A few short hours after President Lincoln has been assassinated, Dr. Samuel Mudd gives medical treatment to a wounded man who shows up at his door. Mudd has no idea that the president is dead and that he is treating his murderer, John Wilkes Booth. But that doesn’t save him when the army posse searching for Booth finds evidence that Booth has been to the doctor’s house. Dr. Mudd is arrested for complicity and sentenced to life imprisonment, to be served in the infamous pestilence-ridden Dry Tortugas.Read More »
Classics
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John Ford – The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936)
1931-1940ClassicsDramaJohn FordUSA -
John Ford – The Informer (1935)
1931-1940ClassicsDramaJohn FordUSADublin, 1922. Gypo Nolan, strong but none too bright, has been ousted from the rebel organization and is starving. When he finds that his equally destitute sweetheart Katie has been reduced to prostitution, he succumbs to temptation and betrays his former comrade Frankie to the British authorities for a 20 pound reward. In the course of one gloomy, foggy night, guilt and retribution inexorably close in…Read More »
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Tomu Uchida – Dotanba AKA The Eleventh Hour (1957)
1951-1960AsianClassicsJapanTomu UchidaQuote:
Based on a 1956 television feature on Japan’s national network, NHK, this is one of Uchida’s rarest films. A socially conscious drama with a contemporary backdrop, Dotanba focuses on the attempts to rescue a group of trapped miners. The title is a figure of speech — (essentially “last minute” or “eleventh hour”) — that refers to a situation of peril. The film boasts a script co-written by Uchida and Akira Kurosawa’s frequent screenwriter, Shinobu Hashimoto, and stars Kurosawa’s frequent star Takashi Shimura.Read More » -
Clarence Brown – Inspiration (1931)
1931-1940Clarence BrownClassicsDramaUSAInspiration is a 1931 English language film adapted from the Alphonse Daudet short novel Sappho (1884). It was adapted by Gene Markey, directed by Clarence Brown and produced by Irving Thalberg. The cinematography was by William H. Daniels, the art direction by Cedric Gibbons and the costume design by Adrian.Read More »
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Jia-qi Ma & Gui-zhen Sun & Fulin Wang – Hong lou meng AKA A Dream in Red Mansions (1987)
1981-1990ChinaClassicsFulin WangGui-zhen SunJia-qi MaTV

Plot Summary
Based on the mid-eighteenth century novel by Cao Xueqin, Beijing’s CCTV’s version of “A Dream in Red Mansions” (aka Dream of the Red Chamber) is known by many to be the ultimate and best adaptation of the story either on TV or film. It is a story about the tragic love of Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu, and the prosperity and decline of the four notable feudal ruling-class families of Jia, Shi, Wang and Xue. Daiyu is a beautiful and talented girl, but prone to ill health. The intelligent and carefree Baoyu, nonetheless, shows love toward her over the years and puts up with her sensitivity and ill-tempered personality. They, along with their family-favored and tactful cousin Xue Baochai, reside in the Grand View Garden. Read More » -
Nikolai Ekk- Putyovka v zhizn AKA Road to Life [Original Cut] (1931)
1931-1940ClassicsDramaNikolai EkkUSSR

Young hobos are brought to a new camp to become good Soviet citizens. This camp works without any guards, and it works well. But crooks kill one of the young people when they try to damage the newly build railroad to that camp.Read More »
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Kenji Mizoguchi – Waga koi wa moenu AKA Flame of My Love (1949)
Kenji Mizoguchi1941-1950AsianClassicsJapan

Quote:
A woman’s struggle for equality in Japan in the 1880s. Eiko Hirayama leaves Okayama for Tokyo, where she helps the fledgling Liberal Party and falls in love with its leader Kentaro Omoi, just as the party is being disbanded by the government. Eiko and Omoi are jailed because of a fire at a factory instigated by Chiyo, a servant girl from Eiko’s home in Okayama, who was sold to slavery. A few years later the 1889 constitution is proclaimed, Eiko, Omoi, and Chiyo are pardoned, and the Liberal Party is reinaugurated. However Omoi does not campaign for women’s rights. – imdbRead More » -
Ken Russell – Savage Messiah (1972)
1971-1980ClassicsDramaKen RussellUnited KingdomSynopsis:
The Music Lovers. Mahler. Valentino. In these and other films, Ken Russell explores the lives of artists and in turn finds inspiration for his own considerable cinematic creativity. Savage Messiah belongs to that Russell oeuvre and it draws from the filmmaker a work often studied in its pace yet exhilarating in its impact. It is the story of the short, influential career of pre-World War I French sculptor Henri Gaudier and of his intimate yet platonic friendship with a Polish émigré 20 years his senior. Scott Antony and Dorothy Tutin, perhaps better known to theater aficionados, play the two leads. Movie fans will readily identify the third-billed player: Helen Mirren in a memorable early-career role as a flamboyant, uninhibited suffragette.Read More » -
Ray Nazarro – China Corsair (1951)
1951-1960AdventureClassicsRay NazarroUSAPlot:
In this exciting actioner a daring Eurasian woman gets involved with a shipwrecked engineer whom she rescues from a remote island. Together, they have many romantic and exciting adventures as they try to keep a crook from selling her uncle’s priceless collection of antique jade.Read More »





