1971-1980

Synopsis:
During the Yuan Dynasty, a band of Han rebels in disguise converge at an inn out in a desolate Western province to await the arrival of Mongol warlord Lee Khan in order to intercept the delivery of a military war map.Read More »

Quote:
Gérard Depardieu and Catherine Deneuve star as members of a French theater company living under the German occupation during World War II in François Truffaut’s gripping, humanist character study. Against all odds—a Jewish theater manager in hiding; a leading man who’s in the Resistance; increasingly restrictive Nazi oversight—the troupe believes the show must go on. Equal parts romance, historical tragedy, and even comedy, The Last Metro (Le dernier métro) is Truffaut’s ultimate tribute to art overcoming adversity.Read More »

Quote:
Scenes from a Marriage chronicles the many years of love and turmoil that bind Marianne (Liv Ullmann) and Johan (Erland Josephson), tracking their relationship as it progresses through a number of successive stages: matrimony, infidelity, divorce, and subsequent partnerships. Originally conceived as a five-hour, six-part television miniseries, the film is also presented in its three-hour theatrical cut. Shot on 16 mm in intense, intimate close-ups by cinematographer Sven Nykvist and featuring flawless performances by Ullmann and Josephson, Bergman’s emotional X-ray reveals the intense joys and pains of a complex bond.Read More »

Synopsis:
Heather, Beth, Carla, Brea, and Heather’s cousin Paula are five lovely young ladies who decide to spend their summer vacation at Lake Arrowhead. While at Lake Arrowhead the women hit the party circuit and get involved with various men in the area. However, things go awry when the gals find themselves the targets of a mysterious murderer.Read More »

Quote:
Subversive Italian satirist Marco Ferreri directed and co-wrote (with Rafael Azcona) this grotesquely amusing French black comedy about four men who grow sick of life, and so meet at a remote villa with the goal of literally eating themselves to death. The quartet comes from various walks of life — a pilot (Marcello Mastroianni), a chef (Ugo Tognazzi), a television host (Michel Piccoli), and a judge (Philippe Noiret) — but all are successful men with excessive appetites for life’s pleasures (food is used as mere metaphor here, as graphic as that metaphor becomes). ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie GuideRead More »

Synopsis:
The Night Strangler is the sequel to the enormously successful 1972 TV movie The Night Stalker. Darren McGavin returns as seedy reporter Carl Kolchak, who previously ran into conflict when Las Vegas authorities refused to acknowledge Kolchak’s uncovering of a modern-day vampire. Now he’s in Seattle, on the trail of a mysterious strangler who drains the blood of his victims. Kolchak’s quest takes him to a hidden underground city beneath Seattle and the bizarre residents therein. Margaret Hamilton (The Wizard of Oz) is seen briefly as an expert on alchemy; John Carradine also makes cameo. The success of this telemovie and its predecessor inspired a brief 1974 TV series, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, also starring McGavin.

— Hal Erickson.Read More »

Synopsis:
The Duke Lionello Shandwell is delighted that his sister Barbara has returned home, after being away for a year in Venice, to his lonely ancestral castle in the Roman countryside. His happiness is disrupted when she reveals that she has since gotten married to Giordano. Although he doesn’t fully show it around others, Lionello is deeply disturbed by his sister’s new union, and it’s not in a protective big brother sort of way. While his sister and brother-in-law stay with him, Lionello sometimes retreats into a tormented, depraved, and jealous state, spying on them making love, harboring repressed aggression towards Giordano. Barbara is a red head, and meanwhile a giallo-esque killer is going around killing red heads. Could it be Lionello venting his aggressions over his unrequited love for Barbara, or is it something more demonic?Read More »

Set in the summer of 1933,in the depths of the Great Depression, Arthur Miller’s one-act play “A Memory of Two Mondays” (1955) focuses on the workers in a Brooklyn automobile parts warehouse, a grim place in which men and women work for small wages and are grateful for the work. Appearing at the beginning of this production to set the scene, Miller observes that the Civil War and the Depression were the only times in American history in which the whole country was in the same boat-“You could not do a single thing that you wanted to do because no one had any money.” The warehouse, he notes, became a grotesque sort of haven for the employees since they, at least, had jobs.Read More »

A detailed investigation of the 70’s Au Pairs, leaving no stone unturned and milking every situation.

Four young women from Europe and Asia, recently arrived in England, begin their new jobs as Au Pairs. They quickly find that the English are not as stuffy and staid as they appear, and the young ladies are soon spending more time in bed than on the job.Read More »