Classics

Synopsis:
Reporter ‘Stew’ Smith meets beautiful Ann Schuyler, a rich socialite, while covering the story of a scandal involving Ann’s family. Ann takes a liking to the wisecracking Smith and the couple eventually elope. Stew’s roots as a street smart reporter don’t prepare him well for mixing with Ann’s high society friends and he starts spending more time with his ‘pal’, female reporter Gallagher. Everything comes to a head when Ann and her family return home to their mansion one evening and find that Stew has invited all his ‘pals’ over for an impromptu drinking party.Read More »

“You are the first man I ever loved… and the world has only just begun…”
Plot:
American William Holden, as former architect turned struggling artist, Robert Lomax, a cynic who’s “pushing forty,” arrives in 1960 Hong Kong to make a valiant effort for his art. He’s never been there and has no idea what to expect. On the ferry boat to Kowloon, he has a sort of altercation with the very young & attractive Nancy Kwan, who claims to be named “Mei Li,” a very proper young lady about to enter into an arranged marriage set up by her wealthy father. Shortly before reluctantly introducing herself, she also almost manages to have Robert arrested by claiming he’s a purse snatcher, which, judging from her mirthful expression, she does for the sheer entertainment value of the situation.Read More »

Quote:
Sudanese Film Group – Films by Suliman Elnour, Eltayeb Mahdi & Ibrahim Shaddad

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a group of filmmakers working in the film department of the Ministry of Culture at the time published the magazine CINEMA. This group founded the Sudanese Film Group (SFG) in April 1989 in order to be able to act more independently of the state. Their aim was to be involved in all aspects of film production, screening and teaching and to maintain the Sudanese* passion for cinema. On 30 June 1989, however, the coup, which brought with it a distrust of all forms of art, ended all cultural endeavours. All civil society organisations were banned. In 2005 the firm hand of the state was finally loosened somewhat and SFG was able to register again.Read More »

In eighteenth-dynasty Egypt, Sinuhe, a poor orphan, becomes a brilliant physician and with his friend Horemheb is appointed to the service of the new Pharoah. Sinuhe’s personal triumphs and tragedies are played against the larger canvas of the turbulent events of the 18th dynasty. As Sinuhe is drawn into court intrigues, and bizarre secrets are revealed to him, he learns the answers to the questions he has sought since his birth. Short on historical accuracy but strong on plot and characterization.Read More »

Frank and Eleanor Perry’s heartbreaking feature adaptation of three Truman Capote stories, produced in collaboration with Capote himself. The stories all center around the relationship between two slightly odd, outcast characters, and they all hover around the idea of loss — but each winds up in a starkly different place, perhaps even in a different genre. Magnificently written, acted, and directed – an absolute shame that it’s not better known.Read More »

Shiro Toyada is known for his literary adaptations and this is an early adaptation of Fumiko Hayashi’s work, the second after Sotoji Kimura’s A Wanderer’s Notebook from three years ealier. Like Toyoda’s later 50s masterpieces it features strong minded woman and weak, feckless men.

Crybaby Apprentice tells of four sisters, the eldest, the widowed Sadako, has a failed businessman as a lover and two children, eleven year old Keikichi and his younger sister. The boy’s sullen demeanour gets on “uncle’s” nerves and after moving in to save money he threatens to move out again. During the course of the film Keikichi is passed from one sister to the next, unwanted either as a nuisance or through poverty.Read More »

Save Shakespeare, Chekhov is the literary giant whose work is most frequently adapted for the screen. Based on his eponymous 1891 novella, THE DUEL gives life to a classic Chekhovian tale: the young ne’er-do-well aristocrat vs. the arrogant man of science; the attraction of a manipulative, narcissistic mistress vs. the life of the mind and of principled action. Gambling, alcohol and flirtations consummated in an impossibly beautiful countryside hold obvious attractions for Laevsky. But he’s brought up short when financial ruin and his mistress’s sexual dalliances lead to a violent denouement. Dover Kosashvili, director of LATE MARRIAGE, assembles a brilliant ensemble cast of British actors who strike just the right balance between intrigue and that particularly Russian brand of ennui we associate with Chekhov — but which today might elicit a prescription for Celexa.Read More »

Quote:
A young girl moves from Iwate to Kawasaki after leaving her village, but she suffers from asthma and is ostracised by her friends. A young boy who dreams of becoming a footballer. The two gradually develop a friendship, but tragedy strikes at the end…

A very pure and touching film. The last part of the film will make you cry.Read More »

This is an early film from the career of Shibuya Minoru and according to Donald Richie in The Japanese Film: Art and Industry, “One of his best, the 1939 [actally 1938] Mother and Child (Haha to ko), was taken from a onvel by Tsuneko Yada. This story of a young daughter, her businessman father, and his mistress was slightly overloaded with sentiment and burdened with the confused social criticism apparent in some of the director’s postwar work, but was nonetheless representative of the period.Read More »