1971-1980

London, 1949. John Christie is an unassuming, middle aged man who, along with his wife Ethel, manages the apartment building at 10 Rillington Place. His unassuming demeanor masks the fact of being a serial killer. His modus operandi is to act as a person with a medical background, lure unsuspecting women to his apartment on the pretense of curing them of some ailment, knock them unconscious with carbon monoxide gas, gain his sexual release through contact with the unconscious body, then strangle the victim dead before disposing of the body usually by burying it in his back yard. His next intended target is Beryl Evans, a young woman who has just moved into a flat in his building. Beryl’s husband, Tim Evans, is an illiterate man who likes to put on airs. Already with an infant daughter named Geraldine, the Evanses learn they are going to have another baby, which they cannot afford to have, nor can they afford to abort the pregnancy. This problem, on top of the constant issue of lack of…
Read More »

The inhabitants of a small village in a backward area of Macedonia earn their living by sending their men abroad in search of employment. Three young girls, named Elica, Maria and Nikolina live and work as schoolteachers in the village. Each of them try to make sense of their lives, in that situation where it is imposed on them. In the village the greatest problem is the supply of water. Spring water is carried by Marko from the distant mountains Marko is falls in love with the poor girl Kate. The monotonous peasant life is dispelled with the arrival of a group of mining engineers who come to do some research. The one engineer, named Victor is among them and he attracts the schoolteacher Maria’s attention. The return of Trendafil the old man working abroad, Kate’s uncle, is a special event in the village’s life. The destiny of a great number of the inhabitants depends on the wealth of the uncle returned from America. However there is no place for faith and hope as the uncle returns with no earnings at all.Read More »

Quote:
How to describe Nobuhiko Obayashi’s indescribable 1977 movie House (Hausu)? As a psychedelic ghost tale? A stream-of-consciousness bedtime story? An episode of Scooby-Doo as directed by Mario Bava? Any of the above will do for this hallucinatory head trip about a schoolgirl who travels with six classmates to her ailing aunt’s creaky country home and comes face-to-face with evil spirits, a demonic house cat, a bloodthirsty piano, and other ghoulish visions, all realized by Obayashi via mattes, animation, and collage effects. Equally absurd and nightmarish, House might have been beamed to Earth from some other planet. Never before available on home video in the United States, it’s one of the most exciting cult discoveries in years.Read More »

Synopsis:
Director Alain Resnais’s STAVISKY… is a stylized recounting of the life of Alexandre Stavisky, a masterful swindler who sold thousands of worthless bonds, working his way into a massive financial hole and drowning in a riotous political scandal. The film focuses on his heyday, which came in the years just before his arrest and subsequent death in 1934. Surrounded by an aristocratic class of financiers who, like Stavisky, delighted in transferring enormous sums among a multitude of accounts around Europe, he was an expert at moving money. Stavisky inhabited the lavish wooden parlors and grandiose theaters of Paris, the ocean overpasses and casinos of Biarritz, with sexy cars, planes, and women to get him from place to place. Read More »

The New York Times review, Published: October 16, 1972

Roger Greenspun wrote:
“Fellini’s Roma” is perhaps three-quarters Fellini and one-quarter Rome; a very good proportion for a movie. Although an appreciation of the city informs every part of the movie, Rome is not so much the subject as the occasion for a film that is not quite fiction and surely not fact, but rather the celebration of an imaginative collaboration full of love and awe, suspicion, admiration, exasperation and a measure of well-qualified respect.Read More »

Review from DVDTalk:
My first introduction to the oddball cinema of Spanish filmmaker Jesus ‘Jess’ Franco came one night about 3am while channel surfing in my parent’s basement. I’d just gotten back from college, it was time for the summer break, and I’d only minutes beforehand returned from an evening at the pub. I came across what appeared to be a pair of lesbian vampires doing their thing set to a be-bopping score and some whacked out colors and it instantly caught my attention. I didn’t really know what I was watching and didn’t find out until the film was finished that it was one of Franco’s most popular films, Vampyros Lesbos. That semi-intoxicated late night initiation led me to seek out more of the man’s work, and since that night over ten years ago I’ve become a casual fan of his wildly uneven catalogue of work. His films may not always be good in the traditional sense of the word, but they’re always interesting and there’s always a little piece of himself put into his work.Read More »

Amazon.com—
This ambitious 1979 Russian film attempts no less a feat than the encapsulation of the tumultuous history of Russia in the 20th century. Written and directed by Andrei Konchalovsky (Runaway Train, Tango and Cash), the film weaves an engrossing tale of three generations of two Russian families in the remote region of Siberia, each trying in their own way to find fulfillment in their lives as they seek to reconcile themselves with the ever-changing landscape of their homeland. Sandwiched between the chaotic events of the First and Second World Wars, as well as the Russian Revolution of 1917, the people of the small village find themselves at the cusp of great changes, from communications to the expanding infrastructure and the changes that brings, to the discovery of oil and the riches and perils that come with it. Konchalovsky juxtaposes archival footage with stunning cinematography and contrasts the assaultive changes of the modern world with the timeless impulses of family and the enduring need to adapt and survive. Reminiscent of such great films as Giant and 1900, Siberiade is a visually adept and stunningly effective epic about the price of a country’s history on its people. —Robert Lane
Read More »

Plot Synopsis by Hal Erickson (from allmovie.com)
Nikita Mikhalkov examines the plight of the filmmaker operating in an uncertain political climate in his irony-laden seriocomedy Slave of Love. The time is 1918, at the height of the Bolshevik revolution. A small group of filmmakers are hurriedly trying to complete a silent melodrama while the world changes all around them. As production progresses, leading lady Elena Solovei metamorphoses from self-centered movie star to committed revolutionary. Normally described as “Chekhovian,” director Mikhalkov borrows a few pages from Pirandello. With Slave of Love he gained his first serious international attention.Read More »

Synopsis:
St. Petersburg, mid 19th century: the indolent, middle-aged Oblomov lives in a flat with his older servant, Zakhar. He sleeps much of the day, dreaming of his childhood on his parents’ estate. His boyhood companion, Stoltz, now an energetic and successful businessman, adds Oblomov to his circle whenever he’s in the city, and Oblomov’s life changes when Stoltz introduces him to Olga, lovely and cultured. When Stoltz leaves for several months, Oblomov takes a country house near Olga’s, and she determines to change him: to turn him into a man of society, action, and culture. Soon, Olga and Oblomov are in love; but where, in the triangle, does that leave Stoltz?Read More »