Many years ago, in a nearly deserted town at the foot of a mountain, lives Agostino with his wife Nina and his son Giovanni. The mountain rises up like a wall blocking out the sun that never reaches their fields below, now reduced to just stones and underbrush. Agostino, even though everything suggests him to leave, decides that the destiny of his family is there, among the peaks. He is not only driven by stubbornness, but by the certainty that our roots cannot betray us and that with the help of our spirit we can bring the sun on every destiny.Read More »

From Kinji Fukasaku (Battles Without Honor & Humanity) comes this pivotal early crime drama in the celebrated career of the director who changed the face of Japanese action cinema. Stylish and hard-boiled, Sympathy for the Underdog stars Koji Tsuruta, one of Japan’s seminal figures in the Yakuza genre, as Gunji, an aging Yakuza who is released from prison after ten years. Gunji lives by a code of honor that has no place among Tokyo’s modern corporate gangs. He gets a new lease on life by reforming his former gang and taking over the whiskey trade on the island of Okinawa. But he is forced to make a final, fateful, bloody stand against the mainland gang that sent him to prison.Read More »

Dressed to Kill, also known as Prelude to Murder (working title) and Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Code (in the UK), is the last of fourteen films starring Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Doctor Watson.

Though not directly based on any of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes stories, the film features several references to “A Scandal in Bohemia”, with Holmes and Watson discussing the recent publication of the story in The Strand Magazine, and the villain of the film using the same trick on Watson that Holmes uses on Irene Adler in the story. The plot also bears some resemblance to “The Adventure of the Six Napoleons”.Read More »

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Legendary actor Ben Gazzara made his feature film debut in The Strange One, recreating his Broadway role in Calder Willingham’s gripping “End as a Man”. Gazzara stars as Cadet Sgt. Jocko De Paris, a sadomasochistic bully in a Southern military academy who uses his magnetism and the school’s own military code to manipulate his fellow cadets and officers. When he engineers the expulsion of a hated rival, his reign of terror begins to unravel.Read More »

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The life and the impact of iconic German New Wave director, Rainer Werner Fassbinder.Read More »

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Farmers and their families, engineers, technicians, criminals and prostitutes were acquired on the construction of industrial facilities in Zenica. Siba tries to help them, working with dedication and love that goes beyond his duty. It is difficult to satisfy everyone and achieve more in this scorching city and Siba makes mistakes, carried by desire to achieve the impossible. With great effort, the builders manage to overcome the maelstrom after the dam burst, and while the first iron runs from the new furnace, Siba, dismissed because of errors committed, leaves a boom town of Zenica.Read More »

A girl loves an older man. He demands that she goes in a brothel, as evidence that she loves him.

Shuji Terayama adapted his 1981 film, The Fruits of Passion, from the eponymous Pauline Reage’s sequel to her well regarded book, The Story of O. However, ‘adapted’ is used very loosely in this instance, as Terayama uses the opportunity to completely reshape the structure of the novel, and use only it’s themes and characters to create a story that is uniquely his. According to the credits, the text of the narration and O’s dialogue itself was taken directly from the short novel, but everything else is pure Terayama.Read More »

The director takes us to a cemetery for dogs.Read More »

Errol Flynn duels into action in Warner Bros.’ spectacular, spirited film of Mark Twain’s classic novel. Amid 16th-century England’s pomp and poverty, two lookalike lads, one a beggar and one young Edward VI, exchange identities for a lark. But their switch backfires and it’s up to soldier of fortune Miles Hendon (Flynn) to turn the tables on a conspirator (Claude Rains) and return the correct lad to the throne. Flynn’s rakish persona, William Keighley’s brisk direction, Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s score and the spry performances of twins Billy and Bobby Mauch helped many a film fan form an enchanted view of olde England. That view is just as rousing today. The Prince and the Pauper is regal all-family entertainment.Read More »