PLOT: ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

A troubled teen discovers that reform isn’t always easy in this drama. The lad is on probation for robbery when he falls in love with a wealthy young girl.

Wanting to help him out, she gets him a job in her father’s textile mill. Things are swell there until her father is unable to find his wallet. Due to the boy’s dubious recent past, he is naturally the first suspect. Afraid that no one will believe him innocent, the boy takes off. In desperate need of quick cash, he robs a store. Eventually the police catch up to him, but by this time the wallet has been found and the boy’s gal convinces him to go face his crime and go straight for good.
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After his sister is murdered while trying to pass on information about a drug dealer, FBI agent Charles Sturgis (Victor Mature) dedicates himself to tracking down international drug kingpin Frank McNally (Trevor Howard). Traveling to London on a lead, Charles learns that McNally is difficult to identify, as he changes his appearance regularly. Charles finds McNally’s courier, Gina (Anita Ekberg), and places her in danger by following her across Europe, hoping that she’ll lead him to McNally.Read More »

Synopsis:
The world’s weather seems to have changed dramatically with violent storms everywhere and long dormant volcanoes suddenly erupting. No one is sure what is happening or why but when American intelligence chief Cramden loses yet another team of agents, there appears to be only one man who can do the job: Derek Flint, former super spy, incredibly rich and the ultimate ladies man. Despite Cramden’s concerns, Flint is on the job and soon discovers that the Earth’s weather is under the control of a secret organization known as GALAXY whose scientists are looking to pacify the world and devote humankind to scientific pursuits.Read More »

Monica Vitti is Modesty Blaise, fabulous international spy-slash-jewel thief. She is hired by Sir Gerald Terrant (Harry Andrews) of the British government — I think, but I’m not sure, for reasons I’ll explain momentarily — to make sure £50 million in diamonds gets to the proper Middle Eastern sheik in exchange for oil reserves. Modesty warns them that if she is not told the full story about the diamonds and the plans to rob them en route, she will consider herself a free agent and steal the diamonds for herself. Thus begins a strange series of events that are part spy spoof, part random stream of consciousness events, and partly based on the long-running comic strip begun in 1963.Read More »

Quote:
Dvoe aka Two aka Two in Love (Mikhail Bogin, 1965)

(confusingly, the NY Times reviewer cited below refers to this as A Ballad of Love, the English title commonly given not to this but to Bogin’s second film, O lyubvi)

A young musician courts a beautiful woman who refuses to respond to a word he says despite multiple encounters. Eventually he learns that she is completely deaf. The remainder of the film consists of their beautiful — and beautifully silent — romance.Read More »

Quote:
The man responsible for some of the funniest contemporary French films of the past thirty years (a few of which have been remade in the U.S.) releases one of his most creative and sweet-natured comedies about Francois, a dull accountant (Daniel Auteuil) who, after being forced out of the large group photo at his work for “space reasons” overhears that he is about to be fired.Read More »

Quote:
This superior melodrama with a darkly comic tinge came out at a time when Mitchell Leisen’s career was running hot after a series of successes including films like Easy Living, Midnight, and Remember the Night. It was also the last film Billy Wilder (in partnership with Charles Brackett) was content with just writing the screenplay for. He was supposedly so annoyed by the way Leisen took liberties with his script that he resolved never to cede directorial control again.Read More »

Synopsis:
David Stillwell makes his way down several flights of stairs in the dark after the lights suddenly go out in his office building. He is accompanied by an attractive woman. Thanks to his flashlight, he can see her, but she can’t see him. Still, she assumes she knows him by his voice and talks to him about someone named The Major, as if he should know who that is. The day becomes stranger when he gets outside the building and discovers that someone has apparently committed suicide by jumping out of a window. Read More »

Synopsis:
It’s the late nineteenth century Austria. The Emperor Franz-Joseph and his son, the Crown Prince, Archduke Rudolf, have never seen eye to eye. While the Emperor retains the traditions of the empire in the rapidly changing world keeping it a police state, Rudolf is liberal, wanting to see the people have a say in what happens in their lives. Rudolf even rejected the Emperor’s choice of a Spanish wife for him, he instead choosing Belgian Stephanie as his wife, that marriage which he himself never saw and will never see as anything more than a political alliance, Stephanie who he considers a shrew. Read More »