the heroic proletariat, has lived a rather comfortable life in an East Berlin plush apartment, enjoying a certain notoriety among the DDR officials while preserving the respect of his fellow artists by using his (relatively) secured position for occasional interventions in favor of fellow dissident artists. Wiesler, at once, suspects that Dreyman's loyalty to the party is not as strong as it would seem on the surface, even if the high party officials are convinced. Following the play, Grubitz has a brief conversation regarding Dreyman, with Culture Minister Bruno Hempf (Thomas Thieme), who also was attending the premiere. Hempf is attracted to the leading lady. However, since Dreyman is in the way, he must somehow be eliminated. Hempf, who happens also to be a member of the ZK ("Zentralkomitee") who has authority over the "Stasi", tells Grubitz about his reservations regarding the playwright's loyalty to the SED ("Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands," or Socialist Unity Party), suggesting a full-scale surveillance operation of Dreyman. Grubitz, always eager to better his own political future, asks his friend Wiesler to manage this "Operative Procedure" (the highest level of monitoring of suspected individuals), code-named "Lazlo" (Laszlo is a Hungarian male name, but maybe spelled Lazlo in English/German to ease pronunciation - perhaps a reference to the even
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higher suicide rates in Hungary), the latter promising to oversee the case personally. Soon after, Hempf meets the artists at a party in their honor, and in a rather unsubtle way lets Christina-Maria know of his feelings toward her. Wiesler stalks Dreyman, noting his comings and goings, and while the playwright is temporarily away, has Dreymans apartment systematically bugged. Wiesler sets up his surveillance headquarters in the attic, just above the apartment. Soon Wieslers observations indicate that, contrary to his prejudices toward artists as free-thinkers, Dreyman's attitude toward the DDR and its SED is not particularly scornful. In the meantime, Christa-Maria has been "convinced" by Minister Hempf to be receptive to his advances, and when Wiesler finds out about this development, it dawns on him that maybe Operation Lazlo has more to do with the libido of the Minister than with the DDR's security. Dreyman is provoked to take some action, any action, by the awareness of his lover's unwanted sexual relationship with the Minister and the death of his close friend, theater director Albert Jerska (Volkmar Kleinert) who had been driven to suicide after many years of being blacklisted by the government. Dreyman resolves to help reveal the true face of the DDR Government to the outside world. With the help of well-positioned West Germans, he plans to publish an anonymous exposé in one of the leading West German weeklies, "Der Spiegel," concerning the DDR Government cover-up of the high suicide rate in East Germany. Wiesler, who has been monitoring Dreymans activities all along, has finally trapped his victim and will provide another victory to the DDR by foiling Dreymans plot. However, Wiesler is starting to waver in his determination to bring Operation Lazlo to its conclusion. In the process of snooping in his victims' everyday life, including their lovelives, he has unconsciously been drawn into their world, which in turn has put his own in question. When Dreyman's article is finally published in the West, it is a public disaster for the DDR, and the playwright becomes one of the prime suspects. Grubitz is incredulous that in spite of his expertise, Wiesler could have been duped by Dreyman. Minister Hempf, discovering Christa-Maria's drug addiction, threatens to terminate her acting career unless she collaborates with the authorities and denounces her lover as the author of the embarrassing article, which she does. "Stasi" searches Dreyman's apartment, but comes up empty-handed. Now Wiesler, who had withheld the evidence concerning the source of the article, must now decide where his allegiances lay: to the DDR and to his brilliant career as a top "Stasi" officer or to Dreyman whose honest lifestyle he has come to appreciate. I will not reveal the remaining twists and turns of the story that lead to a dramatic resolution of the Lazlo operation, because you should discover it for yourself. Following this resolution, we are projected seven years forward in time. The Berlin wall fell two years earlier, as Dreyman runs into ex-Minister Hempf (who has survived the political upheaval very well, thank you), who tells him about Operation Lazlo. Dreyman, using the "Stasi" archives which have now been made public, discovers the reality of his past and its cruel truths. Plot : The horrifying, sometimes unintentionally funny system of observation in the former East Germany. In the early 1980s, the successful dramatist Georg Dreyman and his longtime companion Christa-Maria Sieland, a popular actress, are big intellectual stars in the socialist state, although they secretly don't always think loyal to the party line. One day, the Minister of Culture becomes interested in Christa, so the secret service agent Wiesler is instructed to observe and sound out the couple, but their life fascinates him more and more...

Gate of Hell
Director: Teinosuke Kinugasa In 1159, during an attempted coup, one of the court's ladies in waiting disguises herself as the lord's wife, and a loyal samurai conveys her from the city. This diversion allows the royal family to escape. After the coup fails, the samurai asks his lord to let him marry the woman as his reward. The lord grants the request and then discovers she is already married to one of the ruling family's lieges. The samurai clings to his desire, importuning her to leave her husband, then challenging the husband to release her. Although the husband stays calm and she stays faithful, the samurai remains intemperate and stubborn, with tragic consequences.

The Virgin Spring
Director: Ingmar Bergman Set in beautiful 14th century Sweden, it is the sombre, powerful fable of peasant parents whose daughter, a young virgin, is brutally raped and murdered by swineherds after her half sister has invoked a pagan curse. By a bizarre twist of fate, the murderers ask for food and shelter from the dead girl\'s parents, who discovering the truth about their erstwhile lodgers, exact a chilling revenge.
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Babette’s Feast
Director: Gabriel Axel. Despite the absence of sex or nudity, this film is highly sensual and satisfying. Food provides the medium for examining the conflict and/or relationship between sensuality and austere spirituality. The cinematography is magnificent and complemented by great performances. Babette, a French exile, is living as a servant in a remote religious community on the rough coastline of Denmark. The community reluctantly agrees to permit Babette to organize an elaborate feast in accordance with French standards, but the hedonistic delights thus afforded conflict with the community’s beliefs in the importance of self-denial. In 19th century Denmark, two adult sisters live in an isolated village with their father, who is the honored pastor of a small Protestant church that is almost a sect unto itself. Although they each are presented with a real opportunity to leave the village, the sisters choose to stay with their father, to serve to him and their church. After some years, a French woman refugee, Babette, arrives at their door, begs them to take her in, and commits herself to work for them as maid/housekeeper/cook. Sometime after their father dies, the sisters decide to hold a dinner to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his birth. Babette experiences unexpected good fortune and implores the sisters to allow her to take charge of the preparation of the meal. Although they are secretly concerned about what Babette, a Catholic and a foreigner, might do, the sisters allow her to go ahead. Babette then prepares...

Burnt By the Sun Utomlyonnye solntsem (1994)
Director: Nikita Mikhalkov Russia, 1936: revolutionary hero Colonel Kotov is spending an idyllic summer in his dacha with his young wife and six-year-old daughter Nadia and other assorted family and friends. Things change dramatically with the unheralded arrival of Cousin Dmitri from Moscow, who charms the women and little Nadia with his games and pianistic bravura. But Kotov isn't fooled: this is the time of Stalin's repression, with telephone calls in the middle of the night spelling doom - and he knows that Dmitri isn't paying a social call...

Life is Beautiful La vita è bella (1997)
Director: Roberto Benigni Seldom will you encounter a character in a film providing a more perfect match for the actor who plays the part. Since the star, Roberto Benigni, also co-scripted the film and directed it, it is perhaps understandable that the result would be an uncommonly perfect role-of-a-lifetime. Unless you’ve seen this film, it is hard to imagine a comedy set in the circumstances of the Holocaust being anything less than terribly inappropriate and offensive, yet Life is Beautiful manages to deliver an upbeat message without depreciating the horror of the death camps. Life is Beautiful is justifiably among the most popular foreign language films ever made. In 1930s Italy, a carefree Jewish book keeper named Guido starts a fairy tale life by courting and marrying a lovely woman from a nearby city. Guido and his wife have a son and live happily together until the occupation of Italy by German forces. In an attempt to hold his family together and help his son survive the horrors of a Jewish Concentration Camp, Guido imagines that the Holocaust is a game and that the grand prize for winning is a tank. Set in late 1930s Arezzo, Italy, Jewish man and poet, Guido Orefice (Roberto Benigni) uses cunning wit to win over an Italian schoolteacher, Dora (Nicoletta Braschi) who's set to marry another man. Charming her with "Buongiorno Principessa", getting the timing perfect every time and whisking her away on a green horse (don't ask!) ensures they soon live together happily in Guido's uncle, Eliseo Orefice's (Giustino Durano) house. Bringing up their 5 year old boy, Giosué (Giorgio Cantarini), the war continues without them noticing until one fateful day when the Germans arrest Guido and his son at the uncle's house during preparation for Giosué's birthday party, and transfer them to a concentraction camp. Dora demands to be taken too, thus Guido is devastated to see his non-Jewish wife board the train. Protecting his son from the vile truth, Guido tells Giosué that they are just on a big hoilday, and he turns the camp into a big game for Giosué, claiming that they must win 1000 points to win a real tank and leave. His elderly uncle, however, is on a different "team" and is lead towards the showers first. Guido must complete "tasks" for the camp "moderators" (ie. the Nazi SS), while avoiding the impending fate with everything he can offer. His quick thinking saves Giosué from the truth when a German officer requires a translator. Despite not speaking a word of German, Guido steps forward and makes up the "Regole del Campo" from the German's body language, claiming that tanks, scoreboards and games of Hide and Seek litter the camp, while cleverly stating that Giosué cannot cry, ask for his
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mother or declared he's hungry, resulting in the loss of the "game", in other words, death. Giosué later refuses to take a shower, and unknowingly escapes being gased, so Guido hides him with the help of other Italian prisoners, since there are no other children. Playing messages over the tannoy for Dora, kept prisoner on the other side of the camp, the family build up hope, only to be diminuished by the SS. With the help of Guido's former German friend, Herr Lessing, Guido can hide Giosué amongst the German children, while waiting the German Officer's meals. With the days becoming steadily worse, Guido realises that time is short and that he must make certain sacrifices if his son is ever to see the tanks roll over the hills, and be reunited with his mother. Giosué is pessimistic, and doesn't believe that there are any real tanks or games. Hiding Giosué in a junction box for the last time, telling him that everyone is looking for him, Guido jeapordises his own survival to prevent the Germans discovering Giosué, while he attempts to free Dora, giving his own life away at the same time. The Americans break into the seemingly deserted camp the following morning. Giosué immerges just as a tank pulls around the corner. Hitching a lift out, Giosué soon spots his mother and the film closes.

All About My Mother (Todo Sobre Mi Madre) 1999
Country: Spain Director: Pedro Almodovar
Synopsis: Manuela, a nurse and single mother in her late thirties must come to terms with the tragic loss of her only son, Esteban, when he is struck by a car.... Manuela, a nurse and single mother in her late thirties must come to terms with the tragic loss of her only son, Esteban, when he is struck by a car. She never told Esteban who he was, "your father died long before you were born" was all she ever told him. In memory of her son--who's his father's namesake--Manuela leaves Madrid and goes to Barcelona in search of Esteban's father. However, the man that she left behind, eighteen years ago when she was pregnant, is now a transvestite named Lola. The search for a man with that name cannot be simple. And indeed it isn't. Starring: Cecilia Roth, Marisa Paredes, Penelope Cruz, Candela Pena, Antonia San Juan, Eloy Azorin, Rosa Maria Sarda, Toni Cantó, Fernando Guillén Cuervo, Fernando Fernán Gómez, Cayetana Guillen Cuervo, Carlos Lozano The always controversial Pedro Almodovar elevated his art to the sublime in this film while retaining his edgy exploration of society’s dispossessed and gender ambiguity. When the remarkable Manuela loses her beloved son in a freak accident, she resolves to honor his dying wish by seeking out the boy’s long-absent father. This resolution brings her back to a life she left behind some twenty year earlier – a life peopled by prostitutes, transvestites, a pregnant nun, and other deviants and down-and-out types. A single mother in Madrid sees her only son die on his 17th birthday as he runs to seek an actress's autograph. She goes to Barcelona to find the lad's father, a transvestite named Lola who does not know he has a child. First she finds her friend, Agrado, a wild yet caring transvestite; through him she meets Rosa, a young nun bound for El Salvador, but instead finds out she is pregnant by Lola. Manuela becomes the personal assistant of Huma Rojo, the actress her son admired, by helping Huma manage Nina, the co-star and Huma's lover. However, Agrado soon takes over when Manuela must care for Hermana Rosa's risky pregnancy. With echos of Lorca, "All About Eve," and "Streetcar Named Desire," the mothers (and fathers and actors) live out grief, love, and friendship. Manuela is a single mother of Madrid, who brings her only son Esteban to a Tennessee Williams play, A Streetcar Named Desire for his 17th birthday. After the play, they wait outside to get the autograph of one of the actresses. He doesnt receive it and proceeds to chase their taxi down and gets hit by a car and dies. Manuela decides to go to Barcelona to find Estebans father, a transvestite named Lola, who doesnt know that he is a father. She finds her old friend Agrado who is also a transvestite. Manuela needs a job so Agrado brings her to Rosa, a nun, who is three months pregnant with Lolas child, and contracted AIDS from Lola. Manuela goes to the same production of A Streetcar Named Desire and meets the actress her son was chasing after, Huma. Manuela helps take care of Rosa, and works for Huma. After Rosa has the baby, she dies from AIDS, and Lola comes back and is also dying from AIDS and meets his new son who Manuela names Esteban. Manuela heads back to Madrid the same way she did before, with a baby son.

The Body Heat 1981
Ned Racine is a seedy small town lawyer in Florida. During a searing heatwave he's picked up by married Matty Walker. A passionate affair commences but it isn't long before they realise the only thing standing in their way is
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Matty's rich husband Edmund. A plot hatches to kill him but will they pull it off? Written by Col Needham <[email protected]> A heat wave has settled over the Florida coast. The heat doesn't affect the overactive sex drive of womanizing Ned Racine, a somewhat inept Miranda Beach lawyer who has his own small law firm. Although he spies several women as possible conquests, the one he really has his sights set on is the beautiful Matty Walker, who he can tell comes from money by her appearance. She flirts with him despite his less than subtle come-ons and she thinking him simple minded. Ultimately she tells him that nothing will happen between them since she's married, her wealthy businessman husband, Edmund Walker, who comes to their home in upscale Pinehaven only on the weekends if that at all. Despite Matty playing hard to get, which turns Ned on more, the two begin a passionate affair. She stipulates he can't tell anyone of their affair, which is against the general behavior of telling his friends, public attorney Peter Lowenstein and police detective Oscar Grace. As their affair escalates into a declaration of love, it also turns to one of greed, wanting both each other and Edmund's money. Since Matty signed a prenuptial agreement that would provide her nothing upon a divorce, they decide instead to murder Edmund. As they proceed with the plot, they encounter some unforeseen obstacles, including some the result of last minute changes to the plan by Matty without her notifying Ned beforehand. But after he is unable to heed the advice of Peter and Oscar, Ned comes to some realizations about what he's gotten himself into. By that time, it may be too late both for himself and for Matty. Written by Huggo In a small Florida town, the weather is hot. And for Ned Racine, a seedy lawyer with an overactive sex drive, things are about to get hotter. He makes a play for the intoxicating blonde he spots at an outdoor concert. He seems to be making progress, but she disappears; yet not before he learns enough about her to find her again. He finds her in a bar. She invites him to her place to look at her wind chimes. He sees them; she sends him away. But he knows she really wants him, and he's right. He looks inside. She's waiting for him. There's only one thing left for a selfrespecting lecher to do: throw a chair through the window. Their torrid affair has begun, and everything seems to be his idea: even when the idea is to murder her husband. Written by J. Spurlin In the hot Pinehaven, Florida, the smalltime wolf lawyer Ned Racine flirts with the sexy but married Matty Walker and they begin a torrid love affair. After a short period together, she convinces him that her husband and mobster, Edmund Walker, is an obstacle for their passion and they have a prenuptial agreement; therefore he should be eliminated. Ned carefully plots a perfect scheme for killing Edmund. However things go wrong when successive evidences are disclosed conspiring against him. Mary Ann Simpson (Kathleen Turner) and Matty Tyler (Kim Zimmer) graduate together from Wheaton High School in Illinois. According to the yearbook, Mary Ann's goal is to be rich and live in an exotic land. She pursues her goal in a calculated, manipulative, and ruthless manner that includes a switch of identities. The following synopsis describes events in chronological order, but the viewer learns many of the events only at the end of the movie. Mary Ann Simpson gets involved in bad things after high school, but then sets her sights on wealthy Edmund Walker (Richard Crenna). She knows Walker will not marry her if he finds out about her past. She decides to adopt the identity of her high school classmate Matty Tyler. As Matty Tyler, she arranges to meet Edmund Walker. They get married and move to a waterfront estate in Pine Haven, Florida. Edmund travels frequently and is involved in many business dealings, including an investment in an abandoned beachfront hotel nearby. Edmund's will leaves much of his estate to his niece. Matty Tyler Walker (the real Mary Ann) knows that if his will is invalidated for any reason, she would inherit all his estate as the surviving spouse. Matty devises a plan to murder Edmund and get all of his estate. To carry out the plan, she must find an attorney to commit the murder and forge a new, invalid will. She will then implicate the attorney as the murderer and kill him in what looks like an accident to end any further investigation. Ned Racine (William Hurt) is a slightly disreputable attorney. One of the wills he drafted was invalidated and he was sued for legal malpractice. His best friends are prosecutor Peter Lowenstein (Ted Danson) and detective Oscar Grace (J.A. Preston). At a party, Matty Tyler Walker meets an attorney who tells her about the legal malpractice case against Ned. Matty decides that Ned is the perfect target for her scheme. Matty arranges to meet Ned and they begin a hot affair. She eventually talks Ned into murdering Edmund. Ned gets advice on arson devices from his client Teddy Lewis (Mickey Rourke). Matty asks Ned to change Edmund's will and forge his signature. He refuses because he thinks it will attract attention. As the murder plans develop, Ned makes a surprise visit to see Matty and finds another woman meeting with Matty. Matty introduces her as "Mary Ann Simpson," but unknown to Ned (or to the viewer) she is actually the real Matty Tyler. The real Matty Tyler has learned about Matty Tyler Walker's deception and is blackmailing her. Matty Tyler
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Walker must now alter her plans to also get rid of the real Matty. On the night Edmund is to be killed, Ned goes to Miami and checks into a motel to give himself an alibi. He then drives back to Edmund and Matty's house and murders Edmund. He takes Edmund's body to the abandoned beachfront hotel and sets it on fire, hoping to make it look like Edmund tried to commit arson and was accidentally killed in the process. While Ned is gone setting the fire, Matty telephones the front desk of Ned's motel repeatedly and asks to speak with Ned. Matty knows that Ned is not there and that this will destroy Ned's alibi. After the murder and the fire, Ned is shocked to learn that Matty changed the will and made it appear that Ned was involved. The redrafted will is invalid and, as a result, all of Edmund's estate passes to Matty. When Edmund's estate is eventually settled, Matty sends all the money to a secret bank account overseas. Oscar Grace and Peter Lowenstein investigate Edmund's death. They learn that Edmund's body was discovered without his glasses. If his glasses are found elsewhere, it would suggest he was murdered elsewhere and his body then taken to the hotel. They also discover the motel telephone records that suggest Ned did not stay in his Miami motel room the night of the death. They reluctantly begin to suspect their friend Ned. Meanwhile, Matty Tyler Walker has developed a revised plan that will get rid of both Ned and the real Matty. The first part involves a made-up story that her former housekeeper has Edmund's missing glasses and is threatening to turn them over to the police unless she is paid off. If the glasses are kept from the police, there would still be a chance that Edmund's death would be ruled an accident rather than a homicide. The second part of the plan is to murder the real Matty and place her body in the boat house at her estate. The third part is to send Ned to the boat house on the pretext of recovering the glasses. The boat house will be rigged to explode a few seconds after the door is opened. Before Matty can fully execute her plan, Ned happens to meet the attorney who originally told Matty about him. Ned suspects he has been set up. Then Teddy Lewis tells Ned that Matty had asked him questions about rigging a delayed explosion. Matty Tyler Walker murders the real Matty Tyler and puts her body in the boat house. She then calls Ned and tells him the housekeeper has been paid off and has left the glasses in the boat house. Matty asks Ned to go to the boat house and pick them up. Ned goes to the the boat house, carefully inspects it, and sees the trip wire on the door. Matty arrives, expecting to find the boat house destroyed with the bodies of Ned and the real Matty inside. She is startled to see Ned alive and the boat house intact. Ned tells Matty that he has learned the truth. Matty denies it and swears that she really does love him. To prove his suspicions are unfounded, Matty says she will go down to the boat house by herself. Matty opens the boat house door and then, unknown to Ned, secretly dives into the water and swims away. The boat house explodes a few seconds later. The dental records confirm that the real Matty Tyler's body was in the boat house. The police believe that Matty Tyler Walker and Ned were responsible for Edmund's death and that Matty Tyler Walker was killed in the boat house fire. Ned is charged with Edmund's murder and convicted. The fake Matty retrieves the money from the overseas account and moves to an exotic land. While in prison, Ned obtains a copy of the Wheaton High School yearbook and his suspicions about the switched identities are confirmed when he sees the photos of Mary Ann and Matty. He knows that Mary Ann Simpson/Matty Tyler Walker has succeeded in achieving her high school goal.

Schindler's List (1993)
Oskar Schindler is a vain, glorious and greedy German businessman who becomes unlikely humanitarian amid the barbaric Nazi reign when he feels compelled to turn his factory into a refuge for Jews. Based on the true story of Oskar Schindler who managed to save about 1100 Jews from being gassed at the Auschwitz concentration camp. A testament for the good in all of us. Written by Harald Mayr <[email protected]> The true story of Czech born Oskar Schindler, a businessman who tried to make his fortune during the Second World War by exploiting cheap Jewish labour, but ended up penniless having saved over 1000 Polish Jews from almost certain death during the holocaust. Written by Rob Hartill The true story of Oscar Schindler, a German businessman who owns a factory. He witnesses the horrifying visions of the Holocaust and the toll it takes on the Jewish people. Eventually, he creates a list of over 1100 Jews whom he saves from death. Written by David Landers <[email protected]> "Schindler's List" is the based-on-truth story of Nazi Czech business man Oskar Schindler, who uses Jewish labor to start a factory in occupied Poland. As World War II progresses, and the fate of the Jews becomes more and
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more clear, Schindler's motivations switch from profit to human sympathy and he is able to save over 1100 Jews from death in the gas chambers. Written by Anthony Hughes <[email protected]> The relocation of Polish Jews from surrounding areas to Krakow in late 1939, shortly after the beginning of World War II. Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), a successful businessman, arrives from Czechoslovakia in hopes of using the abundant cheap labour force of Jews to manufacture goods for the German military. Schindler, an opportunistic member of the Nazi party, lavishes bribes upon the army and SS officials in charge of procurement. Sponsored by the military, Schindler acquires a factory for the production of army mess kits. Not knowing much about how to properly run such an enterprise, he gains a contact in Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley), a functionary in the local Judenrat (Jewish Council) who has contacts with the now underground Jewish business community in the ghetto. They loan him the money for the factory in return for a small share of products produced (for trade on the black market). Opening the factory, Schindler pleases the Nazis and enjoys his new-found wealth and status as "Herr Direktor," while Stern handles all administration. Stern suggests Schindler hire Jews instead of Poles because they cost less (the Jews themselves get nothing; the wages are paid to the Reich). Workers in Schindler's factory are allowed outside the ghetto, and Stern falsifies documents to ensure that as many people as possible are deemed "essential" by the Nazi bureaucracy, which saves them from being transported to concentration camps, or even being killed. Amon Göth (Ralph Fiennes) arrives in Krakow to initiate construction of a labor camp nearby, Paszów. The SS soon clears the Krakow ghetto, sending in hundreds of troops to empty the cramped rooms and shoot anyone who protests, is uncooperative, elderly, or infirm, or for no reason at all. Schindler watches the massacre from the hills overlooking the area, and is profoundly affected. He nevertheless is careful to befriend Göth and, through Stern's attention to bribery, he continues to enjoy the SS's support and protection. The camp is built outside the city at Paszów. During this time, Schindler bribes Göth into allowing him to build a sub-camp for his workers, with the motive of keeping them safe from the depredations of the guards. Eventually, an order arrives from Berlin commanding Göth to exhume and destroy all bodies of those killed in the Krakow ghetto, dismantle Paszów, and to ship the remaining Jews to Auschwitz. Schindler prevails upon Göth to let him keep "his" workers so that he can move them to a factory in his old home of Zwittau-Brinnlitz, in Moravia -- away from the "final solution" now fully under way in occupied Poland. Göth acquiesces, charging a certain amount for each worker. Schindler and Stern assemble a list of workers that should keep them off the trains to Auschwitz. "Schindler's List" comprises these "skilled" inmates, and for many of those in Paszów camp, being included means the difference between life and death. Almost all of the people on Schindler's list arrive safely at the new site, with the exception to the train carrying the women and the children, which is accidentally redirected to Auschwitz. There, the women are directed to what they believe is a gas chamber; but they see only water falling from the showers. The day after, the women are shown waiting in line for work. In the meantime, Schindler had rushed immediately to Auschwitz to solve the problem and to get the women off from Auschwitz; to this end he bribes the camp commander, Rudolf Höß (Hans-Michael Rehberg), with a cache of diamonds so that he is able to spare all the women and the children. However, a last problem arises just when all the women are boarding the train because several SS officers attempt to hold some children back and prevent them from leaving. So Schindler, who is there to personally oversee the boarding, steps in and is successful in obtaining from the officers the release of the children. Once the Schindler women arrive in Zwittau-Brinnlitz, Schindler institutes firm controls on the Nazi guards assigned to the factory, permits the Jews to observe the Sabbath, and spends much of his fortune bribing Nazi officials. In his home town, he surprises his wife while she's in church during mass, and tells her that she is the only woman in his life (despite having been shown previously to be a womanizer). She goes with him to the factory to assist him. He runs out of money just as the German army surrenders, ending the war in Europe. As a German Nazi and self-described "profiteer of slave labor," Schindler must flee the oncoming Soviet Red Army. After dismissing the Nazi guards to return to their families, he packs a car in the night, and bids farewell to his workers. They give him a letter explaining he is not a criminal to them, together with a ring engraved with the Talmudic quotation, "He who saves the life of one man, saves the world entire." Schindler is touched but deeply distraught, feeling he could've done more to save many more lives. He leaves with his wife during the night. The Schindler Jews, having slept outside the factory gates through the night, are awakened by sunlight the next morning. A Soviet dragoon arrives and announces to the Jews that they have been liberated by the Red Army. The Jews walk to a nearby town in search of food. As they walk abreast, the frame changes to another of the Schindler Jews in the present day at the grave of Oskar Schindler in Israel. The film ends by showing a procession of nowaged Jews who worked in Schindler's factory, each of whom reverently sets a stone on his grave. The actors portraying the major characters walk hand-in-hand with the people they portrayed, also placing stones on Schindler's grave as they pass. The audience learns that the survivors and descendants of the approximately 1,100 Jews sheltered by Schindler now number over 6,000. The Jewish population of Poland, once numbering in the millions, was at the time of the film's release approximately 4,000. In the final scene, a man (Neeson himself, though his face is not visible) places a pair of roses on the grave, and stands contemplatively over it.
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The film begins in 1939 with the German-initiated relocation of Polish Jews from surrounding areas to the Kraków Ghetto shortly after the beginning of World War II. Meanwhile, Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), an ethnic German businessman from Moravia, arrives in the city in hopes of making his fortune as a war profiteer. Schindler, a member of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, lavishes bribes upon the Wehrmacht and SS officials in charge of procurement. Sponsored by the military, Schindler acquires a factory for the production of army mess kits. Not knowing much about how to properly run such an enterprise, he gains a close collaborator in Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley), an official of Krakow's Judenrat (Jewish Council) who has contacts with the Jewish business community and the black marketers inside the Ghetto. The Jewish businessmen lend Schindler the money for the factory in return for a small share of products produced. Opening the factory, Schindler pleases the Nazis and enjoys his newfound wealth and status as "Herr Direktor", while Stern handles all the administration. Schindler hires Jewish Poles instead of Catholic Poles because they cost less (the workers themselves get nothing; the wages are paid to the SS). Workers in Schindler's factory are allowed outside the ghetto, and Stern falsifies documents to ensure that as many people as possible are deemed "essential" to the German war effort, which saves them from being transported to concentration camps, or being killed. SS Captain (Hauptsturmführer) Amon Göth (Ralph Fiennes) arrives in Kraków to initiate construction of the new Płaszów concentration camp. He orders liquidation of part of the ghetto and Operation Reinhard in Kraków begins, with hundreds of troops emptying the cramped rooms and murdering anyone who protests or appears uncooperative, elderly or infirm. In all cases, the killings are shown to be arbitrary and Schindler, watching the massacre from the hills overlooking the area with his mistress, is profoundly affected. He nevertheless is careful to befriend Göth and, through Stern's attention to bribery, Schindler continues to enjoy SS support and protection. During this time, Schindler bribes Göth into allowing him to build a sub-camp for his workers. Originally, his intentions are to continue making money but, as time passes, he begins ordering Stern to save as many lives as possible. As the war shifts, an order arrives from Berlin commanding Göth to exhume and destroy the remains of every Jew murdered in the Kraków Ghetto, dismantle Płaszów, and ship the remaining Jews to the Auschwitz concentration camp. At first, Schindler prepares to leave Kraków with his ill-gotten fortune. He finds himslf unable to do so, however, and prevails upon Göth to allow him to keep his workers so that he can move them to a factory in his old home of Zwittau-Brinnlitz, in Moravia away from the Final Solution, now fully underway in occupied Poland. Göth eventually acquiesces, but charges a massive bribe for each worker. Schindler and Stern assemble a list of workers who are to be kept off the trains to Auschwitz. "Schindler's List" comprises these "skilled" inmates, and for many of those in Płaszów camp, being included means the difference between life and death. Almost all of the people on Schindler's list arrive safely at the new site. The train carrying the Jewish women is accidentally redirected to Auschwitz. The women are taken to what they believe to be the gas chambers; they then weep with joy and immense relief when water falls from the showers. The day after, the women are shown waiting in line for work. In the meantime, Schindler rushes immediately to Auschwitz. Intending to rescue all the women, he bribes the camp commander, Rudolf Höß, with a cache of diamonds in exchange for releasing the women to Brinnlitz. However, a last minute problem arises just when all the women are boarding the train. Several SS officers attempt to hold back the children and prevent them from leaving. Schindler, however, insists that he needs their hands to polish the narrow insides of artillery shells. As a result, the children are released. Once the women arrive in Zwittau-Brinnlitz, Schindler institutes firm controls on the SS guards assigned to the factory, forbidding them to shoot or torture anyone. He permits the Jews to observe the Sabbath. In order to keep his factory workers alive, he spends much of his fortune bribing Nazi officials. Later, he surprises his wife while she is in the village church during mass, and tells her that she will now be the only woman in his life, a concession he had refused to grant previously. She goes with him to the factory to assist him. He runs out of money just as the Wehrmacht surrenders, ending the war in Europe. As a Nazi Party member and a self-described "profiteer of slave labor", in 1945, Schindler must flee the advancing Red Army. Although the SS guards have been ordered to liquidate the Jews of Brinnlitz, Schindler persuades them to return to their families as men, not murderers. In the aftermath, he packs a car in the night and bids farewell to his workers. They give him a letter explaining he is not a criminal to them, together with a ring secretly made from a worker's gold dental bridge and engraved with a Talmudic quotation, "Whoever saves one life saves the world entire." Schindler is touched but deeply ashamed, feeling he could have done more to save many more lives. Weeping, he considers how many more lives he could have saved as he leaves with his wife during the night. The Schindler Jews, having slept outside the factory gates through the night, are awakened by sunlight the next morning. A Soviet dragoon arrives and announces to the Jews that they have been liberated by the Red Army. The Jews walk to a nearby town in search of food. After a few scenes depicting post-war events and locations, such as the execution of Amon Göth for war crimes and a brief summary of what eventually happened to Schindler in his later years, the film returns to the Jews walking to the nearby town. As they walk abreast, the black and white frame changes to one in color of present-day Schindler Jews at Schindler's gravesite in Jerusalem (where he wanted to be interred).[2] The film ends by showing a procession of now-elderly Jews who worked in Schindler's factory, each of whom reverently sets a stone on his
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grave - a traditional Jewish custom denoting deep gratitude or thanks to the deceased. The actors portraying the major characters walk hand-in-hand with the people they portrayed, placing their stones as they pass. (Ben Kingsley is accompanied by the widow of Itzhak Stern, who died in 1969.) The audience learns that, at the time of the film's release, there were fewer than 4,000 Jews left alive in Poland, but more than 6,000 descendants of the Schindler Jews throughout the world. In the final scene, Liam Neeson (although his face is not visible) places a pair of roses on the grave and stands contemplatively over it. The film concludes with a statement, "In memory of the more than six million Jews murdered"; the closing credits begin with a view of a road paved with headstones culled from Jewish cemeteries during the war (as depicted in the film), before fading to black.

Through a Glass Darkly (film)
Through a Glass Darkly (Swedish: Såsom i en spegel) is a 1961 Swedish film written and directed by Ingmar Bergman, and produced by Allan Ekelund. The film is a three-act "chamber film", in which four family members act as mirrors for each other. It is the first of many Bergman films to be shot on the island of Fårö. The title is from a biblical passage (1 Corinthians 13) in which seeing through a glass darkly refers to our understanding of God when we are alive; the view will only be clear when we die. The title literally means As in a Mirror, which is how the passage reads in a 1917 Swedish translation of the Bible. Bergman described Through a Glass Darkly as a “chamber film,” an allusion both to the chamber plays of Strindberg (Bergman's favorite playwright), and to chamber music in general. In line with the “chamber” theme, the film takes place in a single 24-hour period, features only four characters and takes place entirely on an island. The story takes place during a twenty-four hour period while four family members vacation on a remote island, shortly after one of them, Karin (Harriet Andersson), who suffers from schizophrenia, was released from an asylum. Karin's husband Martin (Max von Sydow) tells her and Minus's father, David, that Karin's disease is almost incurable. Meanwhile, Minus tells Karin that he wishes he could have a real conversation with his father, and cries because he feels deprived of his father's affection. David (Gunnar Björnstrand) is a second-rate novelist who has just returned from a long trip abroad. He announces he will leave again in a month, though he promised he would stay. The others are upset, and David gives them bad, last-minute presents. He leaves them and sobs alone for a moment. When he returns, the others cheerfully announce that they too have a "surprise" for David; they perform a play for him that Minus has written. David takes offense (although approving on the outside) at the play, which can be interpreted as an attack on his character. That night, after rejecting Martin’s erotic overtures, Karin wakes up and follows the sound of a foghorn to the attic. She faints after an episode in which she hears voices behind the peeling wallpaper. David, meanwhile, has stayed up all night working on his manuscript. Karin enters his room and tells him she can't sleep, and David tucks her in. Minus asks David to come with him out of the house, and David leaves. Karin looks through David's desk and finds his diary, learning that her disease is incurable and that her father has a callous hunger to record the details of her life. The following morning, David and Martin, while fishing, confront each other over Karin. Martin accuses David of sacrificing his daughter for his art, and of being a self-absorbed, callous, cowardly phony. David is evasive, but admits that much of what Martin says is true. David says that he recently tried to kill himself by driving over a cliff, but was saved by a faulty transmission. He says that after that, he discovered that he loves Karin, Minus and Martin, and this gives him hope. Meanwhile, Karin tells Minus about her episodes, and that she is waiting for God to appear behind the wallpaper in the attic. Karin has repeatedly teased Minus sexually, in a subtle way, and Minus is somewhat sexually frustrated. When Karin sees that a storm is coming, she runs into a wrecked ship and huddles in fear. Minus goes to her and she grabs him. There are strong hints that they have sex, but it is unclear whether they do. Given the hints in the movie, it is possible that Minus is homosexual. Minus tells the other men about the incident in the ship and Martin calls for an ambulance. Karin asks to speak with her father alone. She confesses her misconduct toward Martin and Minus, saying that a voice told her to act that way and also to search David's desk. She tells David she would like to remain at the hospital, because she cannot go back and forth between two realities—she must choose one. While they are packing to go to the hospital, she
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runs to the attic, where Martin and David observe her actions. She says that God is about to walk out of the closet door, and asks her husband to allow her to enjoy the moment. The ambulance, a helicopter, flies by the window, making a lot of noise and shaking the door open. Karin moves toward the door eagerly, but then she runs from it, terrified, and goes into a frenzy of panic. Karin vanishes, and, reappearing in a frenzy, is sedated. When she stands, she tells them of God: a stone-faced spider who tried to penetrate her. She looked into God's eyes, and they were "cool and calm," and when God failed to penetrate her he retreated onto the wall. "I have seen God," she announces. Karin and Martin leave in the helicopter. Minus tells his father that he is afraid, because when Karin had grabbed him in the ship, he began leaving ordinary reality. He asks his father if he can survive that way. David tells him he can if he has "something to hold on to." He tells Minus of his own hope: love. David and his son discuss the concept of love as it relates to God, and the factor of human father-child relationships in the perception of God, in the stretching final chapter of the film. Minus seems relieved, and is tearfully happy that he finally had a real conversation with his father: "Father spoke to me."

Winter Light by Ingmar Bergman
Bergman cited Winter Light as his favorite among his films.[1] One of Ingmar's most intimate and autobiographical films, it deals harshly with personal elements of the director's life and worldview. Bergman claims that he only "realized who he really was" and came to terms with himself through the making of Winter Light. It is sometimes considered the second in his 'Trilogy of Faith', the first film being Through a Glass Darkly and the third The Silence. Vilgot Sjöman's film Ingmar Bergman Makes a Movie was made simultaneously with Winter Light and documents its production. The film opens with the final moments of Tomas's noon service. In attendance are only a handful of people, including fisherman Jonas Persson and his wife Karin (von Sydow and Gunnel Lindblom), and Tomas's exmistress, the atheistic Märta (Ingrid Thulin). After the service, Tomas, though coming down with a cold, prepares for his 3 o'clock service in another town. Before he leaves, however, the Perssons arrive to speak to him. Jonas has become morose after hearing that China is developing an atomic bomb. Tomas speaks to the man briefly, but asks Jonas to return after taking his wife home. No sooner have the Perssons left than Märta enters, attempts to comfort the miserable Tomas, and asks if he's read the letter she wrote to him (he hasn't). Tomas tells her of his failure to help Jonas, and wonders if he will have anything to say, since he is without hope as well. Märta states her love for Tomas, but also her belief that he doesn't love her. She leaves, and Tomas reads her letter. In an unbroken shot lasting almost six minutes, Bergman has Märta face the camera and speak the contents of the letter. In it, she coldly attacks Tomas for his neglect of her, relating a story of how a rash that disfigured her body repulsed him, and neither his faith nor his prayers did anything to help her. Tomas finishes the letter, and falls asleep. Awakened by the return of Jonas, Tomas clumsily tries to provide counsel, before finally admitting that he has no faith as well. He tells the depressed man that his (Tomas's) faith was an egotistical one — God loved humanity, but Tomas most of all. Serving in Lisbon during the Spanish civil war, Tomas could not reconcile his loving God with the atrocities being committed, so he ignored them. Tomas finally tells Jonas that things make more sense if we deny the existence of God, because then man's cruelty needs no explanation. Jonas leaves, and Tomas faces the crucifix and declares himself finally free. Märta, who has been lurking in the chapel, is overjoyed to hear this, and embraces Tomas (who again does not respond to her affections). They are interrupted by the widow Magdalena, who tells them that Jonas has just committed suicide with a rifle. Tomas drives, alone, to the scene. Shot in an awkward, distant style (as contrasted with the claustrophobic close-ups of the rest of the film), Tomas stoically helps the police cover Jonas's body with a tarp, then stands guard while waiting for the "van" to collect the body, which arrives shortly. Märta arrives on foot, and she and Tomas drive off to her home, where she invites him in to take some medicine for his cold. Waiting in the classroom attached to her house (Märta is a substitute teacher), Tomas finally lashes out at her, telling her first that he rejected her because he was tired of the gossip about them. When that fails to deter her affections, Tomas then tells her that he was tired of her constant talking, and that Märta could never measure up to his late wife, the only woman he has ever loved. Though shocked by the attack, Märta agrees to drive with him to the Persson house. Informed of Jonas's suicide, Karin collapses onto the stairs and wonders how she and her children will go on. Tomas makes a perfunctory offer of help, and leaves.
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Arriving for the 3 o'clock service at the second church, Tomas and Märta find the building empty except for Algot, the hunchbacked sexton, and Fredrik, the organist (who arrives late and slightly inebriated). Fredrik tells Märta that she should leave the small town and Tomas and live her life, rather than stay and have her dreams crushed like the rest of them. Meanwhile in the vestry, Algot questions Tomas about the Passion. Algot wonders why so much emphasis was placed on the physical suffering of Jesus, which was brief, versus the many betrayals he faced from his disciples (who denied him, did not understand his message, and did not follow his commands) and finally from God, who did not answer him on the cross. Wasn't God's silence worse, he asks. Tomas, who has been listening silently, answers "yes". Fredrik and Algot wonder if they should have a service since no one showed up, but Tomas replies that someone has shown up: Märta. Tomas speaks the first lines of the service as the film ends.

The Silence (Tystnaden) (1963)(Ingmar Bergman)
Description: The third entry in Ingmar Bergman's trilogy about faith and redemption (with Through A Glass Darkly and Winter Light) is a stark and enigmatic allegory fueled by subtle performances from Ingrid Thulin and Gunnel Lindblom. Thulin plays Ester, a translator and intellectual, who is traveling back to Sweden on a train with her younger sister Anna and Anna's son Johan. They stop in the town of Timuku and check into an old hotel in a foreign land where the language cannot be understood by the three travelers. Ester, who suffers from a terminal lung disease, is very protective towards Anna; but Anna resents being tied down by her sickly sister, and she leaves the hotel room, picking up a waiter in a nearby café. Returning to the hotel room, Anna tells Ester about her sexual encounter with the waiter, and Ester becomes sexually aroused. Anna leaves for another room in the hotel to continue making love with the waiter. Johan helps Ester track Anna down Anna, and Anna and the waiter proceed to make love a third time. This provokes a violent and bitter argument between the two sisters. -AMG

THE GREAT GATSBY
Directed By: Jack Clayton `RAVISHINGLY, RICHLY BEAUTIFUL FROM START TO FINISH.' - Charles Champlin, Los Angeles Times The '20s never roared louder than in this sumptuously romantic retelling of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Jazz Age classic. Robert Redford stars as Jay Gatsby, who had once loved beautiful, spoiled Daisy Buchanan (Mia Farrow), then lost her to a rich boy. But now Gatsby is mysteriously wealthy...and ready to risk everything to woo Daisy back. A winner of two Academy Awards, The Great Gatsby features a fine supporting cast and an elegant script by Francis Ford Coppola. And at its center is the opulent evocation of an era of hot jazz and cold champagne, of women as exotic and demanding as hothouse flowers, and of lives made soft by too much, too soon. This lavish Hollywood treatment of the Classic F. Scott Fitzgerald novel is a visual and acoustic delight. Nelson Riddle's spellbinding score and the many brilliant camera shots capturing the splendor of an age of excesses and indulgences make for engaging entertainment. Still, the dark story will leave the viewer numb at the eventual (bitter) end. A young Mia Farrow and Robert Redford in the leads, along with excellent performances by Scott Wilson and Bruce Dern, as well as the 70s "femme fatal" staple Karen Black round out the top, with what seems to be hundreds of colorful "flapper" and servant extras in the cast. Everyone fortunate enough to be born or married or mistressed into money is living the "life", not caring about anyone and anything other than fun, fun, fun. A series of indiscretions (by just about everyone) culminates in the "just desserts", and several deaths. The fact that life of the high and mighty seems to go on without skipping a beat, regardless of anyone's recklessness or involvement, is the tough lesson the author seems to aim for. Without conscience, what have we? All the money will not replace human emotions, though the cash seems to easily take their place. But didn't we have fun....

Teenage Bride
Starring Sharon Kelly (Colleen Brennan), Cyndee Summers, Jane Louise, Cheri Mann, Don Summerfield, Ron Presson, Elmer Klump College dropout Dennis arrives to stay over at his stepbrother Charlie's house. With Charlie and Sandy's marriage falling apart, Charlie prefers to visit his buxom nudist mistress Marie. As she wants Charlie for herself, Marie wants
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him to tape Sandy seducing Dennis. Meanwhile, bra-less Sandy really does invite Dennis to bed. Charlie finds a private detective who is preoccupied by his secretary Betty. Afterwards, Charlie's own secretary Abigail invites him home. Meanwhile, Dennis confronts Marie, but she seduces him. As Marie lives in the same street as Charlie, the private detective accidentally tapes her and Dennis

L'uomo che guarda (The Voyeur)
At a college in Rome, a professor, nicknamed "Dodo" is in a deep depression. His stunningly beautiful wife has just left him for another man. Dodo wants her back very badly and has erotic daydreams about her. A beautiful young student in his class asks him for a ride home and seduces the lucky man, but still he wonders about his wife and her lover. Wile visiting his father he meets his dad's very sexy live-in nurse who takes care of much more then his broken leg. She tells Dodo of a beautiful young woman whose been having a sexual relationship with his father?

THE CONSTANT GARDENER 2005
The Constant Gardener seeks to juggle three film stylesΓΓé¼ΓÇ¥the romance, the thriller, and provocative social realism. On all three levels, the film succeeds, especially with the latter. Much credit should go to director Fernando Meirelles, who has synthesized a virtual textbook of different film techniques. The uses of set-ups, location filming, lenses, film editing, and close-ups were simply dazzling. While the panoramic scenes of the African landscape were breathtaking, there was a starkly contrasting approach to the close-ups in the scenes in the city. The jittery, hand-held camera sequences added to the dramatic tension and underscored the urgency of coming to terms with poverty and disease. The romantic portion of the film was anchored by the two characters played by Ralph Fiennes (Justin) and Rachel Weisz (Tessa). Their first meeting was dynamically presented as Tessa was a social activist heckling Justin as he was making a political speech. When the hall was cleared, however, it was Justin who was actually comforting Tessa after her outburst. The juxtaposition of the placid, passive Justin versus the fervent, hyper-kinetic Tessa was brilliantly established in that opening scene. The strands of thriller and social realism are inextricably tied together in the film. As a whodunit, The Constant Gardener seeks to uncover what actually happened to Justin and Tessa on their African journey. At the same time, the main culprit that emerges is the heavy hand of greed as the pharmaceutical companies exploit helpless victims of tuberculosis for the purpose of testing and marketing an experimental drug. At one point in the film, it is disclosed to Justin that the pharmaceutical industry is no different than arms dealers.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Director: Woody Allen Sexually adventurous Cristina and her friend Vicky, who is bright but cautious, holiday in Barcelona where they meet the celebrated and wholly seductive painter, Juan Antonio. Vicky is not about to dive into a sexual adventure being committed to her forthcoming marriage. But Cristina is immediately captivated by Juan Antonio's free spirit and his romantic allure is enhanced when she hears the delicious details of his divorce from fellow artist, the tempestuous Maria Elena. Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlet Johansson) visit Barcelona for their summer, staying with Vicky's distant relative Judy (Patricia Clarkson) and her husband, Mark Nash (Kevin Dunn). A Narrator (voice of Christopher Evan Welch), present throughout the film, describes the two friends: Vicky is practical and traditional in her approach to love and commitment, and is engaged to the reliable but unromantic Doug (Chris Messina). She is in Barcelona getting her masters in Catalan Identity, a project spawned by her love of the works of Gaudí, and is emotionally moved by Spanish guitar. Cristina, on the other hand, is spontaneous and unsure of what she wants in life. She is just out of a relationship and wants to get over the bad time she had making a 12-minute film about Love. At an art exhibition, they notice the artist Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem). Cristina is impressed with him at first sight, and grows intrigued when Judy and Mark tell the girls that the artist has suffered a violent relationship with his exwife, María Elena (Penélope Cruz). Later that night, the pair notice him across the room in a resturant. He and Cristina exchange glances, and he approaches their table, asks Cristina's eye color, and abruptly invites them to accompany him to the town of Oviedo, where they will sight-see, drink wine and, hopefully, make love. Cristina accepts at once, but Vicky is skeptical and refuses. She is eventually convinced, and the pair accompany Juan Antonio to Oviedo on a small private plane during a storm. At the end of the day, after some sight-seeing and a good deal of wine, Juan Antonio asks both women to come to his room. While Vicky refuses to sleep with him, Cristina agrees, but suddenly falls ill with an ulcer and food
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poisoning. For the remainder of the weekend, Vicky and Juan Antonio are forced to sight-see alone. During their trip, he tells her about his ex-wife and his loving but violent relationship with her. After more wine over dinner and a guitar concert in a park, Vicky succumbs to his charms and the two make love. The next day, Juan takes them back to Barcelona. Vicky, feeling guilty, does not confess the incident to Cristina, and the two begin to grow apart, Vicky throwing herself into work and Cristina experimenting with photography and poetry. Juan Antonio calls Cristina back, and they begin to date. Doug suddenly suggests to Vicky that they get married in Spain in a civil ceremony, assuring her that their high society wedding will take place later in the States. She agrees, with some misgivings, and he flies to Barcelona from New York. Cristina and Juan Antonio grow closer and they move in together. Suddenly one night, Juan Antonio receives a call that María Elena has attempted to kill herself. Since she has nowhere else to go, he brings her home, and she moves into the guest room. Though initially María Elena distrusts Cristina, she soon develops a liking for her and encourages her photography, which becomes better as a result. Cristina soon realizes that the ex-spouses are still in love, and María Elena confides that their relationship was always loving but unstable because they were missing something, a mystery element neither of them figured out. María Elena now suggests that the missing link is in fact, Cristina, and the three indulge in extremely cooperative sexual relationships, as Cristina begins making love to María Elena as well. Cristina discloses the events of her life to Vicky, who appears secretly jealous of her friend's freedom, and to Doug, who disapproves. As the summer winds to a close, Vicky has realized that she is unsatisfied in her married life, and is still attracted to Juan Antonio. She sees Judy cheating on her husband but understands why Judy can't leave her husband, and confides in the older woman. Judy, who sees Vicky as a younger version of herself,takes it upon herself to bring the two together. Meanwhile, Cristina realizes that she can't live in a threesome for the rest of her life and decides to leave Juan Antonio and María Elena. Maria does not take the news well and breaks down. Cristina goes to France to spend the last week of her summer. With their "missing link" gone, Juan Antonio and María Elena break up again. As a final attempt to pair up Juan Antonio and Vicky, Judy arranges for their meeting at a party. He begs her to to meet him the next day. After lying to Doug, Vicky, against her better judgment, goes to Juan's home for lunch, after which Juan tries to seduce her again. She is about to allow herself to be seduced when María Elena enters the scene with a gun and begins firing wildly. As Juan Antonio takes the gun away from his sobbing wife, the gun goes off and Vicky is accidentally shot in the hand, wounding her slightly. Vicky shouts at both of them, calling them insane, and that she could never live like this, and leaves. When Cristina returns from France, Vicky confesses the entire story to her. Doug is never told the true version of events. As the three Americans return to the USA, Vicky goes back to her married life and Cristina remains where she started, not knowing what she wants, but knowing what she doesn't. As Vicky chooses to live her planned, perceived ideal life and Cristina chooses to live with no plans for life, they end where they begin.

Taken 2008
Seventeen year-old Kim is the pride and joy of her father Bryan Mills. Bryan is a retired agent who left the Central Intelligence Agency to be near Kim in California. Kim lives with her mother Lenore and her wealthy stepfather Stuart. Kim manages to convince her reluctant father to allow her to travel to Paris with her friend Amanda. When the girls arrive in Paris they share a cab with a stranger named Peter, and Amanda lets it slip that they are alone in Paris. Using this information an Albanian gang of human traffickers kidnaps the girls. Kim barely has time to call her father and give him information. Her father gets to speak briefly to one of the kidnappers and he promises to kill the kidnappers if they do not let his daughter go free. The kidnapper wishes him "good luck," so Bryan Mills travels to Paris to search for his daughter and her friend.

Remember Me
Director: Allen Coulter A romantic drama set in New York City during the summer of 2001, where Tyler, a rebellious young man, meets Ally through a twist of fate. Her spirit helps him heal after a family tragedy, though soon the circumstances that brought them together threaten to tear them apart.

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In the romantic drama Remember Me, Robert Pattinson plays Tyler, a rebellious young man in New York City who has a strained relationship with his father (Pierce Brosnan) ever since tragedy separated their family. Tyler didn't think anyone could possibly understand what he was going through until the day he met Ally (Emilie de Ravin) through an unusual twist of fate. Love was the last thing on his mind, but as her spirit unexpectedly heals and inspires him, he begins to fall for her. Through their love, he begins to find happiness and meaning in his life. Soon, hidden secrets are revealed, tragedy lingers in the air, as the circumstances that brought them together threaten to tear them apart. Set in the summer of 2001, Remember Me is a story about the power of love, the strength of family, and the importance of living passionately and treasuring every day of one's life. ***In New York City in 1991, an 11-year-old girl named Ally Craig witnesses the murder of her mother on a New York City Subway platform, on the F Line at the 18th Avenue and McDonald Avenue elevated station in Brooklyn. Ten years later, Ally (Emilie De Ravin) is a student at New York University. She lives at home with her overprotective detective father, Neil (Chris Cooper). Tyler Hawkins (Robert Pattinson), a moody, directionless 21 year-old, is auditing classes at NYU and working in a bookstore. He has had a strained relationship with his businessman father, Charles (Pierce Brosnan) since his brother Michael's suicide. Charles appears to ignore his youngest child, Caroline (Ruby Jerins), to whom Tyler is very close. One night, Tyler and his roommate Aidan (Tate Ellington) find themselves in trouble with Neil. Later, Aidan sees Neil dropping Ally off at NYU. He decides to retaliate against the detective by persuading Tyler to sleep with and ultimately dump Ally. Tyler reluctantly agrees to meet her. After spending some time together, Ally and Tyler bond over the losses in their lives and begin to fall in love. After Ally sleeps over at Tyler's house, she and her father have a fight, ending with Neil hitting her. Ally then moves in with Tyler and Aidan. Neil's friend, a cop, recognizes Tyler with Ally on a train coming from a beach holiday with his family. Neil breaks into Tyler's apartment and confronts Tyler. Tyler provokes Neil by confessing to Aidan's plan and his initial reason for meeting Ally, which in turn forces Tyler to confess everything to Ally. She leaves him angrily and returns to her father's home. The couple remain alienated until Aidan visits her to explain that only he is to blame, and that Tyler was sincerely in love with her. They are then shown to be back together, as they walk with Caroline in the park. Shortly thereafter, Caroline is bullied by a group of classmates at a birthday party; they cut her hair off, and when they tease her in front of Tyler, he turns violent and ends up in jail again. Charles is impressed that Tyler stood up for his sister, and they begin to reconnect. Later, Charles asks Tyler to meet with him and his lawyers at his office. Charles takes Caroline to school and is late, so Tyler waits in his office, where he sees, on Charles's computer, a screensaver of pictures of Tyler, Michael, and Caroline when they were younger. Caroline is then shown in class and the teacher draws her attention to the board, where the date is revealed as September 11, 2001. Tyler looks out at Manhattan from the window of his father's office which is located in the World Trade Center. Once the 9/11 terrorist attacks begin, the rest of the family rushes to the site, only to see all that is left of Tyler his journal in the rubble. Some time later, Caroline and Charles seem to have a healthy father-daughter relationship. Aidan, who has since gotten a tattoo of Tyler's name on his arm, is working hard in school and Ally is finally taking the subway again, after having avoided it since her mother's death.

Kill Kill Faster Faster
Director: Gareth Maxwell Roberts 'Kill Kill Faster Faster' is a contemporary film noir inspired by the critically acclaimed novel of the same name by Joel Rose. Produced by rising UK outfits Aria Films and Full Circle Films. Director Gareth Maxwell Roberts has written the screenplay with author Joel Rose. The film runs for 93 minutes and was completed in June 2007. Kill Kill Faster Faster' is a New York tragic love story - streetwise, stylish and desperately, savagely sad. Joe One-Way serves a life stretch for the murder of his teenage bride Kimba. Inspired to write by Clinique, his cellmate and mentor, Joe writes the play White Man: Black Hole. NYC film producer Markie Mann pulls strings to have Joe paroled, contracting him to write the screenplay. Fleur is Markies wife, a one-time hooker and ex-con, who cant help but fall for kindred spirit Joe. Their attraction is irresistible. Fleur is Joes salvation. Propelled on a journey of obsession, guilt and lust, Joe struggles between the pull of heroin, his violence and the desire to redeem himself in
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the eyes of his estranged twin daughters. Joe One-Way soon discovers that life on the outside may be too dangerous even for him. I was lucky enough to be invited to a pre-release screening of KKFF and where so many of these occasions have been disappointing, this was ninety-odd minutes well spent to say the least. Based on the novel by Joel Rose of the same name, it's the story is of Joe One-Way, a recovering heroin addict and convicted killer who is granted early parole due the arm-twisting, string-pulling antics of New York movie producer Markie Mann. Markie read the play Joe wrote whilst inside and wants to make it into a film. Things seem on the up for Joe until he meets Markie's wife, Fleur whose past is not unlike his own and their immediate connection seems to burn up the furniture from the off. Through a series of flash-backs, we see Joe go from being the young-and-in love occasional smack-dabbler, through to full-blown addict whose young wife can no longer bear to live with him and subsequently, the prison inmate who becomes inspired to write through his relationship with Clinique, his Jamaican cell-mate (played with a combination of cutting dry humour and eerie menace by Shaun Parkes). Upon his release Joe has to make good and combat his demons while at the same time putting them to paper as the pressure mounts for him to complete his script. While the film is exceptionally dark in places - Director Gareth Maxwell Roberts pulls very few punches in highlighting the obviously negative aspects of drug-abuse and prison life - it's an ultimately brilliant and touching tale of a man seeking redemption for the many terrible things he's done. Gil Bellows (who we've seldom seen on the big screen as of late) really comes into his own with the portrayal of such a conflicted character, seemingly leaving behind forever the fluffy, handsome persona he'd carved out during his years on Ally McBeal. Other notable performances are from Esai Morales whose presence as Markie is electric from the minute he arrives spouting producer talk with borderline-Wiseguy attitude, and Lisa Ray as Fleur whose sole purpose for being seems to be making every man in the audience fall in love with her. I'm told the film is being geared up for release in late 2008 and my advice to any self-respecting film lover is to see it at your earliest opportunity.

Aastha: In the Prison of Spring (1997)
Director: Basu Bhattacharya Mansi and Amar have been married for years, and have a daughter by this marriage. Amar is employed full-time, while Mansi looks after the household chores and their daughter. Amar earns a steady income, which enables the family to live comfortably, but they cannot afford to be extravagant at all. One day while buying shoes for her daughter, Mansi realizes that shoes are really expensive, and wants to leave the store without purchasing them. Another woman customer named Reena offers to pay for the shoes, as she feels sorry for Mansi. Mansi reluctantly accepts Reena's offer to pay for the shoes, not realizing that Reena has paid for these shoes with a secret agenda that will take Mansi to a whole new world, and change her life forever. Its a story of a lower middle class happy nuclear family. The lady of the family gets involved in prostitution, owing to the not so good financial condition of the family. It is the story of the guilt that comes with the money and the cobweb that such a route entails that its quite an effort to come out of the profession once one enters it. This movie has many things to take it from, but lets first discuss the story line. The story line is quite weak at times. The most important scene of her starting all this is unconvincingly shown. However one may argue (and I argued the same thing with myself when I saw it the second time) that this is how it looks like if someone watches a real person go through all this. It feels unconvincing. And thats how it feels in the movie. But other than some of that, the movie and many dialogues have far reaching connotations. The movie talks about man's endless desire to acquire, rather beautifully. It tries to separate needs and conveniences. It also touches on the sexual imbalance existing between couples. One line that I always remember from this movie goes something like this "Slowly and slowly husbands and wives start sharing their habits much more than they share their thoughts and this distances them". Anyhow, this is a not a great one, but a worth see anyway. It might not be the full money's worth but it might initiate a much needed thought process.

The Switch (I) (2010)
Directors: Josh Gordon, Will Speck Kassie (Jennifer Aniston) and Wally (Jason Bateman) are best friends. Being unlucky in love, Kassie has decided to have a child using artificial insemination. Wally doesn't like this idea, but he isn't capable of admitting to himself,
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let alone to Kassie, that he's in love with her. At Kassie's artificial insemination party, Wally gets very drunk and spies the sperm donor's sample in the bathroom. Wally was way to drunk to know what he did that night, and Kassie has moved away because she doesn't feel that New York City is a place to raise a child. Now 7 years later, Kassie has moved back with her son Sebastian. While she is looking to get Roland (the sperm donor) more involved in their lives, Wally can't help but notice the many striking similarities that he and Sebastian share.

Un long Dimanche De Fiancailles ( A Very Long Engagement)
Directed By: Jean-Pierre Jeunet Synopsis: Set in France near the end of World War I in the deadly trenches of the Somme, in the gilded Parisian halls of power, and in the modest home of an... Set in France near the end of World War I in the deadly trenches of the Somme, in the gilded Parisian halls of power, and in the modest home of an indomitable provincial girl and her relentless search to find her fiancée, who has disappeared. He is one of five French soldiers believed to have been court-martialed under mysterious circumstances and pushed out of an allied trench into an almost-certain death in no-man's land. All an investigation into the arbitrary nature of secrecy, the absurdity of war, and the enduring passion, intuition and tenacity of the human heart. Five desperate French soldiers during The Battle of the Somme shoot themselves, either by accident or with purpose, in order to be invalidated back home. Having been "caught" a court-martial convenes and determines punishment to be banishment to No Man's Land with the objective of having the Germans finish them off. In the process of telling this tale each man's life is briefly explored along with their next of kin as Methilde, fiancée to one of the men, tries to determine the circumstances of her lover's death. This task is not made any easier for her due to a bout with polio as a child. Along the way she discovers the heights and depths of the human soul. As World War I draws to an end, a young French woman's greatest fight is about to begin. Mathilde has received word that her fiancé Manech is one of five wounded soldiers who have been court-martialed and pushed out into the no-man's land between the French and German armies... an almost certain death. Unwilling to accept that her beloved Manech is lost to her forever, Mathilde embarks on a extraordinary journey to discover the fate of her lover. At each turn, she receives a different heartbreaking variation on how Manech must have spent those last days, those last moments. Still, she never gets discouraged. If Manech were dead, Mathilde would know. With a steadfast faith, strengthened by hope and a stubbornly cheerful disposition, Mathilde follows her investigation to its conclusion, convincing those who might help her and ignoring those who will not. As she draws closer to the truth about the five unfortunate soldiers and their brutal punishment, she is drawn deeper into the horrors of war and the indelible marks it leaves on those whose lives it has touched.

The Eiger Sanction (1975)
Directed By: Clint Eastwood Synopsis: Dr. Jonathan Hemlock (Clint Eastwood) is tired of killing for a living, but the ruthless government agency he works for needs his services again, and... Dr. Jonathan Hemlock (Clint Eastwood) is tired of killing for a living, but the ruthless government agency he works for needs his services again, and they'll use any kind of manipulation they have to in order to get him to take one last job. They eventually convince him to take on a dangerous undercover mission that involves climbing the Eiger--and the most dangerous aspect is that he doesn't know which of his fellow climbers is the enemy assassin he's supposed to "sanction." THE EIGER SANCTION is Eastwood's exciting journey into the world of the James Bond-style spy thriller. Eastwood was attracted to the script by the opportunity it afforded him to film exciting climbing sequences in the Swiss Alps, and these well-made sequences are the high point of the movie. Eastwood insisted on doing almost all his own climbing. The plot, vased on the novel by Trevanian, is entertainingly far-fetched; its main purpose seems to be getting Hemlock on that mountain, so it succeeds. Eastwood gets strong supporting help from George Kennedy as his aging climbing buddy, Ben Bowman; Vonetta McGee as the provocatively named Jemima Brown, the woman he's not sure he can trust; and, most amusingly, Jack Cassidy in a hilariously over-the-top performance as Miles Mellough, a flamboyant gay double agent. Dr. Jonathan Hemlock (Clint Eastwood) is a college Art professor whose former life as an international assassin comes back to haunt him when a ruthless leader of a secret agency called C-2, Dragon (Thayer David) pulls him back into action. Hemlock is given a large amount of money and security for his priceless collection of original paintings, but when he is double-crossed by government agent Jemima Brown (Vonetta McGee) and discovers a loyal Army friend of his has been murdered, he agrees to go to Switzerland to kill a secret agent that he has been told is one of a team who will attempt to climb Eiger Mountain. Knowing that he needs to be coached for such a
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climb Hemlock looks up his old friend Ben Bowman (George Kennedy) who trains him for the climb. During his training he is visited by traitor Miles Mellough (Jack Cassidy) who informs Hemlock that the murderer may be closer than he thinks. Once in Switzerland Hemlock starts the climb with a group of younger climbers and suspects each as the possible killer he is seeking, but when they meet with heavy snows on the mountain top and encounter a series of problems Hemlock struggles to save his life and those of his team.

The Rain People (1969)
Directed By: Francis Ford Coppola Synopsis: Having discovered that she is pregnant, Natalie Ravenna (Shirley Knight), a Long Island housewife panics and leaves home to see if she might just... Having discovered that she is pregnant, Natalie Ravenna (Shirley Knight), a Long Island housewife panics and leaves home to see if she might just possibly have made something different out of herself; if she can manage to unshackle her grocery list worth of responsibilities that add up to a life with a husband she loves. In a motel room where Natalie stops to rest during the day, she sits motionless on the bed, and experiences the exuberance of complete freedom and the queasy feelings of new beginnings. Natalie continues on with her journey and picks up a young hitch-hiker -Killer (James Caan), an attractive brain-damaged football player. It is through Killer that poses a more disturbing question to Natalie than that of domestic responsibility. How deeply are we wedded to chance meetings and are we responsible for the crimes that we witness?

Kannathil Muthamittal : A Peck on the Cheek (2002)
Director: Mani Ratnam Dhileepan and Shyama are Tamil-speaking residents of Mankulam, Sri Lanka, who get married with the blessings of their respective families. After the marriage, Shyama confides that she would like to be a mother of 8 children, but is stunned when her husband tells her that he cannot father any children until there is peace between the mainstream and the Tamils in this country. Nevertheless, they do get intimate, resulting in Shyama getting pregnant. Dhileepan goes into hiding because of his connections with the Tamil Tigers, while Shyama returns to her dad, Devanathan's house. A storm threatens their village, and they are forced to flee to a Refugee Camp in Rameswaram, India. Alone, without any support, Shyama gives birth to a girl, leaves her, and returns to Sri Lanka to be with her husband. This child gets noticed by noted Tamil author Thiruchelvan, who lives with his sister, Kamalee, her husband...

Bengali Night La nuit Bengali (1988)
Directed By: Nicolas Klotz Stars: Hugh Grant, Shabana Azmi and Supriya Pathak Synopsis: While recuperating from an illness, a British engineer, Allan (Hugh Grant), falls in love with the beautiful Bengali teenage daughter (Supriya Pathak)... While recuperating from an illness, a British engineer, Allan (Hugh Grant), falls in love with the beautiful Bengali teenage daughter (Supriya Pathak) of his hostess. When the young woman's family learns of the affair, a lovelorn Allan must leave the house. Meanwhile, &NFi;Life&NFi_; magazine photographer Lucien Metz (John Hurt) convinces his friend that staying in India may not be in the heartbroken man's best interest. Nicolas Klotz directs.

Adieu l'ami (Farewell, Friend) (Honor Among Thieves) (1968)
Director: Jean Herman After serving together in the French Foreign Legion, a mercenary and a doctor leave the service and go their separate ways. Later, they are reunited by a coincidence. The doctor has made a promise to a friend which involves his breaking into a safe to return some improperly removed bearer bonds. When he hides in an office building to accomplish his task, he is followed by the mercenary, who is out to steal the contents of the safe. Locked inside the building together, they reluctantly agree to cooperate in cracking the safe. However, surprises await them both and in the end, they both must rely on 'the honor among thieves' to straighten everything out.

L' Homme qui Aimait les Femmes (The Man Who Loved Women) (1977)
Directed By: François Truffaut
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Synopsis: Scientist Bertrand Morane, "never in the company of men after 5," seduces women by evening and writes about the experiences in the early morning.... Scientist Bertrand Morane, "never in the company of men after 5," seduces women by evening and writes about the experiences in the early morning. Though 40ish and somewhat square, no woman in the town of Montpelier seems capable of resisting his earnest advances. Not much else happens in The Man Who Loved Women, but in the hands of master visual storyteller François Truffaut, the threadbare plot accumulates deep and ominous philosophical resonances. What drives Morane from woman to woman, and what accounts for his remarkable success? Does he secretly dislike women and consider them interchangeable (as one of the more prurient characters charges, to Morane's genuine befuddlement), or is his enthusiasm a kind of celebration? Truffaut refuses to answer plainly, but does drop clues; as his camera focuses on everyday objects, many take on a chilling, otherwordly luster, and coldly foreshadow Morane's fate. A deceptively simple film, The Man Who Loved Women is neither an indictment nor an apology for philandering; rather, it's a courageous, lovingly detailed portrait of a complex, intelligent man suffering from an altogether intractable complaint. This film was clumsily remade in English in 1983 by Blake Edwards, with Burt Reynolds assuming the role played here with such understated skill by the wonderful Charles Denner. --Miles Bethany

"L' enfant sauvage (The Wild Child) [1970] dir Francois Truffau"
Directed By: François Truffaut Synopsis: One of director François Truffaut's most unusual films is based on a true story and contains one of his rare acting appearances. In 1798 France, a... One of director François Truffaut's most unusual films is based on a true story and contains one of his rare acting appearances. In 1798 France, a feral child (Jean-Pierre Cargol) who's grown up wild in the forest is discovered. Truffaut plays Dr. Jean Itard, the deaf specialist who tries to civilize the boy; the screenplay was adapted from Itard's writings. Truffaut dedicated the film to Jean-Pierre Leaud, the star of his Antoine Doinel series The Wild Child (French: L'Enfant sauvage, released in the United Kingdom as The Wild Boy) (1970) is a French film by director François Truffaut Jean-Pierre Cargol ... Victor, l'enfant sauvage Françoise Seigner ... Madame Guerin Annie Miller ... Madame Lemeri Paul Villé ... Remy Mathieu Schiffman ... Mathieu Robert Cambourakis ... Countryman Jean-François Stévenin ... Countryman Eva Truffaut ... Girl at farm François Truffaut ... Le Dr Jean Itard Jean Dasté ... Professor Philippe Pinel Claude Miller ... Monsieur Lemeri Nathan Miller ... Baby Lemeri Jean Gruault ... Visitor at Institute Gitt Magrini ... Countrywoman Laura Truffaut ... Girl at farm

In 1798, a feral boy is discovered outside the town of Aveyron, France. His origins are unknown, but a scar on his neck suggests that he was possibly stabbed by his parents when abandoned as a young child. Diagnosed as mentally impaired, he is relegated to an asylum. A young doctor named Jean Itard, who specializes in ear-nosethroat physiology and the education of deaf-mutes, becomes convinced that the boy has normal mental capacity, but that his development was hindered by lack of contact with society. He brings the boy home, names him Victor, and begins an arduous attempt at education over several years. Francois Truffaut’s The Wild Child (1970) reflects the director’s lifelong fascination with childhood and his deep commitment to reforms in child-rearing. While his celebrated feature debut The Four Hundred Blows (1959) depicted a semi-fictionalized version of his own adolescence, for this film Truffaut turned to a widely-studied historical case that he encountered in a 1964 review of a book on feral children by Lucas Malson. That book has been translated into English under the title Wolf Children and the Problem of Human Nature and includes translations of Jean Itard’s two reports (from 1799 and 1806) on the wild boy of Aveyron. Jean Itard (1774-1838) carried out his work against a background of recent philosophical and scientific debates about the relationship between human nature, the natural order and society, including the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and David Hume, and the taxonomy of Carl Linnaeus. In that respect, one of his goals in educating Victor was to promote his theory that “man is only what he is made to be by his circumstances.” Although his progress with Victor was ultimately limited--Victor learned to execute a few basic tasks but never learned fully how to speak--Itard’s observations contributed greatly to the education of deaf-mutes in general and even influenced the educational theories of Maria Montessori. According to biographers Antoine de Baecque and Serge Toubiana, after Truffaut had decided to film the project and assigned the script to Jean Gruault, he viewed films such as Arthur Penn’s The Miracle Worker (1962), conducted further research on the education of deaf-mutes and even observed an actual autistic child. Some 2,500 boys were considered for the role of Victor. Truffaut finally decided on Jean-Pierre Cargol, who was of Romani
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(Gypsy) origin and was related to a noted guitarist. It is worth noting that Truffaut listed Cargol first in the credits as the ultimate gesture of respect. For the role of the doctor Truffaut decided to cast himself, as he explained in a 1970 interview: “The Wild Child is a two-character film. It seemed to me that the essential job in this film was not to manage the action but to concern oneself with the child. I therefore wanted to play the role of Dr. Itard myself in order to deal with him myself and thus avoid going through an intermediary.” Admittedly, Truffaut’s performance is not the film’s strongest suit compared to Cargol or its luminous black-and-white cinematography (by Nestor Almendros) and scrupulous period detail. However, in retrospect he was probably correct in his intuition that he needed to play the doctor in order to elicit the best performance from Cargol. After the film’s release, Alfred Hitchcock sent the following telegram to Truffaut: “I SAW THE WILD CHILD WHICH I FIND MAGNIFICENT PLEASE SEND ME AN AUTOGRAPH BY THE ACTOR WHO PLAYS THE DOCTOR HE IS TERRIFIC […]” Hitchcock knew very well, of course, “the actor who plays the doctor.” Film critic Roger Ebert gave the film a positive review and discussed the film's theme is one of Truffaut's favorites. He wrote, "The story is essentially true, drawn from an actual case in 18th Century France, and Truffaut tells it simply and movingly. It becomes his most thoughtful statement on his favorite subject: The way young people grow up, explore themselves, and attempt to function creatively in the world...Truffaut places his personal touch on every frame of the film. He wrote it, directed it, and plays the doctor himself. It is an understated, compassionate performance, a perfect counterpoint to Jean-Pierre Cargol's ferocity and fear...So often movies keep our attention by flashy tricks and cheap melodrama; it is an intellectually cleansing experience to watch this intelligent and hopeful film." The staff at Variety magazine also praised the drama, and wrote, "This is a lucid, penetrating detailing of a young doctor's attempt to civilize a retarded boy found living in the woods in Southern France in the 18th century. Though based on a true case [Jean Itard's Memoire et Rapport sur Victor de L'Aveyron, published in 1806], it eschews didactics and creates a poetic, touching and dignified relationship between the doctor and his savage charge...It progresses slowly but absorbingly. Truffaut underplays but exudes an interior tenderness and dedication. The boy is amazingly and intuitively well played by a tousled gypsy tyke named Jean-Pierre Cargol. Everybody connected with this unusual, off-beat film made in black-and-white rates kudos." French Syndicate of Cinema Critics 1971 Won Critics Award Best Film François Truffaut Laurel Awards 1971 3rd place Golden Laurel Best Foreign Film National Board of Review, USA 1971 Won NBR Award Best Director François Truffaut 1971 Won NBR Award Best Foreign Language Film France. National Society of Film Critics Awards, USA 1971 Won NSFC Award Best Cinematography Néstor Almendros Also for Ma nuit chez Maud (1969).

L' Argent de Poche (Pocket Money) (Small Change) (1976)
Directed By: François Truffaut Synopsis: L'Argent de Poche (Small Change) is an episodic comedy drama composed of several sequences that explore childhood in director François Truffaut's... L'Argent de Poche (Small Change) is an episodic comedy drama composed of several sequences that explore childhood in director François Truffaut's signature humanistic style. Filmed in Thiers in South Central France, each vignette is seen from the point of view of a kid from two weeks to 14 years old. There is no real plot, just little scenes flowing together dealing with personal joys and pains of the children in a small town. While most of the issues are simple and lighthearted, some of the kids have a harder time growing up. A few choice moments involve a double date at the movies, brothers who give a friend a haircut, and a toddler who falls from a window. Patrick (Georges Desmouceaux) discovers girls and helps care for his father, Sylvie (Sylvie Grizel) rebels against her parents, and Julien (Philippe Goldmann) comes from a painful home life. While mostly focusing on developing the personal perspectives of children, adults get some screen time to share their wisdom. The conclusion consists of a monologue from the schoolteacher, played by Jean-François Stévenin.~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
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In the town of Thiers, summer of 1976, teachers and parents give their children skills, love, and attention. A teacher has his first child, a single mother hopes to meet Mr. Right, another mom reaches out to Patrick, a motherless lad who is just discovering the opposite sex. Patrick befriends Julien, a new student who lives in poverty with his mother and has a terrible secret. Bruno shows his friends how to chat up girls. Sylvie stages a witty protest against her parents. Brothers give a friend a haircut. A toddler falls from a window and is unhurt. Everybody goes to the cinema. At camp, Martine catches Patrick's eye. A teacher explains: "Life is hard, but it's wonderful.

The Woman Next Door (La femme d'à côté) (1981)
Directed By: François Truffaut Synopsis: Madame Jouve, the narrator, tells the tragedy of Bernard and Mathilde. Bernard was living happily with his wife Arlette and his son Thomas. One day, a... Madame Jouve, the narrator, tells the tragedy of Bernard and Mathilde. Bernard was living happily with his wife Arlette and his son Thomas. One day, a couple, Philippe and Mathilde Bauchard, moves into the next house. This is the accidental reunion of Bernard and Mathilde, who had a passionate love affair years ago. The relationship revives... A somber study of human feelings. François Truffaut's The Woman Next Door continues his fascination with obsessive love. It was also his first collaboration with Fanny Ardant, who would become his favored leading lady for the last phase of his career and offscreen love for the last years of his life. Bernard Coudray (Gerard Deparidieu) is a happily married man living in the village of Grenoble; his life is knocked askew when Philippe and Mathilde Bauchard move in next door, and Mathilde (Ardant) proves to be Bernard's long-ago lover. Truffaut and his screenwriters deftly allow the couple to slide into an affair, slowly revealing that their previous relationship ended without a firm resolution. Mathilde, married more recently than Bernard, to a devoted man some years older than her, senses the futility of revisiting the past, but her attempts to break off the relationship inflame Bernard. When Bernard begins to regret his own reckless behavior, Mathilde's understandable confusion leads to a nervous breakdown. Poorly received by critics who had written off Truffaut as irrelevant, The Woman Next Door is very much the work of the man who made Jules and Jim, Mississippi Mermaid, and Two English Girls.

Day for Night (La Nuit Américaine) (The American Night) (1973)
Directed By: François Truffaut Synopsis: A film company at work. Actors arrive and depart; liaisons develop. Julie, the beautiful but possibly unstable lead, is recovering from a breakdown,... A film company at work. Actors arrive and depart; liaisons develop. Julie, the beautiful but possibly unstable lead, is recovering from a breakdown, aided by an older physician, her new husband. Alphonse is insecure, he babbles. When his fiance exits with a stunt man, he threatens to quit. Julie must convince him to stay. Alexandre, a consummate pro on the set, runs back and forth to the airport hoping a certain young man will visit. Severine, no longer young, hits the bottle and covers blown lines with emotional outbursts. At the center is Ferrand, the writer director, who must make constant decisions, answer a stream of questions, and deliver the film on schedule. The shooting of "Je vous presente Pamela" (may I introduce Pamela) begins. This is the story of en english married wife falling in love and running away with the father of her French husband. Will be simultaneously shozn the shooting, the behavior of the people (including the technical team) on the set, and a part of their private life (a factor of complication)...

Jules and Jim (1962)
Directed By: François Truffaut Synopsis: A freewheeling woman tempts two lifelong friends. A freewheeling woman tempts two lifelong friends. In Paris, before WWI, two friends, Jules (Austrian) and Jim (French) fall in love with the same woman, Catherine. But Catherine loves and marries Jules. After the war, when they meet again in Germany, Catherine starts to love Jim... This is the story of three people in love, a love which does not affect their friendship, and about how their relationship evolves with the years.

La Mariée était en Noir (The Bride Wore Black) (1968)
Directed By: François Truffaut Synopsis: Julie Kohler is prevented from suicide by her mother. She leaves the town. She will track down, charm and kill five men who do not know her. What is... Julie Kohler is prevented from suicide by her mother. She leaves
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the town. She will track down, charm and kill five men who do not know her. What is her goal ? What is her purpose ?

La Peau douce (The Soft Skin) (1964)
Directed By: François Truffaut Synopsis: While traveling to Lisbon for a lecture, the famous middle-aged publisher and lecturer Pierre Lachenay (Jean Desailly) has one night stand with the... While traveling to Lisbon for a lecture, the famous middle-aged publisher and lecturer Pierre Lachenay (Jean Desailly) has one night stand with the young Panair do Brasil stewardess Nicole (as Françoise Dorleac). They start a love affair traveling to Reims together, and Pierre hides from his unbalanced wife Franca Lachenay (Nelly Benedetti), trying to spare his daughter Sabine Lachenay (Sabine Haudepin) from a separation. However, Pierre gets involved with Nicole, misunderstanding her feelings and expectations, and decides to live with her, leaving Franca, leading the couple to a tragic end.

The 400 Blows (Les Quatre cents coups) (1959)
Directed By: François Truffaut Synopsis: Intensley touching story of a misunderstood young adolescent who left without attention, delves into a life of petty crime. Intensley touching story of a misunderstood young adolescent who left without attention, delves into a life of petty crime. For his feature-film debut, critic-turned-director François Truffaut drew inspiration from his own troubled childhood. The 400 Blows stars Jean-Pierre Léaud as Antoine Doinel, Truffaut's preteen alter ego. Misunderstood at home by his parents and tormented in school by his insensitive teacher (Guy Decomble), Antoine frequently runs away from both places. The boy finally quits school after being accused of plagiarism by his teacher. He steals a typewriter from his father (Albert Remy) to finance his plans to leave home. The father angrily turns Antoine over to the police, who lock the boy up with hardened criminals. A psychiatrist at a delinquency center probes Antoine's unhappiness, which he reveals in a fragmented series of monologues. Originally intended as a 20-minute short, The 400 Blows was expanded into a feature when Truffaut decided to elaborate on his self-analysis. For the benefit of Truffaut's fellow film buffs, The 400 Blows is full of brief references to favorite directors, notably Truffaut's then-idol Jean Vigo. The film won the 1959 Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival, even though Truffaut had been declared persona non grata the year before for his inflammatory comments about the festival's commercialism.

