Drama

Quote:
One of the powerhouses of the 1950s, Time Without Pity is the first film that Joseph Losey signed with his own name after being blacklisted and fleeing the U.S. In effect, it’s the film in which Losey proclaimed himself a Brit, as eager and willing to skewer the establishment there as he had done on the other side of the Atlantic. It’s the one with Michael Redgrave, in a bravura performance, as the alcoholic father in a race against the clock to save his son, whom we know is innocent, from being executed for murder. The film takes aim at capital punishment.Read More »

Plot: Joe Pesci is a small man looking for a big break. Owner of a bowling alley and nightclub in Jersey, Ruby Dennis (Pesci) sets his sites on making it big in Vegas. But Ruby finds more than he gambled for and in the end is a much bigger man for it.

Many of the crew members from this film went on from this production to work on John Sayles’ Baby It’s You the following year, including cinematographer ‘Michael Ballhaus’. Sayles’ film was released first in the U.S. while “Dear Mr. Wonderful” premiered in Germany in 1982.Read More »

Synopsis:
Adapted by Nichola Bruce from the acclaimed photographic novel by Timothy O’Grady and Steve Pyke. I Could Read the Sky is a haunting and lyrical film about identity, love, loss, and the isolation and loneliness of the immigrant. Dermot Healy movingly portrays a man reflecting upon his life, from his rural upbringing on the West Coast of Ireland to his journey to London and experiences in the vividly modern metropolis. Driven by a dynamic music soundtrack that draws from both environments, the film is a labyrinthine, visually extraordinary journey into the textures, fragments, details and layers of one man’s life and memories.Read More »

Synopsis:
Westerplatte is a small peninsula at the entry to the Gdansk Harbour. Before World War II, it functioned as a Polish ammunition depot in the Free City of Danzig/Gdansk. Its crew consisted of one infantry company and a group of civilians, 182 people in total. It was the only Polish guard-post at the mouth of the Vistula River, with as little as five sentries, one field cannon, two anti-armour guns and four mortars. It was the first obstacle to Hitler’s predatory march across Europe. The first shots of World War II were fired here. This film tells the story of Westerplatte’s courageous defenders.Read More »

Boys (Drenge) is Nils Malmros’ first movie made in collaboration with a professional film crew. Even so, the movie has a very mature feel to it and the feeling of authenticity from Malmros’ earlier film “Lars Ole, 5C” remains. Boys is, together with “Lars Ole, 5C” and “Tree of Knowledge” part of Malmros’ “Ole”-triology.Read More »

Pandora’s Box (German: Die Büchse der Pandora) is a 1929 German silent film based on Frank Wedekind’s plays Erdgeist (Earth Spirit, 1895) and Die Büchse der Pandora (1904). Directed by Austrian filmmaker Georg Wilhelm Pabst, the film stars Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner and Francis Lederer. Brooks’ portrayal of a seductive, thoughtless young woman whose raw sexuality and uninhibited nature bring ruin to herself and those who love her, although initially unappreciated, eventually made the actress a star.Read More »

Destinées (US: Daughters of destiny) is a triptych about women in war: One part, “Elizabeth”, is about American war-widow (Claudette Colbert) who goes to Italy where her husband was in WW II; “Jeanne” tells the life of Jeanne d’Arc (Michèle Morgan); “Lysistrata” (Martine Carol) is about Athenian wives, adaptation of the Greek play.Read More »

Vera Baxter is talking to a woman. It seems that the woman was attracted to her by hearing her name called out: “Baxter, Vera Baxter.” In response to her new friend’s queries, Vera recounts the story of her life.
The story begins with his marriage to Jean. Vera is a faithful wife to the point that her husband pays a man to be unfaithful to him, according to him, adultery paid revitalize the desire of the couple. But this does not happen and Vera will not see him anymore.Read More »

In Ostkreuz (1991), Michael Klier tells the episodic story of 15-year-old Elfie, who literally and metaphorically inhabits a no-man’s-land between the two Germanys during the Wende, and deploys a neorealist aesthetic to reinforce the difficulties confronting the girl, and by inference, Germany. (Filmgalerie 451)Read More »