Quote:
One has to just think of a great film featuring a war and a train would automatically come to mind. While Czech cinema gave its immortal classic, ‘Closely watched trains’ directed by the legendary director Jiri Menzel to the admirers of cinema, Polish cinema also had its fair share of films depicting war where trains have played a major role. ‘Ludzie Z Pociagu’/’People on a train’ is one brilliant example of a war film featuring innocent people whose lives depended a lot on the running of a train. In this film, director Kazimierz Kutz depicts how an act of heroism involving the seizure of a gun is responsible in allowing the viewers to get a better idea of the microcosm of Polish society. Read More »

New Beverly Cinema writes:
Charlie (Mickey Rourke) is a restaurant manager and small-time hustler aspiring for more. Paulie (Eric Roberts) is his desperate, hotheaded cousin who thinks he may have just found it: the easiest money they’ll ever make, and it’s just sitting there! But the heist goes sour and attracts the ire of local mobsters. These two goombahs are taking huge risks, and their Little Italy lives start to feel a whole lot bigger. An irreverent coming-of-age tale and urban jungle crime story, The Pope of Greenwich Village captures the sensory experience of New York City, from the cut of a nice suit to wailing police sirens to the feeling of fifty thousand dollars right in your hand.Read More »

Documentary about the 1962 capes fashion, from the designing process by the stylists of “Elle” magazine to photo studio to the women wearing capes in the street.

avec FOULI ELIA, BERTHE GRANVAL, HÉLÈNE LAZAREFF & JEAN LESCOT
scénario DENISE DUBOIS-JALLAIS & JACQUES ROZIER
image WILLY KURANT
musique SERGE GAINSBOURGRead More »

Plot Synopsis by Hal Erickson
The Adventurers is set in South Africa at the end of the Boer war. Commando Pieter Brandt (Jack Hawkins) comes across the dead body of a diamond courier. Brandt buries both the courier and his valuable cache of diamonds then heads back to his regiment. After the cessation of hostilities, Brandt raises money for an expedition back into the mountainous regions where the diamonds are hidden. There’s no love lost among Brandt and his three treasure-hunting companions; particularly prickly is the relationship between Brandt and Clive Hunter (Dennis Price), whose wife is Brandt’s former fiancé. Sort of an African variation of Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Adventurers is buoyed by an unusually vicious performance by Jack Hawkins.Read More »

Sweden 1958. In a small provincial town there is a band who plays dance music twice every week. All decisions are made by Sven Klang, the undisputed leader of the band. A new member joins them, saxophone player Lasse. He starts to criticize Sven’s decisions, questions the way they divide the money and he also wants them to be more of a jazz band.

This is a very underrated movie with a strong jazz score. Norwegian cartoon artist Cristopher Nilsen has named this as the main inspiration for his Jazzbasillen book. As people familiar with the cartoon will know, this inspiration should involve the more shady sides of jazz culture.Read More »

Ridley Scott: A Critical Filmography
by William B. Parrill
Paperback: 189 pages
Publisher: McFarland & Company (July 15, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0786458666
ISBN-13: 978-0786458660Read More »

Synopsis:
A massacre initiated by the followers of an apocalyptic religious sect, the Ark of Truth, leaves more than a hundred people dead – including the self-appointed executioners, slain by fellow cult members.

Three years pass. On the anniversary of the slaughter, four friends who lost loved ones in the tragedy seek solace by journeying to the secluded lake where it all began. They encounter a man who was with the executioners until the very moment the killing began, and their pilgrimage takes a strange, unexpected turn.Read More »

Director Barbet Schroeder makes an ambitious attempt to revisit, in spirit, some of the great B-movies and thrillers of the past in ‘Inju, the Beast in the Shadow,’ which starts out as a smart romp through exotic Japan, only to spiral down into disappointing predictability after a hot opening half-hour. Inspired by a book by cult writer Edogawa Rampo and shot in French and Japanese, the film promises much more than it ultimately delivers. Commercial prospects will rest on the imaginatively recreated Kyoto atmosphere and vivid characters, not least a beautiful geisha into S&M.Read More »

“The Manuscript Found in Saragossa collects intertwining stories, all of them set in whole or in part in Spain, with a large and colorful cast of Gypsies, thieves, inquisitors, a cabbalist, a geometer, the cabbalist’s beautiful sister, two Moorish princesses (Emina and Zubeida) and others that the brave, perhaps foolhardy, Walloon Guard Alphonse van Worden meets, imagines or reads about in the Sierra Morena mountains of 18th-century Spain while en route to Madrid. Recounted to the narrator over the course of sixty-six days, the novel’s stories quickly overshadow van Worden’s frame story. Read More »