Alice in den Städten (1974)
Directed By: Wim Wenders Synopsis: German journalist Philip Winter has a case of writer's block when trying to write an article about the United States. He decides to return to Germany,... German journalist Philip Winter has a case of writer's block when trying to write an article about the United States. He decides to return to Germany, and while trying to book a flight, encounters a German woman and her nine year old daughter Alice doing the same. The three become friends (almost out of necessity) and while the mother asks Winter to mind Alice temporarily, it quickly becomes apparent that Alice will be his responsibility for longer than he expected. After returning to Europe, the innocent friendship between Winter and Alice grows as they travel together through various European cities on a quest for Alice's grandmother. Alice in den Städten is the story of Philip Phil Winter (Rüdiger Vogler) a German author contracted to write a book about America. We catch up with Phil in California after driving cross-country with a Polaroid camera for inspiration. He returns to his Publisher (Ernest Boehm) in New York and decides to go back to Germany to finish his book. While attempting to book a flight to Munich he discovers that there is an airline strike in Germany and that all flights in and out of the country are, for the time being, cancelled. He then encounters a young German woman Lisa (Lisa Kreuzer) with a young girl, Alice, (Yella Rottländer) who are in a similar predicament. They team up and decide to wait a day for the next flight to neighboring Austria and then driving into Germany from there. While in New York Phil goes to see his friend Angela (Edda Köchl), he attempts to sleep with her but she refuses to have anything to do with him. Phil goes to the hotel where Lisa and Alice are staying for the night and he sleeps there. The next morning Phil wakes up to a note left by Lisa saying that she will meet them in Austria due to the fact that her boyfriend is hysterical and she has to help him. Phil and Alice then fly to Austria and wait for Alice's mother. Phil realizes that her mother is not coming and they set out looking for Alice's grandmother, only Alice does not know her name or where she lives. After aimlessly searching for several days Phil decides to go to the police and let them deal with the abandoned girl. He leaves the police station and goes to a chuck Berry concert. After the concert Alice hops back into Phil's car remembering her grandmothers name and the city she lives in. They then set out and find the house only to discover that her grandmother does not reside there any longer. The police then catch up with Phil and ask why he and Alice disappeared. Phil learns that Alice had simply left out of the police station and was not released. The officer tells Phil that they had found Alice's mother and that he may accompany them to the train station to see Alice off. Phil does not have money for a train ticket so as he is saying goodbye to Alice at
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the station she gives him a hundred dollar bill so that he can go with her on the train. He accepts Alice's offer and the film ends with the two of them riding a train back to Munich.

Fanny och Alexander (1982)
Directed By: Ingmar Bergman Synopsis: The title characters are children in the exuberant and colorful Ekdahl household in a Swedish town early in the twentieth century. Their parents,... The title characters are children in the exuberant and colorful Ekdahl household in a Swedish town early in the twentieth century. Their parents, Oscar and Emilie, are the director and the leading lady of the local theatre company. Oscar's mother and brother are its chief patrons. After Oscar's early death, his widow marries the bishop and moves with her children to his austere and forbidding chancery. The children are immediately miserable. The film dramatizes and resolves those conflicts. A sub-plot features Isak, a local Jewish merchant who is the grandmother's lover and whose odd household becomes the children's refuge.

12 Angry Men
Director: Sidney Lumet Stars: Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb and Martin Balsam The defence and the prosecution have rested and the jury is filing into the jury room to decide if a young SpanishAmerican is guilty or innocent of murdering his father. What begins as an open and shut case of murder soon becomes a mini-drama of each of the jurors' prejudices and preconceptions about the trial, the accused, and each other. Based on the play, all of the action takes place on the stage of the jury room. ### A teenaged Hispanic boy has just been tried for the murder of his father, and the case is now in the hands of the jury. A guilty verdict will send the boy to the electric chair. The case looks, on the surface, cut and dried. But Juror number 8 (Henry Fonda), despite believing that the defendant is probably guilty, feels that the facts merit a cursory review before the jury hands in a guilty verdict. His insistence on a brief examination of the case seems to rub many on the jury the wrong way, as they continue to see the matter as open and shut. Fascinatingly, as they examine the testimony and facts of the case, the experiences, personalities, limitations, and biases of the jurors weave in and out of the deliberation process, at times to its benefit and at times to its detriment. To the benefit of the deliberation process, 1) the very elderly juror (Joseph Sweeney) is the only one who can see a possible motive explaining why an elderly witness may have misled the court in his testimony; 2) the one fellow (Jack Klugman) who grew up in a rough neighborhood, where he witnessed numerous knife fights, is the only one who sees a problem in assuming that the defendant made the stab wound found; and 3) the juror who had done contract work by the elevated subway (Edward Binns) was the only one in a position to question what one of the witnesses might or might not have heard. To the detriment of the deliberation process, 1) one juror (Ed Begley) is so consumed by his personal prejudices that he sees value in ridding the streets of the Hispanic defendant whether or not he is guilty, and 2) another, Juror number 3 (Lee J. Cobb), is impervious to reason because he has been physically harmed by his teenaged son, and, consequently, views every teenaged boy, including the defendant, as capable of patricide. The number of obstacles on the path to honest assessment of the facts is a constant threat to the deliberation process. If the jury fails to unanimously agree on a verdict of either "guilty" or "not guilty," it will become a hung jury (a jury that cannot reach a decision, and must retire from the case without declaring a verdict). Watching how this matter is resolved is a riveting study in the nature, and ultimate beauty, of the trial by jury process. One by one the jurors change their minds and decide the boy is not guilty. Juror number 3, the man at odds with his teenaged son, is the last one to change his mind. The jurors, at last, are able to vote unanimously for acquittal. As they leave, Juror number 8 and Juror number 9, the elderly man, introduce themselves as Davis and McArdle, respectively.

Pulp Fiction
Director: Quentin Tarantino

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Jules Winnfield and Vincent Vega are two hitmen who are out to retrieve a suitcase stolen from their employer, mob boss Marsellus Wallace. Wallace has also asked Vincent to take his wife Mia out a few days later when Wallace himself will be out of town. Butch Coolidge is an aging boxer who is paid by Wallace to lose his next fight. The lives of these seemingly unrelated people are woven together comprising of a series of funny, bizarre and uncalled-for incidents. ### Late one morning in the Hawthorne Grill, a restaurant on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, a couple of young Brits called Honey Bunny (Amanda Plummer) and Pumpkin (Tim Roth) discuss the pros and cons of robbing banks versus liquor stores. Then they add restaurants to the equation, realizing they can make more by taking customers' wallets than they get out of the till. They stand up in their booth and announce that they're robbing the diner. Earlier in the day, Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent Vega (John Travolta) arrive at a San Fernando Valley apartment building. They are hit men in the employ of Marsellus Wallace and have come to retrieve a valuable belonging of Wallace's from a group of would-be crooks led by a young and naive guy named Brett (Frank Whaley). They take back the valuable item -- kept in a briefcase, it glows warmly and transfixes whoever looks at it. Jules recites what he claims is a Bible verse, Ezekiel 25:17, before he and Vincent execute Brett and his men. Story #1: VINCENT VEGA AND MARSELLUS WALLACE'S WIFE At his strip club, Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames) pays boxer Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) to throw his next fight. Jules and Vincent arrive; though it's only a few hours after their visit to the Valley, the two hit men are sporting gym clothes in place of the suits they wore earlier in the day. While Jules heads to the men's room, Vincent goes to the bar and encounters Butch. The men take an instant dislike to each other. Vincent insults Butch but before Butch can retaliate, Marsellus calls Vincent over and embraces him. Marsellus is leaving town that evening and Vincent is to take Marsellus's wife, Mia (Uma Thurman), out for dinner to keep her entertained. Rumors abound that Marsellus gravely wounded another associate who he believed had been improperly friendly with Mia, so Vincent is nervous. Before picking Mia up, he visits his drug dealer, Lance (Eric Stoltz), and buys some high-quality heroin. Properly sedated, he escorts the cocaine-addicted, chain-smoking Mia to Jack Rabbit Slim's, a West Hollywood 1950s theme restaurant. After some small talk about European travel, Mia's failed acting career, and foot massage, Mia enters herself and Vincent in a dance contest. They dance the twist and win an award. After dinner, they return to the Wallaces' home. Vincent goes to the bathroom to talk himself out of making a pass at Mia. Meanwhile, she discovers the baggie of heroin in his coat pocket and, assuming it's cocaine, snorts some. She immediately passes out and begins to foam at the mouth. Panicked, Vincent takes the dying Mia to Lance's where they argue about what to do with her. Following Lance's advice, Vincent is able to revive her with a shot of adrenaline administered straight to the heart. Vincent takes Mia home. They agree not to tell Marsellus what happened since both of them would get in trouble for it. Story #2: THE GOLD WATCH The following night, before his fight, Butch dreams of an incident from his childhood: Back at his Tennessee home in 1973, Captain Koons (Christopher Walken) visited Butch to bring him a gold watch. The watch had belonged to Butch's great-grandfather, who took it to World War I with him. Butch's grandfather had taken it to World War II, and Butch's father to Vietnam. Butch's father died as a POW, but gave the watch to Koons to return to Butch. Koons says that he and Butch's father had to hide the watch in their rectums to keep it away from their captors. Butch wakes from the dream. Instead of throwing the match (not shown on-screen), he fights so viciously that he kills his opponent. He took Marsellus' money and bet it on himself; his winnings will amount to a small fortune. Butch makes small talk with Esmarelda (Angela Jones), the driver of the cab he is in, who reveals that she knows he's the boxer who killed his opponent; she seems fascinated with the topic of death. Esmarelda drives Butch to the seedy motel where he and his French girlfriend, Fabienne (Maria de Medeiros), are staying, having abandoned their apartment. In the morning they will travel to Butch's hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee, claim their winnings, and leave the country. While packing the next morning, however, Fabienne reveals that she forgot the gold watch, the belonging Butch cherishes above all others. After a savage outburst in which he wrecks the motel room, Butch takes Fabienne's car to get the watch, parking a few blocks away and walking across a field to his apartment as a precaution. He enters without incident and finds his wristwatch in the bedroom. He realizes he's not alone in the apartment when he notices a gun in the kitchen. Catching Vincent off guard as he emerges from the bathroom, Butch kills him with his own gun. Leaving the apartment with his watch, Butch encounters Marsellus crossing the street. He tries to run Marsellus over with his car but only wounds him and is hit by another car himself. Marsellus chases Butch into a pawn shop. There, the owner Maynard (Duane Whitaker) overpowers them. Marsellus and Butch wake up in the basement of the pawn shop, bound and gagged. Maynard has called his cousin Zed (Peter Greene), who works as a security
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guard. Maynard and Zed are apparently a pair of redneck serial killers who kill passersby who happen into their store. While the Gimp (Stephen Hibbert), a huge manchild dressed head to toe in black leather fetish gear, watches Butch, Maynard and Zed take Marsellus into the next room and begin to rape him. Butch escapes and knocks out the Gimp. Rather than leave the pawn shop, he procures a samurai sword and rescues Marsellus; in the process, Maynard is killed and Zed emasculated by a shotgun blast. Marsellus stays behind to oversee the torture-execution of Zed ("I'ma get medieval on your ass," he tells him), but promises that as long as Butch never mentions what happened and never returns to Los Angeles, Marsellus will forget that Butch betrayed him in the boxing ring. Butch agrees. In the final scene, Butch and Fabienne leave town on Zed's chopper-style motorcycle. Story #3: THE BONNIE SITUATION Three days earlier, flashing back in time to just after Vincent and Jules finish killing Brett for stealing Marsellus' prized possession, a gang member they had not known about bursts out of the bathroom and empties his gun point blank at them. However, all of the bullets miss Vincent and Jules, hitting the wall behind them, so they kill the gang member. Jules is certain this is a miracle but Vincent dismisses the idea. They leave with Marvin (Phil LaMarr), Marsellus' inside man in the gang. In the car, Vincent asks Marvin if he believes in miracles, but accidentally shoots him in the head and kills him. The inside of the car is now covered in blood and brain matter. Jules drives to the house of his only friend in the Valley, a former colleague named Jimmie (Quentin Tarantino). Jimmie lets them hide the car but angrily tells them that they have to get rid of the body within an hour -- before his wife Bonnie comes home from her night shift at a hospital. Jules calls Marsellus at his home to explain their predicament. Marsellus then calls Winston Wolf (Harvey Keitel), a suave and professional criminal and gambler who solves problems. Wolf arrives at Jimmie's house and tells Vincent and Jules how to clean up the car and themselves -- they have to strip out of their business suits and wear Jimmie's spare T-shirts and shorts (which explains their appearance at the strip club) -- then helps them dispose of the car and body at a junkyard belonging to a discreet friend named Monster Joe, whose daughter is Mr. Wolf's girlfriend. With the whole situation resolved, Jules and Vincent decide to have breakfast at the Hawthorne Grill, where they continue their discussion about miracles. Jules reveals his plan to leave his criminal life and travel the globe as a mendicant, helping those suffering under tyranny. Vincent mocks him, then goes to the bathroom. Just then Honey Bunny and Pumpkin (from the prologue) begin their robbery of the diner. They collect the cash from the register and the patrons' wallets. Jules gives Pumpkin his wallet, but when Pumpkin tries to take Marsellus' briefcase, Jules pulls his gun and disarms Pumpkin. While Vincent holds Honey Bunny at bay, Jules explains to Pumpkin how, even earlier that morning, he would have killed Pumpkin and Honey Bunny without a second thought. He recites his ersatz version of Ezekiel 25:17 again: "The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of charity and good will shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you." Jules explains that while he previously thought it was cool to make such a cold-blooded passage the last thing his victims heard, he now realizes that the "tyranny of evil men" part of the passage refers to him, and he intends to become a better person. He and Vincent allow Honey Bunny and Pumpkin to leave with all the money but not the briefcase. They leave the diner themselves and head to Marsellus' strip club.

Black Swan
Director: Darren Aronofsky Nina (Portman) is a ballerina in a New York City ballet company whose life, like all those in her profession, is completely consumed with dance. She lives with her obsessive former ballerina mother Erica (Hershey) who exerts a suffocating control over her. When artistic director Thomas Leroy (Cassel) decides to replace prima ballerina Beth MacIntyre (Ryder) for the opening production of their new season, Swan Lake, Nina is his first choice. But Nina has competition: a new dancer, Lily (Kunis), who impresses Leroy as well. Swan Lake requires a dancer who can play both the White Swan with innocence and grace, and the Black Swan, who represents guile and sensuality. Nina fits the White Swan role perfectly but Lily is the personification of the Black Swan. As the two young dancers expand their rivalry into a twisted friendship, Nina begins to get more in touch with her dark side - a recklessness that threatens to destroy her. ### The movie opens as Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman), a young 20-something ballerina, is dancing the prologue to Swan Lake. Swan Lake is a ballet in which a young woman is turned into a swan and can only be turned back by the kiss of her true love. As Nina dances (in what turns out to be a dream), a sorcerer appears and places a curse on Nina, and she wakes up in her apartment. She begins her daily ballet stretching telling her mother about her dream. Nina mentions that the director of her ballet company promised to feature her more this season and her
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mother agrees that she's been there long enough. Nina goes to the ballet studio only to learn that Beth (Winona Ryder), the head of the ballet, is being put out to pasture because of her age. As a result, the director, Tomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) is looking for a new face to feature the company. Tomas announces to the company that the first performance of the season will be a reworking of Swan Lake. He casually walks among the dancers as they're practicing nonchalantly tapping several girls on the shoulder. He then tells those he tapped to be certain they're at the next rehearsel -- those he didn't are to meet with him later for, unknowingly, a private audition for the next Swan Queen. As she's transcends into the Black Swan, Nina's audition is interrupted by the late arrival of new dancer Lily (Mila Kunis) . Already fearing imperfection and disappointing Tomas, she loses focuses when she makes eye contact with Lily. Despite her flawless performance as the White Swan, Tomas is not impressed by Nina's performance as she failed to capture the sexuality of the Black Swan. Nina goes home in tears and practices until she cracks her big toe nail. The next day, Nina visits Tomas in his office telling him she finished the Black Swan at home and wants the role. He tells her that he's decided to give it to another dancer. He then grabs her face and kisses her passionately. Angered by this unwanted advance, Nina bites him on the lip and runs out of his office -- which both shocks and impresses him. Nina sees Beth having a emotional meltdown in her private dressing room throwing things and breaking the full length mirrors. After Beth leaves, Nina decides to take a peek inside. She sits down in Beth's chair and stares at herself in the mirror which is surrounded by globe lights. She begins to go through Beth's things and stashes several items in her purse, specifically, nail polish, diamond earrings, a nail file and tube of lipstick. She sneaks out of Beth's dressing room just as the girls begin running down the hall to find out who has been chosen as the new Swan Queen. Feeling certain she didn't get the role, Nina congratulates another dancer for getting it. The girl runs to see the posting and darts back to Nina, who is not aware that SHE is actually the new Swan Queen, shouting how could she be so cruel like that? Stunned, Nina decides to go see who received the role. Several girls gather around her congratulating her. Overjoyed -- and nauseous -- she calls her mother from the bathroom and tells her that she won the part. When she leaves the bathroom stall she sees the word "WHORE" written on the mirror in red lipstick and frantically struggles to clean it off. Meanwhile, Nina's mother quickly orders her a beautiful pink and white frosted cake -- strawberries and cream, their favorite -- and presents it to her and she walks in the door of their home. Her mother cuts her a slice but Nina refuses telling her that her stomach is still in knots. Becoming angry her mother begins to throw the cake out leaving Nina feeling guilty. She accepts a slice and takes a few small bites, then runs to the bathroom and trys to vomit it back up. Over the next several days, the stress of the role and her inability to perform get to Nina. She begins having visions of herself in black walking around, often filling in for Lily. Tomas holds a gala to officially announce Beth's "retirement" and Nina's rise as the Swan Queen. Nina goes to the bathroom and on her way out encounters Lily coming in. In front of Nina, Lily takes off her panties putting them in her purse then sits down on the toilet to urinate. Lily congratulates Nina on her role, but Nina is uncomfortable and attempts to excuse herself. Lily playfully asks her to stay, but Nina leaves. As Nina and Tomas leave the party, Tomas is momentarily called back inside. Intoxicated with dripping black mascara from crying, Beth confronts Nina asking if her if she had to suck Tomas' cock to get the role. Nina is offended, and tells Beth that she didn't have to. Tomas appears and diffuses soothing Beth by calling her "My little princess" and then takes Nina back to his place. He brusquely asks her if she likes making love and gives her a homework assignment: she must touch herself and get in touch with her sexuality so that she may better inhabit the role. The next day, at the company the dances huddle to grieve over Beth. Curious as to what happened, they tell Nina that she was in an accident and is in the hospital. Later, Tomas pulls her to the side and tells her he believes that Beth threw herself into oncoming traffic. She visits Beth in the hospital where she finds her room filled with beautiful flowers and cards wishing her a quick recovery. As Beth lays comatose in the bed, she lifts up the sheet draped over Beth and sees metal bars sticking out of her leg. Horrified, she quickly turns to leave and bumps into Beth's nurse who asks what she is doing there. Later, Nina's mother sees scratches on Nina's back, and asks what they are from. Nina brushes her off. Nina wakes up the next morning and begins masturbating. As she becomes aroused, she is startled to realize her mother is asleep in the chair next to her bed. She goes to practice and still cannot get the passion of the Black
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Swan into the performance. Disappointed, Tomas sends the other dancers home and steps in to dance as Nina's partner. As they dance together, he slowly moves his hands over her thighs arousing her. After a deep kiss, he lets go of her and walks away calling over his shoulder that he seduced her and that it should be the other way around with her performance. Nina is left behind to practice. Nina feeling as though she has disappointed Tomas, sits alone and cries. Lily arrives and sees her seated, drying her tears. Lily chats casually, implying that Tomas has a tendency of sleeping with the troop and Nina tries to defend him. Lily realizes that Nina has a crush on Tomas and jokes about it. Infuriated by such a thought, Nina gets upset and leaves. The next day, Tomas angrily asks Nina if she needs time off, after Lily's comment to him that he should cut Nina some slack. Angered Nina tracks Lily down in the general dressing room where she is greeted with banter the other dancers that "the queen" is gracing their presence on their turf. She takes Lily aside yelling at her for talking about her to Tomas. That night, Nina's mother sees more scratches on Nina's back and assumes that Nina has been hurting herself as she used to when she was younger. However, before she can confirm it there is a knock at the door. She answers the door and talks quickly before closing the door. Nina demands to know who it is, then goes to the door and sees Lily. She asks how Lily knew where she lived and Lily tells her she asked Tomas' secretary. Lily invites her out and Nina leaves with her, despite her mothers protests that it's the night before a long day of work and she should stay home. Nina and Lily go out and Lily offers Nina a pill to relax, saying it would only last a few hours. Nina turns it down. Nina goes to the bathroom and returns to see Lily slip the content of the pill into a drink, as she flirts with two guys named Tom and Jerry. Nina is reassured by Lily that the pills will only last a few hours and downs her glass. The two have a crazy, drugged night of clubbing with two guys. When Nina is next lucid, she finds herself hooking up with a man in a bathroom. She leaves to find a cab and Lily runs to catch up with her. They take a taxi back to Nina's apartment. Nina's mother is waiting for them and asks Nina what she was doing out late and Nina says, "I was with two guys named Tom and Jerry and I fucked them both," and laughs. Nina's mother is horrified and slaps her. Nina grabs Lily and runs into her room, barricading the door with a piece of wood. As a distraught Nina looks on, Lily walks up and suddenly kisses her on the lips. Momentarily stunned by this sudden display, Nina passionately kisses Lily back. Lily begins to orally pleasure Nina, and as Nina reaches orgasm, she sees Lily morph into herself, which scares her. But the two continue to have sex before Lily (as Nina) says, "innocent girl" and puts raises a pillow to smother Nina. Nina wakes up the next morning with a headache to find Lily gone and realizes she is late for work. As her mother sits quietly in the living room, Nina yells at her as she's rushing out the door for not waking her and tells her that she plans to move out. When Nina arrives at the ballet studio, she finds Lily in her costume, practicing her routine. She asks Lily when she left her house and Lily claims she was never there and had last saw her at the club. She is flattered that Nina had a wet dream about her and asks playfully if she was any good. Nina leaves uncomfortable and frustrated, wondering if her lovemaking with Lily had really happened or not. Tomas informs Nina that her alternate for the performance is now Lily, which enrages Nina. Nina begs Tomas to not make Lily the alternate, convinced that Lily is trying to steal the role from her. Tomas calls her paranoid and that the only person trying to sabotage Nina is "Nina". That night, Nina is practicing alone in the studio and the lights shut off. She calls out for someone to turn the lights back on, and sees a cloaked figure darting around in the shadows (the Sorcerer from the dream). She then finds Tomas having sex with Lily behind a curtain. Lily smiles at her and Nina runs away. In a fit of hysteria, Nina goes to the hospital to find Beth sitting motionlessly in a wheelchair, now a decrepit shadow of the woman she used to be. Nina quietly places the items she stole on the table next to Beth, when Beth suddenly grabs her arm. Beth is angry that Nina stole from her and then notices the nail file and picks it up. She then takes the nail file and stabs herself in the face with it repeatedly. Nina grabs the nail file from Beth's hand and runs fearfully from the room to the elevator. As she gets in the elevator, she drops the bloody nail file. Nina returns home dashing hysterically into the bathroom to wash her hands which are covered in Beth's blood. She then calls down the hall for her mother walking towards her mother's art studio. As she peers in, she imagines her mother's paintings moving and talking to her. Nina runs to her bedroom, followed by her mother. As she tries to reach Nina, Nina slams the door on her hand, breaking it. Inside Nina's room her skin begins to shift, her eyes reddening and changing, her skin taking on a birdlike texture and her knee joints violently changing to those of a bird. Nina falls and hits her head on a bed post, collapsing.
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Nina wakes up the next day, normal, but with gloves on her hands to prevent scratching. She realizes it is only hours prior to the premiere of Swan Lake, but her mother has locked them room and tells Nina that she called Tomas and told him that Nina was sick. Nina frantically tries to get out, but the door nob has been removed. Nina hits her mother and her broken hand, and steals the door knob to leave. Nina arrives at the ballet to find Lily in her dressing room prepared to take the role. Nina confidently tells Tomas that she is ready to perform and if she doesn't take the stage, the troupe will be marred with controversy, after Beth's incident. Nina goes to the dressing room. The first half of the performance is ruined when Nina is dropped by her partner, who appears to be sexually involved with Lily. Tomas is enraged, and during the intermission, Nina is attacked by Lily in her dressing room. Lily once again morphs into Nina, and Nina struggles against her. Nina pushes Lily into a full-length mirror and it shatters. Nina then uses a shard of glass to stab her. Unsure of what to do, Nina hides the bleeding body in her bathroom and takes the stage as the Black Swan. She dances fervently and as she dances, she begins to physically transform into a large Black Swan on stage. She dances the part better than ever and the crowd is amazed, giving her a standing ovation. After leaving the stage Nina seizes the moment to kiss Tomas passionately, after finally effectively seducing him with her movements. She then leaves the stage and goes to change for the next act, placing a towel over the growing pool of blood emerging from under the bathroom door. Suddenly, the real Lily arrives to congratulate Nina for her incredible performance. Nina is shocked, moving the towel to see no blood. She touches her chest and finds the shard of glass embedded in it. (In her unhinged and delusional mind, Nina has just stabbed herself imaging herself as Lily). Nina slowly removes the mirror shard and takes the stage as the White Swan despite her bleeding wound. She dances beautifully, and the audience does not notice the spot of blood forming under her white costume. In the final act, as the Swan Queen commits suicide and she calmly leaps from the constructed hill on the stunt mattress, the spot of blood growing and staining her white feathered dress. Tomas is overjoyed and newly infatuated with Nina and crouches down to congratulate her, a crowd of ballerinas gathering around the star. Lily suddenly gasps, the first to notice the huge stain of blood forming at Nina's chest. Someone calls for help, and Tomas frantically asks her what she did. Nina calmly and quietly utters that she was "perfect." The crowd roars as Nina dies.

Into the Wild
Director: Sean Penn Based on a true story. After graduating from Emory University, top student and athlete Christopher McCandless abandoned his possessions, gave his entire $24,000 savings account to charity and hitchhiked to Alaska to live in the wilderness. Along the way, Christopher encounters a series of characters who shape his life. ### A young man leaves his middle class existence in pursuit of freedom from relationships and obligation. Giving up his home, family, all possessions but the few he carried on his back and donating all his savings to charity Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch) embarks on a journey throughout America. His eventual aim is to travel into Alaska, into the wild, to spend time with nature, with 'real' existence, away from the trappings of the modern world. In the 20 months leading up to his Great Alaskan Adventure his travels lead him on a path of self-discovery, to examine and appreciate the world around him and to reflect on and heal from his troubled childhood and parents' sordid and abusive relationship. When he reaches Alaska he finds he has been insufficiently prepared for the hardships to come. Despite making it through the winter his plan is ill-judged and prepares to return home in spring, only to find the stream he crossed in the snow has become an impassable raging torrent and that he is trapped. With no means of sustaining himself adequately he takes to eating berries and fauna, that he identifies using a book. Unfortunately, he awakes one morning to find that the berries he consumed the night before were in fact poisonous, and causes him to starve in his so sought after isolation. Throughout his epic journey the people he meets both influence and are influenced by the person he is and bring him to the eventual and tragic realisation that "Happiness is only real when shared". It must be noted that this is not the true story, it is the synopsis of the film. Any background information on the film or its characters and setting can and should be found in the user comments section of this film.

Forrest Gump (1994)
Director: Robert Zemeckis Forrest, Forrest Gump is a simple man with little brain activity but good intentions. He struggles through childhood with his best and only friend Jenny. His 'mama' teaches him the ways of life and leaves him to choose his destiny. Forrest joins the army for service in Vietnam, finding new friends called Dan and Bubba, he wins medals, starts a
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table tennis craze, creates a famous shrimp fishing fleet, inspires people to jog, create the smiley, write bumper stickers and songs, donating to people and meeting the president several times. However this is all irrelevant to Forrest who can only think of his childhood sweetheart Jenny. Who has messed up her life. Although in the end all he wants to prove is that anyone can love anyone ### The film begins with a feather falling to the feet of Forrest Gump who is sitting at a bus stop in Savannah, Georgia. Forrest picks up the feather and puts it in the book Curious George, then tells the story of his life to a woman seated next to him. The listeners at the bus stop change regularly throughout his narration, each showing a different attitude ranging from disbelief and indifference to rapt veneration. On his first day of school, he meets a girl named Jenny, whose life is followed in parallel to Forrest's at times. Having discarded his leg braces, his ability to run at lightning speed gets him into college on a football scholarship. After his college graduation, he enlists in the army and is sent to Vietnam, where he makes fast friends with a black man named Bubba, who convinces Forrest to go into the shrimping business with him when the war is over. Later while on patrol, Forrest's platoon is attacked. Though Forrest rescues many of the men, Bubba is killed in action. Forrest is awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his heroism. While Forrest is in recovery for a bullet shot to his "butt-tox", he discovers his uncanny ability for ping-pong, eventually gaining popularity and rising to celebrity status, later playing ping-pong competitively against Chinese teams. At an anti-war rally in Washington, D.C. Forrest reunites with Jenny, who has been living a hippie counterculture lifestyle. Returning home, Forrest endorses a company that makes ping-pong paddles, earning himself $25,000, which he uses to buy a shrimping boat, fulfilling his promise to Bubba. His commanding officer from Vietnam, Lieutenant Dan, joins him. Though initially Forrest has little success, after finding his boat the only surviving boat in the area after Hurricane Carmen, he begins to pull in huge amounts of shrimp and uses it to buy an entire fleet of shrimp boats. Lt. Dan invests the money in Apple Computer and Forrest is financially secure for the rest of his life. He returns home to see his mother's last days. One day, Jenny returns to visit Forrest and he proposes marriage to her. She declines, though feels obliged to prove her love to him by sleeping with him. She leaves early the next morning. On a whim, Forrest elects to go for a run. Seemingly capriciously, he decides to keep running across the country several times, over some three and a half years, becoming famous. In present-day, Forrest reveals that he is waiting at the bus stop because he received a letter from Jenny who, having seen him run on television, asks him to visit her. Once he is reunited with Jenny, Forrest discovers she has a young son, of whom Forrest is the father. Jenny tells Forrest she is suffering from a virus (probably HIV, though this is never definitively stated). Together the three move back to Greenbow, Alabama. Jenny and Forrest finally marry. Jenny dies soon afterward. The film ends with father and son waiting for the school bus on little Forrest's first day of school. Opening the book his son is taking to school, the white feather from the beginning of the movie is seen to fall from within the pages. As the bus pulls away, the white feather is caught on a breeze and drifts skyward.

Three Colors: Red (Trois couleurs: Rouge) (1994)
Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski Valentine is a young model living in Geneva. Because of a dog she ran over, she meets a retired judge who spies his neighbours' phone calls, not for money but to feed his cynicism. The film is the story of relationships between some human beings, Valentine and the judge, but also other people who may not be aware of the relationship they have with Valentine or/and the old judge. Redemption, forgiveness and compassion...

Three Colors: Blue (Trois Couleurs: Bleu) (1993)
Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski First of a trilogy of films dealing with contemporary French society concerns how the wife of a composer deals with the death of her husband and child. Three Colors: Blue is the first part of Kieslowski's trilogy on France's national motto: Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. Blue is the story of Julie who loses her husband, an acclaimed European composer and her young
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daughter in a car accident. The film's theme of liberty is manifested in Julie's attempt to start life anew free of personal commitments, belongings grief and love. She intends to spiritually commit suicide by withdrawing from the world and live completely independently, anonymously and in solitude in the Parisian metropolis. Despite her intentions, people from her former and present life intrude with their own needs. However, the reality created by the people who need and care about her, a surprising discovery and the music around which the film revolves heals Julie and irresistably draws her back to the land of the living.

Three Colors: White (Trzy kolory: Bialy) (Trois Couleurs: Blanc) (1994)
Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski Second of a trilogy of films dealing with contemporary French society shows a man dealing with a Polish immigrant whose wife wants to divorce him because he can't perform in bed. Karol (Polish) marries Domininque (French) and moves to Paris. The marriage breaks down and Dominique divorces Karol, forcing him into the life of a metro beggar and eventually back to Poland. However, he never forgets Dominique and while building a new life for himself in Warsaw he begins to plot...

Once Upon a Time in the West (C'era una volta il West) (1968)
Director: Sergio Leone Story of a young woman, Mrs. McBain, who moves from New Orleans to frontier Utah, on the very edge of the American West. She arrives to find her new husband and family slaughtered, but by who? The prime suspect, coffee-lover Cheyenne, befriends her and offers to go after the real killer, assassin gang leader Frank, in her honor. He is accompanied by Harmonica on his quest to get even. Get-rich-quick subplots and intricate character histories intertwine with such artistic flair that this could in fact be the movie-to-end-all-movies. ### In the desert Southwest of America during the waning days of the Old West, three gunmen two wearing long duster overcoats (Jack Elam, Woody Strode, Al Mulock) take over an isolated train depot and settle in to wait for the train. When the train finally comes, a nameless harmonica-playing stranger (Charles Bronson) gets off and asks for someone named Frank. They tell him Frank sent them in his place. In the ensuing showdown, all four men go down. Only the man with the harmonica gets up again. The soundtrack to the opening scene is a creative orchestration of ordinary sounds in the style of the John Cage. Composer Ennio Morricone uses dripping water, the clicking of a telegraph, a buzzing fly, and over all the persistent, annoying squeak of a windmill-powered pump to build tension, punctuate visual jokes, and emphasize the tedium of waiting for the train. The scant dialog allows the soundtrack to consume much more of our attention than a score usually does. On a remote farm called Sweetwater, Brett McBain (Frank Wolff) and his family are preparing an outdoor wedding feast. McBain tells his son Patrick to drive into town to meet his new mother, who will be arriving by train from New Orleans. Suddenly shots ring out from the surrounding desert, and daughter Maureen, son Patrick, and McBain himself are slain. The youngest McBain, Timmy, runs out of the house to find that his entire family has been destroyed. He watches in terrified silence as a group of five gunmen in duster overcoats emerge from the scrub brush. When one of the men calls their leader Frank by name, asking what to do with the child, Frank (Henry Fonda) draws his pistol and slowly takes aim at the last remaining witness. With a self-satisfied grin, he pulls the trigger. In the town of Flagstone, McBain's bride Jill (Claudia Cardinale) steps down from the train to find that no one is there to meet her. Giving up hope, she steps through the train station into the bustling new town still being built. She hires a carriage to drive her to Sweetwater. The farm's name draws laughter from the driver, Sam (Paolo Stoppa), who informs her that "Sweetwater" is a worthless piece of ground, and McBain is crazy for trying to farm it. Along the way, Sam speeds through a group of railroad workers busily laying their "damn rails." Then he stops at a wayside inn/tavern/trading post, and Jill follows him inside. Her beauty draws the unwelcome attentions of the barman (Lionel Stander). After a noisy off-screen gun battle, the outlaw Cheyenne (Jason Robards) enters wearing shackles on his wrists. The sounds of a harmonica again reveal the presence of the nameless stranger, who has been watching from a dark corner of the tavern. Cheyenne dubs him "Harmonica," and he uses Harmonica's gun to force another patron to shoot apart the chain between his wrists. Cheyenne's men soon arrive, too late to help him escape the prison guards who now lie dead outside. Harmonica notes that the three men he killed earlier were wearing the same duster overcoats as Cheyenne's men, and Cheyenne is annoyed that rivals may be copying his trademark dusters. Jill and Sam arrive at Sweetwater to find a crowd of somber wedding guests standing around the outdoor tables,
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now put to use as funeral biers. Jill is horrified at the carnage. When one of the women bemoans that this should happen to the "poor little miss" on her wedding day, Jill informs the guests that she and Brett McBain were married a month earlier in New Orleans. As the burial comes to an end, the crowd discovers that the torn-off collar of a duster overcoat was found on a nail by the door. This marks the massacre as Cheyenne's work. The men form a posse and ride off to track down the outlaw and hang him. Sam offers to drive Jill back to Flagstone, but she says she will stay at Sweetwater. That evening, she ransacks the McBain household, looking for anything of value that might have been hidden away. At the town laundry in Flagstone that night, Harmonica puts the laundry man Wobbles through a violent interrogation, wanting to know why Frank didn't show up at the train. Wobbles doesn't know; he only arranged the meeting. Harmonica suspects Frank was occupied at McBain's farm just then, but Wobbles insists otherwise: "Cheyenne did that job--everyone knows that. We got proof." Harmonica doesn't believe it: "That was always one of Frank's tricks--fakin' evidence." Jill finds a group of miniature buildings stored away in a trunk, including a model train station with a fancy swinging sign that says "STATION." She hears the sound of a harmonica outside and fires a shotgun into the darkness. The sound of the harmonica moves farther away. In the morning as she is about to leave for good, she finds Cheyenne on her doorstep. While his men wait outside, he barges in and asks for coffee. He tells of being chased by the posse all night and helps make the fire for the coffee. He says he would never kill a kid: "I ain't the mean bastard people make out." He decided to come take a look at the scene of his supposed crime. Not only is he annoyed that someone is trying to blame him, but neither he nor Jill can understand why the killings happened at all. The place looks so worthless, he imagines that McBain must have hidden a treasure away somewhere. Jill tells him that if so, she couldn't find it. Aware that she is vulnerable to any sort of mistreatment Cheyenne and his men might deal out, she serves the coffee. In a private railroad car, Morton (Gabriele Ferzetti), a crippled and dying railroad tycoon, berates Frank for killing the McBains. He only wanted Frank to scare McBain, not kill him. And now a Mrs. McBain has shown up, making the killings pointless. Morton began building his railroad in sight of the Atlantic Ocean, and he means to build his way to the Pacific before he dies. He hired Frank to "remove small obstacles from the tracks," but Frank intends to become a wealthy businessman himself. Morton tells Frank he will never be like Morton, because Frank doesn't understand that money is more powerful than guns. After sharing a congenial interlude with Jill, Cheyenne finishes his coffee and rides away with his men. Jill takes her traveling bags out to the wagon. But Harmonica is there and demands that she stay. As he throws her down roughly and begins ripping at her clothes, Jill becomes alarmed. Instead of harming her, he simply removes the white trimmings from her black dress, leaving her in full mourning. They go to the well for a drink of water, only to be attacked by two more of Frank's men. Harmonica kills them, and from a nearby vantage point Cheyenne sees how handy Harmonica is with a gun. Jill goes to the laundry and asks Wobbles to tell Frank she knows everything and wants to negotiate with Frank personally. Wobbles denies knowing anyone named Frank, but Jill repeats her demand and leaves. Wobbles heads out to Morton's private train, unaware that Harmonica is following him. Morton scolds him for coming there, but Wobbles says he wasn't followed, and he thought Morton and Frank would want to know about Mrs. McBain. When Frank sees Harmonica's shadow on the ground, he knows someone is on the roof, and he signals the train to start moving. Stopping in open country, Frank captures Harmonica (at which time a blurry flashback appears of an indistinct man walking through a desert landscape, but no explanation is given). Frank has Harmonica brought on board and bound. He kicks Wobbles off the train (literally) and shoots him down just as Wobbles is about to reveal the presence of Cheyenne hiding in the train's undercarriage. Harmonica lets Frank know that the two men he sent to kill Jill are themselves dead. Realizing this is the man who wanted to meet with him, Frank asks Harmonica who he is. Harmonica answers with the names of two men Frank has killed. Morton interrupts the interrogation to remind Frank he has more urgent business: the woman. Taking to horseback, Frank rides away with three of his men to do away with Mrs. McBain himself. He leaves three men behind on the train to guard Harmonica and keep an eye on Morton, whom he doesn't trust. Frank tells the men to meet him at the Navajo cliff, and the train gets under way again. Over the next few minutes, Cheyenne craftily disposes of the three gunmen one by one and sets Harmonica free. They now have Morton in their power, but they will deal with him later, choosing to stop the train and ride to Jill's aid. At Sweetwater, Jill is puzzled by the arrival of a large amount of lumber and building supplies that McBain ordered. Since he paid cash, it all belongs to her. Neither the lumberman nor Sam can say what it's for, but there are enough materials to build at least eight buildings. When the lumberman shows her a blank sign and asks if she knows what
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should go on it, she recognizes its outline from the miniature train station and tells him it should say "STATION." Inside the house, she looks through the trunk again for the model train station. Just then, Frank captures her. At the Navajo cliff, Morton offers to buy Sweetwater to avoid more killing--he's had enough of Frank's butcher tactics. He doesn't have time to compete with Frank. But away from his train, Morton looks weak and pathetic, no competition at all as far as Frank is concerned. Frank kicks one of his crutches out from under him, sending Morton sprawling face first: "I could squash you like a wormy apple." Frank tells some of his men to take Morton back to his train and watch him. At Sweetwater, Cheyenne and his men are just as puzzled by the building supplies as Jill was. Harmonica paces off the dimensions of a train station while explaining to Cheyenne what he has seen in a document: McBain was planning to build a town at Sweetwater, which has the only water supply for fifty miles west of Flagstone. Since trains need lots of water to make steam, the railroad must inevitably come through Sweetwater. McBain contracted for the rights to operate the depot himself, provided it was built by the time the tracks reached it. Knowing that the rail gangs are just over the hill, Cheyenne puts his men to work building the station. Inside a ruin at the Navajo cliff, Frank enjoys an intimate interlude with his captive Jill. He remarks that she will do anything to stay alive and that it seems she can't resist a man's touch, even the touch of the man who killed her husband. Frank knows from inquiries sent over the telegraph that Jill was one of the most popular prostitutes in New Orleans until she married McBain. As he undresses her, he thinks of marrying her himself to take over the land. Realizing he would make a bad husband, he comes up with a quicker, simpler solution. Jill sits in quiet resignation in the saloon at Flagstone, where people have gathered for a land auction. One of Frank's men hovers over her, and several more are scattered through the crowd, ready to intimidate anyone who even starts to make a bid. It's Frank's way of getting the property for himself cheaply. The sheriff (Keenan Wynn) reluctantly gets the auction under way. Meanwhile on Morton's train, Morton can sense that his dream of seeing the Pacific is growing more and more remote. He joins a game of poker with four of Frank's men who are now his captors. Instead of dealing out cards, he deals out five hundred dollars to each of the men to buy their allegiance to him. Back at the land auction, one of Frank's still-loyal men bids five hundred dollars for the farm. Just as the sheriff is about to close the sale, Harmonica calls out a bid of five thousand dollars. In what is most likely a scheme devised by both men, Harmonica brings in an indignant Cheyenne at gunpoint and turns him in for the reward money to cover his bid. The sheriff puts Cheyenne under guard on the train bound to Yuma, where there is a new, strong, modern prison that is much more secure than the local jail. But two of Cheyenne's men follow him onto the train after buying one-way tickets to the next station. Meanwhile, one of the men on Morton's train rides into town to tell the others what transpired in the poker game. Jill is grateful that Harmonica has saved the farm for her, and she begins to look at him more warmly. Frank enters the saloon and offers Harmonica five thousand dollars for the farm, plus one silver dollar profit. Again he asks Harmonica's name, and Harmonica answers with the names of two more dead men: "They were all alive until they met you, Frank." (Again, the blurred flashback appears, but the image of Frank walking through the desert becomes clearer than before.) Harmonica rejects the offer but uses Frank's silver dollar to pay for his drink. Having noticed suspicious activity outside, Harmonica goes to watch from the upstairs windows and balcony, breaking into the room where Jill is taking a steamy bath. Frank steps out of the saloon onto the street--and into a deadly cat-andmouse game. His former men, now Morton's men, try to gun him down. But with some "timely" assistance from Harmonica, Frank manages to kill them instead and rides out. Jill is furious at Harmonica for saving Frank's life. He tells her, "I didn't let them kill him and that's not the same thing." Frank discovers the aftermath of a gun battle at Morton's train. Bodies of Frank's men and Cheyenne's men lie strewn along the tracks and in Morton's private car. He finds Morton crawling desperately to a nearby mud puddle. Frank draws and cocks his gun to finish him off but then decides to let him suffer. With the sound of ocean waves crashing in his mind, Morton dies. The tracks are reaching Sweetwater at last, and builders are busily turning the farmyard into the beginnings of a town. Harmonica sits at the farmyard gate as Cheyenne comes riding awkwardly in and goes inside. Not quite his usual self, he again asks for coffee, which Jill has ready this time. They both sense that outside something important is about to happen with Harmonica, but they're not sure just what. Cheyenne: "He's whittlin' on a piece of wood. I got a feelin' when he stops whittlin', somethin's gonna happen." Frank rides up to the gate, and Harmonica stops whittling. They have a verbal exchange that serves as a prelude to
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their coming duel. Frank admits he'll never be a businessman: "Just a man." They acknowledge they're of an ancient race being killed off by the coming of the modern age--arriving right next to them as they speak. Then Frank gets to the business between them: "The future don't matter to us. Nothin' matters now--not the land, not the money, not the woman. I came here to see you. 'Cause I know that now you'll tell me what you're after." "Only at the point of dyin'," Harmonica tells him. Frank says, "I know," and they stride out into the farmyard to face off for the final showdown. Inside, Cheyenne begins to clean up and shave while he watches the railroad move up. He tells Jill she should take water out to the workers at the tracks, letting them enjoy the sight of a beautiful woman. And if one of them should pat her behind, she should just make believe it's nothing. They earned it. As Frank and Harmonica square up to draw, Harmonica focuses on his history with Frank, and the full flashback is revealed. A younger Frank strides out of the desert to the isolated ruin of a Spanish mission--a lone arch with a bell hanging at the top. He places a brand-new harmonica into a young man's mouth, telling him to keep his lovin' brother happy. The youth's hands are bound behind him, and his older brother, also bound, is standing on his shoulders with a noose around his neck. Frank and his men wait for the inevitable moment when the boy's legs will give way and complete the hanging. The doomed man curses Frank and kicks his younger brother away. The harmonica drops out of the young man's mouth as he falls into the dust. Frank and Harmonica draw and fire. Frank staggers away a few steps and falls to the ground, again asking Harmonica, "Who ... who are you?" In answer, Harmonica places the old, beaten-up harmonica into Frank's mouth. It jogs Frank's memory--he sees the end of the flashback for himself, the image of the youth falling into the dust and the harmonica dropping out of his mouth. With a few wheezed chords, Frank falls lifelessly into the dust, and the harmonica drops out of his mouth. Cheyenne tells Jill he's not the right man for her, but neither is Harmonica. There's something inside a man like that, he tells her, something to do with death. Once Harmonica has dealt with Frank, he will come inside, pick up his things and move on. Harmonica comes in and, true to Cheyenne's prediction, picks up his belongings and tells Jill he has to go. They share a lingering look, and then he opens the front door and surveys the developing street scene outside. "It's going to be a beautiful town, Sweetwater," he says. Jill hopes he will come back someday. With a doubtful "Someday," Harmonica takes his leave. Cheyenne too says goodbye and pats Jill on the behind, telling her to make believe it's nothing. As the two men begin to ride away, Cheyenne gets off his horse and plops to the ground. Harmonica discovers that Cheyenne has been gut-shot, the work of Morton himself during the gun battle at the train. Cheyenne asks Harmonica to go away--he doesn't want Harmonica to see him die. Harmonica turns away and soon hears Cheyenne fall over dead. Just then, the work train rolls into Sweetwater and stops at the station, which has its "STATION" sign in place. Harmonica takes away Cheyenne's body as Jill carries water out to the newly arrived railroad workers. END OF FILM

Repulsion (1965)
Director: Roman Polanski A Belgian girl, Carol, works as a manicurist at a London beauty salon. While having lunch, a good looking young man, Colin, spots her and makes a date for another evening. She shares a flat with her sister Helen. Her sister's married lover, Michael, brings out her dislike of men which she cannot explain to Colin. Michael takes Helen abroad for a holiday. Left alone in their flat, Carol's moments of catalepsy and hallucination increase and deepen into madness. Carol Ledoux, a beautiful, reserved Belgian woman, works in London as a manicurist and lives in an apartment with her sister Helen. Although she has an admiring boyfriend, Colin, Carol is repulsed by sexuality, and particularly by Michael, her sister's married lover. Carol is repelled by his razor and toothbrush in their bathroom and especially by the sounds of their lovemaking at night. Helen and Michael leave for a vacation in Italy, and left alone, Carol falls into a tortured state of mind. She leaves her job at the beauty salon and barricades herself in the apartment. Her mind becomes further unhinged when she receives an abusive telephone call, intended for her sister, from Michael's wife. She tears out the telephone, shutting herself in totally. She imagines a rapist coming through the
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door and sees arms reaching out of the walls to ravish her. The slight cracks in the apartment walls appear to enlarge and the walls to crumble. An uncooked rabbit in a dish decays and appears grotesque and hideous. Colin, concerned about Carol's condition, breaks down the door; when he turns his back, she bludgeons him with a candlestick and places his lifeless body in the bathtub. The landlord comes to collect the rent, and when he interprets Carol's scanty dress as a sexual invitation, she slashes him to death with Michael's razor. Returning from their vacation, Helen and Michael find Carol in a trance on the floor and telephone the police. The last scene had Michael carry Carol and presumed to place in mental hospital.

Cet Obscur Objet du Désir (That Obscure Object of Desire) (1977)
Just after boarding a train, much to the surprise of his fellow passengers, a man pours a bucket of water over a young girl on the platform. Over the next few hours he explains (and we see in flashback) how he became obsessed by her (so much so that he failed to notice that she was played by two different actresses, representing different sides of her personality), and how she tantalised him, but would never allow him to satisfy his desire for her...

For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)
Directed By: Sam Wood Synopsis: Ernest Hemingway's 1939 novel, FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS, stands among the great pieces of American literature. Sam Wood's direction of the script by... Ernest Hemingway's 1939 novel, FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS, stands among the great pieces of American literature. Sam Wood's direction of the script by Dudley Nichols stars Gary Cooper as Hemingway's pain-ridden, love-torn hero, Robert Jordan, a Montana schoolteacher who risks his life to fight Franco's forces during the Spanish Civil War.Jordan joins a group of Spanish guerrilla fighters whose mission is to blow up a bridge behind enemy lines. Ingrid Bergman plays Maria, a beautiful Spanish refugee who has been rendered mute by the trauma of a rape. Over the course of four days, Maria and Jordan fall head over heels in love, a plotline that subsumes the fighting and the war itself. Still, it is Katina Paxinou as Pilar, the hen mother of the guerrilla troop, who steals the show in her Oscar-winning performance.FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS is not to be missed by any Hemingway fan. Spain in the 1930s is the place to be for a man of action like Robert Jordan. There is a civil war going on and Jordan who has joined up on the side that appeals most to idealists of that era -- like Ernest Hemingway and his friends -- has been given a high-risk assignment up in the mountains. He awaits the right time to blow up a bridge in a cave. Pilar, who is in charge there, has an ability to foretell the future. And so that night she encourages Maria, a young girl ravaged by enemy soldiers, to join Jordan who has decided to spend the night under the stars.

Lean on Me (1989)
Directed By: John G. Avildsen Synopsis: The dedicated but tyrannical Joe Clark is appointed the principal of a decaying inner-city school that he is determined to improve. The dedicated but tyrannical Joe Clark is appointed the principal of a decaying inner-city school that he is determined to improve. An arrogant and unorthodox teacher returns as principal to the idyllic high school from which he had earlier been fired to find it a den of drug abuse, gang violence, and urban despair. Eventually his successful but unorthodox methods lead to a clash with city officials that threatens to undo all his efforts. Based on a true story. A renowned renegade as a teacher, Joe Clark is, with some reluctance of the local educational authorities, appointed to be the new principal of downtrodden, crime-filled, East Side High School in Paterson, NJ. In dramatic fashion, his first steps in transforming the school are identifying and expelling the many troublemakers that make East Side High a dangerous place, but these actions enrage some of the students, parents, and local residents. Academically, the early results are marginal, but the students seem to be gaining a sense of pride in themselves. Unfortunately, an incident soon occurs in which a drug dealer who had been expelled comes into the school and a knife fight breaks out. Joe Clark is at the crossroads. How can he keep the drug dealers out and give the children of the school a fair chance to succeed academically? His solution, which is in violation of the local fire safety code, is to chain up most of the doors of the school, incensing some of the locals, especailly Mrs Barrett, who tries to have him arrested.
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Clark is beginning to get some results with his students, who will soon take a minimum basic skills test upon which the future of the high school will rest, as the state of New Jersey is considering closing it as a failed academic institution. The authorities, sympathetic to Clark's predicament, don't want to arrest him before the children have had a chance to properly prepare for the exam, and they use stall tactics to stave off the increasingly vigilant Mrs. Barrett, who petitions the school board to have Clark replaced as principal. To further appease Mrs. Barrett, Clark is arrested for conspiracy to violate the fire safety code, but his students rise up to demonstrate outside the high school. He is released from te local jail in the hope that he can appease them, but as he is addressing them, news arrives that the students have, as a group, passed the minuimum basic skills test, thereby saving the school, and making a hero of Principal Clark, whose unconventional methods have saved the day.

Freedom Writers (2007)
Directed By: Richard LaGravenese Synopsis: A dedicated California teacher finds a way to unify her disadvantaged, racially divided students and to improve their grasp of academics, partly by... A dedicated California teacher finds a way to unify her disadvantaged, racially divided students and to improve their grasp of academics, partly by having them keep journals about their violent, troubled lives. The storyline of the movie takes place between 19921995, beginning with scenes from the 1992 Los Angeles Riots. Hilary Swank plays the role of Erin Gruwell, a new, excited schoolteacher who leaves the safety of her hometown, Newport Beach, to teach at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, a formerly high achieving school which has recently had an integration program put in place. Her enthusiasm is quickly challenged when she realizes that her class are all "at-risk" students, also known as "unteachables", and not the eager students she was expecting. The students segregate themselves into racial groups in the classroom, fights break out, and eventually most of the students stop turning up to class. Not only does Gruwell meet opposition from her students, but she also has a hard time with her department head, who refuses to let her teach her students with books in case they get damaged and lost, and instead tells her to focus on teaching them discipline and obedience. One night, two students, Eva (April Lee Hernández), a Hispanic girl and narrator for much of the film, and a Cambodian refugee, Sindy (Jaclyn Ngan), find themselves in the same convenience store. Another student, Grant Rice (Armand Jones) is frustrated at losing an arcade game and demands a refund from the owner. When he storms out, Eva's boyfriend attempts a drive-by shooting, wanting to kill Grant but misses, accidentally killing Sindy's boyfriend. As Eva is a witness, she must testify at court; she intends to protect her own kind in her testimony. At school, Gruwell intercepts a racist drawing of one of her students and uses it to teach them about the Holocaust. She gradually begins to earn their trust and buys them composition books to record their diaries, in which they talk about their experiences of being abused, seeing their friends die, and being evicted. Determined to reform her students, she takes two part-time jobs to pay for more books and spends more time at school, to the disappointment of her husband (Patrick Dempsey). Her students start to behave with respect and learn more. A transformation is especially visible in one of her students, Marcus (Jason Finn). She invites several Holocaust survivors to talk with her class about their experiences and takes them on a field trip to the Museum of Tolerance. Meanwhile, her unorthodox teaching methods are scorned by her colleagues and department chair Margaret Campbell (Imelda Staunton). The next year comes, and Gruwell teaches her class again for sophomore (second) year. In class, when reading The Diary of Anne Frank, they invite Miep Gies (Pat Carroll), the woman who sheltered Anne Frank from the German soldiers to talk to them. After they raise the money to bring her over, she tells them her experiences hiding Anne Frank. When Marcus tells her that she is his hero, she denies it, claiming she was merely doing the right thing. Her denial causes Eva to rethink lying during her testimony. When she testifies, she finally breaks down and tells the truth, much to some of her family members' dismay. Meanwhile, Gruwell asks her students to write their diaries in book form. She compiles the entries and names it The Freedom Writers Diary. Her husband divorces her and Margaret tells her she cannot teach her kids for their junior year. She fights this decision, eventually convincing the superintendent to allow her to teach her kids' junior and senior year. The film ends with a note that Gruwell successfully brought many of her students to graduation and college.

Stand and Deliver (1988)
Directed By: Ramón Menéndez

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Synopsis: Story of a dedicated East Los Angeles high school teacher who transforms some of his students into math scholars. Story of a dedicated East Los Angeles high school teacher who transforms some of his students into math scholars. Jaime Escalante is a mathematics teacher in a school in a hispanic neighbourhood. Convinced that his students have potential, he adopts unconventional teaching methods to try and turn gang members and no-hopers into some of the country's top algebra and calculus students. Based on a true story, this low budget theatrical masterpiece opens with the background of Eastern LA. In an environment that values a quick fix over education and learning, Jaime A. Escalante is a new teacher at James A. Garfield High School determined to change the system and challenge the students to a higher level of excellence. Leaving a steady job for a lowly position as a math teacher in a school where rebellion runs high and teachers are more focused on discipline than academics, Escalante is at first not well liked by students, receiving numerous taunts and threats. As the year progresses, he is able to win over the attention of the students by implementing innovative teaching techniques, using props and humor to illustrate abstract concepts of math and convey the necessity of math in everyday lives. We all use math every day, a value that Escalante successfully instills. He is able to transform even the most troublesome teens to dedicated students, ready to learn. While Escalante teachs math 1A, basic math, he soon realizes that his students are capable of more than the expectations set forth by the school board. Despite concerns and skepticism of other teachers, who feel that "you can't teach logarithms to illiterates", Escalante nonetheless develops a program in which the his students can rise to take AP Calculus by their senior year. This intense math program requires that students take summer classes, including Saturdays, from 7 to 12, tasking for even the most devoted and committed students. While other students spent their summers "barefoot and pregnant", these math enthusiasts were learning complex theorems and formulas. The vast contrast between home life and school life, however, begins to show as these teens struggle to find the balance between what other adults expect of them and the goals and ambitions they hold for themselves. With Escalante to help them, they soon find the courage to separate from society's expectations for failure and rise to the standard to which Escalante holds them to, a standard of success. Taking the AP Calculus exam in the spring of their senior year, these students are relieved and overjoyed to be finished with a strenuous year. After receiving their scores, they are overwhelmed with emotion to find that they have all passed, a feat done by few in the state. Later that summer, a shocking accusation is made. The Educational Testing Service calls into question the validity of their scores when it is discovered that similarities between errors is too high for pure chance. Outraged by the implications of cheating, Escalante feels that the racial and economic status of the students has caused the ETS to doubt their intelligence. In order to prove their mathematical abilities and worth to the school, to the ETS, and to the nation, the students agree to retake the test at the end of the summer, months after their last class. With only a day to prepare, there is high stress to show that they have what it takes to make something of themselves. After the retake, these students truly stand and deliver when they all pass the exam again, showing they deserve all they have achieved.

Rudy (1994)
Directed By: David Anspaugh Synopsis: Rudy has always been told that he was too small to play college football. But he is determined to overcome the odds and fulfill his dream of playing... Rudy has always been told that he was too small to play college football. But he is determined to overcome the odds and fulfill his dream of playing for Notre Dame. Rudy grew up in a steel mill town where most people ended up working, but wanted to play football at Notre Dame instead. There were only a couple of problems. His grades were a little low, his athletic skills were poor, and he was only half the size of the other players. But he had the drive and the spirit of 5 people and has set his sights upon joining the team. Rudy Ruettiger (Sean Aston) grows up in a Catholic, working class family that loves Notre Dame football. He does not have the grades, the size or the talent to get into his beloved school so he follows his brothers and father into work at the steel plant. After his twenty-second birthday his best friend Pete (Christoper Reed) who always believed in him dies in an accident. Rudy then realizes that it is now or never to follow his life-long dream to play for the Fighting Irish. Despite fear of failure from his father (Ned Beatty) and girlfriend (Lily Taylor) he leaves to pursue his goal. Showing up is not enough to get him into the university, so with the encouragement of a priest (Robert Prosky), he enrolls in Holy Cross Junior College. There he gets help from a tutor (Jon Favreau) who helps him deal with his reading disability and finally get good grades. He works on the maintenance crew (Charles S. Dutton). Finally, Rudy gets accepted and upon transferring in to the school, he gets a chance as a "tackling dummy" for the team for two years. Encouraged by his persistence and spunk, Rudy inspires the team and is allowed to dress for one game by the coach (Jason Miller), where he is triumphantly carried off the field by his fellow teammates. The story is based on the life of Daniel "Rudy" Ruettiger.
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Good Will Hunting (1997)
Directed By: Gus Van Sant Synopsis: Will Hunting, a janitor at MIT, has a gift for mathematics which is discovered, and a psychologist tries to help him with his gift and the rest of his... Will Hunting, a janitor at MIT, has a gift for mathematics which is discovered, and a psychologist tries to help him with his gift and the rest of his life. A janitor at MIT, Will Hunting has a gift for maths that can take him light-years beyond his blue-collar roots, but to achieve his dream he must turn his back on the neighborhood and his best friend. To complicate matters, two strangers enter the equation: a washed-up shrink who starts to coach Will through his transformation, and a med student who shows him that there can be a pretty face along with his life of the mind. Though Will Hunting (Matt Damon) has genius-level intelligence (such as a talent for memorizing facts and an intuitive ability to prove sophisticated mathematical theorems), he works as a janitor at MIT and lives alone in a sparsely furnished apartment in an impoverished South Boston neighborhood. An abused foster child, he subconsciously blames himself for his unhappy upbringing and turns this self-loathing into a form of self-sabotage in both his professional and emotional lives. Hence, he is unable to maintain either a steady job or a steady romantic relationship. In the first week of class, Will solves a difficult graduate-level math problem that Professor Gerald Lambeau (Stellan Skarsgård), a Fields Medalist and combinatorialist, left on a chalkboard as a challenge to his students, hoping someone might solve the problem by the semester's end. Everyone at MIT wonders who solved it, and Lambeau puts another problem on the board -- one that took him and his colleagues two years to prove. Will is discovered in the act of solving the problem, and Lambeau initially thinks that Will is vandalizing the board and chases him away. When Will turns out to have solved it correctly, Lambeau tries to track Will down. Meanwhile, Will attacks a youth who had bullied him 15 years ago in kindergarten, and he now faces imprisonment after attacking a police officer who was responding to the fracas. Realizing Will might have the potential to be a great mathematician, such as the genius Évariste Galois, Lambeau goes to Will's trial and intervenes on his behalf, offering him a choice: either Will can go to jail, or he can be released into Lambeau's personal supervision, where he must study mathematics and see a psychotherapist. Will chooses the latter even though he seems to believe that he does not need therapy. Five psychologists fail to connect with Will. Out of sheer desperation, Lambeau finally calls on psychologist Sean Maguire (Robin Williams), an estranged old friend and MIT classmate of his who grew up in the same neighborhood as Will. Sean differs from his five predecessors in that he pushes back at Will and is eventually able to get through to Will and his hostile, sarcastic defense mechanisms. At one point, Will analyzes a watercolor painting that Sean had done himself and concludes that it reflects Sean's suppressed feelings and guilt over the premature death of his wife. Sean becomes offended and hostile and grabs Will by the throat, threatening to sink his chances for reform. Will ends the appointment and walks out; Lambeau walks in believing that Will had ruined his chances with another therapist, however, Sean sees Will as a challenge and tells Lambeau to bring him back each week. In a later session Will is particularly struck when Sean tells him how he gave up his ticket to see the Red Sox in the 1975 World Series (thus missing Carlton Fisk's famous home run in Game 6) in order to meet and spend time with a stranger in a bar, who would later become his wife. Will is encouraged to try to establish a relationship with Skylar (Minnie Driver), a young woman he met at a bar near Harvard University. This doctor-patient relationship, however, is far from one-sided. Will challenges Sean in the same way that Sean is encouraging Will to take a good, hard, objective look at himself and his life. Sean's own pathology is that he is unable and unwilling to even consider a second romantic relationship in the aftermath of his first beloved wife's premature death from cancer several years before. This may well be the primary reason why Sean agrees to take Will on as a client. Meanwhile, Lambeau pushes Will so hard to excel that Will eventually refuses to go to the job interviews that Lambeau arranged for him for positions that might prove challenging, even to his immense talents. Lambeau and Sean also squabble about Will's future. Will's accidental witnessing of this furious argument somehow acts as a catalyst for his decision to enter a deeper level of trust and sharing with Sean. He has apparently realized from this event that the situation is a little more complex than Will vs. The World. He now sees that these mentors are every bit as human, fallible, and conflicted as he is.
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Skylar asks Will to move to California with her, where she will begin medical school at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Will panics at the thought. Skylar then expresses support about his past, which is received as patronization and triggers a tantrum in which Will storms out of the dorm while still in a state of undress. He shrugs off the work he's doing for Lambeau as "a joke," even though Lambeau is incapable of solving some of these theorems and admittedly envies Will. Lambeau begs Will not to throw it all away, but Will walks out on him anyway. Sean points out that Will is so adept at anticipating future failure in his romantic relationships, that he either allows them to fizzle out or deliberately bails, in order to avoid the risk of future emotional pain. When Will then provides a whimsical reply to Sean's very serious query of what he wants to do with his life, Sean simply shows him the door. When Will further tells his best friend Chuckie (Ben Affleck) that he wants to be a laborer for the rest of his life, Chuckie becomes brutally honest with Will: he feels it's an "insult" for Will to waste his potential as a laborer, and that his recurring wish is to knock on Will's door in the morning when he picks him up for work and find that he just isn't there, that he has left without saying goodbye. Will goes to another therapy session, where he and Sean share that they were both victims of child abuse. At first, Will is defensive and resentful at Sean's repeated reassurances that "It's not your fault," but he eventually breaks down in tearful acknowledgment. Finally, after much self-reflection, Will decides to cease being a victim of his own inner demons and to take charge of his life. When his buddies present him with a rebuilt Chevrolet Nova for his 21st birthday, he decides to go to California and reunite with Skylar, setting aside his lucrative corporate and government job offers. Will leaves a brief note for Sean explaining what he's doing, using one of Sean's own quips, "I had to go see about a girl." Sean also leaves to travel the world, though not before reconciling with Lambeau. The movie ends as Chuckie poignantly discovers, in fulfillment of his own long-standing wish, that Will has left for a better life. Will is then shown starting his life-affirming drive to California for a new beginning with Skylar and a leap into an unpredictable future.

To Sir, With Love (1967)
Directed By: James Clavell Synopsis: Engineer Mark Thackeray arrives to teach a totally undisciplined class at an East End school. Still hoping for a good engineering job, he's hopeful... Engineer Mark Thackeray arrives to teach a totally undisciplined class at an East End school. Still hoping for a good engineering job, he's hopeful that he won't be there long. He starts implementing his own brand of classroom discipline: forcing the pupils to treat each other with respect. Inevitably he begins getting involved in the students' personal lives, and must avoid the advances of an amorous student while winning over the class tough. What will he decide when the engineering job comes through? Engineer Mark Thackeray arrives to teach a totally undisciplined class at an East End school. Still hoping for a good engineering job, he's hopeful that he won't be there long. He starts implementing his own brand of classroom discipline: forcing the pupils to treat each other with respect. Inevitably he begins getting involved in the students' personal lives, and must avoid the advances of an amorous student while winning over the class tough. What will he decide when the engineering job comes through?

Secondhand Lions (2003)
Directed By: Tim McCanlies Synopsis: If you can get past its thick layer of syrup and molasses, Secondhand Lions reveals itself as a thoroughly decent family film that anyone can enjoy.... If you can get past its thick layer of syrup and molasses, Secondhand Lions reveals itself as a thoroughly decent family film that anyone can enjoy. It gets a little sappy sometimes, but there's something to be said for a movie in which Michael Caine and Robert Duvall play eccentric old brothers who take the easy approach to fishing: instead of a peaceful rod and reel, they use 12-gauge shotguns. When 14-yearold Walter (Haley Joel Osment, teetering on puberty) spends an eventful summer with his great-uncles on their vast Texas farmland (he's been dumped there by his delinquent mom, played by Kyra Sedgwick), he soon discovers they've lived lives full of adventure, excitement, passion, and mystery. Either that or they're old-time bank robbers with a long criminal record, and writer-director Tim McCanlies (who invested similar warmth into The Iron Giant) does a nice job of concealing the truth until the very end. Full of enriching lessons and homespun humor, Secondhand Lions has more substance than most family films. If you enjoyed Holes, you'll probably enjoy this movie, too. --Jeff Shannon.
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"Secondhand Lions" follows the comedic adventures of an introverted boy left on the doorstep of a pair of reluctant, eccentric great-uncles, whose exotic remembrances stir the boy's spirit and re-ignite the men's lives. Walter is a timid teenager played by Haley Joel Osment, who is dropped off at his great-uncles farm in Texas during the 1960s by his neglectful mother. The two oddball and rich uncles are played by Robert Duvall and Michael Caine. Even though the uncles have never raised any children, they accept the responsibility of taking care of Walter for the summer. Since they don't have a TV or telephone in the house, the uncles entertain Walter with colorful stories from their past when they were young and fighting for the Foreign Legion and Duvall's love affair with the Sultan's daughter. The stories are so fantastic that Walter is not sure if they are true or made-up by his uncles. The uncles purchase an old lion to hunt, but Walter makes the lion his pet instead. The uncles must contend with their greedy relatives who are after their money and Walter knows where it is. With the guidance of his uncles, Walter becomes a man. Douglas Young (the-movie-guy)

Coach Carter (2005)
Directed By: Thomas Carter (II) Synopsis: Based on a true story of the man who locked his boys out of the gym until they focused on their schoolwork, this by-the-numbers crowd-pleaser holds... Based on a true story of the man who locked his boys out of the gym until they focused on their schoolwork, this by-the-numbers crowd-pleaser holds together because a steely Samuel L. Jackson refuses to notice the parade of clichés he's trumpeting (the dialogue sticks to platitudes like, "Success in here is the key to success out there"). Coach Ken Carter (Jackson) takes over an unruly team of Richmond, California basketball players and teaches them how to play--and behave--like champions. His plight, which pits him against an uncooperative school board and parents who've given up hope, holds some interest, but the film is too concerned with giving us a Big Game every twenty minutes or so. The teens all have the spark of life in them (including pop star Ashanti, who features in a surprisingly well-handled teen pregnancy subplot), though the film's plodding familiarity means it's never really rousing, adding up to simply a good-natured amalgam of Stand and Deliver, Hoosiers, Dangerous Minds, and even Dead Poet's Society (one of the tougher players actually recites some inspirational poetry).--Steve Wiecking In 1999, Ken Carter, a successful sporting goods store owner, accepts the job of basketball coach for his old high school in a poor area of Richmond, CA, where he was a champion athlete. As much dismayed by the poor attitudes of his players as well as their dismal play performance, Carter sets about to change both. He immediately imposes a strict regime typified in written contracts that include stipulations for respectful behavior, a dress code and good grades as requisites to being allowed to participate. The initial resistance from the boys is soon dispelled as the team under Carter's tutelage becomes a undefeated competitor in the games. However, when the overconfident team's behavior begins to stray and Carter learns that too many players are doing poorly in class, he takes immediate action. To the outrage of the team, the school and the community, Carter cancels all team activities and locks the court until the team shows acceptable academic improvement... 'Coach Carter' is based on a true story of Coach Ken Carter, a controversial high school basketball coach played by Samuel L. Jackson. Coach Carter took the coaching job under his rules. He believed that the players must maintain good grades and become a united team or they would not play. All the team players signed his contract to do just that. The team was undefeated and on it's way to the 1999 State Championship, when Coach Carter received the low grades of his players. Coach Carter received national attention when he locked the gym and benched the whole team for poor grades. Coach Carter received some praise and much more criticism for his decision. Douglas Young (the-movie-guy)

The Ultimate Gift (2007)
Directed By: Michael O. Sajbel Synopsis: When his wealthy grandfather dies, trust fund baby Jason Stevens anticipates a big inheritance. Instead, his grandfather has devised a crash course on... When his wealthy grandfather dies, trust fund baby Jason Stevens anticipates a big inheritance. Instead, his grandfather has devised a crash course on life with 12 tasks--or "gifts"-designed to challenge Jason in improbable ways, sending him on a journey of self-discovery and forcing him to determine what is most important in life: money or happiness.
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Jason thought his inheritance was going to be the gift of money and lots of it. Was he ever in for a big surprise. Based on the best-selling book "The Ultimate Gift" by Jim Stovall, the story sends trust fund baby Jason Stevens on an improbable journey of discovery, having to answer the ultimate question: "What is the relationship between wealth and happiness?" Jason had a very simple relationship with his impossibly wealthy Grandfather, Howard "Red" Stevens. He hated him. No heart-to-heart talks, no warm fuzzies, just cold hard cash. So of course he figured that when Red died, the whole "reading of the will" thing would be another simple cash transaction, that his Grandfather's money would allow him to continue living in the lifestyle to which he had become accustomed. But what Red left him was anything but simple. Red instead devised a plan for Jason to experience a crash course on life... (this was first posted on www.realmoviereview.com) The story, which is based on Jim Stovalls novel of the same name, is manipulative (big surprise there), but is fairly engaging once it gets going. Drew Fullers inexperience shows itself from time to time, as he plays Jason Stevens, the spoiled grandson of a deceased billionaire whose expectations from the will are put off while he is led through several tasks designed to make him a better person. Along the way, he meets and befriends a young girl named Emily, played by Abigail Breslin just before Little Miss Sunshine hit the theatres and made her a big star. Her mother, Alexia, played by Ali Hillis. The production values here are Hollywood quality, though both the script and the acting could have been improved.

Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002)
Directed By: Phillip Noyce Synopsis: In Western Australia, 1931, the small depot of Jigalong sits on the edge of the Gibson Desert. Running through Jigalong and out into the desert is a... In Western Australia, 1931, the small depot of Jigalong sits on the edge of the Gibson Desert. Running through Jigalong and out into the desert is a rabbit-proof fence that bisects Australia from north to south. The fence was built to keep rabbits on one side and pasture on the other. This remote country is home to three spirited Aboriginal girls, Molly, her sister Daisy, and their cousin Gracie. The girls' white fathers are fence workers who have moved on. Now their only contact with white Australia is the weekly ration day at Jigalong Depot. In Perth, AO Neville, the area's Chief Protector of Aborigines, receives word that the three girls are running wild. He believes the Aboriginal race is dying out and believes that the answer to the "colored problem" is to breed out the Aboriginal race. To achieve this he has ruled that children of mixed marriages cannot marry fullblooded Aborigines. Settlements are set up across the state and "half-caste" children are removed from their families and prepared for their "new life in white society" as domestic servants and laborers. Neville orders the removal of Molly, Gracie, and Daisy and they are relocated 1,200 miles from home to a grim settlement. The harsh conditions they must live under shock Molly, and she convinces Daisy and Gracie to run away with her. With Moodoo, a cruel and master tracker on their tails, they begin a grueling three-month journey home, following the rabbit-proof fence that will guide them back to their mother and their rightful home. Western Australia, 1931. Government policy includes taking half-caste children from their Aboriginal mothers and sending them a thousand miles away to what amounts to indentured servitude, "to save them from themselves." Molly, Daisy, and Grace (two sisters and a cousin who are 14, 10, and 8) arrive at their Gulag and promptly escape, under Molly's lead. For days they walk north, following a fence that keeps rabbits from settlements, eluding a native tracker and the regional constabulary. Their pursuers take orders from the government's "chief protector of Aborigines," A.O. Neville, blinded by Anglo-Christian certainty, evolutionary world view and conventional wisdom. Can the girls survive? Rabbit-Proof Fence is a 2002 Australian drama (directed by Phillip Noyce) film based on the book Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington Garimara. It concerns the author's mother, and two other young mixed-race Aboriginal girls, who ran away from the Moore River Native Settlement, north of Perth, in order to return to their Aboriginal families, after being placed there in 1931. The film follows the girls as they trek/walk for nine weeks along 1,500 miles (2414km) of the Australian rabbit-proof fence to return to their community at Jigalong while being tracked by a white authority figure and a black tracker.

Dancer in the Dark (2000)
Directed By: Lars von Trier Synopsis: An east European girl goes to America with her young son, expecting it to be like a Hollywood film. An east European girl goes to America with her young son, expecting it to be like a Hollywood film. Selma has emigrated with her son from Central Europe to America. The year is 1964. Selma works day and night to save her son from the same disease she suffers from, a disease that inevitably will make her blind. But Selma has
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the energy to live because of her secret! She loves musicals. When life feels tough she can pretend that she is in the wonderful world of musicals...just for a short moment. All happiness life is not able to give her she finds there.. Selma is a young Czech mother living in Washington state in the early 1960s. How she loves musicals! Alas, she is going blind, and this is threatening her job (not to say her limbs) at the local factory, where she is friends with Cathy, who is a bit flummoxed by Selma's increasing workload, which includes pinning hairpins to unbent cardboard as a side job. Selma lives with her understandably ungrateful 12-year-old delinquent son in a mobile trailer on the property of a local sheriff and his happy-go-lucky wife. One day, the sheriff reveals a dark secret to Selma, and being the type to cement friendships, she tells him a secret, too: that she is going blind. Life spirals downard for her after this revelation, but Selma is resolute in protecting her friend's secret. Cathy, who grows increasingly frustrated with Selma's decisions, comes to realize Selma's methodology was right after all, and in the gripping final moments of the film, she tells Selma that she did right. This is a curious, highly depressing, yet exhilarating film (with various experimental camera techniques) about the power of friendship and maternal love -- not to be watched alone!

My Life Without Me (2003)
Directed By: Isabel Coixet Synopsis: Ann is 23-years-old, she has 2 young daughters, a husband who spends more time unemployed than working, a mother who hates the world, a father who has... Ann is 23-years-old, she has 2 young daughters, a husband who spends more time unemployed than working, a mother who hates the world, a father who has spent the last ten years in jail, and a job as a night janitor in a university that she could never attend in the daytime. They all live in a trailer, on the yard of her mother's house, in the outskirts of Vancouver. However, this gray existence changes completely when, after a medical check-up, a doctor tells Ann that she has very little time left on this earth. Learning that she has hardly two months to live, Ann decides to keep her condition a secret, and refuses to tell anybody--not even her husband--about her time remaining. She does not want people around her with long faces, and obsessed with her approaching death. Ann starts to make a list of things to do before dying, which she completes little by little. The list targets a wide range of things to which she must attend, including carrying out tasks like: saying exactly what she thinks to certain people; as well as getting herself some fake fingernails. Unexpectedly, Ann discovers an appetite for life that drives her to live her last days with a sensual and furious intensity she had not known before. During this short time, she prepares her daughters for a life without her; she meets a solitary wounded man, whom she seduces; and most importantly, Ann faces what remains of her life with a certain steadfast courage she never knew she possessed. Ann, 23 years old, lives a modest life with her two kids and her husband in a trailer in her mother's garden. Her life takes a dramatic turn, when her doctor tells her that she has uterine cancer and only two months to live. She compiles a list of things to do before she dies.

Breaking the Waves (1996)
Directed By: Lars von Trier Synopsis: The revolutionary Dogma 95 school of filmmaking washed up on American shores with this intense European drama starring Emily Watson as Bess, a naïve... The revolutionary Dogma 95 school of filmmaking washed up on American shores with this intense European drama starring Emily Watson as Bess, a naïve Scotswoman who's convinced that God will heal her paralyzed husband (Stellan Skarsgård) if she has sex with other men. Director Lars von Trier shot the film using only available light, handheld cameras and no musical score; the result is a stunning, nakedly emotional film. Drama set in a repressed, deeply religious community in the north of Scotland, where a naive young woman named Bess McNeil meets and falls in love with Danish oil-rig worker Jan. Bess and Jan are deeply in love but, when Jan returns to his rig, Bess prays to God that he returns for good. Jan does return, his neck broken in an accident aboard the rig. Because of his condition, Jan and Bess are now unable to enjoy a sexual relationship and Jan urges Bess to take another lover and tell him the details. As Bess becomes more and more deviant in her sexual behavior, the more she comes to believe that her actions are guided by God and are helping Jan recover.

21 Grams (2003)
Directed By: Alejandro González Iñárritu
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Synopsis: A freak accident brings together a critically ill mathematician (Penn), a grieving mother (Watts) and a born-again ex-con (Del Toro). A freak accident brings together a critically ill mathematician (Penn), a grieving mother (Watts) and a born-again ex-con (Del Toro). This is the story of three gentle persons: Paul Rivers an ailing mathematician lovelessly married to an English émigré, Christina Peck, an upper-middle-class suburban housewife, happily married and mother of two little girls, and Jack Jordan, an ex-convict who has found in his Christian faith the strength to raise a family. They will be brought together by a terrible accident that will change their lives. By the final frame, none of them will be the same as they will learn harsh truths about love, faith, courage, desire and guilt, and how chance can change our worlds irretrievably, forever. "21 Grams" is done in the Quentin Tarantino "all the scenes are out of order" style, which was a good way to tell this story. Paul Rivers (Sean Penn) is a college math professor and a long-time smoker who is close to death from heart failure. He's weak, coughs and gasps, and drags around an oxygen tank to help him breathe. He's on the transplant list for a new heart. His wife wants nothing more than to get pregnant by him before he dies. Jack Jordan (Benicio Del Toro) is an ex-con that has spent more time in jail than out, but has reformed and is working in a church, spreading the gospel, and helping kids that are heading toward the same kind of trouble he's been in. He and his wife have two young children. Cristina Peck (Naomi Watts) seems to be a typical housewife. She and her husband have two young daughters, and they appear to have an ideal life. One afternoon Jack accidentally runs over Christina's husband (Huston) and daughters (Nahon and Pakis) while they're out walking. Both of the little girls are killed, and the father ends up brain dead. Christina consents to organ donation, and her husband's heart ends up being transplanted into Paul. Jack turns himself in for the hit-and-run and goes to jail, but is later released. Paul recovers and hires a private detective to find the donor family (to find out "who he is"). The detective comes up with the information not only about the donor and his widow, but also about the ex-con. Most of the movie is about the relationships that develop between these three main characters.

Hable con Ella (Talk to Her) (2002)
Directed By: Pedro Almodóvar Synopsis: Two men share an odd friendship while they care for their girlfriends who are both in deep comas. Two men share an odd friendship while they care for their girlfriends who are both in deep comas. After a chance encounter at a theater, two men, Benigno and Marco, meet at a private clinic where Benigno works. Lydia, Marco's girlfriend and a bullfighter by profession, has been gored and is in a coma. It so happens that Benigno is looking after another woman in a coma, Alicia, a young ballet student. The lives of the four characters will flow in all directions, past, present and future, dragging all of them towards an unsuspected destiny.

