USA

Quote:
Wildly inventive and effortlessly enchanting, Maurice Tourneur’s legendary 1918 fantasy The Blue Bird combines spectacular costumes, lavish sets, ingenious camera effects and disarmingly naturalistic performances in a wholly original American silent film masterpiece. Tourneur’s extravagant vision anticipates the spellbinding German Expressionism of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, made the following year, while affectionately evoking the whimsical theatricality of Georges Méliès’s pioneering cinematic genius.Read More »

Plot Summary:
Madariaga is an Argentinian cattle baron with two daughters: one married a Frenchman, the other a German. Madariaga favors his French grandson, Julio, as his heir, but Julio is a wastrel and rake whose greatest achivement is tangoing well. When Madariaga dies, his fortune is split between his daughters. The German side of the family goes back to Berlin, while the French half moves to Paris, where Julio becomes a painter and falls in love with Marguerite, a married woman. When WWI explodes (and is described by the mystic Tchernoff as the coming Apocalypse), and Marguerite’s husband is blinded, Julio decides he must join the army, and becomes a reformed character. But Death hasn’t finished gathering his harvest yet and Julio must face his own cousin on the battlefield.Read More »

Synopsis:
A fictionalized account of the latter part of the life of French artist Henri de Toulouse Lautrec (1864-1901) is presented, he who is arguably most renowned professionally for immortalizing the characters of the Paris can-can dance hall, the Moulin Rouge, on canvas. This phase of his story begins in 1890. Born into aristocracy, Toulouse-Lautrec moves to Paris to pursue his art as he hangs out at the Moulin Rouge where he feels like he fits in being a misfit among other misfits. His misfit status is due to his diminutive physical stature, his legs which were broken and stopped growing following a childhood fall down some stairs.Read More »

Milestone Films wrote:
A key masterpiece of the L.A Rebellion, Bless Their Little Hearts distills the social concerns and aesthetics of that trailblazing movement in African American cinema. Billy Woodberry’s film showcases his attentive eye, sensitivity to the nuances of community and family, and the power of the blues.Read More »

Quote:
After a series of mysterious murders, a Miami detective goes undercover to try and solve the crimes, but there’s one small catch: in order to find the killer the detective must infiltrate a drag ball on a cruise ship dressed in full female garb.Read More »

At the start of WWII, Katie O’Hara, an American burlesque girl intent on social climbing, marries Austrian Baron Von Luber. Pat O’Toole, an American radio reporter, sees this as a chance to investigate Von Luber, who is suspected of having Nazi ties. As country after country falls to the Nazis, O’Tool follows O’Hara across Europe. At first he is after a story, but he gradually falls in love with her. When she learns that her husband is indeed a Nazi, O’Hara fakes her death and runs off with O’Toole. In Paris, she is recruited to spy for the allies; he uses a radio broadcast to make Von Luber and the Nazis look like fools.Read More »

Quote:
Tonsler Park (2017) observes, in black and white 16mm, the democratic process in action, at Charlottesville, Virginia voting precincts, over the course of Election Day, November 8, 2016.Read More »

Plot:
The sparkling screwball comedy And So They Were Married was originally released as Johnny Doesn’t Live Here Any More. French-Canadian girl Simone Simon leases a Washington DC apartment from Marine William Terry. Since the Nation’s Capital is overcrowded (wartime, don’t you know), Simon must put up with a steady parade of Terry’s old cronies and girlfriends, all of whom have keys to the apartment. She also becomes the romantic bone of contention between Terry and his sailor pal James Ellison. The last half of the film is dominated by Robert Mitchum as a Chief Petty Officer, who wants to rent the apartment for himself and his wife.Read More »

Synopsis:
Though his people, the Israelites, are enslaved by the Philistines, Samson (Victor Mature), strongest man of the tribe of Dan, falls in love with the Philistine Semadar (Dame Angela Lansbury), whom he wins by virtue of a contest of strength. But Semadar betrays him, and Samson engages in a fight with her real love, Ahtur (Henry Wilcoxon), and his soldiers. Semadar is killed, and her sister Delilah (Hedy Lamarr), who had loved Samson in silence, now vows vengeance against him. She plans to seduce Samson into revealing the secret of his strength and then to betray him to the Philistine leader, The Saran of Gaza (George Sanders).Read More »