USA

An official selection of Cannes Critics Week and winner of the Special Jury Prize at SXSW, THE MYTH OF THE AMERICAN SLEEPOVER is a youthful and tender coming-of-age drama from first-time writer/director David Robert Mitchell.Read More »

Raoul Walsh had just come off The Birth of a Nation both as one of Griffith’s assistant directors and as an actor (most prominently as John Wilkes Booth), when he made this film. In his autobiography, Walsh credits Griffith with “teaching” him not only about much of the art of fiction filmmaking, but also about production management technics that aided him in taking full advantage of many of New York City’s most pictorial exterior locations. The locations play an important role in adding to the naturalism of an otherwise highly melodramatic plot with the high society young woman turned heroine social worker (much overplayed by a major star of the 1910s, Anna Q Nilsson) and the regeneration of the one-time Lower Manhatan gang leader. The wonder of this film is the performance of the male “star”, Rockliffe Fellowes, who played in over a dozen nearly unremembered films until he died in 1950. His performance is so subtly varied and electrically alive that one is reminded of Brando in his early 1950s films.Read More »

Description: They All Laughed is less a comedy than an extended love letter—there’s a rambling, awkward tone to the film, and in places it’s so unabashedly personal that certain viewers may flinch from the self-exposure. Ritter’s character is openly a Bogdanovich surrogate—he even wears the director’s trademark horn-rimmed glasses, and he helps Stratten escape an overbearing, jealous husband. The romance between Hepburn and Gazzara is rooted in their real-life affair, and the regret felt by Hepburn’s character references her own status as an aging star. And though the humor in the film is squarely in the neo-screwball style of What’s Up Doc—lightning-quick dialogue, pratfalls, double-takes, blink-and-you-missed it innuendo—They All Laughed, with its sudden shifts in tone and lack of conventional narrative, moves that style into the realm of the European art film.Read More »

A documentary on the life and films of director John Ford.

Plot Synopsis by Clarke Fountain
This documentary profiles the great American filmmaker John Ford (1895-1973). Among the films he directed were The Young Lincoln, Stagecoach, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and The Grapes of Wrath. Ford’s work was distinguished by its great emotional clarity, which some see as sentimentality, and storytelling which evokes and defines what it is to be American. The film features interviews with Ford and with many of his stars, as well as exemplary clips from his films. Many of Ford’s films were westerns, and interviews with him are filmed in Monument Valley, one of his favorite film settings. It is narrated by director Peter Bogdonavich, whose own work shows Ford’s influence. Among the actors interviewed are John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda.Read More »

The Bobo is a 1967 film starring Peter Sellers and co-starring his then-wife Britt Ekland. Based on a play, Sellers is featured as the would-be Spanish singing matador, Juan Bautista.

A theater manager offers to give him a big break if he seduces the beautiful Olympia (Ekland) and spends an hour in her apartment with the lights off. The plot centers around Juan’s attempts to woo the woman and famously includes Sellers covered in blue dye as the “Blue Matador.”Read More »

Description: Miranda “no relation” Presley is a singer-songwriter from New York City who comes to Nashville to make it big in country music. As do 10,000 fellow hopefuls. After arriving in the Music City after a long bus ride, Miranda makes her way top the Bluebird Cafe, a local watering hole with a reputation as a showcase for new talent. The bar’s owner, Lucy, takes a shine to the plucky newcomer, and gives her a job as a waitress. Miranda befriends three fellow hopefuls: shy Connecticut cowboy Kyle, Southern belle Linda Lue and James Wright, a cocky Texan with brooding good looks and a tormented artist attitude. A love triangle between Miranda, Kyle and James ensues. Together they embark on a rocky ride down Music city´s well-worn highway of hope, heartbreak and the thing called love.Read More »

Plot:
Gus (George Winslow) is the young son of divorced industrialist Dave Jennings (Richard Widmark). Unable to cope with Gus’ mischievous streak, Jennings places the boy in a day-care center. Gus’ teacher Lydia Marble (Joanne Dru) manages to curb the boy’s prankishness, and along the way falls in love with Jennings. Enter the villainess of the piece: Jennings’ ex-wife Joyce (Audrey Totter), who claims that the divorce is invalid and demands a huge sum from Jennings, lest she claim custody of Gus. In the end, it comes down to priorities: does Jennings value his son over his money, or vice versa? My Pal Gus is no Kramer vs. Kramer, but it does pass the time in an agreeable manner.Read More »

Plot Synopsis by Mark Deming
In this caper comedy, Duffy (James Coburn) is a shaggy bohemian living in Tangiers who is approached for a less-than-legal business proposition by two half-brothers, carefree Stephane Calvert (James Fox) and stuffy businessman Antony Calvert (John Alderton). Though Stephane and Antony had different mothers, they share the same father, and they both hate him; Charles Calvert (James Mason) is a mean-spirited multi-millionaire who shows his sons little affection and isn’t very interested in cutting them in for the family fortune. Charles plans to transport several million dollars in banknotes by ship from Tangiers to Marseilles, and the brothers want Duffy to help them liberate the money from the ship. While the Calvert Brothers are persuasive, Stephane’s beautiful girlfriend Segolene (Suzannah York) is even more so, and Duffy finds that he not only wants to steal the cash from Charles, but the girl away from Stephane. Duffy was scripted by Donald Cammell, who gained a cult reputation for his first directorial effort, the Mick Jagger vehicle Performance.Read More »

Synopsis:

In Los Angeles, artist Sonny Malone reluctantly returns to his job at Airflow Records – his job to do poster-sized exact renderings of album covers for on-site promotions, the renderings to be as close to the originals as possible – as he could not make a living as a freelance artist, where he could truly use his artistic vision. On his first day back at Airflow, he gets sidetracked by the thoughts of a young woman who literally roller skates into him. What he is unaware of is that their initial encounter and subsequent encounters are not by accident as she, Kira, a muse, was awakened by his lamentations about his art, she sent to help him achieve his artistic vision. This day, Sonny also meets aging Danny McGuire, a former big band musician turned construction company owner, he who wants to return to his roots by owning a live music venue. Danny initially and Sonny also do not know that their meeting is not by accident as Sonny will soon discover that Kira was part of his past. Sonny and Danny achieving their dreams is threatened by Kira knowingly albeit unpurposefully having broken the rules.Read More »