True Grit (1969)
Directed By: Henry Hathaway Synopsis: An aging marshal helps a young girl find her father's killer. When a Texas Ranger joins in the pursuit for the reward, conflicts ensue between the two... An aging marshal helps a young girl find her father's killer. When a Texas Ranger joins in the pursuit for the reward, conflicts ensue between the two men until the girl brings them together. The murder of her father sends a teenage tomboy, Mattie Ross, (Kim Darby), on a mission of "justice", which involves avenging her father's death. She recruits a tough old marshal, "Rooster" Cogburn (John Wayne), because he has "grit", and a reputation of getting the job done. The two are joined by a Texas Ranger, La Boeuf, (Glen Campbell), who is looking for the same man (Jeff Corey) for a separate murder in Texas. Their odyssey takes them from Fort Smith, Arkansas, deep into the Indian Territory (present day Oklahoma) to find their man. Young tomboy Mattie Ross (Kim Darby) loves her father. But when this father gets killed by a tramp called Tom Chaney (Jeff Corey), she is determined to see him hang.
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She goes to Fort Smith and discovers that Tom Chaney has fled in the Indian territory, where only a marshall can get him. A marshall who has true grit, in order to vanquish not only Chaney, but also the group of outlaws he has connected with, led by the notorious bandit Ned Pepper (Robert Duvall) and including Moon (Dennis Hopper) and Quincy (Jeremy Slate). So Mattie finds the toughest marshall of the West : the one-eyed Reuben J. "Rooster" Cogburn (John Wayne), who's never known a dry day in his life, and hires him - with 100 $ - to go after Chaney and Pepper. Rooster soon pairs with young Texican La Boeuf (Glen Campbell) who also looks for Chaney as he had killed a Texas-senator before murdering Mattie's father. Mattie and La Boeuf are soon at odds, as the latest doesn't want her to join the chase, but Mattie hangs on and Rooster lets her come with them. Strong-headed Mattie, fast talking La Boeuf and sharp Rooster engage themselves in a battle of wits and, at the same time, on Chaney's tracks. After a first embush where Moon and Quincy are killed, Mattie gets face to face with Chaney and wounds him before being kidnapped by Ned Pepper. Ned forces Rooster and La Boeuf to withdraw and lets Mattie with Chaney as a hostage. But La Boeuf comes back and captures Chaney. Mattie and La Boeuf witness the last fight between Ned Pepper and three of his men on one side, Rooster all alone on the other. They all charge on their horses and Rooster kills three men and injures Pepper before his horse (Bo) is killed under him. He desperately tries to get his gun as the dying Ned comes closer. At the very last moment, La Boeuf fires from the hill he stands on with Mattie and shoots Ned before Rooster gets killed. Chaney then escapes and hits La Boeuf on the head with a big stone, only to get shot again by Mattie. With the gunfire, she falls in a pit where a deadly snake threatens her. Rooster arrives at that moment, kills Chaney who was still trying to hurt Mattie and goes down the pit to save Mattie. The snake bites her and Rooster's unable to go up the pit with the unconscious Mattie. La Boeuf wakes up just a little while to pull them out with a horse and a rope, before falling dead. Rooster leaves him on the field and kills his horse under him to bring Mattie to a doctor. At the end of the movie, Mattie is back to her ranch where she heals slowly. Rooster comes and visits her. She shows him the cemetery where her father rests and she offers him, as he has no family, to rest beside her after his death. He takes on the offer with a joke and departs, jumping over a fence and yelling: "Come and see a fat old man sometime!"

True Grit (2010)
Directed By: Ethan Coen , Joel Coen Synopsis: A tough U.S. Marshal helps a stubborn young woman track down her father's murderer. A tough U.S. Marshal helps a stubborn young woman track down her father's murderer. Following the murder of her father by hired hand Tom Chaney, 14-year-old farm girl Mattie Ross sets out to capture the killer. To aid her, she hires the toughest U.S. marshal she can find, a man with "true grit," Reuben J. "Rooster" Cogburn. Mattie insists on accompanying Cogburn, whose drinking, sloth, and generally reprobate character do not augment her faith in him. Against his wishes, she joins him in his trek into the Indian Nations in search of Chaney. They are joined by Texas Ranger LaBoeuf, who wants Chaney for his own purposes. The unlikely trio find danger and surprises on the journey, and each has his or her "grit" tested. Young tomboy Mattie Ross (Kim Darby) loves her father. But when this father gets killed by a tramp called Tom Chaney (Jeff Corey), she is determined to see him hang. She goes to Fort Smith and discovers that Tom Chaney has fled in the Indian territory, where only a marshall can get him. A marshall who has true grit, in order to vanquish not only Chaney, but also the group of outlaws he has connected with, led by the notorious bandit Ned Pepper (Robert Duvall) and including Moon (Dennis Hopper) and Quincy (Jeremy Slate). So Mattie finds the toughest marshall of the West : the one-eyed Reuben J. "Rooster" Cogburn (John Wayne), who's never known a dry day in his life, and hires him - with 100 $ - to go after Chaney and Pepper. Rooster soon pairs with young Texican La Boeuf (Glen Campbell) who also looks for Chaney as he had killed a Texas-senator before murdering Mattie's father.
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Mattie and La Boeuf are soon at odds, as the latest doesn't want her to join the chase, but Mattie hangs on and Rooster lets her come with them. Strong-headed Mattie, fast talking La Boeuf and sharp Rooster engage themselves in a battle of wits and, at the same time, on Chaney's tracks. After a first embush where Moon and Quincy are killed, Mattie gets face to face with Chaney and wounds him before being kidnapped by Ned Pepper. Ned forces Rooster and La Boeuf to withdraw and lets Mattie with Chaney as a hostage. But La Boeuf comes back and captures Chaney. Mattie and La Boeuf witness the last fight between Ned Pepper and three of his men on one side, Rooster all alone on the other. They all charge on their horses and Rooster kills three men and injures Pepper before his horse (Bo) is killed under him. He desperately tries to get his gun as the dying Ned comes closer. At the very last moment, La Boeuf fires from the hill he stands on with Mattie and shoots Ned before Rooster gets killed. Chaney then escapes and hits La Boeuf on the head with a big stone, only to get shot again by Mattie. With the gunfire, she falls in a pit where a deadly snake threatens her. Rooster arrives at that moment, kills Chaney who was still trying to hurt Mattie and goes down the pit to save Mattie. The snake bites her and Rooster's unable to go up the pit with the unconscious Mattie. La Boeuf wakes up just a little while to pull them out with a horse and a rope, before falling dead. Rooster leaves him on the field and kills his horse under him to bring Mattie to a doctor. At the end of the movie, Mattie is back to her ranch where she heals slowly. Rooster comes and visits her. She shows him the cemetery where her father rests and she offers him, as he has no family, to rest beside her after his death. He takes on the offer with a joke and departs, jumping over a fence and yelling: "Come and see a fat old man sometime!"

Lilja 4-ever
While waiting for her mothers reply to take her to the USA, Lilya idles the time away smoking, drinking and having fun with her, too, outcast friend Volodya. In time, the chance of a new life becomes non-existent; her life is going nowhere. Meeting a young man, she then finds a plane ticket in her hand and a new life in Sweden: a job, an apartment and prospects. All is not what it seems. There shall be work, there shall be housing and there shall be no escape. This is the stark, frank and disturbing vision of the life of a young victim of the underground sex trade and in all its tone of realism of abject poverty, despicable actions and of wanting to show that dreaming of a better life is not a crime but that life can shatter the illusion of a happy ending.

American Beauty (1999)
Director: Sam Mendes

Lester and Carolyn Burnham are on the outside, a perfect husband and wife, in a perfect house, in a perfect neighborhood. But inside, Lester is slipping deeper and deeper into a hopeless depression. He finally snaps when he becomes infatuated with one of his daughter's friends. Meanwhile, his daughter Jane is developing a happy friendship with a shy boy-next-door named Ricky, who lives with a homophobic father.

Last Train Home (2009)
Director: Lixin Fan Synopsis: Every spring, China's cities are plunged into chaos as 130 million migrant workers journey to their home villages for the New Year's holiday. This... Every spring, China's cities are plunged into chaos as 130 million migrant workers journey to their home villages for the New Year's holiday. This mass exodus is the world's largest human migration-an epic spectacle that reveals a country tragically caught between its rural past and industrial future. Working over several years in classic verité style Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Lixin Fan (with the producers of the award-winning hit documentary Up the Yangtze) travels with one couple who have embarked on this annual trek for almost two decades. Like so many of China's rural poor, Changhua and Sugin Zhang left behind their two infant children for grueling factory jobs. Their daughter Qin-now a restless and rebellious teenager-both bitterly resents their absence and longs for her own freedom away from school, much to the utter devastation of her parents. Emotionally engaging and starkly beautiful, Last Train Home's intimate observation of one fractured family sheds light on the human cost of China's ascendance as an economic superpower.-A family embarks on an annual tormenting journey along with 200 other million peasant workers to reunite with their distant family, and to revive their love and dignity as China soars as the world's next super power.
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3-Iron (Bin-jip) (Empty Houses) (2004)
Directed By: Ki-duk Kim Synopsis: Tae-suk is homeless and lives like a phantom. His daily routine involves temporarily staying in houses and apartments he knows to be vacant. He never... Tae-suk is homeless and lives like a phantom. His daily routine involves temporarily staying in houses and apartments he knows to be vacant. He never steals from nor damages his unknowing hosts' homes; rather, he is like a kind ghost, sleeping in other people's beds, eating a little food out of strangers' refrigerators and repaying their unintended hospitality by doing the laundry or making small repairs. Sun-hwa was once a beautiful model, but she has become withered living under the shadow of her abusive husband, who keeps her imprisoned in their affluent, expensively decorated house. Tae-suk and Sun-hwa are bound by fate to cross paths though their invisible existences. They meet when Tae-suk breaks into Sun-hwa's house and they instantly recognize the similarity of their souls. As if bound by unseen ties, they find themselves unable to separate and quietly accept their bizarre new destiny. A young drifter enters strangers' houses - and lives - while owners are away. He spends a night or a day squatting in, repaying their unwitting hospitality by doing laundry or small repairs. His life changes when he runs into a beautiful woman in an affluent mansion who is ready to escape her unhappy, abusive marriage.

Belle de Jour (1967) Beauty of the Day
Directed By: Luis Buñuel Synopsis: Severine (Catherine Deneuve) is a wealthy young newlywed who's eager to live life to the fullest. Although she loves her husband, Severine can't bring... Severine (Catherine Deneuve) is a wealthy young newlywed who's eager to live life to the fullest. Although she loves her husband, Severine can't bring herself to be intimate with him. To sate her physical desires, she indulges in erotic daydreams, often blurring the line between reality and fantasy. When that's not enough, she begins frequenting a classy Parisian brothel, working as a prostitute while remaining celibate within her marriage. Severine is a beautiful young woman married to a doctor. She loves her husband dearly, but cannot bring herself to be physically intimate with him. She indulges instead in vivid, kinky, erotic fantasies to entertain her sexual desires. Eventually she becomes a prostitute, working in a brothel in the afternoons while remaining chaste in her marriage.

Fa Yeung Nin Wa (In the Mood for Love) (2000)
Directed By: Kar Wai Wong Synopsis: Hong Kong, 1962. The city is tranquil and courteous, but divided between indigenous Cantonese Chinese and immigrants from mainland China. Through... Hong Kong, 1962. The city is tranquil and courteous, but divided between indigenous Cantonese Chinese and immigrants from mainland China. Through coincidence, Chow Mo-wan, a journalist, moves into an apartment building occupied mainly by Shanghainese at the same time as Su Li-zhen, a secretary, while their spouses are away. When Chow finds out their respective spouses are having an affair, the two of them grow closer as they commiserate, finding more and more excuses to spend time with each other. Set in Hong Kong, 1962, Chow Mo-Wan is a newspaper editor who moves into a new building with his wife. At approximately the same time, Su Li-zhen, a beautiful secretary and her executive husband also move in to the crowded building. With their spouses often away, Chow and Li-zhen spend most of their time together as friends. They have everything in common from noodle shops to martial arts. Soon, they are shocked to discover that their spouses are having an affair. Hurt and angry, they find comfort in their growing friendship even as they resolve not to be like their unfaithful mates. Two couples Mr and Mrs Chan ( Mrs Chan played by Maggie Cheung ) and Mr and Mrs Chow ( Mr Chow played by Tony Leung Chiu Wai ) move into the same building on the same day. Both spend much time alone as their respective spouses work long hours. One day they discover when talking things over that their spouses are having an affaire. The two lonely hurt people come together as friends and try to reproduce the infidelity of their husband and wife whilst analysing just how it happened. Deciding in doing so to avoid the usual clichés and above all not become like 'them' they end up by falling in love for real. In becoming what they had objected to and despised they break up and leave for different lives. In the end of the movie we learn that both of the couples have split up and are alone. Mrs Chow has a son which we assume could be Mr Chow's although their 'union' was never actually shown, but implied. A divine movie with a beautiful haunting music and fabulous photography.

Memento (2000)
Directed By: Christopher Nolan
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Synopsis: A man, suffering from short-term memory loss, uses notes and tattoos to hunt for the man he thinks killed his wife. A man, suffering from short-term memory loss, uses notes and tattoos to hunt for the man he thinks killed his wife. Memento chronicles two separate stories of Leonard, an ex-insurance investigator who can no longer build new memories, as he attempts to find the murderer of his wife, which is the last thing he remembers. One story line moves forward in time while the other tells the story backwards revealing more each time. This is a complex story about Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce), a man whose ability to make new memories is damaged when he is struck in the head while confronting two people who are attacking his wife at their home in the middle of the night. Leonard kills one of the attackers during the attack and one of the last things Leonard remembers is his wife dying. Leonard then devotes his life to finding and killing the second attacker. The movie alternates between color and black and white sequences. The black and white sequences proceed in chronological order, but the color sequences proceed in reverse chronological order. The forward black and white scenes and the reverse color scenes alternate until they meet in the middle of the story at the end of the film. In the two disc DVD set, the second disc contains the movie in chronological order. To play this version of the movie: (1) select the clock icon; (2) select the answer "C" to every multiple choice question; and (3) arrange the tire changing steps in reverse chronological order (3-4-1-2). The movie will then begin to play (with the credits first - in backward order). Some functions (fast forward, chapter skip, etc.) are disabled. This is a synopsis of the story as presented when put together in chronological order. It is not the plot order presented in the film. The story starts in black and white. Leonard Shelby wakes up in a room at the Discount Inn puzzled as to why he is there. The phone rings and he speaks with an unknown caller. He tells the caller that he suffers from anterograde amnesia, a condition which makes him unable to create new memories. He describes the condition by detailing the story of Sammy Jankis (Stephen Tobolowsky), who had the same problem. Leonard describes how one must have a system of notes to deal with the problems and a drive to use them. Leonard says he has the drive that Sammy never had and the viewer sees Leonard's tattoo: "JOHN G. RAPED AND MURDERED MY WIFE" as well as other clues and notes tattooed on his body. Leonard continues the story and explains that he had just become an insurance investigator when he met Sammy and was assigned to determine whether his condition was covered by his insurance policy. Sammy's condition was not like other cases of anterograde amnesia in that Sammy was unable to learn through conditioning. After additional testing, Leonard says he concluded that Sammy's condition was psychological and the claim was denied because Sammy was not covered for mental illness. Leonard explains how Mrs. Jankis (Harriet Sansom Harris) met privately with him. In trying to placate her, Leonard told her that Sammy should be able to make new memories. She tested Sammy's memory by repeatedly asking him to give her insulin injections. She lapsed into a coma and died from the overdose. Sammy was then confined to a mental institution. During this conversation, the caller and Leonard talk about Leonard's quest and how the police did not believe the story about the second attacker. The caller identifies himself as a policeman and provides Leonard with additional clues for his quest . Leonard tattoos the fact the second attacker was a drug dealer. The caller identifies the second attacker as Jimmy Grantz and tells Leonard that he has set up a meeting with Jimmy. Leonard agrees to meet the caller in the motel lobby. In the lobby, Leonard meets a man (Joe Pantoliano) asking him if he is "Officer Gammell". The man insists that Leonard should call him "Teddy" since he is "undercover". Teddy gives Leonard directions to the meeting location and Leonard goes to meet Jimmy at an abandoned building outside of town. When Jimmy Grantz (Larry Holden) arrives, he recognizes Leonard as the man with the memory condition, demands to know what Leonard is doing there, and asks where Teddy is. Leonard threatens Jimmy with a tire iron and tells him to strip. Jimmy pleads for his life and tells Leonard that there is $200,000 in the trunk of his car for payment of the drugs that Teddy was to have brought to the meeting. Leonard strangles Jimmy, takes a Polaroid photo of his body, and starts putting on Jimmy's clothes. As the photo of Jimmy's body develops, the film gradually goes from black and white into color.
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The remaining story is in color, but proceeds in the film in reverse order. As Leonard drags Jimmy into the basement, he hears Jimmy whisper "Sammy..." before dying. Leonard concludes that if Jimmy knew about Sammy, he was not the second attacker. Teddy arrives at the scene and tries to convince Leonard that Jimmy was the man he was after. Leonard does not believe him. Teddy finally admits that Jimmy Grantz was a drug dealer who did not have anything to do with his wife's killing. Teddy then tells Leonard that his wife survived the attack. According to Teddy, Sammy Jankis was a fraud who was not even married and it was Leonard's wife who was diabetic. Teddy claims to be the police officer who investigated his wife's murder. He says he believed him about the second attacker and helped him track down and kill the real John G. more than a year ago. Teddy claims that he took a picture of a happy Leonard right after the second attacker was dead. Leonard forgot the killing and began searching for the dead John G. all over again. Teddy tells Leonard there are plenty of John Gs to find and admits that he is even a John G: his full name is John Edward Gammell and his mother calls him Teddy. Before Lenny can forget Teddy's revelations, he decides to continue the hunt, lying to himself to set himself up to kill Teddy. He records a note on Teddy's photo "Don't believe his lies", records Teddy's license plate number as John G's, and leaves himself a reminder to get a tattoo of the plate number, SG137IU. Leonard ditches Teddy by throwing Teddy's car keys into some weeds. Leonard then leaves his pickup truck at the refinery and drives away in Jimmy's Jaguar, still wearing Jimmy's clothes. After forgetting Teddy's revelations and the lies to himself, Leonard finds a tattoo parlor and has the license plate number tatooed onto his leg. Teddy sees the Jaguar parked outside and comes in, trying to move the car and get Lenny to get out of town in some new clothes. Leonard sees the note on the back of Teddy's pictures and decides to leave without him. Leonard finds a note in the pocket of Jimmy's suit coat, which he is wearing. The note is from a Natalie telling Jimmy to come to Ferdy's bar. Not realizing he is wearing Jimmy's clothes and driving Jimmy's car, Leonard thinks the note is for him and goes to meet Natalie (Carrie-Anne Moss). He tells her about his condition. Natalie believes his story after a test. Natalie takes Leonard to her home and tells him he can stay with her. Leonard recounts what he remembers of the attack. He says he awoke to sounds, got a gun, and found his wife (Jorja Fox) being strangled. Leonard shot one intruder, but a second man clubbed him with a sap and smashed his head into a mirror. He goes on to explain that the cops did not believe there was a second attacker. Leonard tells Natalie that the second attacker was too smart and left the evidence to look like there was only one intruder. Natalie tricks Leonard into going after a man named Dodd (Callum Keith Rennie), who she claims has been harassing her for the money from Jimmy's prior drug deals. Leonard leaves to look for Dodd. Teddy is waiting for him as he leaves Natalie's home. Teddy tries to warn Leonard about Natalie, but after seeing the "Don't believe his lie" note on Teddy's picture does not believe he. Leonard does decide he shouldn't stay with Natalie and follows Teddy's advice to go to the Discount Inn. Leonard goes to the Discount Inn. Burt (Mark Boone Junior) at the front desk takes advantage of his condition by renting him a second room even though he had already paid for a first room. Leonard calls an escort service. When the escort arrives, Leonard explains to her that he wants only to relive going to sleep the night of the attack. After falling asleep, the escort wakes him. He asks the escort to leave. He then takes personal items belonging to his wife to a reservoir and burns them. In the morning, Leonard leaves the reservoir and is spotted by Dodd. Leonard escapes Dodd and goes to Dodd's motel to wait for him. When Dodd returns to his motel room, Leonard beats him and ties him up. Leonard calls Teddy for help in dealing with Dodd. Teddy comes to Dodd's motel room. Leonard and Teddy convince Dodd to leave town. Returning the favor of getting rid of Dodd, Leonard spends the night at Natalie's. In the morning she agrees to trace the license plate number tatooed on Leonard's leg. Later that day, Natalie gives him the information along with directions to "an abandoned place outside of town" where a guy she knew "used to do bigger deals". Leonard takes it back to his motel. At the motel, Leonard puts the clues together and concludes that Teddy is John Edward Gammell and must be the second attacker. He calls Teddy and they go to the same abandoned building where Jimmy Grantz was killed a few days earlier. Leonard then shoots Teddy in the head.

Viridiana (1961)
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Directed By: Luis Buñuel Synopsis: On the eve of taking her vows to be a nun, a pious young woman makes a fateful last visit to the home of her lecherous uncle. On the eve of taking her vows to be a nun, a pious young woman makes a fateful last visit to the home of her lecherous uncle. Viridiana, a young novice about to take her final vows as a nun, accedes to a request from her widowed uncle to visit him. Moved purely by a sense of obligation, she does so. Her uncle is moved by her resemblance to his late wife to attempt to seduce Viridiana, and tragedy ensues. In the aftermath, Viridiana tries to assuage her guilt by creating a haven for the destitute folk who live around her uncle's estate. But from these good intentions, too, comes little good. Just before taking her final vows, a young idealistic nun Viridiana (Silvia Pinal) is requested by her Superior Mother to visit her uncle Don Jaime (Fernando Rey) who has funded her education and provided for the girl for many years. Viridiana has a low opinion of her uncle considering him a horrible person but agrees to visit him to say farewell before her entry into her religious career. When she arrives at Don Jaimes mansion she finds the man to be a quite gracious recluse living quietly with only his housekeeper and caretaker to maintain. Don Jaime confesses to Viridiana that his wife died on their wedding night and that the young nun-to-be is so similar to his dead wife that he wants her to stay with him for good. Viridiana is shocked and decides to leave immediately but Don Jaime drugs the young woman and attempts to make love to her but suffering a bout of guilt, decides against it. The next day Viridiana believes she has been violated during the night and decides to leave, but before she can the police inform her that Don Jaime has committed suicide and has left the future of his estate to be decided between her and brusque cousin Jorge (Francisco Rabal). As Viridiana acts the gracious owner by caring for the surrounding community of homeless by inviting them into the estate to care and feed for them she realizes that the real world has an endless array of challenges and compromises.

Zerkalo (The Mirror) (1974)
Directed By: Andrei Tarkovsky Synopsis: The director mixes flashbacks, historical footage and original poetry to illustrate the reminiscences of a dying man about his childhood during World... The director mixes flashbacks, historical footage and original poetry to illustrate the reminiscences of a dying man about his childhood during World War II, adolescence, and a painful divorce in his family. The story interweaves reflections about Russian history and society. The director mixes flashbacks, historical footage and original poetry to illustrate the reminiscences of a dying man about his childhood during World War II, adolescence, and a painful divorce in his family. The story interweaves reflections about Russian history and society. This film does not have a storyline, but proceeds in a non-narrative, stream-of-consciousness form. To add to the confusion, several of the characters are played by the same actors. Margarita Terekhova plays the roles of Maria (the mother, also called "Masha" or "Marousia" in some of the pre-war scenes), and of Natalya (the wife of the protagonist as a young woman). Ignat Daniltsev is the protagonist at age 12 (Alyosha/Aleksei), as well as Aleksei's own son at age12 (Ignat). A précis to the film will certainly help the viewer through this labyrinth. The film takes place in three distinct time periods: Pre-war (1930s), War-time, and Post-war (1960s), and can be divided into fourteen sections, each of which takes place during one or more of these periods. In the following breakdown of sections, I will indicate the time period for the section and a brief description of the section's content. 1) Post-war. The film opens with Ignat turning on the television set. The program shown is that of a therapist treating an adolescent afflicted with stuttering. The credits follow. The Music: J. S. Bach, Das Orgelbüchlein No. 16, "Das alte Jahr vergangen ist" (The old year now hath pass'd away). 2) Pre-war. Edge of a field, Maria and a doctor who is passing by (Anatoly Solonitsyn) meet and converse. Voiceover of the narrator (Innokenti Smoktunovsky), who is obviously the protagonist Aleksei (he talks in the first person, plural, "we"). Arseni Tarkovsky's poem, read by the poet. Maria with the children, Alyosha and Marina, inside the dacha. Maria and children go outside to see the barn on fire. 3) Pre-war. Interior night shots. Maria is washing her hair with her husband's (Oleg Yankovsky) help. Maria young/Maria old [Maria Ivanovna Vishniakova (Tarkovskaya)] looking in the mirror (time ambiguous). 4) Post-war. Phone conversation between Aleksei and his mother, Maria.
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5) Pre-war. The printing shop incident. (Maria thinks she has made a misprint, "Shralin"-- slang for "excrement" -for "Stalin"). Lisa (Alla Demidova), Maria's friend, tells her she reminds her of Maria Timofeyevna (Captain Lebyadkin's sister in Dostoevsky's The Devils), which leads to recriminations on Lisa's part. 6) War-time. Natalya and husband quarrel. Ignat watches the Spanish tenants. Archive footage of the Spanish Civil War. Children being evacuated. A stratospheric balloon journey undertaken by a Kurdish aviator in 1937. Music: Pergolesi, Stabat Mater, No 12: "Quando corpus morietur fac ut animae donetur paradisi glori." (While my body here decays, may my soul Thy goodness praise, safe in Paradise with Thee). Ticker tape parade. 7) Post-war. Ignat leafs through Leonardo da Vinci book. Natalya drops her purse. Ignat reads Pushkin's letter to Chaadayev (October 19, 1836) to two unknown women, one of whom appears to be modeled after the poet Anna Akhmatova (1898-1966). Ignat answers the door. Ignat and his father talk on the phone. 8)War-time. Aleksei looks at the redhead girl (Olga Kizilova). Music: Purcell, from The Indian Queen, Act IV, "They tell us that your mighty powers." Instruction at the firing range where a rebellious Asafyev, a war orphan, keeps getting it wrong. War footage of soldiers unloading cargo. Coming from the firing range, Asafyev walks up a snowy hill. War footage of the crossing of Lake Sivash in Crimea. Poem by Arseni Tarkovsky, read by the poet. War footage of Russian tanks at the liberation of Prague, dead soldiers, artillery batteries, Bikini atomic test (1946). Asafyev stops at the top of the hill and a bird lands on his head, after which he takes it in his hand. Chinese crowd scene, the Soviet-Chinese conflict at Damansky Island, in 1969. 9) War-time. Maria with husband leaving for the war. Children playing outside and quarreling. The father with the children. Music: J.S.Bach: Matthew Passion, Recitative: "Und siehe da! Der Vorhang im Tempel..." (And see there! The veil of the temple...). Cut to a picture of a Maria look-alike, "Genevra de Benci" (c. 1470), by Leonardo da Vinci. 10) Post-war. Natalya and husband again quarrelling. 11) Pre-war. The dacha, Maria, the children on a mat, with Aleksei voice-over. Garden scene with the children. 12) Wartime/Postwar. Maria and Alyosha visit her neighbor, Nadezhda (Larisa Tarkovskaya), to sell her a pair of earrings. Levitation scene. Maria as an old woman with the children (dream). Poem by Arseni Tarkovsky, read by the poet. 13) Post-war. Aleksei (narrator) on his death bed (although we never see his head), attended by a doctor and the two women from the reading of Pushkin's letter scene (Section 7). Aleksei reaches for and holds a bird in his hand. 14) Pre-war. Maria and husband. Music fades in, opening number of J.S.Bach's St John Passion: Herr, unser Herrscher, dessen Ruhm in allen Landen herrlich ist! (Lord, our Sovereign, whose glory in every land is magnificent!). Maria old, with young Alyosha and his sister, and Maria young, briefly in the background (dream).

The Secret in Their Eyes (El Secreto de Sus Ojos) (2009)
Directed By: Juan José Campanella Synopsis: A man wants to solve a murder committed 25 years ago. A man wants to solve a murder committed 25 years ago. In 1999, retired Argentinian federal justice agent Benjamín Espósito is writing a novel, using an old closed case as the source material. That case is the brutal rape and murder of Liliana Coloto. In addition to seeing the extreme grief of the victim's husband Ricardo Morales, Benjamín, his assistant Pablo Sandoval, and newly hired department chief Irene Menéndez-Hastings were personally affected by the case as Benjamín and Pablo tracked the killer, hence the reason why the unsatisfactory ending to the case has always bothered him. Despite the department already having two other suspects, Benjamín and Pablo ultimately were certain that a man named Isidoro Gómez is the real killer. Although he is aware that historical accuracy is not paramount for the novel, the process of revisiting the case is more an issue of closure for him. He tries to speak to the key players in the case, most specifically Irene... The story, set in 1999, is told in flashback form: in June 1974 a federal justice agent, Benjamín Espósito, becomes spellbound by and subsequently entangled in the investigation of the crime of a young woman, brutally raped and murdered inside her house in a Buenos Aires neighbourhood. Her widowed husband, bank employee Ricardo Morales, is shocked by the news; Espósito vows to find the killer and bring him to justice. In his ordeal he is aided by his alcoholic assistent Pablo Sandoval and a newcomer, the upper class lawyer Irene Menéndez-Hastings, who takes over as department chief. Espósito's rivaling partner Romano pins the murder on two immigrant workers so
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as to get rid of the matter - an issue that enrages Espósito, who attacks Romano in a fury. He finds a tip soon enough while looking over some old pictures provided by Morales: he comes across a dubious young man - identified as Isidoro Gómez - who looks at the victim in a suspicious way in several photos. Espósito investigates the whereabouts of Gómez, and determines that he is living and working in Buenos Aires, but fails to locate him. Espósito and Sandoval break into Gómez' household in the city of Chivilcoy, hometown not only of Gómez, but also of Morales ill-fated wife. During the illegal search, they (unwillingly) steal a set of letters written by the suspect to his mother. Back in Buenos Aires, the deed earns them trouble back at the courthouse, and neither make nothing out the letters. In addition, Gómez remains at large due to a careless phonecall made earlier by Morales, who desperately wanted to apprehend the killer of his wife. In the end, it is Sandoval who comes across a new lead: a fellow drinker in the bar identifies the various names mentioned in the letters (neither with apparent connection) as them being those of various soccer players of Racing Club. After identifying him as a Racing Club fan, Espósito and Sandoval attend a soccer match where Racing Club plays against Huracán in hopes of catching Gómez. With the assistance of police officer Molinari and his men, they spot him among the crowd, but a sudden goal provides the necessary disturbance for Gómez to slip away. A surreal pursuit ensues in which Gómez nearly vanishes, but he's ultimately knocked down in the middle of the pitch. Espósito and Irene Hastings subsequently stage a fake, largely illegal interrogation at office. They succeed in bringing him to confess the murder by taunting him and hurting his macho pride. Justice seems served; however, barely a year later, Gómez is released by a spiteful Romano, who is now working for a government's agency. Amid an increasing political violence, Gómez is set to work as a hitman for the far-right wing of the Peronist party. Espósito finds Sandoval shot dead upon arriving home - Sandoval used to pass the night at the house of his coworker, due to endless arguments with his wife about his drink problems. He presumes, and imagines, that Sandoval was killed by hitmen sent after himself, perhaps under Romano's orders, and that Sandoval posed as Espósito and sacrificed his life for his friend. A budding romance between Benjamín and Irene -the latter then recently married- is cut short by Sandoval's death and Espósito's ultimate decision to exile himself deep within the countryside, with the help of some of Irene's relatives. Here the movie returns to 1999. After coming back from exile in 1985, Espósito returned to an uneventful career in Buenos Aires until his retirement. Haunted by the past, he's determined to write down his story in novel form. He presents the framework to Irene, still married and with children. She remains resentful and hardened from their sudden departure 24 years earlier, and for apparently never having had her feelings returned by him. Espósito drives to Chivilcoy to meet Morales, the widower, who has taken to a quiet life and gradually let go of his obsession with the murder case. Espósito promises him that he will not rest until he can put the convict once again in jail. A hesitant Morales then confesses to having killed Gómez many years ago, having kidnapped him and shot him in the trunk of his car. A disturbed Espósito leaves, but upon thinking over certain facts, secretly returns to Morales' house. Sneaking inside, he is shocked to find that Morales has a makeshift cell in his home and that he has kept Gómez chained inside for over 24 years as punishment for his wife's death. He kept him alive by feeding him and tending to him, but not once in 24 years talking to him nor letting him out. Morales repeats what he had mantained in front of Espósito back to 1974: that, instead of a death sentence, he believes the boredom of a meaningless life in jail to be true justice. Espósito leaves. He pays a visit to Sandoval's grave. Knowing that Gómez will never be a free man again, he finally comes to terms with his life. He visits Irene one more time, where he finally responds to her feelings. Their love rekindled, they smilingly shut themselves in her office.

The Consequences of Love (Le Conseguenze dell'amore) (2004)
Directed By: Paolo Sorrentino Synopsis: Titta di Girolamo has spent eight years living alone, not working. His only vices are cigarettes and hanging around in bars, he seems as if he's... Titta di Girolamo has spent eight years living alone, not working. His only vices are cigarettes and hanging around in bars, he seems as if he's waiting for something, for a secret to be revealed. As it turns out, Titta is a mafia courier and his life is programmed by his work commitments and his drug addiction, both facets of his life meticulously managed. Then one day he meets a young girl, Sofia, and his habits will be completely altered, down to a tragic unpredictable epilogue. Titta di Girolamo apparently has a regular and tedious life with nothing strange a part from his own name (as he uses to say). He lives in a Hotel in Lugano (Switzerland) since almost ten years, spending his days waiting for something we don't know. His life is too rigid, too detached following a flat routine. Titta ignore everyone and probably he has no emotions at all. Basically there is no story. But one day he decided, breaking all his personal
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rules, to exchange some words with Sofia, the hotel's barmaid. Incredibly all the situation change, emotions, love, mafia, death come back violently into Titta's life.

El Ángel Exterminador (The Exterminating Angel) (1962)
Directed By: Luis Buñuel Synopsis: The guests at an upper-class dinner party find themselves unable to leave. The guests at an upper-class dinner party find themselves unable to leave. After a lavish dinner party, the guests find themselves mysteriously unable to leave the room... and over the next few days all the elaborate pretenses and facades that they've built up by virtue of their position in society collapse completely as they become reduced to living like animals..

Two Lovers (2008)
Directed By: James Gray Synopsis: A Brooklyn-set romantic drama about a bachelor (Phoenix) torn between the family friend his parents wish he would marry and his beautiful but volatile... A Brooklyn-set romantic drama about a bachelor (Phoenix) torn between the family friend his parents wish he would marry and his beautiful but volatile new neighbor. Leonard Kraditor is a burned-out case, living with his immigrant parents after his fiancée left him, helping out at their Brooklyn dry cleaners, taking photographs, at loose ends, suicidal. In quick succession, he meets two women: Sandra, the daughter of his parents' business associates, frank, direct, sensual, Jewish like Leonard; and, his neighbor Michelle, mercurial, rootless, fun, blond, unattainable. Michelle is in love with a married man and cries on Leonard's shoulder; Sandra wants to save him. Is Leonard willing to risk losing Sandra's fidelity for the moments Michelle's moods swing toward him? Can this end well? The film starts with Leonard (Phoenix) walking along a foot bridge over the Sheepshead Bay creek in Brooklyn with dry cleaning when he drops the clothing and jumps into the water in an attempted suicide. He changes his mind and surfaces to be helped by a random passersby. After walking home to his parents apartment and his mother seeing him dripping wet it becomes evident that Leonard has emotional problems and had tried to kill himself before. His parents tell him that a potential business partner and his family are invited for dinner. When they arrive Leonard finds out that he had been set up with the other family's daughter, Sandra (Shaw). He hits it off with Sandra and tells her how he had been engaged several years before but the relationship broke off because genetic counselling showed that he and his fiancee could not have had healthy children. A few days later, Leonard meets a new neighbor Michelle (Paltrow) in his apartment building hall. He is immediately attracted to her and spends time with her and goes out on the town with her and her friends. He finds out that she is dating a married partner in her law firm, Ronald (Koteas). Leonard later meets Ronald and Michelle for dinner at an upscale restaurant in the city. He goes home upset but then Sandra surprises him at home where they have sex. The next day he tells Michelle he no longer wants to see her and becomes further involved in a relationship with Sandra. After a while he is asked to photograph Sandra's brother's Bar Mitzvah. Afterward, Michelle calls him upset and says that she is sick. He takes Michelle to the hospital where she is treated for a miscarriage. She had not known she was pregnant. Then he takes her home and while talking to her, Ronald unexpectedly arrives. Leonard hides behind a door while Ronald apologizes to Michelle for not having come to the hospital and that he was going on a trip to London for two weeks. However, Michelle is cross with him and sends him away quickly. She then asks Leonard to console her and caress her hand until she falls asleep, which he does. Two weeks later Michelle calls Leonard and meets him on the roof. She tells him that she has broken off the relationship with Ronald and is going to San Francisco. Leonard tells her not to go because he loves her and they make love on the roof. He later agrees that he will go with her the next day. He buys two tickets online, purchases an engagement ring, and then packs for his trip. At noon on the next day Sandra's father talks to him offering him a partnership in the soon to be merged family businesses believing that he is going to marry Sandra. The next day, during his parents New Year's Eve party, Leonard ducks out to the courtyard to meet Michelle where she tells him that she isn't going to San Francisco because Ronald had left his wife and will marry her. Distraught,
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Leonard heads out to the beach apparently to kill himself. As he steps in the ocean, he drops a glove that Sandra had bought for him earlier. He picks up the glove, returns to the party, and seeing Sandra gives her the ring.

Flesh and the Devil (1926)
Director: Clarence Brown Leo and Ulrich are life long friends. Home, on leave from their military training, Leo sees the beautiful Felicitas at the railroad station. Awed by her beauty, they meet again at the ball and quietly leave together. In her room, her husband, about whom she has neglected to inform Leo, comes in and challenges Leo to a duel. The duel is done, the Count is killed, and Felicitas is a widow. Leo, however, is 'requested' to serve 5 years in Africa and he tells Ulrich to watch over Felicitas while he is gone. After 3 years, Ulrich is able to get a pardon for Leo, and all that Leo thinks about on the way home is Felicitas. When he arrives, he learns that Felicitas has married Ulrich. Felicitas likes that Ulrich is rich and she never told Ulrich the truth about Leo and her. Leo is crushed and does not visit them which saddens Ulrich as he does not know the reason why. Leo tries to stay away from her.. "When the Devil cannot reach us through the spirit, He creates a beautiful woman to reach us through the flesh." Hermann Sudermann When they were young children in Germany, Leo von Harden [John Gilbert] and Ulrich von Eltz [Lars Hanson] rowed out to the Isle of Friendship where, in the presence of Ulrich's younger sister Hertha [Barbara Kent], they cut their wrists and vowed to be blood brothers forever. And so they have remained through school and military service, the one always looking out for the other. Even Pastor Voss [George Fawcett] admits that, although he christened them separately, he's never since seen them apart. All that is about to change. Leo and Ulrich are on military furlough and have returned home together where they are greeted at the train station by Leo's mother [ Eugenie Besserer] and Hertha, who is now almost 16 years old. As they are about to gather up their bags and depart from the station, Leo sees a beautiful woman debark from the train and walk to a waiting carriage. When she drops her bouquet of flowers, Leo hurries over to pick it up. Their eyes meet, and it is love at first sight. They meet again that very evening at the ball at Stoltenhof, which marks the opening of the social season. One look at her seated across the ballroom, and Leo leaves Hertha, who saved her first dance for him, standing alone on the dance floor. One dance later, and the lovers retire to the garden terrace. A shared cigarette later, and they are liplocked. Throughout Leo's furlough, they are inseparable. The day before Leo is to return to the military base to serve out his last five months of duty, his world collapses. While languishing in his lover's arms, her husband comes home. The love of Leo's life is Countess Felicitas von Rhaden [Greta Garbo], and Count Rhaden [ Marc McDermott] is not amused. Rhaden challenges Leo to a duel, first warning him that no scandal can come to the Rhaden name, so they stage the duel under the pretext of a dispute during a card game. Ulrich attempts to talk Leo out of the duel, but Leo is adamant. He and Rhaden begin their pacing, two shots are fired, and Rhaden is killed. Following Rhaden's death, the military court "advises" Leo to sign up for a five-year stint in Africa, which means being separated from Felicitas. Felicitas promises to wait but is worried about being alone for so long. Who better to console the grieving widow and see to her needs in Leo's absence than Leo's blood brother Ulrich. A last kiss stolen in a park where Leo thinks no one will see him and Felicitas together, and Leo is off for Africa. Unfortunately, someone does see them -Pastor Voss. Three years pass. Leo gets a letter from Ulrich saying that he has been pardoned through the intervention of His Majesty and that Leo is free to return home. All the long way back from Africa to Germany, Leo can think only of seeing his beloved Felicitas again. He is met at the train station by Ulrich, Felicitas, and another surprise. Felicitas has become Ulrich's wife. Leo is devastated. Not even the happy reunion with his mother and with little Hertha, who is now 18 years old and living with Leo's mother since Ulrich's marriage, can take Felicitas off his mind. Although he refuses to promise Pastor Voss to never again see Felicitas, Leo stays away from her and avoids Ulrich, too, much to Ulrich's dismay. Eventually, after Felicitas and Leo have a heart-to-heart on the Isle of Friendship and Felicitas tells him how he is breaking Ulrich's heart, Leo resumes his friendship with Ulrich. Of course, this includes being around Felicitas, and Pastor Voss finds the three of them paling around together to be sinful. After Voss delivers a firey sermon, to the entire church but obviously directed at Leo and Felicitas, about David's seduction of Uriah's wife , Leo begins to avoid Ulrich and Felicitas again. One day, with Ulrich off in Munich, Felicitas pays Leo a visit at his home. She begs to talk with him, but he refuses to do so where his mother or Hertha might overhear, so they begin walking into town. It is winter, and the snow is freezing Felicitas' feet, which are clad only in high heels. Felicitas forces him to stop at a gardening cottage where a
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fire is blazing so that she can dry out her shoes. There is no one else in the cottage and, before long, they're in each others' arms, professing their love. Felicitas convinces Leo that the only thing left for them to do is to run away together, so they make plans to leave that very evening. Felicitas goes home to pack, but she is surprised when Ulrich comes home early from Munich. Not only that, but he brings her a present -- an elaborate diamond bracelet. She puts the bracelet on, takes the bracelet off, puts it on again, takes it off again, and finally puts it back on. She orders the maid to return her clothes to her closet and, when Leo arrives to pick her up, Felicitas tells him that she's not brave enough to leave everything that Ulrich has given her and that she's not going to run away with him after all. She intends to stay with Ulrich but wants to continue having Leo as her lover. Leo is both mortified and furious. In his anger, he grabs her by the throat and begins choking her. Suddenly, Ulrich enters the room. His eyes blazing, Ulrich asks what Leo is doing there. Felicitas throws herself at Ulrich's feet and tells him that Leo broke in and, when she refused to go away with him, tried to kill her. Leo upholds her story and tells Ulrich to shoot him where he stands. Although looking as though he'd love to do just that, Ulrich refuses and defers the duel until the next morning when they can meet on the Isle of Friendship. It being the dead of winter, it is not difficult the next morning for Leo and Ulrich to cross the frozen lake to the Isle. Warm and snug in her bed, Felicitas sit stone-faced as Hertha begs and pleads with her to stop the duel. When Hertha realizes that Felicitas has no intention of doing so, she falls on her knees and begins to pray for divine intervention. Felicitas goes ballistic, but Hertha keeps praying. Suddenly, Felicitas' face softens, she embraces Hertha, then throws on her coat and heads for the isle. On the Isle of Friendship, Leo and Ulrich have selected their guns. Pacing through the knee-deep snow, they turn on each other. Ulrich aims, but Leo refuses even to lift his gun arm until Ulrich reminds him that he intends to shoot to kill. Leo then raises his gun but points it haphazardly. Ulrich continues to aim but cannot shoot. Ulrich drops his gun and embraces his blood brother, telling him that all has become clear to him...the duel with Rhaden...Felicitas...and Leo. . Meanwhile, in parallel editing,unknown to either Leo or Ulrich, Felicitas has been hurrying across the ice to the isle when, suddenly, she steps in a patch of thin ice and falls into the frigid water; after their aborted duel their is a cut back to where she fell in and a few bubbles come up, and then nothing is left but her scarf floating on the surface. Alternate Ending: It is summer. Leo and Ulrich have remained friends since Felicitas' death and are in the garden helping Leo's mother wind yarn when Hertha prances by with her suitcases and boards a carriage. She announces that she is moving to Munich and never coming back. As the carriage starts down the road, Leo races after it, pulls Hertha from her seat, and begs her to stay. Hertha smiles demurely. [Original synopsis by bj_kuehl]

Eugénie (1974)
Director: Jesus Franco Eugenie, a beautiful but shy young girl, lives with her stepfather, a famous writer specializing in stories of erotica. One day she happens to read one of his "erotic" books and its power so affects her that begins to find herself sexually attracted to her stepfather. He notices this, and eventually brings her into his dark world of sexual perversion and murder. The Marquis de Sade's writings melt the screen in director Jesus Franco's unsettling tale about perversion and amorality, which finds shy Eugénie Radeck (Soledad Miranda) drawn into a realm of sex and sadism after reading a volume of erotica penned by her stepfather (Paul Muller). Before you can say "kinky," the two embark on a spree of seduction and destruction across Europe. Andrés Monales and Greta Schmidt also star.

Venus in Furs [1969]
Director: Jesus Franco In Istanbul, a jazz trumpeter pulls the murdered body of a young woman from the surf. He remembers her from the night before, when he saw her at a millionaire playboy's party and then later watched as she was assaulted by the party's host and two of his friends. In confusion, Jimmy, the musician, leaves for Rio where he finds the sympathetic ear of Rita, a singer who invites him to live with her and helps him recover his equilibrium and his musical ability. Then, into the room walks a woman who looks like Wanda, the murder victim. Jimmy pursues her, not caring if she's alive or dead. What's going on? The film (also known as Paroxismus and Black Angel) bears only a superficial resemblance to the 1870 Venus in Furs novel by Leopold von Sacher Masoch. The title and character names in Franco's original script were changed
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to the novel's for commercial reasons. Franco's movie is a surreal horror-fantasy about unattainable love and how far one is willing to go for the person they desire. It is not a study in masochism as portrayed in the novel. James Darren ... Jimmy Logan Barbara McNair ... Rita Maria Rohm ... Wanda Reed Klaus Kinski ... Ahmed Kortobawi Dennis Price ... Percival Kapp Margaret Lee ... Olga Adolfo Lastretti ... Insp. Kaplan (as Aldo Lastretti) James Darren plays a jazz musician who becomes obsessed to the point of madness with the mysterious fur-clad Wanda (Maria Rohm), only to find her dead body washed up on the beach.

Made at a time when exploitation films could occasionally cross over to the art film market or dabble in visual or narrative experimentation that would be unthinkable now, Venus in Furs (1969, aka Paroxismus) is that rarity, a hypnotic, dreamlike tale that merges elements of a softcore grindhouse feature with avant-garde techniques and a touch of the surreal. At the center of the elliptical storyline is Jimmy Logan (James Darren), a trumpet player in an Istanbul jazz venue who witnesses the sadistic rape-murder of Wanda (Maria Rohm) by a decadent trio of thrill seekers - Ahmed (Klaus Kinski), Percival (Dennis Price) and Olga (Margaret Lee). Haunted by his memory of the incident, the musician flees to Rio where he begins a relationship with Rita (Barbara McNair), a nightclub singer, but soon his attention shifts to a mysterious woman who is a dead ringer for the murdered Wanda. Is she the same person? Has she returned from the dead for revenge? Jimmy becomes increasingly obsessed with Wanda but she appears to have a secret agenda that emerges slowly during the course of the unearthly narrative. Originally inspired by a conversation director Jess Franco had with jazz musician Chet Baker, Venus in Furs (which bears little relation to the famous Leopold von Sacher-Masoch novel except for the title) was first designed as "an unusual love story between a black trumpeter and a beautiful white girl." Franco, who was a musician and jazz aficionado himself, intended to model the male protagonist on Miles Davis but the American producers that the director was dependent on for a wider distribution nixed the idea, telling him "The American public are not ready to see a black man and a white woman in bed." They were fine, however, with the reverse situation and so Franco reworked the story, eventually casting James Darren in the lead. Darren was looking to broaden his range after a stint as a pop singer and teen pinup in such beach pictures as For Those Who Think Young [1964], all three Gidget films [1959-1963] and the sci-fi TV series The Time Tunnel [1966-1967]. Yet, Venus in Furs would remain an intriguing anomaly in his career as he would concentrate solely on television series such as T.J. Hooker after this. Much more interesting is Venus in Furs's real attraction, Maria Rohm, and the eclectic supporting cast that includes Barbara McNair, Klaus Kinski, Dennis Price, Margaret Lee, Paul Muller (a regular fixture in Franco films) and British musician Manfred Mann and his band (including Mike Hugg) which provides the lively jazz-influenced score, some of it performed on screen by the band, where it becomes part of the film's trippy sound design. Rohm had appeared in several of Franco's films before but mostly in decorative parts that highlighted her exotic beauty. Venus in Furs provides her with her first challenging role, one that requires her to be both seductive and menacing in equal parts and she rises to the task, creating an enigmatic femme fatale who haunts the dreams of not just Jimmy but probably those of every male and possibly female viewer. Her first appearance in the film as the reincarnated Wanda, dressed in a white fur coat and high heels with nothing on beneath it except her silver stockings, is hard to forget. Lesbianism, S&M, voyeurism, groovy fashions, literary references and decadent jet set parties that seem like a hangover from Fellini's La Dolce Vita [1960] - Venus in Furs has something for everyone. The colorful locales of Istanbul, Barcelona and Rio provide additional eye candy and the film occasionally breaks from its drug-induced state to stage a bizarre happening like the scene where Wanda and Olga are making out in the middle of a soiree, surrounded by hipsters who start painting their bodies and showering them with feathers. Don't you miss the sixties? Despite some budgetary restraints, a constant problem with Franco, the director had relative freedom to do what he wanted on Venus in Furs and was relatively pleased with the result, even if the distributors changed his original title from Black Angel and altered his preferred ending. And of the countless films that Franco has made - more than 150 features under various pseudonyms such as Clifford Brown, David Khunne and Joan Almirall - Venus in Furs is considered by most of his fans and even some critics as one of his most accomplished features. It's not flawless, of
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course, and some will take issue with the often ludicrous, deadpan voice-over narration by Darren, an overuse of some once stylistic devices of the late 60s/early 70s such as the zoom lens, and the often uneven mixture of stock footage with new material. At the same time, these qualities which were often necessitated by the meager budget, help lend the movie an almost experimental, freeform tone. In assessing the film in The Video Watchdog Book, Franco devotee Tim Lucas wrote, "The beauty of this film - a kind of inverted telling of The Bride Wore Black [1968], influenced by Antonioni's Blow-Up [1966]- is that it makes little narrative sense, while making perfect emotional sense. What better purpose can film serve? The fetishistic images come to a boil with a hot, obsessive jazz score....as Darren narrates the hallucinations with lines like "Man, it was a wild scene, but if they wanted to go that route, it was their bag!" These Sixties-isms only make the experience more appealingly distorted, a haunting, virtually unique fantasy." Producer: Harry Alan Towers Director: Jesus Franco Screenplay: Milo G. Cuccia, Carlo Fadda, Jesus Franco, Bruno Leder, Malvin Wald Cinematography: Angelo Lotti Special Effects: Howard A. Anderson Music: Mike Hugg, Manfred Mann, Stu Phillips (uncredited) Film Editing: Henry Batista, Michael Pozen, Nicholas Wentworth Cast: James Darren (Jimmy Logan), Barbara McNair (Rita), Maria Rohm (Wanda Reed), Klaus Kinski (Ahmed Kortobawi), Dennis Price (Percival Kapp), Margaret Lee (Olga), Adolfo Lastretti (Inspector Kaplan), Paul Muller (Hermann). C-86m.

Taste of Cherry (Ta'm e Guilass) (1998)
Directed By: Abbas Kiarostami Synopsis: A sublime and deceptively simple parable about life's possibilities, Abbas Kiarostami's Palme d'Or winning Taste Of Cherry follows Mr. Badii, a weary... A sublime and deceptively simple parable about life's possibilities, Abbas Kiarostami's Palme d'Or winning Taste Of Cherry follows Mr. Badii, a weary and increasingly desperate middle-aged man who has decided to end his life. Driving through the hilly outskirts of Tehran, in search of someone who will bury him if he succeeds or rescue him if he fails, he meets an assortment of different characters: Afghans, Kurds, Turks, prisoners of the desert, a soldier, a seminary student, and a museum employee, each with their own reason to turn down the job: fear, religious scruples and the humanist's revulsion at a life willfully squandered. Taste Of Cherry is told with Kiarostami's incomparable sense of poetry and lyricism. Middle-aged Mr.Badii is planning to commit suicide and desperately seeks anyone to assist him - he has already dug out the grave in the mountains, but the assistant will have to bury him when he will do the deed. He asks Kurd soldier, Afghan seminarian, but everyone refuses by some reason. Finally he finds an old Turkish taxidermist, who has a sick son and previously attempted suicide himself, and he agrees to assist Badii.

Raise the Red Lantern (Da hong deng long gao gao gua) (1991)
Directed By: Yimou Zhang Synopsis: In 1920's China, an attractive new concubine to a wealthy master arouses tension amongst the other wives. In 1920's China, an attractive new concubine to a wealthy master arouses tension amongst the other wives. China in the 1920's. After her father's death, nineteen year old Songlian is forced to marry Chen Zuoqian, the lord of a powerful family. Fifty year old Chen has already three wives, each of them living in separate houses within the great castle. The competition between the wives is tough, as their master's attention carries power, status and privilege. Each night Chen must decide with which wife to spend the night and a red lantern is lit in front of the house of his choice. And each wife schemes and plots to make sure it's hers. However, things get out of hand..

The Celebration (Festen) (1998)
Directed By: Thomas Vinterberg Synopsis: At Helge's 60th birthday party, some unpleasant family truths are revealed. At Helge's 60th birthday party, some unpleasant family truths are revealed. The Father turns 60. His family, which is a big one of the kind, gathers to celebrate him on a castle. Everybody likes and respects the father deeply...or do they? The Youngest Son is trying to live up to The Father's expectations. He
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is running a grill-bar in a dirty part of Copenhagen. The oldest son runs a restaurant in France, while the sister is a anthropologist. The older sister has recently committed suicide and the father asks the oldest son to say a few words about her, because he is afraid he will break into tears if he does it himself. The oldest son agrees without arguments. Actually he has already written two speeches. A yellow and a green one. By the table, he asks the father to pick a speech. The father chooses green. The oldest son announces that this is the Speech of Truth. Everybody laughs, except for the father who gets a nervous look on his face. For he knows that the oldest son is about to reveal the secret of why the oldest sister killed herself.

Leave Her to Heaven(1946)
Directed By: John M. Stahl Synopsis: Leave Her to Heaven is one of the most unblinkingly perverse movies ever offered up as a prestige picture by a major studio in the golden age of... Leave Her to Heaven is one of the most unblinkingly perverse movies ever offered up as a prestige picture by a major studio in the golden age of Hollywood. Gene Tierney, whose lambent eyes, porcelain features, and sweep of healthy-American-girl hair customarily made her a 20th Century Fox icon of purity, scored an Oscar nomination playing a demonically obsessive daughter of privilege with her own monstrous notion of love. By the time she crosses eyebeams with popular novelist Cornel Wilde on a New Mexico-bound train, her jealous manipulations have driven her parents apart and her father to his grave. Well, no, not grave: Wilde soon gets to watch her gallop a glorious palomino across a red-rock horizon as she metronomically sows Dad's ashes to the winds. Mere screen moments later, she's jettisoned rising-politico fiancé Vincent Price and accepted a marriage proposal the besotted/bewildered Wilde hasn't quite made. Can the wrecking of his and several other lives be far behind? Not to mention a murder or two. Fox gave Ben Ames Williams's bestselling novel (probably just the sort of book Wilde's character writes) the ClassA treatment. Alfred Newman's tympani-heavy music score signals both grandeur and pervasive psychosis, while spectacular, dust-jacket-worthy locations and Oscar-destined Technicolor cinematography by Leon Shamroy ensure our fixed gaze. Impeccably directed by the veteran John M. Stahl (who'd made the original Back Street, Imitation of Life, and Magnificent Obsession a decade earlier), the result is at once cuckoo and hieratic, and weirdly mesmerizing. Bet Luis Buñuel loved it. --Richard T. Jameson Novelist Richard Harland and socialite Ellen Berent meet on a train to New Mexico. They are immediately attracted to each other, soon fall in love and decide to get married, about which everyone they know is happy except Ellen's fiancé back home, politician Russell Quinton. However, Richard and Ellen's love for each other is different than that of the other as Ellen demonstrates in the manner which she tells everyone of their impending marriage. Ellen's love for Richard is an obsessive, possessive one, much like the love she had for her now deceased father, who Richard physically resembles. Ellen wants Richard all to herself and resents anyone who even remotely takes a place in his life and heart, even if his love for that person is not a romantic one. These people include most specifically Richard's physically disabled teen-aged brother Danny Harland, Ellen's own adopted sister Ruth Berent.

Tokyo Story (Tôkyô monogatari) (1953)
Directed By: Yasujiro Ozu Synopsis: 'Tokyo Story' is a meditation on the generational gap and the trials of mortality. An elderly couple visits their children in a bustling Tokyo, where... 'Tokyo Story' is a meditation on the generational gap and the trials of mortality. An elderly couple visits their children in a bustling Tokyo, where they are seen almost as a nuisance and shuffled off to a resort. Modernization is the torrent that tears through Japanese society, and this film takes a hard look at what it has done to the family unit. An elderly couple are visiting their children in Tokyo. The children are all grown-ups and have their own responsibilities. Of the five children, only a daughter has stayed in their village with their parents. First, they visit their older son, a family doctor in a popular Tokyo neighbourhood. After being greeted by their rude grandchildren, they decide to sightsee the city, but they have to call it off, as the doctor is summoned to tend to a very sick person. Then, the couple visit their second child. She is a busy hairdresser, married and without children. The second child convinces everybody to pack her parents to a summer resort. They can't stand the noise and all the drunk people there, so they come back to their second child's home. When they have just made up their minds, she feels a little tired and dizzy. The hairdresser has been preparing a home party with some other fellow hairdressers, so she makes her parents feel unwelcome and a nuisance. The third son had died in the war, leaving a young childless widow. The elderly couple decides to split. The grandmother will go to her daughter-in-law's, and the grandfather will visit some old friends from his army years.
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The grandmother admits to her daughter-in-law that her son had not made her happy, and encourages her to remarry again. She isn't keen on the idea. The grandfather gets drunk with his two friends, as he used to be all the time when he was younger. His two friends are all disappointed in their children. The grandfather is so as well: he wanted his doctor son to be famous, rick and have good earnings but he is actually a doctor in a working-class district; and his daughter is stubborn and bad-humoured. The friends haven't got a place for the grandfather to stay, so he tries to go back home. A policeman finds him drunk late at night on the street and takes him to the hairdresser's home. The grandparents decide to go back to their village sooner than expected. Grandma tells their children that they have been good to them, so if anything bad happens to the grandparents, they don't need to visit to them in the village. Grandparents will make a final stop on their journey: their younger son lives in a city on their way. However, grandma feels really sick soon. Telegrams are sent, and their children have to visit her. The next day, grandma dies. The younger brother is the last one to arrive - when Grandma has already passed away - as he is a salesman and was out of home working. The hairdresser is bossy, although it is the daughter living in the village who is the one to take care of all the details. The doctor, the hairdresser and the younger son leave the village the same day, returning to their lives, jobs... Only the widowed sister-in-law stays for almost a week, helping the village daughter. The village daughter brands her siblings as "ungrateful, rude...". Finally, the sister-in-law needs to go back to her job as well. Grandpa stays in the village with her daughter, promising never to drink again.

Love and Other Drugs (2010)
Directed By: Edward Zwick Synopsis: A salesman competes in the cutthroat world of pharmaceuticals to hawk a male performance enhancement drug. Based on Jamie Reidy's memoir "Hard Sell:... A salesman competes in the cutthroat world of pharmaceuticals to hawk a male performance enhancement drug. Based on Jamie Reidy's memoir "Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman." It is the mid 1990s. Jamie (Jake Gyllenhall) is seen working in an electronics store. Hes talking females of all ages into buying phones and stereos while flirting with the store owner's girlfriend. Jamie and the owner's girlfriend sneak into the back to have sex and she accidentally calls her boyfriend on the intercom phone and he hears them everything. After getting punched in the face by his boss, Jamie runs out of the store (stopping to hit on a woman on the way out). Later that night, Jamie is at his parents house for dinner. His father and his sister are doctors and his brother, Josh, is rich from owning a medical software company. At dinner, Josh and his wife fight and he brings up Jamie getting fired and the family gets on him for dropping out of med school. Jamie blows them off and brings up that Josh is going to help him get set up as a pharmaceutical sales rep. With Josh's help, Jamie goes to work for Pfizer, practicing his sales pitch and trying to get doctors to prescribe Zoloft and Zithromax. He is rebuffed constantly by doctors much to the dismay of his partner Bruce (Oliver Platt) who sees Jamie as his ticket to the "big leagues" of Chicago near his wife and kids. Bruce tells Jamie if he can get Dr. Knight (Hank Azaria) to prescribe Zoloft instead of Prozac then all the other doctors will follow his lead. After trying to chat Dr. Knight up several times unsuccessfully, Jamie flirts with his receptionists and sneaks into the back to steal all of the Prozac samples and throw them in the dumpster. Jamie is still unable to raise his sales so he pays Dr. Knight $1,000 to let him shadow him. The doctor accepts and Jamie spends the day babbling about how Zoloft is better than Prozac. Dr. Knight goes in to see a patient and tells Jamie to say hes an intern. Knights patient is Maggie (Anne Hathaway) a young woman diagnosed with an early onset of Parkinson's Diease. Maggie tells Jamie that someone broke into her house and stole all her medication and she gives him a long list of refills that she needs. While there, Maggie asks Jamie to look at a weird lump on her breast, which turns out to be a spider bite in which Dr. Knight enters and the gig is up. Later in the parking lot, Maggie stops Jamie while he is throwing away Prozac and punches him in the face for
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pretending to be an intern and for looking at her breast. She takes his picture and leaves. Jamie comes home to find Josh who has split from his wife and wants to stay with him. Jamie calls Dr. Knight's receptionist (who he is sleeping with) and gets Maggies number. He calls Maggie and asks her out for coffee. At first she says no, but then she gives in and meets him. The date is basically him being charming and her being rude. After 10 minutes, they head back to her apartment and have very casual sex. Afterwards, she kicks him out right away and we see a montage of Jamie getting booty calls and him and Maggie having sex everywhere and whenever she calls him. Later at work, Jamie is throwing away the Prozac pills and he looks up to get punched in the face by Trey (Gabriel Macht), the rep for Prozac. Trey is the top seller in the region and gives the doctors and staff big kickbacks (trips to Florida and Hawaii) for pushing Prozac. He says he knows what Jamie is doing and that he will take him down if he doesn't stop. Trey and Jamie fight some more and he leaves Jamie on the ground after telling him to stay way from Maggie. Jamie then gets take out food and goes to see Maggie. After briefly discussing Trey (hes married but was seeing her on the side) and Maggie's Parkinsons (shes a waitress and has no health insurance) they start to have sex but Jamie is unable to get errect for the occasion. After a few kind words from Maggie, they just hang out and she teases him that he should use the new erection drug that his company has developed. The next day before Jamie leaves, Maggie begins having problems with tremors, which she hides from him as she pushes him out the door. Jamie approaches Bruce about the new drug and Bruce says he will look into it. At work, Jamie gets the green light to sell Viagra and suddenly he is extremely popular and the doctors pursue him. Back at his apartment, Maggie and Jamie talk and he tries to convince her to have a relationship with him. She says no and leaves. The next day, Maggie is helping senior citizens onto a bus to go to Canada to get cheap prescription drugs when Jamie shows up. They argue about their relationship some more and she leaves. Jamie waits in the parking lot for her to come back and the next day when the bus comes back Maggie is touched that he waited. Maggie tells him that she will have a relationship with him but that she gets to hate him and slam him to her girlfriends when he dumps her. Back at her apartment, Maggie talks about how she use to be a painter but since her diagnosis with Parkinsons, she has switched to photography/collages. Jamie talks about how he dropped out of med school because he has ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). One night after networking at the bar, Jamie comes home and starts to mess around with Maggie when he starts to hyper ventilate and tells her that he loves her and that she is the first person he has ever told that to. A few days later, Bruce and Jamie are talking about an upcoming conference in Chicago and Jamie says he doesn't want to leave Maggie to go because of her illness. Jamie comes home to find Maggie drunk. Earlier in the day, she realized that she ran out of meds and couldnt get to the pharmacy in time to get a refill due to the wait in the clinic. They have a fight and Jamie leaves. After he walks out, Maggie starts to cry and throws her glass. Jamie comes back and holds her and they make up. Jamie asks Maggie to go the conference with him. She accepts and while at the conference she gets invited to a Parkinson's convention across the street. She is moved by the people (mostly elderly) and their stories. She texts Jamie to come over and join her and while at the refreshment table he meets a middle-aged man whos wife is in the final stages of the disease. Jamie asks for advice and the man tells him to run, that he wouldn't do it again. This shakes Jamie and after the convention Maggie tells him how much she loves him and how happy she is that he is with her. In a montage, we see Jamie researching Parkinson's and pushing Dr. Knight for info on specialists to help her. He starts taking Maggie to specialist and seminars across the country, paying for her to have tests done and maxing out his credit cards on hotel rooms and airfares. At one office, Jamie gets angry with the receptionist because their appointment was rescheduled and they had flown in to see the doctor for only that one day. While he is yelling at the receptionist, Maggie walks out and Jamie runs after her. They fight and Maggie says that there is no cure for her Parkinson's and that she isn't having fun anymore. They break up against Jamie's wishes. Jamie is depressed but Dr. Knight talks him into going to a pajama party at another doctors house. Jamie and Josh show up and Josh hooks up with someone right away. Jamie takes Viagra and has a three-way with two female coworkers. Jamie wakes up later in pain and sees that he is having a bad reaction to the Viagra. As his brother drives him to the ER, Josh tells him that he doesn't envy Jamie's random empty sex life and that he misses his wife and
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he is going back to her. The next night, Jamie goes to meet Bruce for dinner and runs into Maggie who is on a date. After some awkward conversation, Bruce shows up and says that Jamie has been promoted to the Chicago office. Maggie congratulates him and hurries off. During dinner, Bruce tells Jamie that he didnt get promoted and that he just received a raise. Jamie goes home and starts to pack when he finds a video that he and Maggie had made of their talking in bed. He realizes that he wants to be with Maggie and goes to the dinner where she works. Her boss tells him that she has left for a med run to Canada and Jamie speeds off after her. Jamie flags the bus down on the highway and gets them to pull over at a rest stop. Maggie gets off and says that Jamie has three minutes to talk. He tells Maggie about how she makes him a better person, that he loves her and needs her. She starts to cry and says that she will need him more. He says thats okay and she says she can't ask that of him. He says "you didn't" and tells her that even if in some alternate reality there was a healthy version of both of them with no worries or problems that he would still choose their reality and problems. They hug and kiss and the movie cuts to yet another montage with a voice over from Jamie. It shows Maggie and Jamie living together and Jamie studying for med school. In the final shot, there is a image of a video of Jamie talking about living everyday to the fullest and how money isn't everything and you should follow your dreams.

Tre Fratelli (Three Brothers) (1980)
Directed By: Francesco Rosi Synopsis: Following his wife's death, a man summons their sons from across Italy to the family farm. Raffaele is a judge risking assassination for his current... Following his wife's death, a man summons their sons from across Italy to the family farm. Raffaele is a judge risking assassination for his current case; Rocco is an ideological counselor at a correctional institute for boys; Nicola is a factory worker facing labor disputes. Once home, each must deal with the skeletons in their closets and the dreams they never dared pursue. Directed by Francesco Rosi, this film is a mainstay of Italian cinema. In a farmhouse in southern Italy, an old woman dies. Her husband summons their sons: from Rome, Raffaele, a judge facing a political case for which he risks assassination; from Naples, the religious and ideological Rocco, a counselor at a correctional institute for boys; from Turin, Nicola, a factory worker involved in labor disputes. Once home, each encounters the past and engages in reveries of what may come: Raffaele imagines his death, Rocco dreams of lifting the youth of Naples out of violence, drugs, and corruption, Nicola pictures embracing his estranged wife. Meanwhile, the old man and his young granddaughter explore the rhythms of the farm and grieve together.

Les héroïnes du mal (Immoral Women) (1979)
Director: Walerian Borowczyk This is another Borowczyk compendium of erotica: the original title may translate to HEROINES OF EVIL, but the film might just as well be considered a sequel to his IMMORAL TALES (1974) – hence the similar moniker. The first episode – featuring frequent Borowczyk muse Marina Pierro – is the longest and, in a way, most substantial: it’s set in Renaissance Rome, with the lusty (and perpetually nude) leading lady sexually involved with famous painters and church benefactors. However, the girl is revealed to be harboring motives of her own, as she proceeds to poison and rob her wealthy admirers for the sake of her true love! Worth noting here – apart, obviously, from the luscious Pierro’s classical beauty – is the period décor, especially the labyrinth in which Raffaello’s quarters are concealed. The second episode is the most notorious and, consequently, gave the film its controversial poster – featuring a rabbit slowly disappearing under the skirt of a teenage girl (played by Gaelle Legrand). This segment is also a period piece, but it’s set in 19th century France – with the girl’s excessive fondness for her pet bunny (she likes to spread on the garden lawn stark naked and let the curious, furry little animal ‘explore’ her body!) falling foul of her condescending and slightly barmy family. She then visits the horny black butcher who supplies them with lamb chops (ostensibly to steal his carving knife) but he proceeds to ravage her, immediately regrets his selfish act and decides to hang himself – leaving the girl free to exact her bloody revenge on her oblivious sleeping parents. The latter event, then, subsequently becomes a bedtime story told by Legrand to her companions at the orphanage she
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ends up in! The third and final episode, which has a modern-day setting, is the shortest – but also, possibly, the most outrageous: Pascale Christophe is a young married woman who’s abducted on a busy Parisian street by a smalltime hood hidden inside a cardboard box! They move inconspicuously (i.e. the box moves!) through the crowd until they reach his van, from where he starts organizing her ransom. She goes to a phone booth to call her husband, all the while being in the criminal’s line of fire; the woman’s faithful Doberman senses that something is wrong and sets out in pursuit of her. Amazingly, the dog manages to locate the van by a river and savagely attacks the young man (who, at the time, was raping its mistress) as soon as he appears out of the vehicle…but the same thing happens when the husband finally arrives (both he and the criminal, screaming in pain, eventually tumble into the water). Apparently, the woman is unperturbed by all of this – and is merely overjoyed at her savior’s prowess! IMMORAL WOMEN, therefore, provides many of Borowczyk’s typical ingredients – filmed in his traditional dreamy soft-focus and set to the equally familiar strains of a harpsichord/synthesizer-based score: sexualized objects, suggestions of bestiality, a depraved religious environment (which includes depicting Michelangelo as a neurotic homosexual given to liberating bouts of mud-slinging!), snooty bourgeoisie, etc. As was the case with IMMORAL TALES, the cumulative experience of the film is somewhat underwhelming and, at nearly 2 hours, decidedly draggy; such slight and fanciful pieces are, perhaps, best sampled individually! Even if Borowczyk started his career by churning out surrealist animated shorts, it seems to me that he did his most potent work when his themes were fleshed out to feature-length form (a case in point being THE BEAST [1975], whose bizarre centre-piece was initially intended to form part of IMMORAL TALES itself – but was ultimately given added texture by being framed inside a modern, and quite fascinating, morality play!).

Wuthering Heights (Abismos de pasión) (1953)
Directed By: Luis Buñuel Synopsis: Emily Bronte's Yorkshire Moors become Luis Bunuel's Mexico, in the director's unconventional version of the haunting, popular novel. Heathcliff and... Emily Bronte's Yorkshire Moors become Luis Bunuel's Mexico, in the director's unconventional version of the haunting, popular novel. Heathcliff and Cathy are here transformed into Alejandro and Catarina (Katy), who engage in a passionate, doomed love affair with a power that transcends even death. Gone several years, the brooding Alejandro returns to the hacienda of his foster sister, Catalina, whom he loves, to find her married to the wealthy and effete Eduardo. Alejandro hates Eduardo and Catalina's brother Ricardo; he's rich now and has a lien on the drunken Ricardo's ranch. He also wants Catalina to run away with him. She loves him as if he was her soul, but she also loves Eduardo and is pregnant, so she won't leave. She wants Alejandro to stay nearby, a soul mate, but he, ruled by instinct and passion, stays only to hurt her. He woos Isabel, Eduardo's impressionable young sister. The passions of impossible love and corrosive hate play out against Mexico's barren high chaparral.

Léon (The Professional) (1994)
Directed By: Luc Besson Synopsis: Professional assassin Léon reluctantly takes care of 12-year-old Mathilda, a neighbor whose parents are killed, and teaches her his trade. Professional assassin Léon reluctantly takes care of 12-year-old Mathilda, a neighbor whose parents are killed, and teaches her his trade. Mathilda, a twelve-year old New York girl, is living an undesirable life among her half-family. Her father stores drugs for two-faced cop Norman Stansfield. Only her little brother keeps Mathilda from breaking apart. One day, Stansfield and his team take cruel revenge on her father for stretching the drugs a little, thus killing the whole family. Only Mathilda, who was out shopping, survives by finding shelter in Léon's apartment in the moment of highest need. Soon, she finds out about the strange neighbour's unusual profession - killing - and desperately seeks his help in taking revenge for her little brother. Léon, who is completely unexperienced in fatherly tasks, and in friendships, does his best to keep Mathilda out of trouble - unsuccessfully. Now, the conflict between a killer, who slowly discovers his abilities to live, to feel, to love and a corrupt police officer, who does anything in his might to get rid of an eye witness..

Penelope (2006)
Directed By: Mark Palansky
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Synopsis: A modern romantic tale about a young aristocratic heiress born under a curse that can only be broken when she finds true love with "one who will love... A modern romantic tale about a young aristocratic heiress born under a curse that can only be broken when she finds true love with "one who will love her faithfully." In this modern day romantic tale, Penelope is about a young girl's inspiring journey, a mysterious family secret and the power of love. With all odds against her, in order for Penelope to break the family curse, she must find true love with "one of her own kind" and realize the most important life lesson, "I like myself the way I am." Penelope Wilhern, born to wealthy socialites, is afflicted by the Wilhern spell that can only be broken when she finds love. Hidden away in her family's estate, the lonely girl meets a string of suitors in her parent's futile attempt to break the curse. Each eligible bachelor is enamored with Penelope and her sizable dowry; until her curse is revealed. Lemon, a mischievous and eager tabloid reporter wants a photograph of the mysterious Penelope and hires Max to pose as a prospective suitor to get the shot. The handsome down-on-his luck gambler finds himself falling for Penelope. Many generations ago, the Wilherns were a prestigious, wealthy, and respected family. However, things went downhill after young Ralph Wilhern had a romance with (and impregnated) a servant girl named Clara. Though he wished to marry Clara, Ralph was talked out of the idea by his family and married a young woman of his own social class. A devestated Clara commits suicide. Unfortunately for the Wilherns, Clara's mother happens to be a witch. To avenge her daughter, the old woman curses the wealthy Wilherns, promising that the next girl born into the family will have the face of a pig, until she is accepted and loved by "one of her own kind." For generations, only sons were born to Wilherns, and the curse was nearly forgotten. But finally, Jessica and Franklin Wilhern produced a baby girl, Penelope, born with the nose and ears of a pig. Penelope's parents attempt to have the nose surgically removed, but the placement of a certain artery makes it impossible. They resort to hiding ther daughter in their lavish mansion, with Jessica banning anything pig-related (such as bacon) from the household. Due to the media circus revolving about the rumors of the "pig-faced girl," Franklin and Jessica fake Penelope's death and dedicate their time to finding her a welathy husband, which they believe will break the curse. Though Penelope is isolated, she is well-educated and develops a love for horticulture. When she is 18, Jessica hires a matchmaker, Wanda, to assist with the husband-hunt. A room is set up with a one-way mirror, allowing Penelope to talk with potential matches while hidden in her room. When she reveals her face to them, however, they run from the house screaming. They are caught (by the Wilhern's butler, Jake), and legally forced to keep Penelope's condition secret. Seven years later, after one such meeting, the young man in question (the snobbish Edward Vanderman III) outruns Jake and attempts to report "monsterous" Penelope to the police. Edward is laughed at and imprisoned for the night. The next morning, his story is printed in the newspaper, citing his outburst as a "mental breakdown." Desperate to clear his name, Edward complains to the author of the article. About to be dismissed a second time, Edward has a chance meeting with Mr. Lemon, a reporter determined to get a photograph of Penelope. Lemon had nearly gotten the picture in Penelope's infancy, but was attacked by Jessica, resulting in the loss of his eye. He and Edward team up to reveal her existance to the community. Lemon decides to find a "down-and-out blueblood" who would be willing to meet with Penelope while rigged with a hidden camera. He finds a name of a nearly broke man from a wealthy family: Max Campion. Lemon visits a gambling hall that Campion frequents, and is directed to his poker table. Lemon bribes the young man he believes to be Campion with $5,000 to participate in the scheme. The following day, "Max" meets up with Edward and Lemon and is affixed with a jacket containing a camera. Max enters the Wilhern house and files into the observation room with other young, wealthy candidates. As Max's camera malfunctions, he drops behind a sofa to fix it. At that moment, Penelope enters the room and the other young men flee. A disheartened Penelope retreats to the kitchen, where she argues with her controlling mother about the futility of finding a husband. Jessica and Wanda spy Max through the security camera, sitting alone in the observation room (having been the only one to not see Penelope). They quickly send Penelope to speak with him through the one-way mirror. Max and Penelope bond in their conversation, despite Max's obvious crooked ways. Max promises to return the next day. He assures Lemon he will be back to secure the photograph, which he had failed to obtain. The following day, Penelope suspects that Max plays a musical intstrument, and he playfully asks her to guess which one while he demonstrates his (lacking) skills at guitar, drums, bass, and saxaphone. Penelope concludes that Max pays piano, and finally reveals her face to him while helping him play a chord. Max is taken aback, but does not run. He snaps a picture, and is immediately ashamed as Penelope runs from the room. Max returns to Edward and Lemon, destorying the camera and photograph, as Jessica spys them and recognizes Lemon from years before. After an
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altercation back in the house, a tearful Penelope begs Max to marry her and break the curse. Max sadly refuses, and is banished from the house. That night, Penelope steals her mother's credit card, covers her pig snout with a scarf, and escapes into the city for the first time. She calls her parents from a payphone, assuring them that she is safe, and books a room at a hotel. Franklin and Jessica face dilemmas about finding their daughter; they cannot describe her to authorities without mentioning the pig features, which will expose her. After having a beer at a bar, Penelope befriends a delivery girl named Annie who helps her explore the city. After nearly being discovered by her parents, Penelope decides to sell her own photograph to Lemon to avoid using Jessica's credit card. Though Penelope still hides her identity, her picture starts a media frenzy. Her parents spot her once again, and after a chase through the city, an exhausted Penelope faints. Annie removes the scarf to reveal the famous pig snout. To Penelope's surprise, she is welcomed and treated kindly by the community, and has no further need to conceal her face. Edward, however, still sees Penelope as a hideous monster, and angers his prestigious father by expressing his disgust to the press. To redeem his image, Edward proposes to Penelope, who is hesitant because of lingering feelings for Max. At a theater one night, a still smitten Max confronts Edward about hurting Penelope, but remains hindered by his own guilt for leaving her. At the newspaper office, Lemon overhears that Max Campion was recently arrested for robbery. Shocked, Lemon visits the police station where he discovers the real Max: a middle-aged, portly man who also played poker at the gambling hall. Lemon asks about the young man who claimed to be Max, and Campion identifies him as Johnny Martin. Lemon realizes his mistake: he had approached the wrong man at the poker table, but the phony Max had played along for the money.After visiting Johnny at his blue-coller job, he discovers why Johnny could not break Penelope's curse: he is merlely a plumber's son, not a blue-blooded aristocrat. Penelope must marry "one of her own kind." The day of Penelope and Edward's wedding arrives. Edward is still disgusted by his fiancee, but is assured by his mother that the curse will be broken once the wedding is over. Penelope does not love Edward, and stoically allows herself to be preened for the ceremony. At the alter, Penelope backs out of the marriage and retreats to her room, with Jessica in hot pursuit. Jessica pleads with Penelope to reconsider and rid herself of the curse, but Penelope replies "I like myself the way I am." At that moment, a flash of light and a swirl of memories occurs, and a stunned Penelope finds her pig nose has been replaced by a human one. By being accepted by one of her own kind (herself), she had broken the curse. Without the iconic snout, Penelope falls out of the media circle and is free to live a low-profile life. She leaves home and becomes an elementary school horticulture teacher. Jake, the Wilhern butler, also leaves the household, revealing himself to be the witch who had cursed the family generations ago (he also "mutes" Jessica, sparing the family from her constant demands). On Halloween, Penelope is surprised to find that she, in her pig-faced form, is the most popular costume among her students. Remembering who had accepted her from the beginning, she decides to reconcile with Johnny. Dressed as herself (by wearing a fake pig snout), Penelope goes with Annie to a Halloween party at the theater where Johnny works and rents an apartment. Penelope nervously knocks on his door, under the guise of "having to pee." She notices he is packing a suitcase, and he tells her he is leaving town. Still not recognizing her, he sadly tells her that her mask reminds him of someone he used to know. Penelope sees a piano in the corner and reveals her indentity, remembering that she had guessed his instrument correctly before. Johnny kisses her and apologizes for being unable to break the curse. With a smile, Penelope removes her mask, showing that she had the power all along. Penelope tells her story to her horticulture class (accompanied by Johnny, now in a relationship with her), and asks their opinion of the curse. One young student replies insightfully "It's not the power of the curse, it's the power you give the curse." After sending the class off to collect plant samples in the park, Johnny pushes Penelope on a nearby swing. Lemon sits in a rowboat in the nearby lake, ready to sneak a picture of the new Penelope. Seeing her happiness, he thinks better of it and rows away.

Moulin Rouge! (2001)
Directed By: Baz Luhrmann Synopsis: Christian, a young writer with a magical gift for poetry, defies his bourgeois father by moving to the bohemian underworld of Montmartre, Paris. He is... Christian, a young writer with a magical gift for poetry, defies his bourgeois father by moving to the bohemian underworld of Montmartre, Paris. He is taken in by the absinthesoaked artist Toulouse- Lautrec, whose party- hard life centers aound the Moulin Rouge, a world of sex, drugs,
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electricity and the shocking Can-Can. Christian falls into a passionate but ultimately doomed love affair with Satine, the Sparkling Diamond, the most beautiful courtesan in Paris and star of the Moulin Rouge. The year is 1899, and Christian, a young English writer, has come to Paris to follow the Bohemian revolution taking hold of the city's drug and prostitute infested underworld. And nowhere is the thrill of the underworld more alive than at the Moulin Rouge, a night club where the rich and poor men alike come to be entertained by the dancers, but things take a wicked turn for Christian as he starts a deadly love affair with the star courtesan of the club, Satine. But her affections are also coveted by the club's patron: the Duke. A dangerous love triangle ensues as Satine and Christian attempt to fight all odds to stay together but a force that not even love can conquer is taking its toll on Satine.

