Quote:
Kazuo Hasegawa has wild friends and hates being compared to his stepbrother, Reikichi Kawamura, who is steady, works hard at his taxicab business, and is amiable. That’s why he left home a year ago. Now he has heard his mother is ill, and wants to come home, but thinks she hates him. That’s nonsense, says Kawamura. Hasegawa agrees to reform. Just then two men come in and want to hire a cab. Everyone has gone home for the evening, so Hasegawa shows his willingness to reform by taking the fare. They drive to a distant house. They ask him to wait. While he does so, Kinuyo Tanaka pops out, begs him to help her escape. He does so. The two men are her step-brother, and the man everyone wants her to marry…. except her, of course.Read More »
Classics
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Yasujirô Shimazu – Watashi no niisan AKA My elder Brother (1934)
1931-1940ClassicsJapanRomanceYasujirô Shimazu -
Carl Theodor Dreyer – Vampyr [Masters of Cinema 2K] (1932)
1931-1940Carl Theodor DreyerClassicsGermanyHorrorWeimar Republic cinema

Traveler Allan Gray arrives in the village of Courtempierre and takes lodgings in a small inn. Gray has a great interest in the supernatural, particularly vampires. He’s barely settled in when he feels a sinister force descending upon him. In the night an old man enters his room to tell him ‘she must not die’. One of the old man’s daughters, Leone, has been bitten by a vampire. In order to break the curse, Gray and Leone’s sister Gisele must find the original vampire and drive a stake through her heart.Read More »
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Keisuke Kinoshita – Kotoshi no koi AKA This Year’s Love (1962)
1961-1970AsianClassicsJapanKeisuke KinoshitaHikaru and Ichiro are close friends in high school. Hikaru’s elder brother Tadashi fell in love with Ichiro’s elder sister, Mikako at first sight. Although she gave the cold shoulder to Tadashi, she gradually became fond of Tadashi.Read More »
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Julie Taymor – The Tempest (2010)
2001-2010ClassicsDramaJulie TaymorUSAWilliam Shakespeare
Adaptation of Shakespeare’s play. Prospera, the female form of the male role in the original story, is banished from Milan by her brother. She finds herself stranded on an island with her four-year-old daughter and the beast Caliban. After 12 years of isolation, she gets the chance to take her revenge on her sibling, by causing a storm that wrecks his ship and strands those on board. Show lessRead More »
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Goutam Ghose – Maa Bhoomi AKA Our Land (1979)
1971-1980ClassicsGoutam GhoseIndiaPoliticsSet during one of India’s main peasant risings, the Telangana insurrection between 1945 and 1951 in the pre-Independence state of Hyderabad, the Bengali director’s first feature tells the story of Chander’s best-known novel (Jab Khet Jaage (1948) from the peasant’s point of view. A young peasant, Ramiah, rebels against the corrupt rule of the nizam, and when his girlfriend has to submit to the potentate’s sexual coercion, Ramiah leaves. He befriends a Marxist activist (the rising was CPI-inspired) and participates in the Independence struggle.Read More »
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Augusto Genina – Prix de beauté AKA Miss Europe [Silent] (1930)
Augusto Genina1921-1930ClassicsFranceSilent

From IMDb:
Lucienne, typist and gorgeous bathing beauty, decides to enter the ‘Miss Europe’ pageant sponsored by the French newspaper she works for. She finds her jealous lover Andre violently disapproves of such events and tries to withdraw, but it’s too late; she’s even then being named Miss France. The night Andre planned to propose to her, she’s being whisked off to the Miss Europe finals in Spain, where admirers swarm around her. Win or lose, what will the harvest be?Read More » -
Wallace Fox – Bowery at Midnight (1942)
1941-1950ClassicsHorrorUSAWallace FoxBowery at Midnight casts Bela Lugosi as Professor Brenner, a psychology instructor at New York University (which looks a lot like Berkeley in the exterior shots!). When not enlightening his students — most of them buxom Monogram starlets — Brenner is engaged in charitable work, running a mission in the Bowery. In truth, however, the kindly professor is a fiend in human form, who uses his mission as a front for a vast criminal empire. When Judy (Wanda McKay), one of Brenner’s students, stumbles onto the truth, she’s targeted for extermination by the Dr. Jekyll-and-Mr. Hyde prof.Read More »
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Hiroshi Inagaki – Muhomatsu no issho AKA The Rickshaw Man (1958)
Hiroshi Inagaki1951-1960ClassicsDramaJapanIn the turn of the Twentieth Century, the rickshaw driver Matsugoro “Matsu” is a happy man and a troublemaker well-known by everyone in his village. One day, Matsu sees an injured boy, Toshio, and brings him home. His mother Yoshiko Yoshioka asks Matsuo to take the boy to the doctor and then her husband Capt. Kotaro Yoshioka asks her to reward Matsu. However the rickshaw man refuses the money and becomes a friend of the family. When Kotaro unexpectedly dies, Matsuo helps Yoshiko to raise her son. Soon he falls in love with her, but he does not dare to open his heart to Yoshiko since they belong to different social classes.Read More »
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Hiroshi Inagaki – Muhomatsu no issho AKA The Life of Matsu the Untamed (1943)
Hiroshi Inagaki1941-1950ClassicsDramaJapan

Matsugoro is a poor rickshaw driver whose animated spirit and optimistic demeanor make him a favorite of the town. Matsu helps an injured boy, Toshio, and is hired by the boy’s parents, Kotaro and Yoshioko, to transport the boy to and from doctor appointments. Matsu comes to love the boy and his parents. When Toshio’s father dies, Matsu becomes a surrogate father, helping to raise the boy and secretly falling in love with Toshio’s mother Yoshioko. But Matsu knows there is a great gulf between their classes and there seems no hope that Matsu can ever be more than the rickshaw man to the mother and son.Read More »




