David Bordwell wrote:
A bit like The Downfall of Osen (Orizuru Osen, 1935), this film centers on a woman who’s a cat’s paw for a gang involved in shady dealings. Okichi, played by Yamada Isuzu, is pulling scams for the sake of her lover. But she falls out with the gang and takes pity on one of the young men whom she victimizes.Read More »
The kid stars of Broadway’s Dead End were seasoned series vets by 1939, having already appeared in a number of films backing up the likes of James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart and Pat O’Brien. By 1939, their popularity propelled them to headliner status and the Kids were now the stars.
The Dead End Kids On Dress Parade features Leo Gorcey’s first appearance under the moniker “Slip,” playing the wise-mouthed, malcontent that would become his signature. The other Kids doff their kid gang guises for the starch dress of trainees at a military academy that the delinquent Slip is forced to attend.Read More »
A boy finds a special jug and releases an ancient genie. The powerful and kind wizard is ready to fulfill all desires, but he doesn’t know anything about the reality of the 20th century.Read More »
A young salesman may inherit a wine-estate on one condition: he can’t drink a drop of alcohol for at least a month.Read More »
Vautier, a wealthy surgeon in his fifties, falls in love with Hélène, a young woman from a modest background. He allows her to have a string of short-lived lovers – but when Jean Trapeau, an old boyfriend, resurfaces, things get complicated.Read More »
The Palace, a world-renowned hotel in St. Moritz, is preparing for the winter season under the guidance of its beautiful lady manager. In this hive buzz Staub, the old waiter, his daughter, the telephone operator, Fredy, the playboy kitchen porter who is very much in demand by lonely female customers, the chambermaids Speranza, Fredy’s fiancée, and Emilie, who lives with her young boy, the sommelier Loosli and many others who are all valiantly doing their work. All these people are upset one day when a robbery is discovered in room 126.Read More »
A 1989 British drama film adapted for the screen and directed by Kenneth Branagh, based on William Shakespeare’s play of the same name about Henry V of England. The film stars Branagh in the title role with Paul Scofield, Derek Jacobi, Ian Holm, Emma Thompson, Alec McCowen, Judi Dench, Robbie Coltrane, Brian Blessed, and Christian Bale in supporting roles.
The film received worldwide critical acclaim and has been widely considered one of the best Shakespeare film adaptations ever made. For her work on the film, Phyllis Dalton won an Academy Award for Best Costume Design and Kenneth Branagh, in his directorial debut, received Oscar nominations for Best Actor and Best Director.Read More »
Set in 19th Century New England, the story follows the whaling ship Pequod and its crew. Leading them is Captain Ahab, who was almost killed by the “great white whale,” Moby-Dick. Now he is out for revenge. With the crew that has joined him, Ahab is out to destroy the huge mammal, but soon he learns that his obsession with vengeance is so great that he cannot turn back, eventually leading to the death of him and all save his newest able seaman, Ishmael.Read More »
Synopsis:
One of the most admired Danish films of all time, Bjarne Henning-Jensen’s Ditte Menneskebarn is the story of a poor girl born out of wedlock (Jette Kehlet plays the child Ditte, then Tove Maës) whose mother (Karen Lykkehus) is an abusive adulterer who nearly kills her eldest daughter. Ditte grows up with her grandmother (wonderfully played by Karen Poulsen), but is ill equipped to later fend for herself as a maid on a large farm. Impregnated and abandoned by the weak-willed son of the house (Preben Neergaard), Ditte, just like her mother, will have to face the future as a social outcast. The original novel was by Martin Andersen Nexø (Pelle the Conqueror), a writer who used a very broad pencil indeed. The American reviewers (who saw the film in 1950 sans several scenes of a nude Maës) certainly thought so, dismissing the film as mere melodrama. Some of the performances are difficult to take for a modern audience, but, overall, the film still has the power to move.
— Hans J. Wollstein (allmovie.com)Read More »