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970)
Directed By: Jaromil Jires Synopsis: This dreamlike fairytale captures the coming-of-age of a young Czechoslovakian girl. After receiving a pair of earrings, strange things begin to... This dreamlike fairytale captures the coming-of-age of a young Czechoslovakian girl. After receiving a pair of earrings, strange things begin to happen to Valerie. As her burgeoning sexuality sparks even more haunting escapades, Valerie must contend with an explosively surreal world that challenges and inspires her. Jaromil Jires' film is a surprisingly sensitive and visually spectacular. Valerie [Jaroslava Schallerová] has just come of age with her first bleeding. Babischka [Helena Anyzová] says that it's time to put away her magic earrings and attend to the missionaries who are coming to town. Valerie, however, is more interested in the performers who have arrived for Hedvica's wedding. As the celebrators pass below her dining room window, Valerie sees a "monster," a masked man whose face changes from human to a nosferatu-like vampire. Even Babischka pales when she sets eyes on him. Now Valerie begins to see the vampire everywhere. He is the Bishop, he is the Constable, he is her boyfriend Orlik's guardian, he is the Weasel, he is Babischka's lover Richard. Babischka wishes to be young again so that Richard will find her beautiful, so she signs away her house (Valerie's inheritance) in return for a drink of Hedvica's blood on her wedding night. Babischka then shows up as Valerie's second cousin Elsa, young, beautiful, and vampire. When Valerie learns that the Vampire is dying and must have blood, she steals a chicken and feeds him the blood off her lips. A visiting priest, another of Babischka's lovers, tells Valerie that her father was also Orlik's father, which greatly disturbs Valerie to find that she and Orlik are brother and sister, but she is more disturbed when the priest attempts to seduce her, so upset in fact that she kills herself with her magic earrings. The priest then kills himself but comes back to life. The priest convinces the town that Valerie bewitched him, so the townsfolk tie Valerie to a stake and set her on fire, but her magic earrings save her. Suddenly, Babischka is back. She reveals to Valerie a story about how her lover Richard had two children with Valerie's mother (of which Valerie is one, of course) just as a carriage drives up and Valerie's parents get out. A hunter kills a weasel which has been eating the chickens, and much merriment ensues as the whole town turns up to celebrate. The story ends with Valerie asleep in a bed in the middle of the forest. [Synopsis by bj_kuehl]

Suna no Onna (Woman in the Dunes) (1964)
Directed By: Hiroshi Teshigahara Synopsis: Symbolic parable about a man who wanders into a seaside village, where he falls into a deep sandpit at the bottom of which lives a beautiful woman. He... Symbolic parable about a man who wanders into a seaside village, where he falls into a deep sandpit at the bottom of which lives a beautiful woman. He falls in love with her, but the local villagers have a strange purpose in keeping her down there -- and him as well as he soon finds out. An amateur entomologist searching for insects by the sea is trapped by local villagers into living with a mysterious woman who spends almost all her time preventing her home from being swallowed up by advancing sand dunes. The woman and the trapped man begin a strange and erotic relationship that stretches over years, as the man's hope for escape dims. Beautifully shot, a film full of sand as far as the eye can see, a film of hopeless situations with no way out, a film on the impossibility of getting beyond one’s past. A film of futility, and yet, one which also poses the question of hope in the deepest despair. A film about postwar Japan, about the relation of love and destiny, a film that’s powerful, slow, and moving.

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Contes Immoraux (Immoral Tales) (1974)
Directed By: Walerian Borowczyk Synopsis: Four erotic tales from in various historical eras. The first, 'The Tide', is set in the present day, and concerns a student and his young female... Four erotic tales from in various historical eras. The first, 'The Tide', is set in the present day, and concerns a student and his young female cousin stranded on the beach by the tide, secluded from prying eyes. 'Therese Philosophe' is set in the nineteenth century, and concerns a girl being locked in her bedroom, where she contemplates the erotic potential of the objects contained within it. 'Erzsebet Bathory' is a portrait of the sixteenth-century countess who allegedly bathed in the blood of virgins, while 'Lucrezia Borgia' concerns an incestuous fifteenth-century orgy involving Lucrezia, her brother, and her father the Pope. Four erotic tales from in various historical eras. The first, 'The Tide', is set in the present day, and concerns a student and his young female cousin stranded on the beach by the tide, secluded from prying eyes. 'Therese Philosophe' is set in the nineteenth century, and concerns a girl being locked in her bedroom, where she contemplates the erotic potential of the objects contained within it. 'Erzsebet Bathory' is a portrait of the sixteenthcentury countess who allegedly bathed in the blood of virgins, while 'Lucrezia Borgia' concerns an incestuous fifteenth-century orgy involving Lucrezia, her brother, and her father the Pope.

2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle (1967) 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her1967
Director: Jean-Luc Godard Godard is perhaps the most technically innovative filmmaker in history, and this film is not only my favorite film of his, but I think also his best. Godard breaks every single cinematic convention in this film-essay about industrialization, sex, capitalism, and film itself. This is the ultimate film about film, conscious of its every move, always in meta-commentary about its own activity. And while it’s mostly a ‘head’ film, it has some moments of sparse beauty and simple poetry that are missing from Godard’s other works.

Synopsis: In this film, 'Her' refers to both Paris, the character of Juliette Janson and the actress playing her, Marina Vlady. The film is a kind of dramatised documentary, illustrating and exaggerating the emotionless lives of characters in the new Paris of the 60s, where commercialism mocks families getting by on small incomes, where prostitution is a moneyspinning option, and where people are coldly resigned and immune to the human nightmares of Vietnam, and impending Atomic war.

L'année dernière à Marienbad (1961) Last Year at Marienbad
Director: Alain Resnais Alain Resnais’ puzzle-box of a film is brutally cold, and leaves many viewers feeling nothing more than chilled and confused. What did I just see? What does it mean? Do I care? And yet, I think there is emotional depth here, hiding under the icy veneer of formal perfection, impossible plot, elaborately wealthy protagonists, and alienated vision. But it’s the plot, its impossibilities and layers and contradictions, that eventually raise the stakes to a fever pitch at which sheer contradiction tips over into the sublime. An ice palace, but a gorgeous one, one whose emotional reach is perhaps felt most severely in the pain of its very absence. In a huge, old-fashioned luxury hotel a stranger tries to persuade a married woman to run away with him, but it seems she hardly remembers the affair they may have had (or not?) last year at Marienbad. Since man first became aware of time with the passing of the seasons, the nature of time has been challenging philosophers and scientists alike. Starting with the "flux doctrine" of "Heraclitus," according to which everything is constantly altering ("You cannot step twice in the same river"), to Henry Bergson, who was one of the first philosophers to incorporate cinema into a philosophical discourse, philosophers have wrestled with the concepts of time and memory. In literature, Marcel Proust of course comes to mind with his huge novel "Remembrance of Things Past," and on the scientific side, Albert Einstein with his "Theory of General Relativity." Einstein posited that time is simply another dimension, which with space forms a four-dimensional space-time continuum (that was until recently, when seven more dimensions were added with the M-theory, the "theory of everything").
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Stephen Hawking distinguishes three different "arrows of time": thermodynamic, cosmological, and psychological ("A Brief History of Time," 1988). Although all of these three time arrows enter in our daily lives to a greater or lesser extent, we are here only concerned with the psychological arrow of time. Bergson, whom Proust admired, made a distinction between the concept ("clock time") and the experience of time ("real time"), arguing that "real time" is experienced as "duration" and apprehended by "intuition." He further stated that time is in constant flux, with moments of the past and the present having equal reality. This leads us to Alain Resnais' film, "L'année dernière à Marienbad" ("Last Year at Marienbad," 1961), which appeared on the French screens in 1961. To say that this film shocked the film audiences is an understatement. Nobody had seen anything like it, although Resnais' "Hiroshima mon amour" should have prepared us by the way it explores his favorite themes: the anguish of oblivion and the fixity of time. In Resnais' film traditional realism is no longer, replaced by a deeper realism, that of the mind. For "L'année dernière à Marienbad," Resnais collaborated with Alain Robbe-Grillet on the scenario. Robbe-Grillet should also be credited as co-director, as he wrote a detailed shooting script that Resnais followed faithfully, with a few exceptions. As such, some words are also in order regarding Robbe-Grillet. Alain Robbe-Grillet is a French author and literary critic. In the mid-1950s until the early 1960s, he was the theorist and leading proponent of a new movement in French literature known as "le nouveau roman" (the new novel). This new novel is characterized by stark descriptions which often shun allegory and metaphor in favor of precise physical details, an enhanced sense of ambiguity with respect to points of view, and an extreme disjunction of time and space. The new novel lacks the conventional elements of the traditional modes of literary realism, such as dramatic plotting, psychological analysis, and its adhesion to the unities of time and place, which creates an illusion of order, in contrast to modern life's discontinuities and randomness. Robbe-Grillet's novels are characterized by the destruction of the plot in favor of a clever construction where the protagonists no longer have any psychological dimensions, nor time and space any objective reality. They are composed largely of recurring images, impersonally depicted physical objects, and the random events of everyday life. Robbe-Grillet has written eighteen novels of various kinds and directed ten films. He was made a member of the prestigious "Académie Française," in 2004. The most famous dramatization of his literary theories came to life in the present Resnais' film. The film is about the dream of a man in love with an inaccessible woman. But the dream is also a nightmare. He comes to take her away, but she does not, or does not want to, remember him. When he seems to have finally reached her, she has moved into another time, into another memory. As he renews his efforts to convince her, new nightmares arise. He is not even sure of loving her, or even if it was she who was or the object of his love. The film ends with his taking her in the nightuntil the next dream. "Marienbad" is a love story, although not a "story" in the conventional narrative sense, since the fragmented images cannot be scanned chronologically. The "story" is not told rather it is described using a juxtaposition of physical images, through memories and associations, projected through a space-time continuum, which destroys both linear chronology and fixity. Resnais built a captivating puzzle-like film, a labyrinth, which at time resembles the optical illusions of Escher or the surreal world of Magritte. Any attempt to provide a satisfying chronology for the film would contradict the assumptions upon which it was built, as well as the manner in which it is presented. However, we can describe it. The setting is a luxurious hotel, lush with furnishings, paintings, moldings, and sculptures. There are endless formal gardens surrounding the hotel. The principal characters go only by letters, A (Delphine Seyrig), X (Giorgio Albertazzi), and M (Sasha Pitoeff). X attempts to convince A that they have met last year in this hotel (or maybe it was in a different one), that they loved each other, emotionally and physically, and that she had agreed to elope with him, away from M, her husband (or lover). At the last moment, she had refused (for whatever reason) and asked for a one year postponement. Now, the year has passed and X has come to their agreed rendezvous to take her away. A claims she does not recognize X, and cannot remember any agreement between them. At first, X is surprised, and he recounts conversations the two of them had, supporting details, relating scenes convincingly. A persists in not remembering, even though X produces a photograph of her as a proof of his claim. However, X could be mistaken about his last year's affair. If X is not mistaken, could his affair have been with another woman? A could have also had an affair with another man, "Frank," whose name recurs during the film in several of the other hotel guests' conversations. As the film progresses, X is insistent, as if the strength of his conviction in recounting what he believes are actually the events themselves. At this point, facts and arguments are so mixed up that nothing is any longer verifiable. And to top it all off, at the end of the film, the lovers (A and X) run away together into the night, but this flight is recounted to us by X, in the past tense. The result is that the story can be re-started from the beginning: the whole thing took place last year, and it can be repeated ad infinitum.
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The woman, A, moves about the hotel in a series of stylized poses. She spends her time reading, watching a play, walking about the gardens, and having conversations with X. M hovers throughout the film, drifting from room to room, engaged in a multitude of pursuits. In particular, he gambles and plays a variation of the game of "Nim" with the other guests, which he claims he always wins. Surrounding these three main characters are the other personages of the film: the hotel itself, the gardens, and the other guests. The guests take walks along statuaries, hedge-mazes, fountains, and long gravel paths. Everyone appears in evening clothes to attend a dinner, a concert, or a play presented at the hotel's theater, a play that resembles the events that are unfolding in the very film we are watching. Conversations are overheard. Words float in the air as if trapped inside the hotel, in search of a listener. Time itself moves forward or backward, depending on the subject of conversations, or the mood of the people.

Hiroshima mon amour (1959)
Director: Alain Resnais 1959. A French young woman has spent the night with a japanese man, at Hiroshima where she went for the shooting of a film about peace. He reminds her of the first man she loved. It was during World War II, and he was a German soldier. The main themes of this film are memory and oblivion.

Fotografando Patrizia (1985) The Dark Side of Love
Director: Salvatore Samperi Synopsis: The sexual relationship between a successful woman and her brother, an introvert, hypochondriacal youth, who is also a pornophile. The sexual relationship between a successful woman and her brother, an introvert, hypochondriacal youth, who is also a pornophile.

La Mujer de Mi Hermano (2005) A Beautiful Wife
Directed By: Ricardo de Montreuil Synopsis: When, after 10 years of marriage, Zoe (Barbara Mori) realizes she no longer feels any passion for her successful but vain husband, Ignacio (Christian... When, after 10 years of marriage, Zoe (Barbara Mori) realizes she no longer feels any passion for her successful but vain husband, Ignacio (Christian Meier), her ardor finds another object in Ignacio's younger brother, Gonzalo (Manolo Cardona). This stylish exploration of infidelity pits brother against brother as all three points in the love triangle struggle to understand who they are, what they want from life and what they truly value. After almost 10 years of marriage, attractive Zoe discovers that her marriage lacks passion and surprise, and is seduced by the possibility of finding those sensations already forgotten in her husband's brother. From this premise a series of events lead these three characters to a dangerous game of revenges, secrets and passions. Two brothers and one woman: the triangle is outlined in a disquieting way. It is a bomb that triggers family secrets, the contained rage of desire and the unmanageable power of love. An exciting story that subjugates the viewer from beginning to end.

Naked (1993)
Director: Mike Leigh Johnny flees Manchester for London, to avoid a beating from the family of a girl he has raped. There he finds an old girlfriend, and spends some time homeless, spending much of his time ranting at strangers, and meeting characters in plights very much like his own.

Máncora (2008)
Director: Ricardo de Montreuil An adventure drama that tells the story of Santiago, a 22-year old from Lima. Following his father's suicide, haunted by his inner daemons and hatred for the world in general, Santiago decides to escape the crude Lima winter to take
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refuge in Mancora, a beach to the north of Peru where it is always summer. Upon his departure, Santiago receives the unexpected visit from his stepsister, Ximena, a young and beautiful photographer in her late twenties, accompanied by her husband Inigo, a young surgeon from Spain. The three take off on a journey escaping reality and in search of themselves. Santiago and Ximena find refuge in each other, which sparks off jealousies within Inigo, and a trip that was intended to be a simple escape turns out to be much more, when each of the three crosses limits and borders they should never have crossed. The three are placed face to face with their dreams and daemons. From the director of "La Mujer de Mi Hermano" (My Brothers Wife), and the writer of "Voces Inocentes" (Innocent Voices) comes Máncora, a tender and pulsating road-trip drama that delicately traces the shifting emotional boundaries between three disconnected souls. Máncora introduces us to Santiago, a 21-year old from Lima who is haunted by his fathers recent and unexpected suicide. Suffocating in the chill of a grey Lima winter, Santiago decides to take refuge in Mancora, a beach town in the north of the country where summer never ends. Right before his departure, Santiago receives an unexpected visit from his stepsister Ximena, a vibrant, sexy Spanish photographer and her husband Iñigo, a brash art collector from New York. The tranquility of their getaway is quickly shattered by a powerful act of boundary-crossing and betrayal, which threatens to transform their relationship forever and turn Mancora in to a paradise lost.

The Little Rascals (1994)
Directed By: Penelope Spheeris Synopsis: Spanky, Alfalfa, Buckwheat, and the other characters made famous in the Our Gang shorts of the 1920s and 1930s are brought back to life in this... Spanky, Alfalfa, Buckwheat, and the other characters made famous in the Our Gang shorts of the 1920s and 1930s are brought back to life in this nostalgic children's comedy. Although the setting is the present day, the characters remain much the same, down to their old-fashioned clothing and their membership in the He-man Womun Haters Club. When Alfalfa (Bug Hall) starts to question his devotion to the club's principles after falling for the beautiful nine-year old Darla (Brittany Ashton Holmes), the rest of the gang sets out to keep them apart. An attempt to win the grand prize in a go-cart race also comes into play, providing opportunities for physical comedy, while Darla's and Alfalfa's story trades on the humor of innocent puppy love. Most critics found the film less a tribute to the original series of shorts than a blatant attempt to capitalize on the familiar name, though younger audiences may be entertained by the simple gags and child-like attitude. The story begins with Spanky, who is the president of the "He-Man Woman Haters Club" with many school-aged boys from around the neighborhood as members. His best friend, Alfalfa, has been chosen as the driver for the club's prize-winning go-kart, called "The Blur", in the annual Soap Box Derby style race. However, when the announcement is made, Alfalfa is nowhere to be found. The boys catch Alfalfa in the company of Darla -- "a girl!" Alfalfa isn't like his friends because he's in love with Darla, and unfortunately threatens the very existence of their "boys only" club. The club's members try their hardest to break the two apart, eventually causing their beloved clubhouse to burn down. Darla is mistakenly led to believe Alfalfa feels ashamed of her, so she turns her attentions to Waldo, the new rich kid whose father is an oil tycoon. Further trouble ensures when their prized go-cart "The Blur" is stolen by local neighborhood bullies Butch and Woim...

Ne le Dis à Personne (Tell No One) (2006)
Directed By: Guillaume Canet Synopsis: Pediatric Alex Beck (François Cluzet), still devastated by the savage murder of his wife Margot (MarieJosée Croze) in the early days of their... Pediatric Alex Beck (François Cluzet), still devastated by the savage murder of his wife Margot (Marie-Josée Croze) in the early days of their marriage eight years ago, receives an anonymous email. When he clicks on the link he sees a woman's face standing in a crowd and being filmed in real time - Margot's face. Is she still alive? And why does she instruct him to 'tell no one'? The pediatrician Alexandre Beck misses his beloved wife Margot Beck, who was brutally murdered eight years ago when he was the prime suspect. When two bodies are found near where the corpse of Margot was dumped, the police reopen the case and Alex becomes suspect again. The mystery increases when Alex receives an e-mail showing Margot older and alive. The novel and movie have significant differences. The novel takes place in the U.S., while the movie takes place in Paris. The following is the movie version. The movie opens with a nighttime dinner scene at a country home with many of the main characters in the movie. It is revealed that the main character, Alex Beck, has been in medical school for nine years. What appears to be the
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following day Alex and his wife Margot drive to a secluded lake, Lake Charmaine, where they have childhood memories and a carved heart with their initials, M+A, on a tree near the lake. There, Margot uses Alex's pocketknife to add an additional hash mark to the many already present below the heart. Thereafter they disrobe and romantically swim naked in the lake. After nightfall they end up snuggling together on a wooden raft in the center of the lake. After having a little argument about the cold relationship he has with his sister Anne, Margot comments she will "butt out" and swims back to the shore to check on the dog that was left in the car. Alex then hears Margot's cry for help, swims to shore, and is knocked unconscious as he attempts to exit the water using the ladder on the dock. He is last seen falling back into the water. The next scene is eight years later when we see Alex arriving at the hospital where he works as a practicing pediatrician. While attending to a young girl and her parents Alex hears a commotion in the admission section and rushes to the scene. There he finds a thug-looking man named Bruno holding his son in his arms and demanding to see Alex. Alex is the only person there who Bruno will trust with his hemophiliac son who had fallen off the couch. Alex provides Bruno assurance and carries Bruno's son into the emergency room. Alex meets his friend Helene, who is his sister's lover and domestic partner, for lunch in her restaurant, where he reads in a newspaper that two male bodies were uncovered near the Lake Charmaine. In his lunch conversation with Helene they discuss his plans to meet with Margot's mother in what has been a yearly meeting with her for the past eight years on the anniversary of Margot's murder. Alex also promises to stop by Helene's apartment after his visit with Margot's mother. Alex stops and talks with Bruno on his way back to the hospital. Bruno provides Alex with his phone number on a card and offers Alex cash. Alex declines the cash to which Bruno suggests a DVD player or plasma TV. Alex refuses the gifts and tells Bruno he will update him when his son comes out of surgery. When Alex returns to his office, he notices a new email message with the subject M+A followed by a row of about thirty slash marks (M+A///////////////////////////). He counts the slash marks and then opens the email. The email contains a link and the message with the words "open link," "anniversary," and "6:15 p.m." Alex attempts to immediately open the link, but it doesnt open. While Alex is still contemplating the email, he receives a message from his secretary that a police sergeant would like to speak to him. In the next scene Alex has arrived at his sister's home where she is practicing jumping with her horse. They then meet with the police sergeant to discuss the case of the two men that were found buried near the lake. The discussion reveals several interesting points. The two men were found near where Margot was killed, but not on the family's property. A baseball bat was found buried with the two victims containing type B positive blood, the same blood type as Alex. And, even though Alex was cleared of his wife's murder and even though the murder was later attributed to a serial killer by the name of Serton, the police still proclaimed being puzzled by Alex's claim that he had been knocked unconscious into the water, yet was later found on the dock. Alex then submits to a blood DNA test. A nurse also shows up to take his blood. That night he has several drinks while out walking his dog Nina. At home he stares at the email message on his computer screen and recalls the days with his wife including his childhood memories, his wedding, and her funeral where she was cremated. The next day he is anxious all day for the email he is expecting at 6:15 p.m. on the apparent day of the anniversary of Margot's death. When he opens the link at 6:15, he observes that it is a web camera located at a shopping mall focused on a pair of escalators. While he is watching, he sees a woman who looks like Margot walk into the frame, turn to the camera, look at him, and slowly speak to the camera though Alex can only see her speak. She then turns around and walks off. Alex also receives a second email that contains the messages: "Same time + 2 hrs," "Username: Concert, Password: Olympia," and "Tell no one. They are watching." Alex thereafter visits Margot's mother and father where he confronts Margot's father regarding how positive he was when he identified his daughter's body after the murder. Out of this conversation we learn that Margot's father was a captain in the police force at the time and that Alex never viewed or identified his wife. Margot' father is irritated by all of Alex's probing questions and eventually asks him to leave. As promised at lunch the previous day Alex stops at Helene's apartment. While there, he tells Helene of the emails he has received and shows her the link to the web camera. In the discussion Alex mentions that the web camera must be located outside of France because it was dark in Paris while the web camera still depicted daylight. While Alex is visiting Helene, Alex's sister Anna is participating in an equestrian meet sponsored by Gilbert Neuville
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in honor of his son who was an equestrian jumping champion who died eight years ago in 1997. When Anne shows up at Helene's apartment, she announces that she placed second, is very tired, and is going to bed. Helene whispers to Alex that she and Anne had had a little fight, that Anne was suspicious of Helene having an affair with a woman at work. When Alex returns home, he again stares at his computer screen displaying the web camera at the shopping mall. Meanwhile two men at some unknown location are viewing and discussing the same two emails that Alex has received. One of them is knowledgeable of computers and states that the emails are anonymous and that the accounts are created at the time the emails are sent. He further states that he is tied into both of Alex's computers so that he would know when Alex goes on line. The other man, later identified as Bernard, states that he thinks he knows enough already. The next morning several policemen are awaiting Alex when he arrives at the hospital. One of them is Captain Levkowitch who invites Alex to the police station where it would be more convenient to talk. At the police station Alex is asked about a woman named Juliette Langlois and is shown three photos of Margot bruised and beaten. Alex acknowledges that Juliette is his wife's middle name and that Langlois is the street where she lived growing up. Alex denies ever beating his wife and denies ever seeing the photos. Alex is next seen in a car with a highpowered woman attorney name Elysabeth Feldman, who was hired by Helene. Although Alex had never seen the photos that the police had in their possession, Alex told Elysabeth that while he was doing his residency in Bordeaux, Margot had been in an automobile accident with her girlfriend, Charlotte. That afternoon Alex goes to visit Margot's old girlfriend Charlotte, a photographer, who he hasn't communicated with since his wife's death. Charlotte admonishes Alex for not staying in touch but Alex tells her that he just wasn't up to it. Alex then asks Charlotte about the automobile accident and the photos. Charlotte explains that there was no accident, that one day Margot showed up bruised and asked her to claim that she was in an accident with her, should Alex ever ask. She assured Alex that Margot had never lied to him regarding anything else. When Alex returns to his apartment, he searches through boxes of Margot's stuff and finds her daily plannercalendar for 1997. In there he finds an appointment noted by the initials PF. When he calls the phone number, a woman answers the phone for a lawyer by the name of Pierre Ferrault, who is not in the office. In the meantime Captain Levkowitch and his partner meet Margot's parents at their residence. Levkowitch shows the same three photos to Margot's mother that he had shown to Alex and inquires about Alex. Eventually Margot's father asks his wife to leave the room while he discusses further details. In that discussion Levkowitch and his partner make a case for Alex having murdered Margot for the 200,000-pound life insurance policy. In the conversation they disclose that the photos were from a safe deposit box under the name of Juliette Langlois and that the key was in the pocket of one of the men found at the lake. Alex later meets up with Helene where they discuss the possibility of the police attempting to shake him up with the apparent emails from Margot. That evening the two of them attempt to open the web mail account with the username and password provided in the previous email. They are both unsuccessful, but discover that Alex's computer was actively being linked to another computer. In the mean time, Bernard and a woman thug await Charlotte in her studio. When she returns from being out, they terrorize her and torture her regarding the whereabouts of Margot. After they receive a call that Helene has left Alex's apartment. Bernard shoots Charlotte and the two leave. In the mean time Alex has taken his dog Nina for a walk. While thinking about the emails he has received, he gets an idea and runs with Nina to an Internet boutique several blocks away. The clerk will not allow Alex to enter with Nina, so he ties Nina to a bike rack and enters by himself. Another man, who arrived about the same time, allows Alex to go first and a minute or so later takes a seat at the computer to his right. Alex first enters the username "Concert" and password "Olympia" but then changes it to "U2" and "1995." The email account is valid and Alex finally gets to read the message he has been after. The message is to meet at a park near the bandstand the following afternoon at 5 p.m. The next morning on the way to work Alex stops by the morgue to talk with the coroner regarding Margot's file and photos of her autopsy. He is told by the coroner that the records are not filed there and that he would have to formally request them, which he does. In the mean time, the police have arrived at Charlotte's studio presumably called there by her associate. Her associate tells the police that when he had left work the day before, Charlotte was with a gentleman by the name of Alex Beck. The police immediately send a team of officers to Alexs apartment where they find some gloves in a
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trash can in the alley and a handgun taped to the backside of a desk. Alex is next seen at work working with a patient when he receives a call from Helene's attorney, Elysabeth Feldman. She informs Alex of Charlotte's murder, that the police are on their way to the hospital, that she will meet him there as well, and to sit tight and not say anything. Alex checks out the hallways and exits where he sees police on their way. He then leaves the building through a window in his office, jumps to the roof of a van below, and then runs down the street pursued by the police. After a harrowing chase scene, Alex hides in a dumpster and calls Bruno. After another chase Bruno and his associates create a distraction and get Alex into his black Chevy Tahoe. After losing Alex in the chase, Captain Levkowitch stops by his mother's place to drop off some groceries. There he speaks with his partner and admits to being the one who called Alex's attorney, Elysabeth Feldman. In his conversation Levkowitch goes through a list of reasons why he doesnt think Alex would have murdered Charlotte including hiding the murder weapon in his apartment behind a desk, his stopping at the coroner's office on the way to work, and even going to work at all. While his partner cautions him about the consequence of doing something that would re-open the murder case of the serial killer Serton, Levkowitch counters that he just wants to get to the truth. Next, Alex and Bruno together go to the office of Pierre Ferrault where Alex questions Ferrault regarding his connection to Margot. Ferrault informs Alex that he had represented a man name Helio Gonzales who had been accused of killing Philippe Neuville, the son of the wealthy and well known Gilbert Neuville. Philippe and Helio had been seen together the night of Philippes murder and Margot came forward as his alibi for the time of the murder. Margot had originally claimed that she had been professionally counseling Helio, but because no one was expected to believe that she would have been working at 11:00 p.m., Margot eventually admitted that she had had a twomonth affair with Helio. Alex, Bruno, and Brunos associate next track down Helio. Although Helio is a jerk and enjoys humiliating Alex about having sex with his wife, Alex bluffs Helio telling him that he was with his wife the night Philippe was murdered and could thereby invalidate Helio's alibi and land Helio in jail. Helio falls for the bluff and confirms that he did not have an affair, simply went along with what Margot told him to say, and that she got him released from murder charges. At 5 p.m. Alex shows up in at the park and waits on a bench near the bandstand as instructed in the email. However, unknown to Alex there are four men and a woman (including Bernard, the woman, and the man who sat next to Alex at the Internet boutique the previous evening) staking out the park from within and from a van parked near the entrance. The group initially mistake a woman with stroller and child for Margot. As Margot approaches Alex from behind, she sees a man talking on a walky-talky and hesitates approaching Alex any further. She then decides to abort the meeting and leaves through one of the gates. Because the gang of thugs had been concentrating on the woman with the stroller, they miss Margot leaving through the gate. Alex catches a glimpse of Margot leaving and attempts to catch up with her, but as he exits the gate, Bernard gives the go-ahead to take him captive. The four remaining thugs kidnap him in the van, hold him down, and begin to torture him for information. When the van stops at the next cross street, Bruno and his associate hijack the van and kill two of Alex's kidnappers, rescue Alex, and flee the scene Bruno's black Chevy Tahoe. In the meantime, Captain Levkowitch is parked at the morgue where he has obtained a copy of the autopsy report. While he is sitting in his car reading it and taking notes, he receives a call on his radio that Alex had purchased a ticket for a flight to Buenos Aires at 10:30 p.m. Around this same time Bernard, the leader of the other four thugs, meets with his boss, Gilbert Neuville at Gilberts home. At their meeting, Gilbert describes his attachment to his son, who he says, "rots underground, while she may still be alive." He then states that he "cannot accept that." At the airport Margot is awaiting her flight. When she hears her boarding call, she stands and catches a glimpse of the televised news. The news flash indicates the murder of Charlotte Bertaud and the escape of suspect Alex Beck. Margot then proceeds to boarding where she changes her mind and leaves. In the meantime Captain Levkowitch and his partner learn from a clerk at flight check-in that the seat adjacent to Alex Beck was reserved by a woman named Caroline Perreire and that the tickets were purchased only five minutes apart. When they run to the appropriate gate which was starting to board passengers, they discover that neither Alex nor Caroline Perreire have boarded. Alex, who is now at Brunos apartment, has no success in being contacted by Margot on the computer at Brunos apartment. He does, however call his attorney, Elysabeth Feldman, and tell her that he can prove he didn't kill Charlotte. In the meantime, Captain Levkowitch meets Helene walking home from work with Alex's dog. He tells her
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that he is probably the only one who thinks Alex is innocent and asks for her help in locating him. In their conversation he tells her that Margot's photos had been removed from the autopsy report and that according to the report, Margot was a heroin addict. Helen then begins to examine the report. When Helene arrives home, she is greeted by a kiss from Anne who then follows her into the bathroom where Helene showers. While Helene showers, Anne tells Helene that she is the one who took the photos of Margot and that it was Philippe Neuville who had beaten her. Helene steps from the shower and a brief argument ensues. The phone then rings. The call is from Elysabeth Feldman who wants a photo of Alex's dog to establish Alex's alibi. When Elysabeth Feldman receives the photo of Nina, she provides it to the DA with statements establishing that Alex was at the Internet boutique at the time of Charlotte's murder and calls for the DA to do a press release that Alex is only wanted for questioning. The following day Alex shows up at Helene's where Anne apologizes for all of the problems she has caused him by not telling anyone about the photos. Also present are Captain Levkowitch and his partner who apologize as well and provide Alex a copy of the autopsy report. Alex reads the report and recognizes that the dead woman was much taller than Margot. He has a few more words with everyone and then leaves the apartment. Captain Levkowitch and his partner ride down the elevator with Alex and continue to ask more questions as they also share some of their information. While they are talking in front of the apartment, a bouquet of flowers like those that grow near the lake are delivered to the apartment for Alex Beck in care of Helene. Next, with the flowers in the back seat of his car Alex drives to Margot's parent's house. The front door is slightly open, so Alex enters. When inside, he hears Margot's father tell him that he is in the kitchen. As Alex walks into the kitchen Margots father pulls a gun on him from behind, frisks him, and then tells him to have a seat in the living room. He pours himself a stiff drink and proceeds to provide an account to Alex. As Margot's father tells the story the audience is provided scenes to accompany the story. Two months before the event at Lake Charmaine, a boy from the children's trust came to Margot distressed and told her he had been molested by Philippe Neuville. This prompted Margot to invite Philippe to her home in the country where she confronted him. The plan was for Margot to extract a confession for her father who was waiting outside. However, when confronted, Philippe violently retaliated and was beating Margot mercilessly when Margot's father entered the house with a shotgun. He immediately became enraged and shot Philippe with both barrels. As Margots father continues to tell the story, the scene changes to another location where the police are listening to the story via a wire worn by Alex. At a point in the story, the wire gets static and the police can no longer hear the story continue. When the signal becomes clear again, we learn that Margot's father then disposed of the body to implicate a kid named Helio Gonzales who lived at the home of the childrens trust. Margot, however, would not accept Helio taking the wrap for something he didnt do, so she provided an alibi to get him off. Then, to protect herself Margot placed the photos taken by Anne in a safe deposit box and contacted Gilbert Neuville to warn him that she was holding incriminating evidence against Philippe. Margot's father then tells Alex that Neuville had half of the police force and politicians on his payroll including him. He also knew how Neuville would respond to Margot and thereafter tapped Neuville's phones where he later learned that Neuville had hired two men to kill Margot and retrieve the evidence. To outwit Neuville, he then paid one of the two men to help him with a different plan. He then staged Margot's death by using the body of a drug user that had been stabbed. He then mutilated her face so that no one could know it wasn't Margot. He further staged the scene to appear like that of a wanted serial killer. In brief, he dragged Alex from the lake, loaded Margot's body into his car, killed both men hired by Neuville, and buried them around 100 meters away. He also told Margot that Alex had died so that Margot would leave and not return. He then sent her by air to Spain and has not contacted her since. He claimed his only mistake was that he forgot to remove the safe deposit box key from the man who had taken it from Margot's purse. When Alex asked Margot's father why he didnt seek help from the authorities, Margot's father claimed that he had already crossed the line. He then provided Alex an envelope containing the details of all the crooked matters he had had with Neuville. He then began to discuss Alex's father, who had also worked as a trainer at the stables. Six months earlier Alex's father had also discovered that Philippe had been molesting kids and had demanded that Margot's father type up a complaint. However, when Gilbert Neuville read the complaint, he simply tore it up and then had Alex's father killed in a staged hunting accident. At this point, Margot's father puts down the gun. Enraged by the story, Alex picks up the gun, aims it at Margot's father, and begins to squeeze the trigger. Apparently regaining his senses, Alex leaves the house where he is greeted by a swat team and Captain Levkowitch. As Alex closes the door behind him, we hear a shot. Alex then hands over the envelope to the police, removes the wire from
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under his shirt, and walks off. In the next scene, Gilbert Neuville is placed under arrest while attending the jumping show in his son's honor. As he is being escorted away, a rider falls on a fourth jump of a tight series. We next see Alex on his way to Lake Charmaine. As he drives along he has a flashback of the story provided by Margot's father. We again see the scene where Margot's father searches Alex. We then see and hear what transpired when the voice on the wire was drowned out with static. We see that Margot's father had deliberately turned up the volume of static on the TV to suppress the conversation. He then very quietly tells Alex that he knows he is wearing a wire and will tell him what really happened. Instead of Margots father shooting Philippe as before, we again see Philippe punching and kicking Margot, but then leaving through a door. We then see Margot struggling to pull herself to her feet, grabbing several shells from a box in a drawer, inserting the shells into a shotgun, following Philippe out through the same door, and then when he turns around, she shoots him twice. Later we see Margot's father arrive at the scene. At Lake Charmaine, Alex stands before the tree containing the heart, their initials, and hash marks. As he stands there, Margot walks up behind him. When he hears her footsteps, he drops to his knees and begins to cry. Margot walks up behind him and the camera pans upwards. The movie ends with the two of them as children, kissing, holding hands and sitting down on the pier together.

Shaun of the Dead (2004)
Directed By: Edgar Wright Synopsis: On Friday, Shaun is in a rut. At 29, he's coasted through life--and still hasn't gotten very far, usually winding up at the local pub, the Winchester.... On Friday, Shaun is in a rut. At 29, he's coasted through life--and still hasn't gotten very far, usually winding up at the local pub, the Winchester. His roommate Ed looks up to him--when he can take his eyes off the TV, that is. Liz is re-evaluating their relationship, particularly after Shaun fails to do something special for their anniversary on Saturday. That day, there are train delays, people fainting in the streets, TV news reporters on unexplained calamities. No, it can't be--but it is--the dead have risen. Saturday's isolated incidents mushroom into a full-on zombie assault and, once daylight breaks, it's Sunday bloody Sunday. As manners and flesh take a beating, it's time to separate men from meat, humans from zombies, and living from undead. Shaun and Ed grab whatever is at hand to repel the attacking zombies, summoning reserves of strength they didn't know they possessed and straining muscles they forgot they had. Rounding up friends and family, they press on towards the sanctuary of the Winchester. All that stands in their way are hordes of the flesh eating undead. Shaun doesn't have a very good day, so he decides to turn his life around by getting his ex to take him back, but he times it for right in the middle of what may be a zombie apocalypse... But for him, it's an opportunity to show everyone he knows how useful he is by saving them all. All he has to do is survive... And get his ex back. The film begins in The Winchester, a traditional London pub. Shaun (Simon Pegg, his girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield) and her two friends David (Dylan Moran) and Dianne (Lucy Davis) are socializing while Ed (Nick Frost) plays away on the slot machine. Liz is trying to encourage Shaun to strengthen their relationship and be more adventurous, rather than just reminisce in the pub. Liz displays her cynism by reminding Shaun how she hasn't even met his mum yet. This intro scene ends with Shaun staring vacantly towards the camera, clearly displaying anxiety. The movies intro credits roll, continually panning right through scenes of regular people performing everyday tasks. We see ordinary people moving supermarket trolleys, working behind tills, waiting at the bus stop, or mindlessly listening to street music, all staring and acting zombie-like (a reference to the satirical elements of Dawn of the Dead). The scene finishes with a shot of Shaun's home. Inside his house Shaun wakes up and joins Ed in the living room where he joins in a game on the PlayStation. Ed reminds Shaun that he has to go to work and Shaun begrudingly goes to get ready. While Shaun is getting ready, his second flat-mate and college buddy Pete confronts him about Ed's behaviour. Pete is fed up with Ed lounging around all day and not bothering to find a job. Shaun defends Ed by just saying he's harmless and fun to have around, to which Pete replies "Why? Because he can impersonate an orangutan? Fuck-a-doodle-do!". Both Pete and Shaun leave for work, with Shaun asking Ed to take down any phone while he is at work. Just as Shaun leaves, Liz calls to leaves an answerphone message for Shaun, asking him to book their restaurant dinner an hour earlier. Shaun doesn't hear the message. The next sequence of scenes sees Shaun side-tracked by a series bizarre events, including newspaper headlines describing attacks on members of the public, people collapsing at bus stops, and television news reports of more attacks and military dispatchment. Shaun arrives at work, an electronics retail shop, where he is manager. Shaun's step-dad, Philip (Bill Nighy), pays him a visit to remind him of his bi-monthly visit to his mum. The pair have a very
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frosty relationship and Shaun clearly does not like his step-father. Shaun holds a staff meeting for his team of clearly bored and feckless staff. He tries to discipline a colleague for using his mobile phone on shop floor, and while doing this his own phone rings. To save looking hypocritical he is forced to pretend it's a work related call, and ends up ignoring a bemused Liz who's called to remind him about booking dinner earlier that evening. Later, when Shaun is purchasing flowers for his mum, he notices a homeless man (Patch Connolly) outside staggering and trying to eat the pigeons, before vanishing when a bus cuts across the scene. On his way home, Shaun gets off the bus early as traffic is gridlocked, we see more accidents involving people passing out in their cars. On the walk home Shaun bumps into his old flame Yvonne (Jessica Hynes). She asks how he's getting on with Liz, which triggers his memory about booking the table for that evening. The scene cuts back to Shaun's flat as he desperately tries to call the restaurant to change the times, only to hear that they are fully booked. Liz then phones and Shaun explains that he forgot all about it, then suggests maybe they go to The Winchester...Liz then hangs up. Shaun grabs the flowers and makes his way down to Liz's flat in an attempt to make ammends with her. At first Liz refuses to let him in so Shaun tries and fails to scale the wall outside and enter through a window. Liz eventually relents and lets Shaun in to the flat, where she launches into a tirade. She lists all the promises Shaun's broken, and tells him how she's tired of putting up with a relationship that's clearly going nowhere. In her rage she finishes the relationship and David and Di stand by awkwardly. Shaun makes his way alone to The Winchester through the pouring rain, throwing his mother's flowers in a wastebin outside the pub. He meets with Ed and they spend the night joking and drinking heavily. A figure outside the pub batters against the window and moans, to which Ed simply retorts 'Piss head!". Drunk and still singing, the duo make their way outside - not noticing the zombie girl tearing someone's head off. They mock a moaning zombie as another drunk - and make their way back home. They continue to sing and play loud music until Pete storms downstairs in a rage at being woken up by the noise. He throws the record out the window and launches into a barrage of swearing, verbally attacking Ed and telling Shaun to sort his life out. Ed notices that Pete's hand is bandaged and Pete tells him that a 'crackhead' bit him and he has a splitting headache. He shouts at them one last time for leaving the front door open, again, and returns to his room. The next morning arrives and Shaun decides to go down to the corner shop for a drink, and a Cornetto for Ed. Still hungover from the previous nights drinking, Shaun is completely oblivous to the carnage surrounding him. Smashed cars, blood-stained floors / windows, corpses lying on front porches and hoardes of zombies slowly flooding the streets. Back at the flat, Shaun skips through the TV channels, past entertainment channels and news reports of the incidents. Ed is stood looking out of the window, he tells Shaun there's a girl in their garden. Out in the garden, they try and get the girl's attention. When she turns around, they think she's drunk, until she attacks them. Thinking that she's just a nuisance, Shaun pushes her back and she trips and impales herself on a metal stump. Shaun and Ed are seen looking very shocked as the girls slowly stands up as if nothing has happened. Panicking, they choose to go back inside only to be confronted by another male zombie. They make it past him and return to the safety of the house. Back inside, Shaun dials 999, the line is engaged. The pair sit down on the sofa watching the news, when a zombie with a severed arm makes his way inside (Shaun left the front door open again) the pair attack it by throwing any object they can. Only for Ed to kill it by smashing a glass ash tray on its head. The pair then decide to take on the two in the garden, again, by throwing any household object they can, at their heads. When Ed finds the record Pete threw out last night and throws it at the male zombie, it sticks into him like a blade, prompting their second idea... They go through Shaun's record collection and throw every record they dislike (the Batman soundtrack, Dire Straights) and use them as projectiles. When that plan fails, Shaun bashes down the shed door, and the pair arm themselves with a Cricket Bat (Shaun) and a shovel (Ed), they then beat the zombies to death. Back inside, Shaun and Ed are watching the news reports advising people to contain anyone who has been bitten. At this point Shaun and Ed then remember Pete. They call upstairs to him, but get no response. Shaun then tries to call Liz but can't get through. His mum, Barbara (Penelope Wilton), then calls him, she tells him that some men were trying to attack her and Philip, but only Philip was bitten, much to Shaun's relief. Shaun and Ed then go through plans to rescue his mum and Liz, kill zombie Philip, and rendevouz at The Winchester. Shaun goes the toilet first, only to discover a naked zombified Pete in the shower. Shaun and Ed no longer waste time and head outside to Pete's car, only to attract the attention of every zombie outside. They drive at high speed, listening to the radio reports of a coming apocalypse and witnessing zombie attacks on every street corner they drive past. They make it to Philip's and Barbara's house and screech to a halt outside Shaun goes inside while Ed Stays outside on lookout. Barbara greets Shaun warmly and makes him tea. Shaun goes to kill Philip while Barbara is distracted. He finds Philip hasn't become a zombie yet. After some discussion Shaun eventually convinces them to come with him and Ed. Outside, Ed has intentionally crashed Pete's car so they can ride in Philip's Jaguar. As they go to get into the Jaguar another zombie attacks and bites Philip on the neck. A wound which will prove mortal, the four quickly get in the car and drive to Liz's. At Liz's flat, Shaun tells Ed to stay outside on lookout again. Zombies are swarming outside, and Shaun dispatches them quickly with his cricket bat and makes his way to the front door. When he gets cornered again, he makes his way into the flat by
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climbing up to the window. Inside, Shaun convinces Liz, David and Di to come with himself, Ed, Barbara and Philip to The Winchester for safety. The four make their way outside clubbing the zombies to get to the car. Its here when Shaun finally introduces Liz to his mum. On the way down the road, Ed is intentionally mowing down every zombie he can. Philip, bleeding profusely, tells Shaun his tough attitude towards him was to help him become better and hopefully he would look up to him. He lastly tells Shaun he loves him before he dies. Shaun, in an emotional state, tells Ed to pull over and tells Barbara that Philip is dead. She looks and says '..no he isn't..' Shaun then panics as he sees that Philip has instantly become a zombie, and shouts for everyone to get out of the car . Out in the open and vulnerable, the six head for a short-cut, making their way through the back-alleys of the local houses. They then bump into Yvonne and another group of five (who all strike similar resemblance to Shaun's team) who are trying to survive. After some quick talk, Shaun and Yvonne embrace before parting ways. They start to pass through the back gardens. When they come to a garden where the Winchester is just over the other side, Shaun sees that his mum is missing from the team, and Shaun quickly jumps back into the previous garden, where he fends off another zombie. Liza and Di join in to help, passing a tennis pole to use as a weapon, Shaun then impales the zombie against a tree, imobilising it. Although not killing it. Shaun checks over the fence to see if the coast is clear, only to his horror to discover that there are hundreds of the undead swarming the street, so Shaun has an idea: Dianne is a actress-in-training, so she gets the other 5 to mimmick the actions and sounds of the zombie impaled behind them so they can sneak through the crowds unsuspected. This plan pulls off. But when they make it to the doorway, the zombies start to raise suspision, only for Ed to completely give the game away when he answers his mobile phone and starts chatting away. Shaun knocks away the phone and barrates at Ed for his habit of messing up all the time. He ceases when he sees that ALL the zombies have turned their attention to the group. David quickly throws a trash bin through the window for everyone to get inside. To make sure the zombies don't follow, Shaun waves and shouts and gets the zombies to chase him (or simply, stagger after him) so the group can make it inside. Barbara spots the flowers Shaun was going to buy for her through the rubbish and get inside the pub. Hours pass and Shaun has not returned, David suggests blocking up the window, although Liz is insistant that Shaun will return, leading to David complaining about the entire situation they're in. Shaun eventually makes it back (through the back door) saying that he 'gave them the slip'. Night falls, and the group of 6 are bored and decide to see there's anything on the TV. As there's no electricity in the area, Shaun goes into the back to turn on the main circuit. When he turns the lights on, he's shocked to discover the zombies have followed him back. Back in the main pub, the TV channels are broadcasting nothing. Shaun whispers that the zombies followed him back, and they keep very quiet. However, Ed being Ed, messes it up again by playing on the slots and triggering more noise. Zombies now surround the outside of the pub, and the zombie pub landlord crawls in to attack. With the electrcity on, the Juke box turns on and starts to play "Don't Stop Me Now" by Queen. Shaun, Ed and Liz all grab pool cues and (in a classic scene) club the zombie to the song's beat. Dianne joins in by throwing darts at the zombie, only for one to land in Shaun's head. Ed tosses the rifle from the bar to Shaun (who thinks its deactivated) and kills the zombie by smashing its head through the Juke box. Asking why Shaun didn't just shoot him, Shaun tries to explain its not functional only to be blown back when he pulls the trigger. Packed together, the group join to defend against the masses of the undead. As they start to charge through the windows, Shaun fires but misses several times, with none of the other's directions being much help, except when Ed calls out the same way they do in their video-games, Shaun lands a head-shot. Shaun notices something's wrong with Barbara, and quickly comes to her attention. She was bitten by the zombie they impaled with the tennis pole. Every one of the group comes to her need except for David, who's been left with the rifle. Barbara thanks Shaun for the flowers, then collapses dead in his arms. David cocks the gun and aims for Barbara, and Shaun explodes in a fit of rage, holds a broken bottle to his neck and threatens him to stop aiming at her. Ed does the same, Dianne says this ain't fair, so he gives her the broken bottle (to point at Shaun) and Ed points a corkscrew at David, leading to a mexican stand-off, which ends just as quickly when Barbara rises as a zombie. Shaun takes the gun, says sorry to his mum, and shoots her dead. When David says he did the right thing, Shaun retaliates by punching him. David tries to shoot Shaun, only for the gun to run out of shells. He then decides to leave. When Dianne barrates at him, he relents and says he sorry, but Dianne says he should apologize to Shaun. When he tries, zombies smash through the window and pull David through, completely dismembering him. Dianne irrationally opens the front door and charges for the zombies in a blind effort to save David. Her fate is left unknown. The zombies break into the pub at all corners, including Pete, much to everyone's suprise. Pete and others swarm over Ed and bite into him, and Shaun shoots Pete in the head finishing him off. Shaun and Liz then jump over the bar, setting the bar table on fire with the spirits. Ed, severely wounded makes it over the bar to join them. With the rifle shells left in the burning mess, they only have two shells to spare and make their way into the cellar, as there is a lift down there that will lead to the outdoors. With the lift and the trapdoor not working, the remaining three are trapped. Shaun contemplates the last two shells for Liz and himself. Ed says 'I don't mind being eaten'. They share a last cigarette between them, only to see the power switch for the lift when they light up. Shaun tries to get Ed to come with him, but Ed knows he's done for anyway as he's bitten, and decides to stay. Liz and Shaun say their
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farewell to Ed and make it out into the street. Prepared for more fighting, luck comes their way as the military arrives and opens fire on the zombies. Accompanying them is Yvonne, who says they're evacuating any survivors. Shaun and Liz follow, holding hands. The next scene opens with several TV shows and reports saying that months have passed since the outbreak, and that zombies have now been used in everyday life. For menial jobs, such as trolley stacking and used as part of silly game shows. Shaun wakes up - in the same zombie-like way at the beginning of the film - and is sharing the flat with Liz, who have become a couple again. The film ends with Shaun saying he's gonna pop out to the shed, where the zombie Ed is chained up so he can play video-games with.

Secret Sunshine (2007) Milyang
Directed By: Chang-dong Lee Synopsis: In this somber Korean drama, a young mother and widow, Shin-ae, moves with her young son, Jun, from Seoul to a small town called Miryang following her... In this somber Korean drama, a young mother and widow, Shin-ae, moves with her young son, Jun, from Seoul to a small town called Miryang following her husband's death. Having given up on her career as a concert pianist when she married her husband, she starts up a piano school, but soon it begins to feel like the polite people who inhabit her new home aren't as friendly as they seem on the surface. Judgmental whispers and disapproving gossip begin to reach Shin-ae's ears, and pressure to join the Christian cult that thrives in the town begins to mount. She's hesitant until an unimaginable tragedy alters her life forever, setting Shin-ae on a dark path of withdrawal from society as a whole. Sin-ae moves with her son Jun to Miryang, the town where her dead husband was born. As she tries to come to herself and set out on new foundations, another tragic event overturns her life.

Samaria (Samaritan Girl) (2004)
Directed By: Ki-duk Kim Synopsis: To fulfill their dreams of traveling to Europe, two teenage girls Yeo-jin (Ji-min Kwak) and Jae-young (Minjeog Seo) start a prostitution business.... To fulfill their dreams of traveling to Europe, two teenage girls Yeo-jin (Jimin Kwak) and Jae-young (Min-jeog Seo) start a prostitution business. Yeo-jin handles the business side, while Jae-young "entertains" the customers. When Jae-young is accidentally killed during a police raid, Yeo-jin locates their clients in an act of penance, sleeping with them to return their money. Yeo-jin's father (Eol Lee) stumbles onto her secret and takes revenge on her lovers. At a crossroads, father and daughter embark on a desperate trip in the hope of gaining absolution and redemption. Jae-Young is an amateur prostitute who sleeps with men while her best friend Yeo-Jin "manages" her, fixing dates, taking care of the money and making sure the coast is clear. When Jae-Young falls in love with one of those man she suppresses her feelings towards him in respect of her friend who's jealous. One Day Yeo-Jin fails in doing her job overlooking police officers looking for under-aged prostitutes. In order to not get caught Jae-Young jumps out of a window almost killing herself. On her deathbed, she wishes to see the man again whom she fell in love with and turned away from. But the man only agrees if Yeo-Jin sleeps with him. She does but as they arrive in the hospital Jae-Young is already dead. Trying to understand her best friend, Yeo-Jin tracks down every man she slept with and does the same. As her father learns about this he gets on revenge with fatal consequences.

Gone With the Wind (1939)
Directed By: George Cukor , Sam Wood Scarlett is a woman who can deal with a nation at war, Atlanta burning, the Union Army carrying off everything from her beloved Tara, the carpetbaggers who arrive after the war. Scarlett is beautiful. She has vitality. But Ashley, the man she has wanted for so long, is going to marry his placid cousin, Melanie. Mammy warns Scarlett to behave herself at the party at Twelve Oaks. There is a new man there that day, the day the Civil War begins. Rhett Butler. Scarlett does not know he is in the room when she pleads with Ashley to choose her instead of Melanie. The setting is the American state of Georgia just before, during and after the U.S. Civil War. Gerald O'Hara (Thomas Mitchell), a self-made man of Irish origin, has become rich from his cotton plantation named Tara. Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) is his exceptionally pretty, and exceptionally headstrong, 16-year old
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daughter. Scarlett likes having fun and flirting, for example with the twins Brent and Stuart Carleton (George Reeves and Fred Crane). They are anticipating the next ball, while also speculating about the likelihood of war, although Scarlett finds the latter topic boring. Neighbor John Wilkes (Howard C. Hickman) gives a barbecue party at the Twelve Oaks plantation. Scarlett longs for Wilkes' son Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard), a lanky, soft-spoken young man of refined bearing, whom she sees as the love of her life. At the party, Scarlett flirts with many boys, to the dismay of her sisters Suellen and Carren (Evelyn Keyes and Ann Rutherford). While the younger women take a mid-afternoon nap, the men meet for cigars and brandy and discuss how the South will win the war. Another guest, Rhett Butler (Clark Gable), a handsome, if rather rough-hewn, adventurer from Charleston, South Carolina, scoffs at the notion that the South will win the war simply through the exhibition of pride; the North is industrially superior to the South and therefore can produce more of the tools of war much more quickly. Young Charles Hamilton (Rand Brooks) is offended by Rhett's opinion and openly tells him so. Rhett, realizing he's already lost the argument, leaves the meeting. Scarlett slips away from the nap room to talk to Ashley. She declares her love to him. However, Ashley declares his intention to marry his cousin Melanie Hamilton (Olivia de Havilland). The waifish Melanie can't compete with Scarlett in looks, but is admired by all for her kindheartedness. In her anger, Scarlett throws a vase at the wall. Rhett Butler suddenly pops up from the couch where he'd been resting and jokingly asks if the war has just begun. Scarlett is outraged and defends Ashley when Rhett mocks him. The start of the war is announced. All the young gentlemen rush to enlist. Charles Hamilton (Melanie's younger brother) is thought to be planning to marry Ashley's sister India Wilkes (Alicia Rhett), but after Scarlett flirts with him, he asks Scarlett to marry him. Furious because Ashley has rejected her, Scarlett agrees. They marry quickly and Charles leaves for the front immediately. Scarlett offers herself to Ashley, but he just gives her a cold kiss on the cheek. A few months later, news comes of Charles's death from illness at the front. Scarlett's mother Ellen (Barbara O'Neil) wants to cheer up the young widow and suggests that she go to Atlanta to live with Melanie and Aunt Pittypat (Laura Hope Crews). She agrees as she realizes Atlanta might mean a chance to see Ashley. In Atlanta, there is a fundraising ball for the army, where Scarlett, as a recent widow, is not supposed to enjoy herself. She dances surreptitiously behind the counter of her charity stall. Rhett Butler is in attendance. Butler is well-known as an arms smuggler who aids the Southern cause, even though he has a cynical attitude towards the war's aims and is in the arms business mainly to make money. He was responsible for getting the ball decorations through the blockade. Melanie offers her wedding ring as a war contribution and Scarlett feels obliged to follow suit, although Rhett praises Scarlett's generosity sarcastically. Then there is an auction for the men to bid on a dance with the girl of their choosing. Rhett is the winner, and he chooses Scarlett, causing consternation in the crowd since Scarlett is a widow. While dancing, Rhett tells Scarlett that someday he wants to hear her say that she loves him. She proclaims confidently that this will never happen as long as she lives. Christmas arrives, and Ashley returns home for a furlough. Scarlett is obviously still in love with Ashley, but Melanie refuses to believe it. Melanie and Ashley close the bedroom door on a sad-eyed Scarlett. Soon, it's Ashley's departure day. Finally managing to get Ashley alone, Scarlett gives him a Christmas present and confesses with tears in her eyes that she married Charles only to hurt Ashley. Ashley makes Scarlett promise to take care of Melanie. He returns to the front, knowing that the war is lost. The war drags on and the situation in the South worsens. Food is scarce. All families have lost loved ones. Melanie is pregnant with Ashley's child, and Scarlett, the only capable person at Aunt Pittypat's, has to take care of her. Scarlett is also a volunteer nurse, a role she hates but feels pressured to perform. A dying soldier (Cliff Edwards) reminisces about his brother Jeff. Scarlett flees the hospital in desperation after hearing the agonizing cries of a soldier (Eric Lindon) who is having a leg amputated without anesthetic. The useless Aunt Pittypat leaves the city because the noise of the bombs is getting to her nerves. Scarlett can't leave because of Melanie's condition; she is weak and problems may arise during childbirth. Scarlett counts on Dr. Meade (Harry Davenport) to attend Melanie's labor, but when the time arrives he can't leave the train station where hundreds of Confederate soldiers are wounded or dying. Scarlett and the uneducated house slave Prissy (Butterfly McQueen) must attend. Prissy, who had claimed to know everything about childbirth, confesses she doesn't know anything about it, to Scarlett's anger. Labour is long and complicated and eventually a son (Ricky Holt) is born, leaving Melanie very weak. Scarlett sends Prissy in search of Rhett. He is enjoying himself at the brothel run by Belle Watling (Ona Munson). Rhett mocks Prissy, but finally decides to help Scarlett and Melanie. Scarlett insists on returning home to Tara, where she thinks they all will be safe. Rhett steals a horse and a derelict cart. Melanie and her baby, Scarlett, Prissy and Rhett, drive out through Atlanta's burning buildings. Rhett leaves them on the road to Tara. He is going to enlist in the Confederate army because he only likes lost causes "when they are really lost." Before leaving he proclaims that he has loved Scarlett more than he has ever loved any woman. He kisses her passionately and she
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repays him with a slap saying "Everybody was right about you. You're no gentleman". He rides off laughing. When he is gone, Scarlett breaks down in tears. Scarlett goes on to Tara. The journey is long, cold and wet. They must hide from the Northern troops and travel mainly at night. They find a stray cow and use it to feed the baby, as Melanie is not able to lactate. They pass through the Wilkes' plantation, which is completely destroyed. The horse dies just as they arrive at Tara. Lit by weak moonlight, they gaze at proud Tara, still standing because the Northern troops used it as a headquarters. Conditions at Tara are terrible, as related by the house servants Mammy (Hattie McDaniel) and Pork (Oscar Polk). Scarlett's mother has died, her father has gone mad, there are no farm animals and very little food, many slaves have ran away while others were conscripted, there is no money, and the harvest has been lost. Scarlett goes out to clear her thoughts, and resolves not give up, saying "As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again." Intermission. The war enters its final stages as Sherman marches through Georgia in a trail of destruction. Scarlett forces herself to make the best of it and work the land. Little by little, they repair Tara. Scarlett makes her sisters work the fields, which they do grudgingly. Melanie can't work because of her weakness. One day, a renegade Union soldier (Paul Hurst) enters the house in search of valuables. He threatens Scarlett, and she shoots him dead with an old pistol. Her father and sisters are told that she was cleaning the weapon and that it went off. Only Melanie knows the truth. She gives her nightdress to wrap the body, and they secretly cart it off for burial. The war is finally over. Confederate soldiers start to return, with them a local man named Frank Kennedy (Carrol Nye), who has long been in love with Suellen OHara. He asks Scarlett's permission to propose to her sister. Passing soldiers are given food at Tara, mainly at the behest of Melanie. One of them, (Phillip Trent) tells Melanie that her husband is still alive but in a Yankee prison camp. Finally, the war-weary Ashley appears. Melanie runs to embrace him, but Mammy won't let Scarlett do the same. Ashley will stay to live at Tara. Carpetbaggers from the North impose high taxes on plantations, and Scarlett is terrified that she will lose her beloved Tara. She searches for comfort from the dispirited Ashley. Scarlett begs Ashley to leave everything behind and go away with her to Mexico. He embraces her and they share a forbidden kiss. He admits that he loves her and admires her courage, but because of his honour he can't leave Melanie and the baby behind. Ashley reminds Scarlett that she still has Tara which she loves more than him; he thrusts the red dirt of Tara into her hand. Tara's former overseer Jonas Wilkerson (Victor Jory), who has grown prosperous by collaborating with the carpetbaggers, offers to buy Tara. Scarlett humiliates him and throws a clump of the red-clay earth in his face. Scarlett's feebleminded father pursues Wilkerson on a horse, intending to upbraid him. The horse falls while attempting to jump a fence, and Mr. OHara is killed in the fall. Scarlett decides to visit Rhett Butler, who now holds the rank of Captain, to ask him for the money she needs. He is being held in jail in Atlanta by Union forces, who are threatening him with hanging in the hope of obtaining Confederate gold that Butler has hidden. (Conditions aren't too bad, though; he drinks and gambles with the Yankees, and receives female visitors in his cell). Scarlett dresses up for the occasion in a gown sewn from the green-colored curtains of Tara. The loyal Mammy accompanies Scarlett, always trying to keep her charge out of trouble. Scarlett, admitted to Rhett's cell, assumes a nonchalant air and tries to present herself as elegant and rich. Rhett reveals her deception when he points out Scarlett's rough hands from working in the fields. Despite her anger, she begs him for the money, and even offers to be his mistress. Rhett says he has nothing to give her and dismisses her. On the way out, Scarlett sees Belle Watling arriving for a visit. Scarlett observes that Belle would know how to get the money and that she dresses well. Walking through the town, Scarlett and Mammy come across Frank Kennedy. He is a newly-successful businessman, selling the hardware and wood by which the city is being rebuilt. Frank is saving money to marry Suellen and bring her to the city. Scarlett sees her opportunity; she tells Frank that Suellen has decided to marry another man, and proceeds to play the coquette with Frank, despite Mammy's disapproving looks. Back at Tara, Suellen is heartbroken, having just learned that Scarlett has hastily married Frank, and that Frank has paid off Tara's tax debts. Ashley talks about the lost civilization of the South, and tells Scarlett that he will move his family to New York to work in a bank. Scarlett wants to hold onto the love of her life, so she throws a tantrum and insists that Ashley stay to help Scarlett and Frank with the lumber business. Melanie naively takes Scarlett's side, and a defeated-looking Ashley gives in. Frank's and Ashley's hardware and lumber store flourishes under Scarlett's management. She refuses credit to her poor neighbors and makes lucrative deals with northern businessmen. They expand by buying a sawmill, and Tara starts to regain part of its former splendor. Scarlett hires hungry convicts, who are exploited by a cruel overseer
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(John Wray). One day, she comes across Captain Rhett Butler, who is now free and very wealthy. He laughs, saying that she could have married him and become rich if she had waited. She brushes him off and leaves alone for the sawmill. Rhett points out that the shantytown on the way to the sawmill is full of dangerous criminals and deserters, but Scarlett shows him that she carries a gun. On the way to the sawmill, two men attack Scarlett from behind and overpower her before she can use her gun. They are on the verge of raping her when Big Sam (Everett Brown), a former slave at Tara, saves her. News of the events spreads quickly through the town. That evening, Frank drops Scarlett and Mammy at the Wilkes' home while he and Ashley go out to a "political meeting." The women sense that something is afoot, and Melanie reads aloud from 'David Copperfield' in an attempt to relieve the tension. Rhett appears and tells the women that the men have formed a vigilante group to punish the attackers. Rhett says that the Union army has been tipped off and that the men are in danger. Melanie reluctantly tells Rhett where the men are meeting, and Rhett says he will do what he can. Later, Rhett appears with Ashley and Dr Meade, with a squadron of Union soldiers right behind them. Rhett, Dr Meade and Ashley pretend to be drunk. Rhett tells the Yankee captain (Ward Bond) that they have spent the evening at the establishment of Belle Watling, who will confirm their story. The captain accepts this explanation and departs. Rhett then reveals that there was a skirmish at the shantytown, that Ashley is wounded and the two who attacked Scarlett are dead, along with others. Scarlett is frantic over Ashley's condition, but neglects to inquire what happened to her husband. Rhett finally mentions that Frank Kennedy was killed. Another day, Melanie meets Belle Watling and thanks her for helping to save Ashley. Belle cautions Melanie not to speak to her in public as it would damage Melanie's reputation. Melanie says that she would be proud to greet Belle in public. Rhett visits Scarlett, again a widow. He realizes that she has been drinking heavily, despite her attempts to cover up the smell with cologne. Scarlett tells Rhett that she will never love him because she's in love with another man, but she will marry Rhett because of his money. Rhett says that they two are two of a kind, partners in crime, and he marries her anyway. They have a luxurious honeymoon in New Orleans and then return to Tara so that Scarlett can use her new riches to restore its full glory. Rhett also buys a mansion in Atlanta for them. Soon, they have a child, Bonnie Blue Butler (Cammie King). After the birth, Scarlett becomes depressed by her fading youth and her unrequited love for Ashley. She informs Rhett that she wants no more children and will no longer sleep with him. The furious Rhett storms out to find consolation at Belle Watling's. Although he has grounds for divorce, Rhett continues with the sham marriage in order to keep up social appearances for Bonnie's sake. Bonnie becomes a sort of substitute for Scarlett in Rhett's eyes. He dotes on the child, giving her the best of everything, including riding lessons and a pony. India and Mrs. Meade discover Scarlett hugging Ashley at the hardware store. Although the hug was rather innocent, Scarlett knows that rumours will fly. That night is Ashley's birthday party. Rhett, who has heard the gossip, forces Scarlett to go in a daring red taffeta dress. Melanie is the only person who welcomes Scarlett. Back at the Atlanta mansion, Scarlett finds Rhett completely drunk. They have an angry confrontation, and this time Rhett refuses to take no for an answer. He carries Scarlett off to the bedroom. The next morning, Scarlett seems deliriously happy. When Rhett arrives to apologize and propose a divorce, her good mood vanishes. Both partners are too proud to admit that they enjoyed the reunion. Rhett promises to take care of Scarlett financially, but insists on taking Bonnie. Scarlett rejects his offer, as it would be a disgrace. Rhett later leaves on an extended trip to London and takes Bonnie with him. In London, Bonnie has nightmares and can't sleep in the dark. Her stuffy English nurse (Lillian Kemble-Cooper) believes that the ordeal will build the child's character, but Rhett dismisses the nurse and lets Bonnie sleep with a light on. The homesick Bonnie begs to return to her mother. When Rhett and Bonnie return to Atlanta, Scarlett tells him that she's pregnant again. Rhett reacts coldly and Scarlett ups the ante by saying she wishes the baby were not his, to which Rhett retorts "Maybe you'll have an accident." In the ensuing row, Scarlett falls down the stairs and loses her baby. Later, at the behest of Melanie, who has become preganant again, Rhett makes an effort to be kind to Scarlett. Sitting in the back terrace of their Atlanta mansion, Rhett and Scarlett discuss the possibility of Scarlett giving up the lumber business to devote herself to her husband and child. A reconciliation starts to seem possible. Just at that moment, Bonnie insists stubbornly on jumping a fence with her pony. Scarlett remembers her father's death and has a premonition of disaster. Her worst fears come true as Bonnie misses the jump, falls, and dies. Rhett is devastated by Bonnie's death, and refuses to release the child's body for burial until convinced to do so by Melanie. The overwrought Melanie collapses and goes into labor. The doctor determines that Melanie is dying. In a final meeting with Scarlett, Melanie asks her to look after Ashley. When Melanie dies, Ashley is left a broken man. He tells Scarlett that Melanie was always his true love; this comes as a devastating revelation to Scarlett. Scarlett runs after Rhett, who had withdrawn when he saw Scarlett talking to Ashley. Back in the cold and empty Atlanta mansion, Rhett tells Scarlett that, since Scarlett will never stop loving Ashley, he
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is leaving her and going back to Charleston. Any chance of making the marriage work ended when their child died. Scarlett insists that she now realizes she loves Rhett, and that she has loved him all along. Rhett won't listen. She asks what will happen to her if he leaves for good. Rhett replies "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn!" and strides out of the house into the fog. Scarlett collapses in anguish, having realized too late where her true love lies. She pulls back from despair only when she remembers the other great love of her life, for her homestead of Tara. Scarlett determines to return to Tara, make a new start, and try to get Rhett back, since "Tomorrow is another day!" In the final shot, we see Scarlett silhouetted against Tara in the sunset.

Ôdishon (1999) Audition (1999)
Director: Takashi Miike Seven years after the death of his wife, company executive Aoyama is invited to sit in on auditions for an actress. Leafing through the resumés in advance, his eye is caught by Yamazaki Asami, a striking young woman with ballet training. On the day of the audition, she's the last person they see. Aoyama is hooked. He notes her number from her file, calls her and takes her to dinner. He hesitates to call again, worried that he'll seem too eager. When he does, Asami knowingly lets the phone ring for some time before answering. She's alone in her darkened room alone, that is, apart from the writhing victim she has tied up in a sack on the floor. Shigeharu Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi), a middle-aged widower who lost his wife to an illness seven years prior, is urged by his 17-year-old son, Shigehiko (Tetsu Sawaki), to begin dating women again. Shigehiko is somewhat doubtful of his father's love life, but plans to move out when he finishes school and does not want his father to be alone. Aoyama's friend and colleague, Yoshikawa (Jun Kunimura), a film producer, devises a plan to hold a mockaudition, in which young, beautiful women would audition for the "part" of Aoyama's new wife, under the impression that they are auditioning for a new film, but actually so Aoyama can marry one of the finalist contestants. Aoyama is immediately enchanted by Asami Yamazaki (Eihi Shiina), a 24-year-old woman with a soft voice and reserved, yet confident, mannerisms. In her audition, Asami says that she was once a ballerina headed for greatness, but had to give up dancing after an injury. Aoyama, still reeling from the death of his wife, is attracted to her apparent emotional depth. Yoshikawa warns him about Asami, saying that he has a bad feeling about her. None of the references on her résumé were able to be reached and her job history is shaky. The music producer she claimed to work for had gone missing. Unfortunately, Aoyama is so enthralled by her inner and outer beauty that he is blinded by his feelings for her. She lives in an empty apartment, furnished only with a sack and a telephone. Four days following the audition, she sits perfectly still in the middle of the floor next to the telephone, waiting for it to ring. When it finally does, the sack lurches across the room and makes gurgling sounds. She ignores it as she waits a few rings before answering. When Asami answers the phone, she confesses to Aoyama that she never expected him to call. After several dates, she agrees to accompany him to a seaside hotel. Once at the hotel, Asami tells Aoyama about the abuse she suffered as a child and shows him the burn scars on her body. Asami asks Aoyama to love only her. Aoyama promises to do so and they make love. The next morning, Aoyama is awakened by a telephone call; it is the front desk wondering if, since his companion left, he too would be checking out. He realizes Asami is nowhere to be found. Using her résumé, Aoyama searches in vain for her. Aoyama visits the old ballet studio where Asami claimed to have trained for 12 years. He finds that the studio is now inhabited only by a disabled old man in a wheelchair with artificial feet. It is revealed that the man caused the burn scars on Asami's legs. Then he goes to the bar where Asami used to work and someone tells him that it has been closed for a year because the woman who was in charge, the wife of a record producer, was found dismembered. When the police put her body back together, they found 3 extra fingers, an extra ear, and an extra tongue. Asami goes to Aoyama's house during his search. Once there, she finds a photo of his dead wife. Enraged, she slips a sedative in his drink and hides. Aoyama comes home, has a drink and faints. The movie cuts to a sequence about Asami's past and present. In one scene, The contents of the sack are revealed to be a man missing both
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feet, his tongue, one ear and three fingers on one hand. He crawls out of the sack and begs for food. Asami vomits into a dog dish and places it on the floor for the man. The man sticks his face in the bowl of vomit, and hungrily consumes it. A while later, Asami returns to the drugged and paralyzed Aoyama. As she walks into the room, the audience sees the twisted body of Aoyama's pet dog. She proceeds to inject Aoyama with an agent that paralyzes his body, but keeps his nerves alert. She then tortures him with needles in his abdomen and under his eyes. As she is torturing him, she tells him he is just like everyone else in not being able to love only her. She talks about how he has many whom he loves in his life, mainly his son. She says that she has only him and that this is not acceptable, because then he will never be completely hers. Her torture of him, she explains, is to teach him the meaning of needing someone. She tells him that, "words cause lies, pain can be trusted." She then cuts off his left foot with a wire saw. While Asami begins to cut off his other foot, she is surprised by Aoyama's son returning home. She hides and prepares to attack him. He discovers his father on the floor, turns, and is surprised by Asami. Suddenly Aoyama has a dream that he is waking up and that the past events have been a dream, to just after he and Asami had made love for the first time. She says that she accepts his marriage proposal, despite him never actually proposing, and says that she is the heroine of his life. He awakes from this dream to see his son swing around and Asami fail to disable him. Shigehiko runs up a flight of stairs to escape her and she follows him, he kicks her down the stairs, breaking her neck. Aoyama tells his son to call the police. As Aoyama lies in agony on the floor, he continues to stare at the dying figure of Asami on the floor, her neck is broken in a way that she is facing him. She mutters things that she had told him earlier about waiting for his call, and being excited to see him again. He is overcome with sadness as he remembers his answer to her in his dream sequence about her abuse, that "It's hard to forget about...but someday you'll feel...that life is wonderful."

AWAY FROM HER
Directed By: Sarah Polley Synopsis: Married for almost 50 years, Grant and Fiona's commitment to each other appears unwavering, and their everyday life is full of tenderness and humor.... Married for almost 50 years, Grant and Fiona's commitment to each other appears unwavering, and their everyday life is full of tenderness and humor. This serenity is broken only by the occasional, carefully restrained reference to the past, giving a sense that this marriage may not always have been such a fairy tale. This tendency of Fiona's to make such references, along with her increasingly evident memory loss, creates a tension that is usually brushed off casually by both of them. But, when it is no longer possible for either of them to ignore the fact that Fiona is being consumed by Alzheimer's disease, the limits of their love and loyalty must be wrenchingly redefined. Grant and Fiona Anderson have been married for forty-four years. Their marriage has been a generally happy and loving one although not perfect due to some indiscretions when Grant was working as a college professor. Fiona has just been admitted to Meadowlake, a long term care facility near their country home in southwestern Ontario, because her recent lapses of memory have been diagnosed as a probable case of Alzheimer's disease. She and Grant made this decision together, although a still lucid Fiona seems to have made peace with the decision and her diagnosis more so than Grant. With respect to the facility, what Grant has the most difficulty with are what he sees as the sadness associated with the facility's second floor - where the more advanced cases are housed - but most specifically the facility's policy of no visitors within the first thirty days of admission to allow the patient to adjust more easily to their new life there... Julie Christie's combination of talent, beauty and brains has enthralled me over four decades. Nearly a decade ago, her Oscar nominated performance in "Afterglow" established that she was not a spent force while playing a gracefully aging wife of a handyman in the US. One thought that would be her best turn at geriatric impersonations. Less than a decade later, Christie comes up with an even better performance of a woman coping with Alzheimer's disease in a debut directorial effort "Away from Her" of Canadian actress Sarah Polley. I saw the film today at the ongoing International Film Festival of Kerala, India, where Ms Christie, serving on the jury for the competition section, introduced her film thus: "It is immaterial whether you are rich or poor--we cannot predict what can happen to us. Enjoy the film with this thought." Ms Christie probably put in her best effort because the young director considers Ms Christie to be her "adoptive" mother, having worked together on three significant movie projects in five years. The film's subject brings memories of two similar films: Pierre Granier-Deferre' film "Le Chat" that won a Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival for both Jean Gabin and Simone Signoret in 1971 and Paul Mazursky's "Harry and Tonto" which won an Oscar for the lead actor Art Carney in 1974. This performance of Julie Christie ranks alongside those winners. Today geriatric care is a growing problem. This film is a sensitive look at parting of married couples when one of
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them needs institutional care. Ms Polley's choice of the actor Gordon Pinsent is an intelligent one as the film relies on his narration and Mr Pinsent's deep voice provides the right measure of gravitas. Olympia Dukakis is another fine actor playing a lady who has "quit quitting". So is Michael Murphy doing a lengthy role without saying a word. The strengths of the film are the subject, the direction, the performances and the seamless editing by the director's spouse. It is not a film that will attract young audiences who are insensitive. Yet the film has a evocative scene where a young teenager with several parts of her body pierced by rings is totally amazed by the devotion of the aging husband for his wife. So in a way the film reaches out to different age groups. Though it talks about sex, it can be safe family viewing material. Chances are that most viewers will love the film if they are interested in films that are different from "the American films that get shown in multiplexes" to quote a character in the film. More importantly this film advertises the problem of Alzheimer's disease eloquently and artistically. It prepares you for future shocks.

Elegy (I) (2008)
Director: Isabel Coixet David Kepesh is growing old. He's a professor of literature, a student of American hedonism, and an amateur musician and photographer. When he finds a student attractive, Consuela, a 24-year-old Cuban, he sets out to seduce her. Along the way, he swims in deeper feelings, maybe he's drowning. She presses him to sort out what he wants from her, and a relationship develops. They talk of traveling. He confides in his friend, George, a poet long-married, who advises David to grow up and grow old. She invites him to meet her family. His own son, from a long-ended marriage, confronts him. Is the elegy for lost relationships, lost possibilities, beauty and time passing, or failure of nerve? David Kepesh (Ben Kingsley) is a cultural critic and professor, in a state of 'emancipated manhood'. Previously married, he has a son who has never forgiven him for leaving his mother. His relationships with women are usually casual, brief and sexual in nature. His Pulitzer Prize-winning friend, George O'Hearn (Dennis Hopper), suggests that he "bifurcate" his life: have conversations and enjoy art with a wife, and "keep the sex just for sex". Believing himself to be an independent and self-actualized individual, he encounters Consuela Castillo (Penélope Cruz), a beautiful and confident student who attends one of his lectures. She captures his attention like no other woman, and they begin a serious relationship. David is also in a casual 20-year relationship with Caroline (Patricia Clarkson), another former student. Over dinner, Consuela invites David to her graduation party. George advises him to leave her before she leaves him. Consuela waits for an answer, but David only promises, "I'll have to check my schedule." Consuela is frustrated. In the end, he agrees to attend. On the day of the event, David phones Consuela and claims he has blown a tire and is stuck in bad traffic and it will be unavoidably delayed. In reality, he is sitting in his car, anxious about meeting Consuela's family. Heartbroken and annoyed, Consuela hangs up. Over the course of the next two years, David's friend George, passes away, and David's son Kenny is embroiled in an affair. Two years pass before Consuela and David come in contact again. On New Year's Eve, David arrives home to find a message from Consuela. She mentions that she needs to tell him something before he finds out from someone else. At his apartment, Consuela announces that she has found a lump in her breast and will need surgery. Griefstricken, David cries and asks her why she didn't tell him sooner. Consuela then asks David to take photos of her breasts, before the doctors 'ruin' them in the surgery. David agrees. In the final scene, David visits Consuela at the hospital where she is recovering from her surgery. Consuela says, "I will miss you". David responds, "I am here" as he climbs into the hospital bed and gently kisses her face. In a fantasy scene, the film flashes back to David and Consuela on the beach where Consuela told David she loves him.

A Single Man (2009)
Director: Tom Ford It's November 30, 1962. Native Brit George Falconer, an English professor at a Los Angeles area college, is finding it difficult to cope with life. Jim, his personal partner of sixteen years, died in a car accident eight months earlier when he was visiting with family. Jim's family were not going to tell George of the death or accident let alone allow him to attend the funeral. This day, George has decided to get his affairs in order before he will commit suicide that
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evening. As he routinely and fastidiously prepares for the suicide and post suicide, George reminisces about his life with Jim. But George spends this day with various people, who see a man sadder than usual and who affect his own thoughts about what he is going to do. Those people include Carlos, a Spanish immigrant/aspiring actor/gigolo recently arrived in Los Angeles; Charley, his best friend who he knew from England, she... George Falconer (Colin Firth) approaches a car accident in the middle of a snow-white scenery. There is a bloodied man there and he kisses him. He wakes up: he was dreaming about the moment when his partner of 16 years, Jim (Mathew Goode), died--though he was not there with him because Jim was visiting his disapproving family on his own. George remembers the phone ringing on that fateful day, when Jim's cousin told him about the fatal accident, and how George was not welcome to attend the funeral, because of the family's homophobia (common for the period and later). George remembers breaking down to Charley (Julianne Moore) that day, his best friend from his life in London, who had also relocated to LA; once briefly sexually attached to George before he was completely honest with himself, she may still feel attracted to him. George showers and dresses. It's November 30, 1962, the eve of the Cuban missile crisis. Though British, he is now a professor of English at UCLA. He is depressed, never having recovered from his loss; and when he leaves for work, he packs a gun in his briefcase. He tells his cleaning lady Alva (Paulette Lamori) that she has always been wonderful - in spite of her having forgotten to take out the bread from the fridge. George hugs her, which leaves her utterly confused. On campus, George notices a couple of students, chain-smoking Lois (Nicole Steinwedell) and a boy. One of the secretaries (Keri Lynn Pratt) tells him that she has given his address to some nice new student; it turns out to be this boy, Kenny Potter (Nicholas Hoult), who talks to him after class about the speech George has just given out in the classroom concerning minorities and fear. Kenny discusses recreational drug use with Kenny who tells him that he had never heard George express himself so openly in class as he had that day. He buys George a pencil sharpener as a token of gratitude for George's talking with him. George phones Charley, who is dressing for the dinner they have planned at her home. George gets into his car, and picks his gun after having cleaned up his office. However, Kenny appears once again, and invites him to go for a drink, observing George's depression and having noticed that he has cleaned out the desk in his office. George tells him it will have to be some other time. He goes to the bank to pick up various things from his safe deposit box, and when looking at a photo of his deceased lover, recalls a conversation with him on the beach. After buying some bullets, he goes to a convenience store. There, Carlos (Jon Kortajarena) bumps onto him, breaking the bottle of Scotch he has just bought. George buys a new bottle of Scotch and they talk. They smoke a few cigarettes and drink a bottle of gin together. George leaves, refusing Carlos' offer of company, saying that this is a serious day for him and that he's trying to get over an old love. At home, he puts on a record and remembers a conversation with Jim while each one was reading a different book on a couch. He pretends shooting himself as practice for later that night, but in a semi-comic scene, can't find the best position in which to accomplish it. Charley calls to remind him of their dinner plans, which he grudgingly attends after leaving a note and some money for Alva. They dance and talk about London, life, Charley's exhusband's abandonment, and she offends George by suggesting that they might have had a "normal" life together if he hadn't been a "poof." Charley says George doesn't look well, reminding him of the heart attack he suffered near the time of Jim's death. Charley tries to convince George to spend the night at her home, but he leaves. The scene flashes back to 1946 when Jim and George had met when at a bar. Jim was on leave from the Army, right after the second world war. Returning to1962, we see George returning to the same bar, near his home; now a quiet place where he asks for a Scotch. Kenny has followed him there. They talk and then go to the beach and swim naked. They go to George's place. As George's forehead is bleeding, Kenny tends to it, and sees in the medicine's cabinet a nude photo of Jim. George sees Kenny strip off his wet clothes, but does nothing. Kenny says that he and Lois are not romantically involved. Not unlike George and Charley in the distant past, Kenny explains that they had a brief sexual liason. Kenny and George do not have sex, and Kenny stays on the couch, given the very late hour. George wakes in a few hours, and finds his gun under Kenny's covers and removes it, locking it up as Kenny sleeps. When he returns to bed, George dies of a heart attack, seeing the image of Jim kissing his forehead.

