This is the movie that gave Clara Bow, the film world’s first sex symbol, her lasting nickname. She will allways be “The It Girl”. “IT” is roughly sex appeal, or in the words of novellist Elinor Glyn: “‘IT’ is that quality possessed by some which draws all others with its magnetic force. With ‘IT’ you will win all men if you are a woman—and all women if you are a man. ‘IT’ can be a quality of the mind as well as a physical attraction.”Read More »
Synopsis
A compelling but very strange relationship between a young and lonely fourteen-year-old girl and a mute peasant farmer is at the core of this curious film by Raphaele Billetdoux. Elisabeth (Penelope Palmer) has reason to be unhappy at home so when she meets Marcel (Klaus Kinski), a farmer who indulges her, the two enjoy many an innocent moment together every morning before she leaves for school. Eventually, Elisabeth’s parents send her off to study the organ because of her musical talent. As a result, she begins to develop her abilities and grow beyond the relationship she once had with Marcel. But the mute farmer does not necessarily see this change from Elisabeth’s perspective.Read More »
This story opens in 1938 in Rome, where Marcello has just taken a job working for Mussollini and is courting a beautiful young woman who will make him even more of a conformist. Marcello is going to Paris on his honeymoon and his bosses have an assignment for him there. Look up an old professor who fled Italy when the fascists came into power. At the border of Italy and France, where Marcello and his bride have to change trains, his bosses give him a gun with a silencer. In a flashback to 1917, we learn why sex and violence are linked in Marcello’s mind.Read More »
Warning: Spoilers Ahead
Quote:
There’s an elegance that graces every frame of Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite (aka Gisaengchung). From the stunning home of Mr. Park (Sun-kyun) to the slums where the Kim family resides, every shot is deliberate and masterfully constructed, resulting in a movie that is a visual wonder. Everything else about the film is just as expertly done, the story and the acting all top-notch. Joon-ho’s film blends a multitude of genres, collecting them all under the umbrella of “dark comedy”, which this film certainly encapsulates. Undeniably funny and sometimes shockingly emotional, Joon-ho’s film is about class disparity and the lengths people will go through in order to survive.Read More »
Synopsis:
For some time now, women coming home at night have been savagely murdered by a mysterious serial killer. Inspector Lagrume thinks he has found the culprit in the person of Barberot, a local butcher. But Maigret, who takes over the investigation, is not convinced. Deep inside himself, he knows the murderer is still at large. But how to trap him ?Read More »
Schroeter set out to make a film about Marilyn Monroe ten years after her death as a meditation on the new feminism in America. The result was this bizarre chamber melodrama about three women who turn an abandoned shack in the Mojave Desert into a kind of Charles Manson commune. The three lure men to their lair, force them to have sex, then rob and murder them. With a music track that includes Bizet, Yugoslavian folk tunes, the Andrews Sisters and the Blue Ridge Rangers, Schroeter fashions a spectacle of female power which critics have compared to Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant and Altman’s Three Women.
– San Francisco CinemathequeRead More »
Plot summary: (from Variety.com)
A Hong Kong police surveillance unit finds itself caught up in the rough-and-tumble of underworld violence in smart action-thriller “Eye in the Sky,” helming debut of longtime Johnnie To scripter Yau Nai-hoi. Well-received at its world preem in Berlin’s Forum, and stuffed with To regulars on both sides of the camera, this looks to have a similar fest and distribution arc to the best of To’s own signed movies, and will be welcomed by the same aficionados.Read More »
After several false starts, opera star Grace Moore became a motion picture success in the sublimely assembled One Night of Love. Moore opens the film by losing a radio talent contest in New York. She disconsolately heads to Europe, where the best job she can come up with is singing in a restaurant. Here she is discovered by brilliant voice-teacher Tulio Carminatti, who carefully nurtures Moore until she becomes the toast of the European opera world. The two fall in love, but jealousy nearly destroys them both… Read More »
Quote:
This film is mesmerising, not least because the director, René Allio, chose to use a cast entirely made up of real villagers from the area where the events took place. They serve him well, because the film has an authenticity and naturalness which would have been impossible to capture with trained actors. Based on the book by the French philosopher, Michel Foucault, the film charts the gruesome events that took place in a village in Normandy in 1835.Read More »