Drama

  • Joseph Losey – Secret Ceremony (1968)

    Drama1961-1970CultJoseph LoseyUnited Kingdom

    Quote:
    Beautifully dark movie which grants Mia Farrow the freedom to showcase the strange range of her gift. Elizabeth Taylor stays close with a deep and sensitive touch, flashing a legitimate side of herself, oft covered up. Robert Mitchum achieves repulsive perfection lurking in the garden, symbolic of the disgust and fear we share in our hide. The entire cast in breath and stone include every sense in totality, placing the actors and ourselves together to spy on each other from above, and within the ornamental mansion. Intense hallucinogenic 1968 camera shots intimately portray the family by chance’s horrific existence. Read More »

  • Ermanno Olmi – La circostanza AKA The Circumstance (1973)

    1971-1980ArthouseDramaErmanno OlmiItaly

    Synopsis:
    ‘The bourgeois family Olmi observes here is caught in a process of disintegration that hardly requires the promptings of a languid summer’s minor crisis. A motorcycle crash, a business reorganisation seminar and a childbirth represent the unlikely-seeming dramatic punctuation in Olmi’s mosaic portrait of minimal domestic communication; while the director himself adopts an uncharacteristically elliptical structure and a rare stridency to capture both the frenetic tail-chasing and tentative adaptations to change which criss-cross the dead institutional centre. If the criticism is muted, it’s because for Olmi, every new circumstance offers at least a new option.’
    – Time OutRead More »

  • Manoel de Oliveira – A Caixa aka Blind Man’s Bluff (1994)

    1991-2000ComedyDramaManoel de OliveiraPortugal

    Quote:
    One of Manoel de Oliveira’s masterpieces, A Caixa (The Box) / Blind Man’s Bluff is an adaptation, in parable form, of a play of the same name by Prista Monteiro.
    The action takes place around a flight of steps in a poor neighbourhood and is about the final misadventure of an old Blind Man who has yet again been robbed of the official alms box with which he earns is living. His daughter, besides doing the house work, wears herself out taking in washing. Her companion, an unemployed lay-about like many of his friends, lives off the Blind Man’s box which has just been stolen for the second time.Read More »

  • Oxide Chun Pang – Som and Bank: Bangkok for Sale AKA One Take Only (2001)

    2001-2010CrimeDramaOxide Chun PangThailand

    Mak, a street urchin in Bangkok, dreams of being a tough gangster. He earns some money as a drugs runner. One day he meets a young prostitute, who turns out to live nearby and they fall in love. After he has delivered a large batch of drugs to a rich man on the other side of town, they can suddenly afford new clothes, luxury mobile phones and expensive sunglasses. Made reckless, Mak and his partners use the girl for an even bigger delivery to the same rich man. But then everything goes terribly wrong…Read More »

  • Douglas Sirk – Interlude (1957)

    1951-1960ClassicsDouglas SirkDramaUSA

    Synopsis:
    The story of a young woman, Helen Banning, who travels to Munich in search of life experience and romance. While working for America House, she meets a famous symphony conductor, Tonio Fischer, and begins a relationship with him. She soon finds out there is much more to this man than his music, including a wife Reni Fisher, but there’s definitely more to the story, which she soon discovers. While dealing with the experiences life has thrown in her way, she is also being courted by Morley Dwyer a doctor from back home, who is currently practicing medicine in a Munich hospital. Who will she choose?Read More »

  • John Hough – Twins of Evil (1971)

    1971-1980DramaHammer FilmsHorrorJohn HoughUnited Kingdom

    “This entry in Hammer Films’ long-running vampire series of the ’60s and ’70s is one of the most evocative and original. The story features voluptuous twin Playboy centerfolds Madeleine and Mary Collinson as sisters who, without parents, are sent to stay with their oppressive uncle (Peter Cushing, looking more emaciated than ever), who happens to live near the sinister Karnstein Castle, the locale of countless vampiric happenings in two prequels (The Vampire Lovers and Lust for a Vampire). One of the twins wanders over and meets the dashing Count Karstein (Damien Thomas), a vampire who later uses the girl’s blood to awaken his long-lost ancestor from the dead. Read More »

  • Stanley Kramer – Inherit the Wind (1960)

    1951-1960ClassicsDramaStanley KramerUSA

    Synopsis:
    In the 1920s, Tennessee schoolteacher Bertram Cates (Dick York) is put on trial for violating the Butler Act, a state law that prohibits public school teachers from teaching evolution instead of creationism. Drawing intense national attention in the media with writer E. K. Hornbeck (Gene Kelly) reporting, two of the nation’s leading lawyers go head to head: Matthew Harrison Brady (Fredric March) for the prosecution, and Henry Drummond (Spencer Tracy) for the defense.Read More »

  • Nuri Bilge Ceylan – Kasaba AKA The Small Town (1997)

    1991-2000ArthouseDramaNuri Bilge CeylanTurkey

    Quote:
    Depiction of a small Turkish town, as seen from the perspective of an 11 year old girl and her 7 year – old brother. The four part film unfolds along with the seasons. The first part is set at the school the girl attends, the social environment she must adapt to and its difficulties. She faces with her feeling of shame and some merciless clues of life. The second part is in spring. We see the girl with her brother and their journey to the maize field where their family are waiting for them.Read More »

  • Stephen Roberts – The Story of Temple Drake [+ Extras] (1933)

    1931-1940ClassicsDramaStephen RobertsUSA

    Loosely adapted from William Faulkner’s controversial novel Sanctuary, this notorious pre-Code melodrama stars Miriam Hopkins as Temple Drake, the coquettish granddaughter of a respected small-town judge. When a boozehound date strands her at a bootleggers’ hideout, Temple is subjected to an act of nightmarish sexual violence and plunged into a criminal underworld that threatens to swallow her up completely. Steeped in southern-gothic shadows by influential cinematographer Karl Struss and shot through with moral ambiguity, The Story of Temple Drake is a harrowing vision of sin and salvation that boasts an astonishing lead performance from the fiery Hopkins, whose passage through the stations of terror, trauma, and redemption is a true tour de force of screen acting.Read More »

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