Yeh Saali Zindagi
Director: Sudhir Mishra
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Gangsters kidnap the prospective son-in-law of a politician in order to secure the release of an imprisoned gangmember.

The Mother and the Whore 1973
Directed By: Jean Eustache One of the most important French films of the 1970s, Jean Eustache's marathon drama focuses on three twenty something Parisians in a bizarre love triangle: Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Léaud) is a seemingly unemployed narcissist involved with both a live-in girlfriend (Bernadette Lafont) and a Polish nurse (Franτoise Lebrun) whom he picked up at a café and with whom he begins a desultory affair. Clocking in at over 3 1/2 hours, the movie focuses less on plot than on the confused and ambivalent interrelations of these three lost souls. As such, it becomes a searing document of the aftermath of Paris's social and sexual revolutions of the Sixties, particularly the uprisings of May 1968. These characters know that they are supposed to be free and liberated, but they don't quite know how to go about it, or how to make it work in practice, and their efforts don't seem to make them any happier. In the guise of a plotless style seemingly borrowed from cinéma vérité documentaries, Eustache unfolds a critique of both the illusory liberations of his social moment and the dead-end heritage of his cinematic moment. By casting Jean-Pierre Léaud, an icon of the French New Wave who first made his name as the star of Franτois Truffaut's pioneering The 400 Blows (1959), Eustache sets out to rewrite the conventions of a French New Wave that had changed from a revolutionary film movement into a formulaic mainstream style. Despite its deceptively rambling manner, the film effortlessly intertwines its characters' psychological dilemmas with a portrait of its cultural moment with a revision of a wide swath of film history from Truffaut's Jules and Jim to Jean Renoir's Rules of the Game to Ernst Lubitsch's Design for Living. This experimental classic is not for all viewers, but it's an unforgettable, and historically indispensable, experience for those who can stick with it. Unfortunately, Jean Eustache (1938-1981) belongs like so many once leading French film makers nowadays to the great unknown ones whose movies are hard to find and are not released on international DVDs. Since we have a good old-fashioned video-store in Tucson, I had the chance to watch this 3 1/2-hour marathon masterwork that is not boring for ten seconds. Since we speak here about one of the most discussed (and most controversially discussed) movies of all times, let me tell you my impression that the endless dialogs, originally typical for the early "Nouvelle Vague" of a Jacques Rivette or Alain Resnais appear almost ridiculous in this movie. The dialogs are basically monologues, mainly the longest ones spoken by Jean-Pierre Léaud. The most characteristic feature is that the intersections of the speeches of two people is almost zero. Léaud, or his character, Alexandre, pleases to tell more about himself than about the topics he is seemingly to speak. Therefore, one can hardly speak about communication in this movie. It is well possible that the director had a gargantuan satire in mind against the idle running of the once so hotly discussed political and sociological ideas, but the type of man Alexandre exists to all times, we find him already in Petron's "Satiricon", which work has actually great resemblance with "The Mother and the Whore". Alexandre does not only nothing, but he has developed an own kind of metaphysics about the absence of acting, at least acting in the sense of responsibility toward the society whose part he is. He mocks at the people who run to work at 7 c'clock in the morning, when he is just busy having his last drink before he goes to bed in the apartment of one of his girlfriends from whose money he lives. He is unable to speak one sentence without quoting one of the leading thinkers between Nietzsche and Bernanos. Especially Sartre who is shown quickly in the French intellectual café "Aux Deux Magots", where Alexandre, too, is sitting all day, must serve as excuse for the life-style of Alexandre and his colleagues, because they suffer existential crisis from bourgeois nausea. However, the intellectual speeches of Alexandre seem to be rather pseudo-intellectual, and the sentences and quips he cites seem to come rather from a dictionary of quotations than from his actual reading of the respective books. It is true: This movie demands an extremely broad European knowledge, especially the connoisseurship of French existentialist philosophy and there consequences to the 68 student revolution movement, but if you have this knowledge, than you will enjoy 215 minutes of your life by staring amazed into the TV and crying out with laughing like you have probably not done it since a long time.

El lado oscuro del corazón (1992) The Dark Side of the Heart
Directed By: Eliseo Subiela Oliveiro is a young poet living in Buenos Aires where sometimes he has to sell his ideas to an advertising agency to make a living or exchange his poems for a steak. In Montevideo, he meets a prostitute, Ana, with whom he falls in
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love. Back in Buenos Aires, he accepts a contract with a publicity agency to get the money for three days of love with her. Will he get what his searching for when his ideal of love's pleasure is literally going in levitation while making love?

Blue Valentine (2010)
Directed By: Derek Cianfrance The film centers on a contemporary married couple, charting their evolution over a span of years by cross-cutting between time periods. Dean Pereira and Cindy Heller Pereira are a young, working class married couple - Dean currently working as a painter, and Cindy working as a nurse in a medical clinic - with a young daughter named Frankie. Despite their relatively tender ages, they are both ravaged by the life they've eked out together and by the experiences they've had leading into their marriage. Dean, a high school drop out, comes from a broken home, where he never really had a mother figure. He never saw himself getting married or having a family despite falling in love at first sight with Cindy. He doesn't have any professional ambition beyond his current work - which he enjoys since he feels he can knock off a beer at 8 o'clock in the morning without it affecting his work - although Cindy believes he has so much more potential in life. Cindy also comes from a dysfunctional family, with her own mother and father not setting an example of a harmonious married or family life.. I came away from this film more wary of love and relationships than any film I've ever seen. You look at Dean's character (Gosling's best role to-date) and wonder what it is that he did wrong. He fell for a beautiful, young woman (Williams), stepped-up to care for her and her yet-unborn daughter, and shifted his life to focus entirely on being a good husband and father. He was so charming in his interactions with his daughter, and was also loving towards his wife enduring more rejection from her than most could, trying to breathe love back into the relationship. Even his outbursts seemed attempts to give her what she wanted. So many reviews talk about this being a story of falling in and out of love. My response is surely subjective, but I don't feel Cindy ever loved Dean. She was desperate, pregnant and facing life as a young parent, and Dean was there to hold her. As a mother and wife, I found her to be unlikeable and selfish, cold and unloving. Cindy was probably not intentionally manipulative, but from her initial reluctance to tell Dean about her pregnancy, to her secrecy around her job offer or the encounter in the grocery store, these are all subtle manipulations and lies, hiding the truth (and her true self) from Dean. I heard the director say he was sympathetic to both characters. Any sympathy I had for Cindy as a young woman caught in a relationship and family she did not hope for was overshadowed by the fact that she made the choices that led her there, and dragged others in with her. I did not sense any growth in her character to indicate she'd move on to create a brighter future for herself and Frankie. Dean, on the other hand, was a good person, eager to love, and all-too-willing to devote his life to Cindy and daughter Frankie (a sparse, but strong, performance by Faith Wladyka), and in the end, he's left with a broken heart and a broken home. I'd love to feel he's better-off without Cindy, if only it weren't so heartbreakingly clear that he loves her and her daughter immensely. To me, the film served as a warning in love to be careful where you put your energy.

Sophie's Choice (1982)
Director: Alan J. Pakula Sophie is the survivor of Nazi concentration camps, who has found a reason to live in Nathan, a sparkling if unsteady American Jew obsessed with the Holocaust. They befriend Stingo, the movie's narrator, a young American writer new to New York City. But the happiness of Sophie and Nathan is endangered by her ghosts and his obsessions. The year is 1947. Aspiring southern author Stingo (Peter MacNichol) heads to New York to seek his fortune. Moving into a dingy Brooklyn boarding house, Stingo strikes up a friendship with research chemist Nathan Landau (Kevin Kline) and Nathan's girlfriend, Polish refugee Sophie Zawistowska (Oscar-winner Meryl Streep). There is something unsettling about the relationship; Nathan is subject to violent mood swings, while Sophie seems to be harboring a horrible secret. Stingo soons learns that both Nathan and Sophie are strangers to truth; the audience is likewise led down several garden paths by a series of sepia-toned flashbacks, depicting Sophie's ordeal in a wartime concentration camp. The scene in which we discover the facts behind Sophie's "choice" is a gut-wrenching one; it might have been even more powerful had not the film taken so long to get there. It is betraying nothing to reveal that the character of Stingo is the alter ego of William Styron, upon whose best-selling novel the film was
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based. The film is rated R, due in great part to a disposable scene wherein Stingo tries to put the make on a "liberated" female intellectual.

Bo (2010)
Directed By: Hans Herbots Synopsis: Fifteen year old Deborah wants to escape her dull suburb and enjoy the luring city of Antwerp. Her new eighteen year old friend Jennifer leads her... Fifteen year old Deborah wants to escape her dull suburb and enjoy the luring city of Antwerp. Her new eighteen year old friend Jennifer leads her into the sparkling downtown nightlife. When Jennifer admits she's an escort girl, Deborah is intrigued by what appears to be an easy way of getting cash. Under the alias Bo, she takes her first steps into a world she can't handle yet. The downward spiral leads her to cheap thrills, drugs and into a juvenile institution. To escape this spiral, Deborah can only count on herself.

Biutiful (2010)
Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu Synopsis: Biutiful is a love story between a father and his children. This is the journey of Uxbal, a conflicted man who struggles to reconcile fatherhood,... Biutiful is a love story between a father and his children. This is the journey of Uxbal, a conflicted man who struggles to reconcile fatherhood, love, spirituality, crime, guilt and mortality amidst the dangerous underworld of modern Barcelona. His livelihood is earned out of bounds, his sacrifices for his children know no bounds. Like life itself, this is a circular tale that ends where it begins. As fate encircles him and thresholds are crossed, a dim, redemptive road brightens, illuminating the inheritances bestowed from father to child, and the paternal guiding hand that navigates life's corridors, whether bright, bad - or biutiful. This is a story of a man in free fall. On the road to redemption, darkness lights his way. Connected with the afterlife, Uxbal is a tragic hero and father of two who's sensing the danger of death. He struggles with a tainted reality and a fate that works against him in order to forgive, for love, and forever.

Hope Springs (2003)
Director: Mark Herman Colin's a sad-eyed British artist holed up in a rundown hotel in small-town Vermont after being dumped by his fiancée. The hotel owner plays matchmaker and introduces him to a local girl. Romance ensues, though Colin's ex may be looking to reunite.

Consenting Adults (1992)
Director: Alan J. Pakula Richard and Priscilla Parker's lives take a turn for the better when Eddy and Kay move into the house next door. Eddy's a risk taker and shows his new neighbours how to enjoy life at the expense of a rule or convention or two. What Richard doesn't realise is that Eddy's little games are just a prelude to something that's intended to destroy his neighbours' lives.

Much Ado About Nothing (1993)
Director: Kenneth Branagh Young lovers Hero and Claudio are to be married in one week. To pass the time, they conspire with Don Pedro to set a "lover's trap" for Benedick, an arrogant confirmed bachelor, and Beatrice, his favorite sparring partner. Meanwhile, the evil Don Jon conspires to break up the wedding by accusing Hero of infidelity. In the end, though, it all turns out to be "much ado about nothing." From the beginning to the end, I was comfortable with this movie. The script mixed with the directing and the terrific acting created a glad feeling over this movie. The clips when sir.Benedict and Beatrice are extremely happy to the fake-news arranged by the prince, to the tunes of the main theme you smile, just because it is such a merry film. The language is highly enjoyable, of course. The love-enemies between Benedict and Beatrice are fabulous. Keanu Reeves is good, for once. Denzel Washington really is enjoying being in a Shakespeare-movie, and Branagh is very, very entertaining. I love this movie.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
Director: Milos Forman McMurphy thinks he can get out of doing work while in prison by pretending to be mad. His plan backfires when he is sent to a mental asylum. He tries to liven the place up a bit by playing card games and basketball with his fellow inmates, but the head nurse is after him at every turn.
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Upon arrival at a mental institution, a brash rebel rallies the patients together to take on the oppressive Nurse Ratched, a woman more a dictator than a nurse. What a movie, what an excellent movie!!! That is what first went through my mind after seeing this masterpiece. I've seen many movies, but there aren't much movies which had such an impact on me. Nowadays almost all filmmakers believe they can only make a good movie by adding loads of special effects and lots of huge explosions ... This movie is so good, so convincing without them. The actors played their roles in such a convincing way that you would think these weren't actors at all, but real psychiatric patients. This movie may be 30 years old, but it hasn't lost any of its relevancy. OK, we don't put our mentally ill people in that kind of prisons anymore, the bars in front of the windows have gone and now we call it hospitals in stead of nut houses. But the treatment hasn't changed all that much. I once worked in such a hospital as a volunteer and still saw things like forced feeding, giving people so much medication until they no longer know who or where they are,... When the movie first came out, some people were shocked because when you watch the movie, you can't help it feeling more attached to the patients than to the doctors and nurses. This movie shows that cinema can make a difference. It can help to open people's eyes. If there is a movie that should be seen by everyone, this sure is the one. I give it a well deserved 10/10.

Waitress (2007)
Director: Adrienne Shelly Jenna is unhappily married, squirreling away money, and hoping to win a pie-baking contest so, with the prize money, she'll have enough cash to leave her husband Earl. She finds herself pregnant, which throws her plans awry. She bakes phenomenal pies at Joe's diner, listens to old Joe's wisdom, tolerates her sour boss Cal, is friends with Dawn and Becky (her fellow waitresses), and finds a mutual attraction with the new doctor in town. As the pregnancy advances, life with Earl seems less tolerable, a way out less clear, and the affair with the doctor complicated by his marriage. What options does a waitress have?

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (2006)
Directed By: Marc Rothemund Synopsis: Spring 1943: The Germans have lost the battle for Stalingrad and, in Munich members of the White Rose infiltrate the city with a wave upon wave of anti-Hitler activities and slogans. Sophie and Hans Scholl are busy distributing flyers in the main... Spring 1943: The Germans have lost the battle for Stalingrad and, in Munich members of the White Rose infiltrate the city with a wave upon wave of anti-Hitler activities and slogans. Sophie and Hans Scholl are busy distributing flyers in the main hall of Munich University when they are arrested. Interrogations follow the brother and sister's arrest and so does the pronouncement of their sentence. At first, Sophie feigns innocence, fighting tooth and nail to secure her and her brother's release. However, realizing that the death penalty awaits them, she does her best to protect her brother and the other resistance fighters. Gestapo man Mohr admires Sophie and indicates that he will help her if she admits to being a fellow-traveler. But Sophie refuses to give up her conviction, instead confronting Mohr with his own unthinking perception of what is right and just. Roland Freisler, chief of the Nazis' "People's Court", is sent from Berlin to Munich to conduct a show trial against the students. During the trial, Sophie battles so brilliantly against Freisler that she wins the approval of the male Nazi spectators at court. As soon as the trial is over, the two are taken away to Stadelheim to be executed. They are allowed to say goodbye to their parents before sharing their final cigarette. The Final Days is the true story of Germany's most famous anti-Nazi heroine brought to life. Sophie Scholl is the fearless activist of the underground student resistance group, The White Rose. Using historical records of her incarceration, the film re-creates the last six days of Sophie Scholl's life: a journey from arrest to interrogation, trial and sentence in 1943 Munich. Unwavering in her convictions and loyalty to her comrades, her cross-examination by the Gestapo quickly escalates into a searing test of wills as Scholl delivers a passionate call to freedom and personal responsibility that is both haunting and timeless.

The White Ribbon (Das weisse Band) (2009)
Directed By: Michael Haneke Synopsis: Strange events happen at a rural school in the north of Germany during the year 1913, which seem to be ritual punishment. Does this affect the school system, and how does the school have an influence on fascism? Strange events happen at a rural school in the north of Germany during the year 1913, which seem to be ritual punishment. Does this affect the school system, and how does the school have an influence on fascism?
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From July, 1913 to the outbreak of World War I, a series of incidents take place in a German village. A horse trips on a wire and throws the rider; a woman falls to her death through rotted planks; the local baron's son is hung upside down in a mill; parents slap and bully their children; a man is cruel to his long-suffering lover; another sexually abuses his daughter. People disappear. A callow teacher, who courts a nanny in the baron's household, narrates the story and tries to investigate the connections among these accidents and crimes. What is foreshadowed? Are the children holy innocents? God may be in His heaven, but all is not right with the world; the center cannot hold.

The Milk of Sorrow (2009)
Director: Claudia Llosa Fausta is suffering from a rare disease called the Milk of Sorrow, which is transmitted through the breast milk of pregnant women who were abused or raped during or soon after pregnancy. While living in constant fear and confusion due to this disease, she must face the sudden death of her mother. She chooses to take drastic measures to not follow in her mother's footsteps.

The Sea Inside (I) (2004)
Director: Alejandro Amenábar Life story of Spaniard Ramón Sampedro, who fought a 30-year campaign to win the right to end his life with dignity. Film explores Ramón's relationships with two women: Julia, a lawyer who supports his cause, and Rosa, a local woman who wants to convince him that life is worth living. Through the gift of his love, these two women are inspired to accomplish things they never previously thought possible. Despite his wish to die, Ramón taught everyone he encountered the meaning, value and preciousness of life. Though he could not move himself, he had an uncanny ability to move others.

Edge of Darkness
Director: Martin Campbell Thomas Craven is a detective who has spent years working the streets of Boston. When his own daughter is killed outside his own home, Craven soon realizes that her death is only one piece of an intriguing puzzle filled with corruption and conspiracy, and it falls to him to discover who is behind the crime. Written by alfiehitchie Thomas Craven, a single father, has been a Boston homicide detective for many years. His 24-year-old daughter Emma, his only child, is killed on the front steps of his home. At first it appears that Craven was the intended target. He soon uncovers evidence that leads him to think differently, and decides to pursue the information at all costs. He learns his daughter led a secret life that led to her murder. He quickly finds himself confronted with a shadowy world of corporate collusion with government-sanctioned murder. In the process he collides with a secret government operative, Darius Jedburgh, whose job is to clean up and hide any remaining evidence. Craven's singleness of purpose in finding answers about Emma's death becomes a transforming experience that changes his life.

Papillon (1973)
Director: Franklin J. Schaffner Based on the true story of Henri Charriere, also known as Papillon, which is French for 'butterfly' (the character even sports a large tattoo of a butterfly). A petty criminal, Papillon is wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to life in a French penal colony in 'Guiane' (French Guiana, South America). Papillon is determined to escape but attempt after attempt meets with difficulty, resulting in eventual recapture. He continues his attempts to escape despite incarcerations in solitary confinement as punishment.

Splendor in the Grass (1961)
Director: Elia Kazan It's 1928 in oil rich southeast Kansas. High school seniors Bud Stamper and Deanie Loomis are in love with each other. Bud, the popular football captain, and Deanie, the sensitive soul, are "good" kids who have only gone as far as kissing. Unspoken to each other, they expect to get married to each other one day. But both face pressures within the relationship, Bud who has the urges to go farther despite knowing in his heart that if they do that Deanie will end up with a reputation like his own sister, Ginny Stamper, known as the loose, immoral party girl, and Deanie who will do anything to hold onto Bud regardless of the consequences. They also face pressures from their parents who have their own expectation for their offspring. Bud's overbearing father, Ace Stamper, the local oil baron, does not believe Bud can do wrong and expects him to go to Yale after graduation, which does not fit within Bud's own expectations for himself..

Fish Tank 2009
Director: Andrea Arnold
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Mia, a foul-mouthed, stroppy fifteen-year-old, lives on an Essex estate with her tarty mother, Joanne, and precocious little sister Tyler. She has been excluded from school and is awaiting admission to a referrals unit and spends her days aimlessly. She begins an uneasy friendship with Joanne's handsome, extrovert Irish boyfriend, Connor, who encourages her one interest, dancing. What could go wrong? Andrea Arnold's "Fish Tank" was a big hit in Britain and at Cannes and now tries its hand at America, who will probably nickname it "White Precious." Anchored by a star-making performance from Kate Jarvis, Arnold's film is more grit and zero melodrama, a step-up from the weepy style of "Precious." Jarvis plays Mia, a teenager living in the ghetto where kids expect to follow in the option-less footsteps of their parents. Her little sister (Rebecca Griffiths) is already smoking and emulating skanks on MTV and mom (Kierston Wareing) is a drunk throwing parties with very sketchy friends. Mia has a dream of becoming a dancer and she finds encouragement from mom's new boyfriend, Connor (Michael Fassbender), a hunky security guard who seems like a nice guy but is, at times, "too friendly." It's familiar other-side-of-the tracks territory but it doesn't spend time wallowing in misfortune. Arnold's film is harsh, and with its use of language (the C and F words are used a lot), dead-end scenery, breathless sexual and violent encounters, and Jarvis' award-worthy portrayal, it's nothing short of compelling. It's a brave performance, a rough-fighter exterior masking youthful vulnerabilities. Fassbender also impresses as a charming/shady character that you're never quite sure has a sexual or fatherly preference toward Mia. It all comes down to a predictable yet scary ending where neglect turns dangerous.

A Swedish Love Story En kärlekshistoria 1970
Directed by: Roy Andersson A Swedish Love Story (Swedish: En kärlekshistoria) is a 1970 Swedish romantic drama directed by Roy Andersson, starring Ann-Sofie Kylin and Rolf Sohlman as two teenagers falling in love. Inspired by the Czechoslovak New Wave, the film was Andersson's feature film debut and was successful in Sweden and abroad. "As in a stage play, the red curtain rises: the film can start. The first sequence sets out the décor, after a prologue where we hear that girls are partial to aggressive boys ... However, the protagonists are fragile creatures who discover their amorous attraction via a simple exchange of looks – a furtive moment which the camera captures on the fly. Awkward and sensitive, these two youths, at the border between childhood and adolescence, give themselves an aura of freedom by going to discos, cigarettes between their lips. Happily, their ingenuousness does not lead to anything too terrible; exposed to the mocking gaze of adults, they manage to preserve the delicacy of their feelings and the justice of their attitudes. The filmmaker observes his pre-adolescents like creatures still in a state of innocence, before maturity catches up and leads them to the mediocrity of adults. Pär, at one point humiliated by a bigger lad who repeatedly slaps him, takes refuge in solitude, and then gives in once more to the attraction he feels for Annika – a very young girl who wears her miniskirt with unforced impudence. Andersson captures the furtive gestures that express love, such as when the boy walks, pushing his motorbike, while the girl follows him, her hand delicately laid on the back saddle." Great quality from a DVD source. Also with directory commentary. This film set a precedent in authenticity. As only a Swede could, Andersson captures young love with the camera in lingering shots against a background of social critique of the older generation. Absolutely fucking brilliant film.

Ordinary People (1980)
Director: Robert Redford Beth, Calvin, and their son Conrad are living in the aftermath of the death of the other son. Conrad is overcome by grief and misplaced guilt to the extent of a suicide attempt. He is in therapy. Beth had always preferred his brother and is having difficulty being supportive to Conrad. Calvin is trapped between the two trying to hold the family together. "Ordinary People" deserved its Oscar. There was such fierce competition in 1980 that winning the award was a real honor. The movie should have shared honors with "Coal Miner's Daughter". Having said that, the reality of the movie is so heartbreaking and so real that you feel every emotion and understand the characters feelings, whether you liked them or not. Mary Tyler Moore's performance of Beth Jarrett is so powerful that you forget Moore's comedic repertoire and immerse yourself into her persona as a cold, distant wife that can not show emotion for her son. It is disturbing that Beth can not show Conrad love and it breaks your heart when you see the awkwardness as he tries so hard to get any love or recognition from her. Her breakdown scene at the golf course and the realization at the end of the movie that she is incapable of affectionate love are powerful performances. Donald Sutherland's understated and beautiful performance is brilliant. His making up for Beth's shortcomings as an affectionate human being are so touching. He does all he can to keep the rest of his family together. Why he was not nominated for an Oscar is beyond comprehension.
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Timothy Hutton absolutely shines as the troubled Conrad. All you want to do is hug him, love him, after his rejections from his own mother. The torture and pain he is in is portrayed so stunningly. His guilt over the death of his brother and subsequent depression are heartbreaking. Growing up in suburban America, the film rings many a truth to the insights of what people perceive as a "normal family". The cocktail parties, the school activities, the socialization of Beth and her friends over the recognition of her son do happen in suburban America. Robert Redford recognized every real detail of the facades that people put up and the reality of what happens at home. They are poignantly and chillingly realized. Definitely one of the most deserved Best Picture Oscars given. Please don't miss this one. The Jarretts are an affluent, upper middle class family trying to return to normal life after the death of one teenage son and the attempted suicide of their other, Conrad (Timothy Hutton). The boy has recently come home following a four-month stay in a psychiatric hospital. Alienated from his friends and family, Conrad sees a psychiatrist, Dr. Berger (Judd Hirsch), who helps him deal with a sailing accident in which he survived his older brother Buck. Buck, more outgoing and perceived to be a better athlete than his brother, came first in everyone's estimation (especially Conrad's). Conrad now deals with post-traumatic stress disorder and survivor's guilt. Conrad's father, Calvin (Donald Sutherland), awkwardly struggles to connect with his son and his wife, Beth (Mary Tyler Moore). However, Beth refuses to comprehend her loss and struggles to maintain her composure. She appears to have loved her elder son more; as a result, she has grown cold toward the younger son. She is fixated with maintaining the appearance of perfection and normalcy. This, along with an inability to confront her own feelings, renders her frigid. In one telling scene, Beth overhears Calvin telling a friend at a party that their son has been seeing a psychiatrist. On their way home, she berates him for revealing something she thinks should be kept private. As Conrad works with Dr. Berger and learns to confront his emotions, he starts dating Jeannine (Elizabeth McGovern), a kind and nonjudgmental girl from his school choir. Conrad begins to regain a sense of optimism. However, the suicide of Karen (Dinah Manoff), a friend from the hospital, threatens to bring back his depression. (Conrad finds out about the suicide later in the movie.) As Conrad struggles to re-establish normal relationships with his family and friends, he doesn't allow anyone -- especially Beth -- to get close. Beth comes across Conrad alone in the back yard and gives him a jacket in an attempt to show tenderness, only to be rebuffed. Conrad also rejects the overtures from a former friend after a fistfight, because it reopens the wounds of Buck's death. Conrad often argues with Beth while Calvin tries to referee. At one point, Conrad confronts his mother with the fact she never visited him in the hospital; when Conrad says that she would have visited Buck in the hospital, Beth tellingly cries, "Buck never would have been in the hospital!" During a subsequent visit to Beth's brother in Houston, Calvin angrily confronts her about her attitude, suggesting that Conrad's fears of his mother not really loving him are probably well-founded. Eventually, Conrad is able to move past Buck's death and begins to get a grasp of Beth's frailties; Dr. Berger advises him to accept her as she is. Calvin, aided by a session with Berger, observes Conrad trying to sincerely apologize for his behavior and affectionately hug Beth. She freezes and limply returns the hug, fighting to suppress any sentiment. Calvin notices this and confronts Beth again, inquiring whether she is capable of truly loving anyone. When Calvin tells Beth that he might not love her anymore, she goes upstairs and packs to leave, where she briefly breaks down crying. As Conrad is awakened by a cab pulling away, he goes downstairs where his father tells him his mother has left. Conrad's first reaction is to blame himself. Calvin rebukes Conrad for taking that attitude but then regrets losing his temper. Conrad tells him not to apologize, that perhaps he needs his father to take him to task more often, as he used to do with Buck. The film closes with both having achieved some level of understanding and they embrace. Pachelbel's Canon plays as the camera pans up over the house, leaving us to consider a family of Ordinary People.

In the Bedroom (2001)
Director: Todd Field The Fowlers are a normal family in Maine. Matt is the town doctor and loves to fish, his wife, Ruth, is the school's choir leader, and their son, Frank, is home from his first year of college. Frank is in love with Natalie, a young mother who isn't quite divorced yet from her ex-husband, Richard Strout, whose family runs the local cannery. It makes Richard's blood run cold to see his wife running around with another man. And soon, an unthinkable tragedy happens that will tear the Fowlers apart. Everything about this film is wonderfully done, from the restrained direction and acting, to the inexorable progression to tragic conclusion following preceding events. All the actors and acting are excellent, with a particularly subtle and brilliant portrayal by Tom Wilkinson as Dr. Fowler. Always great, he is, in my estimation, one of the unsung and underrated actors in film today. Sissy Spacek is also wonderful, and the inevitable emotional fallout in their relationship after their shared experience is beautifully done. Very human - and very real.
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Though difficult to watch, it is a great film, great story, with great performances all around by gifted actors. Not to be unsung are the excellent performances by Marisa Tomei, and all the other supporting actors. A film that would benefit one to watch more than once, there is that much substance there. Worth paying particular notice to is the opening metaphor in the scene on the lobster boat where Tom Wilkinson (Dr. Fowler) explains the nature of how a lobster-trap works - and the name the lobster-men (and tradition) have given to the inner part of the trap. This is the metaphor for the human story that will, tragically, unfold. A great film, with great work all around. Todd Field is a director to remember.

The Deer Hunter 1978
DIRECTOR........ MICHAEL CIMINO Michael, Nick, and Steven are three buddies from the steel mill town of Clairton, Penn.They are like schoolmates, hanging out in a local bar and enjoying weekends of deer-hunting. Michael and Nick are also both in love with Linda, who seems to juggle both of the men. But their placid life is soon to be changed after they are enlisted in the airborne infantry of Vietnam. So they all celebrate a goodbye at Steven's wedding and they leave to Vietnam. After some time and many horrors the three friends fall in the hands of the Vietcong and are brought to a prison camp in which they are forced to play Russian roulette against each other. They escape and return home, but their lives are forever changed. Nick stays in Vietnam, Michael returns to Linda, and Steven is handicapped after losing a leg in the war. Michael, Steven and Nick are young factory workers from Pennsylvania who enlist into the Army to fight in Vietnam. Before they go, Steven marries the pregnant Angela and their wedding-party is also the men's farewell party. After some time and many horrors the three friends fall in the hands of the Vietcong and are brought to a prison camp in which they are forced to play Russian roulette against each other. Michael makes it possible for them to escape, but they soon get separated again.

Half Nelson (2006)
Director: Ryan Fleck Young Caucasian Dan Dunne teaches history and coaches the girls basketball team at a Brooklyn high school populated primarily by black and Hispanic students. To the chagrin of his superiors, Dan bucks the outlined curriculum of historical facts in favor of the philosophy of historical events, generally discussing the concept of dialectics. As such, he captures the imagination of his students, at least in the classroom. Outside of the classroom, Dan's life is in shambles. He has a distant but cordial relationship with his family. He uses illicit drugs rampantly. Although his former girlfriend Rachel was able to clean up her drug habit, Dan believes that rehab will not work for him. Due to a combination of these issues, he treats women poorly. Thirteen year old Drey is a student in his class and a player on his basketball team. Drey has her own problems. Her parents are divorced, with her. ##### Ryan Gosling gives an off-the-charts, startling, emotionally charged performance as Dan Dunne, a young and unhappy man who is disenchanted with the world and himself. The camera follows every emotion that surfaces in Dan's mind and face and soul; we watch him spend every waking moment pondering life and its intricate hypocrisies, intolerance, and continuous disappointments, we watch him spend every waking moment pondering his own personal failings and let-downs, we watch him spend every waking moment trying to escape his anguish through drug abuse, and we watch him spend every waking moment mentally and physically punishing himself for his failings by engaging in drug abuse. In addition to the abuse of drugs, his emotional decline is accelerated by his career as a history teacher (and coach) in an inner-city run-down school where a few, if any, students graduate highschool, let alone advance to college. We readily discern that he has given up all attempts at trying to reach out and inspire his students to fight against the injustices and misinformation that exist in the world. His mental anguish and desolation and severe alienation, melded with rampant drug use, has nearly destroyed him. His only hope of survival is being inspired by one of his own students, Drey - whom he has made an incongruous connection with - to save himself. As Drey (Shareeka Epps) struggles to accept Dan's failings - in the hope that a friendship with him will help both of them overcome their circumstances - she unwittingly leads Dan further down the path of self-destruction, which can only end with a clarifying moment of salvation or untimely death... Half Nelson is a masterpiece film, emotionally purgative and hypnotically realistic; its depiction of people who only experience fleeting moments of happiness in a retrogressive, bleak world is so realistic that it is visually and spiritually and emotionally soul-shattering.
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An Education 2009
Director: Lone Scherfig In the early 1960's, sixteen year old Jenny Mellor lives with her parents in the London suburb of Twickenham. On her father's wishes, everything that Jenny does is in the sole pursuit of being accepted into Oxford, as he wants her to have a better life than he. Jenny is bright, pretty, hard working but also naturally gifted. The only problems her father may perceive in her life is her issue with learning Latin, and her dating a boy named Graham, who is nice but socially awkward. Jenny's life changes after she meets David Goldman, a man over twice her age. David goes out of his way to show Jenny and her family that his interest in her is not improper and that he wants solely to expose her to cultural activities which she enjoys. Jenny quickly gets accustomed to the life to which David and his constant companions, Danny and Helen, have shown her, and Jenny and David's relationship does move into becoming a romantic one. ###### With excellent acting and excellent visuals this is a good film, as a Chaucerian cautionary tale, or a retake on Congreve, it succeeds in buckets. But more even than the excellent script by Nick Hornsby is a marvellous performance by Carey Mulligan. It tackles what is an incredibly sensitive subject, more so today than even in its setting, the relationship between a teenager and an older man, with definite aplomb. What could have been either an anachronistic script filled with moral sensibilities that didn't surface in 1961 or a cheap and tawdry sensationalist production is handled with verve, humour, and brings both the wonder of first love and the seductive ability of that love to steer lives in directions we'd rather not go out in ways that work very well indeed. Carey Mulligan has more than a touch of sensibility about her and is, obviously, the more mature, yet still a naive genué - her performance is to be admired for its ability to not switch characters but rather hold a fast course that is totally believable. I seriously cannot think of any debut in the past 20 years that has this weight. Like Taylor in National Velvet or Johnny Mill's daughter in Whistle Down the Wind you just know you are watching something very special indeed. All the parts are very well written by Nick Hornsby and what we get is both complex and light, a witty drama with depth that truly evokes the post-Suez and Macmillan era; Britain before the Beatles but a Britain full of a generation who didn't wanted to be reminded of rationing and the Blitz, who were searching to get away from the drudgery of a boring job-for-life that was killing their parents by degrees. While there are moments of real unease, not surprisingly given the subject matter, there is nothing to not recommend about this: it is thoughtful, funny, intriguing, and marks the start of a significant career for Carey Mulligan who will certainly become one of the leading British actresses of her generation. #### In the early 1960's, sixteen year old Jenny Mellor lives with her parents in the London suburb of Twickenham. On her father's wishes, everything that Jenny does is in the sole pursuit of being accepted into Oxford, as he wants her to have a better life than he. Jenny is bright, pretty, hard working but also naturally gifted. The only problems her father may perceive in her life is her issue with learning Latin, and her dating a boy named Graham, who is nice but socially awkward. Jenny's life changes after she meets David Goldman, a man over twice her age. David goes out of his way to show Jenny and her family that his interest in her is not improper and that he wants solely to expose her to cultural activities which she enjoys. Jenny quickly gets accustomed to the life to which David and his constant companions, Danny and Helen, have shown her, and Jenny and David's relationship does move into becoming a romantic one. However, Jenny slowly learns more about David, and by association Danny and Helen, and specifically how they make their money. Jenny has to decide if what she learns about them and leading such a life is worth forgoing her plans of higher eduction at Oxford.

House of Sand and Fog 2003
Director: Vadim Perelman An emotionally broken woman, Kathy, suddenly finds herself homeless after her house is wrongly repossessed and auctioned. Seeking respite from his marriage, Lester, a lustful but sympathetic sheriff's deputy comes to the aid of Kathy and becomes intimately involved in her situation. Soon, Behrani, a proud emigrant Iranian and his family move into the house only to find their new lives burdened by harassment from Lester and Kathy as they attempt to reclaim her former home. The once prosperous colonel denies Kathy's pleas for he knows his recent purchase promises a profitable return and a better future for his adolescent son and extravagant wife. But latent consequences lie beneath Behrani's well intentioned plan as Kathy's emotions spiral out of control and her actions spark a tragic chain of events that will leave no resident unscathed in the House of Sand and Fog. #####
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Excellent performances, strong story, riveting. This story would not work without Ben Kingsley. His characterization delivers complexity, strength and intelligence. This movie was well cast and certainly finds a way to touch a cord in everyone. The director did show a light touch where necessary but put the actors through their paces as the story unfolds. This is not light entertainment. It's about the human condition and how people find a way to cope with adversity..........or not. Better have a box of tissues because you will need it by the end of the movie. They want one more line out of me and it's proving tough. Hope this does it. I recommend this movie to anyone. The performances alone are worth it. Guarantee you that you will not walk away from this one without an opinion.

The Return (2003) Vozvrashchenie
Director: Andrei Zvyagintsev Two teenage Russian boys have their father return home suddenly after being absent for 12 years. The father takes the boys on a holiday to a remote island on a lake in the north of Russia that turns into a test of manhood of almost mythic proportions. #### Two pre-teen boys are shocked when their father returns home to them and their mother, after being inexplicably away for 12 years. He takes them on a road trip the next day. If you've seen the incredible but spoiling trailer for this movie, you know what happens in the last 10 minutes. Apart from the frustrating promotional trailer, this movie is exceptional and is one of the most strikingly beautiful films I've seen in a long time. The child actors are so incredible it is almost discomforting. The cinematography is simply breathtaking. "The Return" would make for a perfect double feature with the equally gorgeous and disturbing Italian film "I'm Not Scared" (aka "Io non ho paura"). Both films explore the fear and courage that results when children are suddenly faced with unknown horrors of the adult world.

Things We Lost in the Fire (2007)
Director: Susanne Bier Grief, recovery, and human contact. Brian is a great guy - a sweet father, a good husband, and a loyal friend to his boyhood pal Jerry who's a junkie. When tragedy strikes, Jerry tries to help Brian's wife and children cope, and Audrey, Brian's widow, tries to help Jerry kick the habit. Loss and addiction are stubborn. The story starts on the day of the funeral, with Brian appearing in flashbacks. A neighbor's divorce, a dinner party that includes a young woman from the Narcotics Anonymous group Jerry attends, and thinking back to a fire in Brian and Audrey's garage give the story texture. #### Rather than offering the usual trite "Make Sure You Don't Miss This Film" I will simply say, "Don't Bother Watching Anything Else In 2008" Having worked as a drug councilor back in the early 70s I can assure you that this stunning film doesn't just get it right when it comes to the horrors of heroin addiction it provides powerful hints as to the best way for an addict to make good his escape! Anyone working in the field would do well to buy the movie and watch it over and over and over. NA might also put it to good use within its groups. But this flick is much, much more than a primer on drug addiction. It is simply one of the most moving and motivating flicks I've ever seen on the potential for creative change achievable through the decidedly Low Tech technique of people realizing that in the end the Bell Tolls Today for us all. Better yet it illustrates beautifully and with great emotional impacting the almost unbelievable potential inherent in the process of one and all working towards something a bit larger than making selfish self come true. My hat is off to everyone involved in this stunning piece of work! Brilliant script, brilliant directing, brilliant acting and some of the most innovative and creative camera work that I've every had the joy of experiencing!

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring 2003 aka Bom yeoreum gaeul gyeoul geurigo bom
Director: Ki-duk Kim In the midst of the Korean wilderness, a Buddhist master patiently raises a young boy to grow up in wisdom and compassion, through experience and endless exercises. Once the pupil discovers his sexual lust, he seems lost to contemplative life and follows his first love, but soon fails to adapt to the modern world, gets in jail for a crime of passion and returns to the master in search of spiritual redemption and reconciliation with karma, at a high price of physical catharsis.. ### I'm constantly amazed by the appearance of some seemingly off-the-wall piece of art that when you view it evokes a stunning effect. The simplicity of this film, its low-key action and pace, its visual surrealistic beauty, all interact to
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create an emotional impression that is long-lasting and thought-provoking. Korea has been somewhat slower to enter the international cinematic world and here is a film with actors whose names stir little or no recognition. For myself, who has enjoyed the Korean films I've seen before, it was a delightful surprise. The film itself is a wonderful tapestry of Korean Buddhist culture, with quiet visual beauty, simple moral themes and human passions put into a simple, homespun perspective. The remarkable natural setting which reflects the wide spectrum of Korea's seasons, which range from hot, sticky humid-fraught summers to icy, cold snow-bound winters, become a metaphor of life with unadorned figures, completely human in form. The old monk becomes a witness to the interplay of human qualities, without judgment yet with a complete and quiet moral presence. The foibles of child cruelty is met with a simple retribution which imparts a lasting lesson. Judgment is always withheld and warnings are given simply. The effect of all of this rings long and lasting, much like the impression of a delicate Korean silk print: simple in design with plain brush strokes and stylized representations of nature-- yet, lasting in impression, often to the point of being unforgettable. I buy few videos and DVDs, preferring to see things I really enjoyed again and again. But, I've ordered this one.

Nobody Knows 2004 aka Dare mo shiranai
Director: Hirokazu Koreeda In Tokyo, the reckless single mother Keiko moves to a small apartment with her twelve years old son Akira Fukushima and hidden in the luggage, his siblings Kyoko, Shigeru and Yuki. The children have different fathers and do not have schooling, but they have a happy life with their mother. When Keiko finds a new boyfriend, she leaves the children alone, giving some money to Akira and assigning him to take care of his siblings. When the money finishes, Akira manages to find means to survive with the youngsters without power supply, gas or water at home, and with the landlord asking for the rental. #### Four siblings live happily with their mother in a small apartment in Tokyo. The children all have different fathers and have never been to school. The very existence of three of them has been hidden from the landlord. One day, the mother leaves behind a little money and a note, charging her oldest boy to look after the others. And so begins the children's odyssey, a journey nobody knows. Though engulfed by the cruel fate of abandonment, the four children do their best to survive in their own little world, devising and following their own set of rules. When they are forced to engage with the world outside their cocooned universe, the fragile balance that has sustained them collapses. Their innocent longing for their mother, their wary fascination toward the outside world, their anxiety over their increasingly desperate situation, their inarticulate cries, their kindness to each other, their determination to survive on wits and courage. #### There are very few films I have seen that had the power to affect me as deeply as Nobody Knows. As highly as I recommend it, I must also forewarn, that this film has power, some very serious power. To call Hirokazu Koreeda's Nobody Knows anything less than a masterpiece would be an insult to the story it tells. The craftsmanship we witness here, from the masterful direction to the outstanding performances that the children were able to commit to, are all something of incredible proportions. Nobody Knows, which is a true story, tells of four siblings, ages 5-12, from different fathers, who live in a small apartment in Tokyo. At first, they live in the apartment with their childish Mother who is hardly ever home. With the exception of the oldest, Akira, the mother snuck the children in to keep the rent lower and prohibits them from ever leaving the apartment, even the veranda, for fear of them being seen. The children do not go to school. As they look after each other, all they do is patiently and affectionately wait for their mother to come home. As the story progresses, the children wake up one morning to some money on the kitchen table with a note from their mother saying that she'll be home in a month. As Akira steps up and takes charge of the apartment, the bills, and his siblings, the children still hold hope that mother will be home soon. And then, Nobody Knows hits you like a truck and goes right through you. Complete Abandonment. The smiles diminish and the childish affection for a mother that will never return is gone. Gone to play mother to another family, it is now entirely up to Akira, with money running out. Koreeda's direction of the children is exceptional, as if the film was shot entirely candid. The camera-work is sincere, as if we were one of the children stuck in that apartment. There are no gimmicks here, no slide of hand, or post-production miracles. Nobody Knows is raw, and thrives in Koreeda's ability to capture the distinct personalities of all four siblings, their hopes, and those secretive moments where Koreeda directs the children not for the stories sake, but for the sake of the children being children. Perhaps the most impressive aspect of Nobody Knows is the performances of the four children. All four children, who conjured phenomenal performances, were played by Japanese youths with no film backgrounds. After you see the film, it is likely that Koreeda preferred it this way, tapping into the honesty and energy that such youth had to offer. Their performances are so sincere and beautiful that on several occasions the tears will start to fall, the goose
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bumps will rise, and your heart will undoubtedly cry out to rescue these children, to grab them in your arms and set them free. Without giving too much away, one of the most touching scenes to me, is on Yuki's birthday, the only thing she wants is to be able to go outside for a walk with her big brother Akira. So when the night comes, she puts on her little bear slippers, an ear to ear smile on her face, and with her hand in her brothers hand, they set her heart free for if not only a night. Nobody Knows is a film that I will never let go of. This film impacted me so much and I found it so absolutely remarkable, that it hasn't left my mind since it's viewing. I almost feel that recommending this film just isn't enough, and all I can say is that I hope everyone gets the chance to enjoy this film for all that it is worth. As sure as it is to invoke emotion, it is as sure to please as a piece of cinema.

Tokyo Sonata 2008
Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa An ordinary Japanese family slowly disintegrates after its patriarch loses his job at a prominent company. Moral authority as shown is a given, and it can be so fragile and easily destroyed. Kenji Sasaki (Inowaki Kai), the youngest son, in a scene with his school teacher, creates havoc by just merely stating the fact that the latter had been seen reading a porn comic on a train. Immediately the students entered into an ill-disciplined frenzy in the class which the teacher has little control over, a signal that he has lost all standing in imparting knowledge to minds that are to be molded. And in the main arc, face and standing in society are both easily lost as well, which the head of the Sasaki household Ryuhei (Teruyuki Kagawa) will discover when he gets retrenched as Director of Administration of a corporation. Being clueless on what to do, and how to break the news to his family (which will translate in equivalent terms into the chaos as seen in the classroom), he keeps mum and goes about his routine, heading toward free food lines and unemployment agencies to find another job. But one can imagine the stature of his previous job, and it never is easy to come to terms in the swallowing of Pride, and the acceptance of lower pay, longer hours, and of course, jobs that seem to belong to the lower rungs. Teriyuki Kagawa does a superb job in showing this fear and cluelessness of Ryuhei, who has to grapple with the fact that a victim of downsizing unfortunately has to have his expectations correspondingly reduced in tandem as well. Ever once in a while I would think of what I would do if I'm in the same shoes, and hopefully to lessen the impact should one day the same were to happen. Being unprepared on the receiving end of an outsourcing strategy, he got hit pretty hard, and living a lie to keep up the pretense is something quite pathetic. For all its prim and properness, society can be equally cruel because of the collective fear that hangs over the heads of failures. There are two superbly crafted arcs in Tokyo Sonata, each dealing with failure and the unfortunate ends that were followed to deal with the perceived shame and genuine despair and desperation. One involved Ryuhei's peer who went to the extreme of making himself seem busy with lucrative deals, but is actually sharing the same boat, at wits end since he's a 3-month old unemployed veteran who imparts survival tricks of concealment, and refuge such as the public library (I suppose with its air-conditioning, newspapers, and couches for that quick snooze. The other arc is somewhat of a quirky spin on narrative, with Koji Yakusho playing a comical rookie robber who, as it turns out, had consistently failed in the things he does. While a patriarchal society, the role of the wife and mother is equally important for the household to function and act as the glue of tolerance within the family. Kyoko Koizumi owned this character of Megumi, as she goes about her routine household chores with nary a complaint, always being there for her family in the preparation of warm meals, never chiding her husband or put him down when she learns of the truth accidentally (well, up to a certain point that is), and always protective of her children, seen from her constant reminder to her husband not to get mad when the children are going to tell him something he would disapprove of, coming to their defence when they get beat, and with reluctance, seeing her eldest son (Yu Koyanagi) off when he signs on with the American military. There's a breaking point in everyone, though of course a mother's love knows no bounds. Kurosawa's films are always wonderfully framed, and Tokyo Sonata boasts plenty of beautifully designed shots, not only for aesthetic reasons, but some to involve you in the scene as well. I especially liked the way how the dreaded pink slip got issued, where Ryuhei seemed so small, for an appointment of his stature, when called into his boss' office, and being challenged up front on what else he can contribute to the company, being asked to leave in indirect terms, yet with the meaning fully understood. The routine, impersonal way of the Sasaki family that we see in the beginning, each going about their own thing with nary an interaction other than over the dining table with a missing member, doesn't really get repaired. Some
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issues can be addressed, others can be accepted, life generally goes on and it's up to us to make the best out of it. The Sasaki family has this brief hiccup in their lives that forms the basis of Tokyo Sonata, and it's something that will both move you and bring about that general awareness of how Japanese society ticks. Definitely highly recommended, and a surprise of a gem from Kiyoshi Kurosawa that's not from his usual forte of works.

Sling Blade 1996
Director: Billy Bob Thornton A partially handicapped man named Karl is released from a mental hospital, about 20 years after murdering his mother and another person. Karl is often questioned if he will ever kill again, and he shrugs in response saying there is no reason to. Now out of the mental institution, Karl settles in his old, small hometown, occupying himself by fixing motors. After meeting a young boy named Frank who befriends him, Karl is invited to stay at Frank's house with his mother Linda- who views Karl as a strange but kind and generous man. However, Linda's abusive boyfriend Doyle, sees things differently in the way rules ought to be run- normally insulting Linda's homosexual friend Vaughan as well as Karl's disabilities, and having wild parties with his friends. As Karl's relation with Frank grows, he is ever so watchful of Doyle's cruel actions. A partially handicapped man named Karl is released from a mental hospital, several years after murdering his mother and another person. Karl is often questioned if he will ever kill again, and he shrugs in response saying there is no reason to. Now out of the mental institution, Karl settles in his old, small hometown, occupying himself by fixing motors. After meeting a young boy named Frank who befriends him, Karl is invited to stay at Frank's house with his mother Linda- who views Karl as a strange but kind and generous man. However, Linda's abusive boyfriend Doyle, sees things differently in the way rules ought to be run- normally insulting Linda's homosexual friend Vaughan as well as Karl's disabilities, and having wild parties with his friends. As Karl's relation with Frank grows, he is ever so watchful of Doyle's cruel actions. TAGLINE: Sometimes a hero comes from the most unlikely place. A simple man. A difficult choice.All stand-alone divx players compatibleENJOY & PLEASE SEED FOR AS LONG AS U CAN !!!!!ALSO IF YOU HAVE ANY REQUESTS DON'T HESITATE TO ASK. I MIGHT HAVE WHAT YOUR LOOKING FOR. YOU NEVER KNOW IT NEVER HURTS TO ASK.

Into the Wild 2007
Director: Sean Penn Based on a true story. After graduating from Emory University, top student and athlete Christopher McCandless abandoned his possessions, gave his entire $24,000 savings account to charity and hitchhiked to Alaska to live in the wilderness. Along the way, Christopher encounters a series of characters who shape his life. ###### Who Is Chris McCandless? A true supertramp? An obsessive, emotionally damaged egomaniac? Suicidal thrillseeker? A Kerouac-like drifter addicted to the search for an ever-evasive truth? A high-functioning schizophrenic? The 21st century youth culture reincarnation of John Gault? Or just a kid going through a difficult time and looking for some distance to sort it all out? Sean Penn's pop-philosophical examination of this young man's voyage across America, to Alaska, and to the depths of his young soul will give you an interpretation at least. While it is not clear exactly whose interpretation we are seeing, it is very clear that Penn respects his subject and gave this film about as much thought and power as he could inject it with. And the film did remind me of something very true about the self-righteous naiveté of youth. I am not concerned at all with the accuracy of the film, and, while it is tempting to compare this film to Werner Herzog's excellent but less fictionalized "Grizzly Man", the subjects are really too widely disparate; Herzog and Penn's perspective on humanity is too different to produce a meaningful comparison. The targets of this comparison, too big and too easy. But I will make one comment about the two films - Penn's film is much more or a tribute to its protagonist than Herzog's. I found Into the Wild to be a gripping, thoughtful film. The script was good, but sometimes a bit pretentious occasionally crossing the line between character development and character worship. Penn's direction and cinematography are masterful. The acting - every member of the cast included - is absolutely excellent.

Ed Wood 1994
Director: Tim Burton You are interested in the unknown. The mysterious. The unexplainable. That is why you are here. And now, for the first time, we are bringing to you the full story of what happened, on that fateful day. We are giving you all the evidence, based only on a secret testimony, of the miserable souls, who survived this terrifying ordeal. The
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incidents, the places. My friend, we cannot keep this a secret any longer. Can your heart stand the shocking facts about Edward D. Wood Jr.? ######## The film opens with a thunderstorm. Lightning flashes illuminate a spooky old house, accompanied by the eerie wailing of a Theremin. The camera moves inside the house to reveal a coffin which opens and from the coffin Criswell sits up. (This is nearly the identical opening scene to "Night of the Ghouls"). Criswell offers an opening commentary which practically repeats the opening commentary from "Plan 9 from Outer Space". Credits follow with most of the cast names displayed on tombstones (again similar to "Plan 9"). The camera moves from the Hollywood sign and down into Hollywood itself. It is a rainy night outside a dilapidated theater in Hollywood. It is the early 1950s. The eccentric theater director Edward D. Wood Jr. (Johnny Depp) is pacing outside, waiting for the press who have not shown to review his play "The Casual Company". The show finally goes on to an almost empty house. Ed stands in the wings, silently repeating the dialogue. Later that night Ed, his close friend John "Bunny" Brekenridge (Bill Murray) and the three principal actors in the play, Delores Fuller (Sarah Jessica Parker), Paul Marco (Max Casella) and Conrad "Connie" Brooks (Brent Hinkley) read Victor Crowley's scathing review of the play ("Do I really have a face like a horse?" "What does ostentatious mean?"), the only positive comment being about the realistic costumes. Later that night Ed, who is living with Delores, expresses his doubts about his achieving success in the film industry. He worries that he's nearly thirty and Orson Welles (Vincent d'Onofrio), whom Ed idolizes, was 26-years old when he made "Citizen Kane". Delores reassures him and then absent-mindedly makes a comment to herself about never being able to find her clothes. Ed turns over in bed with a worried look on his face. A few days later, Ed is working in the prop department at a film studio and is asked to take a potted palm over to the executive offices. Ed makes a bit of a side trip to see some new stock footage the studio received, and comments that he could probably make a complete movie using just the stock footage. Later, in the office he overhears two office girls discussing an article in Variety about a bio-pic being considered about sex-change personality, Christine Jorgensen. Ed phones George Weiss (Mike Starr), head of Screen Classics, a small studio which specializes in soft-core sexploitation films, which was making the bio-pic. Ed assures him that he is the most qualified man in Hollywood to direct the sex-change film. Later he is talking to Weiss who tells him that the Christine Jorgensen story is off. Christine heard about it from Variety, and was asking for too much. Weiss was still planing a sex-change film though, to be called "I Changed My Sex". He has no script yet or director. Ed tells him that he can direct and write the movie, in fact he had just finished a play that Victor Crowley praised for its realism. When Weiss asks him why he is the most qualified man in Hollywood to do this movie Ed tells him he himself is a cross-dresser and can add an extra note of realism to the movie. He knows what it is like to hide a secret like that. Weiss tells Ed that he does not need someone who has a burning desire to tell his story. Discouraged, Ed leaves. On his way home, Ed meets Bela Lugosi (Martin Landau). He is leaving a funeral home complaining about the uncomfortability of the coffins. The two start talking and begin a close friendship. Ed learns that Bela has not worked in four years. Later, Ed is discussing Bela with his boss who calls Bela a "washed-out junkie". He suggests that if Ed thinks he is so great he should hire Bela himself. On Halloween night 1953, and Ed and Bela are watching "White Zombie" at Bela's home on the TV. The show breaks for a commercial, introduced by horror-show hostess Vampira whom Bela refers to as "a honey". A short while later, Vampira makes a comment about the film starring Bela Lugosi "and a bunch of other people I've never heard of". This seems to depress Bela who goes into the back to take his "medicine". The medicine (a morphineheroin combination) seems to work almost immediatly and Bela is soon cheerfully scaring trick-or-treating children as Dracula. Using the promise of getting Bela to star in the movie, Ed convinces George Weiss to let him write and direct the movie. He finishes the script two days later and gives it to Delores to read. He also uses the script to tell her about his own cross-dressing, and offers her the role of Barbara in the movie. They begin filming the movie, now re-titled 'Glen or Glenda', with Ed himself performing the title roles. When they get to filming Bela's scenes, there is a minor catastrophy when Connie mentions Boris Karloff. Bela gets highly upset about this, as Karloff was a major of rival of Lugosi's. There is also trouble on the set as Delores, who is playing the female lead Barbara, is having a very hard time accepting Ed's cross-dressing. Somehow the film is finished. Ed takes a film copy of "Glen or Glenda" to Mr. Feldman at Warners, seeking to get financial backing to continue making movies. He mentions several other projects he has planned, such as "The Ghoul Goes West" and "Dr. Acula". Feldman seems interested in another project Ed pitches, "Bride of the Atom". Later Feldman and two subordinates view "Glen Or Glenda", and are reduced to fits of helpless laughter.
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Days later, Ed finds that "Glen or Glenda" is not playing anywhere local. He phones George Weiss who tells him that he could not sell it anywhere in the major markets. In fact, Weiss wishes "he had not blown every dime he had ever made into making this stink-bomb". He promises that if he ever sees Ed again he will kill him. A few evenings later Ed, Delores, and Bunny, are at a wrestling match. Bunny talks about his plans to go to Mexico and take the first steps leading to sex-reassignment, much to Delores' discomfort. They later see in action Swedish wrestler Tor Johnson (George 'The Animal' Steele), who Ed believes would make a fantastic actor, and would be perfect for Lobo, the monstrous henchman in "Bride of the Atom". He convinces Tor to take the part. Some months later, Ed gets a call from Bela. When he arrives at Bela's home he finds Bela collapsed on the floor. He also finds a needle which Bela tells him contains Morphine and Demerol. Bella breaks down and tells Ed that he is totally broke, and doesn't know what he's going to do to pay for his "medication". Ed reassures him that he won't let Bela down. The next day, Ed calls Feldman, who tells him that "Glen or Glenda" was the worst movie he ever saw, and hangs up on him. Discouraged, Ed talks to Delores, who suggests that Ed may not be studio material, and may do better as an independent film maker. Ed starts to try to line up backers. One person he approaches is a producer of a comedy/variety TV series, who arranges to use Bela in a sketch. The sketch turns out to be a total fiasco, as Bela cannot follow the ad-libs of the comic. Backstage Ed and Bela meet "psychic" Criswell (Jeffrey Jones) who predicts that Bela's next project will be a huge success. Criswell even recognises Ed's name as the writer/director of "Glen or Glenda". Quickly Criswell becomes a member of Ed's growing entourage and tells Ed that showmanship is the secret to success. Over the next several months in 1955, Ed continues seeking financing for his next movie, helped by Delores, Criswell, and Tor, but without any success. One evening at a local nightclub, Ed encounters Loretta King (Juliet Landau) who appears to be quite wealthy (she pays a three dollar bar tab with a $50-dollar-note). Still seeking financing, Ed soon convinces her to invest in "Bride of ther Atom". Loretta agrees to finance Ed's movie, but her only catch is that in exchange to be credited as one of the executive producers, she would also like to act in the movie, in fact she wants to take the lead role, which Ed had already promised to Delores. Ed reluntantly agrees so that he can make the movie. Delores however is less then impressed by this, especially when she finds she has been relegated to one of the minor roles. With Loretta's contribution in hand Ed begins filming, despite Loretta being a medicore actress. Unfortunatly filming is soon shut down when the $300 advance that Loretta gave runs out. It turns out that the $300 was all the money that Loretta had. So Ed goes back out on the financing trail. While talking to some potential investors, he meets Vampira. He tries to interest her in helping to get some backers, but her reluctance ends up losing backers. Ed ends up talking to butcher Donald McCoy, who is willing to advance Ed the rest of the money he needs, but McCoy's condition is that he wants the movie to end with a big explosion, and that the lead male role to go to his son Tony. After making the suggested changes, filming resumes, but not without problems. At one point there is a very tense encounter between Delores and Loretta. That night, Ed, Paul, Connie, Criswell, and Tor break into the prop warehouse at Republic Studios to "borrow" a rubber octopus to be used in the climactic scene between Dr. Vornoff (Bela), and his octopus. They realise that they forgot to borrow the octopus motor, so when the are filming thew scene Ed tells Bela to just "Shake his legs around so it looks like he's killing you". At first Bela seems to be unable to do the scene, but after injecting himself with a dose of his "medicine" he is alright again. The next day Ed thanks Bela for everything he has done, and gives him a new final speech. After filming this scene, "Bride of the Atom" wraps. At the wrap party that night, held in McCoy's butcher shop, Ed, once more in drag, does a strip act. This is the last straw, and Delores explodes, saying that Ed's movies are terrible. She leaves Ed for good. Ed gets another phone call from Bela, who he finds completly suicidal and wants Ed to join him. Ed talks Bela out of it, and Bela decides to commit himself into a hospital. Bela uses his rehabilitation to get some publicity and to get his name back in the press. In the hospital, Ed meets Kathy O'Hara (Patricia Arquette), a very sweet young woman, who he becomes attracted to. He tells her that he is a writer, producer, actor, and director in motion pictures. One of two who do it all, Orson
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Wells, and himself. The two go out on a date to a midway. They take a ride through the spook house, which breaks down halfway through the ride. While stranded, Ed confesses to Kathy about his cross-dresing. She accepts it without question. Next morning, Ed gets some bad news from the sanitarium. Bela's insurance has long since lapsed and as a result Bela will not be able to stay any longer. Ed offers to pay all he has to help Bela, but the small amount of money he has will barely help. Ed convinces Bela that he is cured, and takes him home. Bela wonders when Ed's next picture will be coming. To help Bela, Ed invests the last of his cash in some film and a camera rental. He and Bela film several scenes of generic stock footage outside Ed's house that Ed could use almost anywhere. A few weeks later in 1956, Ed invites Vampira to join the party going to the premire of his movie, now re-titled "Bride of the Monster". Ed, Kathy, Vampira (Lisa Marie), Criswell, and Tor go in Ed's car to the theater. The audience is extremely rowdy over the horrible-looking movie and after only a few minutes into the picture Ed begins to fear for the safety of his guests, especially Kathy, Bela, and Vampira. They leave in time to catch a gang stripping down Ed's car. The crowd soon leaves the theater also roaring in anger at being cheated out of their money to watch a bad movie. They hail a taxi, in fact Kathy almost has to jump in front of it to get it to stop. As they leave Bela remarks: "Now THAT was a premire!" The next morning, Ed and Bela are walking and talking. Bela tells Ed that he has a very special woman in Kathy. They talk about the premire and Ed wishes that Bela could have seen the whole movie. Bela says he doesn't really need to, he remembers it all, and proves it by quoting his closing speech to an appreciative improptu audience. That night, Ed gets another phone call from a doctor at a local hospital. Bela has passed away. Ed, Kathy, Tor, Criswell, Vampira, Connie and Paul are all among the mourners at Bela's funeral. It is also mentioned that Bela was buried in his Dracula cape. Some months later, Ed is talking to his landlord, J. Edward Reynolds. Reynolds notices that Ed is in the picture business, and mentions that his church is planning to make inspirational films about the twelve apostles. At the present time though they only have the money for one. Ed tells Reynolds that if he took that money and put it into a commercially proven genre, he would make enough to make all twelve movies. As it happens, Ed has a script he wrote available, entitled "Grave Robbers from Outer Space", and this movie would star Bela Lugosi. Ed has the last film Bela did, and he just needs to hire a double to complete Bela's scenes. Reynolds agrees, and final preparations begin for the movie. When Ed learns that Vampira has been laid off, he convinces her to take a part in the film, but she will only do it mute. Ed meets Dr. Tom Mason, Kathy's chiropractor, and Ed hires him to be Bela's double even though the resemblance is minimal, and the only way Ed could pull it off is if Mason does all his scenes with the Dracula cape pulled over his face. Reynolds will only support the movie if Ed and his companions are baptised into his church. So that Sunday, Ed, Kathy, Vampira, Tor, Criswell, Bunny, Mason, Paul, and Connie are recieved into the local Baptist church. Tor is too large to fit into the regular baptismal font, so the mass baptism is held in a nearby swimming pool. In 1958, filming begins but with many problems. Gregory Wallcott, an actor who is also a member of Reynolds' church choir who is taking one of the lead roles in the movie, is disgusted by the amaturish cockpit set. Bunny, who is playing the alien leader, is insisting on antenna or glitter. Reynolds has many concerns, from daylight stock shots setting up for night scenes, Tor (who is nearly unintelligible) delivering many of the lines because Bela's dead, and Vampira's not speaking, and the title "Grave Robbers from Outer Space" which they find blasphemous. The final straw is when Reynolds questions Ed's skills after Paul and Connie, (playing policemen) fall (knocked down by the passage of the 'flying saucer') and knock over one of the cardboard tombstones in the graveyard set. To relax, Ed puts on his women's clothing only to be chastized even more by Reynolds. Ed storms out of the studio and goes to a nearby bar (still in drag). In the bar Ed meets his idol, Orson Wells. The two begin talking and Orson reminisces about his problems with the film business. He tells Ed that ultimatly the business is worthwhile and advises Ed to hang on to his dreams. Ed returns to the studio and tells Reynolds (Clive Rosengren) that he will get his movie, as Ed wants to make it, and it will be successful. Ed continues filming the movie, now re-titled "Plan 9 from Outer Space" at Reynold's request. Scene after scene are filmed with Ed growing more and more proud of the whole production. He knows that "this is the ultimate Ed Wood movie"
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On opening night in 1959, he and Kathy drive to the theater in Ed's (repaired) convertible. As they arrive, it begins to rain and thunder, much like the storm in the opening scenes. The top gets stuck open, and finally Ed leaves it so that they can make the premire. He introduces it simply "For Bela". As the film runs, Ed is again in the wings silently repeating the dialogue. He knows that "This is it. This is the one I'll be remembered for". As "Plan 9" closes he proposed to Kathy, and the two drive off in his soaked car to marry in Las Vegas. The camera moves back from the area to focus on the Hollywood sign again. The movie ends with short biographical comments about the major characters and their lives after "Plan 9 from Outer Space".

Rescue Dawn 2006
Director: Werner Herzog In 1965, while bombing Laos in a classified mission, the plane of the German-American pilot Dieter Dengler is hit and crashes in the jungle. Dieter is arrested by the peasants, tortured and sent to a prisoner camp, where he meets five other mentally ill prisoners. He becomes close to Duane and organizes an escape plan; however, the unstable Gene opposes to Dieter's plan. When they discover that there is no more food due to the constant American bombings in the area and their guards intend to kill them, Dieter sets his plan in motion. However, an unexpected betrayal split the group and Dieter and Duane find that the jungle is their actual prison. ###### An account of the true story of personal bravery and comradeship in the early days of the Vietnam War; the story follows the experiences of Lt. Dieter Dengler whose Navy propeller plane is shot down in 1965 over Laos and taken prisoner by Pathet Lao (with Vietcong irregulars.) In a story that should not be classified as either pro or anti war, it explores the psychological tragedies of war for all involved, and specifically the torturous personal trials of combatants in this disastrous event. The characters efforts at escape into the countryside while debating the personal consequences make this film a more realistic example of personalities and conflicts among prisoners pushed to their mental limits. The lush jungle contrasted against the raw human struggles of both sides make this a good yet simple portrayal of the early days of the Vietnam heartbreak. (SPOILER) The story of Dengler's rescue does show the inept and stupid bureaucratic incompetence that makes this story just a small part of a this historic American tragedy.

Constantinen 2005
Director: Francis Lawrence John Constantine is approached by Det. Angela Dodson who needs his help to prove that her twin sister Isabel's death was not a suicide. The dead woman was a devout Catholic and Angela refuses to accept that she would have taken her own life. She's asked Constantine for help because he has a reputation for dealing with the mystical. In fact, he is a demon hunter whose sole purpose on Earth is to send demons back to the nether regions. John himself has been to Hell - as a young man he too c`ommitted suicide and now knows that he is destined to return there on his death - but hopes that his good deeds may somehow find him a place in Heaven. As he looks into Isobel's death, he realizes that demons are trying to break through to the human world and his battles lead him into a direct conflict with Satan.

Eagle Eye 2008
Director: D.J. Caruso Jerry Shaw is an amiable slacker with an over-achieving twin brother. After his twin dies in an accident, strange things happen to Jerry at a dizzying pace: a fortune shows up in his bank account, weapons are delivered to his flat, and a voice on his cell phone tells him the police are on their way. Jerry follows the voice's instructions, and soon he and a woman he's never met are racing through the city, on to a plane, and eventually to the Pentagon, chased by the FBI. She is Rachel Holloman, a single mom; the voice has threatened her son's death if she doesn't cooperate. The voice seems to know everything. Who is behind it, what is being planned, and why Jerry and Rachel?

Breathless (À bout de souffle) (By a Tether) (1960)
Directed By: Jean-Luc Godard The first feature film directed by Jean-Luc Godard and one of the seminal films of the French New Wave, Breathless is story of the love between Michel Poiccard, a small-time hood wanted for killing a cop, and Patricia Franchini, an American who sells the International Herald Tribune along the boulevards of Paris. Their relationship develops as Michel hides out from a dragnet. Breathless uses the famous techniques of the French New Wave:
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location shooting, improvised dialogue, and a loose narrative form. In addition Godard uses his characteristic jump cuts, deliberate "mismatches" between shots, and references to the history of cinema, art, and music. Much of the film's vigor comes from collisions between popular and high culture: Godard shows us pinups and portraits of women by Picasso and Renoir, and the soundtrack includes both Mozart's clarinet concerto and snippets of French pop radio. When Breathless was first released, audiences and critics responded to the burst of energy it gave the French cinema; it won numerous international awards and became an unexpected box-office sensation. ************ Stylish and sexy, ? BREATHLESS? (A Bout De Souffle) is the epitome of cinematic cool. A fast tale of a young man on the run in Paris at the end of the 50?s, the film shook up the film world upon it?s release and has made a lasting impression on cinema history. Cigarettes, hats, sunglasses and determined unconformity make Michel Pjenkaard (Jean-Paul Belmondo) a true cinematic icon. Playing against the stunning Jean Seberg he smokes his way through a series of sexy Gallic exchanges to a sharp Jazz score in the coolest of cities. The film debut of Jean-Luc Godard, ?BREATHLESS? spearheaded the French ?New Wave? of filmmaking, recognised as one of the most stylish and influential movements in cinema. Produced by Georges de Beauregard, ?BREATHLESS? was developed by Godard from an original treatment by Francois Truffaut in a production that united the four initiators of the ?Nouvelle Vague?. Claude Chabrol acted as artistic advisor with the acclaimed director Jean-Pierre Melville appearing in front of the camera.

"Jean de Florette (1986-IMDB7.9) and Manon des sources (1986-IMDB8.1)[
Two great French classics from 1986 with English subtitles. While each movie can stand on its own, the two are really one very long movie. Watch Jean de florette first, or the plot will be confusing.

Manon des sources
Directed By: Claude Berri Manon des sources: A beautiful but shy shepherdess plots vengeance on the men whose greedy conspiracy to acquire her her father's land caused his death years earlier. Manon of the Spring (Manon des Sources) has also been released as Jean de Florette II in the US, as it is a sequel to Claude Berri's Jean de Florette. Both films are drawn from the same source: Filmmaker/novelist Marcel Pagnol's 1952 rural romance, also titled Jean de Florette. Manon (Emmanuelle Beart), now fully grown, is a shepherdess who prefers to keep her distance from the local villagers. She is determined to uncover the truth behind the death of her father (played by Gerard Depardieu in Jean de Florette) and to wreak vengeance on the men she holds responsible. The more sympathetic of the two men, Ugolin (Daniel Auteil), is in love with Manon, but this does not weaken her resolve. She causes the village's water supply to diminish, blaming this action upon Ugolin and his duplicitous co-conspirator Cesar (Yves Montand). The upshot of this vengeful behavior ends in tragedy for all concerned. The joint winners of eight French Cesar awards, Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring were released to the U.S. in tandem in 1987

Jean de Florette
Directed By: Claude Berri Jean de florette: A greedy landowner and his backward nephew conspire to block the only water source for an adjoining property in order to bankrupt the owner and force him to sell. Co-adapted by director Claude Berri from a novel by Marcel Pagnol, this hugely successful French historical drama concerns a bizarre battle royale over a valuable natural spring in a remote French farming community. City dweller Jean Cadoret (GÃ (C)rard Depardieu) assumes ownership of the spring when the original owner is accidentally killed by covetous farmer Cesar Soubeyran (Yves Montand). Soubeyran and his equally disreputable nephew Ugolin (Daniel Auteuil) pull every dirty trick in the book to force Cadoret off his land, but the novice farmer stands firm. Although the Soubeyrans appear to gain the upper hand, the audience is assured that they will eventually be foiled by the vengeful daughter of the spring's deceased owner -- thus setting the stage for the film's equally successful sequel, Manon of the Spring. Jean de florette: A greedy landowner and his backward nephew conspire to block the only water source for an adjoining property in order to bankrupt the owner and force him to sell.

The Seventh Seal (Det Sjunde inseglet) (1957)
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Directed By: Ingmar Bergman Endlessly imitated and parodied, Ingmar Bergman's landmark art movie The Seventh Seal (Det Sjunde Inseglet) retains its ability to hold an audience spellbound. Bergman regular Max von Sydow stars as a 14th century knight named Antonius Block, wearily heading home after ten years' worth of combat. Disillusioned by unending war, plague, and misery Block has concluded that God does not exist. As he trudges across the wilderness, Block is visited by Death (Bengt Ekerot), garbed in the traditional black robe. Unwilling to give up the ghost, Block challenges Death to a game of chess. If he wins, he lives -- if not, he'll allow Death to claim him. As they play, the knight and the Grim Reaper get into a spirited discussion over whether or not God exists. To recount all that happens next would diminish the impact of the film itself; we can observe that The Seventh Seal ends with one of the most indelible of all of Bergman's cinematic images: the near-silhouette "Dance of Death." Considered by some as the apotheosis of all Ingmar Bergman films (other likely candidates for that honor include Wild Strawberries and Persona), and certainly one of the most influential European art movies, The Seventh Seal won a multitude of awards, including the Special Jury Prize at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival.

Room In Rome (habitacion En Roma) (2010)
Directed By: Julio Medem ROOM IN ROME is a steamy romance by acclaimed Spanish filmmaker Julio Medem, exploring a single day in the lives of two young women who, in a hotel room in the center of Rome, go on a physical and emotional journey which will touch their souls. Over a period of twelve hours, these two women unravel their lives - one a mother of two, one a student due to marry next week - and find new freedom in each other.

La Haine (Hate) (1995)
Directed By: Mathieu Kassovitz While to most outsiders Paris seems the very picture of beauty and civility, France has had a long and unfortunate history of intolerance toward outsiders, and this powerful drama from filmmaker Mathieu Kassovitz takes an unblinking look at a racially diverse group of young people trapped in the Parisian economic and social underclass. Vinz (Vincent Cassel), who is Jewish, Hubert (Hubert Kounde), who is Black, and Said (Said Taghmaoui), who is Arabic, are young men from the lower rungs of the French economic ladder; they have no jobs, few prospects, and no productive way to spend their time. They hang out and wander the streets as a way of filling their days and are sometimes caught up in frequent skirmishes between the police and other disaffected youth. One day, a street riot breaks out after police seriously injure an Arab student; the three friends are arrested and questioned, and it is learned that a policeman lost a gun in the chaos. However, what they don't know is that Vinz picked it up and has it in his possession, and when Vinz, Hubert, and Said get into a scuffle with a group of racist skinheads, the circumstances seem poised for tragedy. Actress Jodie Foster was so impressed with La Haine when she saw it at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival that she helped to arrange American distribution for the film through her production company, Egg Pictures.

Sex and Lucia (2001)
Director: Julio Medem Lucía is a young waitress in a restaurant in the centre of Madrid. After the loss of her long-time boyfriend, a writer, she seeks refuge on a quiet, secluded Mediterranean island. There, bathed in an atmosphere of fresh air and dazzling sun, Lucía begins to discover the dark corners of her past relationship, as if they were forbidden passages of a novel which the author now, from afar, allows her to read.

Shortbus AKA The Sex Film Project
Director: John Cameron Mitchell Numerous New York City-dwellers come to the exclusive club Shortbus to work out problems in their sexual relationships. Rob and Sophia are a happily married couple, except for the fact that she has never experienced sexual climax. This irony follows her to work, because she is a couples counselor who frequently has to deal with the sexual issues other couples have. Two of her patients are Jamie and James, a gay couple who have been monogamous for five years and counting. James wants to bring other men in to the relationship, and his own history with depression may hint at an ulterior motive. Ceth (Pronounced like Seth) may be the perfect addition to their family, but Caleb, a voyeur from across the street, may have his own ideas about that. Sophia visits Severin, a dominatrix with secrets of her own to reveal. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was going to fire Sook-Yin Lee when they learned that she was going to be participating in a film with explicit sexual content. Several prominent individuals came to her rescue, including Gus Van Sant, Atom Egoyan, David Cronenberg and Julianne Moore, in successfully urging CBC to retain Lee as a member of their staff. ************
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John Cameron Mitchell, who created a cult sensation as writer and director of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, blazes a brave new trail with this comedy-drama which combines the stories of a handful of emotionally unsatisfied New Yorkers with some of the most explicit sexual material to ever appear in a mainstream motion picture. Sofia (SookYin Lee) is a couples' therapist who has a major relationship problem of her own -- she's never had an orgasm, and her husband Rob (Raphael Barker) doesn't seem capable of giving her one. Sophia's clients include James and Jamie (Paul Dawson and PJ DeBoy), a gay couple who have been together for five years and are beginning to grow tired of one another. As James and Jamie discuss the possibility of bringing another man into the bedroom, Sophia accidentally mentions her problem, and they tell her of an upcoming "Shortbus Party," a sexual free-for-all in which straight, gay, and lesbian couples are all welcome to either talk about sex or take a more active role in the main ballroom. As James and Jamie hook up with Ceth (Jay Brannan) for some mutually satisfying action at the bash, Sophia experiments with Sapphic diversions, and begins to truly find herself when she encounters Severin (Lindsay Beamish), a professional dominatrix. However, while Sophia begins to find what she needs with Severin, she discovers that while Severin is able to casually enter into a sexual relationship, she's never been able to emotionally commit herself to someone else. Shortbus was screened in competition at the 2006 Toronto Film Festival.

Lie With Me (2005)
Directed By: Clément Virgo A young woman who's formed her sexual identity around anonymous one-night-stands considers the option of a committed, monogamous relationship in this erotic psychological drama. Introduced in voiceover, the twentysomething Leila (Lauren Lee Smith) makes clear her preferences for picking up guys based on mutual, animal attraction, as well as her desire to exhibit power over men. But when she locks eyes with the tall, dark, and handsome David (Eric Balfour), her priorities begin to change, and she finds herself wanting more from a man than just hot sex. Each partner has his or her own baggage -- David is taking care of an ailing father, while Leila is caught in the middle of her parents' messy separation. Already familiar with the concept of sexual liberation, Leila finds she has to be emotionally vulnerable as well if she wants to hang on to David. Directed by Canadian independent filmmaker Clement Virgo, Lie With Me had its world premiere at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival.

Diary of a Nymphomaniac
Director: Christian Molina In Barcelona, Valére is very attached to her French grandmother Marie Tasso and likes to stay with her. While discussing sex with Val, Marie advises her that it would be important to jot her life experience down and Val decides to write a diary. Val recalls her promiscuous love life and her lovers since her first sexual experience when she was fifteen year-old. When Val loses her job in a downsizing, she is simultaneously informed that Marie had had a heart attack and she visits her granny who dies. Val looks for a job and when she is interviewed by an executive called Jaime, and falls in love for the first time. However Jaime is not good in bed. They move in together to a magnificent apartment and Val believes she has found the man of her life. Val gets a job with a gay Italian called Harry at a fashion house but Jaime becomes jealous and changes his behavior. Val decides to leave Jaime when she gets pregnant and he does not recognize the baby as his own.

Head-On (Gegen die Wand) (2004)
Director: Fatih Akin In 'Gegen die Wand' Cahit, a 40-something male from Mersin in Turkey has removed everything Turkish from his life. He has become an alcoholic drug addict and at the start of the movie wants to end it all. Sibel a 20-something female from Hamburg wishes to please her Turkish parents yet yearns for freedom. She has had her nose broken by her brother for being seen holding hands with a boy and yet she can not break her mother's heart and run away. She too attempts suicide and she first approaches Cahit there at the Hospital. Sibel asks Cahit to marry her, as she believes this to be the way out of her parent's house. She promises Cahit that their relationship will be like roommates, not like a married couple. The film follows Sibel and Cahit as they get married, become closer and eventually fall in love. German-born Turkish filmmaker Fatih Akin writes and directs the drama Gegen die Wand (Head-On). Set in a working-class Hamburg neighborhood, the story follows two Turkish immigrants who get together in a marriage of convenience. Cahit Tomruk (Birol Ãnel) is a heavy drinker and a fighter who crashes his car into a wall. While visiting his psychiatrist, Dr. Schiller (Hermann Lause), he meets fellow patient Sibel Guner (Sibel Kekilli). She's desperate to get away from her restrictive family, so she asks Cahit to marry her. Wanting to change his life anyway, Cahit agrees to the arrangement. After their wedding, Sibel celebrates her freedom by drinking, dancing, and having one-night stands. Meanwhile, Cahit carries on an intimate relationship with hair stylist Maren (Catrin
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Striebeck). Eventually, Cahit and Sibel learn to care for one another after a climactic trip to Istanbul. Head-On won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 2004.

