1971-1980

California Split

By Roger Ebert / January 1, 1974

They meet in a California poker parlor. One wins, despite a heated discussion with a loser over whether or not a dealt card hit the floor. They drink. They become friends after they are jointly mugged in the parking lot by the sore loser.

They did not know each other before, and they don’t know much about each other now, but they know all they need to know: They’re both compulsive gamblers, and the dimensions of the world of gambling equal the dimensions of the world they care anything about. It is a small world and a flat one, like one of those maps of the world before Columbus, and they are constantly threatened with falling over the edge.Read More »

All Movie Guide wrote:
Midnight Express is a harrowing tale of a naïve American caught in a nightmare of his own making thousands of miles from his home. Billy Hayes (Brad Davis) is an American tourist visiting Turkey with his girlfriend Susan (Irene Miracle) when he’s caught by customs officials trying to smuggle a large amount of hashish out of the country. The crime would normally carry a sentence of four years, but officials decide to make an example of Billy, and he draws a 30-year sentence despite the promises of his Turkish legal counsel. While Susan and Billy’s father (Mike Kellin) pledge to do everything they can to speed Billy’s release, in fact there’s little than can be done. Billy quickly finds himself in a hellish prison that’s a nightmare of filth, violence, rape, inedible food, and unspeakable health conditions. However, Billy gains a few confidantes behind bars: Jimmy (Randy Quaid), an American in a constant state of emotional overdrive; Max (John Hurt), an intelligent, drug-addicted Englishman; and Erich (Norbert Weisser), a gay Scandinavian who is attracted to Billy but accepts his gentle refusals of sex. Before long, Billy is convinced that he can take no more, and he makes plans to take the “midnight express” — jailhouse slang for escape. While his friends are willing to help, they also make clear that almost no one who has tried to escape has lived to tell the tale. Based on a true story, Midnight Express was a box-office hit which won wide acclaim for the performances of Brad Davis and John Hurt; and the screenplay, by Oliver Stone, won an Academy Award.Read More »

The last theatrical film by Marcel Camus based on the identically named novel by Jorge Amado. Set in Bahia, the film presents three interconnected stories set amongst prostitutes, cardsharpers, pimps, drunks and homeless Don Juans and Messalinas in the teeming life of a tropical port.Read More »

Quote:
Percy is a 1971 British comedy film directed by Ralph Thomas starring Hywel Bennett, Denholm Elliott, Elke Sommer and Britt Ekland.

The film is based on the 1969 novel of the same name by Raymond Hitchcock, and features a soundtrack by The Kinks. It was followed by a 1974 sequel, Percy’s Progress.Read More »

In 1795, in England, the young woman Catherine (Stephanie Beacham) moves to the house of her fiancé Charles Fengriffen (Ian Ogilvy) in the country to get married with him. When she arrives, she feels interest in the portraits of the Fengriffen family, particularly in the one of Charle’s grandfather Henry Fengriffen (Herbert Lom), which seems to have a sort of evil entity possessing it. While admiring Henry’s face, a severed hand attacks Catherine through the picture on the wall. Later, she gets married with Charles, beginning her journey of mystery, eerie apparitions, secrets and deaths, and having her days filled with fear and the nights with horrors in a cursed family.Read More »

Unheard melodies may be sweet, but unsolved mysteries are about as satisfying as a windowful of succulent food that you can’t afford. Jacques Rivette’s “Out One/Spectre”—which played Saturday and Sunday at the New York Film Festival—is frustrating for two reasons: first, because 4½ hours of hidden motivations is hard on the soul; second, because some of the characterizations and performances are tantalizingly good — hence you really want to understand these people and what drives them. (The movie has been edited down from a 13-hour version that was —and then wasn’t—intended for television.)Read More »

Imdb User Reviews

thanks tv!
13 June 2003 | by Mario Pio (Venezia, Italy)

When in the 1976 “Febbre da cavallo” exit in cinema not so much people went to see it. The status of “cult” movie starts from the various nocturnal passages in the private tv, during the ’80. That’s why people loves “Febbre” in this way (a little bit exaggerated). It’s a personal people discover. This is not the “pinnacle” of italian comedy. It’s only a little movie but funny and memorable in some of its parts. There is one thing over others: the actors are really good, better then some late italian comedies, in a time when comedy leaves for sexy italian comedy, the “commediaccia”. So, no Alberto Sordi, not Tognazzi but Gigi Proietti (an excellent, hystrionic theathre actor), and Enrico Montesano, in one of his few good performance on cinema. Enjoy this movie and…”vai cor tango!”Read More »

Details, fragments, transformations and shadows of a confined space: the toilets of the London Filmmakers’ Co-op in Gloucester Avenue, Primrose Hill, London. This film is neither abstract, nor firmly resolved in terms of what is depicted. Saturated colors and snatches of images are punctuated by darkness, whilst silence is punctuated by mysterious sounds, which are confined to moments when the image is extremely low key. The haunting use of sound and silence and the enigmatic juxtapositions and fragmentation contribute to the film’s overall abstract quality.Read More »

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Brian De Palma has often been accused of ripping off Hitchcock, the director he most admired as a young man. Nowhere is this influence more apparant than in Obsession which is so heavily inspired by Vertigo as to be suspiciously familiar. Having said that, De Palma’s film is very entertaining in its own right and full of technical virtuosity that serves the story as well as being impressive on a purely aesthetic level.

On a technical level, the film is astonishingly well made. It’s here that De Palma really demonstrates his imaginative brilliance as a director. This was present in large portions of Sisters and Phantom of The Paradise, and even in his early work like the obscure Get To Know Your Rabbit and the underrated Hi Mom, but it flowers in Obsession into a signature style that he has been using ever since.Read More »