Synopsis:
The simple story of a Wyoming range war is elevated to near-mythical status in producer/director George Stevens’ Western classic Shane. Alan Ladd plays the title character, a mysterious drifter who rides into a tiny homesteading community and accepts the hospitality of a farming family. Patriarch Joe Starrett (Van Heflin) is impressed by the way Shane handles himself when facing down the hostile minions of land baron Emile Meyer, though he has trouble placing his complete trust in the stranger, as his Marion (Jean Arthur) is attracted to Shane in spite of herself, and his son Joey (Brandon De Wilde) flat-out idolizes Shane. When Meyer is unable to drive off the homesteaders by sheer brute strength, he engages the services of black-clad, wholly evil hired gun Jack Wilson (Jack Palance)…Read More »

In his last film, legendary writer/artist/filmmaker Jean Cocteau portrays an 18th-century poet who travels through time on a quest for divine wisdom. In a mysterious wasteland, he meets several symbolic phantoms that bring about his death and resurrection. With an eclectic cast that includes Pablo Picasso, Jean-Pierre Leáud, Jean Marais and Yul Brynner, Testament of Orpheus (Le Testament de Orphée) brings full circle the journey Cocteau began in The Blood of a Poet, an exploration of the torturous relationship between the artist and his creations.Read More »

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First off: Fatih Akin’s “The Cut” was an aberration, as we all suspected. The director celebrated for his edgy takes on intriguing characters more or less returns with “In the Fade,” a well-constructed, at times moving story of a Hamburg woman seeking justice after the murder of her Kurdish husband and son by a couple of Neo-Nazis. “More or less” because the excellent first quarter gives way to a relatively standard-issue though handsomely produced legal drama with several stock characters and a script that feels too guided by the presumed requirements of mainstream cinema. Diane Kruger’s powerhouse performance in her first German-language production goes a long way toward compensating for the narrative’s dip into overly crystalline waters, and international sales have been unsurprisingly brisk given the film’s incontrovertible general appeal.Read More »

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The power of co-incidence is explored to dramatic effect in The Edge Of Heaven, a Turkish-German production about two deaths that bring strangers together. Once the opening titles warn us of “Yeter’s Death”, we see Turkish prostitute Yeter meeting an elderly client, Ali, in Germany and watch her fate unfold. Shifting to Turkey and Germany and back again, this spirited, beautifully-acted drama follows both Ali’s son and Yeter’s daughter in the wake of the tragedy.Read More »

Synopsis
In an idyllic working class community, 13 year old Anka grows up, going through stages of adolescence, dreaming, first love and gossiping with girlfriends. Roughly disturbed by the shame and disgrace of alcoholism – leaves unwashable stains upon the community, that tries to cope with abuse and depression, and the system (including school teachers) who try to avoid the subject. This story was aimed at parents, to give them morally an insight into what happens when a young girl has to deal with the disgrace of an alcoholic father and a mentally instable mother. Very well acted by Grazyna Michalska as Anka.Read More »

From Allmovie:
Government bureaucracy and ineptitude, as well as social foibles, get a drubbing in this socio-political satire by director Fernando Birri. Everything starts when the families in a poor, mud-hut neighborhood lose what little they own in a bad flood. In steps the militia to rescue them, and then the local government comes next as the politicos hope to gain points by relocating the group of unfortunates. Nothing goes right for the essentially honest, simple villagers who are now the dispossessed. One family seeks temporary shelter in a boxcar and ends up being attached to a train that then takes them on an interesting journey. Meanwhile, no one seems able to help them out and when the hubbub has died down, the families are not much different than when the flood first washed them out. Director Fernando Birri was particularly interested in Neorealism and would eventually move to Cuba.Read More »

Synopsis:
All the hot gamblers are in town, and they’re all depending on Nathan Detroit to set up this week’s incarnation of “The Oldest Established Permanent Floating Crap Game in New York”; the only problem is, he needs $1000 to get the place. Throw in Sarah Brown, who’s short on sinners at the mission she runs; Sky Masterson, who accepts Nathan’s $1000 bet that he can’t get Sarah Brown to go with him to Havana; Miss Adelaide, who wants Nathan to marry her; Police Lieutenant Brannigan, who always seems to appear at the wrong time; and the music/lyrics of Frank Loesser, and you’ve got quite a musical. Includes the songs: Fugue for Tinhorns, “Luck Be a Lady”, “Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat”.Read More »

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Idi Amin Dada was not the only leader of a newly independent African nation who was accused (on the basis of reliable evidence) of bizarre practices. The former French colony known as the Central African Republic was governed from 1966 to 1977 by a man known as Jean Bedel Bokassa. After he was deposed, he was accused of cannibalism. This documentary by Werner Herzog explores the years of his increasingly strange and paranoid rule of that country, and features an interview with a western journalist who was imprisoned by Bokassa as a result of a garbled telex. Bokassa was ousted shortly after he staged an elaborate, widely publicized and very expensive coronation for himself as the “Emperor” of the Republic, during a state visit to another African country.Read More »

A couple in their thirties marry after years of friendship, and go on their honeymoon without having had a physical relationship. Over the course of their honeymoon they encounter sexual difficulties and conflict owed to their heightened self-consciousness and overbearing expectations for how things should be. Feeling that the marriage is hanging by a thread, the couple works desperately towards a solution.Read More »