Little Children (2006)
Directed By: Todd Field Oscar-nominated filmmaker Todd Field teams with novelist Tom Perrotta to adapt Perrotta's acclaimed novel concerning the suburban malaise experienced by a handful of small-town individuals whose intersecting lives converge in a variety of surprising, and sometimes ominous, ways. Kate Winslet, Jennifer Connelly, and Patrick Wilson star in a cinematic adaptation that doesn't aim so much to simply reproduce the book for the screen as it does to re-imagine the written word by exploring new possibilities for the characters and situations originally presented in Perrotta's 2004 best-seller. Sarah (Winslet) is a suburban outsider who, unlike the other playground moms, isn't afraid to approach the dreamy but long-absent father whom smitten housewives have taken to calling the "Prom King." Long days at the local community pool with their respective children soon find Sarah becoming acquainted with local husband and father Brad (Patrick Wilson) -- who seems to share in her seething discontentment with life in their quaint commuter town. An English literature major who never envisioned a fate as a soccer mom, Sarah has a growing dissatisfaction with her successful husband (Gregg Edelman) that parallels Brad's increasing frustration with his inability to pass the bar and connect with his wife, Kathy (Jennifer Connelly), a successful documentary filmmaker. It's not long before the dejected pair is meeting for a series of illicit afternoon trysts as their unsuspecting spouses work and their children lie quietly napping. Meanwhile, after the community is riled by the return of a convicted sex offender (Jackie Earle Haley) who leaves the concerned parents scrambling to protect their young ones, an attempt made by Sarah and Brad to legitimize their clandestine relationship by dining together with their respective spouses begins to awaken Kathy's suspicions about the fidelity of her husband.
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Echoes of "Madame Bovary" in the American suburbs. Sarah's in a loveless marriage, long days with her young daughter at the park and the pool, wanting more. Brad is a househusband, married to a flinty documentary filmmaker. Ronnie is just out of prison - two years for indecent exposure - living with his mother; Larry is a retired cop, fixated on driving Ronnie away. Sarah and Brad connect, a respite of adult companionship at the pool. Ronnie and Larry have their demons. Brad should be studying for the bar; Larry misses his job; Ronnie's mom thinks he needs a girlfriend. Sarah longs to refuse to be trapped in an unhappy life. Where can these tangled paths lead? I had the pleasure of seeing the premiere of "Little Children" at Telluride. The incomprable Mr.Feild hid behind the curtain near the concession at the back of the Nugget Theater wringing his hands, looking a wee bit nauseous. It was all very endearing. The film is superb. Amongst the American fare it tops my list of films fromTelluride, next to the incomprable 'Day Night Day Night' directed by Julia Loktev. For me, it was all about Jackie Earle Haley. Haley sneaks onto the screen 45 minutes into the narrative bursting the happy bubble of familiar ups and downs of married with children life. The result unnerving edgy tension that could be cut with a knife. Haley's performance is vulnerable, awkward and possibly the strongest male role to light up the screen this year. Haley deserves accolades, praise and loads of attention. He's been a favorite darling of mine for ages...something I had the good fortune of recounting to Feild after the screening. Feild provides many questions and very few answers. Haley's character may have been released from jail for indecent exposure to a minor, yet Feild does a delicate balancing act without faltering on the side of "good guy/ bad guy". This is NOT a film about pedophiles. This is a film about faults, judgments, weaknesses that consume, chew one up and spits you out again. And in the end the entire paradigm of suburban life has been twisted, shaken, pushed and pulled. There is tragedy, openness, shifts, that do not add up to ultimate conclusions. This complex tale weaves passion, disillusionment, love, lust, desire, ambivalence. But most importantly, the tender web of Mother-Child relations, WITHOUT ever vilifying Mother. Feild breaks from this poisonous, obsessive, castrating, oedipal mother-subject paradigm and addresses the people who float in and out of crisis above and beyond being tied to their social roles and traditional moral codes. Winslet encapsulates the awkward intellectual mom, who loves her daughter, but has very very human ambivalence towards this 24/7 duty of unconditional love/acceptance and never ending giving. Finally, she decides to give something back to herself, by playing out a torrid love affair with the Prom King (Patrick Wilson) another character ripe with flaws and exudes humanness. This should win many many many accolades for 2006, it's a rare stand out. A powerful disturbingly familiar tale played out eloquently, and held at benign distance via the brilliant use of odd narration. It's a strange convention,
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but Feild masters this as he skewers and satirizes and describes it's subjects with authority. The narration was pleasantly reminiscent of "Fishing with John", often obvious, but nicely pushing the plot along with often more than a hint of humor. The serious tone of the narrator serves to punctuate the utter ridiculous paradox of the banalities of being 'married with children' and having a flashy adventurous love affair in and around the locations of everyday stay at home summer existence; the park, the pool, the evening football game. The Affair never reveals itself as the be-all-and-end-all, answer to disillusionment and sadness of suburban middle class marriage. Nor, the cause-effect that sets the plot in motion. Even more satisfyingly, the affair does not legitimate the happy normative narrative ending.

Il Postino (The Postman) (1994)
Directed By: Michael Radford In this remake of the 1983 Ardiente Paciencia by Antonio Skarmeta, the time and place have been changed to Italy in the 1950s, but the relationship between the Chilean Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda and Mario (Massimo Troisi), the postman who delivers his copious mail, is still the focus of attention. In this version of the story, scripted by a collective of Anna Pavignano, the director Michael Radford, Troisi himself, and a few others (based on Skarmeta's original story), Neruda is an aloof and slightly elitist figure who is seeking solitude on an island off the coast of Italy, taking a respite from political problems at home. Mario is a poet at heart and employs every measure he is capable of inventing to win his way into the affections and attention of the great author. As his efforts start to bear fruit and Neruda unbends and begins to share conversation and philosophy with Mario, the postman idolizes the poet all the more. Eventually, Neruda shares his leftist political philosophy as well -- and helps him win over the captivating Beatrice, the woman of Mario's dreams. When Neruda leaves, Mario enters into high gear as he prepares material for the next time he sees Neruda -- his ardor and patience, alluded to in the original title -- are essentially indestructible. (Massimo Troisi) was fated never to know that Il Postino would receive worldwide acclaim and be nominated for an Oscar for "Best Picture" in 1995 (the first foreign film nominated in that category since Ingmar Bergman's Cries and Whispers 22 years earlier). Suffering from a heart ailment and unable to work more than an hour or two on the filming of Il Postino each day, he died in his sleep at the age of 41, the day after shooting ended on the film.

Cashback (2006)
Directed By: Sean Ellis A young insomniac attempts to cope with his sleepless nights by taking a job at a local supermarket, only to discover that he possesses a curious coping mechanism in the debut feature from Academy-Award nominated filmmaker Sean Ellis. Ben (Sean Biggerstaff) has recently been dumped by his girlfriend, and in his grief he has lost his ability to sleep through the night. When Ben takes a job at the supermarket and makes the acquaintance of an odd collection of individuals, including silly slackers Barry (Michael Dixon) and Matt (Michael Lambourne) and aspiring kung fu master Brian (Marc Pickering), he begins to find his imagination taking flight in a most unusual manner. It seems that Ben has the ability to literally stop time, a talent that allows him to take pause, traverse the supermarket aisles, and ponder both his own life and the existence of the customers who stand frozen and completely unaware of his presence. As much a dreamer as Ben may be, however, his willingness to maintain his connection to the tangible, if slightly antiseptic, world he currently inhabits soon finds the wistful dreamer forming a close connection with disarmingly straightforward checkout girl Emily (Emilia Fox), whose solid ties to reality serve to offer a healthy contrast to the fantasy-prone insomniac's surreal form of escapism. When art student Ben Willis dumps his girlfriend Suzy, he develops chronic insomnia after finding out how quickly she moved on. To pass the long hours of the night, he starts working the late night shift at the local supermarket. There he meets a colorful cast of characters, all of whom have their own 'art' in dealing with the boredom of an eight-hour-shift. Ben's art is that he imagines himself stopping time. This way, he can appreciate the artistic beauty of the frozen world and the people inside it - especially Sharon, the pretty and quiet checkout girl, who perhaps holds the answer to solving the problem of Ben's insomnia. A guy and his girl break up. Painfully. As a result of this the guy becomes an insomniac and suddenly finds himself with 8 more hours in the day. 8 more hours in which he feels the pain of love gone sour. 8 more hours to be bored and restless. He decides to make the best of it and starts working the night shift in a supermarket where he is met with a new kind of boredom and several people that deal with that boredom in different ways. Himself adding yet another way of dealing with that boredom. He imagines he can stop time. What follows is best seen instead of read about. This film is filled to the rim with the most beautiful stills, completed with several speeds of motion and feels right. Right in an artistically way. It is like watching a painting being painted,, like watching a poem being written, like listening to a song being composed. And at the end it all adds up and the completed picture is seen in all its beauty. All in all a really nicely designed film that belongs in the small theaters and in the art-houses.
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Next to that it is fun to watch. The adventures of the guy are interesting to follow, even though they aren't all that different from what most people go through at one or other stage of life. Music choice was very fitting and acting was good enough not to be falling out of place with the rest. So, all in all, a very pleasurable watch and something I can recommend to anyone.

Young People Fucking (2007)
Director: Martin Gero On a Tuesday night, five couples have separate sexual adventures. Matt and Kris, friends for years, want to have an only-once, no-strings good time. Abby and Andrew, married, celebrate his birthday, but it's marred by angst and miscommunication. Mia and Eric are exes, making sure they are over each other. Jaime and Ken work together and this is a first date. Inez and Gord invite his roommate, Dave, to join them. By the time each couple has gone through a prelude, foreplay, sex, an interlude, orgasm, and afterglow, they've answered basic questions: can sex be anonymous, are we bored, is our marriage really finished, does anyone tell the truth, and how do we make someone happy? This film isn't the standard comedy about average teens to young adults trying to get off, this is about young adults that have the same sort of mishaps and adventures exploring the different types of sex, yes believe it or not there are different types; whether it be about being in love, to a one night stand, two friends helping each-other out or just two ex-partners filling in. Be it a rough topic to display on screen seen it's pretty full of sex at every angle, which is besides the point, the point is that it's about the deeper meaning, what do we discover about each-other in bed, what was there before and what's there now. The writing is spot on, the scenes aren't as you'd expect, the characters question themselves and their abilities in or out of the sack. An odd experience on screen, but a funny one. Verdict: 90 minutes of sex on screen, could the internet provide better? Doubtful. This is sexual comedy at it's best, thinking that makes it a new genre of film-making to consider. 7.5/10.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008)
Director: Kevin Smith Zack and Miri are two lifelong platonic friends who make an adult film to pay the rent of their apartment. With their friend Delaney, the couple set out for auditionees for their porn film, but in the process of filming, they realize they feel more for each other than they had before. Zack and Miri are platonic best friends, roommates, and underachievers who've known each other since the first grade. They're both perfectly happy with their below average status until they find themselves eyeball deep in debt and facing the threat of eviction. The solution? Make an adult video hoping it will provide the financial stability they desperately need, but can their lifelong friendship survive the complication of sex? On the surface this raunchy comedy is nothing more than an outrageously vulgar, foulmouthed version of When Harry met Sally, but at its heart is a sweet, genuine, and believable analysis of the frailties prevalent in a male-female friendship. Not always uproariously funny, but easily likable with a script that challenges viewers to keep track of enough sexually explicit dialogue for three films! Rogen and Banks have great chemistry. ***

Beautiful Girls (1996)
Director: Ted Demme New York based jazz pianist Willie Conway heads back to his small hometown of Knights Ridge, Massachusetts for a high school reunion. The trip is as much to go to the reunion and see his old friends - none of whom left Knights Ridge after graduation - as it is to get away from his current life, at which he is at a crossroads both personally and professionally. He is just eking out a living with his piano playing gigs, and as such he is thinking about taking a sales job. He's also not sure if he's ready to marry his long time girlfriend, lawyer Tracy Stover. Most of Willie's Knights Ridge blue collar friends' best days were in high school, they still having that "trophy" mentality of girlfriends and wives. Only Michael "Mo" Morris is happily married with a family. Paul Kirkwood, whose room is plastered with magazine pictures of models, wants his waitress ex-girlfriend Jan back only because he knows now that he can't have her. A terrific ensemble cast brings this film to life, which focuses on the difficulties some face in making that final, `mental' leap from adolescence to adulthood, and spend way too many years trying to sort it all out. As one of the characters so tellingly puts it at one point, `I'm not anywhere close to being the man I thought I'd be--' and the denial, that failure to accept the fact that time stands still for no man, and the inability to choose which path to take
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when you hit that inevitable fork in the road, forms the basis for director Ted Demme's examination of how human nature affects the process of maturating, in `Beautiful Girls,' a drama featuring Timothy Hutton, Matt Dillon and a young Natalie Portman. Willie Conway (Hutton) is back home in the Midwest for his high school reunion, but more than that, to try and make some decisions about his future. He finds that nothing much has changed-- the town, or his old friends, most of whom seem to be exerting more time and energy attempting to cling to what was, rather than moving on with their lives. Tommy Rowland (Dillon), for instance, the high school `hero,' as it were, now drives a snowplow; for all intents and purposes, his life `peaked' in high school, and he can't seem to get past it. Then there's Paul (Michael Rapaport), who just doesn't seem to want to grow up; after a seven year relationship with Jan (Martha Plimpton), he refuses to make that final commitment-- after all, `What's the rush?' All of which does nothing to help Willie with his own dilemma; the only words of wisdom he gets from anyone, in fact, come from the precocious thirteen-year-old, Marty (Natalie Portman), who lives next door. But in a couple of days, Tracy (Annabeth Gish), the girl Willie `thinks' he wants to marry, is due to arrive from Chicago, so it's time to move beyond the crossroads; for Willie, it's decision time. Demme delivers a story that just about everyone in the audience is going to connect with on some level, because everyone's gone through (or will go through) these kinds of things at one time or another. Who hasn't experienced, if only for a moment, that sense of either wanting to stay as they are or going back to what they were, when life was better, or at least simpler. Or more fun. Working from a screenplay by Scott Rosenberg, Demme examines the relationships between this eclectic group of individuals in a way that offers some insights into human nature that will no doubt elicit some reflection on the part of the viewer. It all points up that, no matter what it may look like on the surface, underneath it all we're not so different from one another; we all share that common bond of learning life's lessons one day at a time, albeit in our own particular way, which corresponds to who we are as individuals. And Demme succeeds in telling his story with warmth and humor; by tapping into the humanity at the heart of it all. The story may focus on Willie, but the film is a true ensemble piece, realized as it is through the sum of it's many and varied parts. It's a talented cast of actors bringing a unique bunch of characters to life that makes this film what it is, beginning with Hutton, who anchors it with his solid portrayal of Willie, a challenging role in that Willie has to be an average guy who is unique in his own right. The same can be said of Dillon's Tommy, in whom traces of Dallas Winston from `The Outsiders' can be found; Tommy is, perhaps, just Dallas a few years later. Mira Sorvino gives a memorable performance by creating the most sympathetic character in the film, Tommy's girlfriend, Sharon. This is the girl who was never going to be prom queen, and who up until now has lacked the selfconfidence necessary to create a positive environment for herself. Lauren Holly, meanwhile, succeeds with her portrayal of Darian Smalls, the absolute opposite of Sharon, a young woman who is probably too positive for her own good and who lives the life of a perpetual prom queen, an individual who-- as another character succinctly puts it-- was `Mean as a snake,' back in the day. Good performances that add a balanced perspective to the film. There are two performances here that really steal the show, however. The first being that of Michael Rapaport, who as Paul so completely and convincingly captures the very essence of an average Joe with not too much on the ball, no prospects for the future to speak of, but who is, at heart, a good guy. There's humor and pathos in his portrayal, which personifies that particular state of being the film is seeking to depict. Excellent work by Rapaport, and decidedly one of the strengths of the film. The most memorable performance of all, however, is turned in by Natalie Portman, who at fifteen is playing the thirteen-year-old Marty, the girl mature and wise beyond her years (`I'm an old soul,' as she puts it), with whom Willie forms a kind of bond as she, in her own way, helps him to sort out his feelings and find his focus. Portman's performance here-- some three years before she would forever become Padme Amidala-- exhibits that spark and charismatic screen presence that has served her so well since, in films like `Anywhere But Here,' and `Where the Heart Is.' She has for some time been, and continues to be, one of the finest and most promising young actors in the business. The cast also includes Noah Emmerich (Mo), Rosie O'Donnell (Gina), Max Perlich (Kev), Uma Thurman (Andrea), Anne Bobby (Sarah) and Pruitt Taylor Vince (Stanley), all of whom help to make `Beautiful Girls' a memorable and satisfying cinematic experience. And that's the magic of the movies. 8/10.

In Good Company (2004)
Director: Paul Weitz Dan Foreman is headed for a shakeup. He is demoted from head of ad sales for a major magazine when the company he works for is acquired in a corporate takeover. His new boss, Carter Duryea, is half his age--a business
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school prodigy who preaches corporate synergy. While Dan develops clients through handshake deals and relationships, Carter cross-promotes the magazine with the cell phone division and Krispity Krunch, an indeterminate snack food under the same corporate umbrella. Both men are going through turmoil at home. Dan has two daughters, Alex, age 18, and Jana, age 16, and is shocked when his wife tells him she's pregnant with a new child. Carter, in the meanwhile, is dumped by his wife of seven months just as he gets his promotion. Dan and Carter's uneasy friendship is thrown into jeopardy when Carter falls for, and begins an affair with, Dan's daughter Alex.

The Other Side of the Bed (El.Otro.Lado.De.La.Cama) 2002
Director: Emilio Martínez Lázaro Sex, love, lies, bed-hopping and mistaken identities abound in this pop musical-comedy set in Madrid. The gorgeous Paula breaks up with her boyfriend Pedro in order to continue her affair with Javier. The immature Javier however, is unwilling to break up with his current girlfriend Sonia, or confess to their affair to Pedro, who happens to be his best friend.

Girl in Captivity Psycho Torture Chamber 2008
Directed: Daisuke Got A girl named Kimika wakes up chained up in a dark boiler room, unsure of how she got there. She's soon approached by a strange large man wearing a mask and using a creepy voice changer... The girl is the daughter of Daisuke, the shrewd president of a general contracting company. Daisuke was too occupied with an ongoing sexual fling with his secretary (Asami) to notice that his daughter was missing at first, and his relationship with her was already strained due to a certain incident in the past, but when he receives a threatening phone call he eventually recognizes the gravity of the situation. Eventually, Kimika begins to calm down as her fear slowly turns into a perverse attraction to this strange person holding her captive. What is the kidnapper's motive? And what is his true form? In the basement of a certain building, insanity merges with obscenity as the plot unfolds.

A Lonely Cow Weeps at Dawn 2003
Director: Daisuke Gotô A young widow, Noriko, lives with her senile father-in-law, Shukichi, on a farm. He believes his favorite cow, long gone, is still alive. Noriko pretends to be the cow and lets him milk her - a satisfying arrangement for them both. If Grampa starts thinking you're a cow, what do you do? Well, if you're anything like, Noriko, you'll be a good cow, and wake up at 5 am every morning, strip naked, and wait patiently on all fours with the rest of the other cows for the senility stricken old man to yank on your nipples. There was a time during the flick I was wondering if the old man was just a serious pervert, and he wasn't seeing a cow, but just saying those things to squeeze on his daughter-in law's boobies. As the story unfolds you see that his old age is indeed becoming a problem for him, and this is where the film opens your eyes to movie that's actually much deeper than previously thought. Combine it with some hot and heavy stuff and you got the makings of a very memorable pinku. Lonely Cow Weeps at Dawn was a good one. With surprisingly good sex scenes, solid direction, acting and cinematography, mixed with an intriguing story, I was kept pretty entertained. And it doesn't hurt that the film is only a tad over an hour long. Check it out if you're looking to watch something a bit more abnormal.

The Strange Saga of Hiroshi the Freeloading Sex Machine 2005
Director: Yûji Tajiri Near Kawahara, a young man on a bus connives to meet a single mother by knocking over her son's box of crickets. He's Hiroshi, she's Haruka, the boy is Yuichiro. Hiroshi pursues Haruka, and she invites him into her flat. When Hiroshi is not engaged in exuberant sex with her, he's playing with Yuichiro and learning the intricacies of the neighborhood sport, cricket wrestling. The local cricket-raising champion is Anzai, who desires Haruka for himself. Haruka's ex-husband Taro and his girlfriend Kunico are also around - and everyone's paths will cross over desire, love, loneliness, and the quest for a victorious cricket. There is nothing like a good romantic comedy, especially when it is paired with cricket wrestling. Haruka (Rinako Hirasawa) is a single mother who meets a new guy. Hiroshi (Mutsuo Yoshioka) is unemployed, but gets along well with her son. The two lovers get along great. So great that they are having frantic sex whenever
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they are together. You don't see that in Hollywood RomComs. Of course, the sex alternates with the local pastime of cricket wrestling. Hiroshi is trying to beat the champ Anzai (Kazuhiro Sano), whom he has never met. His prime cricket gets in some hot water - actually hot oil, and he now needs to find another. Of course, neither of the lovers are particularly faithful. We don't just see flirting either, as they engage in sex with outsiders, which, of course, leads to the predictable breakup. There is some over-the-top silliness, and even some girl-on-girl action that was totally unexpected and, given the context, weird. But, all ends as it would in a typical RomCom. You knew that, didn't you. A strange, bizarre and charming love story about a cheerful man Hiroshi and unique single-mother Haruka with offbeat fellows. Hiroshi lives off of his single-mom girlfriend Haruka. When he gets drawn into the cricket fighting craze that has gripped the townsmen, a showdown of epic proportions draws near with Harukas cricket-breeding ex-husband. Director Yuji TAJIRI has pulled no stops in this hyperactive parody / love story / sex film - with a special effects laden finale that will blow you away. Insects, money and carnality collide in this tale of a slacker who passes time mooching off of his girlfriend and participating in the latest vogue: cricket fighting. When his sweetie’s ex-husband challenges his honor by proposing a battle between their crickets, Hiroshi dives into the showdown with an animalistic fervor. Watch out: Even this is a love story this film contains strong content which may not be appropriate for the faint hearted!!! Japan 2005 Director: Yûji Tajiri Cast: Rinako Hirasawa, Mutsuo Yoshioka, Minami Aiyama, Akino Hirasawa, Takeshi Ito, Setchin Kawaya, Setsuhiko Kobayashi, Yûya Matsuura, Kazuhiro Sano, etc. Also Known As (AKA) Sex machine - Hiwai na kisetsu Hiroshi the Freeloading Sex Machine The Strange Saga of Hiroshi the Freeloading Sex Machine

The Japanese Wife Next Door 2004
Director: Yutaka Ikejima The STORY: An office worker (Takashi Ichinose played by Naohiro Hirakawa) has the dream life. He meets two beautiful ladies at a party, both of whom seem interested in him. He ends up leaving with Sakura (played by buxom Reiko Yamaguchi). One wild night of passion followed by six months and they find themselves married and living with Takashi's family (father, grandfather, sister) in the same apartment. The ideal situation soon takes a turn for the worse as Sakura's nymphomaniac sex drive coupled with the paper thin walls of Japanese housing, and the eventual inability of newly wed husband Takashi to keep (it) up with his wife leads to tension, drama, and of course, lots of sex in the household. All of the in-laws get in on the act. Takashi eventually runs into the lady he left behind at the party and they have a sensual fling. But he goes back to his fate, looking for a divorce. In the final scene, his family practically gang rapes him as he is forced to 'enjoy' his family's newfound lust for life. REVIEW: Wow, where to begin. They sure can pack a lot of sex in an hour. This pinku is pretty much all about the sex. No weird torture or psycho drama. It's pretty straightforward. The sex scenes are largely played for laughs with the exception of the first one between the two main leads, and the forbidden tryst between Takashi and the jilted Ryoko - that one probably has the most passion of them all. The actresses playing Ryoko and Sakura are very attractive. The sister didn't really do much for me. It was a little unsettling to watch grandpa getting it on with Sakura but it's easily overlooked once Sakura takes her top off. It's a fun movie, played mostly tongue in cheek (and in other parts) and as an entertaining, light, and very sexy
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romp, I'd have to give it 7/10. P.S. there's a 'sequel' to this film where the director shows what would have happened had the hero chosen the other lady. Interesting idea!

Auto Focus 2002
Director: Paul Schrader Capitalizing on his fame as the star of "Hogan's Heroes," Bob Crane dove into the freewheeling spirit of the 60s and 70s with relish, having affairs with numerous women. Eventually, Crane teamed up with video technician John Carpenter to document his exploits, an association that may very well have led to his murder in a Scottsdale, Arizona motel room in 1978, which remains officially unsolved to this day. Wow, is Greg Kinnear nothing short of amazing in this film or what! An incredible performance as Bob Crane, seriously virtuoso. When, towards the end, he visits his agent and is all messed up, and starts saying "sex is normal. I'm normal" - Kinnear reaches a pinnacle in his young film acting career. I have always felt that actors ascend to the next level of craft and stardom when they breakthrough with a biographical role; see - Denzel Washington in Malcom X, Ben Kingsley in Ghandi, Robert Downey Jr in Chaplin, Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia. And now Greg Kinnear has made that leap with Auto Focus, a well-crafted and seductive film by Paul Schrader, Hollywood's last bastion of non-sugar coated filmmakers. Basically the story of Hollywood's most intriguing unsolved murder, Auto Focus also pulls back the curtain on "good guy" Bob Crane's lecherous and painfully discombobulated private and secret life. What is also amazing about this film is how is records the birth of video and the VCR. Bob Crane turns out to be one of the pioneer "users" of this technology. When we see or hear video, video cameras, or VCRs, we probably automatically think of home movies, recording episodes of Star Trek, or the Star Wars prequels' lack of cinematic quality. When Bob Crane heard about video cameras and VCRs, he automatically thought of sex. Though the film makes no mention of it, it is quite prophetic in showing us how the technology of video created hard-core pornography and turned it into a billion dollar industry. If you think about it, nothing has profited more from video than porno, and nothing ever relied so dearly on video like porno. Bob Crane instinctively felt this, though he never was a pornographer, so to speak; he knew that sex and video can go hand in hand. Unfortunately, this was also his downfall. Like most Paul Schrader writ or directed films, by the end you get that queasy feeling, the feeling you get at the end of Goodfellas, the feeling of sadness that this great ride is over and the feeling of emptiness and loss that all that greatness came crashing down. Bob Crane's descent into moral madness can be sickening, especially when juxtaposed with Hogan's Heroes. I almost felt the desire to shower, to cleanse myself after viewing this film. I love movies that produce reactions from me, movies that linger for days. This is one of them. Filme de Amor (2003) Bressane Director: Júlio Bressane Three friends, Hilda, Matilda and Gaspar, meet in a rundown downtown apartment during a weekend to chat, drink and experience pleasure. No plot. No story. One theme. Just three people in an abandoned building talking about what makes them horny. This movie would actually be interesting if it didnt try so hard to be artistic. You cant try to make art you just do. Instead, you end being pretentious. Which is a word I use for alot of the movies released in 2003's Brasília Film Festival like this one. This movie tries so hard to be shocking and meaningful that it just ends up being funny. To give you an idea, one of the conversations in this movie (which is pretty much the only thing in the movie) feature the main actress saying she wants to be strangled by rhinoceres leather, she pauses and then screams. The only good thing I can say about this movie is that the cinematography is absolutely beautiful and the only thing worthwile in long long art cult wannabe. No te mueras sin decirme adonde vas (Don't Die Without Telling Me Where You're Going) 1995 Director: Eliseo Subiela This movie is a declaration of love to cinema that is used as a metaphor for the universe itself. We are the films and God is projecting them, including this one with Rachel and Leopoldo, who in a former life literally co-invented cinema as an assistant of Thomas A. Edison named William K.L. Dickson. Orthodox religion teaches that man has just one life in which to merit his eternal reward or damnation. Yet today approximately one in four Americans and many Eastern religions believe in reincarnation, the idea that repeated rebirth in human bodies continues until the soul has reached a state of perfection. In his 1995 film, Don't Die Without Telling Me Where You're Going, Argentine director Eliseo Subiela (Man Facing Southeast) uses the idea of
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reincarnation to tell a touching story about the enduring power of love. Adapted from a novel by Uruguayan writer Hermenegildo Sabat, the film is fantasy, but the emotions dealt with are very real. Leopoldo (Dario Grandinetti), like his father, is a projectionist at the local cinema. His dream, however, is to become an inventor. With the help of his friend Oscar (Oscar Martinez), who has invented a robot in the image of famous tango singer Carlos Gardel, Leopoldo creates a machine that can record a person's dreams and play them back later on a videotape. The film opens in New Jersey in the year 1885. Thomas Edison's assistant is saying good bye to his wife who has just passed away. We are then transported to modern day Buenos Aires where Leopoldo has recorded a dream in which he feels overwhelmed with love for a woman he does not know. He has been married to Susana (Monica Galin) for twenty years, but his love has become mechanical. Amazingly, the next day he sees the woman (Marianna Arias) in his dreams standing outside his theater. She explains that her name is Rachel and that she was married to Leopoldo, then named William, over one hundred years ago. She also tells the astonished projectionist that they have reincarnated together many times throughout the centuries in different roles. Like the angels in Wings of Desire, she is a spirit whom Leopoldo can see and talk with but cannot touch. He longs to hold and kiss her but the laws of the universe prevent this. Fears begin to arise about his mental health when he is seen talking to himself as though someone were standing next to him. Leopoldo's love for Rachel only deepens, however, and both must struggle to overcome their deepest fears, Rachel to accept life, Leopoldo to accept death. Enhanced by the music of Franz Schubert and a lovely original score by Pedro Aznar, Don't Die Without Telling Me Where You're Going is a deeply felt meditation on love, death, and spirituality. In lesser hands, it could have become mawkish and unconvincing, yet Mr. Subiela is a true poet, and in spite of some initial resistance, I was moved by this sensitive work.

Te doy mis ojos (Take My Eyes) 2003
Director: Icíar Bollaín One winter night, Pilar runs away from home. With her, she takes only a few belongings and her son, Juan. Antonio soon sets out to look for her. He says Pilar is his sunshine, and what's more, "She gave him her eyes"... The best I can say in favor of this film is that I came out of the cinema with terrible back pain because I had been so extremely tense while watching it. The actors are absolutely brilliant, communicating all that needs to be told, and the plot is never simplistic. Most European social cinema seems influenced by Ken Loach's movies and this one is no exception. The way time passes slowly and characters try hard to improve their situation reminds a lot of Loach's "Sweet Sixteen", among others. If there is any weakness to the movie is that I can't say if people who do not share the director's opinions on gender violence would appreciate this movie as much as I have.

Cross of Iron 1977
Director: Sam Peckinpah after another successful mission. Meanwhile the upper-class and arrogant Prussian Captain Hauptmann Stransky is assigned as the new commander of his squad. After a bloody battle of Steiner's squad against the Russian troops led by the brave Lieutenant Meyer that dies in the combat, the coward Stransky claims that he led his squad against the Russian and requests to be awarded with the Iron of Cross to satisfy his personal ambition together with his aristocratic family. Stransky gives the names of Steiner and of the homosexual Lieutenant Triebig as witnesses of his accomplishment, but Steiner, who has problems with the chain of command in the army and with the arrogance of Stransky, refuses to participate in the fraud. When Colonel Brandt gives the order to leave the position in the front, Stransky does not retransmit the order to Steiner's squad. ****** Cross of Iron is probably the second best film made by Sam Peckinpah, rivalled only by The Wild Bunch. It is a war film shich follows a unit of German soldiers as they escape from the front line as the Russians smash through their ranks. This was perhaps the most devastating line to be fighting on during World War Two, and as expected there is a lot of death and gore, not to mention filth, sweat and treachery. James Coburn plays a German soldier with an almost God-like air of invincibility about him. He is not a comic book creation, but a hardened soldier who terrifies everybody, including his commanding officers. Max Schell plays a
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commanding officer who wants an Iron Cross, despite the fact that he a coward, and will go to the most treacherous lengths to get it. This is an upsetting and unflinching film. It pre-dates Saving Private Ryan by two decades, yet is just as detailed and frightening, just as bloody, and maybe even better. Anyone yet to see Cross of Iron must do so as soon as possible. It is one of the great war films, and an unforgettably chilling experience.

"Titash Ekti Nadir Naam (1973)"
Director: Ritwik Ghatak Typically for Indian movies this has it all, evil capitalists that destroy the property of the poor peasants, a man struck insane by the abduction of his newly-wed wife from arranged marriage, compassionate families that end up turning against the one they help and a lot of smoking from water pipes and chewing of betel nut. The film starts by announcing that not many people know about and much less care about the people living in this region which is one of the world's poorest places. And by the end of it most things look very unfortunate for them still. It is realistically made, shot on location so that doesn't feel contrived. That being said, some of the acting looks funny and artificial by our standards. As we move focal points also it can be a little difficult to follow the numerous plots. Titash Ekti Nadir Naam (Bengali: িততাস একিট নদীর নাম, English: A River Named Titash) is a 1973 Bengali film directed by Ritwik Ghatak. The movie was based on a novel by the same name, written by Advaita Malla Burman. The movie explores the life of the fishermen on the bank of the Titash River in Brahmanbaria, Bangladesh. The shooting of the movie took a toll on Ghatak's health, as he was suffering from tuberculosis at the time. Alongside Satyajit Ray's Kanchenjungha (1962), and Mrinal Sen's Calcutta 71, Titash Ekti Nadir Naam is one of the earliest films to resemble hyperlink cinema, featuring multiple characters in a collection of interconnected stories, both predating Robert Altman's Nashville (1975). In 2007, A River Named Titash topped the list of 10 best Bangladeshi films, as chosen in the audience and critics' polls conducted by the British Film Institute. Description: The tale is set among Malo fishermen living by the Titash river. Kishore's (Mitra) bride (K. Choudhury) is abducted by river bandits. She escapes and is rescued by the fisher folk, with whom she lives and raises her child. Kishore becomes a madman and is offered shelter by his wife but they recognise each other only before they die

The Wild Bunch 1969
Director: Sam Peckinpah In the Wild Bunch the movie opens with a group of aging outlaw's final score, a bank robbery. The event concludes with a violent and overtly bloody shootout that would generally mark the finale of a movie. This is correct in that it marks the finale of an era, for the characters and the world they live in. They simply can no longer keep up, the times are changing, technology advancing, and they're style of life is getting left behind in the dust that they spent so long galloping through. They abandon their careers for the simpler life of retirement. They enjoy this time, they live their fantasies. During this time the law is always on their tracks, bounty hunters. The further into their fantasy they get, the closer their demise seems to get. When one of their own is captured they are faced with the choice of escape or what is certainly a suicide mission to attempt and free their fallen behind comrade... Starring: William Holden, Ernest Borgnine and Robert Ryan

Midaq Alley 1995
Director: Jorge Fons Based on the Nobel Prize Winner's novel, the Egyptian Naguib Mahfouz. The story, translated from El Cairo to Mexico City's downtown, narrates the life of the members of the neighbourhood and the connection between them Don Ru, the owner of the local pub; Eusebia, his wife; Chava, his son and Abel his friend, who emigrate to USA in search of fortune; Susanita, the single landtender always dreaming to marry a good man; Guicho, the pub's employee, who extracts the money when Don Ru is not there and finally marries Susanita; Alma, the very good looking girl, the Abel's dream, who becomes a luxury prostitute while he's away; Jimmy, the handsome young man Don Ru becomes infatuated with, etc. This movie won the Ariel (the Mexican Oscar) as best movie in 1995.
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Ae Fond Kiss 2004
Director: Ken Loach In Glasgow, Scotland, the Pakistani parents of Casim Khan have decided that he is going to marry his cousin Jasmine. Unfortunately, Casim has just fallen in love with his younger sister's music teacher Roisin. Not only is she 'goree', a white woman, she is also Irish and catholic, things that may not go down well with Casim's parents. They start a relationship but Casim is torn between following his heart and being a good son. I was taken to this film sort of against my will, I wanted to see something else, and from the first five minutes I knew I was watching something special. Not to give anything away, but this film has a political side that is not often seen in films in the states, but it's not 'heavy handed' about it at all- the political comes out of the family situations. The actors are all wonderful, particularly the woman lead, and I completely believed every situation they were in. The music was unobtrusive and the camera work felt more like a documentary than a film. But overall I was left with a feeling of joy that there are still films that try to say something, that aren't based on comic books, and that have real concerns that people struggle with. Bravo to Ken Loach and co.

Sweet Sixteen 2002
Director: Ken Loach Liam is a young, restless teen struggling to realize his dream in the gritty and dismal streets of Greenock, where unemployment is rampant and little hope is available to the city's youth. He is waiting for the release of his mother, Jean, from prison where she is completing a prison term for a crime that her boyfriend actually committed. Her boyfriend, Stan, is a crude and obnoxious drug pusher is partnered by Liam's equally rough and foul-mouthed, mean-spirited grandfather. Liam is determined to rescue his mother from both of them, which means creating a safe haven beyond their reach. But first he's got to raise the cash--no small feat for a young man It's not long before Liam and his pals' crazy schemes lead them into all sorts of trouble. Finding himself dangerously out of his depth, Liam knows he should walk away. Only this time, he just can't let go.

City of God 2002
Directors: Fernando Meirelles, Kátia Lund Brazil, 1960's, City of God. The Tender Trio robs motels and gas trucks. Younger kids watch and learn well...too well. 1970's: Li'l Zé has prospered very well and owns the city. He causes violence and fear as he wipes out rival gangs without mercy. His best friend Bené is the only one to keep him on the good side of sanity. Rocket has watched these two gain power for years, and he wants no part of it. Yet he keeps getting swept up in the madness. All he wants to do is take pictures. 1980's: Things are out of control between the last two remaining gangs...will it ever end? Welcome to the City of God.

Definitely, Maybe 2008
Director: Adam Brooks Romantic comedy: Will Hayes, a 30-something Manhattan dad is in the midst of a divorce when his 10 year old daughter, Maya, starts to question him about his life before marriage. Maya wants to know absolutely everything about how her parents met and fell in love. Will's story begins in 1992, as a young, starry-eyed aspiring politician who moves to New York from Wisconsin in order to work on the Clinton campaign. For Maya, Will relives his past as a idealistic young man learning the ins and outs of big city politics, and recounts the history of his romantic relationships with three very different women. On the campaign, Will's best buddy is Russell McCormack. They not only have similar political aspirations, they share the same type of girl problems, too. Will hopelessly attempts a "PG" version of his story for his daughter ad changes the names so Maya has to guess who he finally married. ############ I was completely astonished the first time I saw the movie, Definitely, Maybe. It truly was, as my summary suggests, absolutely wonderful, and that has mostly to do with the performances by the casts' dedication, though the plot and execution of the entire film was remarkable, as well, and the whole atmosphere and the way the movie folds out is incredible. It was so touching and completely entertaining from beginning to end, while being humorous and overall fun at the same time. The acting was great, as I have said, and the script was great, because of everyone who worked on the films' professionalism and believability. They did a perfect job on this movie, and I thought they couldn't have done better with what they had to work with. There was some material I found a bit iffy, and at one point I felt as if I was losing interest, just a little, but this movie is so uplifting that I couldn't manage to look away, and it kept being miraculously beautiful and enchanting that I
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couldn't help but be so interested. It deserves any positivity it receives, and I hope that many more people will watch it, because it is an excellent movie, that needs to be spread around for it's wonderfulness. Go see it if you haven't!

My Life to Live (It's My Life) (Vivre sa vie: Film en douze tableaux) (1962)
Directed By: Jean-Luc Godard Vivre Sa Vie presents 12 episodes in the life of a young woman who turns to prostitution to pay her rent. Each episode features a theatrical scene preceded by a title that lists the characters in the episode, its location, and a brief summary of the action. As he would throughout his career, director Jean-Luc Godard uses prostitution as a metaphor for both economic life in general and the position of the filmmaker under capitalism. Vivre Sa Vie stars Anna Karina, who was married to Godard at the time. Her performance was largely improvised as Godard refused to give Karina her lines until just before each scene was shot. In order to maintain the freshness of the performances, Godard rarely made more than one take of each shot. The film is shot in stunning black-and-white by Raoul Coutard. The improvised acting and fragmented story give the viewer the impression of watching a documentary about a woman's life that is also a series of essays about aesthetics and economics. In addition, the film's camera style presents a catalogue of alternatives to conventional shooting strategies. ~ Louis Schwartz, Rovi ######### I've started to get a little more used to Godard, and now by My Life to Live I know I can expect anything from him, though it's sometimes a style that he presents frankly, stylishly, or in an experimentally real approach. Along with his masterful cinematographer Raoul Coutard, the mis en scene he creates in each episode is equally satisfying. And there is a terrific balance in how the camera may just stay for minutes at a time on a character before moving and how the camera may show off (impressively) for the viewer. For example, there's a moment when Nana (played by Godard's wife Anna Karina) is a café, and gun shots are heard outside, the camera seems to cut - or move - to the sounds and beats of shots being fired, tracking like this all the way across the bar to the window. It was stunning to see that being done, not just for the sake of the scene's twist to intensity, but it perfectly skims the line of stage-ness and reality- if you were positioned in that café, how would you see things as your head turns to look to the street? Godard raises and answers some film-making questions that pay off in the best new-wave type fashion. His dialog, too, is fascinating, and a philosophical discussion between two characters gives me an indication as to what might have inspired Richard Linklater, perhaps. Then there's Anna Karina as Nana, a woman who leaves her husband and child (you have to listen sharp to note when the child's mentioned) and gets kicked out of her home by the concierge. She has a job in a record store, but doesn't keep it, wanders the streets, sees a movie (very emotionally touching scene), and tries to get an acting job, or some money together. Then she gets drawn into, without an ounce of remorse, the prostitution ring-around, learning that there isn't nearly as much emphasis on lawbreaking in the business in Paris as there is with medical concerns. Karina, with a face, eyes, hair, and body that has a sweet level of (distant) attraction, plays Nana in a wonderful way- we get inklings that she can be happy (dancing to music in a pool-hall is the highlight), though she's at best when she hides it under her demeanor. She smokes, she has a lot of sex, she has talks that sometimes don't go anywhere, but is the viewer ever let in to who she really is or what her motives are day to day? This is a credit to her, as well as Godard, in creating this memorable figure in the early 60's New-wave of French cinema. Credit should also be given to Michael Legrand's theme (though repetitive, has a sort of purpose for many scenes).

Pierrot le Fou (Pierrot Goes Wild) (Crazy Pete) (1969)
Directed By: Jean-Luc Godard Pierrot le fou (1965) is Jean-Luc Godard's sixth film staring Anna Karina, his first wife. It is the story of Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and Marianne (Karina). They meet when Ferdinand's wife hires Marianne as a baby-sitter. As he drives Marianne home, Ferdinand decides to run away with her. The couple get caught up in a mysterious gun-running scheme involving Marianne's brother (Dirk Sanders). With Pierrot le fou Godard returns to the story of A bout de souffle (Breathless): the tale of a couple on the run. But in the six years between the two films Godard developed a more complex and often difficult style. Pierrot le fou incorporates musical numbers, references to the history of cinema and painting, and quotations from literature. The film features Godard's most extended use of color to that point, as the shots are filled with blocks of bright primary colors. Pierrot le fou is a catalogue of cinematic inventions and of gestures made by couples in love. ~ Louis Schwartz, Rovi

Los Olvidados (The Young and the Damned) (1950)
Directed By: Luis Buñuel
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The winner of two Cannes Film Festival awards, Luis Buuel's Los Olvidados (aka The Forgotten Ones and The Young and the Damned) was the director's first international box-office success. Yet Buuel showed no signs of curbing the outrageous iconoclasm that made him famous in Europe and South America; one of the more lasting images of the film is the clash-of-cultures shot of a glistening new skyscraper rising above the squalid slums of Mexico City. The story concerns a gang of juvenile delinquents, whose sole redeeming quality is their apparent devotion to one another. Part of the film's perverse fascination is watching Buuel's street punks cause misery to those less fortunate. The audience immediately identifies with Pedro (Alfonso Meja), the youngest gang member, who evinces a spark of decency; yet Pedro, like the others, remains a victim of circumstances far beyond his control. Throughout, Buuel maintains an objective tone; it is our responsibility, not his, to judge the gang members. Seasoned with haunting dream sequences, Los Olvidados was the opening volley in what would turn out to be Buuel's most creative period. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi ###### The story of troubled youth and urban violence has been told many times, but this is, perhaps, the best film on the subject ever made. This is an unblinking look at the hell on earth that looks like slums of Mexico City back in 1950s. It is also a masterful combination of gritty realism and Buñuel's surrealism (young Pedro's dream of Virgin Mary with a face of his mother whose love he desperately needs but never knows). All the characters, including a young boy caught up in a criminal world but trying to be good, his tired mother who does not have time to love her children, the brutal and cruel gang leader with his own story that breaks your heart are not just wonderfully written and acted, they are absolutely real and would stay with you long after the film is over. Shocking, erotic, and sad, this is a masterpiece – the perfect film from the beginning until the harrowing and devastating end.

Music and Lyrics (2007)
Directed By: Marc Lawrence A professional collaboration between a popular lyricist and a washed-up musician takes a decidedly personal turn as the pair gradually finds their relationship developing into something much deeper in a romantic comedy directed by Marc Lawrence and starring Drew Barrymore and Hugh Grant. Alex Fletcher (Grant) may have been all the rage in the 1980s, but these days he's lucky to get a gig playing at the local county fair. Just when it seems as if things couldn't get any more bleak for the dejected has-been rocker, reigning pop diva Cora Corman (Haley Bennett) offers Alex the opportunity of a lifetime -- write and record a duet to be sung with her and watch his career receive a much-needed boost as the nostalgia-crazed public laps it up. Little does Cora realize that not only has it been years since Alex has written a song, but he's never actually written a single lyric. Now, if he hopes to make the comeback needed to save him from a life of complete and utter obscurity, Alex will have to craft a radio-friendly hit in a matter of mere days. Luckily for Alex, his quirky plant-keeper Sophie Fisher (Barrymore) has quite a way with words and may possess just the kind of songwriting talent needed to make such a hit happen. Unfortunately the beguiling Sophie is still reeling from a recent break-up with newly famous novelist Sloan Cates (Campbell Scott), and she isn't quite sure if she's ready for any kind of collaboration right now -- romantic or otherwise. Despite Alex's hesitation to commit and Sophie's reluctance to collaborate, the pair quickly discovers that a little chemistry can go a long way in healing the wounds of the past and laying the foundation for a much-deserved future of happiness and success. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi ###### Cheery Alex Fletcher lives comfortably in Manhattan off the residuals from his 80's pop success and reprising his hits at school reunions, theme parks, and state fairs. But those gigs are declining, so he jumps at the chance to write a song and record it with reigning teen idol Cora Corman. Trouble is, he's good at melodies but needs a lyricist and has less than a week to finish. Enter Sophie Fisher, subbing for a friend who waters Alex's plants; she's a pretty good poet, quick witted, and could do it, if she'd agree. But there's some sort of shadow over her head that Alex may not be able to charm his way past. And what if they do get a song written, what then?

The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie (Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie) (1972)
Directed By: Luis Buñuel In typical Luis Buuel fashion, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie surrealistically skewers the conventions of society. Buuel applies his surrealist touch to a mundane event: a dinner party that may never come to pass. A group of well-to-do friends attempt to gather for a social evening, but are thwarted at every turn. The initial problem seems to be a simple scheduling mistake, but the obstacles become more and more bizarre. At one point, the guests are interrupted at the table by an army on maneuvers. Later they learn that they are merely characters in a stage play and so cannot have dinner together. These misadventures are combined with symbolic dreams of the various characters, some of which also involve interrupted dinners. Wicked social satire and one of Buuel's funniest films. Winner of the Academy Award for "Best Foreign Film" in 1972. ~ John Voorhees, Rovi ######## Bunuel's career was one of the most sensational you could dream of.At least ten of his movies are among my favorites and ten others are not far behind.
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Once he said :" when I was young and I was watching the sky and saying :"it's beautiful up there and there's nothing;now,I simply say :"it's beautiful"Atheism had turned into agnosticism.Perhaps so,but Bunuel's favorite targets are still here.The bishop and the army are here to stay;they already were in "l'âge d'or" (1930) "DIscreet charm" is a comprehensive work :it includes almost everything that made Bunuel the genius every cine buff loves ;his permanent features are all included: these bourgeois walking on an endless road are the same who were locked up in the house in "el angel exterminador";Rabal trying to catch one more peace of meat is like the men who were fighting for water in "el angel" .THe selfishness of the bourgeoisie is given a stunning treatment:the impossibility to get a good meal .Bunuel explodes certitudes and he explodes different genres.One of them is the light comedy with its adulteries,its mistaken identities and its contretemps.and if the message is not clear enough,one of the scenes shows the characters on a stage!Another one is the horror and fantasy film : the young boy's mother asking him to kill his father (who is actually not his parent);and most of all the soldier's dream which could provide the substance for at least a whole movie. Dreamlike sequences are Bunuel's forte .He has sometimes been equaled (André Delvaux:"un soir un train" ) but never surpassed: just think of Pablo's dream in "los olvidados" ;the Christ on the electric wires in "cela s'appelle l'aurore" ;Séverine's fantasies in "Belle de Jour" ;Rey's head as a bell clapper in "Tristana".But in "discreet charm" Bunuel seems to connect all the links of the chain and his film becomes a tapestry of Bayeux where dreams and reality follow naturally. "I dreamed ,Thevenot says,that Senechal dreamed that he was on a stage and ..." It' s "Jacob's ladder" twenty years before that later movie appears. It's also a political movie,but not a work for highbrows .What he did not fully achieved with the spotty "la fièvre monte à El Pao" ,and the more interesting "death in the garden" ,Bunuel pulls it off with gusto here.The republic (sic) of Miranda whose ambassador is none other than Rey is ,even if we never see it , depicted in minute lavish detail .Unlike highbrows like Godard who deals out his lecture on Mao in "la chinoise" ,Luis Bunuel remains accessible to everybody:we laugh and we laugh a lot when we discover the harsh realities of Miranda Land which has no pyramids ,but has Nazis and poverty.Actually it's not that much funny. A word about the cast;it's perfect:Rey is wonderful as a drug trafficker ambassador who is always afraid to be slain ;Stephane Audran and Jean-Pierre Cassel had teamed up two years before in another attack against bourgeoisie ,Chabrol's "la rupture" ;Bulle Ogier,for once,forgets her usual parts who give the non-intellectual terrible headaches and manages to stay very natural;Claude Piéplu and his inimitable voice (make sure you hear his voice:nobody can dub him successfully) portrays a colorful colonel who tells the ambassador home truth and literally invades Audran's house with his staff and has lunch with the guests (a meal where the bourgeois,the Church and the Army eat together is something to watch).But for me the stand-out is feminist Delphine Seyrig,with her beaming face,her preciosity and her sweet stupidity. To say that "discreet charm" is a masterpiece is to state the obvious.Maybe Bunuel's tour de force lies in the fact that even in reality,strange things happen and the characters do not seem to be surprised and shocked.... as long as their privileges are not called into question.If you should only see one Bunuel film,you had to choose this one.But if you like it,treasures are waiting for you.

L'Amour en fuite (Love on the Run) (1979)
Directed By: François Truffaut L'Amour en Fuite (Love on the Run) is presented in flashbacks from the previous four movies as Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Là (C)aud) meets up with people from his past. As the fifth and final film in the series, Antoine is over 30 years old and meets with his wife, Christine (Claude Jade), to sign the papers for their divorce. As it is the first no-fault divorce of its kind in France, the press surrounds them. In the crowd is also Antoine's past love, Colette (Marie-France Pisier), who is now a lawyer and in love with Xaiver the Librarian (Daniel Mesguich). Antoine is in love with Sabine (Dorothà (C)e), but she breaks things off when he ditches her to go see his son at the train station. While he is there, he impulsively joins Colette on a train ride where they recall their past and go through his recent autobiographical novel. Finally, Monsieur Lucien (Julien Bertheau) also re-enters Antoine's life and they visit his mother's grave at Montmartre. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi ####### Antoine Doinel ends his marital existence by divorcing his wife Christine.By chance,he meets all the significant people who helped him to shape his destiny.These encounters guide him to revive a number of bygone events.He is able to find happiness again by falling in love with Sabine.Although dubbed maudlin by certain inconsiderate critics,L'Amour en fuite remains a light romantic work filled with hilarity and empathy. This last film in the Antoine Doinel series is a fantastic trip down memory lane for Truffaut and Antoine Doinel fans.Truffaut's alter ego Antoine Doinel is a veritable emotional wreck as he needs all kinds of women for support.Antoine's past is inextricably linked to his present.All these women have positively been a part of Truffaut's life too.They know each other well
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and plot Antoine's downfall.Truffaut has made competent use of flashbacks to evoke memories of the past. Scenes of the past make one feel like watching two different films at the same time.Everyone feels that Antoine did not try his best to save his marriage.Viewers' sympathies will always be with Antoine as despite his faults,he is a charming guy.Truffaut has ably shown how important it is to love and be loved.

The Young One (Island of Shame) (White Trash) (La Joven) (1960)
Directed By: Luis Buñuel Luis Buuel and Hugo Butler (under the pseudonym "H.B. Addis") adapted Peter Matthiessen's story Travelin' Man for this drama about a black jazz musician, on the run from a false accusation of raping a white woman. Miller (Zachary Scott) is a middle aged handyman on a small island off the southeastern coast. His neighbors are a 13year-old girl and her grandfather. After her grandfather dies, Miller looks after the young girl, and they are the only two on the island until the arrival of Traver (Bernie Hamilton), a black man fleeing a lynch mob that suspects him of rape. In Miller's absence, Traver gives the girl money for supplies and a gun. Returning to the island, Miller tries to kill Traver until he realizes no harm has come to the girl and Traver is allowed to escape when Miller is convinced of his innocence. Miller then announces his intentions to marry the girl and save her from some meddling church officials who wish to take her away. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

The Holiday (2006)
Directed By: Nancy Meyers

Nancy Meyers' romantic comedy Holiday stars Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet as two women who exchange houses in order to get a new lease on life. After each suffers her fair share of romantic disappointments, Englishwoman Iris (Winslet) and L.A. woman Amanda (Diaz) meet on-line at a website devoted to helping people exchange houses for vacations. Each agrees to spend the Christmas holiday at the other's home. While each suffers from a minor case of culture shock, both women also end up becoming involved with a man. Iris makes the acquaintance of an upbeat everyman played by Jack Black, while Amanda spends time with a handsome Brit played by Jude Law. Both women must decide what to do with these new relationships as their pre-arranged house switch is scheduled to last less than two weeks. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi In London, Iris Simpkins writes a wedding column in a newspaper and nurtures an unrequited love for her colleague Jasper Bloom. Near Christmas, she is informed that Jasper is engaged to marry another colleague, and her life turns upside down. In Los Angeles, the movie-trailers maker Amanda Woods has just broken with her unfaithful boyfriend Ethan and wants to forget him. Through a house exchange website, Amanda impulsively swaps her mansion for Iris' cottage in Surrey for the holidays. While in Surrey, Amanda meets Iris' brother and book editor Graham and they fall in love with each other. Meanwhile, Iris meets her new next door neighbor, the ninety year old screenplay writer Arthur, who helps her retrieve her self-esteem, and the film composer Miles, with whom she falls in love with. Iris (Kate Winslett), attractive, if somewhat dowdy, young English journalist (she works for that citadel of fogeyism, the "Daily Telegraph"), on the rebound from an affair with the shiftless Jasper (Rufus Sewell), one of the paper's columnists, decides she needs a Christmas holiday. She goes on-line and has soon swapped her Christmas-card pretty, but cramped, Surrey cottage with a mansion in Bel – Air owned by Amanda (Cameron Dias), the ebullient head of a company that makes movie trailers, who has just thrown out her latest useless partner. The girls swap places and in no time Amanda is romancing Iris's dishy brother Graham (Jude Law). Meanwhile in Hollywood Iris is getting to know Miles (Jack Black), a workmate of Amanda's, and a 90 year old neighbour, Arthur (Eli Wallach) who happens to be one of Hollywood's forgotten great writers. One can of course dismiss this sort of stuff as glossy fairy floss because basically, despite all the money and talent expended in making it, that is what it is - "Love, Improbable." This film is rather long for its genre, over two hours, and it does drag a bit, as if the scriptwriters couldn't decide how to end it. However it must be admitted that Kate Winslett and Jude Law are always interesting to watch on screen and Cameron Diaz has a nice line in parodying some of her earlier performances. Rufus Sewell shows he can out-act Hugh Grant any day (not hard I guess). Jack Black on the other hand seemed strangely out of place as Ms W's love interest – romantic comedy doesn't seem to be his forte, he's more of your gross-out guy. It was nice though to see Eli Wallach, a great Hollywood tough guy of old, who at 90 seems to have the market for nice old buffers sewn up, as the neighbour. Perhaps I am setting my standard too high, but compared to "Four Weddings and a Funeral", "Notting Hill", "Bedrooms and Hallways" and even "Love, Actually", this was a pile of mush, far too sweet and sticky and nice. Good comedy needs a certain bite, a reality bite, a bit of astringency, whereas what we are given here is pure fairyland escapism. Writer/Director Nancy Myers has a record of light entertaining stuff ("The Parent Trap", "Father of the Bride") and she certainly is not trying to extend her range here.

Head On (1998)
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Director: Ana Kokkinos If you’re feeling brave, take a long, deep breath and watch Head On. Ari (Alex Dimitriades) is a nineteen-year-old Greek bisexual, who is confused by life and constantly searches for a path to happiness. He doesn’t find it in drugs or alcohol, nor does he in regular and unsatisfying sex. The film chronicles one day in Ari’s life, an intense twenty-four hours full of pain and occasional joy. Ari realizes the pathetic state of his life but fails to do anything about it; one gets the feeling that he is so far down and out that he will never quite be able to regain status. Ari has pushed on, day by day, meeting men and women, and not thinking about what life might offer him. He is too busy taking everything a step at a time in the busy city of Melbourne (at one moment, much to my delight, there are shots of Flinders Street Station and Crown Casino). Ari’s character works because of the revealing screenplay (which was adapted from the novel Loaded) and Alex Dimitriades’s gutsy performance. I thought that Russel Crowe’s choice of role in 1994’s The Sum of Us was game, but compared to this it seems safe and ordinary. Dimitriades is one hell of a brave actor. Limiting the emotional success of this story is its lack of characters; aside from Ari, there is really nobody else the audience can relate with. But perhaps this is done intentionally, as Ari alone provides the basis for an intriguing character study since he is such a complicated person. His actions are not always understandable 0 but that’s how people are sometimes. Whenever his life seems to be lightening up (if only for a few moments), we are brought down once again into his depressing state of affairs. Some of the final words spoken by Alex Dimitriades are cynical and somber, yet they express the moving and painful feelings this film generates. “I’m sliding toward the sewer, not struggling, I can smell the shit - but I’m still breathing. I’m gonna live my life. I’m not going to make a difference, I’m not going to change a thing.” Ana Kokkinos’s fiery Melbourne-based film is a tense and bold character study, and one that is almost haunting in its realism. Perhaps the most daring of its production assets is the film’s dramatic script, which positions its protagonist in various off-putting homosexual, confrontational and drug induced acts. Disturbing stuff, that’s for sure - and Kokkinos knows it. This is a powerhouse Australian film that is in many ways more confronting than the likes of Saving Private Ryan, for the reason that it depicts issues that are very real in today’s society. Kokkinos boldly looks at sexuality, ethnicity, drugs and gender in a raw and explicit manner. With tight editing and rigid, urban cinematography, Head On is a grating piece that explores the dissatisfaction of youth and society in general. Cast: Alex Dimitriades, Paul Capsis, Julian Garner, Tony Nikolakopoulos, Elena Mandalis, MariÂa Mercedes
Director: Ana Kokkinos
Producer: Jane Scott
Screenplay: Andrew Bovell, Ana Kokkinos and Mira Robertson, based on the novel "Loaded" by Christos Tsiolkas

Stolen Kisses (1968)
Director: François Truffaut Antoine Doinel joined the army but has just been discharged. The film tells his reunion with Christine Darbon, the girl he was in love with before the beginning of the film, and his adventures in his jobs : first as a night watchman, then as a private investigator, especially during one investigation within Mr Tabard's shoes-shop... Mme Tabard is so fascinating... Stolen Kisses (for me) has got to be one the most beautiful film ever made. All of the films in the Antoine Doinel cycle are brilliant (even the half-baked "Love On The Run" is still quite enjoyable). But "Stolen Kisses" hits a spot, which films seem to never hit. It captures an age of awkwardness that seems to be ignored...the early twenties. Not like a typical high school or after college film (ie: "Risky Business" or "Graduate"), "Stolen Kisses" is about learning the survival skills to make it to adulthood (whether it's keeping a job, or making it in love). Antoine Doinel is in the third cycle of the series ("400 Blows" and "Love At Twenty/ Antoine And Collette" being it's predecessor), and Antoine has just been dishonourably discharged from the army for being of unstable character. Antoine haphazzardly begins to go through jobs, trying to find his nitch in life, while being obsessed with love. He begins as a nightwatchman of a hotel, to being a private detective of Blady's, which puts him as a planted spy in Monsieur Tobard's Shoe Shop, and finally settling down as an accident prone TV Repair man. Antoine is the awkward antihero youth of the sixties. During the 68' Paris riots (which were unbelievably carrying on during the filming), the youth of France had a sort of displaced position in the work force. Antoine (superbly played by Jean-Pierre Leaud) typlifies this kind of youth. He is full of nervous energy, politically working class, is love lorn, and uneducated. He is full of human qualities that are real and relateable. He lies, he loves, he fails, and he succeeds. He is just as much as the "everyman" of France, as Jimmy Stewart was in America. But interestingly, where he has once resembled director Francois Truffaut in the earlier works, he now was metamorphasising into Jean-Pierre Leaud's character, but resembling Truffaut more in look. Antoine Doinel was never meant to be just Truffaut, but Leaud as well. And the confusion of this identity is brilliantly displayed as Antoine confirms his identity by manically reciting his name in a mirror, displaying his search for identity to the point of near madness. The beautiful Clade Jade gives an underated performance as the hip, bourgoise student, that makes Antoine's obsessiveness seem somehow justified. The girl that is loved best by Antoine, when out of reach. The film also has a theme, about the differing
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strengths of love. When Antoine is in love with Christine, she doesn't love him. When Antoine loves Fabienne (the shoe shop's owner's wife), Christine is in love with Antoine. Every character is immersed in a love triangle. And asks the question, "Does love really ever exist on an equal basis?" But aside from the romantic cynicism, also lays some of the most romantic cinematic moments in history. The scene in which we follow up the stairs to find Antoine and Christine laying in bed peacefully, and the morning after, where Antoine purposes to Christne (with what looks like a fancy spoon or bottle opener, taking the place of a real ring?) is one of the most poetic moments in film history. The music score is fantastic as well as the cinematography gentle and sweet. For some, the ending is somewhat confusing and abrupt. But only shows, that the man that now stalks Christine with such passion, is now looked at by Antoine as resembling his once passionate feelings for her, that no longer burn with the same intensity. A bittersweet opening to the followup "Bed And Board". This film is a classic on all accounts!!! A must see, and my favourite film of ALL TIME!!! I rate it a 15 out of 10!!

L'Amour en fuite (Love on the Run) (1979)
Directed By: François Truffaut L'Amour en Fuite (Love on the Run) is presented in flashbacks from the previous four movies as Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Là (C)aud) meets up with people from his past. As the fifth and final film in the series, Antoine is over 30 years old and meets with his wife, Christine (Claude Jade), to sign the papers for their divorce. As it is the first no-fault divorce of its kind in France, the press surrounds them. In the crowd is also Antoine's past love, Colette (Marie-France Pisier), who is now a lawyer and in love with Xaiver the Librarian (Daniel Mesguich). Antoine is in love with Sabine (Dorothà (C)e), but she breaks things off when he ditches her to go see his son at the train station. While he is there, he impulsively joins Colette on a train ride where they recall their past and go through his recent autobiographical novel. Finally, Monsieur Lucien (Julien Bertheau) also re-enters Antoine's life and they visit his mother's grave at Montmartre. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud) is having a love affair with the vinyl seller Colette Tazzi (Marie-France Pisier). After five years of a troubled marriage with separations, Antoine and Christine Doinel (Claude Jade) have a private audience with the judge (Marie Henriau) and conclude an amicable divorce process. His former sweetheart and presently lawyer Colette Tazzi (Marie-France Pisier) sees Antoine leaving the court and she goes to a bookstore to buy his autobiographical novel that was published a couple of years ago. When Antoine goes with Alphonse (Julien Dubois) to the train station for the travel vacation of his son, he sees Colette in another train and he jumps from the platform to the train and travels with her. They recall their adolescent love and disclose their sentimental relationships; but when Colette tells how she raises money for her self-support, Antoine is disappointed and seeks out Sabine. "L'Amour en Fuite" is the conclusion of the sentimental saga of the character Antoine Doinel, the insecure alter ego of François Truffaut that began in "Les Quatre Cents Coups" and followed through "L'Amour à Vingt Ans", "Baisers Volés" and "Domicile Conjugal", inclusive with the use of scenes in the many flashbacks of these movies with his recollections and troubled love affairs. This character has an evolution from the needy fourteen years old boy rejected by his mother and his stepfather in the first movie. The lack of affection at home makes him a rebel, bad student, liar, reckless and a thief stealing objects and money at home in his adolescence. In the next movies, he grows-up, but with a fragile emotional structure and the viewer sees an unstable man incapable of having a steady relationship or commitment with the many beautiful women that he meets along his futile life. My vote is seven.

Simon of the Desert (1965)
Director: Luis Buñuel Forty minutes is more than enough screen time for Spanish director Luis Buuel to state his case in Simon of the Desert. Claudio Brook portrays fifth-century Christian Simon (later St. Simon Stylites) who dispenses religious sagacity while standing on a tall column in the middle of the desert. Typical of Buuel's hatred of the Church, the Devil (Silvia Pinal) is a far more entertaining and articulate spokesperson for his point of view than Simon is for Christianity. An abrupt, ill-suited ending suggests that Buuel either tired of the subject and wanted to move on to other things, or that he ran out of money and had to wrap before the process servers showed up. This Mexican film was originally titled Simon del Desierto. ~ Hal Erickson, Rov ########### Simon a deep religious man in the 4th century wants to be nearer to God, so he climbes a column. The devil wants him to get down on earth an is trying to seduce him. But Simon recognizes him everytime. So the devil takes him to a nightclub i n New York of the 1960s. After being forced to self-exile by the Spanish Civil War, Spaniard director Luis Buñuel moved to Mexico, and found in the country's struggling film industry the freedom he had so long desired. In the late 50s, and after a decade of making some of the best Mexican movies ever mad, he met Gustavo Alatriste and his wife, actress Silvia Pinal. Alatriste was very interested in Buñuel's cinema and decided to produce Buñuel's movies with Pinal as main
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actress. This partnership gave Buñuel even more freedom than before, and resulted in three of the most interesting and controversial films of his career. "Viridiana", "El Ángel Extreminador" and this movie, "Simón del Desierto", form a trilogy where Buñuel criticizes mercilessly, but with humor, the hypocrisy of the high society, the government and of course, religion. Simón (Claudio Brook) is a deep religious man who decided that to be closer to God, he should remain alone in a column, living as an hermit practicing asceticism, in order to escape from the world's temptations. Soon Simón becomes to be regarded as a Saint, and people from all over the region come to hear him speak, and witness his miracles. Satan (Silvia Pinal) visits Simón too, in an attempt to tempt Simón with the earthly pleasures that Simón has decided to leave behind. However, the Devil is probably the lesser of Simón's problems, as his own elitist position as an outsider makes him to discover the truth behind organized religion, and so he begins question the nature of what he does, and more importantly, what he believes. Written by Luis Buñuel and Julio Alejandro (Buñuel's collaborator in "Nazarín" and "Viridiana"), the story of "Simón del Desierto" is loosely based on the real life story of Saint Simeon Stylites, a monk who like Simón, decided to spent his days at the top of a pillar. "Simon del Desierto" parodies St. Simeon's story in a wonderful satire about the way Saints are seen and venerated by the religious people. Using the character of Simón, Buñuel explores the human side of religion and with a good dose of humor, he completely exposes his views on it, making a sharp criticism not on religion itself, but on religious organizations and their blind and passive followers, who in Buñuel's eyes, become more and more dehumanized the closer they get to God. In many ways, "Simón del Desierto" works like a slow and fascinating descend into one of Buñuel's surreal nightmares. With a beautiful cinematography by the legendary Gabriel Figueroa, the movie feels initially as a real biopic of the Saint's life, but the portrait of dignity that Buñuel seems to be creating with Simon soon discovers itself as an absurd, as Simón's exaggerated Holiness proves to be as corrupting as the Devil's temptations, and through a series of visions Buñuel breaks the realistic tone and smoothly turns the movie into a surreal madness apparently mimicking the dehumanization of the Saint. The madness concludes in one of Buñuel's most strange finales ever, inviting the audience to make their own conclusions about the movie, and about sainthood. Claudio Brook and Silvia Pinal are basically the main cast of the film, and their work together is really amazing. A very underrated actor, Brook is very convincing, and very funny too, making Buñuel's character come to life and carrying the film with natural ease and powerful presence. Brook delivers his lines with dignity and power, as if he was really being an actor in a biography of the Saint (Ironically, he would play Jesus in two films after "Simón del Desierto"). Silvia Pinal is very good as the Devil, although not as impressive as she was in "Viridiana", she delivers an excellent performance as the erotic representation of Satan. The supporting cast is very small, and have very limited screen time, but overall they do a good job. Jesús Fernández shines in the small role of a dwarf goatherd who seems to know more than what his humble looks tell. The movie is probably one of the most interesting films of Buñuel, but at the same time one of the most troubled, as the low budget couldn't allow him better production values. But the worse flaw occurred because in a very unfortunate incident, Alatriste was unable to complete the funding of Buñuel's film, so the director was forced to stop the film's production and make a quick ending. The bizarre finale of the movie is very simplistic and feels horribly rushed; breaking the pace of the story in a very bad way. Still, even when the rushed ending damages the movie a lot, at least it gives an idea of what Buñuel's intentions with the film were. While the movie was never completed the way Buñuel desired, "Simón del Desierto" is equally as good as the master's better known films, and it also offers the chance to understand the ideology of the man known as "master of surrealism". The excellent performances, Figueroa's beautiful photography and Buñuel's superb direction are definitely the ingredients for a masterpiece, and this modest movie, incomplete as it is, it's definitely one. 8/10

The Arrangement (1969)
Directed By: Elia Kazan Kirk Douglas has an extreme case of mid-life crisis in Elia Kazan's turgid melodrama (adapted from his best-selling novel). Douglas plays successful advertising executive Eddie Anderson, who cracks under the strain of the morning rush hour in Los Angeles and plows his sports car into a truck. Landing in a convalescent home, Eddie remains mute to everyone except his boss Finnegan (Charles Drake). In his recovery room, Eddie dreams about co-worker Gwen (Faye Dunaway), a sexy research assistant at his agency. Meanwhile, the psychiatrist Dr. Liebman (Harold Gould) talks to Eddie's wife, Florence (Deborah Kerr), who reveals that at one time Eddie and Gwen had an affair, but they broke it off. Unfortunately, after that escapade, Eddie's interest in sex vanished completely. Then after the interview with Dr. Liebman, following a terrible nightmare, Eddie breaks out of his self-imposed silence and declares to Florence that he is tired of his unfulfilling life of "arrangements." Eddie returns to work, but the return is marked by Eddie insulting a major client, alienating his co-workers, and then taking off in a private plane in which
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he flies madly over the skies of L.A. His lawyer Arthur (Hume Cronyn) keeps Eddie from being thrown in jail and also talks Eddie into giving Florence the power of attorney. Eddie proceeds to travel to New York, where he runs into Gwen, who now has a child. Eddie is in New York to visit his senile father, Sam (Richard Boone), but when his family attempts to put Sam in a nursing home, Eddie takes him away with him to their old family estate on Long Island. Eddie calls up Gwen, and she travels to Long Island to resume their affair. Meanwhile, Eddie's loved ones search for Sam, and they are closing in on Eddie's Long Island sanctuary.

The Thin Red Line (1998)
Director: Terrence Malick The return of director Terrence Malick to feature filmmaking after a twenty year sabbatical, this World War II drama is an elegiac rumination on man's destruction of nature and himself, based on James Jones' semi-autobiographical novel, his follow-up to From Here to Eternity. James Caviezel stars as Private Witt, a deserter living in peace and harmony with the natives of a Pacific island paradise. Captured by the Navy, Witt is debriefed by a senior officer (Sean Penn) and returned to an active duty unit preparing for what will be the Battle of Guadalcanal. As Witt goes ashore in the company of his fellow soldiers, they meet diverse fates. Sergeant Keck (Woody Harrelson) is killed by an exploding grenade. Captain John Gaff (John Cusack) is an intelligent, sober leader facing the destruction of his command because his commanding officer Colonel Tall (Nick Nolte) is bucking for a general's star. Sergeant McCron (John Savage) loses his mind. Private Bell (Ben Chaplin) gets a "Dear John" letter from his beloved wife. However, as the U.S. troops advance up grassy slopes toward entrenched Japanese positions, it is Witt's voicedover ruminations on life, death, and nature that are the real heart and soul of The Thin Red Line (1998). Adrien Brody appears as Private Fife, the major character of Jones' novel and the author's alter-ego, although Fife has been relegated to a minor supporting role by Malick's filmed adaptation. ######## In World War II, the outcome of the battle of Guadalcanal will strongly influence the Japanese's advance into the pacific. A group of young soldiers is brought in as a relief for the battle-weary Marine units. The exhausting fight for a key-positioned airfield that allows control over a 1000-mile radius puts the men of the Army Rifle company C-forCharlie through hell. The horrors of war forms the soldiers into a tight-knit group, their emotions develop into bonds of love and even family. The reasons for this war get further away as the world for the men gets smaller and smaller until their fighting is for mere survival and the life of the other men with them. This is one of the most beautifully crafted and haunting films that I have ever seen. Not only is the amazing ensemble cast give truly beautiful, effective performances, but the direction and cinematography combines to create a magnificent visual and mental feast. This story about the Guadalcanal campaign during WW2, based on the James Jones novel, weaves the lives of many characters together seemlessly, creating a philosophical/emotional experience of war. It's not just about war. It's about love, faith in yourself and others, friendship, humanity, morality and also works as a startling indictment of man's conflict with nature. The amazing opening sequence, sets up a tranquility as the character Witt, finds peace on a secluded island among the natives, a peace which is shattered by the war. What follows is not a mindless battle-after-battle onslaught of pyrotechnics, smoke, dust and blood, but a thoughtprovoking, visually and verbally poetic analysis of war and humanity. In my opinion it is the greatest war film since Apocalypse now, which I believe bears more flaws than this. It's not an Us-and-Them war story about the glory of the USA defeating the evil Japs. It sticks close with the characters, as we hear the thoughts, their hopes, their fears, leading to a moving experience. This film was released a few months after Saving Private Ryan and unfortunately did not experience the same attention that the latter film did. Ryan was an excellent film, but to offer a comparison, The Thin Red LIne treads where Ryan didn't dare. Ryan sat in the safe territory of Good vs Evil with a bit of Futility of War and a lot of American Patriotism. It seemed to be more about America at some points than about war. The Thin Red Line is about war, the people involved and the destruction it creates for the mind, the soul and for nature. It does not deviate from this to make simple contrasts and offer easy binary oppositions. In fact, TTRL is not an easy film. Gasp, it even tries to make you think. Though the title is not really explained in the film, I believe it is implied, and could have many meanings - the line between sanity and insanity, morality and immorality, love and hate, companionship and loneliness, nature and man, war and peace. While the characters share their thoughts, deeply poetic as they are, the meaning is not thrown in your face and neither is the answer to the questions raised. In this way it is the most thought-provoking war film I've ever seen and one of the best films of all time in my book. Top ten easily. Now to my whinge. I think TTRL was shunned unmercifully at the 1999 Oscars. Shakespeare in Love beat two
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brilliant films - TTRL and Elizabeth - to get that oscar, and don't get me started on Gwyneth's award. This is the best film of 1998/9, in line with Elizabeth. It's unfortunate that the two, thoug h greatly revered, did not achieve the success and attention they deserved. Don't be afraid by its length, it's a beautiful journey, full of rich colour, sound and the reward is a deeply moving human experience, unlike any other that the past decade has offered.

Days of Heaven (1978)
Directed By: Terrence Malick Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven, the long-awaited follow-up to his 1973 debut Badlands, confirmed his reputation as a visual poet and narrative iconoclast with a story of love and murder told through the jaded voice of a child and expressive images of nature. In 1916, Chicago steelworker Bill (Richard Gere, stepping in for John Travolta) flees to Texas with his little sister Linda (Linda Manz) and girlfriend Abby (Brooke Adams) after fatally erupting at his boss. Along with other itinerant laborers, they work the harvest at a wealthy, ailing farmer's ranch, but the farmer (playwright Sam Shepard) falls in love with Abby, and, believing her to be Bill's sister, asks the three to stay on at his elysian spread. Seeing it as his one real chance to escape perpetual poverty, Bill urges Abby to marry the sick man. Marriage, however, has more restorative powers, and the farmer has more magnetism, than Bill had planned. "Nobody's perfect," Linda impassively observes in one of her many voiceovers, after their brief paradise is erased by plagues of locusts, fire, and lethal jealousy. ######### Bill and Abby, a young couple who to the outside world pretend to be brother and sister are living and working in Chicago at the beginning of the century. They want to escape the poverty and hard labour of the city and travel south. Together with the girl Linda (who acts as the narrator in the movie) they find employment on a farm in the Panhandle, Texas. When the harvest is over the young, rich and handsome farmer invites them to stay because he has fallen in love with Abby. When Bill and Abby discover that the farmer is seriously ill and has only got a year left to live they decide that Abby will accept his wedding proposal in order to make some benefit out of the situation. When the expected death fails to come, jealousy and impatience are slowly setting in and accidents become eventually inevitable.

The Longest Day (1962)
Directed By: Andrew Marton , Ken Annakin The Longest Day is a mammoth, all-star re-creation of the D-Day invasion, personally orchestrated by Darryl F. Zanuck. Whenever possible, the original locations were utilized, and an all-star international cast impersonates the people involved, from high-ranking officials to ordinary GIs. Each actor speaks in his or her native language with subtitles translating for the benefit of the audience (alternate "takes" were made of each scene with the foreign actors speaking English, but these were seen only during the first network telecast of the film in 1972). The stars are listed alphabetically, with the exception of John Wayne, who as Lt. Colonel Vandervoort gets separate billing. Others in the huge cast include Eddie Albert, Jean-Louis Barrault, Richard Burton, Red Buttons, Sean Connery, Henry Fonda, Gert Frobe, Curt Jurgens, Peter Lawford, Robert Mitchum, Kenneth More, Edmond O'Brien, Robert Ryan, Jean Servais, Rod Steiger and Robert Wagner. Paul Anka, who wrote the film's title song, shows up as an Army private. Scenes include the Allies parachuting into Ste. Mere Englise, where the paratroopers were mowed down by German bullets; a real-life sequence wherein the German and Allied troops unwittingly march side by side in the dark of night; and a spectacular three-minute overhead shot of the troops fighting and dying in the streets of Quistreham. The last major black-and-white road-show attraction, The Longest Day made millions, enough to recoup some of the cost of 20th Century Fox's concurrently produced Cleopatra.

Karen Cries on the Bus (Karen llora en un bus) (2011)
Director: Gabriel Rojas Vera Karen discovers, after 10 years of marriage, she has left behind her dreams devoting herself to home chores and realizes it has been a mistake that cost her her youth. She decides then to separate and go in search of a life of its own. With her savings she rents a room in the center of Bogota and tries to get a job, but her age and inexperience makes it difficult. Karen will have to decide between returning to the stability of a relationship or facing life for herself. ######## This movie simply oozes with theme. There is a strong thread woven with loneliness and despair running through the opening minutes of this movie which seems relentless. It is excellently directed, acted and produced. I found myself glued to every moment, wondering how it would transpire for our protagonist, Karen: Nether hero nor 'antihero' - but purely human, with problems, seeking resolve in the life in which she finds herself. Loneliness and alienation are most compellingly what drives this movie thoughtfully forward. Yet it is, surprisingly, not a depressing movie. Moreover, it is very much that rare thing nowadays: a great movie. At times subtle perhaps
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even whimsical overtones of hope perfectly complement the engaging story of Karen who first appears to us, crying, lonely on a bus, traveling somewhere; And yet, in a sense, nowhere. But where is she going, and why? Screenplay is first class as is everything else about this production. Albeit its musical score is perhaps underplayed. Still, that's hardly a fault. Direction, as mentioned, is as masterful as everything else about this starkly believable movie. So the only element which could possibly have been improved upon in this movie was its understated musical score. And if that's the only criticism one could say of a movie, doesn't that suggest this is something very special? Our interest as viewers is perfectly piqued from the offset. And our hold remains throughout this true little gem of a movie. I hope you'll find it as stimulating in so many ways as I did. For this is a very human movie which is also existential, and angst driven. This movie is quality throughout. All in all, 'Karen Cries On The Bus' is a most excellent, realistic and very human film.

A Woman Without Love (1952)
Director: Luis Buñuel After indulging in an affair with a man (a friend of the family) she truly loves, a woman returns to her young son and husband for good, and loses contact with the man. Her husband is unaware of the affair. Twenty years later, there is news that the friend has died and left all of his money to the younger son in the family, which leads us to question this younger son's biological origin... ####### This wholly typical Mexican melodrama is a modernization of Guy de Maupassant's "Pierre and Jean" which had already been filmed, straightforwardly, by Andre' Cayatte in 1943. Tellingly, Luis Bunuel dismisses it as his worst film in his celebrated memoirs, "My Last Breath"; although I disagree with him myself and nominate his musical comedy GRAN CASINO (1947) for that dubious honor, it is hard to argue that it is the least Bunuelian (and, reportedly, the most Mexican) of all his films! Strangely – for a Bunuel film of this period – it is also technically flawless, with high production values, notable sets and lush cinematography; in fact, I would go on to say that A WOMAN WITHOUT LOVE is never dull and most lesser directors would be proud to call this film their best work! Although we have here yet another improbable happy ending here (relatively speaking), it has none of the underlying parodic intent of SUSANA (1951) and is meant to be taken at face value. What is ironic, on the other hand, is the fate that befalls the titular character: a beautiful young woman, married to a much older man, falls in love with a handsome engineer but, for the love of her son and ailing husband, selflessly sacrifices her own happiness – only to be branded a wanton woman by her contemptuous older son (through whose absence as a kid she had met her lover in the first place) when it becomes clear that his younger brother was the fruit of that illicit affair! Given that the older son's relationship with his stern father was hardly a friendly one anyhow, what irks him is not his younger brother's new-found inheritance (which the latter is more than willing to share) or that he had also stolen his girlfriend/colleague – but the knowledge that his mother had been sexually active with another man during wedlock! Thus, he turns into an embittered misogynist taking out his ire on his sister-in-law, another lustful colleague he used to pursue in happier times and, especially, his brokenhearted mother. Besides, it is significant that while the mother's lover had been an industrious engineer, her elderly husband was a tightfisted antiquarian; even so, it is the former who dies young while the latter (forever on the brink of collapsing from a heart attack) survives him by many years – until dying, of all days, after one final confrontation with the older son (and one drink too many) at the wedding reception of his other son and, it should be noted, before ever finding out about his wife's infidelity! One of the unheralded pleasures of watching these modest movies from Bunuel's Mexican period back-to-back is recognizing the actors from one film to the next; therefore we have here Rosario Granados (as the mother; she was also in 1949's THE GREAT MADCAP), Tito Junco (as the engineer; he would later appear in both DEATH IN THE GARDEN [1956] and THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL [1962]), Julio Villareal (as the husband; he was also in GRAN CASINO), Joaquin Cordero (playing the older son; he was later to star in 1955's THE RIVER AND DEATH) and Javier Loya' (in the role of the younger son; he was not only in the director's earlier DAUGHTER OF DECEIT [1951], but would go on to appear in THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL).

