Classics

Synopsis:
In a small spanish town, a group of old ladies decide to celebrate Christmas Eve with a “Sit a poor man at your table” dinner: each wealthy household of the town will have a homeless person dining with them that night. The celebrations also include a parade, and in it we find Plácido, the humble owner of a three-wheeler, whose family is forced to live in a public lavatory because of the lack of money to pay the rent, and who has to pay the second bill of his vehicle before midnight or else he will loseRead More »

Quote:
Based on the moving true story of a senior high school student named Michiko (Sayuri Yoshinaga) who contracted a terminal illness and spent the following three years exchanging over 400 letters with her boyfriend Makoto (Mitsuo Hamada).Read More »

Zoltan Fabri’s 1956 Hungarian feature about the persecution of an educator (played for both laughs and great pathos by Ernö Szabó) whose essay about Hannibal and the Punic Wars in a school bulletin is deemed unflattering to the Mussolini regime. A beautifully shot, modest masterpiece which is, as the cliche goes, as timely today as ever.Read More »

The saga of adolescents living on their own as adults was treated as early as 1961 by Triguerinho Neto in this film set in Salvador, Bahia, under the Vargas dictatorship. Tonio has left home, unable to identify with his parents’ community centered around their African-derived religion. But he finds that, as a mulatto, in the outside world he is rejected by whites who see him as black and by blacks who see him as white. Tonio, who prefers the company of marginals who are as indefinable as himself, settles into the protection of a woman old enough to be his mother and befriends local dockworkers who are on strike. Betraying the former to help the latter, he finds himself alone. In his inability to commit, Tonio may be a proletarian version of the rootless character central to early sixties Cinema Novo in such films as São Paulo S/A.Read More »

Plot : While Paris Sleeps is a grim expose of the European white slave trade. To save his daughter Manon (Helen Mack) from falling into the hands of a vicious gang of pimps, convict Jacques Costard (Victor McLaglen) escapes from jail. Jacques’ problems are twofold: he must keep Manon from being abducted into a life of prostitution, and he must also hide his true identity from the girl, who has been raised to believe that Jacques died a hero in WWI. The film’s gruesome “money scene” finds the white slavers disposing of a stool pigeon by incinerating him in a huge bakery oven! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie GuideRead More »

A mad scientist turns a man into an electrically-controlled monster to do his bidding.Read More »

Synopsis:
With interests ranging from banking to commodities and publishing, the Schoudlers are one of France’s wealthiest and most powerful business families. The present head of this formidable dynasty is Noël Schoudler, a driven, plain-speaking magnate who runs his affairs with an unwavering ruthlessness, and this applies as much to his private life as it does to matters of business. Short of breaking the law, Schoudler is ready to resort to any means to protect his family’s wealth and good name, and anyone who dares to oppose him can expect nothing but the roughest of treatment. Noël Schoudler is a patriarch and a tyrant, a capitalist in every atom of his being. and he seems not to have an ounce of compassion in his soul. The pursuit of wealth and power is all that matters to him.Read More »

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As the clouds of war spread over Russia during Germany’s surprise invasion in 1941, the fervent young lovers, the sensitive Veronika and the stalwart Boris, are parted when the patriotic lad secretly volunteers for the war effort. During the following hard years, Veronika who serves her country as a wartime-nurse will lose communication with Boris, moreover, when a devastating air raid destroys her house and Boris’ father takes her in to live with the family, unexpectedly, things will take a turn for the worse. Before long, the worried fiancée will find herself dealing not only with the dark thoughts of Boris’ potential loss but also with the burden of an unwelcome decision. Once, the star-crossed lovers swore eternal devotion under a flock of flying cranes, still, a war is always cruel and eternally disastrous.Read More »

SYNOPSIS
The title “Twenty-four Eyes” refers to the 12 pairs of eyes belonging to the young students of a small branch school on Shodo Island in the Japanese Inland Sea. The story unfolds in the spring of 1928, when Hisako Oishi (Hideko Takamine) takes over as the new teacher at the local grammar school. At first, the small village does not accept the young schoolteacher who wears Western clothes and rides a bicycle to school. It doesn’t take long, however, before the pupils, their parents, and the entire village fall under the spell of this special teacher. However, trauma does not lie far. The peaceful lives of Shodo Shima contrast the war occurring just over its horizon.Read More »