USA

  • Andrew V. McLaglen – McLintock! (1963)

    1961-1970Andrew V. McLaglenComedyUSAWestern

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Plot:
    John Wayne’s most popular film of the 60s is a broad, boisterous comedy-western loosely based on William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. Wayne in his two-fisted best stars as a George Washington Mclintock, a middle-aged cattle baron (John Wayne) who has his hands full with his estranged wife (Maureen O’Hara) – she walked out on him 2 years ago without a word and has returned to get a divorce in order to move back to the east with their daughter,Becky (Stefanie Powers). Verbal fireworks explode, slapstick pratfalls bloom, and the Wayne-O’Hara “reconciliation” culminates with the biggest mud-hole brawl this side of the Mississippi. Patrick Wayne, Yvonne De Carlo, Chill Wills, Strother Martin and Jerry Van Dyke are among the dazzling supporting cast in this wild, raucous and hilarious western. Directed by Andrew V. McLaglen (Cahill U.S. Marshall). Read More »

  • Peter Bogdanovich – Saint Jack [+Extras] (1979)

    1971-1980DramaPeter BogdanovichQueer Cinema(s)USA

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Quote:
    After a couple of major studio flops, Peter Bogdanovich returned to his 1960s filmmaking roots with this Roger Corman-produced low budget film. Easygoing expatriate Jack Flowers (Ben Gazzara) makes his living in early-1970s Singapore legally and illegally looking after the needs of American and British businessmen, such as the mild-mannered William Leigh (Denholm Elliott). With his gift for putting clients and girls at ease, Jack opens a successful brothel, but pressure from local mobsters soon puts him out of business. Ever the survivor, he starts working for the shady, Cuban-cigar-smoking Eddie Schuman (Bogdanovich) as a pimp for GIs on breaks from Vietnam. But Jack’s conscience starts to dog him when Schuman hires him to take compromising pictures of a visiting Senator (George Lazenby). Adapted by Bogdanovich, Howard O. Sackler, and Paul Theroux from Theroux’s novel, Saint Jack offers a pimp with a heart of gold, who is less an ugly colonial American abroad than an outsider trying to make the best of a bad situation.Read More »

  • Carolee Schneemann – Fuses (1964 – 1966)

    1961-1970Amos Vogel: Film as a Subversive ArtCarolee SchneemannEroticaExperimentalUSA

    http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/7506/vlcsnap2010051118h37m53.png

    A silent film of collaged and painted sequences of lovemaking between Schneemann and her then partner, composer James Tenney; observed by the cat, Kitch.

    Carolee Schneemann wrote:
    …I wanted to see if the experience of what I saw would have any correspondence to what I felt– the intimacy of the lovemaking… And I wanted to put into that materiality of film the energies of the body, so that the film itself dissolves and recombines and is transparent and dense– as one feels during lovemaking… It is different from any pornographic work that you’ve ever seen– that’s why people are still looking at it! And there’s no objectification or fetishization of the womanRead More »

  • Richard Elfman – Forbidden Zone (1980)

    1971-1980CultMusicalRichard ElfmanUSA

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Quote:
    Oingo Boingo fans and midnight movie mavens will love this bizarre black-and-white feature packed with music, madness, and members of the Elfman clan. The story revolves around the Hercules family, who live in a house that just happens to hide a secret entrance to the Sixth Dimension in the basement. When daughter Frenchy (Marie-Pascale Elfman) skips school one afternoon, she finds herself irresistibly drawn to the forbidden door, and winds up a prisoner in this alternate world. King Fausto (Herve Villechaize), the diminutive leader of the Sixth Dimension, is enamored with the beautiful young Frenchy and keeps her in the same cell as his favorite concubines, despite the disapproval of Queen Doris (Susan Tyrrell).Read More »

  • Jules Dassin – Brute Force [+Extras] (1947)

    1941-1950250 Quintessential Film NoirsCrimeFilm NoirJules DassinUSA

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    The meanest, heaviest, most unrelentingly grim hunk of American cinema you’re likely to see– at least prior to 1950– Brute Force is an explosive hybrid mixing aspects of the string of stark prison melodramas that stretch back to the silent era, and the broodingly dark crime dramas that sprung up in the postwar 1940’s that we’ve since come to identify as Film Noir.

    One of my personal favorite ‘noir’s of all time, Brute Force features a young, highly flammable Burt Lancaster (in his second film role, his followup to Siodmak’s The Killers, another crime drama produced by Mark Hellinger) in the role of inmate Joe Collins, a part that seems to fit him like a glove. A seething prisoner barely able to contain his rage over his incarceration and the vicious machinations of the warden, Joe dominates the men in his cellblock by the raw power of his presence.Read More »

  • Raoul Walsh – Me and My Gal (1932)

    1931-1940ComedyDramaRaoul WalshUSA

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Synopsis:
    Young New York cop Dan falls in love with waterfront waitress Helen. Helen’s sister Kate falls for gangster Duke. Dan must do in Duke.Read More »

  • Edgar G. Ulmer – Ruthless (1948)

    1941-1950250 Quintessential Film NoirsClassicsEdgar G. UlmerFilm NoirUSA

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Quote:
    Multi-millionaire Horace Woodruff Vendig (Zachary Scott) shows himself to the world as an ambitious philanthropist, but that’s far from the case. Even as a young man he starts to exhibit an obsessive and selfish urge to make more and more money, loving and leaving women at will to further this end. Vendig steps on and rolls over anyone who stands in his way, including his lifelong friend Vic Lambdin (Louis Hayward), utilities executive Buck Mansfield (Sydney Greenstreet) and various women, among them his first and only love, Martha Burnside (Diana Lynn), socialite Susan Duane (Martha Vickers) and Buck’s wife, Christa Mansfield (Lucille Bremer). It is a tribute to the acting skills of Scott that he makes his despicable character somehow likeable and sympathetic. The stellar cast includes Raymond Burr, Edith Barrett, Dennis Hoey and Joyce Arling. One of the few big-budgeted projects helmed by cult director Edgar G. Ulmer (Detour).Read More »

  • Anthony Mann – The Tin Star (1957)

    1951-1960Anthony MannUSAWestern

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Synopsis
    Veteran bounty-hunter Morg Hickman rides into a town in danger. The sheriff has been killed, and young inexperienced Ben Owens named a temporary replacement until a permanent can be found. Ben wants to be that permanent replacement, so needs to impress the townspeople with his skill. When he finds that Morg was a sheriff for a long time before he became a bounty-hunter, he asks the older man to teach him. Morg thinks that being a sheriff is a foolish goal, but agrees to instruct Ben in handling people, more important to a sheriff than handling a gun.Read More »

  • Matthew Porterfield – Take What You Can Carry (2015)

    2011-2020ArthouseDramaMatthew PorterfieldMumblecoreUSA

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    A character study as well as a meditation on communication, creativity, and physical space, Take What You Can Carry is a picture of a young woman seen through the interiors she occupies and the company she keeps. A North American living abroad, Lilly aspires to shape an intimate and private place of her own while connecting to the world around her. When she receives a letter from home, it provides the conduit she needs to fuse her transient self with the person she’s always known herself to be.Read More »

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