Synopsis:
An imaginative lad of about ten has a couple of problems: he wets his bed, and his parents are abusive and disgusting. In a spare room, he finds a bag of seeds, which he plants in soil that he’s placed in the middle of a single bed. The seed sprouts and grows into a grandmother, who’s loving and approving. Life with his parents and with his imagination continues. Is a smiling grandmother enough to get him through?Read More »
Synopsis:
Mr. Grodman was a respected superintendent at Scotland Yard until a mistake in an investigation caused the execution of an innocent man. He takes the blame and is dismissed, replaced by the obnoxious, gloating Buckley. Feeling vengeful, Grodman would like nothing more than to see Buckley look foolish on the job. His friend Victor Emmric, an artist with macabre tastes, wouldn’t mind either and soon a mysterious murder occurs that may provide them with the chance.Read More »
Though we imagine ourselves on the cutting edge of the future, Local Color shows what a creaky old house we live in, haunted by melodramatic ghosts, reverberating with imaginative echoes. There is (in Rappaport’s own description) enough plot to choke a horse, but the real subject is how unimportant actions and events are. Everything that matters happens inside. Local Color has the ironclad logic not of life, but a dream. Everything means something. Everyone is connected to everyone else. Fantasies migrate from one person to another. Read More »
Chain Letters is Rappaport’s most deliciously lush and Byzantine work, It poses a mystery, but while most mysteries want us to dive down and excavate secrets, Rappaport insists that we ice skate the fractured, opaque surfaces. Strange puzzles, symmetries, and coincidences abound. Doppelgangers and mirror-image anti-types lurk around every corner. But you would have to be paranoid to try to connect the dots. Or would you? Could there be a key that unlocks the mysteries of life? Or is that the real mystery? Can you break the chains of code? One character in the film believes all of life is a plot orchestrated by a vast government bureaucracy, but Rappaport tells us that the bureaucracy of the imagination puts that of the Pentagon to shame. The real plots are in our brains–the plots that form the haunted graveyard of Western civilization.”Read More »
Plot Synopsis from allmovie:
Based on a Pushkin novel, The Eagle stars Rudolph Valentino as a Russian cossack who is the special favorite of the formidable Catherine the Great (Louise Dresser). He spurns her attentions, preferring not to be a kept consort. When his lands are stolen from him, Valentino transforms into a Robin-Hood-like masked avenger. Vilma Banky plays the daughter of the man who killed Valentino’s own father. Despite his thirst for revenge, our hero falls in love with Vilma, who goes the “Lois Lane” route of adoring the masked-avenger Valentino but disdaining the unmasked Rudy, little guessing that the two are one in the same. Watch quickly for Gary Cooper as one of Valentino’s masked minionsRead More »
Synopsis:
Thirty years before Arizona achieves statehood, scam artist James Addison Reavis (Vincent Price) cooks up an elaborate scheme to claim the territory as his own. Reavis convinces Mexican immigrant Pepito (Vladimir Sokoloff) that his daughter is the heir to a barony of land granted by Spain, and then departs for years of patient efforts to create a false paper trail. He returns years later to claim the now-grown heir, Sofia (Ellen Drew), as his wife, but will his plan withstand scrutiny?Read More »
Joe Norson, an expectant father and a New York City postman of modest means is chased by both cops and crooks when he steals a shipment of dirty money.
New Crime Story
The respectable but somewhat tedious formula of M-G-M’: “Crime Does Not Pay” shorts has been used by that studio for “Side Street,” a feature-length drama of crime and its profitless consequences, which came to the Palace yesterday. The story is semi-documentary, being a detailed account of the fearful adventures of a young mail carrier who recklessly steals a wad of money that is “hot,” and it is played for considerable realism against the actuality background of New York. In the principal role, Farley Granger makes a vividly terrorized lad, and James Craig, Paul Kelly and Edmon Ryan stand out as assorted thugs and cops.Read More »
Greek actress Melina Mercouri made her English-language film debut in The Gypsy and the Gentleman. Mercouri plays tempestuous gypsy girl Belle, while the “gentleman” is Sir Paul Deverill (Keith Michell). Escaping an arranged marriage, Sir Paul weds the bewitching Belle,who intends to take him for every penny he’s got, then move on to other lovers. Imagine her disappointment when she discovers that her prize catch is flat broke. All sorts of bizarre complications ensue, including the kidnapping of an heiress (June Laverick) by Belle’s gypsy compadres. Gypsy and the Gentleman was directed by American expatriate Joseph Losey, whose British film career wouldn’t truly get off the ground until his collaborations with Harold Pinter in the 1960s.by Hal EricksonRead More »
Quote:
In the first few minutes of Kevin Everson’s new film Spicebush, the screen splits into two frames, one showing a brick factory employee at work, the other a hostess announcing the winning numbers for the Ohio lottery. The juxtaposition serves as context, but it’s clear from the rest of the movie that Everson’s interest lies in the relentlessness of labor. Perhaps this is not a coincidence—he works indefatigably. Currently, 39-year-old Everson is making final edits to Spicebush, casting a new feature film, and working on a screenplay with playwright and historian Talaya Delaney—all in addition to teaching a full course load in art at the University of Virginia.Read More »