A Good Old Fashioned Orgy (2011)
Directors: Alex Gregory, Peter Huyck A group of 30-year-olds who have been friends since high school attempt to throw an end-of-summer orgy. A close group of 30-somethings spend every weekend throwing elaborate theme parties at their friend Eric's (Jason Sudeikis) family home in the Hamptons. When Eric's dad decides to sell off their summer playground, the friends agree there is only one way to have the biggest and brashest send off party, a good old fashioned orgy. -- (C) Samuel Goldwyn
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I Never Sang for My Father (1970)
Director: Gilbert Cates Hackman plays a New York professor who wants a change in his life, and plans to get married to his girlfriend and move to California. His mother understands his need to get away, but warns him that moving so far away could be hard on his father. Just before the wedding, the mother dies. Hackman's sister (who has been disowned by their father for marrying a Jewish man) advises him to live his own life, and not let himself be controlled by their father. I find myself recommending this movie to people all the time. It is such a clear picture of the challenges faced by anyone trying to help an aging parent. But there is another aspect to it that I love. It is one of the few serious films I've seen that shows the effect of a character being viewed as the salt of the earth, heroic and charming by outsiders, but who is nasty, judgmental and selfish with his own family. Whatever has happened due to Douglas' character aging and beginning to lose his mental faculties, you know that this particular pain has been part of his children's lives forever. Such a relationship is always difficult -- it is especially so with an older relative who has truly done heroic things, and who is respected and loved even by those he abuses. It puts everyone who knows his darker side in a bizarre and awkward position, seeming like villains for ever saying a word against a much-admired person. This movie captures the agony and poignancy of such a relationship perfectly, and shows the various levels of maturity with which one's family can choose to respond. The character's daughter needs to stay away, his son takes it with a grain of salt, as evidenced by his wry smile and mild answer when his fiancée finds his father "charming." This is a must-see film, for more reasons than I can list here. The movie was adapted by Robert Anderson from his play and directed by Gilbert Cates. In the early '60s, the esteemed playwright and film scenarist Robert W. Anderson (Tea and Sympathy, 1956) penned a screenplay about the growing strains in a forty-something man's relationship with his aging father as a means of working through similar conflicts in his own life. As the decade progressed, the project took a sidetrack to Broadway before being ultimately committed to celluloid. As a result the film often feels slightly stagebound but I Never Sang for My Father (1970) holds up well because of its refusal to sugarcoat tough issues and the showcase it provides for two premier acting talents of American cinema. The movie opens on widowed New York college professor Gene Garrison (Gene Hackman) as he makes an airport rendezvous with his elderly parents, just returned from Florida for the winter. Gene has recently fallen in love with a divorced California doctor, and is wrestling with how to broach the issue of his relocation with the folks. Dealing with his father Tom (Melvyn Douglas), a former lion of local industry and politics, is seldom easy; the old man is cantankerous, overbearing, and dismissive of his son's own accomplishments, sneering at the jacket photo of Gene's recent book as "unmanly." He gives half-hearted blessings to Gene's marriage plans, but asserts that his wife Margaret (Dorothy Stickney) will be unable to deal with it; Margaret privately assures her son that the reverse would be the case. The situation is placed in upheaval with Margaret's unexpected death. Gene is torn by Tom's less-than-sincere contentions that he can fend for himself. Complicating matters is the arrival for the funeral of Gene's sister Alice (Estelle Parsons). She has been estranged for years from Tom, who has never forgiven her for marrying a Jew, and she finds herself pleading with her brother not to live his life for the old man. The story's windup leaves Gene having to confront his father and make some hard choices about their respective destinies. Anderson frankly paralleled his own life situation in I Never Sang for My Father; his first wife died young in the mid-'50s, and he remarried a few years later to actress Teresa Wright. His original 1962 screenplay was entitled The Tiger, and Fred Zinnemann expressed interest in helming the film if Spencer Tracy could be persuaded to play the father; Tracy's declining health, however, forced him to bow out. John Frankenheimer was intrigued by the script, and a tentative deal was reached that would feature Fredric March and Florence Eldridge as the elder Garrisons. Time constraints ultimately led Frankenheimer to pass. Anderson then heeded the advice of Elia Kazan and reworked his opus for the stage. The play had a 124performance Broadway run in 1968, with British actor Alan Webb taking the role of the old man; the cast was rounded out by Hal Holbrook as Gene, Lillian Gish as Margaret, and Wright as Alice. The show's producer, Gilbert Cates, was convinced of the story's potential for the screen; he secured the rights, and prepared to direct, as well as produce, the adaptation with Anderson committed to recrafting the story for the camera.
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Douglas had declined the role of Tom Garrison in the Broadway production, as had March, Edward G. Robinson, Ralph Richardson, and Alfred Lunt. In his autobiography, Douglas indicated that he had fewer reservations with the screenplay that Cates approached him with in 1969. "I thought it much improved and made a few suggestions designed to clarify the character of the embittered old man," Douglas wrote. "Cates returned almost immediately with rewrites...Having involved myself this deeply, I committed myself to doing the role onscreen." As quoted in Allan Hunter's biography Gene Hackman, Douglas' co-star recalled that the experience of making the film "wasn't gratifying...It only worked because of what people brought to it." The project did provide the actor an excellent vehicle to present a softer-edged characterization than those he had previously committed to film, and critics and audiences came to recognize the extent of his range as a result. The gravity of the material almost certainly predestined I Never Sang for My Father for prestige rather than big boxoffice returns. The film secured respective Best Actor, Supporting Actor and Adapted Screenplay nominations for Douglas, Hackman and Anderson, but the prizes ultimately went to George C. Scott (Patton), John Mills (Ryan's Daughter) and Ring Lardner, Jr. (M*A*S*H). Hackman's hoped-for career boost from the project didn't materialize, but all that would change the following year with an Oscar® and A-list status thanks to The French Connection (1971). It was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Melvyn Douglas), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Gene Hackman) and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium.

In the Land of Women (2007)
Directed By: Jon Kasdan A man having trouble with women suddenly finds himself surrounded by them in this independent comedy drama. Carter Webb (Adam Brody) is a successful writer who has fallen into an emotional tailspin after his girlfriend, wellknown actress Sophia (Elena Anaya), breaks up with him. When Carter learns that his grandmother (Olympia Dukakis) is in failing health, he decides to leave California and return to his hometown of Detroit to help take care of her and beginning work on his long-planned novel. As Carter spends time with his grandmother, he becomes friendly with her neighbors -- mom Sarah Hardwicke (Meg Ryan) and her two daughters, angst-ridden teen Lucy (Kristen Stewart) and precocious 11-year-old Paige (Makenzie Vega). As Sarah attempts to deal with a pressing personal crisis and Carter begins sorting out his relationship issues, he discovers that sometimes what feels like the end is actually just a new beginning. In the Land of Women was the first directorial project for actor and screenwriter Jon Kasdan, the son of writer and director Lawrence Kasdan. Carter (Adam Brody) says to teenager Lucy (Kristen Stewart), "It's a big world out there. It's messy… and you can't let fear turn you into an ass----." Carter reminds Lucy that she should cut her Mom a break, because she may be dying. Even at a young age, she needs to appreciate that the world does not revolve around her, and knock it off. This is the context of Writer and Director Jonathan Kasdan's (son of Lawrence Kasdan) "In the Land of Women". This is Kasdan's feature film debut as director. The material is not entirely original, we have seen similar before. However, Kasdan's storytelling is deeply personal, strikingly poignant, and bittersweet. Much like his Dad, he demonstrates an ease in composing relationships. He has also assembled a wonderful cast. Adam Brody (of "The O.C.") is amazing in the lead. Kristen Stewart ("Speak") is maturing as a powerful young star. Meg Ryan, who plays Lucy's suffering mother Sarah Hardwicke, is awesome giving one of her best performances in years. I think what "In the Land of Women" does so eloquently, is illustrate the pain of those things missing in life, and our blind spots created by our self-absorption. The indelible image of Meg Ryan's Sarah standing alone in the down pouring rain, crying in isolation is stark, moving, and so very human. More than anything, I think Kasdan touchingly pleads for compassion in our relationships that is decent and forgiving. Carter Webb (Brody) is a soft core erotica writer, who is dating beautiful movie star Sofia (gorgeous Elena Anaya). As the movie opens, Sofia breaks up with Carter. Devastated Carter sees his mom Agnes (funny and good JoBeth Williams). Carter volunteers to take care of his ailing grandmother Phyllis (the great Olympia Dukakis) in Michigan, giving him an excuse to get out of Los Angeles for a while. Carter befriends Sarah Hardwicke (Ryan) and her daughter Lucy (Stewart), who lives across the street from his grandmother. Sarah is dealing with possible personal tragedy—she has discovered a lump in her breast. Lucy harbors an unusual disdain for her Mom, even for a teenager. Sarah tells Carter that she tries to stay out of her way, as not to "embarrass her". Sarah's husband Nelson (Clark Gregg) is having an affair with another woman, and both Sarah and Lucy are aware. Lucy proclaims that she does not ever want to be like her Mom. The under current in Lucy's judgment is that Mom is weak. Sad and strong Sarah eloquently says to Carter, "I don't want to look back on my life and wonder what part belonged to me…" Carter forms a relationship with both Sarah and Lucy—the twist being at Sarah's encouragement. Kasdan brilliantly orchestrates this relation tie, never awkward, becoming only something that evolves. After all, "In the Land
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of Women" is about women, and life. Adam Brody is amazing as Carter. His low key presence, and insightful smarts work "In the Land of Women". His Carter's growth from arrogant heartbroken soul to being a "great listener", who cares about others, is moving. And Brody does this with a light and humorous touch. Kristen Stewart is a star. Stewart resonates in Lucy a bold spirit and smart edge. She beautifully captures Lucy's angst and vulnerability as a teenager defining her self. Makenzie Vega makes an impressive turn as Lucy's younger sister Paige, the precocious yoga practicing preteen. Vega has a touching scene with Mom Sarah in the ice cream shop. Olympia Dukakis is brilliantly subtle as Grandmother Phyllis. For the most part she is comic relief. However, her character provides a wake up call to Carter: "One day I am going to be dead, and you will still be alive…" Meg Ryan is awesome as Sarah. I have always been a fan. She is older now, still beautiful and displaying great power as an actor. Ryan movingly imposes a quiet strength of character in Sarah, who endures a loveless marriage, daughter who hates her, and life and death. Sarah by nature has to always keep it together, so when she asks Carter for help it is out of tremendous courage. As she stands inconsolable in the rain, her suffering is heartbreaking. Meg Ryan's humanity gives "In the Land of Women" grace and poignancy. John Kasdan's "In the Land of Women" is bittersweet and moving. Adam Brody, Meg Ryan, and Kristen Stewart are great in Kasdan's tale of compassion and forgiveness. Kasdan accomplishes this all with resounding heart and humor.

What Women Want (2000)
Director: Nancy Meyers Nick, a somewhat chauvinistic advertising exec hot shot, has his life turned haywire when a fluke accident enables him to hear what women think. At first all he wants to do is rid himself of this curse, until a wacky psychologist shows him that this could be used to his advantage! His first target is Darcy McGuire, the very woman that got the promotion he wanted. But just as his plan is beginning to work, love gets in the way. Here is a movie that, to be sure, is part fantasy, part wacky comedy; but to call `What Women Want,' directed by Nancy Meyers, `just' a comedy would be not only inaccurate, but would be doing an injustice to the film as well. Because-- while there are plenty of laughs to be had (especially early on)-- in the end, there is a lot more bite and substance to it than first meets the eye. Enough to definitely raise it far above the `fluff' piece many will perceive it to be, if only due to some shallow reviews and the theatrical trailer currently being shown, which gives only the vaguest notion of what this movie is really all about. In fact, once most of the `cute' stuff is out of the way (about a third of the way through), the film really starts to get good,with a message about decency that is worthwhile, if only it can penetrate the formidable barrier of the viewer with an attention span barely able to accommodate an episode of `Friends.' Beyond the humor, there is a story here about a man named Nick Marshall (Mel Gibson) who literally receives the shock of his life, and afterwards must deal with who he is by coming to terms with his past, realizing the truth about himself in the present, and understanding what his future will be if he does not change his ways . It's something of a contemporary take on `A Christmas Carol,' with Nick an egotistical, self-centered, witty (In his own eyes) Scrooge; a veritable legend in his own mind, which is not-- as he comes to find out-- necessarily the way he is perceived by many of those around him, especially the women in his professional life. The screenplay, written by Cathy Yuspa and Josh Goldsmith, is extremely insightful and brought to the screen with equal acuity by director Meyers, who goes to great lengths at the beginning of the film to explain Nick's exaggerated chauvinism, what made him the `Man's man' he has become. And while it is clever and effective, closer scrutiny in the editing room may have benefited the overall film, as his character is somewhat `overly' established. But just about at the point when you're saying to yourself, `All right I get it!' Meyers grabs the helm with both hands and suddenly the ship is at full mast and on course, where she keeps it for the rest of the journey. The turning point comes after Nick's visit to a marriage counselor (a terrific cameo by Bette Midler) with whom he had had business some years before. It's as if not only Nick, but Meyers as well, had heeded Bette's advice. Mel Gibson does a good job of getting into Nick Marshall's skin, and he's to be commended for going out on a limb and taking on a character that may not be immediately embraced by even die-hard Gibson fans. It's a testimony to his ability as an actor, though, because he does make Nick the epitome of chauvinism, and except for the few throw-back Neanderthals (women as well as men) still in existence who subscribe to the `Man's man' theory of de-evolution, Nick will effect the same response from the audience that he does in the minds of many of the women who surround him in the movie. It's only when you've had a chance to consider Gibson's performance at arm's length that you will realize how good he is in this film. On the other hand, the real saving grace of this movie is immediately discernible, and that is the performance of the wonderful Helen Hunt. As Darcy McGuire, the professional hired to lead the ad agency for whom Nick works into the Twenty-first Century, Hunt is nothing less than sensational. One of the most gifted, expressive actors in the business, she raises the level of the drama (not to mention the comedy) by succinctly conveying the strength-- and at the same time the vulnerability-- of Darcy, while exhibiting a depth of emotion that adds so much to the impact (and the success) of the film. And, in a notable supporting role, Judy Greer is memorable as Erin, a lonely young woman who works at the ad agency. It's the `Tiny Tim' role of the film, and though a small part, it figures
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prominently in revealing Nick's inner-most feelings at a pivotal moment of the film. Rounding out the supporting cast are Alan Alda (Dan), Marisa Tomei (Lola), Ashley Johnson (Alexandra), Mark Feuerstein (Morgan), Lauren Holly (Gigi), Delta Burke (Eve), Valerie Perrine (Margo) and Sarah Paulson (Annie). What Meyers has created here is a mixed-bag, sleight-of-hand bit of entertainment that is so much more than what it seems to be on the surface that it is bound to evoke an equally mixed-bag of reactions (positive and negative) from the audience. It's amusing-downright funny at times-- but also exasperating. To receive the full rewards offered by `What Women Want,' you're going to have to give it something as well. If you do, you'll be pleasantly surprised by what you get in return. And that, my friends, is the magic of the movies. I rate this one 8/10.

Something to Talk About (1995)
Directed By: Lasse Hallström The feminist outrage of Thelma & Louise (1991) screenwriter Callie Khouri blended superbly with director Lasse Hallstrom's predilection for stories about idiosyncratic families in this effective comedy-drama. Julia Roberts stars as Grace King Bichon, a prim small-town wife who is incensed when she learns that her husband Eddie Bichon (Dennis Quaid) is having an affair, and that it's not his first dalliance. Grace embarrasses her husband publicly -then moves in with her wise-mouthed little sister Emma Rae (the scene-stealing Kyra Sedgwick). Grace becomes even angrier when her mother Georgia (Gena Rowlands) and wealthy father, horse breeder Wyly King (Robert Duvall), side with Eddie in the conflict, fearing the small-town gossip that's sure to swirl around their daughter's marital woes. However, when Georgia finds that Wyly has been a long-term philanderer as well, she kicks him out of his palatial home, embroiling the entire King family in a war between the sexes. Something to Talk About went through several title changes, variously being named "Game of Love" and "Grace Under Pressure" before producers settled on the title of the popular Bonnie Raitt song.

Some Like It Hot (1959)
Directed By: Billy Wilder The launching pad for Billy Wilder's comedy classic was a rusty old German farce, Fanfares of Love, whose two main characters were male musicians so desperate to get a job that they disguise themselves as women and play with an all-girl band in gangster-dominated 1929 Chicago. In this version, musicians Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (Jack Lemmon) lose their jobs when a speakeasy owned by mob boss Spats Columbo (George Raft) is raided by prohibition agent Mulligan (Pat O'Brien). Several weeks later, on February 14th, Joe and Jerry get a job perfroming in Urbana and end up witnessing a gangland massacre in a parking garage. Fearing that they will be next on the mobsters' hit lists, Joe devises an ingenious plan for disguising their identities. Soon they are all dolled up and performing as Josephine and Daphne in Sweet Sue's all-girl orchestra. En route to Florida by train with Sweet Sue's band, the boys (girls?) make the acquaintance of Sue's lead singer Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe, in what may be her best performance). Joe and Jerry immediately fall in love, though of course their new feminine identities prevent them from acting on their desires. Still, they are determined to woo her, and they enact an elaborate series of gender-bending ruses complicated by the fact that flirtatious millionaire Osgood Fielding (Joe E. Brown) has fallen in love with "Daphne." The plot gets even thicker when Spats Columbo and his boys show up in Florida. Nominated for several Oscars, Some Like It Hot ended up the biggest moneymaking comedy up to 1959. Full of hilarious set pieces and movie in-jokes, it has not tarnished with time and in fact seems to get better with each passing year, as its cross-dressing humor keeps it only more and more up-to-date.

In the Heat of the Night (1967)
Directed By: Norman Jewison The winner of the 1967 Oscar for Best Picture (as well as four other Oscars), In the Heat of the Night is set in a small Mississippi town where an unusual murder has been committed. Rod Steiger plays sheriff Bill Gillespie, a good lawman despite his racial prejudices. When Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier), a well-dressed northern AfricanAmerican, comes to town, Gillespie instinctively puts him under arrest as a murder suspect. Tibbs reveals himself to be a Philadelphia police detective; after he and Gillespie come to a grudging understanding of one another, Tibbs offers to help in Gillespie's investigation. As the case progresses, both Gillespie and Tibbs betray a tendency to jump to culture-dictated conclusions. Still, the case is solved thanks to the informal teamwork of the two law officers. Based on the novel by John Ball, In the Heat of the Night inspired two sequels, both starring Poiter as Virgil Tibbs. In 1987, a TV series version of In the Heat of the Night appeared, with Carroll O'Connor as Gillespie and Howard Rollins as Tibbs.

Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
Directed By: Bruce Beresford Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Alfred Uhry, Driving Miss Daisy affectionately covers the 25-year relationship between a wealthy, strong-willed Southern matron (Jessica Tandy) and her equally indomitable Black chauffeur, Hoke (Morgan Freeman). Both employer and employee are outsiders, Hoke because of the color of his
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skin, Miss Daisy because she is Jewish in a WASP-dominated society. At the same time, Hoke cannot fathom Miss Daisy's cloistered inability to grasp the social changes that are sweeping the South in the 1960s. Nor can Miss Daisy understand why Hoke's "people" are so indignant. It is only when Hoke is retired and Miss Daisy is confined to a home for the elderly that the two fully realize that they've been friends and kindred spirits all along. The supporting cast includes Esther Rolle as Miss Daisy's housekeeper and Dan Aykroyd as Miss Daisy's son, Boolie (reportedly, playwright Uhry based the character upon himself). Driving Miss Daisy won Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Actress (Jessica Tandy), Best Screenplay (Uhry), and Best Makeup (Manlio Rochetti)

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
Directed By: William Wyler The postwar classic The Best Years of Our Lives, based on a novel in verse by MacKinlay Kantor about the difficult readjustments of returning World War II veterans, tells the intertwined homecoming stories of ex-sergeant Al Stephenson (Fredric March), former bombadier Fred Derry (Dana Andrews), and sailor Homer Parrish (Harold Russell). Having rubbed shoulders with blue-collar Joes for the first time in his life, Al finds it difficult to return to a banker's high-finance mindset, and he shocks his co-workers with a plan to provide no-collateral loans to veterans. Meanwhile, Al's children (Teresa Wright and Michael Hall) have virtually grown up in his absence. Fred discovers that his wartime heroics don't count for much in the postwar marketplace, and he finds himself unwillingly returning to his prewar job as a soda jerk. His wife (Virginia Mayo), expecting a thrilling marriage to a glamorous flyboy, is bored and embittered by her husband's inability to advance himself, and she begins living irresponsibly, like a showgirl. Homer has lost both of his hands in combat and has been fitted with hooks; although his family and his fiancà (C)e (Cathy O'Donnell) adjust to his wartime handicap, he finds it more difficult. Profoundly relevant in 1946, the film still offers a surprisingly intricate and ambivalent exploration of American daily life; and it features landmark deep-focus cinematography from Gregg Toland, who also shot Citizen Kane. The film won Oscars for, among others, Best Picture, Best Director for the legendary William Wyler, Best Actor for March, and Best Supporting Actor for Harold Russell, a real-life double amputee whose hands had been blown off in a training accident.

From Here to Eternity (1953)
Directed By: Fred Zinnemann The scene is Schofield Army Barracks in Honolulu, in the languid days before the attack on Pearl Harbor, where James Jones' acclaimed war novel From Here to Eternity brought the aspirations and frustrations of several people sharply into focus. Sergeant Milt Warden (Burt Lancaster) enters into an affair with Karen (Deborah Kerr), the wife of his commanding officer. Private Robert E. Lee "Prew" Prewitt (Montgomery Clift) is a loner who lives by his own code of ethics and communicates better with his bugle than he does with words. Prew's best friend is wisecracking Maggio (Frank Sinatra, in an Oscar-winning performance that revived his flagging career), who has been targeted for persecution by sadistic stockade sergeant Fatso Judson (Ernest Borgnine). Rounding out the principals is Alma Lorene (Donna Reed), a "hostess" at the euphemistically named whorehouse The New Congress Club. All these melodramatic joys and sufferings are swept away by the Japanese attack on the morning of December 7. No words could do justice to the film's most famous scene: the nocturnal romantic rendezvous on the beach, with Burt Lancaster's and Deborah Kerr's bodies intertwining as the waves crash over them. If you're able to take your eyes off the principals for a moment or two, keep an eye out for George Reeves; his supporting role was shaved down when, during previews, audiences yelled "There's Superman!" and began to laugh. From Here to Eternity won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and supporting awards to Sinatra and Reed.

Gigi (1958)
Directed By: Vincente Minnelli , Charles Walters Leslie Caron plays Gigi, a young girl raised by two veteran Parisian courtesans (Hermione Gingold and Isabel Jeans) to be the mistress of wealthy young Gaston (Louis Jourdan). When Gaston falls in love with Gigi and asks her to be his wife, Jeans is appalled: never has anyone in their family ever stooped to anything so bourgeois as marriage! Weaving in and out of the story is Maurice Chevalier as an aging boulevardier who, years earlier, had been in love with Gingold's character. Chevalier gets most of the best Lerner & Loewe tunes, including Thank Heaven for Little Girls, I'm Glad I'm Not Young Any More, and his matchless duet with Gingold, I Remember it Well. Caron's best number (dubbed by Betty Wand) is The Night They Invented Champagne while Jourdan gets the honor of introducing the title song. Filmed on location in Paris, Gigi won several Oscars, including Best Picture; it also represented the successful American movie comeback of Chevalier, who thanks to this film was "forgiven" for his reputed collaboration with the Nazis during World War II. GIGI - 1958Winner of Nine Academy Awards. This was Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's 1958 follow-up to their My Fair Lady. Set in Paris, Gigi is about a girl (Leslie Caron) on a lower rung of society who blossoms into
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Cinderellahood before our eyes and ears. Thank heaven for Hermione Gingold and Maurice Chevalier as her mentors, and Louis Jourdan as her prince. The screenplay writer and lyricist Lerner always said that Gigi's title song was his favorite of all he'd written. The winner of nine Academy Awards (plus a special Oscar for Chevalier), including Best Picture, Gigi was the last great MGM movie musical and one of the best. Starring: Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier, Louis Jourdan, Hermione Gingold, Eva Gabor. Directed by: Vincente Minnelli. ########## Of all the films which won the Best Picture Oscar, one has to wonder how this ho hum musical earned all nine Oscars for which it was nominated. Was it just a weak year or did The Defiant Ones (1958) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) cancel each other out as well? It's a mystery. Director Vincente Minnelli, the Original Song "Gigi", its Musical Score, and Adapted Screenplay were among the other Oscar winners. Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier, and Louis Jourdan star. Added to the National Film Registry in 1991. #35 on AFI's 100 Greatest Love Stories list. "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" is #56 on AFI's 100 Top Movie Songs of All Time. Gigi (Caron) has been raised quite innocently by her Grandmother Madame Alvarez (Hermione Gingold), with whom she lives. Alvarez didn't do as well as her sister, Gigi's former courtesan Aunt Alicia (Isabel Jeans), who lives in high style but (per her vanity) never leaves her expensive flat with butler (e.g. setup for life by former lovers). However, Alvarez is friends with a rich playboy Gaston Lachaille (Jourdan) who loves to get away from society's trappings - which he finds a "bore" - by visiting her humble apartment, especially because of her energetic granddaughter; he's known Gigi since she was a child and loves to play cards with her. But Gigi is now a young woman who follows Gaston's public love life with delight. Advised by his uncle (Chevalier), an older version of himself, Gaston drops yet another woman (Eva Gabor) he's been dating hoping to escape the trappings of high society for a while. During this time, he takes Gigi and Madame Alvarez to the sea during which he begins to notice the former's maturation. With encouragement and education from Aunt Alicia, a match is eventually made (at first, Gigi resists the arrangement until she decides that she'd "rather be miserable with him than without him"). However, when Gigi acts like the courtesan she's been trained to be in lieu of the precocious and fun 'child' he'd been used to, he's forced to examine his lifestyle and make a decision.

West Side Story (1961)
Directed By: Jerome Robbins , Robert Wise Romeo and Juliet is updated to the tenements of New York City in this Oscar-winning musical landmark. Adapted by Ernest Lehman from the Broadway production, the movie opens with an overhead shot of Manhattan, an effect that director Robert Wise would repeat over the Alps in The Sound of Music four years later. We are introduced to two rival street gangs: the Jets, second-generation American teens, and the Sharks, Puerto Rican immigrants. When the war between the Jets and Sharks reaches a fever pitch, Jets leader Riff (Russ Tamblyn) decides to challenge the Sharks to one last "winner take all" rumble. He decides to meet Sharks leader Bernardo (George Chakiris) for a war council at a gymnasium dance; to bolster his argument, Riff wants his old pal Tony (Richard Beymer), the cofounder of the Jets, to come along. But Tony has set his sights on vistas beyond the neighborhood and has fallen in love with Bernardo's sister, Maria (Natalie Wood), a love that, as in Romeo and Juliet, will eventually end in tragedy. In contrast to the usual slash-and-burn policy of Hollywood musical adaptations, all the songs written by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim for the original Broadway production of West Side Story were retained for the film version, although some alterations were made to appease the Hollywood censors, and the original order of two songs was reversed for stronger dramatic impact. The movie more than retains the original choreography of Jerome Robbins, which is recreated in some of the most startling and balletic dance sequences ever recorded on film. West Side Story won an almost-record ten Oscars, including Best Picture, supporting awards to Chakiris and Rita Moreno as Bernardo's girlfriend, Anita, and Best Director to Robbins and Wise. Richard Beymer's singing was dubbed by Jimmy Bryant, Natalie Wood's by Marni Nixon (who also dubbed Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady), and Rita Moreno's by Betty Wand. The film's New York tenement locations were later razed to make room for Lincoln Center. ########## This updated Romeo and Juliet tale, on the streets of New York, is the only movie so far to share the Best Director Oscar between two directors, Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins (his film debut was also the only film he directed). Can you believe that Elvis was Director Wise's first choice to play the "Romeo" (Tony, played by Richard Beymer) character opposite "Juliet", Maria played by Natalie Wood (whose singing voice was dubbed by Marni Nixon, who also dubbed Ms. Hepburn's singing voice in My Fair Lady (1964))? The film won 10 (out of 11 nominations) total Oscars including Best Picture and both Supporting roles, George Chakiris and Rita Moreno (who also uniquely has an Emmy, a Grammy, and a Tony Award as well!). Added to the National Film Registry in 1997. #41 on AFI's 100 Greatest Movies list. #3 on AFI's 100 Greatest Love Stories list. "Somewhere" is #20 on AFI's 100 Top Movie Songs of All Time. "America" is #35 on AFI's 100 Top Movie Songs of All Time. "Tonight" is #59 on AFI's 100 Top Movie Songs of All Time. #2 on AFI's 25 Greatest Movie Musicals list. The Academy Award winning Score also includes the Leonard Bernstein-Stephen Sondheim songs "Maria" and "I Feel Pretty".
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After the Overture, the film opens fairly silently with breathtaking (helicopter high) overhead views of Manhattan before the camera is focused - and zooms in - on a city playground (where the story later ends). Director Wise would use virtually this exact same technique to open (and close) his other Oscar-winning Best Picture The Sound of Music (1965), which features the majestic Alps in place of the cement and steel 'mountains' of New York City. Two rival street gangs: Riff (Russ Tamblyn) is the leader of the ethnic "White" Jets, Bernardo (Chakiris) the leader of the "Hispanic" (actually, Puerto Rican) Sharks and brother of Maria (Wood); Moreno plays Maria's friend Anita, who is also Bernardo's girl. When Tony (Beymer), who was formerly with the Jets, and Maria fall in love, there is conflict played out ever so creatively in song and dance, with Tamblyn lending his many skills in this area. Of course, their's is a forbidden love which can only lead to tragedy. Simon Oakland, Ned Glass, William Bramley (as Officer Krupke) and John Astin play the adult supporting roles

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)
Directed By: Richard Brooks I This dynamic and commanding adaptation of Tennessee Williams' Pulitzer Prize-winning play focuses on a troubled Southern family and the discord over their dying father's millions. Wealthy plantation owner Big Daddy Pollitt (Burl Ives), celebrating his 65th birthday, is visited by his sons, Brick (Paul Newman) and Gooper (Jack Carson). He has cancer, but a doctor has deliberately and falsely declared it in remission. Seemingly perfect son Gooper and his wife, Mae (Madeleine Sherwood), have several children and are anxiously expecting to inherit Daddy's millions. By contrast, Big Daddy's "favorite," Brick, is a has-been football star who's taken to drinking his days away since the suicide of his "best friend" a year earlier. He resents his wife, Maggie (Elizabeth Taylor), because he believes that she had an affair with his deceased friend. As a result, he refuses to sleep with her, although she remains devoted to him. Since Brick and Maggie have failed to produce any grandchildren, Big Daddy is inclined to leave his estate to Gooper, but Maggie attempts to prevent that by telling him that she is pregnant. Big Daddy knows better, yet he recognizes that Maggie loves Brick so much that she would be willing to do anything for him. Although Brick is self-destructive and resentful, unable to come to terms with his losses, it takes Big Daddy's recognition of his own mortality to make Brick change his perspective. Brick's struggle with his sexual identity, and the nature of his relationship with his "friend," had to be toned down for mass consumption, although this intelligently written and acted film covers such topics as infertility, adultery, and alcoholism that were still considered taboo in the 1950s. Newman brings depth and feeling to the role as Brick, while Taylor succeeds brilliantly in portraying Maggie as a passionate and understanding woman despite her own real-life emotional turmoil over the death of her husband at the time, producer Mike Todd.
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Elizabeth Taylor is gorgeous (besides giving some of her best adult acting) in this Richard Brooks/James Poe interpretation of Tennessee Williams's stunning play that reveals truths about mendacity, days gone by and family power struggles. Director Brooks also got compelling performances from Paul Newman and Burl Ives. Newman, Taylor, Director-writer Brooks, as well as the film and William Daniels's (The Naked City (1948)) Color Cinematography were all Oscar nominated. Jack Carson and Judith Anderson also play significant roles; Larry Gates & Vaughn Taylor also appear. Brick (Newman) and Gooper (Carson) are sons of "Big Daddy" Pollit (Ives). Brick is the favored son, a former football star but now a drunk, who's married to "Maggie the Cat" (Taylor). Maggie caters to Big Daddy, and desperately loves her despondent husband. Gooper, the son that's actually made something of himself, has a chip on his shoulder. He and his wife Mae Flynn (Madeleine Sherwood) try to gain control of dying Big Daddy's estate. Big Daddy, married to Big Momma (Anderson), "ruled" all the members of his family with an iron fist while he built his empire and manipulated events in their lives.

A Place in the Sun (1951)
Drama, Romance, Classics Directed By: George Stevens Previously filmed in 1931 under its original title, Theodore Dreiser's bulky but brilliant novel An American Tragedy was remade in 1951 by George Stevens as A Place in the Sun. Montgomery Clift stars as George Eastman, a handsome and charming but basically aimless young man who goes to work in a factory run by a distant, wealthy relative. Feeling lonely one evening, he has a brief rendezvous with assembly-line worker Alice Tripp (Shelley Winters), but he forgets all about her when he falls for dazzling socialite Angela Vickers (Elizabeth Taylor). Alice can't forget about him, though: she is pregnant with his child. Just when George's personal and professional futures seem assured, Alice demands that he marry her or she'll expose him to his society friends. This predicament sets in motion a chain of events that will ultimately include George's arrest and numerous other tragedies, including a vicious cross-examination by a D.A. played by future Perry Mason Raymond Burr. A huge improvement over the 1931 An American Tragedy, directed by Josef von Sternberg, A Place in the Sun softens some of the rough edges of Dreiser's naturalism, most notably in the passages pertaining to George's and Angela's romance. Even those 1951 bobbysoxers who wouldn't have been caught dead poring through the Dreiser original were mesmerized by the loving, near-erotic full facial closeups of Clift and Taylor as they pledge eternal devotion. A Place in the Sun won six Oscars, including Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Cinematography, although it lost Best Picture to An American in Paris.
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############ Produced & directed by George Stevens (The More the Merrier (1943)), with a screenplay by Michael Wilson and Harry Brown (Sands of Iwo Jima (1949)), this essential romance drama about forbidden, tragic love (and more) stars two of the most beautiful actors of their time at the peak of their sex appeal, Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor. The excellent cast also includes Shelley Winters, Anne Revere, Fred Clark, Raymond Burr, and even John Ridgely (among others). Clift earned the second of his four (unrewarded) acting Oscar nominations, Winters her first and only lead actress nomination (she would go on to win two Supporting Actress Oscars out of three more nominations). Though producer Stevens lost his Oscar to An American in Paris (1951), director and future Irving G. Thalberg Award winner Stevens took home the gold; he earned a second directing Giant (1956). Writers Wilson & Brown also won as did the film's B&W Cinematography (William Mellor earned his first Oscar on his first Academy Award nomination), Costume Design (Edith Head), Editing (William Hornbeck, It's a Wonderful Life (1946), earned his only Oscar) and Score (Franz Waxman, Sunset Blvd. (1950), who earned his second and last Oscar despite three more subsequent nominations). Added to the National Film Registry in 1991. #92 on AFI’s 100 Greatest Movies list. #53 on AFI’s 100 Greatest Love Stories list. George Eastman (Clift) is a handsome drifter with ambition. He gets a job at his wealthy uncle Charles's (Herbert Heyes) bathing suit factory where he works a mundane job and meets assembly line worker Alice Tripp (Winters). Even though she's not attractive and he was told not to date anyone at the plant, George has an affair with her. Later, however, George finds what he think will finally be his “place in the sun”. He gets invited to attend one of the parties at his uncle's estate. There he meets a beautiful debutante Angela Vickers (Taylor). Two people who look as good as they do were meant to be together, right? The only problem is that Alice thinks she has a future in George's “climb up the ladder” in his uncle's business herself. Alice tells George that she's thinks she's pregnant from their earlier encounter which leads him to a desperate decision in a boat on a lake with her over Labor Day weekend. Revere plays George's poor mother, Clark George's defense attorney, Burr the DA, and Ridgely the coroner. Ian Wolfe appears uncredited as Dr. Wyeland.

My Fair Lady (1964)
Kids & Family, Musical & Performing Arts, Comedy Directed By: George Cukor At one time the longest-running Broadway musical, My Fair Lady was adapted by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe from the George Bernard Shaw comedy Pygmalion. Outside Covent Garden on a rainy evening in 1912, dishevelled cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) meets linguistic expert Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison). After delivering a musical tirade against "verbal class distinction," Higgins tells his companion Colonel Pickering (Wilfred Hyde-White) that, within six months, he could transform Eliza into a proper lady, simply by teaching her proper English. The next morning, face and hands freshly scrubbed, Eliza presents herself on Higgins' doorstep, offering to pay him to teach her to be a lady. "It's almost irresistable," clucks Higgins. "She's so deliciously low. So horribly dirty." He turns his mission into a sporting proposition, making a bet with Pickering that he can accomplish his six-month miracle to turn Eliza into a lady. This is one of the all-time great movie musicals, featuring classic songs and the legendary performances of Harrison, repeating his stage role after Cary Grant wisely turned down the movie job, and Stanley Holloway as Eliza's dustman father. Julie Andrews originated the role of Eliza on Broadway but producer Jack Warner felt that Andrews, at the time unknown beyond Broadway, wasn't bankable; Hepburn's singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon, who also dubbed Natalie Wood in West Side Story (1961). Andrews instead made Mary Poppins, for which she was given the Best Actress Oscar, beating out Hepburn. The movie, however, won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor for Harrison, and five other Oscars, and it remains one of the all-time best movie musicals.
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One of "my favorite movies", though it should have starred Julie Andrews who starred with Rex Harrison on Broadway. In a bit of Oscar irony, Ms. Andrews won the Best Actress Oscar playing Mary Poppins (1964) and Ms. Hepburn wasn't even nominated. Alan Jay Lerner's musical adaptation of Bernard Shaw's classic Pygmalion (1938) story. The film won 8 (out of 12 nominations) Oscars including Best Picture, Best Actor for Harrison, and Best Director for George Cukor (his first, on his fifth and last nomination ... 31 years after Little Women (1933)). Gladys Cooper and the marvelous Stanley Holloway were nominated for their supporting roles. #91 on AFI's 100 Greatest Movies list. #12 on AFI's 100 Greatest Love Stories list. "I Could Have Danced All Night" is #17 on AFI's 100 Top Movie Songs of All Time. #8 on AFI's 25 Greatest Movie Musicals list. Harrison plays the great, pompous linguist professor Henry Higgins, who says that the way one speaks reveals everything about them. He claims he can teach any ignorant street person to speak such that they could be passed off as royalty. A fellow linguist & newfound friend, Colonel Pickering (Wilfrid Hyde-White), calls his bluff. So, Higgins chooses to undertake an unkempt, cockney-accented flower girl, Eliza Doolittle (Hepburn), to prove his boast & make his point. When he takes Eliza into his home, to live with him and the visiting Pickering, during the training period, her estranged & drunken father (Holloway) gets the wrong idea and wants a piece of the action. He "sells" his daughter to Higgins, who recommends the man to an associate as a true "moralist". Cooper plays Higgins' disapproving mother. Theodore Bikel plays a former student of the Professor's that becomes the ultimate test of his
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hypothesis. Jeremy Brett plays a gentleman lovestruck by his first encounter with Eliza. Mona Washbourne plays Higgins' live-in servant.

A Man for All Seasons (1966)
Drama, Classics Directed By: Fred Zinnemann Adapted by Robert Bolt and Constance Willis from Bolt's hit stage play, A Man for All Seasons stars Paul Scofield, triumphantly repeating his stage role as Sir Thomas More. The crux of the film is the staunchly Catholic More's refusal to acknowledge King Henry VIII (Robert Shaw)'s break from the church to divorce his first wife and marry Anne Boleyn (an unbilled Vanessa Redgrave). Sir Thomas willingly goes to the chopping block rather than sacrifice his ideals. Director Fred Zinnemann retains the play's verbosity without sacrificing the film's strong sense of visuals. The impeccably chosen cast includes Wendy Hiller as Sir Thomas' likably contentious wife Alice, John Hurt as the deceitful Richard Rich (More's put-downs of this despicable character provide some of the film's biggest laughs), Orson Welles as a dour Cardinal Woolsey, Leo McKern as the ambitious Thomas Cromwell, and Susannah York as More's daughter Margaret. The "Common Man," an important bridging-the-scenes character in the original play, is removed from the film version, which does just fine without him. A Man for All Seasons won six Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor, as well as seven British Film Academy awards. ###########

The Godfather (1972)
Drama Directed By: Francis Ford Coppola Popularly viewed as one of the best American films ever made, the multi-generational crime saga The Godfather is a touchstone of cinema: one of the most widely imitated, quoted, and lampooned movies of all time. Marlon Brando and Al Pacino star as Vito Corleone and his youngest son, Michael, respectively. It is the late 1940s in New York and Corleone is, in the parlance of organized crime, a "godfather" or "don," the head of a Mafia family. Michael, a free thinker who defied his father by enlisting in the Marines to fight in World War II, has returned a captain and a war hero. Having long ago rejected the family business, Michael shows up at the wedding of his sister, Connie (Talia Shire), with his non-Italian girlfriend, Kay (Diane Keaton), who learns for the first time about the family "business." A few months later at Christmas time, the don barely survives being shot by gunmen in the employ of a drug-trafficking rival whose request for aid from the Corleones' political connections was rejected. After saving his father from a second assassination attempt, Michael persuades his hotheaded eldest brother, Sonny (James Caan), and family advisors Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) and Sal Tessio (Abe Vigoda) that he should be the one to exact revenge on the men responsible. After murdering a corrupt police captain and the drug trafficker, Michael hides out in Sicily while a gang war erupts at home. Falling in love with a local girl, Michael marries her, but she is later slain by Corleone enemies in an attempt on Michael's life. Sonny is also butchered, having been betrayed by Connie's husband. As Michael returns home and convinces Kay to marry him, his father recovers and makes peace with his rivals, realizing that another powerful don was pulling the strings behind the narcotics endeavor that began the gang warfare. Once Michael has been groomed as the new don, he leads the family to a new era of prosperity, then launches a campaign of murderous revenge against those who once tried to wipe out the Corleones, consolidating his family's power and completing his own moral downfall. Nominated for 11 Academy Awards and winning for Best Picture, Best Actor (Marlon Brando), and Best Adapted Screenplay, The Godfather was followed by a pair of sequels.

The Godfather, Part II (1974)
Mystery & Suspense, Drama Directed By: Francis Ford Coppola Written By: Francis Ford Coppola, Mario Puzo Francis Ford Coppola's legendary continuation and sequel to his landmark 1972 film, The Godfather, parallels the young Vito Corleone's rise with his son Michael's spiritual fall, deepening The Godfather's depiction of the dark side of the American dream. In the early 1900s, the child Vito flees his Sicilian village for America after the local Mafia kills his family. Vito (Robert De Niro) struggles to make a living, legally or illegally, for his wife and growing brood in Little Italy, killing the local Black Hand Fanucci (Gastone Moschin) after he demands his customary cut of the tyro's business. With Fanucci gone, Vito's communal stature grows, but it is his family (past and present) who matters most to him -- a familial legacy then upended by Michael's (Al Pacino) business expansion in the 1950s. Now based in Lake Tahoe, Michael conspires to make inroads in Las Vegas and Havana pleasure industries by any means necessary. As he realizes that allies like Hyman Roth (Lee Strasberg) are trying to kill him, the increasingly paranoid Michael also discovers that his ambition has crippled his marriage to Kay (Diane Keaton) and turned his
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brother, Fredo (John Cazale), against him. Barely escaping a federal indictment, Michael turns his attention to dealing with his enemies, completing his own corruption.

Chariots of Fire (1981)
Drama, Art House & International, Sports & Fitness Directed By: Hugh Hudson Based on a true story, Chariots of Fire is the internationally acclaimed Oscar-winning drama of two very different men who compete as runners in the 1924 Paris Olympics. Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson), a serious Christian Scotsman, believes that he has to succeed as a testament to his undying religious faith. Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross), is a Jewish Englishman who wants desperately to be accepted and prove to the world that Jews are not inferior. The film crosscuts between each man's life as he trains for the competition, fueled by these very different desires. As compelling as the racing scenes are, it's really the depth of the two main characters that touches the viewer, as they forcefully drive home the theme that victory attained through devotion, commitment, integrity, and sacrifice is the most admirable feat that one can achieve. (Ian Holm was nominated for an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor in his role as Abrahams' coach), and this powerful film ended up with four Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Costume Design, and Best Original Score.

Terms of Endearment (1983)
Drama, Romance, Comedy Directed By: James L. Brooks Terms of Endearment covers three decades in the lives of widow Aurora Greenway (Shirley MacLaine) and her daughter Emma (Debra Winger). Fiercely protected by Aurora throughout childhood, Emma runs into resistance from her mother when she marries wishy-washy college teacher Flap (Jeff Daniels). Aurora is even more put out at the prospect of being a grandmother, though she grows a lot fonder of her three grandkids than she does of her son-in-law. Flap proves that Aurora's instincts were on target when he enters into an affair with a student (Kate Charleson). Meanwhile, Emma finds romantic consolation with an unhappily married banker (played by John Lithgow, who registers well in a rare "nice guy" performance). As for Aurora, she is ardently pursued by her nextdoor neighbor, boisterous astronaut Garrett Breedlove (Jack Nicholson). After 75 minutes or so of pursuing an episodic, semi-comic plotline, the film abruptly shifts moods when Emma discovers that she has terminal cancer. Terms of Endearment won Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay for TV veteran James L. Brooks making his first feature film, Best Actress for MacLaine, and Best Supporting Actor for Nicholson. It was followed by a sequel, The Evening Star (1996), which again featured MacLaine as Aurora.
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I can still remember the tears. Of course I've always loved Shirley MacLaine movies (she finally won gold on her fifth and last, so far, Best Actress nomination) and this film is so good it almost makes having to watch Debra Winger (Oscar nominated) tolerable, winning the Best Picture Oscar. A film about family relationships, particularly mother & daughter. Producer James L. Brooks won his only three Oscars in his directorial debut (also for Best Adapted Screenplay). Jack Nicholson won his Best Supporting Oscar over John Lithgow (also nominated).

Chicago (2002)
Drama, Musical & Performing Arts, Comedy Directed By: Rob Marshall A starry-eyed would-be star discovers just how far the notion that "there's no such thing as bad publicity" can go in this screen adaptation of the hit Broadway musical Chicago, originally directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse. In the mid-'20s, Roxie Hart (Renee Zellweger) is a small-time chorus dancer married to a well-meaning dunderhead named Amos (John C. Reilly). Roxie is having an affair on the side with Fred Casley (Dominic West), a smooth talker who insists he can make her a star. However, Fred strings Roxie along a bit too far for his own good, and when she realizes that his promises are empty, she becomes enraged and murders Fred in cold blood. Roxie soon finds herself behind bars alongside Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta-Jones), a sexy vaudeville star who used to perform with her sister until Velma discovered that her sister had been sleeping with her husband. Velma shot them both dead, and, after scheming prison matron "Mama" Morton hooks Velma up with hotshot lawyer Billy Flynn (Richard Gere), Velma becomes the new Queen of the scandal sheets. Roxie is just shrewd enough to realize that her poor fortune could also bring her fame, so she convinces Amos to also hire Flynn. Soon Flynn is splashing Roxie's story -- or, more accurately, a highly melodramatic revision of Roxie's story -- all over the gutter press, and Roxy and Velma are soon battling neck-to-neck over who can win greater fame through the headlines. A project that had
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been moving from studio to studio since the musical opened on Broadway in 1973, Chicago also features guest appearances by Lucy Liu and Christine Baranski.
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Best choice in a weak year? An Oscar winning Best Picture. The best thing I can say about this film is that in lieu of just filming a popular stage musical with more elaborate sets, the (Oscar nominated) director Rob Marshall (his directorial debut) and editor (Martin Walsh won the Oscar too) for this film really used the medium well to tell the story with the action of its stars (in lieu of doubles), e.g. by utilizing "quick cuts". Based upon what I've read, this technique really wasn't done to cover up or hide any lack of talent on the part of the principals either (however, even slick editing could not hide the fact that Richard Gere can't tap dance). Catherine Zeta-Jones true talent showed through enough for her to win the Supporting Actress Oscar. I think it's been so well received because it moves the adequate (Oscar nominated) story along efficiently with intriguing musical numbers, in lieu of the way Moulin Rouge! (2001) made you say "not another song, please!" and "is it over yet, can I leave now?" This film is much "tighter". Renee Zellweger, John C. Reilly, and Queen Latifah were Oscar nominated for their roles. #12 on AFI's 25 Greatest Movie Musicals list.

Dances With Wolves (1990)
Western, Drama, Action & Adventure Directed By: Kevin Costner A historical drama about the relationship between a Civil War soldier and a band of Sioux Indians, Kevin Costner's directorial debut was also a surprisingly popular hit, considering its length, period setting, and often somber tone. The film opens on a particularly dark note, as melancholy Union lieutenant John W. Dunbar attempts to kill himself on a suicide mission, but instead becomes an unintentional hero. His actions lead to his reassignment to a remote post in remote South Dakota, where he encounters the Sioux. Attracted by the natural simplicity of their lifestyle, he chooses to leave his former life behind to join them, taking on the name Dances with Wolves. Soon, Dances with Wolves has become a welcome member of the tribe and fallen in love with a white woman who has been raised amongst the tribe. His peaceful existence is threatened, however, when Union soldiers arrive with designs on the Sioux land. Some detractors have criticized the film's depiction of the tribes as simplistic; such objections did not dissuade audiences or the Hollywood establishment, however, which awarded the film seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. ######## A very good film about the vanishing West and Native American life (so good it's hard to believe that Kevin Costner produced and directed it; his first one too). Costner received his only Academy Award nominations to-date for this film, losing only the Best Actor award (to Jeremy Irons, Reversal of Fortune (1990), the only time he's ever been nominated as well). The film won five other Oscars including Screenplay Writing; Graham Greene and Mary McDonnell received nominations for their Supporting roles. #75 on AFI's 100 Greatest Movies list. #59 on AFI's 100 Most Inspiring Movies list.

No Country for Old Men (2007)
Drama, Action & Adventure, Mystery & Suspense Directed By: Ethan Coen , Joel Coen When a Vietnam veteran discovers two million dollars while wandering through the aftermath of a Texas drug deal gone horribly awry, his decision to abscond with the cash sets off a violent chain reaction in a stripped-down crime drama from Joel and Ethan Coen. Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) has just stumbled into the find of a lifetime. Upon discovering a bullet-strewn pickup truck surrounded by the corpses of dead bodyguards, Moss uncovers two million dollars in cash and a substantial load of heroin stashed in the back of the vehicle. Later, as an enigmatic killer who determines the fate of his victims with the flip of a coin sets out in pursuit of Moss, the disillusioned Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) struggles to contain the rapidly escalating violence that seems to be consuming his oncepeaceful Lone Star State town. Woody Harrelson, Javier Bardem, and Kelly MacDonald co-star in a distinctly American crime story that explores timeless biblical themes in a contemporary Southwestern setting.

Vertigo (1958)
Drama, Romance, Mystery & Suspense, Classics Directed By: Alfred Hitchcock Dismissed when first released, later heralded as one of director Alfred Hitchcock's finest films (and, according to Hitchcock, his most personal one), this adaptation of the French novel D'entre les morts weaves an intricate web of obsession and deceit. It opens as Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart) realizes he has vertigo, a condition resulting in a fear of heights, when a police officer is killed trying to rescue him from falling off a building. Scottie then retires from his position as a private investigator, only to be lured into another case by his old college friend, Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore). Elster's wife, Madeleine (Kim Novak), has been possessed by a spirit, and Elster wants Scottie to follow her. He hesitantly agrees, and thus begins the film's wordless montage as Scottie follows the beautiful yet enigmatic Madeleine through 1950s San Francisco (accompanied by Bernard Herrmann's hypnotic score). After
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saving her from suicide, Scottie begins to fall in love with her, and she appears to feel the same way. Here tragedy strikes, and each twist in the movie's second half changes our preconceptions about the characters and events. In 1996 a new print of Vertigo was released, restoring the original grandeur of the colors and the San Francisco backdrop, as well as digitally enhancing the soundtrack.
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The title means dizziness, or describes a confused state of mind, this is a film about that and obsessive love which many critics say was director Alfred Hitchcock's best, though only in retrospect since it wasn't initially very well received. It was the last of the four collaborations between "Hitch" and James Stewart. The blonde, this time, was played by Kim Novak (because Vera Miles was pregnant and unavailable), with supporting acting provided by Barbara Bel Geddes (of TV's Dallas fame), Ellen Corby, Konstantin Shayne, and Lee Patrick (among others). The many memorable scenes include Stewart chasing a man across a rooftop and then hanging from a gutter, a leap into the San Francisco Bay under the Golden Gate Bridge, and the climactic chase up the stairs in a Mission's tower. Alec Coppel (The Captain's Paradise (1953)) and Samuel Taylor (Sabrina (1954)) based their screenplay on the novel d'Entre les Morts by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac. The film was Oscar nominated for its B&W Art Direction-Set Decoration and Sound (the last of George Dutton's five unrewarded Academy Award nominations, in two different categories), the director received a Directors Guild of America nomination, and the film was added to the National Film Registry in 1989. #61 on AFI's 100 Greatest Movies list; #18 on AFI's 100 Most Heart-Pounding Movies list; #18 on AFI's 100 Greatest Love Stories list. #12 on AFI's Top 25 Film Scores list.

Psycho (1960)
Horror, Mystery & Suspense, Classics Directed By: Alfred Hitchcock In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock was already famous as the screen's master of suspense (and perhaps the best-known film director in the world) when he released Psycho and forever changed the shape and tone of the screen thriller. From its first scene, in which an unmarried couple balances pleasure and guilt in a lunchtime liaison in a cheap hotel (hardly a common moment in a major studio film in 1960), Psycho announced that it was taking the audience to places it had never been before, and on that score what followed would hardly disappoint. Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) is unhappy in her job at a Phoenix, Arizona real estate office and frustrated in her romance with hardware store manager Sam Loomis (John Gavin). One afternoon, Marion is given $40,000 in cash to be deposited in the bank. Minutes later, impulse has taken over and Marion takes off with the cash, hoping to leave Phoenix for good and start a new life with her purloined nest egg. 36 hours later, paranoia and exhaustion have started to set in, and Marion decides to stop for the night at the Bates Motel, where nervous but personable innkeeper Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) cheerfully mentions that she's the first guest in weeks, before he regales her with curious stories about his mother. There's hardly a film fan alive who doesn't know what happens next, but while the shower scene is justifiably the film's most famous sequence, there are dozens of memorable bits throughout this film. The first of a handful of sequels followed in 1983, while Gus Van Sant's controversial remake, starring Vince Vaughn and Anne Heche, appeared in 1998.
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What kind of director kills off his star (played by Janet Leigh) less than half way into his film? Only Alfred Hitchcock could (get away with it), of course. And what a killing too! You won't turn your back on the door to the bathroom when showering for a while after watching this shocker. From the stinging violin music to the murder itself, this much copied masterpiece has no peer. Its imagery was/is so memorable that it typecast Anthony Perkins for life. It's also impossible to forget the look of the house on the hill, the scene with Martin Balsam on the stairway, or the ending (smiling face) view of Norman Bates (Perkins) in the padded room. What begins as a "woman on the run from the law" film becomes a darkly humorous film about an unstable man. Vera Miles and John Gavin (among others) also appear. Joseph Stefano wrote the screenplay from the novel by Robert Bloch. The film received four Oscar nominations: Best Director, Best Supporting Actress (Leigh, her only Academy Award nomination), B&W Art Direction-Set Decoration, and B&W Cinematography (John Russell's only recognition from the Academy). "Hitch" also received a Directors Guild of America nomination. It was added to the National Film Registry in 1992. #18 on AFI's 100 Greatest Movies list; #1 on AFI's 100 Most Heart-Pounding Movies list; Norman Bates is AFI's #2 villain. "A boy's best friend is his mother." is #56 on AFI's 100 Greatest Movie Quotes list. #4 on AFI's Top 25 Film Scores list.

Awakenings (1990)
Drama Directed By: Penny Marshall Based on a true story as related by neurologist Oliver Sacks, Awakenings stars Robin Williams as the Sacks counterpart, here named Dr. Malcolm Sayer. Something of a klutz and naif, Dr. Sayer takes a job at a Bronx psychiatric hospital in 1969. Here he's put in charge of several seemingly catatonic patients who, under Sayer's painstaking guidance, begin responding to certain stimulati. Apprised of the efficacy of a new drug called L-DOPA
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in treating degenerative-disease victims, Sayer is given permission to test the drug on one of his patients: Leonard Lowe (Robert De Niro), who has not communicated with anyone since lapsing into catatonia as a child. Gradually, Lowe comes out of his shell, encouraging Sayers to administer L-DOPA to the other patients under his care. Julie Kavner and John Heard also star.

Black Narcissus (1947)
Drama, Classics Directed By: Michael Powell , Emeric Pressburger British filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger once again deliberately courted controversy and censorship with their 1947 adaptation of Rumer Godden's novel. Deborah Kerr and Kathleen Byron play the head nuns at an Anglican hospital/school high in the Himalayas. The nuns' well-ordered existence is disturbed by the presence of a handsome British government agent (David Farrar), whose attractiveness gives certain sisters the wrong ideas. Meanwhile, an Indian girl (Jean Simmons) is lured down the road to perdition by a sensuous general (Sabu). While Kerr would seem most susceptible to fall from grace --we are given hints of her earlier love life in a long flashback--she proves to have more stamina than Byron, who delivers one of moviedom's classic interpretations of all-stops-out, sex-starved insanity. The aforementioned flashback was removed from the US release version of Black Narcissus so as not to offend the Catholic Legion of Decency. While the dramatic content of the film hasn't stood the test of time all that well, the individual performances, production values, and especially the Oscar-winning Technicolor photography of Jack Cardiff are still as impressive as ever.
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Five young British nuns are invited to move to a windy "palace", former house of the concubines of an old general, in the top of a mountain in Mopu, Himalaya, to raise the convent of Saint Faith Order, a school for children and girls, and an infirmary for the local dwellers. Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) is assigned as the superior sister, and her liaison with civilization is the rude government agent Mr. Dean (David Farrar). The lonely and exotic place and the presence of Mr. 'Dean awake the innermost desires in the flesh of the sisters, and Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron) becomes mad with the temptation. Deborah Kerr ... Sister Clodagh Flora Robson ... Sister Philippa Jean Simmons ... Kanchi David Farrar ... Mr. Dean Sabu ... The Young General Esmond Knight ... The Old General Kathleen Byron ... Sister Ruth Jenny Laird ... Sister Honey Judith Furse ... Sister Briony May Hallatt ... Angu Ayah The idea of one individual's inner conflicts within an organized religious group is not necessarily a new concept in story telling. Depending on the talents of the artists involved, and usually the stellar performance of one individual, the results can be quite good, and at times extraordinary. Now, take that premise and reverse it. What happens when you have an entire group of individuals, who, for some reason beyond their understanding, begin to question their faith, vows, and purpose in life? You have the film Black Narcissus. A group of Anglican nuns led by Deborah Kerr as Sister Clodah are sent to the Himalaya Mountains to create a school and hospital from an abandoned palace. The palace was once called "The House of Women" and is rather ornately decorated with erotic art. In the opening scenes, we are told that an order of Brothers had attempted to do the same thing as the Sisters, but failed. Sister Clodah obviously enjoys the fact that she has been chosen, and also enjoys being in charge. Not long after the nun's arrival their "straight-laced" behavior begins to loosen, their discipline becomes more lax, and the foundation of their self-image begins to change. Deborah Kerr is wonderful as Sister Clodah. There's more to her character than immediately meets the eye. David Farrar as Mr. Dean, Flora Robson as Sister Philippa, Sabu as The Young General, and Jean Simmons as Kanchi are a superb acting ensemble. However it is Kathleen Byron as the emotionally disturbed Sister Ruth that you will remember the most after viewing this film. The extraordinary performances in this film are complimented visually with the flawless cinematography by Jack Cardiff. This is one of the most beautifully composed color films I have ever seen. I did not know that this film was shot entirely in a studio until after I had seen it several times. Some of the matte shots are extremely realistic, and others look more like beautiful paintings. All this serves to reinforce the struggle between illusion and reality, and
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also passion and chastity. Brian Easdale's musical score is extremely effective, and his use of a wordless chorus is fascinating -- whether they are singing an Irish folk-like song or an Indian chant. In the climactic scene, there is over 10 minutes of film time when not a single word is spoken; just the chorus and orchestra. Black Narcissus brings home the point that we are all sometimes far too ambitious, vulnerable, obstinate, passionate, and alas, human. ................................................................. I have seen Black Narcissus in three different ways. First I saw it in a movie theater when I was 7 or 8 with my mother. I remembered it as being beautiful to look at and rather strange, and I fell in love with the idea of The Roof of The World. I next encountered Black Narcissus as an older adult. I purchased Black Narcissus in VHS format. I devoured the film scene by scene. The film is ravishing, spectral and profound. The idea of someone being given a trust much heavier to bare than their abilities can handle opens the door to all sorts of possibilities. The suggestion that all the nun's had lives before they became nuns and not all of them are suited to "The Life" adds depth and tension. The introduction of a bare-chested, handsome man in shorts adds lust and temptation to the mix. One of the best characters in the film is one that no other poster has mentioned. The marvelous character actress who plays the role of Aiyah, the caretaker of "The General's House of Women." A woman who is already slightly mad when the film begins. A woman who lives in the glorious past of the place. She conjures ghosts. She casts shadows. She has a voice as harsh as a parrot's. She is priceless and wonderful in every scene, for she is not just mad, but wise. She is the key to "The House of Women". In the Alfred Hitchcock film of Rebecca, Mrs. Danvers, the mad housekeeper of Manderly, asks the new Mrs. DeWinter: "Do you believe that the dead come back to watch the living?" In Black Narcissus, the viewer gets the feeling that just around the next turn or at the top of the stairs is one of "The General's Women", watching these odd women who live without men. A previous poster mentioned the superb sense of "place" in the film and I agree. The Palace is a player. It has a personality and a mystery of its own. So is the ever-present wind. Jack Cardiff, the genius who performed miracles with light and painted backdrops to photograph a film set in the Himalayas without ever leaving England, can't be praised highly enough. The cast is splendid. Deborah Kerr's tortured Sister Clodagha registers every emotion, every longing, every doubt and every fear with her eyes and the set of her chin. Dame Flora Robson, better known as Elizabeth I in so many films, portrays Sister Philippa, the nun in spiritual crisis. Her, "I think it is this place. You can see too far. I think you either have to give in to it, like Mr. Dean, or leave", neatly sums up the entire film. When she can't bring herself to plant vegetables instead of the flowers she loves, she knows she MUST leave or lose herself and all she has worked for, forever. Judith Furse, the capable and sturdy Sister Brione has no such concerns. Hers is an unquestioning faith. Kathleen Byron as Sister Ruth, (the extra burden the Mother Superior foists on Sister Clodagha as a test of her dedication and skill at managing a small but dynamic group of women),is excellent in her demanding role as the nun who cracks. A beautiful young Jean Simmons is sensuous as Kanchi who seduces Sabu who is very good as the young Prince, who has set himself to learn just about everything and who thinks the nun's shunning men "Isn't very nice. After all, Christ was a man..." He is named Black Narcissus by Sister Ruth. David Ferrar as Mr. Dean may have "given in to the place" but he is still civilized enough to empathize with Sister Clodagha and resist Sister Ruth's advances. He has predicted that the nuns will last "until the rains come..." Black Narcissus is filled with magic images and haunting echos. The "flowering of the snows" scene is breathtaking. The chapel scene frightening and tense. The "Bell" scene horrifying. The final view of "The House of Women", viewed by Sister Clodagha from the valley below is heart-stopping: A mist rises slowly and inch by inch blots out the Palace, until it is only a dream in your mind's eye. Then, a large leaf is seen. One drop falls. Then another, like tears of regret. A black umbrella is opened. Mr. Dean sits on his pony and runs his hand through his thick black
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hair. He had said the nuns would be gone with the first rain, and he was right. Brian Easdale's brilliant score underlines the changing moods and the mounting terror, but never overwhelms the action. My most recent encounter with Black Narcissus is the new Criterion DVD. The commentary and behind-the-scenes photographs and the marvelous documentary, Painting with Light, is as extraordinary as the film. It is a revelation. The sharper image doesn't bother me as much as it does a previous poster, but I do, when I have friends over to watch Black Narcissus, start with the VHS film and then put on the DVD for the special features. That way I get the best of both worlds. If you love great films, great acting or just stunning cinematography, purchase Black Narcissus. It will haunt you forever. * The much admired Himalayan scenery was all created in the studio (with glass shots and hanging miniatures). * Jack Cardiff came up with the idea of starting the rainfall end scene by first having a few drops hit the rhubarb leaves before cueing a full-force rainstorm. He personally created the first drops with water from a cup when the scene was shot. Michael Powell was so pleased with the effect that he decided to make the scene, originally the penultimate one, the closing shot. Cardiff, however, was a great fan of the original scene (which had already been shot) that was supposed to follow this one and close the film. To this day Cardiff amusingly calls the opening drops of the rainfall "the worst idea I ever had". * The backdrops were blown-up black and white photographs. The art department then gave them their breathtaking colors by using pastel chalks on top of them. * Because of the Technicolor camera and film stock, the sets needed an astounding 800 foot-candles of light just to operate at T2.8, which was the widest lens aperture setting.

Cactus Flower (1969)
Classics, Comedy Directed By: Gene Saks Goldie Hawn won an Oscar for her performance as a Greenwich Village free spirit in Cactus Flower. Middle-aged dentist Winston (Walter Matthau) is enjoying an affair with Toni (Goldie Hawn) but doesn't want to be hemmed in by marriage. He prevails upon his non-glamorous assistant Stephanie (Ingrid Bergman) to pose as his wife so as to keep from campaigning for a ring. Then, to justify his "infidelity," Winston talks his pal (Jack Weston) into pretending to be Stephanie's illicit lover. Flattered by all the attention, Stephanie begins to "doll up." Confronted by a newly gorgeous Stephanie, Winston realizes that his Dream Girl has been right there in his office all along. As for Toni, she ends up in the arms of a writer (Rick Lenz), who has loved her since Reel One. Cactus Flower was adapted by Billy Wilder's frequent collaborator I.A.L. Diamond from the play by Abe Burrows -- which in turn was adapted from a French farce.

Gilda (1946)
Romance, Classics, Comedy, Drama, Mystery & Suspense, Special Interest Directed By: Charles Vidor When wealthy Ballin Mundson (George Macready) rescues down at his heels gambler Johnny Farrell (Glenn Ford) and invites him to the Buenos Aires casino he owns, both men get more than they wagered on. Farrell convinces Mundson to hire him as casino manager, but is shocked when Mundson introduces his new bride, and Farrell's old flame, Gilda (Rita Hayworth).Though Farrell is unwavering in his loyalty to his employer, and he and Gilda treat each other with contempt, Mundson realizes that the torch never died for either of the former lovers. Ordered to guard Gilda, Farrell tries to convince himself that he's protecting Mundson's interests, but Gilda sees through his self-deception. Meanwhile, Mundson reveals to Farrell that his primary business is control of an international tungsten cartel that he plans to use to further his fascist ends. With the police closing in on the cartel, Mundson fakes his death, apparently leaving Gilda and Farrell free to marry. They do so: Gilda for love, but Farrell to punish her for being unfaithful to Mundson. When Mundson returns to kill them, it is he who dies, thereby freeing the lovers to apologize to each other and return to the U.S. Charles Vidor's Gilda is a voyeuristic film noir treat that engages the viewer in a complex web of sado-masochistic triangles. When, for example, Gilda performs her signature number, "Put the Blame on Mame," she is not simply enraging both Mundson and Farrell with her open sexuality, she is also crying out in pain for the love she is being denied.
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O Melissokomos (The Beekeeper) (1986)
Art House & International, Drama Directed By: Theodoros Angelopoulos O Melissokomos (1986)Director: Theodoros AngelopoulosWriters: Theodoros Angelopoulos (writer) Tonino Guerra (co-writer) Dimitris Nollas writer Marcello Mastroianni ... Spyros Nadia Mourouzi ... The Girl Serge Reggiani ... Sick Man Jenny Roussea ... Spyros' Wife Dinos Iliopoulos... Spyros' FriendSpiros retires as a schoolteacher, his daughter is married, and he starts his annual journey with his bees to get honey from different areas. In his truck he finds a young girl who has just been abandoned and has no roots. Spiros lets her follow for a day. Seeing her difficulty in getting further hitch-hiking, he takes her back. They will meet and part several times. Later she will say that Spiros is the only one who has ever been kind to her. But his emotions are so restrained that he cannot show anything until a volcanic eruption breaks through.Language: GreekSubtitles: English ########### In this compelling drama, Marcello Mastroianni gives a tour-de-force interpretation of a disillusioned middle-aged man, a bee keeper who inherited the passion for his vocation from his father. After weeping silently at the end of his daughter's wedding ceremony, Spyros (Mastroianni) leaves in his truck to check on his bee hives and in the process gets involved with a winsome young hitchhiker (Nadia Mourouzi). She makes some advances which he immediately rejects, yet it is clear that he is ambivalent about her. Next he pays his respects to the people who have meant something to him in his life: his ex-wife, an old friend, and his daughter. Each time he mysteriously truncates his visit, and the enigma of what lies unsaid deepens after he encounters the hitchhiker again.

SYNOPSIS
In THE BEEKEEPER, alienation and despair have so mestastasized in the film's central figure that he's virtually one of the walking dead. Spyros, a man soured by a secret, incestuous love for his daughter, on the day of her wedding, gives up his position as a schoolteacher, his wife, his home and his city to take up again the profession of his father and grandfather before him traveling across Greece to the town in which he was born and first learned to tend the bees, following the traditional beekeeper's route, looking for flowers that will produce the best honey, a wanderer obsessed by his job. Like a bee returning to its hive after searching for food he visits his old friends and his childhood home looking for threads to bind him to the present. He drives from town to town revisiting his old haunts and comrades relighting and reliving his history in his memory, trying to reconcile his past ideals with a swiftly changing nation that makes him feel uncomfortable. At some point he picks up a promiscuous young hitchhiker who sporadically tags along with him during his journey and seems to represent a new generation without memory and unconcerned with the past, drifting from one place to the next, flitting between the blinking lights of motor vehicles, gas stations, diners, cheap hotels and traffic signs along the dark, wet glistening roadways of present-day Greece. He becomes obsessed by her. She both irritates and entices him. What he seeks in her is a contact with the future. But for her the future is a casual encounter with the next moment. In the impossibility of their relationship there is a profound despair of a man without a future. He senses a rupture, but it's not the traditional one of the conflict of generations. It's really a rupture of language. He cannot communicate, even with love, with the body. From that comes his crisis of despair. Toward his end, he takes refuge in an abandoned cinema called the Pantheon. There, mocked by the sterile white screen above him, he tries - and fails - to bring himself to life in an attempt to connect sexually with the young hitchhiker but there can be no connection between these people from different worlds, either physical or emotional. For Spyros the past is everything, for her it is nothing. In Angelopoulos' words, «It's the conflict between memory and non-memory.» In the long run she only reminds him of his loneliness and isolation. Unable to come to come to terms with the present, betrayed by the past, wary of the future, Spyros falls back into silence and isolation and returns to his hives, abandoning himself to the stings of his bees.

«... the silence of love...» «Listen: doesn't it sound like a song? It's the virgins who want to be queens beating against the doors of their waxed prisons, trying to break them down but the guards stand watch and patch them up again. Why not let them out? Only the queen is allowed out, the others they keep in reserve in case something happens to the queen. Soon the drones will be going for water. They're waiting for the queen. She'll come and all
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together they'll dance and she'll choose one, only one, and they'll dance high up in the air, and that's the queen's dance.» The Bee-Keeper

The Spirit of the Beehive (El Espíritu de la colmena) (1973)
Art House & International, Drama Directed By: Victor Erice Widely regarded as a masterpiece of Spanish cinema, this allegorical tale is set in a remote village in the 1940s. The life in the village is calm and uneventful -- an allegory of Spanish life after General Franco's victory in the Spanish Civil War. While their father (Fernando Fernn Gmez) studies bees in his beehive and their mother (Teresa Gimpera) writes letters to a non-existent correspondent, two young girls, Ana (Ana Torrent) and Isabel (Isabel Telleria), go to see James Whale's Frankenstein at a local cinema. Though they can hardly understand the concept, both girls are deeply impressed with the moment when a little girl gives a flower to the monster. Isabel, the older sister, tells Ana that the monster actually exists as a spirit that you can't see unless you know how to approach him. Ana starts wandering around the countryside in search of the kind creature. The film received critical accolades for its subtle and masterful use of cinematic language and the expressive performance of the young Ana Torrent.

The Lady from Shanghai (1948)
Drama, Mystery & Suspense, Classics Directed By: Orson Welles The Lady From Shanghai, a complex, involving puzzle-within-a-puzzle mystery story, is a showcase for Orson Welles, showing his singular talents and sensibilities as few other films have. The story is superficially simple: a seaman Michael O'Hara (Welles) is hired as a crew member on the yacht of the wealthy Banister (Everett Sloane). His beautiful but mysterious wife Elsa (Rita Hayworth) has met O'Hara earlier, when he saved her from a mugging. What ensues is a complicated and bizarre pattern of deception, fraud and murder, with O'Hara finding himself implicated in a murder, despite his innocence. The film is best remembered for its final sequence when the plot comes to a literally smashing climax in the famous "hall of mirrors" sequence, with Elsa and Banister shooting it out amidst shards of shattering glass. Orson Welles, who produced, directed, wrote and starred in the film, is sometimes self-indulgent in his use of visual tricks and techniques, which at times sacrifice plot for visual brilliance, but he pulls it together in the end to produce a stunning, difficult film. Rita Hayworth gives one of her best performances as the deceptive, seductive temptress, hard-edged and cynical. The film confounds, unsettles and disorients the viewer, very much as Welles intended to do. While not an easy film, it is well worth the attention required to follow it, and Welles offers no easy solutions or any false happy endings to his tour-de-force mystery.

The Strawberry Blonde (1941)
Western, Drama, Romance, Classics, Comedy Directed By: Raoul Walsh Strawberry Blonde is the second, and by far the most well-regarded, of the three film versions of James Hogan's play One Sunday Afternoon. James Cagney stars as Biff Grimes, a turn-of-the-century dentist married to onetime suffragette Amy Lind (Olivia de Havilland). A former convict, Biff has great difficulty keeping his temper--and when alderman Hugo Barnstead (Jack Carson), the man responsible for Cagney's unjust prison term, shows up one Sunday afternoon to have a tooth pulled, the pugnacious dentist begins developing homicidal urges. In a lengthy flashback, we learn that Biff and Hugo, once the best of friends, were business partners in a construction firm. When one of their buildings collapsed due to shoddy materials, Biff was sent to jail for five years, while Hugo escaped scot-free. Even worse, Hugo stole Biff's girlfriend Virginia Brush (Rita Hayworth), the "strawberry blonde" of the title. The flashback over, Biff sharkishly welcomes Hugo into his office, fully intending to bump off his old enemy. But during a reunion with his "dream girl" Virginia, Biff realizes for the first time that Amy was the right girl for him all along, and that Hugo did him a favor by taking the strident, shrewish Virginia off his hands. Letting Hugo off with little more than a sore jaw, Biff takes Amy in his arms--but not before settling a few old accounts with his fists, just for old time's sake.
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It is always a great thrill to watch this classical comedy drama made by one of greatest directors of the bygone Hollywood golden era, Raoul Walsh. You may also point out that The Strawberry Blonde in many ways reflect his own boyhood and youth memories of New York and in some ways that is also the case for the vibrant, arrogant and
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cocky James Cagney. The film has a wonderful turn of the century atmosphere and it is so highly professional made in all aspects of film-making, that is to tell a story with pictures.The actors are superb and of course you notice that Walsh was a no nonsense director. Someone said about him that Walsh's idea of a great love scene was to "burn down a brothel". But in The Strawberry Blonde you can see that he had many sides and abilities. All together a masterpiece of it's time and a tribute to American culture and the real golden era of film-making.

Separate Tables (1958)
Drama, Classics Directed By: Delbert Mann Based on Terence Rattigan's play, Separate Tables is about a number of characters and their adventures at a British seaside hotel. Among the guests are an alleged war hero (David Niven), a timid spinster (Deborah Kerr) and her domineering mother (Gladys Cooper), and a divorced couple (Burt Lancaster, Rita Hayworth) trying to re-ignite their romance despite the presence of his mistress (Wendy Hiller). All of the characters' lives become intertwined in the course of the film as the story examines love affairs and secrets. Separate Tables is a fine, textured drama, filled with terrific performances and was nominated for several Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actress (Deborah Kerr), Best Actor (David Niven), Best Supporting Actress (Wendy Hiller), Best Screenplay From Another Medium, Best Cinematography and Best Music. Niven and Hiller won Oscars for the film.
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This film came highly recommended to me by my parents, so I was anxious to watch it. Again, I realized that my impression of Burt Lancaster is completely different from what he actually is as an actor. His portrayal of an alcoholic man who gets a visit from his ex-wife (Hayworth) at the hotel he resides is again different from the boisterous, oafish guy that I always believed him to be when I was younger. Also at the hotel are a varied group of characters – including an oppressive woman who lords over her timid spinster daughter (Kerr) and a retired Army officer with some secrets, (Niven) who are all taken care of by the distant, yet sincere proprietress, Pat Cooper (the amazing Wendy Hiller). The film encompasses all of their separate plot lines, and interweaves them gradually until the climatic ending. There was no action in this film, just wonderful, straight melodrama and some great writing and acting. A year later, Lancaster and Hecht, the producers behind this film, went on to produce `Sweet Smell of Success', which is infinitely more searing and dark, but it was interesting to see the precursor to that film. I recommend this film for anyone who appreciates solid classic melodramas.

Laura (1944)
Mystery & Suspense, Classics Directed By: Otto Preminger This adaptation of Vera Caspary's suspense novel was begun by director Rouben Mamoulien and cinematographer Lucien Ballard, but thanks to a complex series of backstage intrigues and hostilities, the film was ultimately credited to director Otto Preminger and cameraman Joseph LaShelle (who won an Oscar for his efforts). At the outset of the film, it is established that the title character, Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney), has been murdered. Tough New York detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) investigates the killing, methodically questioning the chief suspects: Waspish columnist Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb), wastrel socialite Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price), and Carpenter's wealthy "patroness" Ann Treadwell (Judith Anderson). The deeper he gets into the case, the more fascinated he becomes by the enigmatic Laura, literally falling in love with the girl's painted portrait. As he sits in Laura's apartment, ruminating over the case and his own obsessions, the door opens, the lights switch on, and in walks Laura Hunt, very much alive! To tell any more would rob the reader of the sheer enjoyment of watching this stylish film noir unfold on screen. Everything clicks in Laura, from the superbly bitchy peformance of Clifton Webb (a veteran Broadway star who became an overnight movie favorite with this film) to the haunting musical score by David Raskin. Long available only in the 85-minute TV version Laura has since been restored to its original 88minute running time.

Cover Girl (1944)
Romance, Musical & Performing Arts, Classics, Comedy Directed By: Charles Vidor Thanks to its Jerome Kern/Ira Gershwin/Yip Harburg score and the luminescence of stars Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly, Cover Girl has taken on a legendary status in recent years. In truth, the film has a banal and predictable premise: a chorus girl (Hayworth) is given a chance for stardom by a wealthy magazine editor (Otto Kruger), who years earlier had been in love with the girl's mother. Offered an opportunity to be a highly-paid cover girl, our heroine would faithfully remain with her tacky nightclub act if only the club manager (Kelly), whom she pines for, would ask her. He loves her too, but doesn't want to stand in her way, so he fakes an argument to send her packing. You don't need a crystal ball to known that the girl and her guy will be reunited for the finale. Phil Silvers, everybody's best friend, and Eve Arden, Kruger's acid-tongued assistant, provide comic relief. The story sags badly at times, but the fans went home happy thanks to the powerhouse musical numbers, including Long Ago and Far Away and Kelly's famous "alter-ego" dance. The film skyrocketed both Hayworth and Kelly to superstardom, and
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didn't do Silvers any harm, either. Cover Girl is an extraordinarily lavish Technicolor production from the usually parsimonious Columbia Pictures.

You yi tian (One Day) (2010)
Drama, Romance, Art House & International, Science Fiction & Fantasy Directed By: Chi-Jan Hou A visual love poem of magical realism. ########### One day we met, except it wasn't on the same day. A dream, a soldier on a ferry tells a girl she was going to become his lover. A girl wanders in Taiwan, and met the soldier who probes within her dream, yet he was now a school student... A film which entices utter melancholy through its emptiness...Its a truly rare gem. A film which transcends to the seldom realm of nothingness yet still capturing a fragment of familiarity in all of us, like a deja vu perhaps. Its airy, almost transparent in ambiance, which leaks the substantial reality and the dream-like state into a big mesh. The funny thing is, you give up trying to decipher the enigmatic mess after halfway and learn to just sit back and enjoy a beautiful piece of composition even with a baffled mind. It allows you to feel what you see then structure it, and thats the raw beauty of art-house cinema on an overall aspect. Its a film that you can't really put a critical mark upon it, because its a composition of emptiness; devoid from meaning, space, time and substance; yet it does this flawlessly. There's a beautifully warped nature about it; something almost ethereally claustrophobic and alienated in its stunning visual embodiment. Tranquil water, an empty ship,a quiet learning centre, the film execute its material with a stunning use of tone to stimulate an emotion, a memory a mood. Aesthetics wise, its a commendable effort for a debutorial film. It took a lot of effort to pass the first 5 minutes without turning it off, yet after that i had no doubt it was the blue print of a great exemplar. Its not in any sense a perfect film, but it flawlessly struck every chord of the tune. If this is the director's first envisage i am waiting with great anticipation to see what he brings to follow such a rare masterpiece.

One Day in September (1999)
Documentary Directed By: Kevin Macdonald In 1972, athletes from around the globe gathered in Munich, Germany for the Olympic Games. However, the Olympic spirit of brotherhood and peaceful competition was shattered when eight Palestinian terrorists invaded the athletes' quarters to take the Israeli team hostage, resulting in the violent deaths of eleven athletes. In One Day in September, director Kevin Macdonald mixes newsreel coverage of the tragedy with interviews of witnesses and participants (including Jamil Al Gashey, the only surviving member of the terrorist cadre Black September who were responsible for the killings), as they discuss what happened, and how a dangerous situation turned tragic and deadly . Produced by two-time Oscar winner Arthur Cohn,One Day in September earned Cohn another trophy when it received an Academy Award as Best Documentary Feature.

One Day (2011)
Drama, Romance, Comedy Directed By: Lone Scherfig After one day together - July 15th, 1988, their college graduation - Emma Morley (Anne Hathaway) and Dexter Mayhew (Jim Sturgess) begin a friendship that will last a lifetime. She is a working-class girl of principle and ambition who dreams of making the world a better place. He is a wealthy charmer who dreams that the world will be his playground. For the next two decades, key moments of their relationship are experienced over several July 15ths in their lives. Together and apart, we see Dex and Em through their friendship and fights, hopes and missed opportunities, laughter and tears. Somewhere along their journey, these two people realize that what they are searching and hoping for has been there for them all along. As the true meaning of that one day back in 1988 is revealed, they come to terms with the nature of love and life itself. Emma and Dexter meet on the night of their university graduation. We see them every year on the anniversary of that date - July 15th. Emma is smart but success doesn't come quickly for her, whereas for Dexter, success and women come very easily. Through the years they grow apart as their lives take different directions and they meet other people. But as they grow apart from those other people and their lives start taking opposite directions again, Emma and Dexter find that they belong with each other.

