Classics

Quote:
Kihachi Okamoto directs his 37th film with this sweet-natured satire about bungling cops and tax scams. The story opens with an 84-year-old widow and grandmother (Tanie Kitabayashi), who lives in a palatial estate in rural Wakayama prefecture, getting jumped by a trio of bumbling thugs (Toru Kazama, Katsuyoshi Uchida, and Hiroshi Nishikawa) and shoved into their waiting car. Instead of being afraid for her life, she is — to the chagrin of her would-be captors — having the time of her life. Soon the strong-willed granny takes command of her own kidnapping, offering the house of her former maid as a hideout and suggesting the amount of the ransom — ten million yen.Read More »

Synopsis:
In this light drama, Clark Gable once again played his stock-in-trade role of a rogue with a heart of gold. Charlie King (Gable) runs a casino, but, in a business that thrives among the unscrupulous, Charlie takes pride in running an honest game and treating his customers with fairness and respect. However, Charlie’s wife Lon (Alexis Smith) doesn’t care if he runs a fair game — she regards gambling as a dirty and corrupt business, and no matter how honest Charlie may be, he’s still involved in a wicked activity. Charlie’s son Paul (Darryl Hickman) is also against him; when Paul gets in trouble and Charlie bails him out of jail, he refuses to leave with him, instead going home with mother. Charlie invites Paul to see what his casino is like, and Lon agrees that Paul should know just what his father does.
— Mark Deming.Read More »

Synopsis:
On Christmas Eve of 1938, the widow landlord of the boarding house at 10 Dulcimer Street, Mrs Vizzard (Joyce Carey), allows manipulative elderly dance hall coat checker Connie Coke (Ivy St. Helier) to put off payment of her back rent until after the holiday. The landlord rents out her basement room to phony medium Henry Squales (Alastair Sim), who performs a seance at her occult club. The mousey cockney Fred Josser (Wylie Watson) is given a clock at his retirement celebration by his firm after forty years of service and his crabby wife (Fay Compton) groans at his foolish contentment.Read More »

Salem, 1692. Industrious farmer, John Proctor, has twice made love to 17-year-old Abigail, a youth he and his wife have taken in. (His wife Elisabeth has rebuffed him for seven months; she is puritanical and cold.) When she finds John and Abigail embracing, she sends the lass from her home and John, feeling damned, agrees. Abigail vows revenge. Her chance comes when she accuses Elisabeth of witchcraft and manipulates younger girls to support her claims of seeing spirits. The town’s minister and politicians want a cause: ridding the town of witchcraft is the ideal repression. John too, is accused; Abigail offers him a way to avoid hanging. Elisabeth has her own confession.Read More »

Synopsis:
The last eighteen years in the life of Jesse James, showing his home life in Missouri, his experiences with Quantrill’s raiders, his career of banditry with his brother Frank and the Younger brothers, and his attempt to lead a peaceful life after the disastrous attempt to rob the bank at Northfield, Minn.Read More »

Synopsis:
Jeff Wilson, the owner of a small circus, owes his partner Carter $10000. Before Jeff can pay, Carter lets his accomplices steal the money, so he can take over the circus. Antonio Pirelli and Punchy, who work at the circus, together with lawyer Loophole try to find the thief and get the money backRead More »

Review by EastGermanCinema.com:
Many Britons of a certain age share a collective memory so firmly etched in their psyches that the very mention of it brings back childhood nightmares. In 1964, BBC television serialized a film about a haughty princess, a prince that turns into a bear, a giant goldfish, and a really, really evil dwarf. So powerful are the memories of this film, that thirty-eight years later BBC Radio 4 did a program on the film’s effect on an entire generation. The film was called The Singing Ringing Tree, and none of those children could have known that they were watching a film that was the product of East Germany.Read More »

Synopsis:
The first Ealing Studios comedy shot in color, Titfield Thunderbolt takes place in a tiny British village serviced by a branch railway line. When the government plans to close the line down, the locals are in a panic—except for a group intending to set up an expensive bus service. The local vicar (George Relph) concocts a scheme with the town’s wealthiest man (Stanley Holloway) for the villagers to run the rail line themselves; in this way they hope to prove to the railway inspectors that their branch is still worth keeping. When the bus interests attempt to sabotage this undertaking, the villagers respond by stealing a stray locomotive—and when this proves cumbersome, they reactivate a 19th century train engine from the local museum.Read More »

Synopsis:
An honest and naive schoolteacher gets a lesson in how the world works outside the classroom, when a rich Baron and his mistress use the teacher’s name and outstanding reputation in a crooked business scheme.Read More »