Classics

Synopsis:
King Oedipus, the ruler of Thebes, blinds himself after learning that he inadvertently killed his own father, and got married to his mother. From this unholy union, Oedipus had four children: two sons, Eteocles and Polynices, and two daughters, Ismene and Antigone. After a tragic clash between brothers for the throne, the new monarch of Thebes, Creon, decrees that the body of the traitorous Polynices should be left unburied–a royal order which Antigone chooses to defy. Now, a cruel fate awaits the rebellious woman in the castle’s cold and dank dungeons, as Apollo’s blind prophet, Tiresias, warns the king of the Gods’ wrath. Alas, an irreversible chain of events is already set in motion.Read More »

Baron Victor von Plessen’s “Kopfjäger von Borneo” (1936) is a magnificent early ethnographic film. A painter, ornithologist and ethnographer, von Plessen (1900-1980) apparently was an independent spirit of independent financial means. There is absolutely no indication for the fact that this was produced in Third Reich Germany, but this might nevertheless account for the relative obscurity into which this film has sadly fallen.Read More »

Synopsis
A samurai is ordered by his lord to go to Edo and investigate the truth behind the rumor of a rebellion against him. After collecting enough information to prove a conspiracy, the samurai needs to devise some way of leaving Edo without creating suspicion and comes up with a cockeyed plan. Based on the short story by Shiga Naoya.Read More »

I looked out for this movie way back then because it starred Bradford Dillman who had made such a big impression as the charismatically cheerful but murderous Artie Strauss in “Compulsion”.”Circle of Deception” proved something of a letdown because Dillman, as a man taken to drink through self-hatred was hardly sympathetic and his costar, the ex-model Suzy Parker was no less unemotive than she had been before. As it happened I think this was Dillmans last gasp at starring roles, but he became an extremely busy TV and film supporting player for many years thereafter. The film itself predated the downbeat spy genre in which our spymasters were portrayed for once as being as devious and viscious as their spymasters, but it was barely noticed, and it was later that “the Ipcress File” got the genre going. What “Circle of Deception” did have going for it for me was the shock revelation that, well, Dillman had been disgracefully set up. I remember it for that,if nothing else.
By: IMDB user.Read More »

Quote:
It is the early 60s in France. The remaining survivors of the aborted French Foreign Legion have made repeated attempts to kill DeGaulle. The result is that he is the most closely guarded man in the world. As a desperate act, they hire The Jackal, the code name for a hired killer who agrees to kill French President De Gaulle for half a million dollars. We watch his preparations which are so thorough we wonder how he could possibly fail even as we watch the French police attempt to pick up his trail. The situation is historically accurate. There were many such attempts and the film closely follows the plot of the book.Read More »

1776. Along with Lithuania and Prussia, Poland has succumbed to the might of the Russian Empire, but a determined resistance movement is working to bring an end to the country’s annexation. A young woman named Sonia is the figurehead of the Polish resistance fighters, but the Empress Catherine II has no fear of her, as she knows that Sonia is of Russian blood – a fact that she asks the Baron de Kempelen to make known to her political enemies. But Kempelen’s allegiances are ambiguous and he appears more preoccupied with the elaborate life-size automata he is working on than the political situation.Read More »

Shannon Kelley writes:
The powers and fascinations of director John Ford and playwright Eugene O’Neill are happily met in this 1940 feature dramatizing the lives of men who serve as crew members aboard commercial freighters. Like O’Neill, Ford nursed a lifelong obsession with sailing and the sea, and had spent his early years in Portland, Maine, amid the maritime culture that this picture describes. Adapted and updated by screenwriter Dudley Nichols (Ford’s frequent collaborator) from four of O’Neill’s early plays set aboard the fictional “SS Glencairn,” the film recounts the experiences of the ship’s crew while transporting ammunition from the West Indies to England during World War II. Read More »

Mr. Pezzella (Toto) owns and operates a luxury clothing store very well established. By its nature, but does not like and does not consider it right to pay taxes and therefore uses a tax consultant (Louis de Funès) to be able to evade more calmly. Unfortunately for the cavalier Pezzella the Guardia di Finanza decides to send an inspection, in the person of Marshal Topponi (Aldo Fabrizi) and Brigadier Bardi. They start attempts Pezzella (guided by the advice of dishonest and ineffective tax advisor) to get into dell’inossidabile marshal to try to bribe him, and sometimes openly declaring with excessive dose of servility.Read More »

Plot:
From the author of The Citadel and in the grand epic tradition of MGM’s adaptations, The Green Years is the moving story of a boy’s difficult growth to manhood. When young Robert Shannon is orphaned, he leaves his home in Ireland and travels to Scotland, home of his maternal grandparents. Growing up in the home of his stern grandfather (Charles Coburn, in an Academy Award®-nominated performance*) is made bearable by his great-grandfather, loving grandmother and kind aunt and uncle. After a rocky adjustment to his new school, Robbie is befriended by Gavin and Allison, whom he grows to love.Read More »