USA

from slate.com:
The unabashedly teensy-budgeted Funny Ha Ha, written and directed by Andrew Bujalski, is actually more like Funny Strange—or even Funny Unsettling. You might be tempted to walk out in the first 20 minutes, which seem artless and aimless: not very fascinating people making not very fascinating small talk in drab settings. The by-default protagonist, Marnie (Kate Dollenmayer), is a listless 23-year-old between jobs and quietly smitten with an old friend, Alex (Christian Rudder), who has just broken up with his girlfriend. Does Alex like her? Other friends, among them Alex’s sister, don’t quite know. Alex, it seems, doesn’t quite know. Marnie doesn’t communicate her affections very forcefully. In fact, she does nothing very forcefully. She drinks a little at parties, she lies around, she hangs out with laid-back friends, and she floats.Read More »

Quote:
Who directed Jane Eyre? The credits clearly state Robert Stevenson, but a cult of sorts has sprung up over the decades since the film’s 1943 release to claim that it was really helmed—in spirit if not in letter-by its star Orson Welles. Stevenson’s wife and kids argue quite vociferously to the contrary, and certainly the public record, while tantalizingly ambiguous about what (if anything) Welles contributed, does not seem to support this thesis. But there is simply no denying that there is a huge Wellesian influence looming over the film like one of its intrinsically Gothic shadows. Stevens and cinematographer George Barnes often frame things in much the same way Welles and his cinematographer Gregg Toland did in Citizen Kane or how Welles and Stanley Cortez approached The Magnificent Ambersons. Read More »

Freedom’s Fury is a documentary about the Hungarian water polo team of the 1956 Melbourne Olympics and the the effects of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution on the lives of the team members, with their infamous match with the Soviet team in the main focus.
The film is made up of a series of archive and recreated footage and short snippets of interviews with people directly or indirectly involved with the revolution or water polo. The material discussed is perhaps a little too extensive to fit into a ninety-minute-long documentary, but the interviews with the surviving members of both Hungarian and Soviet teams make Freedom’s Fury a memorable viewing experience.Read More »

Synopsis
Follows the creation of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s most attended fashion exhibition in history, “China: Through The Looking Glass,” an exploration of Chinese-inspired Western fashions by Costume Institute curator Andrew Bolton.A behind the scenes look at the preparations for the 2015 art exhibit, China: Through the Looking Glass held at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, commonly referred to as the Met Gala, which has become one of the hottest tickets in town.—clover140Read More »

Quote:
Small-time crook Nick Bianco gets caught in a jewel heist and despite urgings from well-meaning district attorney D’Angelo, refuses to rat on his partners and goes to jail, assured that his wife and children will be taken care of. Learning that his depressed wife has killed herself, Nick informs on his ex-pals and is paroled. Nick remarries, gets a job and begins leading a happy life when he learns one of the men he informed on, psychopathic killer Tommy Udo, has been released from custody and is out for revenge against Nick and his family.Read More »

An American boy turns out to be the long-lost heir of a British fortune. He is sent to live with the cold and unsentimental lord who oversees the trust.Read More »

Quote:
John Wayne is generally credited with having directed only one picture, the 1960 version of The Alamo, but according to several reports, Wayne also “lent a hand” in getting his other 1960 film, the raucous if unfocused and overlong North to Alaska, shot as well. North to Alaska had a rather troubled pre-production history, which in fact included Wayne’s involvement with The Alamo, which delayed production of this film for several months. Those delays may have at least contributed to a rather convoluted revolving door of producers, directors and co-stars, and by many accounts, there was no completed script ready when North to Alaska finally started shooting in mid 1960. The film has serious structure issues, and indeed often seems to have been cobbled together out of set pieces, with no real thought given to through line or that oft-lamented concept of character arc. Read More »

Free-thinking Johnny Case finds himself betrothed to a millionaire’s daughter. When her family, with the exception of black-sheep Linda and drunken Ned, want Johnny to settle a career in finance, he rebels, wishing instead to spend the early years of his life on “holiday.” With the help of his friends Nick and Susan Potter, he makes up his mind as to which is the better course, and who he’d rather take the leap with.Read More »

Quote:
LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN is set in Vienna at the turn of the century, an era Ophüls loved and had used in LA RONDE and LIEBELEI. Joan Fontaine gives a moving, heartfelt performance as Lisa Berndl, a romantic young woman who falls in love with the handsome concert pianist Stephan Brandt (Louis Jourdan).

After a brief affair, which she takes for love, not seeing that he is just a philanderer, he leaves for a concert in Italy and never returns to the now-pregnant Lisa. She bears the child herself and later enters into a stable marriage, although one lacking the passion and love she still feels for Stephan. Ten years later, when he returns to Vienna, Lisa attempts, at the risk of her marriage, to see if he loves, or even remembers her. Fontaine and Jourdan perfectly project the feelings of a woman in love and a man too selfish to notice or care.Read More »