Becoming Jane (2007)
Drama, Romance Directed By: Julian Jarrold
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Events from the life of the author Jane Austen inspired this romantic historical drama, which speculates of a romance that may have had a significant impact on her life and work. Twenty-year-old Jane Austen (Anne Hathaway) is the daughter of Rev. Austen (James Cromwell), a minister who looks after a flock in a small rural community in Southern England with his wife (Julie Walters). While her older sister, Cassandra (Anna Maxwell Martin), is engaged to be married, Jane resists her family's efforts to match her up with Mr. Wisley (Laurence Fox), the wealthy but dull nephew of Lady Gresham (Maggie Smith), a minor member of the British nobility. Jane has the heart of an artist, and hopes to distinguish herself as a musician or a writer, though her parents don't think much of her prospects. When Jane meets Tom Lefroy (James McAvoy), a young man her own age, she's intrigued; while he scoffs at her writing style, he clearly sees she has talent, and is eager for her to learn more of the larger world by exposing her to more daring literature and modern pastimes such as boxing. As Tom begins to court Jane, she finds herself increasingly attracted to this poor but keenly intelligent man, though she soon realizes her own ideas about love and marriage are sometimes at odds with the conventions of the society in which she lives.
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A film about Jane Austen, one of the greatest writers of English literature, will garner expectations and hopes, especially with a cascade of stars newly discovered (James McAvoy, Anne Hathaway) and well-established (Julie Walters, Maggie Smith, James Cromwell). That it focuses on her life before she becomes a writer certainly had not dulled my appetite. The 22 yr old Austen is played by the very pretty Anne Hathaway, who you'll know from Brokeback Mountain and The Devil Wears Prada. We meet her family when her older sister is happily married. The cash-strapped parents have the pressing problem of finding eligible young Jane a husband. A promising offer is the stuck-up relative of wealthy Lady Gresham (Maggie Smith), who Jane rejects. Let's meet Tom Lefroy. He's a penniless, charming, intelligent, apprentice lawyer. He also loves boxing, drinking and the fairer sex. These latter hobbies, mind you, do not endear him to his uncle, the imperious Judge Langlois, who promptly sentences him to a summer in Hampshire as punishment. In a rustic backdrop of dancing and matchmaking, Jane and Tom develop a teasing, flirtatious rapport. Unlike the other men in her life, Tom presents Jane with intellectual company as well as dashing good looks and a flair for the odd chat-up. As they grow more serious about each other, they become equally aware of how doomed their relationship is - something their elders twigged on page one. But Tom has given Jane something she needs - the knowledge of the heart that will impassion her writing. Firstly be warned. If you are expecting a nice feel-good movie, don't bother. This made me thoroughly miserable. Not just because a poignant lonely destiny is too much to bear, but because it's a wasted opportunity to bring a great life to the screen. Our ultimate theme Austen's writing, yet we see little to convince that this bland and photogenic girl has much between the ears. In Devil Wears Prada, an outstanding script enabled Hathaway to suggest hidden brainpower. In Becoming Jane, the occasionally erudite lines sound leaden and false. Her body language, meant to portray a rebel, seems a bit anachronistic. Although she looks quite resplendent, dashing across the hills in a billowing red dress to watch the lads skinny-dipping, the film is a sad disappointment in the development of Hathaway's otherwise promising career. Kate Winslet or Natalie Portman (who were apparently also considered for the role) might well have fared better: they have a depth and experience that could perhaps have compensated for such a clunky script. Maggie Smith and other strong actors are reduced to ciphers and little more than icing on a badly made cake. On the other hand, James McAvoy (fresh from The Last King of Scotland) is a revelation. In what seems like a flash of brilliance in the generally myopic casting, he shines in every scene. A talented actor, he also brings his skills in boxing and sport to imbue Lefroy with vibrancy and charisma. It is when he works his seductive charms on Jane that he also brings out the best in his co-star. After her first adult kiss, Jane trembles, wondering if she has done it well. Hathaway does gooey-eyed emotion much better than persuading us she is a genius about to happen. The film gathers pace as we are drawn into an emotional cat and mouse. Jane's 'experience of the heart' that will inspire her, is the one of the best things about the film, second only to the large and constantly moist dollops of budgetsaving Irish countryside. But how does the film reflect on Jane Austen the author? Austen's possible flirtations with Mr Thomas Langlois Lefroy are more speculative than fact. Historian Jon Spence worked as a consultant on the film and has written a book of the same name, which is probably a must-have for Austen fans. He gives attention to the inspiration he feels Lefroy gave to Jane, and this is developed into actual events in the movie. Austen is one of the most influential and revered novelists of the early nineteenth century and her social commentary is marked with a strong sense of irony. Devotees will no doubt enjoy scenes such as the one where she corrects Tom's uncle on the definition of the word 'irony'. But the transition from girlishness to mastery with words is so contrived that it could almost be two parallel scripts.
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There are many that will love Becoming Jane in spite of its imperfections. The rest of us might wish it had been told better.

Rachel Getting Married (2008)
Drama, Romance Directed By: Jonathan Demme Lingering tensions clash with new hopes in director Jonathan Demme's ensemble drama set during an idyllic wedding that threatens to descend into chaos with the appearance of the bride's estranged sister -- a volatile and unpredictable girl whose turbulent history of personal crisis and family conflict quickly threatens to take precedence over the happy ceremony. Rachel Buchman (Rosemarie DeWitt) is about to be married to the love of her life, but while the weather outside may be perfect, there's a storm blowing in. That storm goes by the name Kym (Anne Hathaway). Kym is the family black sheep, and wherever she goes disaster is sure to follow. Now, as friends and family gather together for a memorable day of dining, dancing, and celebration, everyone braces themselves knowing that, at any given moment, old skeletons may be dragged out and dusted off for display by the bombshell who seems to have an acerbic one-liner for every situation, and a flare for drama that could set their family home ablaze. Bill Irwin and Debra Winger co-star.
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Kym is released from rehab for a few days so she can go home to attend her sister Rachel's wedding. The home environment is always challenging for a recovering addict, no less so when the visit if only for a few days. While the sisters feel genuine affection for one another, there is tension in their relationship. Rachel feels that her father dotes on Kym far too much and Kym is upset to learn that Rachel has selected a friend to be her maid of honor. Their father is genuinely concerned about Kym's well-being but doesn't see the stress the relationship is causing. Both women also have to deal with their selfish mother who is clearly more concerned with her own well-being ahead of that of her children. Underlying the family's dynamic is a tragedy that occurred many years previously and for which Kym is held by some to be responsible. ####### Sitting through a movie about sibling rivalry at a wedding, especially one starring the doe-eyed and normally facile Anne Hathaway, sounds like a potentially painful way to spend an evening. However, as directed by Jonathan Demme and written by Jenny Lumet (Sidney's daughter), this 2008 drama is not a lightweight star vehicle à la Julia Roberts circa 1997 but a darkly realistic look at the dysfunction within a family thrown into disarray. Using an almost cinéma vérité style, Demme explores how a wedding reopens old wounds within a family in a naturalistic way made all the more palpable by the emotional acuity in Lumet's screenplay. The focus is on Kym, a chain-smoking former model who has spent the last several months in rehab. As a substance abuser whose only armor is cutting sarcasm, she is absurdly hopeful that her sister Rachel's wedding will be a harbinger for unconditional love from her upscale Connecticut family. Therein lies the problem as her narcissism provides the catalyst for long-simmering tensions that uncork during the preparations for a lavish, Indian-themed wedding weekend (the movie's working title was "Dancing with Shiva"). It soon becomes clear that Kym's link to a past tragedy is at the core of the unpredictable dynamics that force confrontations and regrettable actions among the four principal family members. Rachel appears to be Kym's sensible opposite, but their alternately close and contentious relationship shows how they have not full recovered from past resentments. Their remarried father Paul is a bundle of loving support to the point of unctuous for both his girls, while their absentee mother Abby is the exact opposite - guarded and emotionally isolated until she is forced to face both her accountability and anger in one shocking moment. Anne Hathaway is nothing short of a revelation as Kym. Instead of playing the role against the grain of her screen persona, she really shows what would happen if one of her previous characters – say, Andy Sachs in "The Devil Wears Prada" - went another route entirely. The actress' studiousness and persistence are still very much in evidence, but the story allows her to use these traits under the guise of a self-destructive, often unlikable addict who gains attention through her outrageous self-absorption. As the put-upon title character, Rosemarie DeWitt realistically shows Rachel's sense of pain and resentment as the attention veers to Kym during plans for the most important day of her life. Bill Irwin is winning as the unapologetically grateful Paul, but it's really Debra Winger who steals her all-too-brief scenes by bringing the remote character of Abby to life. Now in her early fifties, the famously tempestuous actress seems to rein in her innate fieriness to play a woman who consciously disconnects herself from the family she raised. What remains is a crumbling façade of propriety masking this obvious gap. It's similar to Mary Tyler Moore's turn as the cold mother in "Ordinary People", but casting the normally vibrant Winger (who probably would have played Kym a quarter century ago) is a masterstroke. The film is not perfect. Demme's home-video approach, while novel at first, proves wearing over the 114-minute running time. Pacing is also a problem, especially when the focus turns to the minutiae of the wedding ceremony and reception. I wish Demme could have cut this part of the film, so we could get to the icy, unfinished resolution
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sooner. As a filmmaker who obviously enjoys making music concert films ("Stop Making Sense", "Neil Young: Heart of Gold"), there are quite a few musical performances presented in total. However, for non-aficionados, it may prove too much over time. While it's refreshing to see interracial marriages treated so casually (Lumet's grandmother is legend Lena Horne), Demme makes almost too big a point in presenting a global community though the diverse music and the wedding's multi-cultural themes. The movie starts to feel like a Putumayo collection of third-world performances. Still, Demme's intentions can't be faulted, and neither can the piercing work of Hathaway and Winger.

The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Drama, Comedy Directed By: David Frankel Lauren Weisberger's best-selling novel about a young woman who stumbles into the hectic worlds of high fashion and publishing comes to the big screen in this comedy. Andrea "Andy" Sachs (Anne Hathaway) is a bright young woman from the Midwest who has just graduated from college and wants to work as a magazine writer. Andy has applied for a job at "Runway," America's most prestigious fashion journal; though Andy has little to no interest in the garment trade, they are one of the only magazines in New York with a job opening -- second assistant to editor Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep). As Andy quickly learns, Miranda is a diva with plenty of power within the magazine business and she isn't afraid to use it, and though Andy lands the job (primarily by being in the right place at the right time), she soon learns that working for Miranda could test the patience of a saint thanks to her endless demands and refusal to acknowledge the end of a work day. Andy struggles to hold on to the job and her sanity, knowing that a recommendation from Miranda can open nearly any door at any magazine, but can she handle the pressure without losing her mind along the way? The Devil Wears Prada also stars Stanley Tucci, Emily Blunt, and Adrian Grenier.
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In New York, the simple and naive just-graduated in journalism Andrea Sachs is hired to work as the second assistant of the powerful and sophisticated Miranda Priestly, the ruthless and merciless executive of the Runway fashion magazine. Andrea dreams to become a journalist and faces the opportunity as a temporary professional challenge. The first assistant Emily advises Andrea about the behavior and preferences of their cruel boss, and the stylist Nigel helps Andrea to dress more adequately for the environment. Andrea changes her attitude and behavior, affecting her private life and the relationship with her boyfriend Nate, her family and friends. In the end, Andrea learns that life is made of choices.

Man on Wire (2008)
Documentary, Special Interest Directed By: James Marsh On August 7, 1974, a 24-year-old French high-wire artist named Philippe Petit committed one of the most astonishing performance stunts of the late 20th century: he strung a thin cable in between the two towers of the World Trade Center and not only walked across, from one building to another, but did a nerve-wracking series of knee-bends and acrobatic movements on the cable, some 1,350 feet above the ground, before turning himself in. This occurred to the consternation and chagrin of Port Authority policemen, who immediately arrested Petit for the act -- prompting many to dub Petit's stunt "the artistic crime of the century." James Marsh's documentary Man on Wire revisits and recounts this chain of events some 34 years after they occurred.

Aruitemo Aruitemo (Still Walking) (2008)
Art House & International, Drama Directed By: Hirokazu Koreeda Director Hirokazu Kore-eda writes and directs this family drama that unfolds over the course of a single summer day as the Yokoyama family gathers for a rare reunion held to commemorate the death of the one who was taken before his time. It was 15 years ago that eldest Yokoyama son, Junpei, drowned in a tragic accident, and the only changes around the family home since that fateful day are so subtle that they're not likely to be noticed by anyone outside of the immediate family. Retired family patriarch Kyohei (Yoshio Harada) used to run a successful medical clinic out of the home, though the lights in his medical examining room haven't even been turned on in years. The tiles in the kitchen where energetic Toshiko (Kirin Kiki) cooks family meals are slowly coming loose, and as youngest son Ryota (Hiroshi Abe) arrives home, he does his best to hide the fact that he's currently unemployed. His older sister, Chinami (You), has also arrived with her family, and does her best to entertain everyone despite the undeniable cloud of melancholy hanging over the home. As the festive gathering commences and Toshiko lays out a lavish meal, it gradually becomes obvious that resentment and sorrow bonds this family as powerfully as love.

Le Gout Des Autres (The Taste of Others) (It Takes All Kinds) (2000)
Drama, Art House & International, Comedy
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Directed By: Agnès Jaoui Agnes Jaoui co-writes and directs this romantic comedy of manners set in France's rustic Provence. Unpolished and ultra-pragmatic industrialist Jean-Jacques Castella (co-scripter Jean-Pierre Bacri) reluctantly attends Racine's tragedy "Berenice" in order to see his niece play a bit part. He is taken with the play's strangely familiar-looking leading lady Clara Devaux (Anne Alvaro). During the course of the show, Castella soon remembers that he once hired and then promptly fired the actress as an English language tutor. He immediately goes out and signs up for language les`sons. Thinking that he is nothing but an ill-tempered philistine with bad taste, Clara rejects him until Castella charms her off her feet.

Oldboy (Oldeuboi) (2003)
Mystery & Suspense, Drama Directed By: Chan Wook Park South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook directed this violent and offbeat story of punishment and vengeance. Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik) is a husband and father whose reputation for womanizing is well known. One day, for reasons he doesn't understand, Oh Dae-su finds himself locked up in a prison cell, with no idea of what his crime was or whom his jailers may be. With a small television as his only link to the outside world and a daily ration of fried dumplings as his only sustenance, Oh Dae-su struggles to keep his mind and body intact, but when he learns through a news report that his wife has been killed, he begins a long and difficult project of digging an escape tunnel with a pair of chopsticks. Before he can finish -- and after 15 years behind bars -- Oh Dae-su is released, with as little explanation as when he was locked up, and he's soon given a wad of money and a cellular phone by a bum on the street. Emotionally stunted but physically strong after 15 years in jail, Oh Dae-su struggles to unravel the secret of who is responsible for locking him up, what happened to his wife and daughter, and how to best get revenge against his captors. Oldeuboi was screened in competition at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival and won the coveted Grand Prix.

Maria Full of Grace (2003)
Art House & International, Drama Directed By: Joshua Marston New York-based writer/director Joshua Marston makes his feature film debut with the coming-of-age drama Maria Full of Grace, with a script developed at the Sundance Screenwriter's Lab. Catalina Sandino Moreno plays Maria Alvarez, a teenager living in Bogot, Colombia. Along with most of the other able-bodied people in her community, she works a perilous job in a flower plantation. She wants to quit, but her large family depends on her meager salary. One day, Maria meets a smooth-talking young man named Franklin. He offers her a business proposition to make some money and travel. However, the task involves her acting as a drug mule and smuggling heroin into the U.S. Maria Full of Grace premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004 as part of the dramatic competition.
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Description: When a movie can blend passionate social concern with good old-fashioned suspense, it must be doing something right. Maria Full of Grace scores high on both counts. Maria is a Colombian teenager who, for a large paycheck, agrees to be a mule for drug-runners: she has to swallow dozens of thumb-sized capsules of heroin and smuggle them When a movie can blend passionate social concern with good old-fashioned suspense, it must be doing something right. Maria Full of Grace scores high on both counts. Maria is a Colombian teenager who, for a large paycheck, agrees to be a mule for drug-runners: she has to swallow dozens of thumb-sized capsules of heroin and smuggle them into New York. This debilitating process is painstakingly described, and of course not everything goes as planned when Maria and her fellow mules land in America. Director Joshua Marston is working on a low budget, which explains the film's narrow, single-minded focus--but this may be a strength, not a weakness. The trump card is the lead performance of Catalina Sandrino Moreno, who won awards at the Seattle and Newport Film Festivals. Her empathetic face carries us along on Maria's journey, and humanizes a problem that is too easily relegated to a headline.

Orgasm, Inc. (2009)
Documentary, Special Interest Directed By: Elizabeth Canner , Liz Canner Liz Canner's shocking yet entertaining documentary ORGASM INC. explores the strange science of female pleasure, and in the process reveals the often warped mentality of our pharmaceutical and medical industries. ORGASM INC. begins when filmmaker Liz Canner is hired to edit erotic videos to be used in a drug trial for a pharmaceutical company. Her employer is developing what they hope will be the first FDA approved "Viagra" drug for women that will treat a new disease: Female Sexual Dysfunction (FSD). Intrigued, Liz decides to make a movie about the science of female pleasure. But she soon begins to suspect that her employer, along with other medical and pharmaceutical companies, might be trying to take advantage of women (and potentially endanger their health) in pursuit of profit. With unique access and a deft style of interviewing, Liz embarks on a nine year odyssey as she
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follows pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers who are racing to be the first to win FDA approval for their product - be it pill, patch, nose spray, or some other delivery device. The promised cure: "normal" sexual function and orgasm. The prize: billions of dollars in profits. Despite its serious agenda, Canner brings wry humor to her film. Featuring illuminating footage and interviews with activists, doctors and medical experts (including Chicago-based sex therapist Dr. Laura Berman, whose new show will debut on the Oprah Winfrey Network), ORGASM INC. is a powerful, timely and, yes, entertaining look inside Big Pharma and other medical companies with their often misleading marketing campaigns that literally and figuratively reshape our everyday lives. Upbeat, engaging, enlightening, and provocative, ORGASM INC. will change the way you think about sex. Filmmaker Liz Canner takes a job editing erotic videos for a drug trial for a pharmaceutical company. Her employer is developing what they hope will be the first Viagra drug for women that wins FDA approval to treat a new disease: Female Sexual Dysfunction (FSD). Liz gains permission to film the company for her own documentary. Initially, she plans to create a movie about science and pleasure but she soon begins to suspect that her employer, along with a cadre of other medical companies, might be trying to take advantage of women (and potentially endanger their health) in pursuit of billion dollar profits. ORGASM INC. is a powerful look inside the medical industry and the marketing campaigns that are literally and figuratively reshaping our everyday lives around health, illness, desire and that ultimate moment: orgasm.

L'Ultimo capodanno (Humanity's Last New Year's Eve) (1998)
Drama, Art House & International, Comedy Directed By: Marco Risi This $5 million Italian comedy is based on a novella by Nicolo Ammaniti (from his 1996 collection Mud). With a structure reminiscent of Robert Altman, interweaving events transpire in 12 hours on New Year's Eve as the film explores the lives of dwellers in a suburban Rome apartment complex: Just before her dinner guests are due, a hostess learns her lover has been sleeping with her best friend; a gigolo hired for the night is surprised by soccer players from his hometown; thieves interrupt the S&M session of a dominatrix and a lawyer; a family prepares for a fireworks display; the building's doorkeeper entertains the maintenance staff while her son sniffs glue; and a woman attempting suicide wanders the halls. ~ An intense and whirlwind story happening around New Year's eve. With Ms Bellucci in one of your most tragic and vulnerable role ever. Its New Year's Eve at "The Islands" condos. Monica plays an ageing countess who discovers her husband is having an affair with her best friend. What follows is a tale of revenge, where seemingly unrelated stories intersects in an explosive ending.

La riffa (1993)
Director: Francesco Laudadio Francesca, an incredibly beautiful woman, lost her husband. Only after his death she discovers his unfaithfulness and overall the huge amount of debts he left. Cesare is Francesca's best friend, he is a solicitor. Following his advices Francesca starts selling all her goods, like the house, jewels, furs and finally also the yacht. By doing this she is able to survive for the rest of the year, but has no perspective for the future. In fact she is unemployed and every plan to get a job fails. She finally takes a decision: she set up a lottery in which the prize is she. Twenty of the most influent man of the high society Bari (Italy), former Francesca's husband friends, accepts the rules and buy the tickets. The same day Francesca fall in love for Antonio and manage the situation becomes harder. A judge is investigating on the illegal lottery; a scandal is going to explode. Francesca has to find a way out of the strange but danger situation. After the untimely death of her husband in a car accident, she experiences financial hardships and is forced to find a job to support her young son. Her well to do male "friends" starts to circle around her. Her beauty is her down fall as it attracts the lecherous males and perverts out of the wood works. Its a pleasure to live vicariously through her affairs and encounters as she tries her best to adjust to life after her husband's death. Monica Bellucci really shines when she plays the role of beautiful and vulnerable damsels in distress. I guess this is the film that started her on other films like the iconic "Malena".

A Tale of Two Cities (1958)
Drama, Romance Directed By: Ralph Thomas Screenwriter T.E.B. Clarke, the writer of such fifties British comedies as The Lavender Hill Mob and Passport to Pimlico, dips his pen into a more stately inkwell in this stilted adaptation of Charles Dickens' classic novel A Tale of Two Cities. Dirk Bogarde takes the lead role of worn-down, drunken lawyer Sydney Carton, who finally wakes up from his stupor during the French Revolution to make the ultimate sacrifice for Lucie Manette (Dorothy Tutin), the
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love of his life. Also on hand are the evil tyrant Marquis St. Evermonde (Christopher Lee), the treacherous informer Barsad (Donald Pleasence), and the fanatical Madame Defarge (Rosalie Crutchley), who denounces Lucie and her husband Charles Darnay (Athene Seyler) to the tribunal. Description: During the French Revolution, French national Lucie Manette meets and falls in love with Englishman Charles Darnay. He is however hiding his true identity as a member of the French aristocratic Evrémonde family, who he has denounced in private. The Marquis St. Evrémonde in particular was a cruel man, those he wronged who have vowed to see the end of the family line at any cost. Lucie's father Dr. Alexandre Manette, in fact, was imprisoned in the Bastille for eighteen years because of actions of the Marquis. Into their lives comes English barrister Sydney Carton, who enjoys his alcohol to excess. Carton earlier defended Darnay in a trial on trumped up charges of treason. Carton doesn't really like Darnay in part because Carton also loves Lucie, he realizing that that love is unrequited. But Carton does eventually learn of Darnay's true heritage at a critical time…

Shock Corridor (1963)
Drama, Classics Directed By: Samuel Fuller Shock Corridor represents filmmaker Samuel Fuller at his most excessive, but few would have it otherwise. Peter Breck plays a ruthless journalist who believes that the quickest way to a Pulitzer Prize is to uncover the facts behind a murder at a mental hospital. To glean first-hand information, Breck pretends to go insane and is locked up in the institution. While pursuing his investigation, Breck is sidetracked by the loopy behavior of his fellow inmates. During a hospital riot, Breck is straightjacketed and subjected to shock treatment. By now almost as crazy as he's previously pretended to be, Breck begins imagining that his exotic-dancer girlfriend Constance Towers (a Samuel Fuller "regular") is actually his sister! Typical of the Fuller ouevre, the characters in Shock Corridor are either saved or destroyed by their individual obsessions. Description: Johnny Barrett, an ambitious journalist, is determined to win a Pulitzer Prize by solving a murder committed in a lunatic asylum and witnessed only by three inmates, from whom the police have been unable to extract the information. With the connivance of a psychiatrist, and the reluctant help of his girlfriend, he succeeds in having himself declared insane and sent to the asylum. There he slowly tracks down and interviews the witnesses but things are stranger than they seem...

Cape Fear (1962)
Drama, Mystery & Suspense, Classics Directed By: J. Lee Thompson After an eight-year prison term for rape and assault, Max Cady (Robert Mitchum) is set free. Immediately making a beeline to Sam Bowden (Gregory Peck), the former prosecutor responsible for Cady's conviction, Cady laconically informs Sam that he intends to "pay back" the attorney for his years behind bars. Conducting a meticulous campaign of terror, Cady is careful to stay within the law. Sam, realizing that Cady intends to wreak vengeance by raping the attorney's wife (Polly Bergen) and daughter (Lori Martin), tries to put the ex-criminal behind bars, but has no grounds to do so. Chief Dutton (Martin Balsam) tries to help Sam with a few strong-arm tactics, but succeeds only in having the courts take Cady's side in the matter. Things come to a head when Sam moves his family to the "safety" of a remote houseboat on Cape Fear river. Cady shows up unannounced and is about to ravage Bowden's wife and daughter and when Sam turns the tables.

Straw Dogs (1971)
Mystery & Suspense, Drama Directed By: Sam Peckinpah Sam Peckinpah examines the instinctual capacity for violence in his controversial 1971 film, loosely based on the novel The Siege of Trencher's Farm. To avoid the Vietnam-era social chaos in the U.S., American mathematician David Sumner (Dustin Hoffman) moves with his British wife, Amy (Susan George), to the isolated Cornish town where she grew up, but their presence provokes antagonis`1m among the village's men. As the hostilities escalate from routine bullying to the gang rape of his wife, David finds his pacifistic self backed into a corner. When the hooligans attack his house, David finally resorts to the gruesome violence that he abhors. a (Sam Peckinpah-directed, hence) violent film about a married couple under siege in an isolated town in rural England. They’re a mismatched pair to begin with – he’s an intellectual (Dustin Hoffman!) and she’s an immature blonde beauty (Susan George) – plus, as an American, he’s a “fish out of water” in her native land and home town, where she has a past with one of the local hooligans. The town has a constable that barely keeps the peace; there’s a forceful elder (Peter Vaughan) who has undue influence on the layabouts that frequent the same pub as he, several of which are “helping” the couple fix up her father’s old home. The locals rebel against the American’s invasion of their town subtly at first, then boldly. An incident that involves the elder’s missing daughter and the
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village idiot leads to a full out attack on the couple and their home, when they harbor the idiot inside it. The nonsensical plot by David Zelag Goodman (Lovers and Other Strangers (1970)) and Peckinpah (The Wild Bunch (1969)) from a Gordon Williams novel is really just an excuse for (a controversial rape scene and) the over-the-top violence that makes up the last third of the movie, which earned Jerry Fielding an Academy Award nomination for Best Music, Original Dramatic Score.

Watcher in the Attic (Edogawa Rampo ryoki-kan: Yaneura no sanpo sha) (1976)
Art House & International, Mystery & Suspense Directed By: Noboru Tanaka The landlord of a boarding house in 1923 Tokyo, is keen on spying on the bizarre close encounters taking place beneath his roof. One day he sees a prostitute killing a customer, and decides he's found his soulmate. Based on a story by well-praised Japanese writer Edogawa Rampo. In Tokyo, 1923, Saburo Gouda is exploring secrets of his fellow-occupants of an apartment building. All from above, using spy-holes bored in ceilings of his neighbors rooms. After he sees a meeting between aristocratic (and bored) Lady Minako and a clown, he realizes, that pursuit of Minako's blooming dark realm of senses is drawing themselves by the corruption they both experience and cause.

Animal Instincts (1992)
Drama Directed By: Gregory Hippolyte Unlike his sleazy, anti-erotic Dark Bros. porn films, director A. Gregory Hippolyte's mainstream efforts tend to be sleek, stylish, and erotic like this popular item, a kinky thriller based on a true story. Maxwell Caulfield (Grease 2) plays a voyeuristic cop, and Shannon Whirry is his neglected wife. They start bringing home tricks from a classified ad, and Whirry plays with them while Caulfield covertly observes via hidden camera from another room. At first it appears that the couple has solved their marital problems, but things get ugly when one of sleazy bar owner David Carradine's goons answers an ad and gets dirt on the heroes. Caulfield is forced to videotape his wife with Carradine's political rival (Jan-Michael Vincent) in order to protect himself. The angry Caulfield then tries to turn the tables on Carradine, who is blackmailing him, and ends up marked for murder. A solid genre entry, silkily photographed and filled with familiar faces and great bodies, Animal Instincts is one of the more entertaining entries in a seemingly endless cycle, and was followed by two sequels. I rarely enjoy erotic films, but really loved this one. Its plot is quite basic the tale of a cop that works too hard and a wife that is neglected. Shannon Whirry as the wife is stunning and captures your attention. Its adult nature is full nudity and soft focus, with plenty of interesting outfits and people doing what is now seen as swinging. It hasn't really dated too badly, the hair is big, the g-strings high legged and the suits a bit 80s. Other than that they had kept it free of really obvious fashion or image disasters of the era. The second film is also quite good and in the third Shannon wasn't included. If you want intelligent eroticism then get Wild Things with Denise Richards, otherwise this will make a fun watch.

Animal Instincts 3: The Seductress (1995)
Drama Directed By: Gregory Hippolyte In the third installment in the Animal Instincts series of erotic thrillers, Joanna Coles Wendy Shumacher is an author, exhibitionist, and sexual adventurer who becomes involved with Alex Savage (James Matthew), a music industry mogul with a strong voyeuristic streak. Alex enjoys watching Joanna have sex with other men (or women, should that strike her fancy), so they work out an elaborate game in which he poses as a blind man and she seduces others in his presence. Animal Instincts 3 was directed by Gregory Hippolyte, who helped blaze new trails in the adult films of the 1980s under the name Gregory Dark.

Animal Instincts 2 (1994)
Action & Adventure Directed By: Gregory Hippolyte The second in a trilogy of softcore thrillers from porn director Gregory Hippolyte is not, like its predecessor, based on a fascinating true story -- but is more straightforward adult erotica. Shannon Whirry returns as Jo, a new resident of suburbia who has taken up residence in the land of lawnmowers and minivans in an effort to achieve some normalcy. Jo finds work as an assistant to a photographer, Eric (Al Sapienza), who works for a skin magazine. She also meets her neighbors, Steve (Woody Brown), a handsome security expert, and his wife Katherine (Elizabeth
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Sandifer). When Jo discovers that her home is wired for secret surveillance, she realizes that it is Steve who is watching her, and she is aroused by his voyeurism. An unhappy divorcée moves into a new apartment. While she reflects on her life and how she's gotten into the situation she's in now, she doesn't know that her next-door neighbor, a security expert, has planted video cameras all through her apartment--especially in her bedroom--in order to get his kicks by watching her without her knowledge. She eventually catches on. Complications ensue.

Do Fish Do It? (2002) Fickende Fische
Original title: Fickende Fische AKA: Fucking Fish Year: 2002 Runtime: 1 hour, 40 minutes Country: Germany Language: German Subtitles: English | German (.srt) Genre: Drama Director: Almut Getto Cast: Tino Mewes … Jan Sophie Rogall … Nina Hans Martin Stier … Hanno Annette Uhlen … Lena Ferdinand Dux … Opa Ellen Ten Damme … Caro Jürgen Tonkel … Wolf Angelika Milster … Angel Adrian Zwicker … Jonas Thomas Feist … Roger Manuel Cortez … Alf Suzanne Vogdt … Eva Uwe Rohde … Onkel Dieter Veit Stübner … Dr. Weishaus Silke Heise … Schwester Hanna Plot/Synopsis: “What does your paradise look like, then?” – “Dark. Quiet. Wet. And full of fish.” Jan likes Shakespeare, water and fish. Nina likes roller-skates, cars and brightly dyed hair. Jan loves Nina. Nina loves Jan, but… Do Fish Do It? is a film about first love, the problems of growing up, the vital question if fish have sex and a threat this love is exposed to. 16-year old Jan is absent-mindedly strolling through the streets when he’s run over by roller-skating Nina. As fast as she has stormed into his life, however, she rushes off again. Nina is 15 years old and full of crazy ideas. She lives together with her brother, her father and his new girlfriend. Her mother isn’t in touch much. That’s why there is the unconventional Angel whose own daughter disappeared years ago and who is Nina’s best friend and substitute mother. Jan is a little shy, with a sheltered upbringing. Yet the image of the perfect family is an illusion. Jan feels lonely and the only person who seems to understand him is his grandfather. Jan’s great passion is water and fish for they make him forget about his illness.

Rita’s Legends (2000) Die Stille nach dem Schuss
Original title: Die Stille nach dem Schuss AKA: The Legends of Rita | The Legend of Rita Year: 2000 Runtime: 1 hour, 37 minutes Country: Germany Language: German | French | English Subtitles: English | German (.srt) Genre: Drama | History | Romance | Thriller Director: Volker Schlöndorff Cast: Bibiana Beglau … Rita Vogt Martin Wuttke … Erwin Hull Nadja Uhl … Tatjana Harald Schrott … Andreas ‘Andi’ Klein Alexander Beyer … Jochen PettkaJenny Schily … Friederike Adebach Mario Irrek … Joachim Klatte Franca Kastein … Anna Thomas Arnold … Gerngross Dietrich Körner … General Rudolf Donath … Tatjanas Vater Monika Pietsch … Tatjanas Mutter Matthias Wien … Doktor Gruber (as Matti Wien) Petra Ehlert … Beate Hannelore Schubert … Christa Plot/Synopsis: Noted German director Volker Schlondorff helms this riveting exploration of 1970s West German political terrorism. The film opens with Rita reminiscing to her unseen friend Tatjana of her life as a radical. Cut to a flashback of her along with her like-minded colleagues robbing a bank. Later while traveling from Beirut to East Berlin, she is carted away for questioning. When the interrogators learn of Rita’s vocation, Stasi officer Erwin releases her and tells her to consult him if she needs help. After she botches the breakout of her boyfriend Andi from a West Berlin jail, she calls on her Stasi contact to protect the gang and provide safe passage to Beirut and later to Paris. Tension between the group members — particularly between Andi and Rita — soon grow strained. After Rita almost gets arrested for killing a cop, she turns to Erwin, who comes up with a different offer. Rita will stay in East Germany as a working proletarian under an assumed name. While in East Berlin, she befriends Tatjana who soon becomes her lover. ~ Jonathan Crow, Allrovi

Women Without Men (2009) Zanan-e bedun-e mardan
Original title: Zanan-e bedun-e mardan Year: 2009 Runtime: 1 hour, 36 minutes Country: Germany | Austria | France | Italy | Ukraine | Morocco Language: Persian | English Subtitles: English (.srt) Genre: Drama Director: Shirin Neshat | Shoja Azari
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Cast: Shabnam Toloui … Munis Pegah Ferydoni … Faezeh Arita Shahrzad … Farrokhlagha Orsolya Tóth … Zarin Mehdi Moinzadeh … Sarhang Navíd Akhavan … Ali Mina Azarian … Zinat Bijan Daneshmand … Abbas Rahi Daneshmand … Soldier Salma Daneshmand … Guest Shahrnoush Parsipour … Madame Tahmoures Tehrani … Sadri Essa Zahir … Amir Khan Plot/Synopsis: Three women come together in a nation on the verge of a revolution in this drama from artist-turned-filmmaker Shirin Neshat. It’s 1953, and political discord has gripped Iran as a military coup d’etat threatens to depose Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. Munis is a thoughtful woman who has been following the news with great interest, though her brother Assad regards her interest in politics as foolish and unbecoming a woman. Munis’ friend Faezeh shares some of her views, but is ultimately more interested in trying to impress Assad. Elsewhere in Tehran, Fakhri is a woman who is well into middle age and married to a career military official who has lost interest in her both romantically and intellectually. And Zarin is a streetwalker who is looking for a life outside of selling her body to men who don’t care about her. Eager to meet like-minded people, Fakhri tries to establish a literary salon for women, and Munis and Zarin join her in trying to find a satisfaction in the written word that has been denied them in life.

Downfall (Der Untergang) (2004)
Art House & International, Drama Directed By: Oliver Hirschbiegel The last ten days of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime are seen through the eyes of a young woman in his employ in this historical drama from Germany. Traudl Junge (Alexandra Maria Lara) was 22 years old when, in the fall of 1942, she was hired to be personal secretary to Adolf Hitler (Bruno Ganz). In April of 1945, Junge was still working for Hitler as forces were bearing down on Germany and the leader retreated to a secret bunker in Berlin for what would prove to be the last ten days of his life, as well as that of the Third Reich. As Hitler's mistress Eva Braun (Juliane Khler) attempts to throw a cheerful birthday party for her man, Hitler's closest associates, including Heinrich Himmler (Ulrich Noethen), Joseph Goebbels (Ulrich Matthes), and Albert Speer (Heino Ferch), urge him to flee the city with only Goebbels maintaining any illusions that the Third Reich has any hope of survival. Hitler refuses to leave Berlin, and he spends his final days ranting and raving to Junge, blaming all around him as he tries to understand where his leadership went wrong. Meanwhile, Goebbels and his wife round up their six children and bring them to the bunker as Berlin begins to topple, determined to take their lives rather than face the Allies after Germany's certain defeat. Der Untergang (aka The Downfall) was based in part on the memoirs of the real-life Traudl Junge, whose experiences also formed the basis of the 2002 documentary Im Toten Winkel: Hitlers Sekretarin (aka Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary).

Four Minutes (Vier Minuten) (2008)
Art House & International, Drama Directed By: Chris Kraus An embittered, 80-year-old piano teacher working in a women's prison takes on the most challenging student in her enduring career in director Chris Kraus' low-key musical drama. For years, Miss Krueger (Monica Bleibtreu) has been teaching classical piano to some of the most hardened female prisoners in all of Germany, but upon meeting brooding new inmate Jenny (Hannah Herzsprung), Miss Krueger finally seems to have found the one student she can't break through to -- until she hears Jenny play, that is. A former piano prodigy whose abusive childhood prompted her to neglect her natural gift for music in the name of survival, Jenny is a violent offender whose notorious temper has, as an adult, repeatedly landed her behind bars. Though she does still display considerable talent on the ivory, her decidedly antisocial behavior compelled the troubled prisoner to repeatedly sabotage opportunities to take part in recitals that would, at the very least, provide a momentary respite from her grim day-to-day existence.

Auf der Anderen Seite (The Edge of Heaven) (On the Other Side) (2007)
Drama Directed By: Fatih Akin The winner of the Best Screenplay award at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, director Fatih Akin's deeply humanistic, multilayered drama follows the stories of six people -- four Turks and two Germans -- as they realize the meaning of love while facing the harsh realities of the world we live in. Nejat is a second-generation Turkish immigrant living in Germany. His father Ali is a retired widower. When lonely Ali invites pretty prostitute Yeter to move in with him, Nejat makes no attempt to mask his disapproval. Nejat's opinion of Yeter begins to soften a bit, however, when he learns that she regularly sends tuition money to her daughter Ayten in Turkey. Suddenly, Yeter is dead, the unfortunate victim of Ali's violent temper. In the wake of Yeter's death, Nejat is determined to do the right thing for Ayten, and prepares to travel to Turkey to find the girl. But Ayten is a political activist who has recently fled from Turkey to Germany, where she befriended a German student named Lotte. Lotte's conservative mother Susanne isn't comfortable with her daughter's decision to invite a fugitive to live with their family, and when Ayten is arrested by German police and deported back to Turkey, the rebellious daughter rejects her mother and sets out in search of her friend. Later, in Istanbul, Nejat and Lotte are brought together by fate and Susanne is prompted to reexamine her values while searching for her daughter and being confronted with life on the other side.

When We Leave (2010)
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Art House & International, Drama Directed By: Feo Aladag In awarding the film Best Narrative Feature Award, and Best Actress Award for Sibel Kekilli, the Tribeca Film Festival Narrative Jury said of the film: "WHEN WE LEAVE examines one woman's struggle for personal freedom. It is a riveting and heartbreaking story of a woman trapped in an abusive relationship, who must not only free herself from that marriage, but also the cultural prejudices and judgments that would keep her there. Feo Aladag built the nuances of her film over a six year period. She rehearsed her actors for seven months. She immersed herself in every detail of a culture that is revealed to us in remarkable detail. The result is a film that balances complex social issues with honest human yearnings. Through the brutality, WHEN WE LEAVE is also a story of tenderness, the struggle for compassion, the inexorable pull of family and the need to love and be loved." German-born Umay (Sibel Kekilli) flees her oppressive marriage in Istanbul, taking her young son Cem with her. She hopes to find a better life with her family in Berlin, but her unexpected arrival creates intense conflict. Her family is trapped in their conventions, torn between their love for her and the traditional values of their community. Ultimately they decide to return Cem to his father in Turkey. To keep her son, Umay is forced to move again. She finds the inner strength to build a new life for herself and Cem, but her need for her family's love drives her to a series of ill-fated attempts at reconciliation. What Umay doesn't realize is just how deep the wounds have gone and how dangerous her struggle for self-determination has become.

The Marriage of Maria Braun (Die Ehe der Maria Braun) (1979)
Art House & International, Drama Directed By: Rainer Werner Fassbinder The film that elevated German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder from domestic approbation to international acclaim, The Marriage of Maria Braun stars the director's on-and-off favorite actress Hanna Schygulla in the title role. During the allied siege of Germany in the last year of the war, Maria's new husband (Klaus Lwitsch) is shipped off to the Russian front before the marriage is consummated. As she struggles to survive wartime deprivations, Maria haunts the local train station, seeking out information concerning her husband. When it appears that she's a widow, Maria takes a job as a barmaid and befriends a black soldier (George Byrd) from the occupying allied troops, who sees to it that Maria's family receives vital food and supplies. The opportunistic Maria eventually takes a job with a wealthy importer (Ivan Desny), building herself up to a position of power and indispensability. Though she sleeps with her employer, Maria still carries a torch for her husband.

Triumph des Willens (Triumph Of The Will) (1934)
Documentary, Art House & International, Classics, Special Interest Directed By: Leni Riefenstahl Triumph of the Will (Triumph des Willens) is a filmed record of the 1934 Nazi Party Convention, in Nuremberg. No, it is more than just a record: it is an exultation of Adolf Hitler, who from the moment his plane descends from Valhalla-like clouds is visually characterized as a God on Earth. The "Jewish question" is disposed of with a few fleeting closeups; filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl prefers to concentrate on cheering crowds, precision marching, military bands, and Hitler's climactic speech, all orchestrated, choreographed and illuminated on a scale that makes Griffith and DeMille look like poverty-row directors. It has been alleged that the climactic rally, "spontaneous" Sieg-Heils and all, was pre-planned according to Riefenstahl's specifications, the better to take full advantage of its cinematic potential. Allegedly, propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels resented the presence and intrusion of a woman director, but finally had to admit that her images, achieved through the use of 30 cameras and 120 assistants, were worth a thousand speeches. Possibly the most powerful propaganda film ever made, Triumph of the Will is also, in retrospect, one of the most horrifying.

Yesterday Girl (1966) Abschied von gestern
Drama Directed By: Alexander Kluge Yesterday Girl is a 1966 West German film directed by Alexander Kluge. Its original German title is Abschied von gestern , which means "Parting from yesterday". It tells the story of Anita G.,played by Kluge's sister Alexandra, a young East German migrant to West Germany and her struggle to adjust to her new life. The film won a Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival, whereas Kluge's next film, Artists Under the Big Top: Perplexed even went on to win the Golden Lion, a political scandal due to its progressive leanings which resulted in no Golden Lions being awarded up to 1979.

Mother and Child (2009)
Drama Directed By: Rodrigo García Writer/director Rodrigo Garca (Nine Lives) teams with executive producer Alejandro Gonzlez Irritu to craft this drama highlighting the powerful bond between a mother and her son. It's been years since Karen (Annette Bening) gave her daughter, Elizabeth, up for adoption, and the decision to abandon her child has always haunted her. Upon meeting laid-back Paco (Jimmy Smits), Karen permits her anxiety and mistrust to get the best of her. On the surface it appears that Elizabeth (Naomi Watts) is none the worse for never knowing her biological mother; she's a fast-talking lawyer who's just landed a high-profile job at a firm fronted by Paul (Samuel L. Jackson), though her unsavory penchant for exploiting others is about to blow up in her face. Meanwhile, maternal-minded baker Lucy (Kerry Washington) longs to experience the joys of motherhood, eventually deciding that adoption is the best bet to start a family with her husband, Joseph (David Ramsey)

Vincere (2009)
Art House & International, Drama Directed By: Marco Bellocchio
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This unusual and offbeat historical drama rests on a little-known conceit. Though seldom discussed in history books (and reportedly undisclosed for half a century), fascist dictator Benito Mussolini conceived an illegitimate son by a woman named Ida Dalser -- a son Mussolini allowed to be born, acknowledged, and then promptly denied for the duration of his life. The tale begins in early 20th century Milan, with Benito (Fabrizio Costella) working as the socialist editor of a controversial newspaper called Avanti. His dream in life involves triumphantly leading the Italian masses away from monarchy and toward a "socially emancipated future." He met the young and wealthy Ida (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) once before, in Trento -- where they enjoyed a brief exchange; they re-encounter one another during Mussolini's period at Avanti and it becomes clear that Ida has fallen deeply in love with Benito. She believes wholeheartedly in his ideals and his future as the leader of Italy -- to such an extent that she sells everything she has (her apartment, furniture, jewelry, and the beauty salon she owns) to fuel the development of his newspaper, Il Popolo d'Italia.While the two become romantically entangled, with Ida positively magnetized by Benito's charisma and Benito hooked on a lust for power, Benito quickly switches spiritual and political allegiances overnight, changing from an atheistic socialist to a deeply Catholic fascist -- Catholic, because an allegiance with the Vatican will enable him to wrest and retain control over Italy's government. Benito and Ida marry and parent a son together, Benito Albino Mussolini (circa 1915), but the marriage certificate soon conveniently disappears and Ida learns, to her horror, that Benito has married someone else. She unwisely begins to protest the situation -- so loudly and persistently that she's first forced into house arrest and then shoved permanently into an insane asylum -- raising key questions about the fate and future of her young son. On a stylistic level, director Marco Bellocchio films this historical material with the passion, theatricality, lyricism, and tragedy of a classical Italian opera.

Albert Nobbs (2011)
Drama Directed By: Rodrigo García Glenn Close co-wrote and stars in this adaptation of the play about a nineteenth-century Irishwoman who disguises herself as a man and works as a butler for twenty years. Mia Wasikowska, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Aaron Johnson co-star in this intelligent and often surprising period drama. Albert Nobbs struggles to survive in late 19th century Ireland, where women aren't encouraged to be independent. Posing as a man so she can work as a butler in Dublin's most posh hotel, "Albert" (Close) meets a handsome painter and looks to escape the lie she has been living.

Notorious (1946)
Mystery & Suspense, Classics Directed By: Alfred Hitchcock Though Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious was produced by David O. Selznick's Vanguard Films, Selznick himself had little to do with the production, which undoubtedly pleased the highly independent Hitchcock. Ingrid Bergman plays Alicia Huberman, who goes to hell in a handbasket after her father, an accused WWII traitor, commits suicide. American secret agent Devlin (Cary Grant) is ordered to enlist the libidinous Alicia's aid in trapping Alexander Sebastian (Claude Rains), the head of a Brazilian neo-Nazi group. Openly contemptuous of Alicia despite her loyalty to the American cause, Devlin calmly instructs her to woo and wed Sebastian, so that that good guys will have an "inside woman" to monitor the Nazi chieftain's activities. It is only after Alicia and Sebastian are married that Devlin admits to himself that he's fallen in love with her. The "MacGuffin" in this case is a cache of uranium ore, hidden somewhere on Sebastian's estate. Upon discovering that his wife is a spy, Sebastian balks at eliminating her until ordered to do so by his virago of a mother (Madame Konstantin). Tension mounts to a fever pitch as Devlin, a day late and several dollars short, strives to rescue Alicia from Sebastian's homicidal designs. Of the several standout sequences, the film's highlight is an extended love scene between Alicia and Devlin, which manages to ignite the screen while still remaining scrupulously within the edicts of the Production Code. In later years, Hitchcock never tired of relating the story of how he and screenwriter Ben Hecht (who was nominated for an Oscar) fell under the scrutiny of the FBI after electing to use uranium as a plot device -- this before the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A huge moneymaker for everyone concerned, Notorious remains one of Hitchcock's best espionage melodramas. In 1992, Notorious was remade for cable television; it goes without saying that the original is vastly superior.

Spellbound (1945)
Drama, Romance, Mystery & Suspense, Classics Directed By: Alfred Hitchcock As Alfred Hitchcock's classic psychothriller opens, the staff of a posh mental asylum eagerly awaits the arrival of the new director. When the man in question shows up, it turns out to be handsome psychiatrist John Ballantine (Gregory Peck). But something's wrong, here: Ballantine seems much too young for so important a position; his answers to the staff's questions are vague and detached; and he seems unusually distressed by the parallel marks, left by a fork, on a white tablecloth. Dr. Constance Peterson (Ingrid Bergman) comes to the conclusion that Ballantine is not the new director, but a profoundly disturbed amnesiac--and, possibly, the murderer of the real director. But is she correct in her inferences? Scriptwriters Angus MacPhail and Ben Hecht soon add to this the complication that Constance begins to fall in love with John. Director Hitchcock tapped surrealist artist Salvador Dali to design the visually arresting dream sequences in the film.

The Philadelphia Story (1940)
Romance, Classics, Comedy Directed By: George Cukor
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We open on Philadelphia socialite C.K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant) as he's being tossed out of his palatial home by his wife, Tracy Lord (Katharine Hepburn). Adding insult to injury, Tracy breaks one of C.K.'s precious golf clubs. He gallantly responds by knocking her down on her million-dollar keester. A couple of years after the breakup, Tracy is about to marry George Kittridge (John Howard), a wealthy stuffed shirt whose principal recommendation is that he's not a Philadelphia "mainliner," as C.K. was. Still holding a torch for Tracy, C.K. is galvanized into action when he learns that Sidney Kidd (Henry Daniell), the publisher of Spy Magazine, plans to publish an exposà (C) concerning Tracy's philandering father (John Halliday). To keep Kidd from spilling the beans, C.K. agrees to smuggle Spy reporter Macauley Connor (James Stewart) and photographer Elizabeth Imbrie (Ruth Hussey) into the exclusive Lord-Kittridge wedding ceremony. How could C.K. have foreseen that Connor would fall in love with Tracy, thereby nearly lousing up the nuptials? As it turns out, of course, it is C.K. himself who pulls the "louse-up," reclaiming Tracy as his bride. A consistently bright, bubbly, witty delight, The Philadelphia Story could just as well have been titled "The Revenge of Katharine Hepburn." Having been written off as "box-office poison" in 1938, Hepburn returned to Broadway in a vehicle tailor-made for her talents by playwright Philip Barry. That property, of course, was The Philadelphia Story; and when MGM bought the rights to this sure-fire box-office success, it had to take Hepburn along with the package -- and also her veto as to who her producer, director, and co-stars would be. Her strategy paid off: after the film's release, Hepburn was back on top of the Hollywood heap. While she didn't win the Oscar that many thought she richly deserved, the little gold statuette was bestowed upon her co-star Stewart, perhaps as compensation for his non-win for 1939's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Donald Ogden Stewart (no relation to Jimmy) also copped an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. The Philadelphia Story was remade in 1956 with a Cole Porter musical score as High Society.

My Favorite Wife (1940)
Classics, Comedy Directed By: Garson Kanin Leo McCarey was supposed to both produce and direct My Favorite Wife, but an illness forced him to relinquish the director's chair to Garson Kanin, who did a splendid job. This hilarious retread of the old "Enoch Arden" legend stars Irene Dunne as Ellen, who returns home to her husband Nick (Cary Grant) and children Tim (Ann Shoemaker) and Chinch (Mary Lou Harrington) after being marooned on a desert island for seven years. Thing of it is, Ellen has been declared legally dead, and Nick has taken unto himself a second wife, the bitchy Bianca (Gail Patrick). Upon discovering that Ellen is still alive, Nick is on the verge of a tender reunion-until it discovers that she spent those seven lost years in the company of handsome Mr. Barkett (Randolph Scott). The superb supporting cast includes Granville Bates as a flummoxed judge, Chester Clute as a meek shoe salesman whom Ellen tries to pass off as Barkett, and Donald MacBride as a beetle-browed honeymoon-hotel clerk. My Favorite Wife was remade in 1963 as Move Over Darling, in which Irene Dunne and Cary Grant were replaced by Doris Day and James Garner.

Pillow Talk (1959)
Romance, Musical & Performing Arts, Classics, Comedy Directed By: Michael Gordon The fabulously successful Pillow Talk was essentially Shop Around the Corner for the 1950s. Playboy composer Rock Hudson and interior-decorator Doris Day are obliged to share a telephone party line. Naturally, their calls overlap at the least opportune times, and just as naturally, this leads to Hudson and Day despising each other without ever having met in person. In a cute but convenient coincidence, Doris' boy friend is Tony Randall, who also happens to be Hudson's best pal. Thus Hudson gets a glimpse at Day, and it's love at first sight. To avoid revealing that he's her telephone rival, Hudson poses as a wealthy Texan and turns the charm on Day. But when he starts pitching woo, Day instantly recognizes all the "make-out" lines Hudson has used on the phone with his other conquests. She gets even by decorating Hudson's apartment in a hideous manner. But Hudson loves her all the same; he "kidnaps" her, carrying her through the streets in her nightgown in full view of everyone, including a laughing cop who refuses to intervene. He praises her horrifying interior decoration job effusively, and at this point Day can't help but give in to his marriage proposal. A bit too arch and cute for modern tastes at times, Pillow Talk is still one of the best of the frothy Doris Day-Rock Hudson vehicles; it made a fortune at the box office and garnered five Oscar nominations.

Le Jour se lève (Daybreak) (1939)
Drama, Art House & International, Classics Directed By: Marcel Carné Marcel Carne and Jacques Prevert's classic of French poetic realism stars Jean Gabin in one of his most famous roles as Francois, a rough, barrel-chested loner who hides out in his apartment awaiting for the police to arrive. Francois has killed a man in a crime of passion, the slimy lothario Valentin (Jules Berry). As he listens in the darkness of his Normandy apartment to the police sirens closing in and getting louder, he recalls the two women that he loved -- Francoise (Jacqueline Laurent) and Clara (Arletty) -- and the evil Valentin, who stole both their hearts and forced Francois into this melancholy plight. The film was later re-made in Hollywood as The Long Night.

Design for Living (1933)
Romance, Classics, Comedy Directed By: Ernst Lubitsch

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Fredric March

...

Thomas B. 'Tom' Chambers

Gary Cooper

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George Curtis

Miriam Hopkins

...

Gilda Farrell

Edward Everett Horton Franklin Pangborn Isabel Jewell Jane Darwell Wyndham Standing

... ... ... ... ...

Max Plunkett Mr. Douglas, Theatrical Producer Plunkett's Stenographer Curtis' Housekeeper Max's Butler

Design for Living was based on the stage comedy by Noel Coward, though little of his dialogue actually made it to the screen. Playwright Fredric March and artist Gary Cooper both fall in love with Miriam Hopkins, an American living in Paris. Both men love the girl, and the girl can't make up her mind between the two men, so the threesome decide to move in together--strictly platonically, of course. As the men gain in success and prominence, the chasteness of the "menage a trois" begins to be threatened, and soon both March and Cooper clash over Hopkins. She reacts by marrying her wealthy but dull boss (Edward Everett Horton). Miriam is bored to tears until March and Cooper invade one of her husband's stuffy parties and chase the tiresome guests away. Miriam's husband huffily agrees to a divorce, and the girl returns to her unorthodox relationship with her two former suitors. The subtle homosexual implications of the Noel Coward stage original were dissipated by the presence of the aggressively masculine Gary Cooper and Fredric March in the film version of Design for Living. Replacing these implications were the equally subtle but more "mainstream" boudoir innuendos of director Ernst Lubitsch.

La Strada (The Road) (1954)
Drama, Art House & International, Classics Directed By: Federico Fellini Acclaimed Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini drew on his own circus background for the 1954 classic La Strada. Set in a seedy travelling carnival, this symbolism-laden drama revolves around brutish strongman Zampano (Anthony Quinn), his simple and servile girlfriend Gelsomina (Giulietta Masina, Fellini's wife), and clown/aerialist Matto (Richard Basehart). Appalled at Zampano's insensitive treatment of Gelsomina, the gentle-natured Matto invites her to run off with him; but Gelsomina, like a faithful pet, refuses to leave the strong man's side. Eventually Zampano's volcanic temper erupts once too often, leading to tragic consequences. Written by Fellini and Tullio Pinelli and scored by Nino Rota, La Strada was the winner of the first official Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film, awarded in 1956.

Lo sceicco bianco (The White Sheik) (1952)
Drama, Romance, Art House & International, Classics, Comedy Directed By: Federico Fellini The White Sheik (Lo Sceicco Bianco), Fellini's first solo flight as director, is a gentle lampoon of the idolatry heaped upon movie stars. An impressionable young bride, Wanda (Brunella Bovo) accompanies her husband Ivan (Leopoldo Trieste) on a dull honeymoon, full of meetings with family members and the papal father. Bovo fantasizes over matinee idol Fernando Rivoli, AKA The White Sheik (Alberto Sordi), the hero of a photo strip comic. She repeatedly drifts away from her husband and back, in periodic attempts to find The Sheik, ultimately repairing to the location site where Sordi's latest film, The White Shiek, is in production. Her inevitable disillusionment with the vainglorious Sordi is intercut with her husband's comic (and desperate) attempts to explain his wife's absences at family gatherings to his disgruntled relatives. After a comically inept suicide attempt, Bovo and Trieste are reunited. Featured in the cast is Fellini's wife Giuletta Masina as a prostitute named Cabiria, who'd be given a vehicle of her own, Nights of Cabiria, in 1955. Based on "an idea" by Michelangelo Antonioni, The White Sheik was the main inspiration for Gene Wilder's The World's Greatest Lover (1977).

Le Notti di Cabiria (Nights of Cabiria) (1957)
Art House & International, Drama Directed By: Federico Fellini
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Nights of Cabiria opens with Cabiria (Giulietta Masina) and her boyfriend playfully embracing by the seaside -- and then he shoves her into the water and steals her purse. Cabiria is revived by some local boys and runs off by herself, shouting. What follows is a series of similarly humiliating episodes, in which the defiantly positive prostitute Cabiria is hurt, but never broken. She gets picked up by movie star Alberto Lazzati (Amedeo Nazzari, doing a self-parody) and taken to his palatial estate. However, his mistress shows up and Cabiria gets locked in the bathroom all night with the dog. She then joins her fellow prostitutes for a blessing from the Virgin Mary, and ends up getting drunk and wandering into a local show, where the hypnotist invites her to join him on-stage. The audience heckles her, and she toughly reminds them of her independence and that she owns her own house. There she meets Oscar (Franois Perier), an accountant who romantically pursues her. Despite the warnings of her fellow prostitute friend, Wanda (Franca Marzi), she prepares to sell all her belongings and accept Oscar's proposal of marriage. After being ruthlessly taken advantage of once again, Cabiria walks off alone with a smirk of hope.

C'est arrivé près de chez vous (Man Bites Dog) (It Happened in Your Neighborhood) (1991)
Drama, Horror, Art House & International, Comedy Directed By: André Bonzel , Benoît Poelvoorde Man Bites Dog is a Belgian faux-documentary and high-concept satire of media violence which follows the lethal exploits of Benoit Benoit Poelvoorde, an affable, and very talkative, serial killer. He kills for money, and he kills for pleasure, and he talks all the while about philosophy and the proper technique for weighing a corpse down underwater. He is followed through his slaughter-fest by the filmmakers, Rà (C)my and Andrà (C) (the actual filmmakers, Rà (C)my Belvaux and Andrà (C) Bonzel), and the line between reporter and subject becomes blurred pretty quickly. The filmmakers become more and more involved in Benoit's actions, starting with the relatively innocent act of holding a flashlight for him. Eventually, when their funding runs out, Benoit hires them to continue making the film, and soon they are accomplices in a gang rape. While this film has the subtlety of a sledgehammer, its message rings true: the media tend to become part of the stories they report upon as surely as a physicist changes a wave by looking at it.

The Old Man and the Sea (1958)
Drama, Action & Adventure, Classics Directed By: John Sturges Ernest Hemingway's short novel The Old Man and the Sea was probably unfilmable to begin with, but this didn't stop John Sturges from trying to cinematize Hemingway's tight little character study. Spencer Tracy is the Old Man, a Cuban fisherman who tries to haul in a huge fish that he catches far from shore. Tracy's tiny boat is besieged by sharks and by natural elements, but the Old Man stubbornly sticks to his job. In the end, the fish is nothing more than a skeleton, and the Old Man returns to his tiny hovel to "dream about the lions." Spencer Tracy may have been dreaming about the Oscar when he agreed to make this film, but Old Man and the Sea is defeated by pretentiousness and by several unconvincing "sea" scenes shot in a studio tank (even though both Tracy and director Sturges underwent incredible hardships filming in a real boat on the real ocean). Old Man and the Sea was remade as a 1990 made-for-TV movie starring Anthony Quinn, which compounded the mistakes made in the Tracy version by grafting on a pointless love story.

Il Gattopardo (The Leopard) (1963)
Drama, Art House & International, Classics Directed By: Luchino Visconti Burt Lancaster ... Prince Don Fabrizio Salina Claudia Cardinale ... Angelica Sedara / Bertiana

Alain Delon Paolo Stoppa Rina Morelli Romolo Valli Terence Hill Pierre Clémenti

... ... ... ... ... ...

Tancredi Falconeri Don Calogero Sedara Princess Maria Stella Salina Father Pirrone Count Cavriaghi (as Mario Girotti) Francesco Paolo

Lucilla Morlacchi ... Giuliano Gemma ... Ida Galli Ottavia Piccolo ... ...

Concetta Garibaldi's General Carolina Caterina Paolo Little Prince Mademoiselle Dombreuil, the Governess

Carlo Valenzano ... Brook Fuller Anna Maria Bottini ... ...

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Arguably Luchino Visconti's best film and certainly the most personal of his historical epics, The Leopard chronicles the fortunes of Prince Fabrizio Salina and his family during the unification of Italy in the 1860s. Based on the acclaimed novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, published posthumously in 1958 and subsequently translated into all European languages, the picture opens as Salina (Burt Lancaster) learns that Garibaldi's troops have embarked in Sicily. While the Prince sees the event as an obvious threat to his current social status, his opportunistic nephew Tancredi (Alain Delon) becomes an officer in Garibaldi's army and returns home a war hero. Tancredi starts courting the beautiful Angelica (Claudia Cardinale), a daughter of the town's newly appointed Mayor, Don Calogero Sedara (Paolo Stoppa). Though the Prince despises Don Calogero as an upstart who made a fortune on land speculation during the recent social upheaval, he reluctantly agrees to his nephew's marriage, understanding how much this alliance would mean for the impecunious Tancredi. Painfully realizing the aristocracy's obsolescence in the wake of the new class of bourgeoisie, the Prince later declines an offer from a governmental emissary to become a senator in the new Parliament in Turin. The closing section, an almost hour-long ball, is often cited as one of the most spectacular sequences in film history. Burt Lancaster is magnificent in the first of his patriarchal roles, and the rest of the cast, especially Delon and Cardinale, become almost perfect incarnations of the novel's characters. Filmed in glorious Techniscope and rich in period detail, the film is a remarkable cinematic achievement in all departments. The version that won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival ran 205 minutes. Inexplicably, the picture was subsequently distributed by 20th Century Fox in a poorly dubbed, 165-min. English-language version, using inferior color process. The restored Italian-language version, supervised by cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno, appeared in 1990, though the longest print still ran only 187 minutes.

Kapò (1959)
Drama, Action & Adventure, Art House & International Directed By: Gillo Pontecorvo Stars: Susan Strasberg, Laurent Terzieff and Emmanuelle Riva The French/Italian/Yugoslav concentration camp drama Kapo stars Susan Strasberg, who several years earlier had originated the title role in the Broadway production The Diary of Anne Frank. Here, Ms. Strasberg is once again a European Jewish teenager victimized by the Nazis. Interred in a concentration camp, Strasberg is befriended by the camp's kindly doctor, who helps her hide her true identity and work as a camp guard, or "kapo." Unfortunately, Strasberg's new found power goes to her head, and her abuse of that power is very nearly on the same level as the Nazis. Brought down to earth by the death of a close friend, Strasberg spearheads an escape attempt, sacrificing her own life in the process. Nominated for a best foreign picture Oscar in 1960, Kapo nonetheless did not find an American distributor until 1964. ~

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Tears of the Sun (2003)
Mystery & Suspense, Action & Adventure Directed By: Antoine Fuqua Bruce Willis Lt. A.K. Waters Monica Bellucci

Cole Hauser Atkins Fionnula Flanagan Sister Grace

A career soldier is forced to choose between following orders and saving lives in this action thriller. Lt. A.K. Waters (Bruce Willis) is a veteran Navy SEAL whose commander (Tom Skerritt) has given his team a special assignment. A Central African nation is expected to explode into war at any moment, and Waters and his cohorts are to escort any American citizens in the area to safety, most notably Dr. Lena Kendricks (Monica Bellucci), a doctor from the United States who has set up a clinic in the jungle. Waters and his men find Kendricks, but she refuses to leave with them unless she can bring along 70 refugees who have been left to her care. Kendricks makes it clear that if they are left behind, the refugees will face certain death, but Waters's C.O. insists he bring back Kendricks -- but not her patients. Forced by his conscience to disobey orders, Waters and his team race against time to escort the refugees to a border town where they will find safe haven before invading troops can ambush them. Tears of the Sun (which was produced under the title Man of War) also features Cole Hauser and Fionnula Flanagan.

Manual of Love 2
Comedy Directed By: Giovanni Veronesi Monica Bellucci Riccardo Scamarcio

Four episodes. Nicola, paralyzed after a car crash, falls in love for his physiotherapist Lucia. Franco and Manuela, a young couple unfit to have child, fly to Barcelona for a specialized treatment for fertility. Filippo and Fosco, two gays, decide to marry. Ernesto, waiter in an important restaurant has a liaison with Cecilia the new young Spanish help in cuisine. It is just a romantic-comedy with the whole 'inter-twining'stories. It isn't anything original, and the plot is nothing unexpected. It was Monica Belucci though, she made the whole film for me. You are actually able to see her completely nude. I'm no pervert, but any film with Monica Belucci in it, is a film I like. Overall another romance film, that is a little bit more ' naughty' due to the non-american censorship.

Exodus (1960)
Drama, Classics Directed By: Otto Preminger , Preminger

Paul Newman Ari Ben Canaan Peter Lawford Maj. Caldwell Sal Mineo Dov Landau Hugh Griffith Mandria Ralph Richardson Gen. Sutherland Felix Aylmer Dr. Lieberman

...

Eva Marie Saint Kitty Fremont

...

Lee J. Cobb Barak Ben Canaan John Derek Taha Jill Haworth Karen Gregory Ratoff Lakavitch David Opatoshu Akiva Ben Canaan
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...

...

... ...

Alexandra Stewart Jordana Ben Canaan Michael Wager David Ben Ami

... ...

Marius Goring Von Storch

Produced and directed by Otto Preminger, Exodus is a 212-minute screen adaptation of the best-selling novel by Leon Uris. The film is concerned with the emergence of Israel as an independent nation in 1947. Its first half focuses on the efforts of 611 holocaust survivors to defy the blockade of the occupying British government and sail to Palestine on the sea vessel Exodus. Paul Newman, a leader of the Hagannah (the Jewish underground), is willing to sacrifice his own life and the lives of the refugees rather than be turned back to war-ravaged Europe, but the British finally relent and allow the Exodus safe passage. Once this victory is assured, 30,000 more Jews, previously interned by the British, flood into the Holy Land. The film is based on the events that happened on the ship Exodus in 1947 and dealing with the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. Nurse Katherine "Kitty" Fremont (Eva Marie Saint) is an American volunteer at the Karaolos Internment camp on Cyprus, where thousands of Jews - Holocaust survivors - are being held, as the British won't let them go to Palestine. They anxiously wait the day they will be liberated. Ari Ben Canaan (Paul Newman), a Haganah rebel who previously was a captain in the Jewish Brigade of the British Army in World War II, obtains a cargo ship and is able to smuggle 611 Jewish inmates out of the camp for an illegal voyage to Mandate Palestine before being discovered by military authorities. When the British find out that the refugees are in a ship in the harbor of Famagusta, they blockade the harbor. The refugees stage a hunger strike, during which the camp's doctor dies, and Ari threatens to blow up the ship and the refugees. The British relent and allow the Exodus safe passage. Meanwhile, Kitty has grown very fond of Karen Hansen (Jill Haworth), a young Danish-Jewish girl searching for her father, from whom she was separated during the war. She has taken up the Zionist cause, much to the chagrin of Kitty, who had hoped to take young Karen to America so that she can begin a new life there. During this time, opposition to the partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states is heating up, and Karen's young beau Dov Landau (Sal Mineo) proclaims his desire to join the Irgun, a radical Zionist underground network. Dov goes to an Irgun address, only to get caught in a police trap. After he is freed, he is contacted by members of the Irgun and is interviewed by Ari Ben Canaan's uncle Akiva (David Opatoshu). Before swearing Dov in, Akiva forces the boy to confess that he was a Sonderkommando in Auschwitz and that he was raped by Nazis. Because of his activities, Akiva has been disowned by Ari's father, Barak (Lee J. Cobb), who heads the mainstream Jewish Agency trying to create a Jewish state through political and diplomatic means. He fears that the Irgun will damage his efforts, especially since the British have put a price on Akiva's head. When Dov successfully bombs the King David Hotel in an act of terrorism, leading to dozens of fatalities, Akiva is arrested and sentenced to hang. Meanwhile, Karen's father has been found, but he is suffering from clinical depression and does not recognize her. Karen has gone to live at Gan Dafna, a fictional Jewish kibbutz near Mount Tabor at which Ari was raised. (An actual kibbutz named Dafna is located near the present Lebanese border.) Kitty and Ari have fallen in love, but Uncle Akiva's imprisonment is an obstacle, and Ari must devise a plan to free the prisoners. Dov Landau, who had managed to elude the arresting soldiers, turns himself in so that he can use his knowledge of explosives to rig the Acre prison and plan an escape route. All goes according to plan; hundreds of prisoners, including Akiva, manage to escape. (For the historical incident on which this is based, see Acre Prison break.) Akiva is fatally shot by British soldiers while evading a roadblock set up to catch the escaped prisoners. Ari is also badly wounded. He makes his way to Abu Yesha, an Arab village where his lifelong friend, Taha, (John Derek) is the mukhtar. Kitty is brought there and treats his wound. An independent Israel is now in plain view, but Arab nationals commanded by Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, plot to attack Gan Dafna and kill its villagers. Ari receives prior warning of this attack from Taha, and he manages to get the children of the town out in a mass overnight escape. Karen, ecstatic over the prospect of a new nation, finds Dov (who was out on patrol outside the town) and proclaims her love for him; Dov assures her that they will marry someday. As Karen returns to Gan Dafna, she is ambushed and killed by a gang of Arab militiamen. Dov discovers her lifeless body the following morning. That same day, the body of Taha is found hanging in his village, killed by Arab extremists with a Star of David symbol carved on his body. Karen and Taha are buried together in one grave. At the Jewish burial ceremony, Ari swears on their bodies that someday, Jews and Arabs will live together and share the land in peace. The movie then ends with Ari, Kitty, and a Palmach contingent entering trucks and heading toward battle.

Romance and Cigarettes (2005)
Romance, Musical & Performing Arts, Art House & International, Comedy Directed By: John Turturro

Cast
James Gandolfini Nick Murder Kate Winslet Tula Bobby Cannavale Fryburg Susan Sarandon Kitty Kane Steve Buscemi Angelo Mandy Moore Baby

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Actor and filmmaker John Turturro wrote and directed this emotionally resonant blend of music and drama. Nick Murder (James Gandolfini) is an ironworker who has been married for years to Kitty (Susan Sarandon), who works as a seamstress and is the mother of Nick's three daughters. While Nick loves his wife, his head is turned by Tula (Kate Winslet), a sexy salesgirl at a lingerie shop, and soon they're having a passionate affair. When Kitty finds out about Nick's infidelity, she becomes enraged and kicks him out of the house, forcing him to decide what he really wants out of life and what is most important to him. Along the way, many of the characters in the film periodically turn to their favorite songs to explain and amplify their emotions, lip-synching along with the original recordings. Romance & Cigarettes also stars Steve Buscemi, Mandy Moore, Christopher Walken, Eddie Izzard, and Elaine Stritch.

Tangled (2010)
Animation, Kids & Family, Musical & Performing Arts, Comedy Directed By: Nathan Greno , Byron Howard

Cast
Mandy Moore Rapunzel Richard Kiel Vlad Delaney Rose Stein Little Girl, Young Rapu... Zachary Levi Flynn Rider Nathan Greno Guard 1, Thug 1 Byron Howard Guard 2, Thug 2

When the kingdom's most wanted-and most charming-bandit Flynn Rider hides out in a mysterious tower, he's taken hostage by Rapunzel, a beautiful and feisty tower-bound teen with 70 feet of magical, golden hair. Flynn's curious captor, who's looking for her ticket out of the tower where she's been locked away for years, strikes a deal with the handsome thief and the unlikely duo sets off on an action-packed escapade, complete with a super-cop horse, an over-protective chameleon and a gruff gang of pub thugs.

A Serbian Film (2011)
Horror Directed By: Srdjan Spasojevic Milos, a retired porn star, leads a normal family life with his wife Maria and six-year old son Petar in tumultuous Serbia, trying to make ends meet. A sudden call from his former colleague Layla will change everything. Aware of his financial problems, Layla introduces Milos to Vukmir - a mysterious, menacing and politically powerful figure in the pornographic business. A leading role in Vukmir's production will provide financial support to Milos and his family for the rest of their lives. A contract insists on his absolute unawareness of a script they will shoot. From then on, Milos is drawn into a maelstrom of unbelievable cruelty and mayhem devised by his employer, "the director" of his destiny. Vukmir and his cohorts will stop at nothing to complete his vision. In order to escape the living cinematic hell he's put into, and save his family's life, Milos will have to sacrifice everything - his pride, his morality, his sanity, and maybe even his own life.

The Principles of Lust (2003)
Drama Directed By: Penny Woolcock

Cast
Alec Newman Paul Marc Warren Billy Lara Clifton Hole Sienna Guillory Juliette Julian Barratt Phillip Alexander Popplewell

A man must choose between a settled domestic life and wilder nights in The Principles of Lust from director Penny Woolcock. Paul (Alec Newman) is a struggling artist who starts a relationship with Juliette (Sienna Guillory). The same day they meet, Paul makes the acquaintance of Billy (Marc Warren) and Hole (Lara Clifton) whose lives are a long string of drugs, sex, and violence. Paul veers between life with Juliette and her son, and the debauched excesses of Billy and Hole. The Principles of Lust is adapted from a novel by Tim Cooke, and was screened at the Rotterdam Film Festival.

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127 Hours (2010)
Drama Directed By: Danny Boyle

Cast
James Franco Aron Ralston Kate Mara Kristi Kate Burton Aron's Mom Amber Tamblyn Megan Clémence Poésy Rana Lizzy Caplan Sonja

James Franco stars in director Danny Boyle's inspiring survival drama based on the incredible true story of Aron Ralston, who became trapped alone in a Utah canyon for days after slipping on a loose rock, and resorted to extraordinary measures in order to make it out of his dire predicament alive. An experienced hiker and climber, Ralston (Franco) is very much in his element when he parks his truck by a mountain near Moab, UT, hops on his bike, and peddles to the middle of nowhere. Later, when Ralston encounters a pair of young female hikers who have gotten lost while searching for a local landmark, he jovially shows them a sight that most casual hikers miss before bidding them farewell and continuing on his way. Drifting through the canyons alone, deep in thought, however, the explorer who presumed he was ready for anything quickly discovers just how fast things can spin out of control when a rock gives way as he shimmies down a crevice, and pins his hand to the unforgiving wall of stone. Over the course of the next 127 hours, Ralston tries everything he can think of to free himself, flashing back to small but memorable events in his life -- as well as forward to the future that he might enjoy should he manage to wiggle free -- as his body begins the slow process of shutting down. Eventually realizing that the only way out is to leave part of himself behind, the exhausted, delirious adventurer draws his cheap made-in-China multi-tool, and does what it takes to survive.

GoodFellas (1990)
Drama Directed By: Martin Scorsese Robert De Niro James Conway Joe Pesci Tommy DeVito Paul Sorvino Paul Cicero Ray Liotta Henry Hill Lorraine Bracco Karen Hill Frank Sivero Frankie Carbone

Martin Scorsese explores the life of organized crime with his gritty, kinetic adaptation of Nicolas Pileggi's best-selling Wiseguy, the true-life account of mobster and FBI informant Henry Hill. Set to a true-to-period rock soundtrack, the story details the rise and fall of Hill, a half-Irish, half-Sicilian New York kid who grows up idolizing the "wise guys" in his impoverished Brooklyn neighborhood. He begins hanging around the mobsters, running errands and doing odd jobs until he gains the notice of local chieftain Paulie Cicero (Paul Sorvino), who takes him in as a surrogate son. As he reaches his teens, Hill (Ray Liotta) is inducted into the world of petty crime, where he distinguishes himself as a "stand-up guy" by choosing jail time over ratting on his accomplices. From that moment on, he is a part of the family. Along with his psychotic partner Tommy (Joe Pesci), he rises through the ranks to become Paulie's lieutenant; however, he quickly learns that, like his mentor Jimmy (Robert DeNiro), his ethnicity prevents him from ever becoming a "made guy," an actual member of the crime family. Soon he finds himself the target of both the feds and the mobsters, who feel that he has become a threat to their security with his reckless dealings. Goodfellas was rewarded with six Academy Award nominations including Best Picture; Pesci would walk away with Best Supporting Actor for his work.

The African Queen (1952) Drama, Action & Adventure, Romance, Classics Directed By: John Huston Cast
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Humphrey Bogart Charlie Allnut Robert Morley Rev. Samuel Sayer Walter Gotell Second Officer

Katharine Hepburn Rose Sayer Theodore Bikel First Officer Peter Bull Captain of Louisa

After years of wooing director John Huston via good reviews, film critic James Agee was given a chance to write the screenplay for a Huston picture. Adapted from a novel by C.S. Forester, The African Queen stars Humphrey Bogart in his Oscar-winning portrayal of Charlie Allnut, the slovenly, gin-swilling captain of a tramp steamer called the African Queen, which ships supplies to small East African villages during World War I. Katharine Hepburn plays Rose Sayer, the maiden-lady sister of a prim British missionary, Rev. Samuel Sayer (Robert Morley). When Germans invade and Samuel dies, Allnut offers to take Rose back to civilization. She can't tolerate his drinking or bad manners; he isn't crazy about her imperious, judgmental attitude. However it does not take long before their passionate dislike turns to love. Together the disparate duo work to ensure their survival on the treacherous waters and devise an ingenious way to destroy a German gunboat. The African Queen may well be the perfect adventure film, its roller-coaster storyline complemented by the chemistry between its stars. The profound difficulties inherent in filming on location in Africa have been superbly documented by several books, including one written by Katharine Hepburn. Screenwriter Peter Viertel (who worked, on an uncredited basis, on the script of this film - assisting with some of the dialogue) incorporated some of the African Queen anecdotes in his roman a clef about a Huston-like director/adventurer, White Hunter, Black Heart.

Eliseo Subiela's Filmography :) 1) Hombre mirando al sudeste (Man Facing Southeast) [1986] 2) Ultimas imagenes del naufragio (Last Images of the Shipwreck) [1989] 3) El lado oscuro del corazon (The Dark Side of the Heart) [1992] (THIS FILM :) ) 4) No te mueras sin decirme adonde vas (Don't Die Without Telling Me Where You're Going) [1995] 5) Despabilate amor (Wake Up Love) [1996] 6) Pequeños milagros (Little Miracles) [1997] 7) Las aventuras de Dios (The Adventures of God) [2000] 8) El lado oscuro del corazón 2 (The Dark Side of the Heart 2) [2001] 9) Lifting de corazón [2005] 10) El resultado del amor (The Effect of Love) [2007] 11) No mires para abajo (Don't Look Down) [2008]

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"Secrets of Mental Math Ebook"
These simple math secrets and tricks will forever change how you look at the world of numbers. Secrets of Mental Math will have you thinking like a math genius in no time. Get ready to amaze your friends—and yourself—with incredible calculations you never thought you could master, as renowned “mathemagician” Arthur Benjamin shares his techniques for lightning-quick calculations and amazing number tricks. This book will teach you to do math in your head faster than you ever thought possible, dramatically improve your memory for numbers, and—maybe for the first time—make mathematics fun. Yes, even you can learn to do seemingly complex equations in your head; all you need to learn are a few tricks. You’ll be able to quickly multiply and divide triple digits, compute with fractions, and determine squares, cubes, and roots without blinking an eye. No matter what your age or current math ability, Secrets of Mental Math will allow you to perform fantastic feats of the mind effortlessly. This is the math they never taught you in school. File Size: 14796 KB Print Length: 304 pages Language: English ASIN: B000Q80SM6

"Math Ebooks Collection"
blondel.pdf Elementary Mathematical and Computational Tools for Electrical and Computer Engineers Using MATLAB.pdf Fractal.Geometry.Mathematical.Foundations.and.Applications.Second.Edition.eBookEEn.pdf Fractals.pdf Modern.Algebra.with.Applications.Second.Edition.eBook-EEn.pdf Newnes.Mathematics.for.Electrical.Engineering.and.Computing.eBook-TLFeBOOK.pdf Nonlinear.Dynamics.and.Chaos.Where.Do.We.Go.From.Here.eBook-EEn.pdf Schaum's Outline of Advanced Calculus.pdf

"101 Short Cuts in Maths Any One Can DoMantesh"
101 Short Cuts in Maths Any One Can Do Gordon Rockmaker 1965 (New Printing, 1975)
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ENGLISH Pages: 95 PDF 15.8 MB

Description ----------101 Short Cuts in Math Anyone Can Do will unlock the secrets of the art of calculation. It will increase your power of computation and thereby enable you to get more out of the mathematic you now know. You will soon be amazed at your ability to solve once complex problems quickly.

"Word Problems Made Easy [Making Math Easy]-Mantesh"
Word Problems Made Easy (Making Math Easy)

Enslow Elementary Rebecca Wingard-Nelson 2005 ISBN: 0766025128 48 pages PDF ENGLISH 6.62 MB Math is all around, and an important part of your life. You use math when you are playing games, cooking food, spending money, telling time,reading music, or doing any other activity that uses numbers. Even finding a television station uses math!...............................

"Master Math: Trigonometry-Mantesh"
Master Math: Trigonometry
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THEC AREEPRR ESSIN C. Franklin Lakes, NJ BY Debm Anne Ross 368 pages Dec 12, 2007 ISBN:1564145271 PDF ENGLISH 19.7 MB Master Math: Trigonometry is written for students, teachers, tutors, and parents, as well as for scientists and engineers who need to look up principles, definitions, explanations of concepts, and examples pertaining to the field of trigonometry. Trigonometry is a visual and application-oriented field of mathematics that was developed by early astronomers and scientists to understand, model, measure, and navigate the physical world around them......................................

"The Handy Math Answer Book-Mantesh"
The Handy Math Answer Book Visible Ink Press Patricia Barnes-Svarney and Thomas E. Svarney 520 pages Dec 12, 2005 ISBN: 1578591716 PDF ENGLISH 6.90 Mb From modern-day challenges such as balancing a checkbook, following the stock market, buying a home, and figuring out credit card finance charges to appreciating historical developments like the use of algebra by Mesopotamian mathematicians, this engaging resource addresses more than 1,000 questions relating to mathematics. Providing a complete overviewΓΓé¼ΓÇ¥beginning with the early history of Pythagoras, Archimedes, and how some of the first calendars were invented..........................

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