Drama

  • George P. Cosmatos – The Cassandra Crossing (1976)

    1971-1980DramaGeorge P. CosmatosGermanyThriller

    Quote:
    At noon on October 25th, the Transcontinental Express left Geneva Station with almost one thousand people aboard. Their destination: Basel, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and Stockholm. No one arrived.

    “Outbreak” meets “The Runaway Train” as a motley group of passengers are quarantined on a train destined to prevent the spread of the disease at the cost of their lives. Government intrigue, international smuggling, and the legend of the Cassandra Crossing add to the suspense.Read More »

  • Gerry O’Hara – The Bitch [+commentary] (1979)

    1971-1980DramaExploitationGerry O'HaraUnited Kingdom

    Synopsis:
    Fontaine is a woman who always gets what she wants – they call her The Bitch. Now a divorcee and whilst she still leads an extravagant jet-set lifestyle, she no longer has the financial security of being a billionaire’s wife and her once-successful London nightclub, “Hobo”, is now failing. While on a flight returning to London from New York, she meets handsome Italian gambler Nico. In order to impress her, he pretends he is a wealthy businessman, though he is actually a conman who owes money to the mafia and he covertly uses her to smuggle a stolen diamond ring through customs which he intends to sell in London to pay off his debts. With the mafia now pursuing both Fontaine and Nico, they find themselves falling deeper and deeper into danger but she is not ready to give up her life and sets out to prove that she can beat anyone at his or her own game.Read More »

  • Peter Bogdanovich – Mask [Director’s cut](1985)

    1981-1990DramaPeter BogdanovichUSA

    Mask is a 1985 American biographical drama film directed by Peter Bogdanovich, starring Cher, Sam Elliott, and Eric Stoltz with supporting roles played by Dennis Burkley, Laura Dern, Estelle Getty, and Richard Dysart. Cher received the 1985 Cannes Film Festival award for Best Actress.[2] The film is based on the life and early death of Roy L. “Rocky” Dennis, a boy who had craniodiaphyseal dysplasia, an extremely rare disorder known commonly as lionitis due to the disfiguring cranial enlargements that it causes.

    Mask won the Academy Award for Best Makeup at the 58th ceremony, while Cher and Stoltz received Golden Globe Award nominations for their performances.

    Michael Westmore and Zoltan Elek won the Academy Award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling in the 58th Academy Awards.

    The film is recognized by American Film Institute in the 2006 list for AFI’s 100 Years…100 Cheers

    Read More »

  • Martin Ritt – The Long, Hot Summer (1958)

    1951-1960DramaMartin RittUSA

    Synopsis:
    Sixty-one year old widower Will Varner (Orson Welles), in ill health, owns many businesses and property in Frenchman’s Bend, Mississippi, including a plantation. To him, his children are a disappointment, who he sees as not being able to carry on the Varner name in the style to which he has built around it. Son Jody (Anthony Francoisa) has no ambition and does not work, spending much of his time fooling around with his seductive wife, Eula (Lee Remick). He finds twenty-three-year-old daughter Clara (Joanne Woodward) clever, but he feels she also wastes her time on more contemplative pursuits. Read More »

  • Sang-soo Hong – Ja-yu-eui eon-deok AKA Hill of Freedom (2014)

    2011-2020ArthouseDramaSang-soo HongSouth Korea

    Kwon (Seo Young-hwa) returns to Seoul from a restorative stay in the mountains. She is given a packet of letters left by Mori (Ryo Kase), who has come back from Japan to propose to her. As she walks down a flight of stairs, Kwon drops and scatters the letters, all of which are undated. When she reads them, she has to make sense of the chronology… and so must we. Alternately funny and haunting, Hill of Freedom is a series of disordered scenes based on the letters, echoing the cultural dislocation felt by Mori as he tries to make himself understood in halting English. At what point did he drink himself into a lonely stupor? Did he sleep with the waitress from the “Hill of Freedom” café (Moon So-ri) before or after he despaired of seeing Kwon again?Read More »

  • Frank Perry – Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970)

    1961-1970ComedyDramaFrank PerryUSA

    Quote:
    Tina Balser is a bored New York housewife-mother married to Jonathan, a pompous, social-climbing lawyer who ridicules her in front of their children, criticizing everything she does or wears. She begins an affair with George Prager, a dashing, successful and blatantly sadistic writer. Finally after George has tormented Tina in much the same manner Jonathan has, and has been unfaithful to boot, she goes back to her husband and begins group therapy.Read More »

  • Carl Theodor Dreyer – Vredens dag aka Day of Wrath (1943)

    Drama1941-1950Carl Theodor DreyerDenmark

    Quote:
    In a 17th-century Danish village, an old woman is accused of witchcraft. In the shadow of her flight, capture, confession, and burning at the stake, the young wife of the town’s aging pastor falls in love with the pastor’s son…Read More »

  • João Paulo Miranda Maria – Memory House (2020)

    2011-2020BrazilDramaJoão Paulo Miranda Maria

    Cristovam, a native from the brazilian hinterland, works in a milk factory in a former Austrian colony in Brazil. He feels lonely, ostracized by cultural and ethnic differences. One day, he discovers an abandoned house filled with objects that remind him of his origins. He slowly settles in this house. Curiously, more objects start to appear without explanation, as if the place was « alive ».Read More »

  • Stephane Gauger – Owl and the Sparrow aka Cu va chim se se (2007)

    2001-2010DramaStephane GaugerVietnam

    Quote:
    It is a rare opportunity to choose one’s family, but when young orphan Thuy becomes fed up with her circumstances she creates her own fate in Owl and the Sparrow.

    Not satisfied with working at her uncle’s bamboo blind factory, Thuy hits road and river to find her fortune in Saigon. Busy streets swarm with bicycles and peddlers of infinite goods, and the young girl is soon advised by the experienced children of the street. The local triteness of her situation is unnerving, and few blink at her circumstances — except for despondent flight attendant, Lan, who takes Thuy under her broken wing.Read More »

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