Miranda is a beautiful woman who runs a local tavern. After the loss of her husband in WWII, she tries out a variety of men. Over the course of four seasons she meets four men: in Winter the rich old council; in Spring there is the young chauffeur; in Summer the American G.I.; and in Autumn, the servant of the Tavern. Now she has to make a decision, who would be the best lover as well husband.Read More »
Lucio Marcaccini’s only film, Hallucination Strip is a psychedelic trip with a social commentary. Bud Cort, in his debut performance, plays Massimo Monaldi, a student involved in political protests and juvenile delinquency. When Massimo steals a valuable tobacco box, he quickly becomes tangled in a dangerous web between the police and the mafia. Culminating in an extended and elaborately choreographed party sequence, underscored with an excellent soundtrack by Albert Verrecchia, Hallucination Strip excels with it’s not-so-subtle mix of sex, drugs, religion, politics and corruption.Read More »
This film is a series of letters, photos and video cassettes which women often send in to certain newspapers. By visualizing their story-telling (the name given by the psychologists to their fantasies) the film portrays the confessions, the secret longings, the adventures, recollections, dreams, desires and fantasies of these women. It is an open secret that most women dream of forbidden affairs, secret lovers and hasty encounters but when it comes down to it they lack the courage to pursue their dreams.Read More »
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This brooding, operatic movie about Nazism makes Cabaret look like wholesome family fare. The family in The Damned is a symbol of German society circa 1934. The Krupp-like steel magnate Baron von Essenbeck represents the spineless establishment. The Nazis kill the baron, then frame one heir apparent, a socialist (married to the stunning Charlotte Rampling). A bearish, boorish Essenbeck representing the SA, the Nazis’ early goon squad, takes the reins. But Hitler murdered the SA in the 1934 “Night of the Long Knives,” providing The Damned with its bravura action scene, a Nazi massacre at a gay SA orgy. The winning Essenbeck is the murderous, pedophilic, transvestite, mother-rapist Martin (sharp-featured Helmut Berger), who represents Nazism. Though he’s better in director Luchino Visconti’s 1971 Death in Venice, Dirk Bogarde is classy as Martin’s stepdad. The Damned got an Oscar screenplay nomination, and Vincent Canby called Berger’s Martin “the performance of the year.”Read More »
In 1867, with Garibaldi’s forces close to bringing Rome into the Italian kingdom, Monsignor Colombo da Priverno, a world-weary judge on the papal court, wants to resign, disgusted by the violence to which the papacy resorts to hold secular power. That night, three rebels blow up the Zouaves’ barracks. Colombo learns that a brief liaison with a countess 20 years’ before produced a son, one of the rebels arrested for the bombing. He uses his influence to gain the youth’s release, hides him, and then engages in doomed battles of wit with the court and with the Black Pope to free the other two. Can this priest be a father, blunt power, and live out his faith?Read More »
Synopsis:
While looking for a stolen diamond necklace,the private investigator Bob Martin uncovers a smart serial killer.
Review:
DEATH KNOCKS TWICE is an excellent vehicle for both leading man Dean Reed (in this film he reminds me of a cross between James Franciscus, Tab Hunter, and the pre-burnout Jan-Michael Vincent), who plays a detective out to solve a murder and robbery while stumbling across other corrupt activities, and for leading hunk Fabio Testi, who opens the film with a semi-nude outdoor love scene and seems to play half the film without his shirt on.Read More »
Hanna is a young woman with a dysfunctional family background who becomes addictive to heroin and takes up with a guy who pimps her out. As her life begins to slide, she meets a nice young man who falls in love with her and she tries to get clean but her old life will hunt her down.Read More »
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THE ORIGINS OF SCIENTIFIC CINEMATOGRAPHY is a documentary film series directed by Virgilio Tosi. The films complement Tosi’s book Cinema Before Cinema, using archive film and original equipment to show how cinematography had its origins not in the music hall or the fairground, but in the laboratory, as scientists of the 19th and early 20th centuries attempted to find new ways of seeing and measuring the natural world.Read More »
From the IMDb:
“Emma Bovary is bored by her country doctor husband and gives in to the affections of several rich suitors as well as the temptation of living beyond her husband’s means.”Read More »